Chalkbeat

Florida settlement’s limits on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law may give teachers and students breathing room

2024-03-13T20:50:30+00:00

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Florida teachers can place a photo of their spouse on their desk. School libraries can stock books featuring LGBTQ characters. And anti-bullying efforts can protect LGBTQ students. But restrictions on classroom instruction related to sexuality and gender identity remain.

Those are the terms of a settlement agreement that puts an end to a lawsuit challenging what’s commonly known as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Advocates are hailing the lifting of a “shadow” that had fallen over the state’s schools. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made challenging “woke” ideas in schools a cornerstone of his political brand, also declared victory.

The resolution calls attention to the enormous gray areas created by laws restricting how teachers talk about gender, sexuality, race, and history. These laws simultaneously touch on issues of personal identity where federal law protects students and teachers, and issues of curriculum and instruction where states have broad authority.

Fearful of lawsuits and state investigations, teachers have emptied out classroom libraries, taken down Pride flags, and quit their jobs. A high school class president was told he couldn’t mention being gay in his graduation speech. State officials have blamed local leaders for going beyond the requirements of the law, but never formally clarified what was and wasn’t covered — until the settlement agreement was signed Monday.

Essentially, the agreement means that the law won’t force teachers back into the closet or prevent students from talking about who they are.

Under the agreement, the Florida Department of Education will also disseminate guidance about the law to all 67 school districts.

“The vagueness of this law was intentional,” said Joe Saunders, senior political director at Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ rights group and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “At any point, [state officials] could have offered deeper guidance and didn’t. The only reason they’ve done it now is because we sued them in federal court and forced them to end the most harmful aspects of this law.”

Laws restricting teaching have wide-ranging impacts

As classroom restrictions proliferate, a survey by the research group RAND found that two-thirds of teachers reported self-censoring how they talk about certain social and political issues in the classroom, whether they lived in a state with formal restrictions or not. RAND also found — in a study released this week — that a majority of teachers thought these restrictions harmed learning and made students feel less welcome and less empathetic.

Teachers in Florida were the most likely to be aware of their state’s restrictions, and the most likely to report having changed instruction in response, RAND found. Florida also had more laws restricting instruction than other states.

A recent Washington Post analysis of FBI data found that school-based hate crimes against LGBTQ students quadrupled in states that passed restrictive laws, which include laws governing teaching as well as which bathrooms and sports teams transgender children have access to.

The relationship between state policies and bullying has been in the national spotlight after the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary student who died in February after a fight in their Oklahoma high school.

Related: ‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

Some state laws ban discussion of certain topics or require that lessons be “age appropriate” or avoid “divisive” framings, while others require parental notification and the opportunity for parents to opt students out of lessons. Many states leave enforcement to school districts and provide little guidance.

Advocates of these laws say parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, especially on issues that might conflict with their own values, and that schools should focus on core academic subjects.

Students and teachers in states with teaching restrictions told Chalkbeat about LGTBQ student clubs receiving less support, and lessons in literature and history being scaled back to avoid talking about queer references in literature or the movement for gay civil rights.

Legal challenges to these laws are underway in a number of states, but how courts will rule could depend on specifics in individual states. Arizona’s teaching restrictions were struck down, for example, because lawmakers had wedged them into the state budget.

Keira McNett, staff counsel for the National Education Association, said the settlement is important in Florida and “for the national tenor.”

“Many states modeled their law after Florida’s and many are facing lawsuits of their own,” she said. “In many cases, they are overly broad. And when the state is required to actually explain what these vague laws mean, they explain it in a way that is a lot more narrow.”

Settlement provides clarity for classrooms, activities

Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the lawsuit, said the settlement provides immediate relief to Florida students, parents, and teachers who were living under a cloud of uncertainty.

“Every kid should be able to go to public school and have their dignity respected and their family respected,” Kaplan said.

The settlement lays out examples of what’s allowed under Florida law, known formally as the Parental Rights in Education Act:

Teachers can respond to students who choose to discuss their own families or identities and can grade essays that include LGBTQ topics.
Teachers can make reference to LGBTQ people in literature or history.
Student-to-student speech and classroom debates can touch on LGBTQ issues.
Schools can explicitly protect LGBTQ students in anti-bullying efforts, and teachers can have “safe space” stickers in their classroom.
Students of the same gender can dance together at school dances and wear clothing considered inconsistent with their gender assigned at birth.

The settlement clarifies that restrictions on classroom instruction apply “regardless of viewpoint.” In other words, teachers can’t teach a lesson on modern gender theory to elementary students, nor can they teach those students that gender identity is immutable and determined by biological traits.

Kaplan said states have significant authority over curriculum, and that the part of the law specifying such restrictions was unlikely to be overturned on further appeal.

DeSantis’ office in a press release emphasized that the law as written remains intact and “children will be protected from radical gender and sexual ideology in the classroom.”

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” Florida General Counsel Ryan Newman said in the press release. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

Settlement ‘allows for a reasonable conversation’ on instruction

Suzanne Eckes, a professor of educational law and policy at the University of Wisconsin, said Florida’s law and others that are vague and broad potentially violate federal laws and protections.

As employees, teachers have limited free speech rights in the classroom, but states cannot discriminate against them on the basis of sex, which forms the basis of many legal protections for LGBTQ people. For example, they can’t penalize a teacher for having a picture of a same-sex spouse on their desk while allowing a colleague to have a picture of her husband. The federal Equal Access Act says that schools can’t limit extracurricular clubs based on their content. Bible study groups, future homemakers, and gay-straight alliance clubs all have the right to meet in school, Eckes said.

Eckes said the settlement suggests the challengers had viable claims on equal protection grounds, even as the state maintains the right to regulate curriculum and prevent teachers from offering personal opinions to a captive audience.

While the settlement creates no legal precedent, it could encourage some school district lawyers, even in other states, to reach less restrictive interpretations of their states’ laws. At the same time, even in Florida, there may be disagreements about what exactly constitutes instruction.

“If a teacher does give an opinion in class, there is this overall idea that teacher speech can be curtailed,” she said. “That is a grayer area than banning the gay-straight alliance or pulling all the books off the shelves due to your own ideology.”

Derek Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, said the settlement could change the political and cultural calculus around sweeping prohibitions, even though it doesn’t set a precedent for other lawsuits.

“If DeSantis is willing to settle, maybe it’s OK for the governor of Oklahoma to settle,” Black said. “Maybe it denies cultural conservatives the ability to say that some governor or AG in another state is weak.”

The settlement also offers teachers important clarity, Black said: “This type of settlement rebalances things so you don’t have to be so afraid and that allows for a reasonable conversation about what’s instruction and what’s not.”

Michael Woods, a high school teacher in Palm Beach County who leads the Florida Education Association’s LGBTQ caucus, said he’s thrilled with the settlement even as he fears it will take decades to get back to the level of inclusion teachers and students experienced just a few years ago.

His school district’s guide for supporting LGBTQ students shrunk from 140 pages to 14 under Florida’s law, he said. And he stopped leading his school’s GSA club because he would have needed to send permission slips home, which led him to worry about outing students. He’s not sure that’s changed.

Woods also worries about colleagues in smaller, more conservative communities, and about trans educators who often face even more hostility than gay and lesbian teachers.

Still, he hopes teachers in other states feel inspired.

“One of the most hateful states in the nation for LGBTQ rights reached a settlement,” he said. “You have to fight, but it can happen.”

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

As we embrace the ‘science of reading,’ we can’t leave out older students

2023-03-06T13:00:00+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.

The day before my first day of teaching middle school in 2018, I decorated my Brooklyn public school classroom with quotes from famous people reflecting on the importance of reading. Hanging on cream-colored cardstock were the words of Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, C.S. Lewis, Barack Obama, Maya Angelou, and dozens of other writers and thinkers. I hoped to inspire my students to fall in love with reading. I didn’t think to hope that all my students could do the very thing I was asking them to love. I didn’t know that part of my job as a sixth grade Humanities teacher would be to teach students to read in the first place.

Shira Engel

There was a round table in the very back of my classroom that a group of five sixth-graders bee-lined to on day one. On day two, I asked one, then another, to read aloud to me. My request was met with silence, guessing, a fist slammed on the table, and a student storming out of the room. When those sixth grade students finally sat down for a reading assessment, their ability to decode print text was at a first or second grade level.

As a newly minted middle school English teacher, I was shocked by the number of students who entered my classroom unable to decode text. As I got to know them, I saw that herculean efforts to mask their reading disabilities revealed intelligence, determination, and traumatic relationships to school.

Since my first year of teaching, I have dedicated a lot of time to understanding why that happened. With the toxic combination of inaccurate reading assessments and a whole-word approach that encouraged guessing rather than decoding, the Matthew Effect (rich get richer, poor get poorer) has been in full swing in middle schools all around the country. The children who lived in text-rich environments and/or with families who could afford supplemental private tutoring got to “get it.” And those who didn’t? Many never acquired the literacy skills that are tied to power and privilege in this country.

Since my first day of teaching middle school, the “science of reading” — tying reading proficiency to explicit phonics instruction in addition to comprehension work — became a catchphrase for Facebook groups, professional development, and curricula. Lucy Calkins revised her popular but widely criticized “Units of Study” curriculum to include phonics-focused lessons. “Sold a Story,” a podcast series investigating reading instruction, became one of the top podcasts of the year. I also got trained in Wilson Reading Systems, an Orton-Gillingham and multisensory approach to teaching the basic phonics instruction many of my middle school students never received.

In my experience, conversations about the science of reading are happening primarily with elementary and early childhood educators. Those conversations are preventing further literacy injustice and disenfranchisement. But how are we addressing the ways that the system has failed our secondary students when they first learned to read? How can I, a middle school ELA teacher, support the students in my class who were passed along without receiving the literacy instruction they needed?

I am worried that secondary students and secondary education as a whole are being left out of the conversation on how children learn to read. It’s wonderful that (finally!) we are getting to the root of the issue, but what about the young people for whom Tier I instruction comes too late? What about students who, from here on out, will need intensive intervention in order to get on grade level?

I found hope in literacy intervention programs targeting adolescents who lacked key skills.

My former sixth graders are in high school now, preparing for college and careers, but the best preparation they can get is one that helps them, once and for all, become fluent readers. I am concerned that among the excitement of elementary curriculum overhauls, we will leave the children who’ve been wronged even further behind. I am afraid that we’ll do to them what this country has done to people who struggle with literacy since its inception: disenfranchise, hide, and erase.

During that first year of teaching middle school, when I was shocked by the students in my class that struggled to sound out single-syllable words, who guessed based on the first two letters rather than sound out, and who, upon hearing they’d do partner reading, developed looks of panic in their eyes, I found hope in literacy intervention programs targeting adolescents who lacked key skills.

I want more for these students. I want every secondary educator to be trained in not just teaching kids about reading; I want them to be trained to teach their students to read, should one or two or 10 sit down in the back of their class and not know how.

I believe in the power of restorative literacy. Every day, I work with adolescents and pre-adolescents who have slipped through the massive cracks of our education system. What I have witnessed during my five years working in vastly different types of schools is that learning, achievement, and opportunity gaps either dramatically widen or dramatically close in middle school. Passion for social justice within our education systems is insufficient; the actual work — the literacy work — that makes change possible needs to occur.

Shira Engel is a former New Yorker who both attended and taught in New York City public schools. She now lives and teaches seventh and eighth grade Humanities in New Haven, Connecticut, and works as a Wilson tutor for students with dyslexia after school. Shira documents her experiences teaching, reading, and learning on Instagram at @readteachjoy.

NYC may encourage principals to hire teachers over other roles to reduce class sizes

2024-02-29T23:28:24+00:00

Principals with vacant positions next year might start feeling more pressure from the city to hire teachers over other roles to comply with the state’s class size law, officials said Thursday at a New York City Council hearing.

The law, passed by the state legislature in 2022, requires that kindergarten to third grade classrooms have 20 or fewer students, fourth to eighth grade classes have no more than 23 students, and high schools classes have 25 or fewer. The law takes effect in phases – requiring that 20% of classrooms across the city meet the mandates by this September, and 40% satisfy the requirements by September 2025. The entire city will have to be in compliance by September 2028.

So far, the city’s Education Department hasn’t had much trouble complying. Roughly 40% of classrooms across the city are currently at or below the caps, officials testified Thursday.

But to make sure the city is still in compliance by next September, and begin preparing for the stricter requirements in coming years, the department is considering some policy changes next school year, Deputy Chancellor for Operations Emma Vadehra testified on Thursday.

One of those changes may be “asking schools to prioritize hiring teachers over other positions” when they have vacancies, Vadehra said.

That could mark a significant shift in a system where principals have traditionally had wide latitude to manage their hiring decisions and decide how to distribute their dollars among classroom teachers and other positions including aides, administrators, deans, and counselors and social workers.

First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said, pushing school hiring decisions “top-down” would be “overrid[ing] the judgment of the people we want making those judgments.”

Officials didn’t offer many details on how that directive would work. Schools already have some hiring restrictions unrelated to the new class size law, such as maintaining the mandated number of teachers and paraprofessionals for students with disabilities and ensuring they have teachers for required subjects.

The plan will need to be approved by the teachers and principals unions, and officials aim to communicate plans to principals by this spring before they have to begin hiring for next year, Vadehra said.

Henry Rubio, the president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, the union representing principals, expressed concerns about the idea, calling it “tremendously short-sighted.”

In addition to more teachers, schools also need “support staff, paraprofessionals, and supervisors to maintain effective instruction and provide the adequate professional development that a school’s staff needs,” he said. “Otherwise, the academic gains from smaller class sizes may be eroded since new teachers and other staff will require more support given their lack of experience.”

Mike Sill, the assistant secretary at the United Federation of Teachers, said the union “like[s] the concept in general,” but there are “caveats.”

Some schools might need more counselors or deans, he said. “It’s a half-baked plan at this point.”

Education Department previews other potential changes next year

Officials said they are considering a recommendation from a recently-convened working group to restrict how schools can spend $215 million in funding through a state program called Contracts for Excellence, or C4E.

C4E money is distributed by the city, based on the level of student need at a school, measured by the number of low-income and academically struggling students, as well as English Language Learners and kids with disabilities.

Currently, schools that receive C4E money can use it for reducing class sizes, launching professional development programs to improve teacher quality, offering full-day pre-Kindergarten classes, and running programs for English Language Learners, among other things.

Officials on Thursday said they’re considering restricting that funding so it can only be used to lower class sizes.

More than 1,500 schools got C4E money this year, with an average of nearly $141,000 per school.

Bigger changes are ahead

The challenges facing the Education Department are going to grow as the class size law continues to phase in.

Officials estimate that the city will need to increase its teaching force, which currently stands at around 77,000, by between 10,000 and 12,000 to fully comply with the law. That will cost between $1.4 to $1.9 billion a year, according to the Education Department’s estimates, and require a significant boost in hiring at a time when the number of new teachers entering the workforce is shrinking. The Education Department also estimates that there are about 500 schools that will need more classrooms than they currently have in their buildings to meet the class size standards. Some schools that only need one or two extra classrooms might be able to shift around existing space. But other schools need as many as 78 additional classrooms, Vadehra said.

The School Construction Authority, which is in charge of building new facilities, estimated that it will cost between $22 and $27 billion to build all the new facilities needed to meet the class size mandates – a budget far greater than is currently slotted in the SCA’s capital plan.

State legislators have argued that the Education Department doesn’t need any additional funding to comply with the law because Foundation Aid from the state increased by more than $1 billion in recent years. But Education Department officials say they’ve already committed that money to bolstering school budgets, increasing funding for low-income and homeless students, and paying for increasing mandated costs for charter schools and special education.

Adding to the complexity, the schools with the largest class sizes currently are more likely to have larger concentrations of students from affluent families, creating concerns that the city could have to shift resources away from schools with needier populations to those with lower levels of student need.

One of the city’s cheapest options for reducing class sizes citywide would be capping enrollment at the most overcrowded schools, and redirecting students to schools with more room and lower class sizes. But that policy would likely spur significant pushback from parents, since many of the schools with the largest class sizes are among the city’s most in-demand, especially at the high school level, where students have the greatest freedom to apply to schools across the city.

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

Educators: How are you planning to teach about the 2024 presidential election?

2024-02-22T19:00:00+00:00

Dear high school teachers,

In schools across America, the 2024 presidential election will likely become increasingly dominant in hallway conversations, lunch table debates, and teacher-led lessons — planned and unplanned. This fall, American citizens will once again cast their votes, and the two leading contenders are poised to be the same ones from four years ago. 2024 might feel eerily similar to the tumultuous 2020 presidential election and its aftermath.

You all have the important task of teaching history at the very moment it’s being made.

High schoolers: How important is this year’s election? Tell us.

As the presidential election cycle ramps up, The New York Times’ Headway team and Chalkbeat want to hear from you. How are your students thinking about this election? How are you planning to teach it? What questions do you have?

Let us know in the quick questionnaire below, and we’ll be in touch. (We’re particularly interested in learning from educators of current juniors and seniors in high school, but please don’t let that stop you from filling out our form. We want to hear from other types of educators as well!)

Do you have students we should talk to? We also have a questionnaire we are sharing directly with high schoolers. Do you know current juniors and seniors who would want to participate in this project? Please share the student questionnaire here.

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High schoolers: How important is this year’s election? Tell us.

2024-02-22T19:00:00+00:00

Dear high schoolers,

This year’s U.S. presidential election will dominate conversations worldwide. This fall, American citizens will once again cast their votes, and the two leading contenders are poised to be the same ones from four years ago. 2024 might feel eerily similar to the tumultuous 2020 presidential election and its aftermath.

Once again, inside your classrooms, history is being taught at the very moment it’s being made.

Educators: How are you planning to teach about the 2024 presidential election?

Since this could be the first election you’ll have a chance to vote in, we’re eager to know how important this moment feels in your classes and to you and your friends. Are you closely following the campaign? Or does it feel not that connected to your life?

The New York Times’ Headway team and Chalkbeat want to hear directly from you. Take a moment to complete our questionnaire below, and we’ll be in touch with you soon.

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NYC families and teachers: How are your schools handling student cell phones?

2024-02-22T22:21:37+00:00

School cell phone policies are under the microscope nationwide. We want to hear what’s happening at your New York City school.

When students returned to in-person classes after learning remotely during the pandemic, some educators noticed that kids were increasingly attached to their phones. Now, more schools are experimenting with systems to keep phones out of students’ hands during the school day.

And in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has railed against the dangers of social media for children’s mental health, declaring it a public health risk and filing a lawsuit against five leading social media companies.

But efforts to ban or curb cell phone use in schools have also generated significant pushback. Some parents worry they won’t be able to reach their kids in emergencies, while some students and educators say restrictive rules rob them of a critical tool and opportunities to use technology responsibly.

At Chalkbeat New York, we’re hoping to dive deeper into how schools are handling cell phones. We want to learn more about the policies schools are adopting – or avoiding – and the benefits and drawbacks of those approaches. Please fill out the short survey below to help direct our reporting.

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How an AP African American studies class is helping Brooklyn students see themselves in history

2024-02-20T22:08:01+00:00

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Until her junior year, Brooklyn high school student Afag Sidahmed never enjoyed history classes.

“I was so sick of learning about Europeans,” she said. Her courses rarely focused on Black history, with the exception of Martin Luther King Jr.

But this year, a new course offered at her school, the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, has changed her feelings about the subject.

“When I heard about AP African American Studies — and the word African was in there — I was like, ‘Wow, I am taking this class,’” she said.

In 2022, the College Board rolled out its first Advanced Placement course in African American studies through a pilot program at 60 schools across the country. This year, the program expanded to nearly 700 high schools nationwide, with 59 of the city’s schools offering the course locally.

Next year, the course will officially launch, allowing any high schools to offer it. Nearly 160 additional high schools in New York City have already expressed interest in the course, though that number will likely shift as schools develop their plans for the next school year, officials said.

The materials covered in the class have spurred controversy in some states. Last year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state’s schools wouldn’t teach the class and alleged it violated a state law that restricts how race and racism are taught. And when the College Board later released a revised curriculum that had removed much of the criticized content, others protested the organization had buckled under political pressure and watered down the course.

Still, despite being enmeshed in a national political dispute, educators in the city and across the country have emphasized the vital role the class can play in schools and the value it can bring to students.

At the Institute of Math and Science, 32 students across two classes are taking the course, both taught by teachers Kelly Preston and Martine Mercier. Inside their fifth-floor classroom, the walls are decorated with a timeline of Black history that spans thousands of years, and the flags of nations in Africa and the Caribbean. A class constitution encourages students to ask questions, value each other’s opinions, and express any disagreements respectfully.

For Preston and Mercier, the focus of the class has been on student-led discussions and engagement. Typical lessons rely almost entirely on students analyzing primary sources in small groups, instead of more-traditional lectures.

“Kids should be active agents of learning,” Preston said. “They’re not passive absorbers taking in what we tell them. They can create that understanding for themselves, and we want them to feel that agency, and feel empowered in their educational experience.”

Students look to primary sources

In one February class, Preston and Mercier used a hypothetical scenario to segue into a lesson on the Great Migration, a period in the 20th century when millions of Black people moved from the rural South to urban areas in other parts of the country.

Students considered what conditions would prompt them to leave their school for another — whether they’d do so based solely on negative treatment, or if a viable alternative school would be needed to pursue a new environment.

Afterwards, students turned to historical documents, discussing in groups of three or four. Preston and Mercier walked between tables, listening in, posing additional questions, and urging students to explain the reasons for their answers.

Mercier said she and Preston are prioritizing “having the students not always look to us to affirm whether they’re correct or not, but look to each other and look to other sources to affirm what they’re thinking.”

Alizett Tavarez, an 11th grader at the school, explained how she inferred the meaning of the Great Migration through clues from paintings by Jacob Lawrence, a 20th century American painter whose work documented aspects of the Black experience.

“The first thing that caught my eye was how in each of the paintings they have signs that show Chicago, New York, and St. Louis,” she said. “The next picture said tickets, tickets, tickets. It made me assume they were traveling north.”

During the discussion, students often turned to other figures and moments in Black history, drawing connections to Harriet Tubman, Black Wall Street, the Harlem Renaissance, and more.

When Preston and Mercier asked students to consider why so many individuals chose to migrate north, one student spoke up.

“For real freedom,” said Esha Azam, a 10th grader. “Because after slavery ended, the South created the Black Codes, literacy tests, and Jim Crow laws,” she added, referring to various laws that states adopted to restrict the rights of Black Americans to vote or own property, for example, and to enforce racial segregation.

More powerful than just an exam

The AP course pilot is one of several ways New York City educators are working to broaden the scope of how Black history is taught in schools.

Sonya Douglass, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and director of the Black Education Research Collective, helped develop a pre-K-12 Black studies curriculum that has been offered recently across roughly 10 districts as part of a pilot program. Douglass and others worked to develop the curriculum with the Education Equity Action Plan Coalition, a group of educators, nonprofits, and government leaders.

“So far, we have seen a lot of enthusiasm among educators, community members, and students — the older ones of which say, ‘This is long overdue,’” she said. “What we’re really excited about at the K-12 level is basically generations of young people who will have access to this information.”

The AP African American studies course has prompted further discussion and excitement among local communities, Douglass said. For educators who are tackling the material for the first time next year, it’s critical to approach it with “cultural humility,” she noted.

“No matter your background, even if you are of African descent, many of us don’t know this history,” she said. “Just taking that learner’s stance is so important.”

Preston and Mercier have also shared advice for educators in recent months, speaking about their experience leading the class on a local panel with other Brooklyn schools, and at the national College Board Forum in November.

The two educators suggest teachers who are new to the course embrace the work and trust their students.

“It’s not easy to roll out a brand new course — especially one that centers stories and narratives that haven’t always been highlighted,” Preston said. “It’s a lot of learning and unlearning you’ll need to do. … But really, trust the kids. The kids can do this. They can interrogate sources. They can create understanding for themselves. They can have meaningful, effective conversations.

“You just have to figure out how to support them in doing it,” she added.

Kiri Soares, principal of the Institute of Math and Science, praised Preston and Mercier for developing a successful model for the course in its first year at the school. But Soares noted she’s worried fewer students will be able to take the course if it isn’t able to count as a U.S. history credit toward a student’s graduation requirements. (The city’s Education Department said the class is credited as a humanities elective.)

Soares’ hopes for the class hinge less on the results of the AP exam in May — which will be offered for the first time this year — and more on what students can gain from the content covered within it.

“My goal in this course in particular is to have them see themselves written into history,” she said. “That is a disruptor to the history that their families have had, and it’s pretty amazing and more powerful” than a top score on an exam.

For some students at the school, the class has accomplished just that.

“It always ties back somehow to your roots,” Alizett said. “You always learn more than you expect.”

“You definitely learn about your ethnicity in the classroom,” added Amna Sobahi, an 11th grader. “Like I don’t even need a DNA test anymore — I have Ms. Kelly.”

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

A visit to Auschwitz changed how I teach about the Holocaust

2024-01-26T12:00:00+00:00

When I was in sixth grade, I read Anne Frank’s “The Diary of a Young Girl.” This was my introduction to the Holocaust. I was so moved by her life — and subsequent death at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp — that I vowed to never forget Anne and the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis.

My 12-year-old mind could not fathom the senselessness of her murder. As I was reading her diary, I fully expected the outspoken girl who liked to read and disliked math, who had crushes and dreams for the future, to live. Anne reminded me of myself. To this day, it still saddens and haunts me that she did not survive.

Nikia Garland

The similarities between the plight of the Jewish people and Black Americans were also not lost on me. I was moved by photos of Black American soldiers helping to liberate the Jews from concentration camps, and struck by the irony of those servicemen returning to the U.S. where they were denied basic rights, faced racial hostility, and were still not completely free. I am a high school English teacher, and I was determined to teach my students about Black soldiers, such as Cpl. James W. Baldwin, who helped liberate Europe from Hitler’s rule.

Then, last June, decades after I first read Anne’s diary, I had the opportunity to travel solo to Poland and Germany as a Funds for Teachers Fellow. I pursued this fellowship because I wanted to learn more about the Holocaust, as I teach a unit on the subject.

When I arrived at Auschwitz, where about 1 million Jews were murdered, the atmosphere was heavy. Despite it being a sweltering summer day, I felt a distinct chill flow through me as I entered the gates that read, “Arbeit macht frei,” German for “Work sets you free,” even though the millions who passed through those gates were killed or brutally imprisoned and forced to work.

At Auschwitz, I was not prepared for the artifacts that were left behind. There were suitcases bearing names, dishes, and bundles upon bundles of human hair that the Nazis used for textiles. It was especially difficult to see the children’s clothing and shoes, photographs of grossly emaciated prisoners — including kids — and the squalid living conditions they endured.

Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor stands outside the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana, during the filming of the 2014 Andre Singer documentary "Night Will Fall." Kor died at age 85 in 2019.

Entering the gas chamber there was like being transported back in time. The sharp scent of death still lingered in the air. It completely overwhelmed my senses, and I was moved to tears.

I also visited Oskar Schindler’s enamel factory in Krakow, Poland, which is now a museum. Schindler, a German businessman credited with saving more than 1,000 Jews, was the subject of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning 1993 film “Schindler’s List.” Another museum visitor recommended the movie to me.

I watched it on my flight home from Europe — an emotional screening on the heels of an emotional trip. I was captivated by Schindler’s metamorphosis from an opportunistic industrialist to an upstander who, repulsed by the Nazis’ brutal treatment of Jews, developed a plan to save as many as he could. This year, I plan to have my AP students watch “Schindler’s List” and write a rhetorical analysis.

It’s one way my trip to Europe will shape how I teach about the Holocaust. I also created a PowerPoint about my trip to European Holocaust sites, and I have planned field trips to Indianapolis’ Peace Center for Reconciliation and Forgiveness, founded by a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and to a live production of “Letters From Anne and Martin,” which highlights the parallels between Anne Frank and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

In addition, my students will research a real Holocaust victim and learn their story. They will also hear about Eva Mozes Kor, a Holocaust survivor who, along with her twin sister, Miriam, endured the experiments of the brutal Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. Kor lived for many years in Terre Haute, Indiana, and opened a Holocaust museum and education center there. When I was at Auschwitz, I saw a large photo of Eva and her sister being liberated by Russian soldiers in 1945. (Kor died in 2019 at age 85.)

I also hope to speak to my son’s eighth grade humanities class as they study the rise of totalitarianism in the 20th century. And I look forward to sharing what I saw and learned during my Holocaust education fellowship in other schools and classrooms, too.

My students, and all students, should know what happened during the Holocaust. They should understand the importance of empathizing with those who are suffering, regardless of race or creed, and advocating for justice on their behalf. They will read the famous verse “First They Came For…” by Pastor Martin Niemöller, to help emphasize the danger of being indifferent to those in pain.

In memory of Anne Frank, whose story captured my 12-year-old self and whose death broke my heart, I am determined to help shape a generation of upstanders.

Nikia D. Garland teaches British Literature and AP Language and Composition at Arsenal Technical High School. She has taught a wide range of secondary and college-level ELA classes in the U.S. and internationally. Nikia has been a Terry Fear Holocaust Educator in Action recipient, a Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation grant recipient, a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellow, a Fund For Teachers Fellow, and a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. In addition, she is a chair for the Indiana Teachers of Writing conference and president-elect for the Indiana affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English.

You’re invited: Hear local educators share their stories of when lessons don’t go to plan

2024-02-14T22:01:49+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Things don’t always go as planned - even when there’s a lesson plan. And now, you can hear directly from educators about the times they adjusted those plans, whether it was in the moment or after another experience changed their perspective.

Join us for the “From Lesson Plan to New Plan” teacher story slam from 7 to 9 p.m., Friday, March 1, at Fay Biccard Glick Neighborhood Center, 2990 W. 71st St., Indianapolis.

The event is hosted by Indy Kids Winning and Chalkbeat Indiana, and supported by Teach Indy.

This story slam is a continuation of story slams hosted by Teachers Lounge Indy that were a place for teachers to share their stories, spend time together, and learn from each other. This time, it’s also the night before the Teach Indy Educators Conference.

Come to hear the stories, meet other educators, and try handcrafted vegan wines from Sip & Share Wines.

To attend, register here for a free ticket on Eventbrite: https://ckbe.at/indystoryslam

Also, if you’re an educator and want to tell your story, please let us know here.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what happened when my ‘no excuses’ school piloted a restorative justice program

2022-01-07T14:00:00+00:00

Restorative justice. I first heard the phrase during a summer school class back in 2019. The teacher explained that restorative justice is different from our social norm of punishing those who have hurt others or committed crimes. Instead, the goal is to promote accountability and allow both parties (victims and perpetrators) to heal. Understanding restorative justice helped me to envision a world without the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration.

Over the next two years, I spent countless hours reading and theorizing about restorative approaches, as well as advocating for their real-world application. As a member of my school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion team, I led forums on anti-racism and restorative approaches to discipline. But it was my personal experience with restorative justice that fortified my commitment to the practice.

It was a seemingly typical day in my African American History class: We were answering questions, laughing, and enjoying the academic company of each other. Meanwhile, we worked on our second-quarter group projects about the various methods of resistance for enslaved Black peoples across the Americas. My group had been assigned the Stono Rebellion, a 1739 revolt in colonial South Carolina.

I had an idea to add audio to the presentation to enhance the experience of the audience. Specifically, I wanted to incorporate juba, a genre of music birthed on the American Southern plantations and proved essential to mobilizing Black enslaved folks towards the Stono Rebellion.

I was surprised to receive an email from my teacher requesting a meeting about the verbal altercation.

But when I took out my phone to figure out how to add an audio file into our slide presentation, I heard my teacher say: “Chim! Put your phone away!” To which I reflexively blurted out, “I was just using my phone for our project!” This exchange stunned the class, altering its otherwise steady vibe. After a tense pause, my classmates went back to their projects. I tried to convince myself that it would blow over by the time the bell rang.

So I was surprised to receive an email from my teacher requesting a meeting about the verbal altercation. She asked me to choose from various approaches aimed at restoring harmony in my African American History class. I could select a meeting alone with my teacher, one with my teacher and my family, or one with my teacher and several classmates who witnessed the back-and-forth. Ultimately, I chose to meet with my teacher, a peer advocate, and two other classmates.

As the meeting approached, my heart picked up speed, and soon its beating was the only noise I could hear. My teacher began the session by assuring me I wasn’t in trouble. She explained that I was part of a restorative justice pilot program at my school. Restorative justice wasn’t really part of the DNA of the school — a charter known for its “no excuses” approach to academics and discipline. So hearing her say “restorative justice” gave me a sense of automatic relief, as I knew that my agency would not be debated or encroached upon. I realized I was surrounded by people who actually cared and weren’t automatically going to paint me as an aggressor. My heart rate slowed.

We discussed how our verbal interaction had been perceived, and we shared our feelings about it. By the end of the 15-minute session, we approached what everyone there considered an equitable way forward. My teacher conceded that she thought that by looking at my phone I was off-task. I agreed that I could have reacted in a way that was both less harsh and less defensive. The next day in class wasn’t awkward. I felt good about being back.

The restorative justice pilot allowed me to be advocated for, without the quick assumptions about who was in the wrong. If more students — especially those for whom respectability politics don’t play in their favor — could experience restorative justice, we’d all be better for it.

Black children, who often face disproportionate punishment, who may be treated like adults — or worse yet, criminals — in their own schools, need restorative alternatives to the status quo. Creating safer and more equitable school communities starts with relinquishing punitive discipline systems, and implementing restorative practices where students are heard, seen, and championed.

And as a Black girl, this issue is personal. Monique Morris, the author of “Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls In Schools,” has explained that while Black girls make up 16% of female students, they are massively overrepresented among those students referred to law enforcement or arrested on campus. This is what we mean by the school-to-prison pipeline. It’s the reality for Black girls across the country, especially those living in underserved, low-income communities. But the introduction of restorative justice approaches offers hope and lowers rates of recidivism by 11 percentage points, according to Communities for Restorative Justice.

Restorative justice has a role to play when it comes to more serious infractions, too, be they incidents of graffiti, truancy, or threatened violence. Rather than calling in student resource officers or issuing suspensions, restorative justice can de-escalate situations. Rather than officers and handcuffs, there are accountability, amends, and a willingness to believe that we can all do better.

Chimdindu Okafor is a senior at North Star Academy Lincoln Park High School in Newark, New Jersey. She has been accepted to 22 colleges so far. Chimdindu is a Chalkbeat Student Voices fellow.

As NYC overhauls literacy approach, one public school gets phonics help from nearby private school

2024-02-08T21:38:36+00:00

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Clasping a deck of pale yellow flash cards, Sloan Shapiro delivered a phonics lesson she’s taught countless times at her Manhattan private school for children with reading challenges.

“Q — U — Queen — Kwuh,” Shapiro chanted, pointing at the letters “Qu” printed on a card above a cartoon drawing of a queen. A chorus of students mimicked her sounds, tracing invisible letters on their hands.

Without missing a beat, Shapiro ticked off a spelling rule. “Q is always followed by a…”

“U!” the group responded in unison.

The chorus of students responding to Shapiro on a recent Monday afternoon at the Stephen Gaynor School, however, weren’t children. They were teachers from P.S. 84, an Upper West Side public school around the corner.

For the first time, Gaynor is offering a free 15-week course to nine public school educators to help refine their lessons on phonics, which explicitly teaches the relationship between sounds and letters. The small pilot program comes as elementary schools across the city are under a new mandate to emphasize phonics, part of a sweeping plan to overhaul the way New York City public schools teach reading.

Schools Chancellor David Banks has embraced partnerships with private schools that cater to students with reading challenges, though an Education Department spokesperson could not say how prevalent such arrangements are. Banks has also expressed interest in improving public programs to reduce the ballooning costs associated with paying for private school tuition. About 80% of families at Gaynor, which charges nearly $80,000 a year, seek tuition payments from the government, arguing the public schools can’t adequately educate their children.

For the past 17 years, Gaynor has partnered with P.S. 84 and nearby P.S. 166, offering free after-school help for about two dozen students each year who are behind in reading. But it didn’t make sense previously to directly train their teachers because the public schools’ approach to literacy was so different, according to head of school Scott Gaynor, who is the grandson of the school’s co-founder.

P.S. 84 has long deployed “Units of Study,” a curriculum created by Teachers College Professor Lucy Calkins. That program, which has been used by hundreds of city elementary schools in recent years, has been criticized by experts in part because it does not include as much emphasis on phonics. With the city’s new phonics push and curriculum mandate, schools are no longer allowed to use Calkins’ program, and Gaynor is considering expanding their training efforts to schools beyond P.S. 84.

But even as the city moves away from Calkins’ approach, that’s only a first step.

“The harder part of the equation is the training,” Gaynor said. “That doesn’t happen from a one-day or even a one-week workshop.”

Going deeper than previous phonics trainings

Teachers at P.S. 84 said their own experiences with phonics training have been mixed.

“We have been through many different [phonics] programs, so it was a little bit all over the place,” said Johana Talbot, a first grade teacher who said she appreciated the training program at Gaynor. (The principal of P.S. 84 declined an interview request.)

The pilot program at Gaynor involves 45 minutes a week of training in a method called Orton-Gillingham that has historically been used for children with dyslexia, but is increasingly deployed with a wider range of students.

That approach is designed to break down the building blocks of language, teaching children basic spelling rules and sound-letter relationships, building in complexity over time. It also incorporates sight, touch, and movement to help make the ideas stick. Students may tap their fingers as they sound out words or move their arms to represent certain sounds.

Though officials at Gaynor said the approach has worked for their students, the evidence of Orton-Gillingham’s effectiveness more broadly is limited.

Talbot has practiced some of the lessons she’s learned at Gaynor in her classroom at P.S. 84. She encouraged students to tap out sounds with their non-dominant hand instead of their dominant hand, a small tweak that helps them use that strategy during writing exercises.

“The movements for every sound [and] chanting the rules — they feel very empowered by that,” said Talbot. About 10 of her students are recent migrants and some of them have proudly shown off some of those strategies with their parents.

P.S. 84′s Carla Murray-Bolling moved this year from preschool to kindergarten, where she is teaching phonics for the first time. “I was basically just thrown in and told: ‘swim.’”

One practice she’s learned is how to encourage students to blend different sounds of a word together. “It’s been helping them by dragging the sounds out instead of breaking them down one letter at a time,” she said.

For Shapiro and her co-teacher, Kristi Evans, the goal is to help teachers understand the reading principles behind the lessons and determine whether students have actually mastered them.

“If you teach teachers the underlying structure of the language, they can really pick up anything,” Shapiro said.

During a recent training session, Murray-Bolling and Talbot paired up to practice testing each other on “nonsense” words that still follow normal spelling rules, giggling as they teased each other with words like “jetch.”

Students who struggle with reading often develop strategies to compensate by using context clues and pictures, Evans said. That often helps them advance to higher grade levels even if they’re behind in reading. By presenting nonsense words, Murray-Bolling and Talbot were learning a quick assessment to help identify whether any of their students had come up with ways to correctly guess a word’s meaning.

“We get those students,” Evans said, referring to students who enroll at Gaynor. “We’re hoping that in the public school we can catch those kids earlier.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat gets a shout-out on ‘Abbott Elementary’ season three premiere

2024-02-08T16:01:56+00:00

Well, that was cool!

Last night’s season three premiere of “Abbott Elementary” on ABC featured a Chalkbeat shout-out none of us was expecting.

Janine Teagues, played by the show’s creator Quinta Brunson, is telling someone from the district about choosing colors for her classroom: I wanted to go with blue, which inspires focus.

District employee Manny: And calm, which is so important for primary classes. I read about that in Chalkbeat.

Janine: You read Chalkbeat?

Manny: Mhm. Janine: I basically live in the comments section, so.

Our phones immediately lit up from readers across the country. The Chalkbeat staff was, to put it mildly, freaking out in the best way. And we loved seeing responses like this one:

Spot on and so well-deserved. Teachers do read Chalkbeat!! https://t.co/FxC8fEBGUM
— Sara Clough (@Sfclough) February 8, 2024

If you’re coming to Chalkbeat for the first time because you saw us on Abbott, welcome! We’re a nonprofit news organization that reports on schools and education policy in eight locations across the country. We are powered by award-winning journalists who live in the communities we serve and care deeply about education, and by a community of teachers and parents who read our work and tell us what’s happening inside their homes and classrooms. Many teachers like Janine are also members — donors who make it possible for us to stay independent as local news struggles.

How ‘Abbott Elementary’ speaks to the bond between students and teachers: ‘You are making a difference’

What was that story Janine mentioned? There’s no exact match, we did recently write about an Indiana school’s new sensory room with walls painted teal. (We’ve also written about the show and how other Philly teachers felt watching it.)

And about our comments section: We did have a thriving one in our early days, but switched to other ways of connecting with readers a few years back. Janine’s reference makes us think that, like so many teachers, she’s been a fan for a while. Did we mention this is our 10th anniversary year?

We’re grateful that so many of the Janines of Philadelphia, and the rest of the country, are avid Chalkbeat readers. We’re willing to bet that not every Janine in your community is a Chalkbeat newsletter subscriber yet, though. We’d love it if you’d share this with them — they can sign up here — or take a moment to tell us your reaction to last night’s episode.

Can you take algebra in eighth grade? In many cases, the answer is no, national survey finds

2024-02-07T19:00:00+00:00

If you’re an eighth grader who wants to take algebra, can you even take the class?

The answer to that question, it turns out, depends a lot on two things: how your school identifies students for advanced math, and where you live.

According to a new nationally representative survey released Tuesday, 65% of U.S. principals said their elementary or middle school offered algebra in eighth grade, but only to certain students. Meanwhile, just 20% of principals said their school offered the class in eighth grade and that any student could take it.

But that picture differed by state. In California, nearly half of principals said their school offered algebra only to certain eighth graders. But in Florida, more than 80% of principals said the class was restricted. In both states, 18% of principals said any eighth grader could take the class, similar to the national rate.

The findings, based on surveys conducted last spring by the RAND Corporation, shed light on the uneven access students have to advanced math classes in middle school, which can have lasting effects on their higher education and job prospects.

Algebra is often considered a gateway class. Eighth graders who take the course can more easily reach calculus by 12th grade — which can set students up for challenging math classes in college and career paths in science and engineering fields.

“The kids that aren’t in algebra by eighth grade, they can do that still,” said Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at RAND, and the lead author of the report, “but they would have to do something special to get there,” such as doubling up on math or taking a summer class.

The report also details the extent to which students are separated based on their perceived math abilities, starting as young as elementary school.

More than 40% of elementary school principals told RAND researchers that their school grouped kids based on their math levels, mostly within the classroom. But by middle school, nearly 70% of principals said they grouped students in math. Most commonly, students were put into separate math classes on honors or career prep tracks, the report found.

“The amount of achievement-level grouping — that it does start within classrooms in K-5 schools and that by middle school, students are typically grouped by achievement level more often than they’re not in their math classes — that’s something new,” Kaufman said.

The findings come as parents and school leaders across the country engage in fierce debates over whether students should be able to take algebra before high school, and if so, what support students need to do well in the class.

Notably, San Francisco Unified schools, which attracted national attention for a policy that prevented students from taking algebra until ninth grade, are poised to bring algebra back to middle schools following parent pushback. School officials there put the policy in place 10 years ago to help prepare more Black and Latino students and students from low-income families to pass algebra and access higher-level math classes — a goal that hasn’t panned out.

The new survey data doesn’t look at whether tracking helps or hurts students’ math outcomes.

And there are other factors that could affect whether students can access higher-level math classes, the report notes, such as differing teacher certification rules, school funding levels, and state policies. California’s state math guidelines encourage students to take algebra in ninth grade, for example, while New York schools are supposed to offer high school math to eighth graders who want to take it.

But Kaufman says the report does suggest that schools should be looking at the criteria they use to group students in math, and whether it could be fueling racial or socioeconomic disparities.

“We’re not giving a recommendation that nobody should be tracked,” Kaufman said. “But if you are grouping students, I think this report calls for you to consider whether the way students are grouped, and how, is biased. Are a lot of students of color, for example, in the lower track? What’s happening there?”

Schools try various methods to expand algebra access

Nationally, white and Asian American students are more likely than their Black and Hispanic classmates to enroll in and pass algebra in eighth grade, the latest federal data shows. Historically, students from low-income families have had less access to algebra in eighth grade, too.

In Philadelphia, many students are blocked from the city’s most selective high school because their middle schools don’t offer algebra. Making algebra more accessible is part of the superintendent’s curriculum overhaul.

School districts like Chicago have taken steps to expand access to algebra in eighth grade, such as offering the class online and covering costs for educators to get algebra teaching credentials. Historically, fewer students in the city’s predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods have been able to take the class before high school.

The RAND survey found that principals of more-affluent schools were much more likely than leaders of higher-poverty schools to say they considered parent or guardian requests to place students into advanced math classes. That could shortchange kids who don’t have a parent who can step in and do that kind of advocacy, Kaufman noted.

The report urges schools to look at multiple data points to place students into higher-level math classes, and to consider experimenting with the cutoff scores used to identify which students can handle the harder math coursework.

In Oklahoma, Union Public Schools is trying that, The Hechinger Report recently reported. The district, which serves parts of Tulsa and the city’s southeast suburbs, used to offer a pre-algebra placement test in fifth grade, just one time.

But after school officials realized that was mostly funneling kids from elementary schools in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods into the advanced middle and high school math classes, they made changes. The district now allows students to take the fifth-grade placement test multiple times, and teachers can recommend promising students regardless of their score. That’s helped diversify advanced math classes, particularly for Hispanic students.

Union Public Schools also added math tutoring starting in third grade — the kind of support that the RAND report says can be crucial for student success, but that many struggling students aren’t getting.

More than three-quarters of middle school principals told the RAND researchers that less than half of their struggling students participated in math support options offered by their school, such as tutoring, double-dose math classes, or a summer math program for rising middle schoolers.

That could point to the need for schools to universally screen kids for extra math help, or do more to make sure students and parents know about what help is offered. Schools may also need to change how the help is offered, such as moving after-school tutoring to during the school day or providing transportation so more kids can attend.

Those are crucial steps, Kaufman said, at a time when many kids are struggling to close math gaps that cropped up when school was remote or disrupted in other ways by the pandemic.

“I know tutoring is happening in a lot of places, it’s one of the priorities of the White House right now,” she said. But if tutoring is mostly offered to kids and parents who volunteer, “then the tutoring is not going to reach the kids who need it the most.”

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

The list is out: See which curriculum is dominating NYC’s reading mandate

2024-02-03T00:18:40+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

New York City kicked off its new literacy curriculum mandate this year, requiring elementary schools in nearly half of its districts to choose among three curriculums. One pick dominated: Into Reading, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Teachers wondered whether the same curriculum — which has won mixed reviews from educators — would continue to gain traction, as every elementary school must join the initiative by September 2024.

Now, there’s an answer: All elementary schools in 22 of the city’s 32 local districts will be required to use Into Reading, according to the Education Department.

The program’s popularity means the majority of the city’s elementary school students will soon use the same curriculum for reading. That’s a major shift, as the city’s previous approach gave principals leeway to choose their own materials.

It represents a big bet that one flagship curriculum will help schools Chancellor David Banks achieve his top goal: improving the city’s literacy rates. And it’s also a striking outcome given the Education Department vetted three options that officials said are high quality, including Wit & Wisdom, from a company called Great Minds, and EL Education, both of which have won praise from some advocates and educators.

Five districts will require EL Education, and five will use Wit & Wisdom, including Brooklyn’s District 15, where schools with dual-language programs will use Into Reading. It’s the only district that did not use a single choice across its campuses. (A full list of each district’s curriculum choice is included below.)

“It seems like, once again, Into Reading really wins,” said Susan Neuman, a professor at New York University and literacy expert.

Some educators and advocates have raised concerns about Into Reading, including that it is not culturally responsive enough. But Neuman said there is little definitive evidence about what the curriculum’s popularity will mean for student learning. “It’s really difficult to say one is better than another at this point,” she said of the three options the city selected.

Neuman and others said the three newly mandated curriculums are likely an improvement over the materials many schools have used in recent years, including a popular program created by Teachers College Professor Lucy Calkins. Backed by a growing chorus of experts, Banks has argued that Calkins’ curriculum has not worked, in part because it doesn’t include enough systematic instruction on the relationship between sounds and letters, known as phonics. It also includes some discredited methods, such as using pictures to guess what a word says.

The Education Department said it picked three curriculums more aligned with longstanding research about how children learn to read, often referred to as the science of reading. Separately, the city has required schools to use an approved phonics program alongside the three reading programs. Using a single curriculum across districts will allow the city to scale up more effective teacher training efforts, since materials won’t vary as much from campus to campus. Students who transfer schools will be less likely to start from scratch with a new curriculum.

Into Reading gets foothold in NYC schools even before the mandate

There are several reasons Into Reading likely has proved to be the most popular choice among local superintendents, who were tasked with making the final decision for their districts. The program is perceived to be the most traditional option and easier to roll out, with more regimented step-by-step lessons. And unlike the other two approved programs, Into Reading has a Spanish version that may appeal to schools with dual-language offerings.

“It’s so scripted, and if superintendents and district teams are worried about implementation, it could be easier” than the other choices, said a staffer in a local superintendent’s office who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the company behind Into Reading, also deployed a savvy marketing strategy. The publishing house made digital materials free for schools to use during the pandemic, potentially helping it gain a foothold in several districts. Superintendents may have been more compelled to select a curriculum already in their schools, since switching materials can be a difficult and time consuming process.

EL, Wit & Wisdom gain slightly more traction in second round

Despite Into Reading’s popularity, the other two curriculums were slightly more popular among superintendents who are part of the second phase of the mandate beginning this coming fall. Both Wit & Wisdom and EL Education place a greater emphasis on boosting students’ background knowledge, advocates say, a key element for boosting students’ reading comprehension across a wide range of subjects.

Those curriculums often lean on challenging nonfiction readings in an effort to ensure students are reading at their grade level, though some educators have said they can be difficult for students who are behind.

Some superintendents in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods, where certain schools have long-standing commitments to Calkins’ program, seemed to gravitate to Wit & Wisdom and El Education. District 2, which snakes from the West Village to the Upper East Side, is using Wit & Wisdom as is District 3, which covers Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

District 15, which includes Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Sunset Park, and Red Hook in Brooklyn split its schools between Wit & Wisdom and Into Reading. Still, other districts with fewer children from lower-income households — including Bayside, Queens District 26, and Staten Island — are using Into Reading. And some high-poverty areas, such as District 7 in the South Bronx are using EL Education.

Curriculum choices are only one part of the equation, though. Experts say the quality of teacher training and how committed educators are to making changes are also crucial. Among teachers in the first phase of the curriculum mandate this fall, some educators said they haven’t received as much support as they hoped.

“It’s been effective, but they say they want more of it — that it has to be ongoing,” said Marielys Divanne, the executive director of Educators for Excellence-New York, an advocacy group that supports the city’s curriculum mandate. “Curriculum alone is not sufficient.”

Kindergarten teacher Carla Murray-Bolling said she’s anxious and excited about the new curriculum mandate. Her school, P.S. 84 on the Upper West Side, uses Calkins’ program but will be required to switch to Wit & Wisdom this coming fall.

Murray-Bolling likes certain elements of Calkins’ curriculum, called “Units of Study,” including a recent lesson that teaches children that reading is a special power they can unlock — a superhero metaphor that got her students excited. But she also said the amount of time her students are expected to work independently can be a challenge, since many of her students have yet to master basic reading and writing skills.

“I’m anxious to see the changes,” she said, noting that she was not aware of opportunities for teachers to offer input on the new curriculum choices.

Still, she’s coming in with an open mind for the Education Department’s reading overhaul.

“If they feel it’s a curriculum that’s strong, and they think it’s good for the students, I don’t see anything wrong about that,” she said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

I teach future teachers. They don’t need the edTPA.

2023-03-31T14:00:00+00:00

I am a supervisor of teachers who work time and a half, for free. They arrive at work as early as 6:30 a.m., consult with guidance counselors during their free periods, tutor students after school, plan lessons and grade essays before and after dinner. They don’t sleep enough.

These teachers are student teachers, but they carry a full load. And they do all this work under the constant supervision of a veteran teacher and me, their university supervisor, with the expectation that they continuously revise their practice in response to feedback. Not all will make it out with a license. Those who do will have earned it.

When Illinois’ COVID Disaster Proclamation expires on May 11, the student teachers with whom I work will have even more on their plates. Lots more. The edTPA assessment for teacher licensure, which Illinois began requiring of all new teachers in the fall of 2015, will again be required in the spring of 2024.

The edTPA is often compared to the assessment required of veteran teachers seeking National Board Certification. Developed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, it required my students to create some 50 pages of writing as well as video clips of themselves teaching. Despite its good intentions and fancy pedigree, this assessment is redundant, costly, and has the unintended effects of narrowing teacher education curricula and keeping strong candidates out of schools that need them — or out of the profession altogether.

To be sure, I want to hold future teachers to the highest standards; they are working with our most precious assets, our children. But to add such an onerous assessment when there are so many checks already in place is to fall prey to the accountability movement’s lie: that more testing is always good.

Already, pre-service teachers at my university have to apply for admission to our teacher education program after successful completion of prerequisite courses, maintain high grades in their education coursework, pass a state-administered content area test, and receive repeated positive evaluations of their student teaching by at least two veteran teachers. No additional testing is necessary.

For the few years that the edTPA was mandated in Illinois, its negative effects were immediately clear to me and went well beyond making a stressful student teaching semester remarkably more stressful. Because of the pressure to capture excellent student work on video, placement coordinators worried about assigning student teachers to some of the non-selective enrollment schools with which they had previously partnered. Because of the test fee, some teacher candidates with whom I worked — first-generation college students putting themselves through college and helping to support their families — put off licensure. And some, disheartened by not being able to finish on the planned timeline, put it off further.

Most ridiculously, my university colleagues and I devoted precious class time to teaching edTPA-specific vocabulary. The test emphasizes obscure terminology — terms like “language function” to describe “the content and language focus of the learning task, represented by the active verbs within the learning outcomes.” These terms left our and our students’ minds in tangles when we should have been focusing on teaching.

The edTPA doesn’t assess anything a good teacher education program doesn’t, and there are systems in place to assess the teacher education programs themselves. What the edTPA does do is distract from the work of teaching and increase stress, debt, and inequality, making it harder for lower-income student teachers to be licensed and disincentivizing their work in lower-income schools.

If the edTPA had proved itself to be a completely accurate assessment, that would be at least one point in its favor. But it hasn’t. Instead, we see damning data like that reported in a 2021 American Educational Research Journal article that “raise[s] serious concerns about scoring design, the reliability of the assessments, and the consequential impact on decisions about edTPA candidates.” (The testmakers have disputed those claims.) And yet edTPA is due to become required under law again in Illinois after the COVID-era emergency orders cease.

Hopefully, this will not come to pass. State lawmakers are considering changes to the licensure process, and I hope they make them. If the edTPA returns, I will have to return to using valuable class time to prepare students to clear this unnecessary hurdle. And I will again have to watch as the edTPA’s demands dangerously overload student teachers’ plates.

Indeed, as I watch this semester’s student teachers working so hard, giving up time with family and friends to support students of their own, I quake to think of asking future student teachers to do even more. Given Illinois’ teacher shortage (ISBE reported more than 2,000 unfilled teacher positions in 2022) and our children’s increased needs since the pandemic, we should be doing everything we can to get these dedicated aspiring teachers into the schools that need them.

Kate Sjostrom is a lecturer and associate director of English education at University of Illinois, Chicago.

At our parent-teacher conferences, students lead the way

2023-04-18T12:00:00+00:00

Each fall and spring, families and schools across the country take part in “parent-teacher” conferences. Filing in and out of classrooms (or Zoom rooms), educators and parents talk about student progress, participation, and social development. The children and teens who are the subject of the conference are not usually in the room.

At the Newark middle school where I work, though, our students are the ones leading the conference. They are the ones facilitating the conversation about their strengths and areas for growth.

Lauren Whidbee

It takes preparation to get there, but I’ve seen it pay off for everyone involved.

To help students to feel confident enough to advocate for themselves, we have them prepare and practice with their peers. Before parents arrive, students complete a reflection activity, and my colleagues and I use a checklist to ensure we make the most out of these rare opportunities to all get together.

The checklist, for example, reminds teachers that they can ask probing questions or direct the student to the agenda but to be careful not to dominate the conversation. We arrange for interpreters if needed. Even the design is intentional — we adjust our seats into seminar-style circles to promote discussion.

I remember one student whom I’ll call Maria. She was a hard worker and strong reader but was often uncomfortable speaking in front of her peers. At her first conference, she put her hands over her face, too nervous to share.

Through patience, practice in class, and the support of her family, her conference the next year looked completely different. She was able to present, her shoulders back and head held high as she discussed her progress and how she wanted to be pushed not just academically but also socially.

At traditional parent-teacher conferences, students may worry about being misrepresented, and parents and guardians might feel surprised and overwhelmed when a teacher expresses that their child is struggling. It also places a strain on teachers who have large class sizes.

It takes a lot of maturity to express your growth and areas for improvement, but I see a genuine effort from all of my students.

Empowering students to lead these discussions lessens the emotional and mental burden on educators. Students have the opportunity to reflect on the skills they learned, their accomplishments to be proud of, what they can work on during the next quarter, and how those goals align with our school’s values: bravery, ownership, and leadership. Families can also trust that if their student identifies they are struggling with completing math homework and assignments on time, it is true. From there, teachers, parents, and students can work together to create action plans.

Of course, it still takes work and an understanding of the students and their families. I know what classes my students are excelling in and if they are having trouble with behavior in a specific class or homework in another. I let the students lead, but I may ask probing questions or direct the student to the agenda. And I help the student if the parent is talking too much, redirecting the conversation if someone begins to get upset.

After the meeting, students send thank you notes to their guardians who attended the event. It takes a lot of maturity to express your growth and areas for improvement, but I see a genuine effort from all of my students.

Since moving to student-led conferences more than five years ago, we have noticed a subtle but important shift. Students are learning public speaking skills. They are learning to advocate for themselves and to manage their time while speaking. And we see parents making a real effort to attend.

For schools looking for a way to improve on their own conferences, shifting to a student-led model is worth considering. For families wondering how to connect the dots between school and home, ask your child’s school about student-led conferences. Some of the best innovations in education are low-tech and right in front of us.

Lauren Whidbee is a successor school leader at KIPP BOLD Academy in Newark, where she has worked since the school was founded in 2015. She started her career as a Teach for America Corps member in Baltimore. Whidbee is a proud alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, and she earned her master’s degree in education at Johns Hopkins University.

AP U.S. History is a ‘race across time.’ That’s an outdated way to teach.

2023-05-05T12:00:00+00:00

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I walk into my Advanced Placement U.S. History class, excited to teach the Vietnam War, yet knowing I will fail.

My students may learn some basic information about the war from primary documents and get a sense of its horror of it from film clips. But they will not have time to make deep connections to our world today — to wonder deeply about whistleblowers and government secrets, to connect it to “forever” wars, or to consider the implications of war and peace in Ukraine today.

But I smile at my students and queue up my slides because there is no time to waste on doubt. I only have one day for this topic.

For AP U.S. History, the number of units and topics — and their relative importance on the AP exam — are dictated by the College Board. Sadly, the last unit of the AP U.S. History course, Period 9: 1980–present, is the least represented on the exam, making up only 4-6%. The unit likely to be the most relevant to my students is the least tested, and preparing my students for the exam means giving it less emphasis in my classroom, too.

Jeremy Kaplan

The “race across time” content demands of the U.S. History curriculum have also meant that I have to cover a different historical topic each day. It means I have had little to no time to have my students study current and recent history so that they can make meaningful connections between the past and the present.

It’s a frustrating state of affairs, especially when AP History courses are upheld as the model for educational excellence. The assumed supremacy of AP courses is explicitly reinforced through initiatives like New York City’s push to enroll as many students as possible and implicitly reinforced when a school’s “best” teachers are “rewarded” by being programmed to teach AP courses.

I have not found this to be true. To me, AP History courses represent an outdated vision: the idea that knowing more information, however superficially, is good.

In my one-day lesson on the U.S. involvement in World War II, for example, my class did learn about the important topics of Pearl Harbor, D-Day, and the use of atomic weapons in Japan by the U.S. However, how rich would our discussions have been, and how useful to our democracy, if we could have gone deeper? If we could have asked questions about if it is ever justified to kill civilians during war? If my students could have researched current issues of U.S. military interventions? How far we should go to prevent or start a war or terrorism?

How rich would our discussions have been, and how useful to our democracy, if we could have gone deeper?

But no. This is AP History. And there’s no time.

I am totally in favor of students learning historical content. Plenty of research supports the importance of factual knowledge for higher-level thinking and reading comprehension. Current and recent events are also historical content, though, content that students usually do not know much about.

We also know that adolescents learn best when they find what they are learning relevant to their lives. But the AP course rarely allows us to “make it” to the present. The format means never giving my students today a chance to learn about such important, relevant events as the end of the Cold War, September 11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama’s presidency, or the Trump presidency. It simply does not make pedagogical sense to leave the current and recent past to the end of the year. That’s why this year, I opted to teach these more contemporary lessons first (albeit necessarily rushed) as an “entry point” to the other content.

I’m convinced that a more engaging course would prioritize deep learning and engagement by having students study fewer historical topics more deeply and including much more recent and current history. Every unit would include connections to more recent events. This is more straightforward than it seems: History happens chronologically, but history is not the events of the past; it is the study of the events of the past. We experience history by continually bouncing back and forth (cognitively) between the past and the present.

In my dream scenario, high school history classes would allow students to engage in civic action as they sow connections between history, their lives, and their hopes for the future.

Imagine a course where students spend 4-6 weeks on a Racial Justice unit, where students learn about Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and choose a current issue of racial equity to research. Students could connect with an organization that is working on that issue, take some action on the issue, and write a paper reflecting on the experience.

This is the type of class I think my students need. I know it’s the type of class I need. And I think it’s the type of class our country needs.

Jeremy Kaplan is an assistant principal of supervision at High School for Health Professions and Human Services in New York City. He has been a teacher, instructional coach, and assistant principal in New York City since 1994.

In my classroom, I offer trigger warnings. Sometimes, I worry they do more harm than good.

2023-05-31T12:00:00+00:00

In my English classes at a community college in Sonoma County, California, I’ve been teaching the podcast S-town, off and on, since its release seven years ago. Students are overwhelmingly enthralled with the twisting plot, which begins as a murder mystery, evolves into a treasure hunt, and then meanders into examining the life and mind of John B. McLemore, a brilliant and complicated horologist (that is, a person who studies clocks).

Narrated by the unflappable Brian Reed, the podcast is a great vehicle for examining the line between art and exploitation and the debilitating grip of untreated mental illness, among other topics.

Jess D. Taylor

The last time I taught S-town, a student lamented that I didn’t give a trigger or content warning before they listened to the final episode, in which John engages in severe self-harm. (To ensure they felt comfortable with what was ahead, I did give them a trigger warning, but it was before we started the podcast as a whole.)

Through comments on Canvas, she told me, “I swear to you I nearly puked” while listening to the episode. She was a bright and inquisitive student. I valued that she felt comfortable enough to be honest with me, as I work hard to build rapport and trust with my students.

I empathized with her reaction, and I told her so, but I also explained that I wasn’t dismayed by her nausea. In this time of desensitization and apathy (one of John B’s major gripes), I’m actually glad she could let art move her so viscerally. I felt the same way when I read parts of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” for the first time. To be clear: I do not want my students to suffer needlessly, but nor do I want them to fear discomfort or expect other people to take responsibility for their feelings.

This is one of the reasons why Cornell University administrators recently rejected a student assembly resolution that would require faculty to provide trigger warnings for potentially upsetting or offensive material. In rejecting the motion, the school’s president and provost wrote that such a requirement would “have a chilling effect on faculty, who would naturally fear censure lest they bring a discussion spontaneously into new and challenging territory, or fail to accurately anticipate students’ reaction to a topic or idea.”

Of course, this is nothing new: Trigger warnings have been the subject of widespread debate for years now as educators across the country wrestle with whether and how to prepare students for what they are about to read, hear, see, or experience.

The Cornell student resolution said potentially triggering topics included materials discussing “sexual assault, domestic violence, self-harm, suicide, child abuse, racial violence, transphobic violence, homophobic harassment, etc.” But these topics are very often part of literature classes, as we seek to think critically about all aspects of the human experience.

As such, I actually do give trigger warnings, usually both verbally and in writing before the start of a unit. I do this despite the fact that studies have shown such warnings to be ineffective and possibly counterproductive. Students are used to these well-meaning signifiers of care, and I want my students to feel taken care of, especially as they come of age in a sometimes terrifying world in which their bodies, livelihoods, and environments are under attack. As Roxane Gay points out in her essay, “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion,” “Few are willing to consider the possibility that trigger warnings might be ineffective, impractical and necessary for creating safe spaces all at once.”

Students are used to these well-meaning signifiers of care.

Another of the tenets of the rejected Cornell resolution was that students be allowed to opt out of the potentially upsetting material. The president and provost, however, wrote, “Learning to engage with difficult and challenging ideas is a core part of a university education.” It’s hard to disagree with that.

I take seriously my role in creating a safe space in which discomfort is valued as an invitation to deep engagement rather than something to be eschewed or feared. I do this in part by assigning challenging, provocative texts that demand a mature audience. In my experience, when my college students feel heard and seen as burgeoning adults, they are more likely to meet me with measured responses.

“Trigger warnings also, when used in excess, start to feel like censorship,” Gay writes. “They suggest that there are experiences or perspectives too inappropriate, too explicit, too bare to be voiced publicly.” An English class, or any class, may not be the place for a student to work through their trauma, of course. But it can be a place where they see that they are not alone in their experiences, whether that be mirrored through literature, discussions with their peers, or an imperfect podcast with all-too-human elements.

S-town gives my students an opportunity to lean into understanding (rather than summarily pigeonholing and dismissing) someone who sees the world differently. By coming to terms with John B’s conflicting, multitudinous self — at once generous, sensitive, repressed, angry, benevolent, and, sometimes, casually cruel — they can learn to embrace nuance over fundamentalism, which is beneficial in all public discussions.

“I have coaxed many infirm clocks back to mellifluous life,” John B writes in his suicide note. “I have audited the discourse of the hickories, oaks and pines even when no wind was present. I’ve lived on this blue orb now for about 17,600 days, and … I know that if I died tonight my life has been inestimably better than most of my compatriots. Additionally, my absence makes room and leaves some resources for others who deserve no less than I have enjoyed.”

Despite all the ugliness that led to this moment in the podcast, I think these beautiful words are worth considering — even as they may evoke discomfort, with or without warning.

Jess D. Taylor has written for Bon Appetit, Creative Nonfiction, SmokeLong Quarterly, Eater SF, Little Patuxent Review, and several other publications. For 18 years, she has taught English at both the high school and college level in Sonoma County, California, where she also edits Made Local magazine and raises her two daughters.

A new teaching assignment took me way outside my comfort zone

2023-07-12T18:34:21+00:00

I recently received five thank you notes saying that I had been a good teacher. I also got an invite to a graduation party.

These were nice gestures, but the truth is, I don’t feel like a good teacher. In fact, this past school year, I doggy paddled in self-pity for being in this position — involuntarily reassigned from my instructional coaching position to teaching full-time.

Yvette J. Green

The teacher shortage in my district meant that central office staff who were still part of the teachers union would once again become classroom teachers. I would be teaching 12th grade English, African-American literature, and speech. Finding my sea legs was hard, and I wasn’t excited about all that would be required of me — quickly assessing student work, adjusting and re-adjusting instruction, and keeping large groups of students off their devices. Students carried their trauma and pain into the classroom; as an empathic person, it impacted me daily.

It felt like many students were biding their time in a system they couldn’t escape. Some teens told me that school was an obstacle on the way into the real world.

Meanwhile, I felt so poorly equipped for the job before me. And yet I was determined to reduce the harm and offer something different in my African-American literature and speech electives. I introduced my students to some of the standard bearers of African American literature, such as Gwendolyn Brooks, August Wilson, and Lorraine Hansberry, and had them do research on topics relevant to the texts. Sure, they preferred to write notes passively from a PowerPoint, but my training taught me that students learn by thinking and doing.

As an instructional coach for six years prior, I loved working with educators and students one-on-one and in small groups. In those settings, I was able to assess students’ needs and push them harder and assist teachers with their lesson planning. It isn’t an efficient way to teach. Work takes longer to complete, and not all students are on task as I offer individualized instruction to their peers. But I saw real progress.

As the teacher of record, I did my best to bring practices from my coaching years into my classroom. For example, when students were nervous about giving speeches to the entire class, I had them speak in front of three or four students.

My students saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself.

One day, after students delivered their speeches, I said, “Tell me one thing you did well and one thing that you need to work on.” I never had a student say that they did everything perfectly; their responses were thoughtful. I wanted them to develop a habit of being self-reflective. Sometimes, I had them grade themselves.

Throughout the year, I gave my students different opportunities to practice thinking on their feet, conducting research, and making videos. We played games like Liar Liar, charades, and Finish the Story. Eventually, they raised their heads and looked at me as they spoke, and they eased into speaking before their entire class. Their classmates cheered them on. So did I.

And in their end-of-year notes, my students were generous with their praise. “I always appreciate the talks we had after class, they meant a lot to me. I consider you a friend of mine,” wrote one student. “Thank you for all of your spectacular teaching! You really helped me develop my voice!” wrote another. My students told me they learned from me that it is OK not to be OK. They said they now understood the importance of giving themselves space to get something wrong and space to grow.

I doubted myself often this past year. In my lowest moments, I felt like a failure, wondering what had happened to the teacher I had once been. But my students saw something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. They saw in me a good teacher even if I didn’t feel like one. They reminded me that my heart, my grace, and my desire to do better in an imperfect and sometimes chaotic system were more than enough.

Yvette J. Green is originally from Nashville and has lived in the Maryland/Washington, D.C., area for over 20 years. She is a mother of two sons, a former educator, and a freelance writer. Her writing has appeared in Salon, Slate, Viator, midnight & indigo, and 45th Parallel, among other publications.

Middle school teacher at ‘exemplary’ Chicago school honored with $25,000 prize

2024-02-02T22:54:57+00:00

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Comfort Agboola was thinking about her upcoming math lesson while keeping an eye on her middle school students during an assembly this morning to celebrate her school’s recent achievement as one of only five majority-Black Chicago schools to earn an “Exemplary” designation from the state.

At least that’s what she thought the assembly was about.

Until one of the visitors at the assembly turned to announce a $25,000 award to one of Poe Classical Elementary School’s teachers. It was Agboola.

The gym erupted in applause and cheers as Poe students waved light blue Poe Classical flags and paper signs with Agboola’s face on them. The glittering Poe cheer team burst into dance, and colleagues rushed to hug a stunned Agboola.

The event brought out some special guests – including Congresswoman Robin Kelly, State Superintendent of Education Tony Sanders, and Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Pedro Martinez – to the selective enrollment school in the city’s Pullman neighborhood.

Jane Foley, the senior vice president of the Milken Educator Awards, announced the award, which is given to up to 75 educators across the U.S.

Agboola is the only Illinois educator to receive the award this year and the first Chicago Public Schools district teacher to receive the award since 2010.

The Milken Educator Award was created by Lowell Milken in 1987 to honor early- to mid-career education professionals based on their achievements and “the promise of what they will accomplish,” according to a press release from the Milken Family Foundation.

“I was just in shock,” Agboola said afterward. “It pushes me to do more in the classroom.”

Martinez said in a statement that “exceptional efforts” for Agboola’s students “exhibit what we as a District can accomplish if we continue to focus on core instruction and welcoming, supportive school communities.”

Along with the cash award, honorees attend an all-expenses-paid forum with Milken in Los Angeles, receive mentorship opportunities, and become lifetime members of the Milken Educator Network, a nationwide group of educators and education professionals including past award recipients.

“They never let you go,” said Mark Jordan, who won the award in 1989 when he taught music at Gompers Fine Arts Option School in Chicago.

“It’s the Oscars of education. I don’t see anyone saying I do it for the accolades,” he said after helping to present the award to Agboola Friday. “So, if I see another educator being honored, I want to be there.”

The $25,000 award is unrestricted, and recipients have used the money in diverse ways, including spending funds on their children’s or their own education, establishing scholarships, or taking a dream vacation, according to the press release.

Agboola teaches reading, English language arts, and math at Poe. Her passion, however, is writing, and she brings that passion into the class. In her classroom, for example, students have a living room, library, and publishing area where they can practice spelling and respond to writing prompts on a collection of typewriters, while also learning about typewriter mechanics.

Outside of the classroom, Agboola extends student learning with opportunities like spelling bees, a podcast club, debate, and Model UN. She has earned several other distinctions including a Pulitzer Center Teacher Fellowship, the 2020-21 Network 13 Teacher of the Year Award, and the State of Illinois’ 2023 Meritorious Service Award in the Teacher Category.

“I like her teaching style,” said Jayson Ridgell, one of Agboola’s sixth grade students. “She doesn’t yell and she’s patient.”

He said Ms. A, as her students call her, visits every table in the classroom to work with individual students.

Agboola joined Poe in 2020 during the pandemic and spent her first year there teaching virtually, but that wasn’t the first challenge she’s faced in her teaching career.

In her first teaching job at the now-closed St. Hyacinth Basilica School in Avondale more than a decade ago, she worked with a young student who was non-verbal. When the student spoke for the first time in Agboola’s presence, she knew teaching was her calling - just as it was her mother’s.

“Parents are sending their most valuable thing to us,” she said. “I know that anything they do they are still growing and learning. They need our support.”

When the celebration waned and most students returned to their classes, Agboola remained surrounded by cameras as she called another important educator in her life: her mother.

“I just want to thank you too, mom,” she said over the phone. “Because you inspired me in your career as an educator.”

What Gen Z needs to know about 9/11 and its aftermath

2023-09-08T14:00:00+00:00

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Monday marks the 22nd anniversary of 9/11. Around the country, people will remember the unimaginable losses of that day with memorials, rallies, hashtags like #NeverForget, and acts of service. And then they will move on, relegating 9/11 to a one-dimensional and incomplete historical narrative that centers the attacks and the immediate aftermath but neglects the long-term effects of decisions taken after that day.

This cycle of remembering and forgetting can be damaging for young people, especially those who did not live through 9/11 or started school after it occurred. Given recent attacks on how and what to teach about U.S. history, coupled with rising acts of hate against communities of color, we must demand more inclusive curriculums about 9/11 and its aftermath.

For both of us, what happened after the 9/11 attacks catalyzed our research and teaching. For Ameena, it grounded her research with youth from Muslim immigrant communities in the U.S. and, eventually, the creation of the curriculum Teaching Beyond September 11th. Examining the two decades after 9/11, the curriculum covers U.S. foreign and domestic policy as well as solidarity movements, media representation, and Islamophobia. For Deepa, it led her to support South Asian non-profits and write a book that documents the post-9/11 experiences of South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh immigrants in America.

Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, left, and Deepa Iyer

Today, we are also parents of Gen Z children and have witnessed how limited the conversation around 9/11 is, particularly in public schools. Much of this conversation focuses on what unfolded on that terrible Tuesday. Rarely do students examine the devastating aftermath on communities who have borne the brunt of policies that followed in the name of national security or the roughly 432,000 civilian victims of direct war violence in the global war on terror.

It is becoming clearer with each passing year that U.S. students are receiving partial, time-limited, and de-contextualized histories and perspectives about a watershed moment in history. According to a 2017 audit, only 26 states include 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror in public school curriculums. Where and when it is taught, the emphasis is often on national security with scant mention of the effects of Islamophobia, restrictions to civil liberties, or the vast human costs of military interventions.

For Gen Z, 9/11 and its aftermath is perhaps akin to how our generation, Gen X, perceived the Vietnam War. Most of us did not live through that time, and our lessons reduced it to a dark period of U.S. history disconnected from the present. Knowing about the costs of the wars in Southeast Asia, their impact on the global anti-war movement, and the treatment of refugees would have provided us with a vital lens to evaluate U.S. policy.

Similarly, understanding how the world changed after 9/11 will better prepare Gen Z to evaluate policy, understand current events, and form meaningful connections with members of the communities impacted by the backlash to the attacks. It will help them assess the recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the treatment of Afghan refugees, and the cynical use of anti-Muslim election rhetoric.

Social studies content about 9/11 should teach about the backlash perpetrated against Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, and South Asians in the U.S. by fellow Americans and, later, by the state itself through government surveillance and profiling.

American history classes should probe how the U.S. immigration and national security infrastructure changed with the creation of the federal Department of Homeland Security. Students should learn how the war on terror did not just include wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but also subsequent counterterror activities in 85 countries.

Our classroom amnesia around 9/11 could get worse.

Those who want to understand the fuller history have access to stories, case studies, voices of young activists, research, and documentation. These resources are likely to spark discussions about such topics as the mental health consequences of Islamophobia and the effects of domestic policies on working-class communities.

Still, our classroom amnesia around 9/11 could get worse, given the attacks on teaching and learning about the histories of people of color. But it’s crucial that students not receive watered-down historical information, be it about Black history in America or the 9/11 terror attacks and what followed.

Now, 22 years on, we have yet another opportunity to provide students with a complex and multi-layered understanding of 9/11. We have the chance to teach in ways that uplift historical accuracy and complex perspectives for young people. Our children deserve no less.

Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher, EdD, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She is the project director and curriculum lead for the Teaching Beyond September 11th curriculum project.

Deepa Iyer works on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project. Her book, ”We Too Sing America”, documents histories of South Asian, Muslim, Sikh and Muslim immigrants in the wake of 9/11.

Outdoor classrooms should outlast COVID

2023-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

For me, the smiles in back-to-school photos felt extra forced this year.

How can I hold in one hand dystopian headlines about schools — closures for excessive heat, dilapidated buildings with dangerous indoor air quality, shortages of school-based mental health professionals, a worsening mental health emergency — and, in the other, the promise and excitement of a new year of learning?

I offer one common sense proposal to help. I “discovered” it as a teacher in 2011. Many educators deployed it in fall 2020. But it’s hardly new. It was apparent even in the early 20th century.

Teach students outdoors.

Becca Katz

I credit my old high school Spanish classroom for my discovery. It was located in a repurposed strip mall in Durango, Colorado, and its storefront window wall had exactly zero windows that opened. I wasn’t supposed to prop the doors due to security risks. The air conditioner didn’t work. August and September temperatures in my classroom hovered in the upper 90s and low 100s. It was unbearable.

We improvised. We spilled out to the parking lot, playing conjugation musical chairs standing on notebook-spots instead of sitting in chairs. We chanted and danced “Pie-pie-pie” (a Spanish-language twist on “head, shoulders, knees, and toes”) in a giant circle. Our paved heat island was better than indoors but still too hot. So we headed to a park a few minutes walk from our sauna.

We held class chasing shade. I got a small whiteboard and filled a cardboard box with dry-erase markers and extra writing utensils. I even started adapting my lessons to the park with fewer papers that could fly around and no screens. This gave way to more movement, flexible group work, and games. My students were super engaged in learning. Outdoors a chattering squirrel allowed for a “brain break” and a new Spanish vocabulary word, “ardilla.” Nature’s distractions almost felt like they helped my students focus. I’ve since discovered research validating that feeling.

Late fall arrived with cooler temperatures. Even though our outdoor classroom was working, and I had over a decade of experience as an outdoor educator, I led us back inside. My students didn’t question it. On autopilot, we marched indoors to be surrounded by classroom creature comforts: whiteboards, dry-erase markers, a sometimes-functional Smartboard, speakers to blast Aventura and Enrique, books, paper, desks, chairs.

Looking back, it feels like malpractice to have led my students back indoors. I faced fewer barriers teaching outdoors than most teachers do, thanks to two decades of experience leading wilderness expeditions and teaching high school students everything from English to natural history to environmental ethics in outdoor classrooms in the Bolivian Andes, the Canadian Arctic, Utah’s canyons, and Colorado’s mountains.

In Durango, a mountain town with a hearty outdoor recreation culture, most parents were happy for us to be outside. My curriculum at a project-based learning charter school was mine to invent. My students and I were insulated from many standardized tests and accountability pressures. We had a great park nearby.

COVID was our national window-walled classroom moment. In fall 2020, many districts, schools, and individual educators across the country took to learning outdoors out of necessity. Green Schoolyards America led a beautiful collective effort to document outdoor learning practices in a National Outdoor Learning Library.

If we can provide 1:1 tablets, surely we can do 1:1 clipboards.

In the fall of 2020, in a different rural Colorado school, we improvised an outdoor school to make in-person learning possible. Students spent full days outdoors alternating with days indoors with their classroom teachers. In November 2022, after that school received a Bright Spot award from Governor Polis for academic growth through the pandemic, I received an email from the principal. Her take? Outdoor school was a causal part of their success.

The evidence for learning in nature is compelling, robust, and growing. Reduced stress. Improved attention and cognitive function. More physical fitness. Fewer behavioral challenges. Higher engagement. Enhanced cooperation. Better relationships among students and between teachers and students. It even has promising potential as an equity lever.

But I fear the autopilot response that drove my students and me indoors is happening across our country post-pandemic. As we’ve returned to “normal,” we’ve forgotten the immediate benefits of learning outdoors.

I know the magical combination of favorable conditions I faced is far from the reality for most teachers. I also know widespread adoption of learning outdoors in nearby nature is simple and could happen almost overnight in schools with access to green spaces. In those schools, let’s build educator capacity to teach students outdoors. Let’s purchase the requisite resources to support outdoor classrooms. If we can provide 1:1 tablets, surely we can do 1:1 clipboards plus a class wagon, or “go-bin,” with writing utensils, foam sit spots, and a portable whiteboard.

Next, let’s retool or develop from scratch school systems to integrate and support teaching and learning outdoors. While we’re at it, let’s mobilize parents and community members as extra hands who can carry materials, help students cross busy roads, and share what they know about local flora and fauna. Just like that, outdoor learning can generate positive sentiment about what’s happening in (and outside of) school.

For some schools, the solutions are less immediate. Excessive heat. Poor outdoor air quality. Gun violence. Concrete as far as the eye can see. These are real issues that must be addressed. For these schools, let’s do two things. First, let’s immediately infuse the indoor environment with nature to create verdant learning spaces filled with plants (real or fake!), nature imagery, nature soundscapes, and nature objects, like pinecones, seeds, and shells.

In parallel, let’s do the longer work to ensure these schools have safe, nearby nature spaces.

Because back to school should mean back outside for all.

Becca Katz has been a teacher, administrator, and wilderness expedition leader in public and private schools, teaching in indoor, outdoor, and backcountry classrooms. Now, she writes about mainstreaming nature-based learning on her Substack, Learning, by Nature. Through her organization Good Natured Learning, she also works to help teachers integrate nature and the outdoors into their routine teaching practices.

Click here to read Becca Katz’s guidance for outdoor learning.

Schoolwork shouldn’t double as screentime

2023-10-16T20:31:22+00:00

Children get one childhood, and time is one of the most precious resources we have in schools. For these reasons, I am increasingly frustrated that I have next to no power to stop my own children from wasting their time in front of a computer screen.

That’s because screens are where they are expected to access and complete their schoolwork and homework. My children are assigned to watch online videos and answer questions about them in an online form. Their grades reflect their responses.

Jeff Frank

No doubt, this assigned screen time probably comes from a good place. Teachers want to provide students with experiences they will enjoy. Why give students a reading that they may not do when you could give them a video they are more likely to watch?

Watch enough videos and students begin to believe that learning must be passively entertaining and that the best way to take in new information is through streaming content. The most compelling story is often not the most truthful one, but the one that is the most slickly produced.

I don’t want that for my children. I want my children to enjoy the challenges of learning, to take in multiple sources, and to ask good questions about everything they engage with. I don’t want them on autopilot, screening their way through childhood.

UNESCO recently published a book titled “An Ed-Tech Tragedy?” and it is sobering. This book spells out how pandemic school shutdowns resulted in massive learning losses. It also highlights the costs, in terms of mental health, of spending so much time on screens.

For years, educational technologists have cast personalized online learning as an answer to what plagues education. But even when ed tech was needed most, these tools did not always rise to the occasion. They couldn’t take the place of teachers, peers, and classroom conversations. And our reliance on them has instilled terrible habits in teachers and students.

Parents were rightly frustrated and angry when their children were robbed of the opportunity to attend school because of pandemic lockdowns. It is not good for a child to be away from their peers and in front of screens. Key social, emotional, and intellectual skills are lost when this happens. That’s why we must not replicate the worst aspects of school lockdowns now that children are back in school. Children should spend time engaging their teacher and each other — making eye contact and appreciating what can only be learned through human presence — not retreating back into the safe, solitary spaces of their devices.

There is no greater gift we can give children than our fullest attention.

Their schoolwork should have them engaging with what is best in our culture, not what is most convenient or entertaining. This means reading challenging texts with students and doing the work of helping them develop their voices in relation to these texts. However, educators seem to be having a hard time remembering that distance learning was the best we could think to do during the lockdown, not a best practice that we should continue.

I am not afraid to mourn all that was lost because of the pandemic. Children suffered tremendously, and schools across the country will be dealing with the academic, social, and emotional fallout for years to come. My grieving process involves honoring my hopes and fears from the middle of the pandemic. I promised myself then that if we ever got back to normal, I wouldn’t take the physical presence of my students for granted. I would look at their unmasked faces and try to communicate how much I appreciated that we were together.

Screens, and the illusion of engagement they offer, get in the way of this type of lived gratitude, and they distract us from what matters.

To be clear, teachers’ lives in schools are often tremendously difficult. Many educators are demoralized and under-appreciated, but an over-reliance on screens will not make the work of teaching more rewarding or valued. It’s human connections that make teaching an endlessly rewarding calling. I know this from my own classrooms and my experience training future teachers.

As much as I may internally complain about having to pick up all the little Lego pieces, Magna-Tiles, and wooden blocks that my boys leave scattered around the house at the end of a long day, I know that this type of embodied play is the foundation of a good childhood. And as hard as it might be to listen — really listen — to the stories my daughters tell as they process their day at school (and not just let my mind wander to all the items on my to-do list), there is no greater gift we can give children than our fullest attention.

I am not a perfect parent or teacher, but I do know that I am at my best when I am present. And I know that screens keep me from offering my full presence. I wish I had more power to keep them out of schools because I know my children — and all of our children — deserve better.

Jeff Frank is a professor, department chair of education, and director of the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Assessment at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York.

Being a sub made me a better teacher

2023-11-20T16:15:00+00:00

My own path into teaching took a detour when COVID forced me to complete my student teaching online. I found myself adapting on the job and making the best of the hand I’d been dealt, which turned out to be good practice for what lay ahead.

After graduating, I couldn’t secure a full-time teaching position right away, so I turned to substitute teaching. It isn’t the path I would have initially chosen, but I’m grateful it chose me.

Torrey Barlow

Substitute teaching gets a bad rap, as subs may face inconsistent assignments and pay, and they often encounter more challenging student behaviors than their permanent counterparts.

But subbing, despite its drawbacks, allowed me to try more than I usually would as a new teacher — kind of like sharing a dessert platter with friends! Within just a couple of years, I’ve taught a variety of grade levels and subjects in all sorts of campus environments. It also exposed me to a variety of lesson plans, which permanent teachers left for me.

Sometimes, I served as a classroom aide, which meant I got to observe various teaching styles. I remember, for example, the first time I saw a teacher use a “think-pair-share” activity, in which the teacher asked students a question, had them think about it, write it down, and then share their ideas with a partner. I also saw how teachers used moments of levity to develop their rapport with students. It was moments like these that showed me how being part of a team helps new teachers turn theory into practice.

Variety also helped me discover the grade level that resonates with me. I went into teaching picturing myself teaching second grade, when students are full of wonder but they’re also making big strides developmentally. I was especially excited to help students learn to read during that stage of their lives.

Substitute teaching has been more than a 31-flavor tour of classrooms. It has also been a window into the distinct cultures of different schools.

That changed last year when I had a long-term substitute position as a sixth grade teacher. At first, I was intimidated because kids that age are going through so many physical and emotional changes. Then I fell in love with teaching sixth grade because I was able to engage students and content on a deeper level. My sixth graders even helped me realize that I love teaching math — a subject I hated learning. Admitting to my class that I wasn’t a great math student helped me quickly build crucial connections with students.

Substitute teaching has been more than a 31-flavor tour of classrooms. It has also been a window into the distinct cultures of different schools. Before I started teaching, I didn’t think much about finding a school that fits my personality, but now I can see why that’s so important for first-year teaching success.

My years as a sub taught me that I thrive in collaborative environments, something that I will seek out in a full-time position. (I’m close to finishing my master’s in education, which should make me an even stronger candidate.) I want to find a job where teachers hang out in shared spaces and eat lunch together, instead of at their desks, and where administrators walk around the campus and spend time in classrooms.

Had I not spent these past couple of years as a substitute teacher, I don’t think I’d appreciate teaching as much as I do. Instead of getting burnt out and quitting in my first few years, as nearly half of new teachers do, I feel an even stronger commitment to my students and the profession.

Schools would be wise to better support substitute teachers, providing opportunities to learn from and collaborate with permanent teachers, and developing a pipeline so that subs like me can move into full-time teaching roles.

Subbing wasn’t initially the path I saw myself on, but it has been the best possible training ground for me. I can’t wait for what’s next.

Torrey Barlow is a full-time credentialed teacher at the North County Coastal Substitute Consortium in San Diego, California.

When schools assign substitutes the wrong status, the error suppresses their pay

2024-01-31T10:00:00+00:00

This story was published in partnership with New York Focus, a non-profit news site investigating how power works in New York state. Sign up for their newsletter here.

This is the second installment in a two-part series reported with support from the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. You can read the first part here.

When the Queens public school where she was working assigned Antonietta Auriemma to seven classroom sections, she realized something was wrong.

Between January and June 2023, Auriemma, a substitute teacher, filled in for two different teachers on long-term leaves of absence, on top of extra classroom periods as needed.

According to her handbook, she should have been classified as a “long-term sub” — and qualified for the requisite pay and benefits.

In the nation’s largest public school system, most substitute teachers work day-to-day, filling in for short-term absences at a fixed daily rate of roughly $200. But amid a teacher shortage made worse since the pandemic spurred educators to flee in droves, more and more New York City schools have come to rely on substitutes on longer-term assignments. Because they are more like regular teachers, these long-term subs are supposed to earn around $100 extra per day, which can add up to roughly $25,000 more per year, according to the teachers union. Some accrue sick time, vacation time, and even get health insurance.

Auriemma wasn’t receiving any of that.

“I was basically a full-time teacher,” Auriemma told New York Focus. “I was lesson planning for these classes, entering grades for these students, speaking to parents for parent engagement, all while making the [lower] sub pay of $200 a day.”

For years, subs like Auriemma have been underpaid for their long-term services — a violation of the New York City Department of Education’s teacher contract with the United Federation of Teachers, or UFT.

Interviews with 10 former and current substitute teachers or substitute paraprofessionals suggest that the practice is systematic and widespread across the city, and that since the pandemic began, violations may have increased. In a Sept. 11, 2023, UFT executive board meeting, Mark Collins, the union’s grievance director, stated that schools paying substitutes at an incorrect rate is “probably the most common grievance we have in the city.” A UFT spokesperson confirmed that it is one of the top grievances in the union.

Nearly all the interviewed substitutes, whose labor spans multiple city boroughs, said they knew of schools that underpaid subs because of misclassification. Five of them said they had filed grievances related to these issues; three have won back pay as a result, while the others’ grievances are still pending resolution.

Those who don’t grieve their wage shortages may choose not to because they’re unaware of the contract provisions. Others, because of their relative precarity: Many subs depend on the work as their primary income and cannot miss days for fear of falling behind on bills. Six subs described a culture of retaliation that might get them fired or suddenly removed from the classroom if they complain.

“Once you file, you’re essentially blacklisted at a school.”
JOE DIODATO, SUB WHO FILED A LABOR GRIEVANCE

Even if subs get to stay in the same school, they might get moved from classroom to classroom to preserve their place in the arcane classification system that keeps pay down. And when teachers get shuffled, students suffer.

Beth Ellor, who retired from full-time teaching in 2009, has subbed regularly since. She said she covered a class whose students blamed themselves for their lack of a regular teacher.

“They said, ‘Everybody hates us. Nobody wants to stay with us. We are a terrible class,’” Ellor recounted. Later, she found out that another substitute teacher had previously worked 27 days with that class before being moved to another assignment.

Ellor believes it was done to prevent that substitute from achieving the higher-paying status.

Asked about the problem, Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle acknowledged the “critical support” that subs provided during the pandemic.

“Thanks to temporary stimulus funding, we were able to provide additional financial support to schools to take on the additional costs of hiring more substitutes and have worked with the UFT and individual employees to address any outstanding pay issues from this period,” Lyle wrote in an email.

She declined to comment on the widespread, sometimes intentional practice of misclassifying subs, which existed before the outbreak of COVID.

In the education system, it’s not uncommon for subs to fall through the cracks, said David Bloomfield, an education law professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. “Those cracks widened during the pandemic,” he said. “This seems like a situation that hasn’t been given adequate attention by either the union or the central administration.”

Pay scale for subs varies by assignment length

The teachers union contract establishes various letter-coded “statuses” of service to which a substitute teacher can be assigned.

The most common sub classification, “O-status,” is for day-to-day subs who cover short-term absences. Subs are assigned “Z-status” or “Q-status” when working full-time for schools, filling in for longer-term teacher absences or vacancies. Those subs receive higher pay and limited benefits that are unavailable to O-status subs. The Education Department’s payroll system automatically grants the higher-paying Z-status to substitutes so long as they teach a class without an absence for 30 days.

When subs are told to miss a day, it resets the clock.

“What happens is a lot of principals know that [subs] get paid more money” under higher tiers of sub service, said a former school payroll secretary, who asked to remain anonymous because she still works in the school system and fears retaliation. “They don’t want to pay them the higher status, so they’ll tell a sub, don’t come in on this day, for whatever reason, and that defers them back to the old status so they can’t get paid more money.”

“You want to use money to hire more teachers, more supplies, or to get air conditioners. Nobody even thinks of subs.”
JOHN WENK, FORMER PRINCIPAL IN MANHATTAN

The substitutes who spoke to New York Focus described a widespread practice of either denying qualified substitutes Q- or Z-status, actively preventing subs from qualifying, or displaying incompetence in staffing subs under the appropriate status.

“It’s a known thing that principals have tight budgets … and [forcing a missed day] is one way they cut corners in saving money,” said the former payroll secretary. “It doesn’t even get discussed.”

When Joe Diodato subbed for a semester at an elementary school in the Bronx, it found a way to underpay him — without forcing a missed day.

Instead, according to documents Diodato shared with New York Focus, the school periodically changed the code in the payroll system associated with his work assignment. The action incorrectly made it seem like he wasn’t teaching the same class over the course of his employment, a condition required to earn Z-status.

Diodato didn’t learn about the higher-paying sub statuses until a couple months into the job. When he asked his payroll secretary about them, they said he didn’t qualify.

“Every day I came in I documented what I did,” Diodato explained. “I saved my classroom Zoom meetings, I saved my Google Classroom posts, my parent engagement. Everything that showed I did the job of a classroom teacher, I saved.”

At the end of the year, he used his records to file a 187-page grievance. He eventually won nearly $6,000 in a settlement with the Education Department.

Joe Diodato won nearly $6,000 in a settlement with the DOE. He’s now a full-time teacher.

Diodato intentionally waited for the school year to run out before filing his grievance. “Once you file,” he said, “you’re essentially blacklisted at a school.”

Now a full-time teacher, Diodato runs a private Facebook group for substitutes and a blog about the city Department of Education. He believes that more substitutes have likely been filing grievances on long-term status issues since the pandemic began, when the DOE increased its reliance on subs. But most violations, several subs explained, likely go unchallenged.

Without the higher pay and benefits, subs often quit mid-assignment, Diodato said.

Several subs who spoke to New York Focus requested anonymity because they were pursuing full-time teaching positions at their schools. They described a common belief that contesting their status would endanger their chances of full-time employment — or get them fired from their temporary positions.

One substitute, who requested anonymity, subbed regularly at a high school for seven years until she tried to claim increased benefits and wages.

When the sub challenged a principal’s reasoning as to why she could not earn Z-status, “she fired me on the spot,” the sub said. “She said, ‘You are on my last nerve … Yeah, I lied to you. I know what the rules are … but I’m the principal and I make the decisions, and you’re just a sub.’”

John Wenk, a former principal of a Manhattan high school, said that retaliation against subs is unsurprising behavior for some principals and can be done with impunity.

A principal, he explained, is free “to get rid of the sub for any reason whatsoever.”

“I’ve seen that happen,” said the former payroll secretary. But in most cases, she said, subs don’t bring the issues up in the first place. “They need a job. They need money,” she said, “so they’re not going to rock the boat.”

A UFT spokesperson acknowledged that most subs grieve pay violations after their assignment has finished, presumably out of fear of retaliation. They emphasized, however, that subs are already covered by contractual and legal anti-retaliation rules, and that the union is trying to add further protections so they are comfortable filing grievances as soon as the violation occurs.

Pointing fingers at Education Department red tape

Although it falls on individual school payroll secretaries, principals, and administrators to carry out pay violations, some argue that the DOE’s bureaucracy is to blame.

The money to pay substitutes comes from the DOE central administration, but once schools receive it, principals can use the money however they please. Operating under strained resources, with dozens of budgetary items to attend to, a principal may be incentivized to use the money intended for subs on resources deemed more necessary.

“You want to use that money to hire more teachers, or for more extracurricular activities, more supplies, or to get air conditioners,” Wenk said. “Nobody is thinking about this problem. Nobody even thinks of subs.”

Joe Diodato in the South Bronx. Though he's now a full-time teacher, he still runs a Facebook group for subs.

Bloomfield believes principals and individual schools are not equipped to deal with the problem in the first place.

“Principals have neither the expertise nor the budgetary acumen to make the substitute puzzle pieces fit together with all the other pressures they’re under,” he said. “It’s therefore incumbent on the central administration, both the DOE and the city, to offer clear guidance consistent with union contracts and other legal provisions to assist in filling these positions.”

A UFT spokesperson said the union has been working to shift the burden of ensuring correct pay from the subs to the Education Department. The spokesperson referenced an agreement the union won in recent contract negotiations to establish guidance to re-train and educate administrative staff on substitute hiring — to ensure correct classification, pay, and health coverage.

But some subs told New York Focus that they attribute the ubiquity of pay violations in part to the UFT’s inadequate representation of substitutes.

“While [UFT reps] seem to be helpful and they want to be that point of contact for when situations need to be escalated, a lot of them are just at a loss,” said a former substitute teacher in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who requested anonymity.

“We disagree that UFT reps are ‘at a loss,’” a teachers union spokesperson wrote in a statement. They noted that any substitute can receive immediate representation for a grievance.

Bloomfield sees the problem as baked into the DOE’s treatment of its workforce.

“Just that very term ‘substitute’ reeks of second-class citizenship in the personnel constellation,” he said. “They’re an afterthought.”

Teddy Ostrow is a journalist from Brooklyn. He was the host of The Upsurge podcast and his work has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, In These Times, and elsewhere.

How well is your school teaching your child to read? Some parents feel in the dark, report finds.

2024-01-25T14:31:10+00:00

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Mayor Eric Adams’ sweeping effort to improve reading instruction has focused on educators, but a report released Thursday makes the case that caregivers are crucial to boosting reading instruction and the city should do more to include them.

The report focused on parent perceptions of how well their schools are communicating about reading instruction and is based on focus group interviews with 19 New York City mothers conducted by Advocates for Children, a nonprofit group that has pushed the city to adopt stronger approaches to reading instruction.

In many cases, caregivers reported that their schools brushed off concerns about their child’s reading challenges, and they were unsure how to get the help they needed. Some said they heard little from their schools about the city’s new curriculum overhaul.

“The message needs to come from the top that family engagement requires more than just passing along information,” according to the report, which offers a series of recommendations for improving communication between parents and schools. “It means valuing parents’ expertise about their children.”

Parents who participated in the focus groups last summer were not randomly selected and all but one of them has at least one child with a disability. Still, their interviews reveal common roadblocks — and some bright spots.

Here are three takeaways from the report:

Parents struggle to be heard

Several parents said they noticed their child’s reading challenges early on but schools insisted they’d outgrow it. And in cases where a child was already receiving special education services, caregivers said schools seemed reluctant to provide help targeted at specific reading problems or acknowledge the possibility that they might also have dyslexia, a language-based learning disability.

In other cases, parents said educators flagged reading issues, but the school never came up with a solid plan for addressing them. Bronx mom Shy Washington said her son repeatedly did not meet the goals listed on his special education learning plan, falling further behind in reading. But she felt like she never got a clear explanation about the school’s strategy and why it wasn’t working.

“I wanted a roadmap — I wanted some direction,” Washington said in an interview with Chalkbeat. “I looked to them for the answers, and I ended up having to search for my own because they had none for me.”

Caregivers crave more information about instruction and how they can help at home

Parents said they often felt in the dark about how their child’s school approaches reading instruction, including the city’s sweeping curriculum overhaul.

“Most had heard little to nothing about NYC Reads [the city’s new reading curriculum mandate] or about the literacy curriculum being used at their children’s schools,” the report notes. “More than one wished there were more opportunities to discuss their child’s performance and individual needs in depth.”

Some parents said they wanted more guidance about how they could help at home, beyond standard advice to read to their child for 15-20 minutes each night.

Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein emphasized that the city is working with schools to inform parents about the curriculum changes, including how parents could support their child’s reading. She added that the focus group interviews were conducted before schools were required to change their instructional approaches, and the city is now prioritizing outreach to families.

“As always, family engagement and involvement is critical to fostering a strong and supportive school community,” Brownstein said in a statement.

Some parents welcomed regular communication about classroom instruction. One mom received emails throughout the week from her child’s kindergarten teacher about what they’re working on and provided optional worksheets to work on if a student needed to catch up from an absence.

“I felt so empowered by that, because I felt like I had some direction, some guidance,” the parent said in a focus group interview.

The process for getting extra help is murky

Parents often feel unsure what to do next if their child is struggling with reading and isn’t getting the help they need.

“The difficulty of navigating the public school system and getting answers to their questions came up in nearly every one of our conversations,” according to the Advocates for Children report.

Washington, the mother of an eighth grader who is behind in reading, said she struggled to navigate the city’s notoriously complex special education system, requesting multiple evaluations when her son was in elementary school. After years of feeling like her son’s services weren’t making a big dent, she ultimately sought outside evaluations with assistance from The Legal Aid Society to create more pressure for the city to offer extra help. She also looked for tutoring support outside of her son’s school.

Her main advice to parents: Be prepared to chart your own path.

This story has been updated with a response from the Education Department.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

COVID-era laptops made a dent in the digital divide. Now the real work begins.

2024-01-25T22:08:07+00:00

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When pests started attacking plants in the community garden across the street from M. Agnes Jones Elementary School in Atlanta, the students hatched a plan.

They didn’t want to use pesticides in the garden, and they had learned in their science lessons that bats eat insects. They researched how to attract bats to the garden, made paper sketches of bat house designs, then moved to digital design tools. The students could see 3-D versions of their houses, test modifications, and refine their designs — making the entrance narrower so bats would feel safe and adding rafters to create better spaces for brooding.

A new National Education Technology Plan released this week urges educators to use technology to enable this kind of engaged, hands-on learning and urges states and districts to provide the training, planning time, and technical support to make it happen.

First issued by the U.S. Department of Education in 1996 and last updated in 2017, the National Education Technology Plan provides guidance to help school systems use technology to improve learning and close achievement gaps. The latest iteration comes as virtual learning and federal pandemic relief “expedited the proliferation of technologies and connectivity on a scale and speed for which many districts and schools were unprepared.” Innovation actually slowed even as more students got laptops, and too much technology use today is essentially passive, the plan argues.

Surveys suggest more than 90% of secondary students and more than 80% of elementary students have access to a personal laptop or tablet — before the pandemic, fewer than half of students had such access. Schools are awash in digital tools and grappling with the implications of artificial intelligence. Yet a recent survey of more than 41,000 students found the main way students used technology in school was to take online tests and quizzes.

Wide gaps persist between digital haves and have-nots

The plan identifies three types of digital divides. There’s still an access divide — not all students have laptops or reliable internet. There’s also a use divide — some students log into Google Classroom to catch up on assignments while others produce podcasts and design top-notch bat houses. And finally there’s a design divide — only some teachers have the training, support, and planning time to learn how to use new technology in exciting ways.

School systems need to address all three divides to make full use of technological opportunities, the plan said. They also need to balance student privacy with responsible oversight, imbue students with digital literacy, battle the ills of social media, adapt to AI, and make smart decisions about which technology to invest in, according to the report.

Technology has the potential to help students take more control of their learning, make connections they couldn’t make before, and showcase their skills in new ways, the plan says. English learners and students with disabilities, in particular, could benefit from more ways to access material and show what they’ve learned, but if schools don’t plan carefully, these students are also at more risk of being excluded, the plan says.

The plan includes dozens of examples of educators already doing this work, including from rural and high-poverty schools, along with guidelines for decision-making and missteps to avoid.

Districts where internet access is spotty shouldn’t rely on online surveys to reach parents, for example. Consider hosting monthly in-person technology nights instead and send communication in a variety of languages. Special education directors buying screen-reading programs should make sure they also work offline and that they’re compatible with the operating system installed on district laptops.

The plan includes rubrics for assessing whether ed tech programs have evidence to back their claims and suggests regular audits of which programs teachers are actually using. An Associated Press investigation last year found school districts spent tens of millions of pandemic relief dollars on ed tech with little evidence it worked.

David Miyashiro, superintendent of the Cajon Valley Union School District in California, served on the technical working group that helped develop the report. He was an early proponent of embracing technology in education, and he’s led an expansion in Cajon Valley, where two-thirds of students come from low-income households and one-third are learning English.

Students get their first laptops in kindergarten and use them to deliver 30-second TED talks about what they’re afraid of and what they’re excited about, illustrated by generative AI. They’re learning presentation and communication skills while building community and connection with their classmates, Miyashiro said.

Students trade up in third grade, when they go to middle school, and again for high school. An ed tech bond helped pay for devices, IT infrastructure, and a replacement fund.

Miyashiro hopes the new federal plan helps districts incorporate technology thoughtfully. And he said it feels timely, now that many more students have devices.

“A lot of districts bought computers so teachers could Zoom synchronously with their kids,” he said. “Now what are they going to do? This plan helps them course correct.”

But for John Fredericks, an English teacher at West Tallahatchie High School in the Mississippi Delta, digital access has actually gotten worse since 2021. Pandemic relief money meant students had laptops and hotspots for the first time ever — though the connections could be spotty.

“The best thing, when the students had access to the internet and a computer at home, was the ability to differentiate, the ability to challenge the kids who want more work,” Fredericks said. “And for students who have trouble completing work, I could give them more time and grace.”

Now the hotspots are gone, laptops have to stay at school, and when a student is out sick, Fredericks is back to sending home paper packets. Students who take virtual dual-enrollment classes in the school’s computer lab try to get their college coursework done during other classes.

Fredericks said it’s hard to even imagine what learning opportunities his students are missing. He just hopes policymakers don’t forget that pandemic-era laptops are already breaking down and some communities still don’t have internet, at least not at a price families can afford.

“Throwing money at the problem kind of actually worked,” he said. “That’s not always true in government policy or education policy, but if you want to solve the technology divide, keep giving schools money for technology. Let them buy computers and buy hotspots and advocate for high-speed internet in rural areas.”

Blending tech with learning takes time, vision

When Margul Retha Woolfolk started as principal at M. Agnes Jones Elementary in Atlanta, she found a state-of-the-art building where the science lab was “really a storage unit.” The school serves a high-poverty neighborhood, and students spent a lot of time drilling basic skills.

Retha Woolfolk, now an associate superintendent with Atlanta Public Schools, knew her own students had done better when lessons in core skills were coupled with hands-on projects. And she loved science. She started going to conferences, learning everything she could, and seeking out partners at local universities and in the private sector.

Jarvis Blackshear, a paraprofessional with a background in music production, would come to play a critical role providing instructional support in science and technology. He had learned how to teach himself new programs as a music engineer, and he had a knack for bringing students and parents along with him.

Retha Woolfolk wanted to buy the school a programmable robot, but it cost more than $7,000. She could get it for $3,000 if she got it disassembled. Blackshear invited fourth and fifth graders to help him build it. He’d assemble each section ahead of time, sand down sharp edges, then disassemble it and have it waiting for students.

He took the same approach as students designed the bat houses, teaching himself design programs so he could support the students’ learning. When the 3D-printed bat houses weren’t up to snuff, he reached out to a grandparent with carpentry skills to help students make their blueprints reality.

Seven years later, Principal Robert Williams said he’s proud to continue the work. MAJ offers coding alongside art, music, and physical education. Students build electric cars and learn about force and motion, circuitry, teamwork, and the engineering design process along the way. The MAJ Rapid Racers team competes in Greenpower USA regional events, “the NASCAR of elementary school.”

Aleigha Henderson-Rosser, the district’s assistant superintendent for instructional technology, said leadership at the building level makes a big difference, but educators shouldn’t feel like they have to know everything to get started.

“Don’t be scared to take risks, and the kids will guide you,” she said. “Our kids deserve to learn like this.”

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

How Michigan schools are creating safe spaces for students to talk about the Israel-Hamas war

2024-01-24T22:18:41+00:00

Daniel Crowley, a middle school teacher in Ann Arbor, had been teaching about refugees this fall when the Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel catapulted the region into chaos.

In the days and weeks afterward — as Hamas militants’ bloody attack in Israel gave way to devastating death counts in Gaza — Crowley said he felt himself playing it safe in his classroom. When students asked about Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza, he told them they needed to ask their parents, because he didn’t know what the district policies were around the topic.

He regrets that now.

“In order for all my students to feel seen and safe in that community, I can’t just be doing test prep on Emily Dickinson,” Crowley said of his responsibility as an educator. “I have to include their identities, make space for their experiences, and build their voice and agency, and understand their sort of history, their narrative.”

Last week, Ann Arbor Public Schools made national and international headlines when its board passed a resolution calling for a “bilateral ceasefire in Gaza and Israel.” But it was another part of the board’s resolution that is impacting day-to-day learning in classrooms. Rather than steer clear of a difficult subject, the board urged teachers to encourage more classroom discussion.

The resolution calls for more professional development and resources for teachers to help them encourage “respectful, nuanced and age-appropriate dialogue around culturally sensitive real-world conflicts.”

Crowley said the resolution was necessary and liberating for teachers.

“I feel hopeful, after this resolution passing, that teachers themselves will be moved to take more risks. And teachers that I’ve talked to specifically who have played it safe, some of them for decades, are now starting to say … this is too important,” Crowley said. “And it impacts our students and our community too greatly for us to be silent.”

Educators navigate a tense environment in schools and on campuses

In the past week, Bridge Michigan and BridgeDetroit interviewed educators and students across several Michigan districts to learn how schools are, or are not, addressing the Israeli-Hamas war.

The stakes are high. Students, and their parents, are paying attention. Teachers say they are acutely aware that some students have loved ones in the Middle East. Ann Arbor, for instance, has significant Arab and Jewish populations. Dearborn and Dearborn Heights schools have many families from the Middle East. Tensions are immense.

“So I think what is also important is we’ve created a safe space for our students to feel and work and grapple with the things that they are feeling and navigating,” said Mercedes Harvey-Flowers, a social studies teacher and department chair in Dearborn Heights.

“What I don’t want to see happen is, through this, they begin to hate a group of people.”

That is already happening, and students have noticed. In late October, an Illinois man was charged with murder and hate crimes, accused of stabbing a 6-year-old Muslim boy for his religion. And there’s been a staggering rise in reports of antisemitism and Islamophobia since early October, raising tensions at U.S. college campuses in addition to K-12 schools.

Some U.S. students who have spoken publicly on either side of the Hamas-Israeli war have faced death threats, doxxing, or career consequences from keyboard warriors or potential employers. Several people approached for interviews declined to talk, citing concern about having their names publicly attached to the topic.

Crowley said the Ann Arbor resolution provides some insulation for teachers, but acknowledged that talking about the conflict still carries risk and questions about how the resolution will work in practice. For example, he noted that while many Ann Arbor parents felt comfortable signing petitions for or against the cease-fire resolution, only a handful of teachers felt comfortable speaking at last week’s board meeting.

Teachers share strategies for classroom discussion

Into this maelstrom, Michigan teachers are being asked to explain competing narratives about Israeli and Palestinian claims to disputed land and to help students separate fact from fiction in a conflict that’s been uniquely difficult to document.

Jennifer Lewis, a professor of teacher education at Wayne State University, said the success of schools’ efforts will depend in part on how well teachers are prepared to accurately address student questions. In Ann Arbor, for instance, Lewis said the board’s resolution could leave teachers in a tough position.

“To train people to do that takes significant work,” she said. “And we don’t know, from the resolution or from anywhere else, where those funds will come from, how they will be facilitated, who will be tasked with this, whether it will actually happen.”

Teachers across several districts shared classroom discussion strategies that have common themes: They try to share facts from reputable sources. They strive for thoughtful class discussion. And they acknowledge that students may have family or friends in the Middle East directly affected by the violence.

Harvey-Flowers said it’s important to help students find reliable information and analyze the credibility of the people sharing information.

“They can see a very inflammatory video on TikTok, and take that as gospel truth,” she said.

Wading into heated topics is risky for teachers

Teachers’ reluctance to lean into controversial topics is understandable. In recent years, educators in Florida, Missouri and other states have faced pushback, including threats to their jobs, for classroom discussions related to racism, gender identity, or other topics deemed divisive. Closer to home, local school board meetings have sometimes turned volatile over the selection of school library books.

“Doing this work can be very risky because the discussions can get heated, parents can complain,” said Judith Pace, a professor of teacher education at the University of San Francisco who writes about how to teach difficult topics. Sometimes, she said, nervous school administrators “don’t support doing this work. Especially in these times that are so contentious and polarized, I think it’s really important for teachers to be thoughtful and informed.”

Pace said teachers must cultivate a supportive classroom environment, which involves getting to know their students and students getting to know one another. And she stressed the importance of slowly easing into the topic to give students time to feel comfortable.

“Instead of having a debate or even a deliberation where students are deciding on what to do about something, you really need to find out what they know and surface their feelings and their thoughts,” Pace said.

“All of these things have to be taken into consideration.”

In some communities, faraway conflict is ‘real life’

Discussions can depend on the community.

Katelyn Walsh, a high school English language arts teacher in Dearborn Public Schools, where more than half the population is from the Middle East or North Africa, said there is an unspoken understanding that the majority of students and their families support the Palestinian position on the conflict. She said that if she were in a different district with a different student population, she would likely provide more information about the conflict itself. But what may be seen as an abstract discussion on faraway events in some schools, “is real life to some students of ours.”

In Dearborn Heights, Harvey-Flowers said students organized “a peaceful walkout in support of Gaza” on Oct. 20. She said she was pleased to see students share their voices on a subject they feel strongly about. But students “were being called vile things on the internet” after news organizations reported on the walkout. She said the district upped security afterward to ensure their safety. That experience, too, carried lessons.

“So I spent a lot of time in October more specifically talking about the consequences of activism, and how what may feel like a consequence is actually like a good thing, like how ‘you used your voice, and you shook it up and now people are nervous. And that’s a good thing,’” Harvey-Flowers said.

Bayan Founas is a high school English teacher at The School at Marygrove, a public school in Detroit. She conducted several activities with students last fall on the Israeli-Hamas War.

Another teacher, Bayan Founas, took an active role in facilitating activities and pro-Palestinian protests for students.

Founas, a high school English teacher at the School at Marygrove in the Detroit Public Schools Community District, said she helped students plan a walkout. Founas said she and her students wanted to show Palestinians that people around the world are supporting them.

“I obviously don’t know what they’re going through or what’s happening in (Palestinians’) minds, but I think it can go a long way for them to see that the world is not silent, that we are standing up for them and we’re not okay with what’s happening,” she said.

During the fall, Founas also organized school activities for her students, looking for ways to explain the complex relationship between Israel and the Palestinian people in ways teens can understand. One activity involved analyzing political cartoons that addressed segregation in the United States and South African apartheid and compared those to the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza.

Students are hungry for information

Ishai Sussman-Yitzchaki, a junior at a high school in Ann Arbor, and Indigo Umlor, a senior at a high school in Byron Center, a small town in Kent County, are not enrolled in history or current affairs classes, but said they are clued in on what’s happening in the war from other sources.

Sussman-Yitzchaki, who is Jewish, said the topic comes up with friends, especially friends he knows from summer camp. He also hears things from his family, including his mom who is a “much more active news consumer than I am” and has studied the conflict for several years.

Umlor checks news organizations, journalists on the ground, and government sources to find information about the conflict, and is particularly interested in examples in which government sources disagree on specific points.

“Without doing some digging, it can be hard to find solid information that shows you the whole picture,” Umlor said.

So Umlor started an Instagram account that provides information on events in support of the Palestinian people and resources about what is happening in the Middle East.

“The Israel-Palestine conflict is one of those issues that’s complicated, but also very simple at the same time,” Umlor said, arguing that the killing of thousands of people in Gaza should prompt “more and more people around the world” to be outraged by the loss of life.

“I feel like that’s something I wish a lot more people would take away from this is that however you feel about Palestine and Israel as a whole, that you can morally oppose killing 30,000 people in the span of just over 100 days… . And I wish I saw my community caring more about this.”

(The Gaza Health Ministry reported this week that more than 25,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military offensive began, the majority women and children. Its numbers do not separate civilian and combatant deaths. The Israeli government has reported between 1,100 and 1,200 deaths in the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants, mainly involving civilians.)

Teachers see a ‘responsibility’ to tackle tough topics

Sussman-Yitzchaki said the conflict has not come up in his classes, but he’s had a few teachers ask if he has relatives or friends in Israel and make sure he is OK. He said he believes teachers can handle having difficult conversations about Israel and Gaza, in part, because he has already witnessed teachers tackle tough topics like racism.

But he acknowledged the Israel-Hamas conflict brings nuances and debate that can be more difficult to navigate than typical classroom discussions on racism.

Sussman-Yitzchaki’s mother, Mira Sussman, told Bridge she believes it’s “a lot to ask of teachers” to instruct students about the Israeli-Palestine conflict.

But multiple teachers interviewed said they feel up to the task.

Tasneem Madani, a student teacher at Ann Arbor Public Schools, said students want to learn about what is happening in the Middle East. She also believes there has been a rise in anti-Palestinian and antisemitic sentiment because of a lack of education.

“I don’t see this as a burden,” said Tasneem Madani, a student-teacher in the Ann Arbor schools who is currently a student at the University of Michigan. “And I know other teachers don’t see it as a burden.

“We see it as our responsibility, as an opportunity. Because I think we feel like we’re doing the good work, right? Like, it is really difficult. It is hard. But it’s also what we want to be doing.”

Madani called the school board’s resolution encouraging classroom discussion a “first step in affirming our ability to do our jobs,” and there are several organizations and groups willing to share their expertise on these topics.

It’s important, she said, to communicate to students that certain topics aren’t off limits, while seeking to affirm “every single student’s humanity.”

Isabel Lohman is a reporter for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com. Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Newark Teachers Union wants its second contract under local control to go beyond 2019 deal

2024-01-22T15:16:27+00:00

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The Newark Teachers Union is negotiating a “historic” and “unprecedented” contract that demands higher salaries, more autonomy, and respect for teachers, says union President John Abeigon.

Negotiators for the union and the district held their first meeting on Jan. 11 to discuss the contract. If approved, it will be the second contract for teachers since the state ended its 23-year takeover of Newark Public Schools in 2018 and the third union negotiation with Superintendent Roger León since he was appointed by the city’s school board in 2018. It would replace the union’s 2019 contract, which expires at the end of June.

“We look forward to successful negotiations over the next few months for the benefit of our staff and the ultimate beneficiaries, our students,” said Newark Public Schools spokesperson Nancy Deering.

The end of the state’s takeover of the district signaled a change for teachers who had long wrestled with New Jersey officials about the declining conditions in city schools and their roles in them.

The union’s 2019 contract, for instance, ended the practice of paying teachers based on their students’ performance, rather than how many years they spent in the district or the degrees they attained – a provision of the union’s 2012 contract. In the past, the union head fought incessantly with state-appointed superintendents Cami Anderson and Christopher Cerf, resulting in tense negotiations and public feuds.

Anderson, who was superintendent from 2011 to 2015, closed and consolidated schools causing a pool of displaced educators in the district, and she oversaw the city’s rapid expansion of charter schools. Cerf, who replaced Anderson in 2015, was also criticized by teachers and community advocates for his charter-friendly stance and for closing low-performing schools in the city.

Today, Abeigon, who was elected as union president in 2015, has a more amicable relationship with León. Regardless of who is on the opposite side of negotiations, though, Abeigon said his team is focused on fighting to improve teachers’ current working conditions.

“We will continue to fight for those same things we gained in 2019 but instead of stopping at where we once were, we intend to move beyond that, and forge new territory and create a mecca for teachers who wish to be recognized in the manner the profession demands,” Abeigon added.

The union will continue to negotiate with the district every Thursday until they reach a deal, Abeigon said.

Pay raises for teachers

In 2019, the union reached a deal to raise salaries by 2.9% the first year with raises growing each year, capping at 3.3% in the 2023-24 school year. The contract also included pay increases for advanced degrees, substitute teachers and aides, and more planning time for teachers.

Now, the union is looking to secure the highest teacher salary in the country, Abeigon said. Currently, New York teachers have the highest average salary in the nation, with some earning over $90,000 a year, according to 2021-22 data from the National Education Association. In New Jersey, the average teaching salary hovers around $79,000 annually, according to the same data.

In June 2022, the district agreed to raise the starting salary for new teachers to $62,000 a year after it negotiated with the union as part of a recruitment strategy amid staffing shortages during the pandemic.

Abeigon says higher pay means more respect for teachers who are still working through the negative effects of the pandemic on students, such as learning loss and an increase in mental health needs. It also communicates more respect for teachers, Abeigon added, which in turn, retains them, a problem the district has endured amid teacher and principal turnover.

“With a higher salary, we’ll be able to recruit and retain the best,” Abeigon said.

Improving working conditions to keep teachers in Newark

But pay alone won’t keep teachers from leaving the district, Abeigon said. Uniformity and more teacher involvement in the decision-making processes will help retain teachers, he said.

Teachers need more educational responsibilities and less pressure to fulfill duties outside of their teaching role, Abeigon said. Some teachers have been asked to serve as security guards, fix classroom leaks, or other tasks outside their day-to-day duties, he said. District leaders also need to focus on teacher and staff morale, as some face burnout and frustration.

He envisions a “teacher-led” school district that relies on everyone to do their job, said Abeigon.

“You show me the school and I’ll tell you the level of morale. Some of them are so worn that the morale is in the basement,” Abeigon said.

Other teachers are frustrated with changing curriculums, inefficient professional development, and lack of understanding of the challenges they face in the classroom, Abeigon said. They plan on creating a schoolwide and districtwide curriculum committee that oversees curricula across all grade levels and helps workshop those lessons with teachers. The goal is to have uniformity across the district and leave decisions about learning to teachers.

“Let’s replace the useless mandates, and the time consuming data consumption with responsibilities, educational responsibilities,” Abeigon added.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Moms for Liberty came to the Upper East Side. Protesters may have outnumbered guests.

2024-01-19T04:14:35+00:00

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Protesters may have outnumbered participants in Moms for Liberty’s Thursday night town hall on the Upper East Side.

The right-wing organization’s event, which according to organizers was sold out, attracted ire from politicians and parent activists across the city. As about 100 people rallied outside toting signs reading “Mom against fascism,” “Queer people have kids too,” and “Read banned books,” many of the speakers on the panel rehashed national issues like the influence of teachers unions, the teaching of anti-racism and “gender ideology,” and school choice.

Several speakers stood before the crowd of about 75 people and took digs at New York City’s class size mandate, its cap on charter schools, and its high spending and low rates of reading proficiency.

Moms for Liberty bills itself as a “parents rights” group. It was founded in Florida in 2021 and quickly made national headlines for its calls to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and block LGBTQ-focused books and curriculum, as well as limit lessons about race.

The organization has swiftly made inroads across the country, raising $2.1 million in 2022 from the conservative Heritage Foundation and Republican donors, after raising just $370,000 the year before, according to the Associated Press. The organization has become influential in GOP politics and recently started a chapter in Queens.

It was named an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for its divisive tactics and efforts to undermine public education.

The question-and-answer session after the panel turned fiery. Several parents and teachers challenged the panelists on culturally responsive education, their views on transgender children, and what specific curriculum proposals they recommended to boost reading scores.

Moms for Liberty event attracts familiar education names

Moms for Liberty’s town hall in a staunchly blue pocket of the city caused a stir. But for close watchers of local education politics, many of the panelists were likely familiar.

They included Maud Maron, who sits on the Community Education Council, or CEC, for Manhattan’s District 2, and has been sparring for years with other parents.

CECs are largely advisory parent-led boards that approve or reject school zoning proposals and issue resolutions about such topics as admissions and curriculum.

Maron is a co-founder of the group PLACE (Parents Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Learning), which has organized in support of selective admissions at a time when integration advocates had been gaining traction in their efforts to desegregate many schools.

Maron, who recently said in a private chat that transgender children don’t exist, faced a barrage of criticism Wednesday night at the District 2 CEC meeting for her participation in the Thursday panel.

She doubled down on her decision Thursday night, accusing her critics of being “illiberal” and shying away from arguments. She singled out one young woman who recently challenged her stance on transgender children.

“She identified herself as a proud queer woman,” Maron recalled. “Which I think means she’s a straight girl without a boyfriend.” A parent at Thursday’s event subsequently challenged Maron on the comment, calling it “unnecessary and spiteful.”

Charles Love, another District 2 CEC member who spoke on Thursday’s panel, said he hasn’t yet found any evidence that Moms For Liberty is racist or homophobic.

The flier promoting the event listed Maron’s affiliation with the education council, along with Love’s. The city’s conflict of interest rules say council members may only use their titles along with a written disclaimer on materials and a verbal disclaimer that they are speaking in their personal capacity.

Education Department officials said before the event they would follow up with CEC members to remind them of this rule. Love acknowledged he’d been warned and said he agreed not to use his title, but neither he nor Maron offered an actual disclaimer.

Other panelists included Wai Wah Chin, the head of an Asian American parent advocacy group, Natalya Murakhver, an advocate against closing schools during the pandemic, and Mona Davids, who leads a group pushing for more school safety agents and metal detectors.

Some opponents expressed concern that the group was starting to exert influence in city education circles. Abby Stein, a rabbi and transgender advocate, raised the group’s use of a Hitler quote in a newsletter in Indiana. “When you put a quote of Hitler on your newsletter and you’re trying to make your way into New York City, on to education councils, I am terrified,” she said. (The group later apologized for quoting Hitler.)

The conversation did at times center on city-specific issues. When Chin criticized the class size cap, which she said would force the city to hire more teachers of lower quality, several audience members piped up that they were former teachers fired because of the city’s COVID vaccine mandate.

Tiffany Justice, the co-founder of Moms for Liberty and the moderator of the town hall, said she didn’t think education in the city’s public schools could get “much worse.”

Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice opens up the organization's town hall on the Upper East Side on Thursday.

Still, speakers offered few specific prescriptions. One parent asked after the panel what precise curriculum suggestions the panelists had. Maron criticized the city’s long-time reliance on a Teachers College reading curriculum that has largely been discredited. The city is already midway through a two-year effort to move away from that curriculum.

It’s unclear how large Moms for Liberty’s presence actually is in New York City, and event organizers didn’t give specifics about expansion plans.

Several elected officials spoke out before the event, including Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, who called the group a “bunch of hypocrites.”

“You don’t believe in liberty if you ban books,” he said. “If you attack trans kids and the parents of trans kids, that’s not liberty. That’s fascism.”

Jo Macellaro, a trans teacher in a Bronx District 75 program serving students with disabilities, was holding a sign that read: “I’m the trans teacher you’re scared of.”

Macellaro, who uses they/them pronouns, said they were called a “groomer” several times Thursday night. They felt it was important to speak out as Moms for Liberty has made inroads in Queens.

“I think we need to make it very loud and clear they are not welcome here,” Macellaro said.

“[Kids] can see what’s going on. If they can see these people are coming here and spewing their hatred, what message does that send?”

(A Moms for Liberty supporter wearing a “Protect Our Children” sweatshirt did yell at the group’s opponents, “You’re absolutely disgusting, you’re grooming our children.”)

Some protesters tried to convince the event’s venue, the Bohemian Benevolent and Literary Association, to cancel ahead of time, but the nonprofit concluded it couldn’t do so.

“We are a completely apolitical organization concentrating on cultural performances, and – this particular group clearly does not fit our strong non-political stance,” Joseph Balaz, the organization’s president, wrote in a lengthy statement online explaining his rationale.

He said he planned to personally match the rental fee for the event and donate it to “one of our organizations which actively supports young, future leaders.”

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

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

Philadelphia shrugs off national controversy as it updates and reinvigorates Black history lessons

2023-02-27T19:27:42+00:00

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In 2005, Philadelphia became the first big city in America to require all students to take African American history in order to graduate. And as other states and districts pass laws and adopt policies that restrict teaching about race and racism, the city’s public schools are taking a very different approach to classroom topics now under a national microscope.

The district is redoubling its efforts to expose students to Black history and culture. This year, it debuted a substantially updated and revitalized curriculum for the course of study that relies mostly on primary and secondary sources rather than a standard textbook.

Students examine such essential questions as how Black communities retained their cultural identity in colonial America, and they compare the philosophies that motivated figures like Booker T. Washington and Marcus Garvey.

They also discuss whether the nation’s founders were “hypocritical for claiming freedom” while they tolerated slavery in the nation they were creating. And they are asked to ponder why the history of slavery should be taught in schools to begin with.

Philadelphia’s revisions to the course and new training for teachers track with the Board of Education’s commitment in 2021 to “address racist practices” in a multitude of areas, from discipline to the content of classroom libraries. Part of the board’s goal is to ensure that the district’s students, most of whom are Black or Latino, “see themselves in the curriculum” throughout their school careers.

The district is also incorporating instructional materials about Black history beyond the high school course. And the new materials can look quite different from things like traditional classroom textbooks.

Philadelphia’s updated high school course creates a natural avenue for students to think about and discuss topics and authors that were recently removed from early drafts of the Advanced Placement African American Studies course that the College Board has been piloting.

The controversial elimination of topics like the Black Lives Matter movement and Black feminism took place following prominent complaints from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. The College Board has said that it did make changes to the course, but not due to political pressure.

Ismael Jimenez, the district’s social studies curriculum specialist and a driving force behind the revisions, cited the growing number of states where, as he put it, “You can’t even have these conversations” like the ones he wants to encourage.

Since early 2021, 18 states have enacted bans or restrictions on teaching topics related to race and racism, according to Education Week.

Legislators in Pennsylvania did make an effort in 2021 to restrict what could be taught about race, but their bill about the topic has failed to gain traction.

In Jimenez’s view, educators now have an even bigger obligation “to teach children the truth.”

New reading material and new training

Teachers in Philadelphia still have a Prentice-Hall textbook from 2005 for the mandatory high school course. But Jimenez said although the textbook is advanced considering when it was published, the district has also incorporated more primary sources, like Marcus Garvey’s “The Negro World.” The course relies on digital access for books like Garvey’s, which is available through the New York Public Library.

Links to sources, topics to be covered, and pacing schedules are listed for teachers in shared Google documents, which are continually updated.

When he taught the course for more than 12 years at two different high schools, “I found myself making my own materials,” Jimenez said.

Schools are also using materials that aren’t just more recent than Garvey’s work, but present history in a different way.

Earlier this month, Jimenez spoke to Philadelphia teachers and other district employees — many of whom work in elementary schools or preschools and don’t teach the mandatory high school course — at a Temple University event unveiling a new book for use in city schools called “Black Lives Always Mattered!”

The book was written and illustrated in the style of a graphic novel. It features 14 Black figures from 20th century Philadelphia history. These range from luminaries like opera singer Marian Anderson and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois, to lesser-known people like teacher and political activist Crystal Bird Fauset, photojournalist John W. Mosley, and Ruth Wright Hayre, who in the 1940s became the first Black high school teacher in the district and later rose to be Board of Education president.

The book’s lead illustrator and art coordinator is Eric Battle, who has worked for Marvel Comics and other publications. Battle said work on the book began in 2018, well before controversies about lessons on race and racism that are now making headlines.

“It came about as a way to let young people know their connections to the city, knowing why a street is named after a certain person. What did that person do to garner such an honor?” Battle said. “We want them to know that the people profiled in this book are ordinary people who did extraordinary things.”

Other changes are afoot to bolster the revised course.

While the student body in Philadelphia is mostly Black and Latino, more than two-thirds of the teachers are white. And although the mandatory course has been in city schools for 17 years, this is the first year teachers are required to attend professional development focused on the class.

Jimenez, who fought hard for the mandatory training, said it can be “problematic” if teachers “are left on their own without appropriate guidance” before presenting such important and potentially sensitive material.

Unlike in science, where teachers in Pennsylvania must be certified in the specialties of biology, physics and chemistry, social studies teachers have no such restrictions. They can be assigned to teach any required course, regardless of their expertise, even though “you have to be very knowledgeable on the subject before being able to go in and determine what should be emphasized or not,” Jimenez said.

Nicholaus Bernadini, who works at Samuel Fels High School, has been teaching African American history for 14 years and worked with Jimenez alongside other teachers to revise the mandatory high school course.

Bernadini, who is white and was born in Philadelphia, spent most of his formative years in Sea Islands, South Carolina among the Gullah people, a group of Black Americans who live along the southeastern coast and developed a distinctive culture. That background gives him a unique perspective. But Bernadini also recognizes that teachers from all walks of life can face “pitfalls” when dealing with the material.

“Teachers navigate better in environments where they can ask questions on what they are unsure about,” Bernadini said. “It is important for teachers to feel free to improve themselves as educators without backlash.”

During the professional development sessions for teachers on the course, Bernadini said there have been “incredible” conversations about everything from the role of states’ rights in the Civil War to personal perspectives on race.

“We had an educator talk about the idea that they don’t necessarily see color. We had a discussion around that along the lines of, ‘We can respect that, but what’s the impact of that mindset on you and your students?’” Bernadini said. “And while not all white teachers think that, there are teachers of color who don’t necessarily disagree. So having these conversations gets teachers to feel more comfortable about teaching the content.”

Jimenez said that teachers have told him that they appreciated the professional development sessions on a personal level.

“They realize that a lot of things they emphasized before were problematic and that it’s a reflection of the indoctrination in what society tells us about racial progress,” he said.

Teachers see broad benefits of learning Black history

Teachers at different levels of the school system say how invaluable it is for students to encounter things in their classes that presents them a fuller picture of American history through the lives of Black people. And they’re puzzled if not angered by those who say otherwise.

Tiffany Johnson teaches fourth grade at Ziegler Elementary School. Her students are learning about topics ranging from Black women’s contributions to society to the Green Book, a 20th century guide for Black travelers to the places they would be welcome to stay and to have a meal, where they could get their hair done, and which gas stations to patronize.

Many of her students previously had no idea about the existence of things like the Green Book in American history, she said.

“I don’t see what’s wrong with teaching the truth of what happened. I don’t get that. It’s not like we’re saying white people are bad,” said Johnson, who is Black. “We’re saying these events happened, this is how people reacted. The facts need to be told. It happened. We can’t sugarcoat it.”

Monique McKenney, now at Central High School, has taught African American history for most of her 24 years in Philadelphia schools. She said she is “not shocked, but disappointed and outraged” that politicians like DeSantis “would try to water down, or whitewash a curriculum that all students would benefit from.”

Central, one of the city’s leading academic magnet schools, is racially and ethnically diverse but it is predominantly white and Asian, unlike the district as a whole. In McKenney’s experiences, a broad cross-section of students have benefited from the lessons she teaches about the topic.

“It’s interesting to see students of various backgrounds who are able to connect with some of the experiences that you have in African American history,” said McKenney, who is also Black.

Some students, she said, “are surprised they’ve never heard about certain things before.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

As states adopt science of reading, one group calls for better teacher training, curriculum

2024-01-17T19:43:53+00:00

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Wisconsin is creating a new literacy office and hiring reading coaches. Ohio is dedicating millions to a curriculum overhaul. Indiana is requiring new teacher training.

Dozens of states are moving to align their teaching practices with the science of reading, a body of research on how children learn that emphasizes explicit phonics instruction alongside helping students build vocabulary and knowledge about the world. But a national policy group says many states still have significant work to do to ensure strong reading instruction.

A new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality finds that half of states don’t set specific standards telling teacher prep programs what future educators should know about teaching reading, and 28 states cede their authority over teacher prep programs to outside accrediting agencies with vague guidelines. A similar number of states administer weak licensure tests, the report said, creating uncertainty about how well prepared teachers are.

Meanwhile, just nine states require that districts adopt high-quality reading curriculum, NCTQ’s analysis found. Only three of those — South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia — require districts to choose curriculum from a state-approved list and cover the cost for districts.

NCTQ President Heather Peske hopes the report can serve as a roadmap for states looking to improve reading instruction.

“We cannot continue to accept the reading outcomes that we’ve been seeing,” she said.

Last year, NCTQ’s review of hundreds of teacher preparation programs found that thousands of educators graduate every year unprepared to teach children how to read, or trained using debunked literacy instruction strategies.

Some of the states that got good ratings from NCTQ in its new report have been at it for years. Mississippi passed its first reading law a decade ago. Colorado stepped up regulation of its teacher prep programs five years ago.

Other states NCTQ called out for their weak policies are just getting started. Illinois is poised to adopt a new literacy plan this year. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul just announced a major new literacy initiative. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy highlighted early literacy in his State of the State speech.

NCTQ makes five main recommendations. States should set well-defined standards for how teacher prep programs teach reading, review those programs thoroughly, use a rigorous licensing test that includes all components of how students learn to read, require that districts use high-quality curriculum, and provide ongoing training and support.

These types of policies often face pushback from school districts, universities, and teachers unions that see politicians infringing on educators’ authority and autonomy.

In Colorado, some school districts initially resisted state curriculum guidelines. Others struggled to find approved curriculum that felt culturally responsive. In Illinois, political opposition and lack of state funding means the new literacy plan has no teeth. In Ohio, Reading Recovery, a popular but increasingly disfavored reading program, is suing the state for banning certain methods of teaching.

NCTQ’s reports have also come in for criticism for their technical and narrow view of good teaching, for being incomplete, or for not relying on the right data — Peske said states had multiple opportunities to review the latest report and offer corrections. Other advocacy groups have laid out different priorities for reading instruction.

Melinda Person, president of the New York state teachers union, is excited the governor wants to invest $10 million in teacher training aligned with the science of reading. But she’s cautious about calls to get every district to adopt curriculum that meets a currently undetermined standard. She fears that state-approved lists could be influenced by lobbying or force districts to abandon good programs developed by local educators.

“Teaching a child to read is a very complex task,” Person said. “Don’t oversimplify this. It is brain science. Hundreds of studies are pointing us in this direction, but they are not pointing us to ‘buy this curriculum.’”

Data lacking on curriculum in school districts

Twelve states received “strong” ratings overall in NCTQ’s report, including Colorado, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

NCTQ categorized 16 states as having “weak” reading policies, including Illinois, New York, and New Jersey, while three states — Maine, Montana, and South Dakota — were marked as “unacceptable” because they had few or no state-level reading policies.

An analysis by Education Week found that 32 states and the District of Columbia have adopted new reading laws since 2013, but NCTQ found many of these states still had major gaps in teacher preparation or curriculum.

States with strong oversight of teacher prep programs lost points for having weak standards, and states with strong standards lost points for weak oversight. More than half of states, NCTQ found, review the syllabi of teacher preparation programs, but just 10 include literacy experts in the process.

Most teacher prep programs don’t devote at least two instructional hours to how to teach English learners to read in an unfamiliar language or to supporting struggling readers, NCTQ’s analysis found. Even fewer programs provide opportunities for student teachers to practice those skills.

Meanwhile, 21 states don’t collect any data on the curriculum their districts use, nearly half offer no guidance on picking curriculums that serve English learners, and a third offer no guidance on how to use curriculum to support struggling readers. Even in states that value local control, Peske said states have a duty to offer guidance, and many administrators likely would welcome it.

NCTQ’s analysis does not address third-grade retention policies that have been adopted in 13 states. Nor did NCTQ’s report address universal screeners that look for warning signs of reading difficulties such as dyslexia.

Advocacy groups like JerseyCAN have made universal screeners and parental notification key parts of their platform. “Parents cannot ring the alarm or participate in this goal effectively if they don’t know where their children stand,” Executive Director Paula White said.

Linking new policies to test scores can be challenging. Mississippi students’ growth on national exams has been touted as a “miracle.” But students there still have lower test scores than students in some more affluent states with weaker policies.

New York and New Jersey governors elevate literacy

New Jersey received a weak rating from NCTQ due to inadequate standards for teacher prep programs, no requirement that elementary teachers have reading training, and no curriculum requirements or even guidelines for local districts.

White, the JerseyCAN leader, said she hopes the state is turning the corner after years in which people told her “we got this, we’ll do it on our own,” or “We’re already doing what you want us to do, so why should we expend energy on state policy or legislation?”

In neighboring New York, NCTQ gave the state some credit for strong state oversight of teacher prep. But the state lost points because reading standards aren’t specific enough. Nor does New York require districts to adopt high-quality curriculum — its powers are limited under state law.

Hochul’s push on literacy comes as New York City is months into its own reading overhaul, with schools required to adopt one of three approved curriculums. It’s not clear yet how the state might encourage districts using low-quality curriculum to make different choices. State officials are also developing a plan to incorporate more science of reading into teacher prep programs.

Judy Boksner, a literacy coach and reading specialist at P.S. 28 in the Bronx, recalls the “aha moment” she experienced after getting trained in the science of reading on her own time. She said the approach helps more students more reliably than the methods she was previously trained to use, but it can be slow at first.

Curriculum and training requirements are good, Boksner said, but schools still need ongoing support, including literacy coaches.

“In all these curriculums, they have tasks in them. We don’t know if they’ve all been tested in the field. Some of the tasks are so hard for kids, and if you don’t train your teachers well, kids will still struggle,” Boksner said.

Illinois on verge of adopting new literacy plan

In giving Illinois a “weak” rating, NCTQ found the state has set good standards for teacher preparation programs, but called for more oversight to ensure programs are following through. And NCTQ labeled as “unacceptable” Illinois’ lack of any guidance around high quality curriculum.

The report comes just as Illinois is finalizing a literacy plan to help school districts revamp how students are taught to read. After a two-year legislative fight, advocates successfully passed a bill last year that requires the Illinois State Board of Education to write a literacy plan, create a rubric for school districts to grade curriculum, and offer professional development to teachers.

But the new law does not mandate school districts adopt a phonics-based approach that’s key to the science of reading. Other ideas, such as reading grants and an approved curriculum list, didn’t survive the political process.

“There are really no mandates on school districts,” said Stand for Children Illinois Executive Director Jessica Handy, a literacy advocate who helped write the 2023 bill and negotiated with lawmakers. “I think reading grants would be one way to get buy-in from school districts and get more people thinking about how they can accelerate their progress to improve literacy curriculum.”

Education advocates hope to see $45 million from $550 million in new state funding go towards regional literacy coaches and state board staff that work just on literacy — and Stand is working on a new bill that Handy hopes strengthens the literacy plan.

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

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.

NYC school suspensions spiked 13% last year, returning to pre-pandemic levels

2024-01-08T23:41:07+00:00

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Suspensions across New York City public schools came roaring back last school year, according to newly released data.

Schools issued 28,412 suspensions during the 2022-23 school year, a 13% spike compared with the 2021-22 school year, the first time students were required to return to school buildings in the wake of the pandemic.

The number of suspensions remained below the most recent academic year before the coronavirus forced school buildings to shutter in March 2020. But with fewer students enrolled in grades K-12, suspensions issued per capita returned to pre-pandemic levels. (The figures do not include charter schools.)

It’s difficult to know exactly why suspensions spiked last school year, the second year students were required to attend school in person since the pandemic. Some other large districts, including Nevada’s Clark County and Broward County, Florida, also have seen suspensions climb toward pre-pandemic levels.

It’s possible educators were reluctant to remove students from their classrooms the first year they returned to school buildings to avoid further disruptions to their learning — a feeling that may have faded last year. Student mental health remains a pressing concern that can affect behavior, and schools are not always well-equipped to handle it. There was also a 9% uptick in the overall number of weapons confiscated in schools last year, according to Police Department data.

Robert Effinger, a social studies teacher at the Bronx High School of Business, said fights and verbal altercations seemed to return to pre-pandemic levels, as students were less wary of the pandemic and masks were largely off. He noted that teachers’ were still dusting off their classroom management skills, too.

“I think some people had forgotten what it was like to go back to normal,” he said, noting that even as students first returned to buildings full time the prior year, they were still readjusting to regular school rhythms and were more skittish.

As in previous years, the new suspension data showed significant disparities between student groups. Roughly 40% of all suspensions went to Black students, though just 21% of students are Black. About 38% of suspensions were issued to students with disabilities, a group that represents about 22% of all students. Latino students represented about 40% of suspensions, roughly in line with their share of the student population. Meanwhile, white and Asian American students were much less likely to be suspended relative to their share of enrollment.

Still, the number of New York City students excluded from their classrooms remained at some of their lowest levels in at least a dozen years, partly the result of discipline reform efforts under former Mayor Bill de Blasio. But as suspensions creep back up, some observers contend that Mayor Eric Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks may be less focused on limiting their use.

Nelson Mar, an attorney at Bronx Legal Services, an organization that represents students in suspension proceedings, worries the uptick could signal “more of a disciplinarian approach” from the Adams administration.

“It definitely reflects the general attitude and approach,” he said.

Adams has ramped up harsher tactics to combat crime, one of his signature issues, though the administration has not sketched out a detailed vision on school discipline or moved to overhaul the discipline code, which spells out the city’s suspension policies. Banks has signaled that he doesn’t favor “zero tolerance” approaches to school discipline, though he has also said there must be consequences for misbehavior.

An Education Department spokesperson did not express concern over the rise in suspensions last year — or their disproportionate use against Black students and children with disabilities — and emphasized that students must follow school rules.

“We are focused on equipping schools with the resources they need to address any issues not only in accordance with our discipline code but in conjunction with meaningful moments for education,” Jenna Lyle, a department spokesperson, wrote in an email.

But some advocates worry that schools will soon have fewer resources at their disposal to address student behavior without resorting to suspensions. The city has used one-time federal relief funding to hire hundreds of social workers and expand funding for restorative justice programs, which prioritize peer meditations and other methods of talking through conflicts. Those programs are on the chopping block next school year as federal relief money runs out. Department officials have not said whether they are looking for alternate funding.

“With each of these, we continue to be concerned about the expiration of federal funding and what that will mean for support for students,” said Randi Levine, policy director at Advocates for Children. “It’s important for students to have access to mental health professionals who can help work with students and help address student behavior.”

The figures also include breakdowns of suspensions by how severe the punishments were. Principal suspensions, which last five days or fewer and are typically served in school, increased nearly 14% last year. More serious superintendent suspensions, which stretch beyond five days and are served at outside suspension sites, increased about 11%. (Superintendent suspensions can technically stretch for an entire school year but have been restricted to 20 days in most cases since 2019.)

Under city law, the suspension data was required to be released publicly by the end of October. Despite requests from Chalkbeat over the past two months, the Education Department declined to release the statistics or explain the delay. Officials ultimately released the figures after Chalkbeat prepared to publish a story about the missing data.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

‘I’m terrified’: As new laws take effect, LGBTQ students and allies fear the consequences

2022-07-08T11:00:00+00:00

Cindy Nobles, a mother of four in Jacksonville, Florida, watched with mounting dread this spring as the local school board rewrote a guide meant to support LGBTQ students. She feared that every stricken passage left vulnerable children a little less safe.

The Duval County school district had reissued the guide on the heels of an alarming 2019 survey, which showed that more than 60% of the district’s lesbian, gay, and bisexual high schoolers felt sad or hopeless. Nearly 1 in 3 of those students said they had attempted suicide — twice the rate of their straight peers.

But after Republican state lawmakers passed a bill this March restricting lessons about gender identity and sexuality, Duval County gutted its LGBTQ guide. Officials released a draft in May that condensed the 37-page document into eight pages of an employee manual, and removed most references to transgender students.

“It was butchered,” said Nobles, who is president of Jacksonville’s PFLAG chapter. Now, as more school districts rush to comply with the new law, Nobles is convinced that student safeguards are in jeopardy.

“I’m terrified at the moment,” she said.

Cindy and Cody Nobles

For LGBTQ kids, just stepping out into the world as your authentic self can be treacherous. Family members could shun you, classmates bully you, and bigots harass you or worse. Youth of color and transgender kids face added resistance. At the school Nobles’ youngest child attends, a trans boy was barred from the boys locker room and a trans girl was assaulted on campus.

Yet, instead of shielding such students, conservative lawmakers across the U.S. are trying to prohibit practices meant to make LGBTQ youth feel safe and supported at school.

Just this year, legislators have introduced more than 300 bills targeting LGBTQ Americans, with many seeking to limit transgender kids’ access to medical care, school bathrooms, and sports teams, according to the Human Rights Campaign. Other proposals would ban books that “normalize” LGBTQ “lifestyles,” restrict what students can learn about sexuality and racism, or require parental permission for kids to choose their pronouns or join LGBTQ clubs. Republicans say the restrictions restore parents’ authority and defend students from indoctrination.

On July 1, anti-LGBTQ laws affecting young people took effect in six states, including Florida.

“We’re just kind of preparing for a fight,” said Nobles’ child Cody, a rising 12th grader who identifies as bigender and gay.

The full reach of the new laws won’t be known until schools begin enforcing them this fall. But already the targeted legal campaign and intensifying rhetoric have left many LGBTQ students feeling under siege.

“What they’re learning,” said Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, executive director of GLSEN, which advocates for inclusive schools, “is that some people don’t think they should exist.”

Unsafe at school

Even before the recent onslaught of legislation, school was not a safe space for many LGBTQ kids.

For Alex Rambow, a teenager in South Dakota who identifies as transgender, simply being himself at school is a struggle. Yes, most teachers use his correct pronouns. But others are less accepting and some students are openly hostile.

“I just hate being there,” said Alex, a soon-to-be 12th grader. “Not for my education, but just because of the environment.”

Last year, a student followed Alex to his car shouting slurs. Another time, a group of students threatened to beat him up if he used the boys bathroom. So instead, Alex uses an employee restroom or waits until he’s home.

This April, a teacher at Alex’s school gave some students letters challenging their gender identities and urging them to accept “the biological truth.” The superintendent quickly condemned discrimination based on sexuality or gender and said the district was investigating the teacher. But discouraging abuse is hardly the same as making everyone feel welcome.

“They don’t say anything about LGBTQ students,” Alex said. “We just get forgotten and swept under the rug.”

Silence starts at the very top. While every state has some form of anti-bullying law, half do not explicitly prohibit bullying based on race, gender, or other characteristics.

The lack of specificity comes despite research showing state laws that explicitly forbid bullying based on sexual orientation are associated with fewer suicide attempts, and LGBTQ students in schools with such policies face less victimization.

When state policies protect and embrace LGBTQ students, it empowers district and school leaders to follow suit — even if some parents or politicians object.

“It gives them the mandate to do this work,” said Elizabeth Meyer, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who has studied inclusive education policies. “They can say: This is the law and this is what I’m going to be doing.”

South Dakota’s anti-bullying law not only lacks a list of protected student groups, it also bars school districts from creating such lists. Alex’s district has no formal policies related to LGBTQ students, the superintendent confirmed in an email, though he said schools try to work with families to accommodate trans students.

The absence of inclusive policies leaves supportive parents to fill in the gaps.

Amy and Alex Rambow

Alex’s mother Amy formed a nonprofit, Watertown Love, that hosts annual Pride celebrations and monthly meetups where LGBTQ youth can go bowling or get pizza together. The district allowed her group to offer a workshop on inclusive practices during a staff training, but it was voluntary and Amy said only a handful of people attended. Meanwhile, Amy is trying to reckon with the possibility that her son will skip senior prom because he doesn’t feel safe.

“It hurts my heart,” she said.

Alex’s experience is disturbingly common. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual high school students are nearly twice as likely as their straight peers to feel unsafe at school and face bullying, according to a 2019 CDC survey. Some of those students endure additional abuse based on their race, religion, or other aspects of their identities.

Stigma and shunning, whether at school or home, can take a steep toll. Two-thirds of lesbian, gay, and bisexual high schoolers felt persistently sad or hopeless during the past year, and nearly half seriously considered suicide, according to the 2019 survey. The rates are even higher for transgender and nonbinary youth, a different survey found.

Those mental health risks reflect the discrimination that LGBTQ people face, said Preston Mitchum, director of advocacy and government affairs for the Trevor Project, a suicide prevention group.

“It’s not inherent to who we are,” he said. “It’s because of society and how society treats people.”

In recent years, as South Dakota legislators pushed more than 30 bills restricting LGBTQ rights, advocates fought back. Trans youth lobbied lawmakers and testified at hearings.

In February, Amy and Alex traveled to the state capitol, where they invited Gov. Kristi Noem to meet with trans youth and allies. She declined. A few days later, Noem signed a law barring trans girls from girls sports teams. It took effect July 1.

Whether or not such laws pass, the rhetoric promoting them can do harm. A staggering 85% of trans and nonbinary youth said the debate over laws targeting trans people negatively impacted their mental health, according to a Trevor Project poll last fall.

Campaigns seeking to regulate trans lives send young people a clear message, LGBTQ advocates say: They are a problem to be fixed.

“I’ve already got enough self-hatred as it is,” Alex said, “and that’s just piling more on top.”

Support under attack

It isn’t just LGBTQ students who feel increasingly targeted, but also the educators who support them.

Brandy Vance

Brandy Vance, a physical education teacher in Tallahassee, Florida, wears outfits featuring rainbows and unicorns that signal her acceptance of all students. Occasionally students confide to her that they are LGBTQ, including one child who came out as trans. Her class became a refuge for the student, who hid their identity at home.

Under Florida’s new law, schools must notify parents of changes in students’ mental or emotional condition. The state has offered little clarity about the vaguely worded rule, but Vance worries it will force her to inform parents any time a student discusses their identity.

“Do I potentially out this kid to their parents?” she said. “Or do I potentially lose the job that I know I’m meant to do?”

The law has put LGBTQ-affirming educators on the defensive. Conservative critics accuse teachers of usurping parents’ authority and imposing liberal beliefs about gender and sexuality on students — what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis calls “woke gender ideology.”

“We will make sure that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination,” he said when signing the Parental Rights in Education law.

The law, which critics call “Don’t Say Gay or Trans,” says schools must respect “the fundamental right of parents to make decisions regarding the upbringing and control of their children.” It allows parents to report and potentially sue school districts if they believe a teacher has discussed sexual orientation or gender identity with students in grades K-3 or with older students in a way that’s not “age appropriate.”

The restrictions seek to rein in districts that critics say went too far in affirming LGBTQ students. Republicans point to Leon County, the district where Vance teaches, as Exhibit A.

Last year, a conservative group sued the district on behalf of parents who said a Leon County school helped their child adopt a different gender without their consent. The lawsuit referred to a district guide, which warned that outing LGBTQ students to their parents “can be very dangerous” if families are not accepting. Republican state lawmakers began drafting the parents’ rights law after learning about the lawsuit and several districts’ LGBTQ guides, Politico reported.

After the law passed, schools scrambled to bring their practices into compliance.

Leon County convened a 14-member committee to rewrite its guide for supporting LGBTQ students. Like Duval County, the district condensed the guide and added new parent notification requirements. Most controversially, Leon County’s new manual says parents will be alerted if a transgender student in their children’s physical education class requests to use the locker room matching their gender identity.

During some three hours of public comment at a school board meeting last week, the revised guide came under fire from all sides. Some speakers said schools should only allow students to use facilities that match their biological sex, and argued that accommodating transgender students amounts to endorsing their identities.

“The school system is not a place to promote radical ideologies,” one parent said.

But other speakers said notifying families about transgender students’ locker room use would violate their privacy and expose them to hostility.

“LGBTQ students already are in a lot of danger,” said a high school student who warned the notifications could lead to bullying.

For her part, Vance said she’ll continue to accept students just as they are — even as she fears that expressing her support could now invite scrutiny or sanctions.

“If I have to go down that way,” she told Chalkbeat, “then that’s what’s going to happen.”

Beyond Leon County, other districts are also scrambling to revamp policies that could run afoul of the new law. They are doing so largely on their own, as the law gives the state education department until July 2023 to issue updated guidelines.

Meanwhile, Florida educators are trying to make sense of the changes.

A few days before the restrictions went into effect, the LGBTQ-advocacy group Safe Schools South Florida hosted a workshop for teachers. They asked union representatives whether they can still inquire about students’ preferred pronouns, post rainbow flags, or display photos of their same-sex partners.

Such activities are not expressly prohibited, the representatives said, but grade K-3 teachers should beware of actions that parents could interpret as “instruction” about gender or sexuality.

“We encourage you to be self aware, to be cognizant of the very real consequences that this law creates,” said Vincent Halloran, an attorney with United Teachers of Dade, the Miami-area union.

Florida officials have accused activists and teachers unions of trying to “sow confusion” about the new law. In a recent motion asking a judge to dismiss a challenge to the law, the state’s attorney general said teachers would still be free to display family photos or mention their partners during class.

The chaos in Florida could spread beyond its borders. Lawmakers in at least 14 states have introduced bills to restrict classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity, according to an analysis by the Movement Advance Project. Alabama’s bill passed, and the law took effect this month.

Even just the prospect of such restrictions is making some teachers second guess what is safe to say in the classroom, said Andrew Kirk, a high school teacher in Texas, where state officials plan to introduce a bill similar to Florida’s.

“This chilling effect is already happening,” he said.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

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Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that a high school teacher in South Dakota gave letters to several students, including Alex Rambow, challenging their gender identities. Alex did not receive one of the letters.

Staffing, attendance, behavior: 7 big issues facing schools this year

2022-08-18T19:24:19+00:00

After surviving two school years “completely veiled in the pandemic,” teacher Kathryn Vaughn says this year is off to a different start.

Her stress levels are down. COVID protocols are relaxed. Teachers are feeling hopeful.

“It feels a little lighter this year,” said Vaughn, who teaches elementary school art in Tennessee. “It really feels like we’re just kind of back to business as usual.”

Many students and educators are returning to classrooms this fall with a sense of cautious optimism. But there are still many open questions after last year’s staffing shortages, student absences, and mental health and behavioral challenges interfered with academic recovery efforts.

Here are seven big issues facing schools:

How will schools handle staffing challenges?

Some schools are stepping up efforts to boost student attendance this year.

First, some reassuring news: Despite what you might have heard, there isn’t evidence of an unprecedented teacher shortage nor an exodus of teachers fleeing the profession.

Yet some schools are struggling to staff up — partly for reasons that predate the pandemic. High-poverty schools have long had trouble recruiting and retaining teachers, and the supply of new educators has dwindled over the past decade as fewer people enroll in teacher-prep programs.

But the pandemic also has created new complications. Many districts used federal relief funds to add more positions, including tutors and extra substitutes, creating huge demand for a limited pool of workers. Schools also must compete with other employers for lower-wage workers, such as bus drivers and custodians, spurring some districts to hike their pay and offer bonuses.

Those hiring pressures are bearing down on Paterson Public Schools, a high-needs district in New Jersey. Some 130 teaching positions remain unfilled, or nearly 6% of the total teaching force, about three weeks before students return, said Luis Rojas, Jr., the district official who oversees human resources. While some vacancies are expected, Rojas said the number has surged as teachers take advantage of the tight labor market.

“They understand the demand,” he said, “and folks are jumping around from school district to school district trying to move up the salary ladder and get as much money as they can.”

The causes of the staffing crunch are ultimately less important than the effect on students. Schools that can’t find enough teachers might have to raise class sizes, hire less qualified candidates, assign teachers to subjects in which they have limited training, or rely on long-term substitutes — all of which can get in the way of learning.

“I would tell you that one is too many,” Rojas said, “when you have a vacancy.”

Will student attendance improve?

Chronic absenteeism rates rose last year, as quarantines and COVID infections kept students home for long stretches.

This year, the CDC is no longer recommending that students quarantine after an exposure. Many think that will help stabilize attendance, though it’s possible other factors could persist, such as lingering student disengagement.

In Los Angeles, about half of all students were chronically absent last year. Even without quarantines, 30% of students were chronically absent, up from 19% before the pandemic.

“That is just not acceptable,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said last week as he announced a new campaign to boost attendance by visiting student homes.

In Detroit, 77% of students were chronically absent last year, up from 62% the year before the pandemic began. There, the spike was especially concerning because the district has long worked to raise attendance. Now, officials are stepping up efforts to get kids to school.

Lisa Blackwell, a district attendance agent, is part of that. This summer, she’s been knocking on doors to talk up her elementary school’s new before- and after-school care options, and explaining to parents the COVID precautions her school is taking. She’s also planning incentives to reward students, like bringing an ice cream truck to school.

“I want to focus more so on getting the kids excited to go to school,” Blackwell said. “Maybe that will push parents a little bit more to say: ‘Well, my kid is very excited to be at school, so I as a parent, I’m held accountable to make sure they get there.’”

Can schools meet students’ mental health needs?

Inside classrooms across the country last year, the crisis in young people’s mental health was all too evident. After many months of social isolation and learning by laptop, some students were prone to outbursts, meltdowns, and squabbles.

“These kids are very anxious,” said Aaron Grossman, a fifth grade teacher in Reno, Nevada. “The uptick in behavior is very real.”

The distinct but overlapping challenges of worsening student behavior and mental health were fueled by the pandemic — and the stress, financial hardships, and trauma it caused. Federal survey data from this spring confirmed the twin crises: 70% of public school leaders reported an increase in students seeking mental health services during the pandemic, and 56% said disruptive student misconduct had become more common.

Efforts to address both issues have achieved mixed results. Some schools responded to student misbehavior by leaning into restorative practices, which aim for healing over punishment, but others issued more suspensions than usual. Many schools used federal aid to hire more counselors, social workers, and school psychologists, but not always as many were needed. In an April survey, just over half of school leaders said their schools could provide mental health services to all students who require them.

Nance Roy, the chief clinical officer of The Jed Foundation, which focuses on youth mental health and suicide prevention, says schools should encourage students to reach out for help and connect them with service providers.

“It’s developing a culture of care and compassion in schools,” she said, “where there’s no wrong door to walk through for support.”

What will public school enrollment look like?

U.S. public school enrollment held steady last fall, according to federal data released this week. That came after student head counts dropped 2.8% in the fall of 2020, following years of national enrollment growth.

Last year saw a spike in preschool and kindergarten enrollment, both of which dropped sharply when many districts turned to virtual schooling. The return of full-time in-person learning, declining COVID safety concerns, and additional family outreach likely helped boost those grades. But enrollment continues to fall among students in other elementary and middle school grades, a trend that could spell trouble for some districts as the extra funding from federal COVID relief packages dries up.

The issue weighs especially heavily on school leaders in big cities where the share of small schools has ballooned. Now, some are considering school closures, which can create schools that are less expensive to run and have a wider range of programs, but will mean more disruption for students who’ve faced a lot of it in recent years.

“There are really awful tradeoffs,” Shanthi Gonzales, a former school board member in Oakland, California, told Chalkbeat this summer.

Can schools get extra academic help to students who need it most?

Many schools are offering tutoring and other kinds of academic interventions, but it doesn’t always reach the students who need the most help.

The road to academic recovery is coming into focus as data rolls in. So far, elementary school students seem to be recovering more quickly than middle schoolers, but students of all ages are still significantly behind where they would normally be on reading and math tests.

Katrina Abe, a math teacher in Houston, has seen that. Last year, her eighth graders needed extra help with seventh grade topics like interpreting graphs and understanding rates of change. Those concepts are harder to grasp virtually and without working in groups, which happened if students learned online or missed a lot of class the prior year.

This year’s class is noticeably behind last year’s, she said, likely because half of them had three different math teachers in seventh grade. To help, Abe is planning small-group instruction every day and more turn-and-talk time so students can problem solve together. She’s also going to review some fifth and sixth grade standards.

“We’re going to just take that slow, depending on their level,” she said.

Many schools are offering tutoring and other kinds of academic support, but data on which recovery efforts are working is limited. More than half of public schools said they provided high-dosage tutoring in a recent federal survey — a highly effective strategy — but schools often have trouble staffing and scheduling that support. Some districts have turned to virtual tutoring, but it often doesn’t reach students who need help the most.

Meanwhile, educators are keeping their eyes on the larger crop of teens who are behind in credits needed to graduate.

Will schools ramp up COVID relief spending?

Schools have an unprecedented pot of federal money to spend, but many are still struggling to put it to use. There’s a few reasons for that. In some states, money got stuck in red tape and arrived late. Elsewhere, schools are having a hard time finding staff to fill new positions, or hiring contractors to make building repairs.

Some districts that have been slow to spend say they’re planning to ramp up spending over time. Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, had spent only 10% of its federal COVID aid as of late June, mostly to avoid staff cuts and buy PPE. But the district says it has budgeted all the money, including to tutor more students.

Still, this aid doesn’t always feel like new money. New York City recently gave schools the OK to use $100 million in federal aid that was previously set aside for academic recovery to pay teachers, after announcing $215 million in school budget cuts.

This money also has been difficult to track: School district spending plans vary widely in quality and there’s often limited data at the state and federal levels.

But some trends are apparent. When FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank, looked at spending plans for some 5,000 school districts in June, it found a quarter of federal funds were budgeted for staff, and another quarter were earmarked for academic recovery. Just under a quarter was set aside for facilities and operations, mostly to upgrade heating, ventilation and cooling systems.

How will the culture wars shape what students learn?

America’s latest culture wars are being waged inside schools.

Seventeen states now ban lessons on racism or sexism, six states restrict teaching about sexuality and gender identity, and 18 states don’t allow transgender students to play on sports teams that match their gender.

Peyton, a 12th grader who is part of a support group for Black queer youth in Alabama, said the laws send a clear message to LGBTQ students.

“It’s just enforcing that you’re not normal and society does not want you here,” they said.

In addition to making some students feel less safe, the laws are limiting what they learn.

Some teachers have curtailed class discussions about the oppression of Black people and Native Americans, and some schools are restricting students’ access to books by or about people of color and LGBTQ Americans.

The Biden administration has proposed new rules to protect LGBTQ students, but conservative states are expected to challenge those rules in court. Meanwhile, school districts that run afoul of the new state laws already are facing consequences, and more attacks are likely: Florida’s new law allows parents to file complaints or even sue if they believe their children are taught banned topics.

But for every lesson that is challenged, many more will never be taught as schools seek to avoid sanctions and controversy. In a new survey, 1 in 4 teachers nationally — and nearly 1 in 3 teachers in states with curriculum restrictions — said higher-ups told them to steer clear of contentious topics in the classroom.

As Andrew Kirk, a high school teacher in Texas, told Chalkbeat: “This chilling effect is already happening.”

Jessica Blake contributed reporting.

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

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Gov. Hochul wants New York schools to embrace the ‘science of reading.’ Will they?

2024-01-03T22:37:14+00:00

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Eight months after New York City announced a major literacy shakeup, Gov. Kathy Hochul sketched out one of her own on Wednesday that may encourage districts across the state to adopt new reading curriculums.

The effort comes amid growing pressure for officials to boost literacy, as dozens of states have enacted efforts to improve reading instruction and embrace what’s known as the “science of reading,” an established body of research about how children learn to read. New York is one of a handful of states that has not advanced similar proposals in recent years, even as fewer than half of students in grades 3-8 are considered proficient in reading on state tests.

Hochul said her goal is to move schools away from “balanced literacy” — including a popular curriculum developed by Teachers College professor Lucy Calkins that has come under intense scrutiny in recent years. The approach includes mini-lessons and lots of independent reading time to get students excited about literature and help practice reading skills on their own. Experts say that method often does not work for students who struggle to read, including those with learning disabilities like dyslexia.

The state will begin to favor programs that emphasize phonics lessons that explicitly teach the relationships between sounds and letters, an approach backed by research. Hochul indicated her plan would help rid schools of discredited methods often found in balanced literacy programs, such as encouraging children to use pictures to guess at a word’s meaning.

“We’re going to throw away the old methods: Say goodbye, it didn’t work, and get back to basics,” Hochul said during a press conference at an elementary school in Watervliet, New York.

The governor’s proposal is unlikely to force changes in New York City because the city’s Education Department already launched its own sweeping curriculum mandate that appears to line up with Hochul’s plan. It remains to be seen whether the governor’s proposal will lead to big changes in other parts of the state, especially as curriculum overhauls can be difficult — and expensive — to pull off.

The state’s power is also limited, as local school districts are responsible for choosing their own curriculum materials. A Hochul spokesperson suggested the state’s plan would require that science of reading principles would need to be “part of” a district’s offerings.

“I think she’s trying to appease people who have heard about the quote unquote ‘reading crisis’ but is being very careful not to step on districts’ toes,” said Jennifer Binis, a long-time curriculum designer who has worked with teachers in New York State.

Hochul’s plan would direct the state Education Department to create a series of “instructional best practices” related to literacy skills including phonics, decoding, and comprehension. By September 2025, school districts would be required to certify that their curriculums, instruction, and teacher training efforts aligned with those best practices, according to a press release. (Officials declined to provide the exact legislative language Hochul supports.)

The governor also proposed a $10 million partnership with the state’s teachers union to train 20,000 educators and to expand efforts from the city and state university systems to help educators learn about the science of reading, a priority among state officials.

Hochul’s plan won support from union officials, advocacy groups, and a flurry of lawmakers. The state’s Education Department declined to comment directly on the proposal until more information about it is available. Some experts said they were happy to see Hochul emphasize literacy instruction, but remained skeptical that her proposal would lead to significant changes.

“It’s the beginning and it’s a good step,” said Susan Neuman, a reading expert at New York University and former federal education official.

But she said it’s “unrealistic” to expect deep changes in classrooms without a more significant commitment to rigorous training, money for new materials, and clear accountability mechanisms. “Unfunded mandates don’t work,” Neuman said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Can artificial intelligence help teachers improve? A network of NYC schools wants to find out.

2024-01-02T20:28:53+00:00

A network of small public high schools in New York City is exploring whether artificial intelligence can change the way teachers receive feedback about their classroom instruction.

Urban Assembly, a network of 21 schools, is working with the American Institutes of Research to develop an AI-powered tool that can help instructional coaches analyze videos of teachers delivering lessons and offer feedback, according to network leaders.

Artificial intelligence is already transforming the classroom experience for many New York City students, who say chatbots like ChatGPT can help them understand difficult topics and speed up their research. But the technology has also sparked fierce pushback from some educators and officials worried about its potential to encourage cheating and spread misinformation and bias.

After initially banning ChatGPT on school devices over concerns about academic dishonesty, New York City’s Education Department pledged to teach students to use the technology responsibly, and plans to open an institute to study its applications in schools.

The use of AI in teacher coaching brings up similar questions. Proponents say it could save lots of time for instructional coaches and expand access to feedback that improves the quality of teaching. But some teachers said they still had questions about how accurately the technology can capture subtle classroom interactions, how useful its data will be, and whether it will be skewed by biases.

Judy Cappuccio, a math teacher and instructional coach at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Downtown Brooklyn, said she’s “open” to the idea of assistance from the AI tool, but has a “healthy amount of skepticism.”

“I would like to see it in action. It would take me some verification at first to trust it,” she said.

Several schools in Urban Assembly’s network are already part of a pilot where educators record themselves teaching and analyze the videos in detail with instructional coaches to improve their practice — a practice Urban Assembly CEO David Adams likened to athletes reviewing game tape.

The problem, Adams said, is that it can take the instructional coaches hours to review a single video, limiting the scale of the program. That means teachers aren’t getting enough feedback, and they’re getting it less often than they should be, he said.

That’s where the new AI-powered tool comes in. At the end of a two-year rollout, project leaders from the American Institutes of Research hope it will be able to measure things like how often students and the teacher are talking, laughing, and yelling, according to a proposal researchers submitted to Urban Assembly.

The tool will initially roll out to the 21 schools in the Urban Assembly network, though Adams hopes to eventually expand its use. It will cost around $500,000 to develop, test, and implement over two years, according to the network.

The tool will also be able to use “natural language processing,” a branch of AI that seeks to understand the meaning of language, to evaluate how “positive,” “respectful,” or “insulting” the teacher’s language is.

Some of the details captured by the AI tool might seem small, but they can offer clues about the climate of a classroom that teachers can learn from, Adams said.

When kids and teachers are laughing together, for example, it can be a sign that they’re “in the same emotional space” and students are better equipped to absorb the lesson, Adams said.

Capturing and documenting those moments on video can help teachers “replicate and grow” them, added Kiri Soares, the principal of Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, one of the schools planning to pilot the new tool.

The tool won’t replace the instructional coaches, but will save them time by pointing them to relevant sections of the video, producing audio transcripts, and quickly gathering data that would take humans hours to compile, Adams said.

Ultimately, the tool could enlarge the program and allow more teachers to benefit, Adams argued.

The tool won’t be used in an evaluative capacity and won’t be tied to performance reviews conducted by the school principal, he added. The program is meant to be supportive and highlight what teachers do well, not just where they need to improve, Adams said.

Project leaders propose using the tool to help schools expand an existing teacher feedback program called CLASS, which taps instructional coaches to evaluate educators on metrics ranging from academic content to their relationships with students, based on video recordings of their classroom lessons.

Using videos rather than live observations can give a more honest glimpse of the classroom, and gives teachers the chance to see themselves in action, proponents said.

Teachers interested in AI proposal but have questions

Liza Backman, a science teacher and instructional coach at Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in downtown Brooklyn, said she could see the benefits of having the type of data the AI tool can quickly gather at her fingertips.

“I think it’s a tally that would be interesting,” she said.

Still, she cautioned, those data points are only useful if there’s an instructional coach to help make sense of what they mean within the context of the class.

“Some of the lessons, there would be no laughter because we were talking about a very serious topic,” she noted.

Backman also raised questions about what kinds of school environments would be featured in the videos used to train the AI, and whether any biases could be baked in as a result.

“If you feed it videos from primarily white schools, versus primarily Black and brown schools, how will it navigate names?” she asked.

Adams said the tool in development for Urban Assembly schools would be trained at other Urban Assembly schools with similar demographics.

There are other potential downsides.

The AI-powered tool may miss out on meaningful moments from a classroom video that don’t fit cleanly into one of the categories it’s meant to track — moments an instructional coach would’ve caught if they’d been watching, said Soares, the principal of Urban Assembly Institute.

But that’s a worthwhile tradeoff if she can expand the number of teachers participating in the program, she said.

“Yes, we might miss out on some of those moments,” she said. “But more people will get more things.”

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

La vida es dura para los estudiantes de intermedia y secundaria que tienen dificultad para leer. Esta escuela pública de Colorado quiere ayudar.

2022-05-26T16:26:08+00:00

Read in English.

Kaylee, estudiante de octavo grado vestida con un hoodie azul claro, le leyó una lista de palabras (una por una) a la maestra Jessica Thurby. Batalló un poco con algunas: Leyó ‘debate’ como “deblate”, sacred como “secret” y defend como “define.”

Ambas repasaron las palabras que Kaylee no leyó bien. Cuando intentó leer la palabra sacred otra vez, Kaylee dijo “Se ve como la palabra scared”.

“Así es,” dijo Thurby. “Por eso el cerebro adivinó automáticamente. Pero estamos tratando de no hacer eso, ¿recuerdas?”

Para los estudiantes que llegan a la escuela intermedia sin contar con buenas destrezas de lectura, estas palabras se convierten en barreras que les impiden entender y dificultan el aprendizaje. Un programa nuevo en la escuela Alameda International Junior/Senior High School de Lakewood está tratando de ayudar.

El programa Bright MINDS, lanzado el otoño pasado, ofrece tutorías intensivas de lectura para ayudar a 14 estudiantes de séptimo y octavo grado que tienen dislexia u otras dificultades para leer. Los líderes escolares tienen planes de agregar un grado cada año hasta que Bright MINDS incluya hasta el 12mo grado, y el objetivo final es que sirva de modelo para otras escuelas en el distrito Jeffco (cuya matrícula es de 78,000 estudiantes) y el resto del estado.

Bright MINDS ha surgido en un momento en que los líderes de educación de están bastante enfocados en mejorar la enseñanza de lectura en la primaria, con iniciativas que incluyen requisitos nuevos de capacitación para los maestros de Kinder hasta tercer grado, y límites más estrictos en el currículo de lectura. Pero aparte de ser un modesto programa de lectura subsidiado, quienes establecen las políticas en el estado le han dado muy poca atención a las decenas de miles de estudiantes de secundaria que tienen problemas para leer.

La especialista en aprendizaje/lectura Jessica Thurby trabaja con un estudiante del programa Bright MINDS. El programa comenzó con 14 estudiantes de séptimo y octavo grado, pero agregará un grado adicional cada año hasta llegar al duodécimo.

Los estudiantes que no saben leer bien enfrentan consecuencias a largo plazo. Están en mayor riesgo de abandonar la escuela, ganar menos ingresos como adultos, y de terminar en el sistema de justicia criminal.

Los líderes del departamento de educación estatal dicen que el rol de ellos es mínimo en cuanto a resolver el problema de estudiantes mayores que no saben leer, ya que no existe ley equivalente a la Ley READ de 2012, que los obliga a ayudar a los estudiantes más pequeños que estén batallando para leer.

“Como no hay una ley similar a la Ley READ, no existe estructura en cuanto a la lectura y escritura en [los grados] cuarto hasta 12”, dijo Floyd Cobb, director ejecutivo de enseñanza y aprendizaje en el Departamento de Educación de Colorado. “Esa responsabilidad recae mayormente en los distritos”.

Los expertos dicen que el panorama de control local de Colorado significa que hay una amplia variedad en los tipos de ayuda adicional provista a los estudiantes de secundaria que no leen bien — si es que hay alguna.

“Siempre somos honestos con las familias sobre el hecho de que, a medida que los estudiantes siguen subiendo de grado, a menudo hay menos recursos para el tipo de intervención recomendada”, dijo Laura Santerre-Lemmon, que dirige la clínica de neurosicología de desarrollo en la Universidad de Denver, un centro que frecuentemente hace evaluaciones de dislexia en niños.

Si bien los líderes educativos de Colorado han trabajado para mejorar la instrucción de lectura en la primaria, han prestado menos atención a los estudiantes de secundaria que tienen dificultades con la lectura.

Enemigo de la seguridad en sí mismos

La dislexia, una discapacidad de aprendizaje que afecta entre un 15% y 20% de la población, tiene la capacidad de ser devastadora para los estudiantes y hacer que las tareas escolares de rutina les causen estrés y vergüenza.

Elise, estudiante de 13 años y participante en el programa Bright MINDS, tartamudeaba al leer en voz alta en la primaria y los otros niños la llamaron estúpida porque leía lentamente y no sabía deletrear bien.

La niña de séptimo grado, que tiene dificultad para escuchar los sonidos de las palabras, recuerda cómo finalmente se memorizó la palabra “people” porque la maestra estaba bastante frustrada con ella.

“Memoricé muchas palabras de esa manera porque temía que ella se enojara conmigo”, dijo.

Aun después de identificar que un estudiante tiene dislexia, los problemas pueden persistir si no reciben el tipo adecuado de ayuda. Brody, otro estudiante de Bright MINDS, fue diagnosticado en quinto grado con dislexia y calificó para recibir servicios de educación especial. Su mamá, Kristina Trudeau, dijo que sin embargo no estaba teniendo progreso en su escuela en el condado de Adams.

Estaba leyendo a nivel de Kinder, y reconocía únicamente palabras básicas como “cat” y “dog”. En un momento, ella descubrió que el programa de lectura que los maestros de Brody estaban usando no era recomendado para estudiantes con dislexia.

Trudeau ha visto el impacto real de las dificultades para leer de Brody. Una noche lo encontró llorando solo en el cuarto de lavandería. Se había propuesto hacerse cena, pero no podía leer las instrucciones en el paquete de pasta china.

“Me rompió el corazón”, dijo Trudeau. “Él piensa de manera diferente. Aprende de manera diferente. Y merece que esas necesidades sean atendidas”.

¿Qué tan grande es el problema?

La escasez de datos hace difícil cuantificar cuántos estudiantes de intermedia y secundaria están teniendo problemas para leer en Colorado.

Más de la mitad de los estudiantes de intermedia en Colorado tuvieron puntuaciones de poco rendimiento en los exámenes de lectura y escritura del estado en 2019, el último año en que los estudiantes de sexto, séptimo y octavo grado tomaron el examen. Es una medida aproximada, sin embargo, en parte porque el estado no separa los resultados de lectura y de escritura.

El alcance de los problemas de lectura es más claro para los estudiantes más pequeños porque la ley de lectura de Colorado de 2012 requiere que las escuelas identifiquen a los estudiantes con problemas significativos de lectura desde Kinder hasta tercer grado y que definan planes para ayudarlos a mejorar. De hecho, el estado ha separado fondos para ayudar a este grupo de estudiantes.

La Asistente del Director de Alameda, Andrea Arguello (a la izquierda), diseñó el programa Bright MINDS junto con el sicólogo de la escuela, Todd Ognibene (a la derecha) y las maestras Jessica Thurby y Sarah Richards.

En contraste, para los estudiantes de cuarto hasta 12mo grado no existe ese requisito — y tampoco los fondos — aunque algunos estudiantes continúan sus planes de la ley READ por más tiempo después del tercer grado. Unos 48,000 estudiantes de Colorado en los grados cuarto hasta 12mo estaban en planes de la ley READ en 2021, lo cual representa un 8% de los estudiantes en esos grados.

Grado	No cumple las expectativas	Cumplio parcialmente	Se acercó a las expectativas	Total que no cumplieron
6	9.8%	18.3%	28.3%	56.4%
7	13.3%	16.9%	23.2%	53.4%
8	15.0%	16.2%	21.9%	53.1%

Porcentaje de estudiantes que no cumplieron expectativas en las pruebas de lectura CMAS

Estos datos vienen de las pruebas CMAS de literatura del 2019. Los estudiantes de secundaria toman las pruebas PSAT o SAT y no están representados.

Grado	Estudiantes
6	14.7%
7	11.7%
8	8.4%
9	6.1%
10	4.2%
11	2.6%

Porcentaje de estudiantes secundarios con plan de la ley READ en 2021

Pero muchos estudiantes con dificultad para leer nunca son identificados para tener un plan de lectura porque sus problemas no son lo suficientemente graves en los primeros grados o porque ellos ocultan sus debilidades con vocabulario avanzado, excelentes destrezas verbales, y otras estrategias de compensación. Esos estudiantes a menudo se las ingenian para seguir subiendo de grado con las calificaciones mínimas aunque no hayan captado gran parte de lo que leían.

Ese fue el caso de Collin, estudiante de séptimo grado y aficionado al lacrosse que vive en el distrito Jeffco y está matriculado en el programa Bright MINDS.

Su mamá, Leslie Dennis, dijo que hasta el segundo grado Collin podía tomar exámenes de lectura usando una herramienta que le leía los pasajes. A su hijo siempre le fue bien en los exámenes, pero en tercer grado tuvo que leer los pasajes por sí solo y sus puntuaciones bajaron drásticamente. Sin embargo, Collin no recibió un Plan de la ley READ; solamente recibió sesiones de ayuda para ayudarle a ser más fluido al leer — es decir, poder leer rápido, sin errores, y con la expresión apropiada.

Las sesiones no fueron suficiente. Collin obtuvo calificaciones promedio en toda la primaria, pero todavía titubeaba al leer algunas palabras, odiaba leer en voz alta, y se llamaba “tonto” a sí mismo.

Dennis sabía que el problema tenía que ser mayor, y dijo “pero no sabía exactamente cuál era”.

Finalmente, en quinto grado y siguiendo el consejo de otra mamá, llevó a su hijo a hacerse una prueba privada y descubrió que tenía dislexia.

Equidad y acceso

El programa Bright MINDS — donde ‘MINDS’ es la sigla de Multisensory Intensive Dyslexia Support — fue una idea de Jason Glass, pasado Superintendente del Distrito Jeffco, nos dijo Todd Ognibene, sicólogo escolar de Alameda y coordinador de Bright MINDS. Cuando Glass dejó de ser superintendente en 2020, otros administradores continuaron el plan.

“Salté de la alegría porque esto era algo que el distrito… finalmente reconoció que se necesitaba”, dijo Ognibene.

Alameda, donde casi tres cuartas partes de los estudiantes califican para comidas con subsidio, fue seleccionada para ser la sede del programa por su ubicación centralizada. Ognibene y Andrea Arguello, Asistente del Director de la escuela, diseñaron Bright MINDS junto con Thurby, maestra de educación especial, y Sarah Richards, maestra de inglés como segundo idioma y cuya hija tiene dislexia.

Para asegurar accesibilidad, no requieren un diagnóstico de dislexia, cuya prueba privada puede costar cientos de dólares. En su lugar, el equipo evalúa a los solicitantes del Distrito Jeffco y otros distritos del área metropolitana de Denver para detectar características asociadas con dislexia u otros problemas de lectura relacionados.

Encontrar un programa de dislexia estructurado dentro de una escuela pública es una agradable sorpresa para muchas familias. Las escuelas privadas que ofrecen servicios similares son bastante caras.

Algunos padres le han dicho a Ognibene, “Esto fue más difícil que encontrar una aguja en un pajar”.

Los estudiantes del programa reciben 80 minutos de lectura diarios. Aproximadamente la mitad recibe la ayuda más intensa, un programa de intervención aprobado por el estado llamado Wilson Reading System. La otra mitad, que cuenta con destrezas de lectura un poco mejores, usan Just Words, otro programa de Wilson.

Bright MINDS está apenas empezando, pero los primeros resultados son prometedores. Desde el otoño hasta el invierno, los estudiantes que participaron mejoraron un 68% más de lo esperado típicamente en lectura.

“Estoy agradecida… Por esto es que yo estaba exactamente peleando”, dijo Trudeau, la mamá de Brody. “No es justo asumir una deuda de $30,000 al año simplemente para que tu hijo reciba la educación correcta”,

Este año, Bright MINDS incluye algunos estudiantes que están en el programa de educación especial, algunos que tienen otros planes de aprendizaje, y otros que no tienen ningún plan. Algunos estudiantes hablan inglés como segundo idioma.

Los estudiantes del programa también reciben ayuda con destrezas como planificación y organización, ya que es común que otros trastornos ocurran junto con la dislexia, como por ejemplo déficit de atención/hiperactividad.

Los estudiantes de Bright MINDS no tienen que faltar a sus clases básicas para asistir a su clase diaria de lectura. En su lugar, simplemente no se matriculan en una de las clases electivas. Además, Thurby o Richards los acompañan en sus clases básicas para asegurar que estén recibiendo la ayuda necesaria para absorber el contenido.

Arguello, que también tiene dislexia, recuerda el impacto que tenía ser sacada de las clases generales en la escuela para recibir ayuda con la lectura.

“Me tomó mucho tiempo ponerme al día”, dijo.

La especialista en lectura Sarah Richards (a la derecha) mide un minuto durante un descanso del programa Bright MINDS. El programa ha tenido resultados prometedores hasta ahora, y los estudiantes han mostrado una mejora 68% mayor desde el otoño al invierno de la que normalmente se anticiparía.

Cambio en la atención

Hay señales de que pronto habrá más ayuda para los estudiantes de los grados mayores.

En 2020, el gobierno federal le otorgó $16 millones en grants a los distritos de Colorado para ser destinados a iniciativas de lectura y escritura que cubran desde la niñez temprana hasta la secundaria. Hasta ahora diez distritos han recibido los grants, y estos incluyen Aurora, Cherry Creek, St. Vrain Valley, Harrison, Lewis-Palmer y Sheridan.

Además, esta primavera se aprobará una ley para requerir que los directores de primaria y los intervencionistas que trabajan con estudiantes de cuarto hasta 12mo grado completen una capacitación en enseñanza de lectura similar a la que ya se les requiere a los maestros de los grados K-3.

Jill Youngren, consultora que está ayudando a los distritos St. Vrain y Sheridan con sus grants, aboga por una estrategia sistémica para ayudar a los estudiantes que están batallando con la lectura — asegurar que los educadores usen las evaluaciones correctas, identifiquen el problema raíz, y sepan cómo impartir enseñanza que resuelva la brecha.

“Si se empieza temprano todo eso se puede evitar, pero no podemos tirar la toalla por un niño que no recibió la instrucción correcta y decir, ah pues, lo sentimos, así es la vida, qué pena”.

Los estudiantes de Bright MINDS y sus padres dicen que este año el programa los ha ayudado con mucho más que lectura, deletreo y redacción. Ha logrado que la experiencia de tener dislexia se siente menos aislante.

“Ha sido excelente”, dijo Elise, “Es como tener un montón de hermanos y más padres que te están cuidando”.

Una encuesta rápida de las metas profesionales entre los estudiantes de Bright MINDS demostró una gran variedad: Astronomía, medicina, guardabosque, ingeniería y jugador de béisbol. Ognibene dijo que la prioridad es empoderar a los estudiantes para que logren sus metas.

“Queremos que se gradúen de Alameda sabiendo que esencialmente no existe opción que no puedan perseguir”, dijo.

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Ann Schimke es reportera senior en Chalkbeat y cubre temas de niñez temprana y de lectura y escritura en la niñez temprana. Comunícate con Ann escribiéndole a aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Las escuelas de Boulder están implantando la co-enseñanza para atender a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés

2023-06-06T16:19:36+00:00

Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación dos veces al mes.

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El año pasado, en la clase de primer grado Susan Tran en el Distrito Escolar de Boulder Valley, ella y otra maestra trabajaron en equipo, ayudando a los estudiantes a enfocarse en el lenguaje de las matemáticas, descifrando problemas matemáticos y usando palabras para comparar, contrastar y describir formas diferentes.

La labor de estas dos maestras es parte de los cambios que el distrito escolar de Boulder está haciendo en la manera en que los estudiantes identificados como aprendices de inglés reciben servicios en las escuelas primarias.

En lugar de sacar a los estudiantes de su salón de clases diariamente por aproximadamente 45 minutos para que aprendan inglés, el distrito está adoptando un modelo de enseñanza conjunta, en el que un maestro especialista visita los salones de clase regulares para ayudar a dirigir una lección para todos los estudiantes junto con el maestro de ese salón.

“Cada vez que ves a un maestro nuevo, aprendes algo nuevo”, dijo Tran. Aproximadamente la mitad de los estudiantes de su clase están aprendiendo inglés.

“Noté que los estudiantes estaban hablando con un vocabulario académico más sólido y con frases más completas”, dijo Rachelle Weigold, una de las maestras de inglés que trabajó con Tran. “Creo que han sido avances realmente fantásticos”.

Es un cambio que algunos padres hispanos habían pedido hace años y que el distrito ya había probado antes, pero sin tener éxito.

En la escuela primaria Alicia Sánchez en Lafayette, donde trabajan Tran y Weigold, casi un 36% de los estudiantes están aprendiendo inglés (en algunos salones, hasta la mitad), o sea, son estudiantes que hablan principalmente otro idioma que no es inglés. Por eso, la escuela ya llevaba tiempo probando la co-enseñanza. Sin embargo, este año hubo un nuevo enfoque en la planificación intencional antes de probar con lecciones enseñadas por dos maestros. La co-enseñanza durante la clase de matemáticas también fue algo nuevo.

Este próximo otoño, otras ocho escuelas se unirán a las cuatro que empezaron a usar el modelo este año. Los planes son que la mayoría de las escuelas primarias de Boulder hagan el cambio en los próximos años. Cada escuela decide qué asignatura combinar con las lecciones de inglés, pero muchas se están enfocando en la clase de matemática.

Según las leyes federales de derechos civiles, los distritos escolares tienen que proporcionarles servicios a los estudiantes identificados como aprendices de inglés para que aprendan el idioma y puedan tener acceso a una educación.

En Boulder, donde alrededor de un 7% de los estudiantes están en el programa para aprender inglés, esos servicios se habían prestado principalmente a través de un modelo en el que los niños salían de su salón para recibir lecciones de inglés con maestros especialistas y luego regresaban a tomar el resto de sus clases.

Es raro que los distritos escolares cambien su forma de ofrecer servicios.

Pero por mucho tiempo, los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en el Distrito Escolar de Boulder Valley han tenido grandes diferencias de puntuación en los exámenes estatales en comparación con los estudiantes cuyo primer idioma es inglés.

Los resultados más recientes de las pruebas estatales mostraron una brecha de 54.7 puntos de porcentaje, una de las diferencias más amplias del estado. En 2022, un 9.1% de los estudiantes que estaban aprendiendo inglés en el distrito de Boulder obtuvieron una puntuación de dominio del idioma o más en los exámenes estatales, en comparación con un 7.9% del mismo grupo de estudiantes que obtuvieron puntuaciones de dominio o más a nivel estatal. Por otro lado, un 63.8% de estudiantes de Boulder cuyo primer idioma es inglés obtuvieron o superaron las puntuaciones esperadas.

Los líderes del distrito han dicho que una de sus metas a largo plazo es mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y cerrar esa brecha. A corto plazo, las metas giran en torno a mejorar la capacidad de los maestros para apoyar a los estudiantes durante todo el día y darles un mejor acceso a su educación.

Una de las metas más importantes “es no separar a los estudiantes de sus compañeros de grado y que no se sientan diferentes”, dijo Kristin Nelson-Stein, directora de educación cultural y lingüísticamente diversa del Distrito Escolar de Boulder Valley.

Los líderes del distrito dijeron que ya habían probado la co-enseñanza, pero que no había funcionado del todo.

“La verdad es que no funcionó”, dijo Meghan MCracken, coordinadora de educación cultural y lingüísticamente diversa del distrito de Boulder Valley. “Realmente no teníamos apoyo al más alto nivel para cambiar el programa”

Randy Barber, portavoz del distrito, dijo que la prioridad ha sido mejorar los sistemas de enseñanza para los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés, pero que toma tiempo escuchar a los padres y conseguir que todos estén de acuerdo en cómo deben cambiar las cosas.

En esta ocasión, parte de lo que ayudó para que todos estuvieran de acuerdo fue visitar el Distrito Escolar de Cherry Creek para observar cómo ellos usan los modelos de co-enseñanza para desarrollar el inglés.

Los padres preocupados fueron una fuerza de impulso

Los padres latinos habían pedido estos cambios hace años. Muchos pensaron que sus recomendaciones habían caído en el olvido.

Ana Lilia Luján fue una de las líderes de padres que hizo esa recomendación. Su hijo, que acaba de graduarse del distrito este año, tuvo problemas con el inglés la mayor parte de su tiempo en la escuela. Cuando empezó la escuela intermedia y todavía no progresaba en su aprendizaje del inglés, Lujan decidió sacarlo del programa.

“Yo tenía mucho miedo de quitarle esas clases, pero dije, no ya eran muchos años”, dijo Luján. “Lo quité y lo pusieron en clases regulares. Eso le ayudó grandemente. Su autoestima cambió. Su inglés mejoró porque estaba escuchando a niños que sabían más”.

Luján, que pasó años tratando de entender cómo se identifican y atienden los estudiantes que necesitan aprender inglés, dijo que ha llegado a creer que los métodos de sacarlos del salón de clases no son eficaces.

“Eso de sacar a los niños no funciona”, dijo Luján. “Llega un punto en que si no te gradúas de los servicios, nunca te vas a igualar con los demás. Y ellos piensan que no son inteligentes. Es como el sistema los está tratando”.

Ella dijo que quiere que los distritos reconozcan que los estudiantes son inteligentes, a pesar de las dificultades que puedan tener en los exámenes estatales.

“No confundamos el no saber un lenguaje con falta de capacidad intelectual”, dijo Luján.

A Luján también le preocupa que no haya suficientes padres que tengan el tiempo que ella tuvo para informarse sobre el complicado sistema o para aprender que otros modelos podrían funcionar mejor. Eso significa que son menos los que pueden abogar por cambios, lo que reduce la presión sobre los distritos para que sean creativos a la hora de buscar soluciones para mejorar el aprendizaje, dijo.

Los investigadores que estudian el desarrollo del idioma inglés dicen que el modelo de separar a los estudiantes tiene ventajas, pero que no suele ser el más eficaz. No obstante, cambiar a la co-enseñanza no es automáticamente mejor, dicen.

“A veces sacar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés del salón hace que los niños se sientan estigmatizados o no tan inteligentes como los demás niños de la clase normal”, dijo Kathy Escamilla, investigadora y antigua directora del BUENO Center for Multicultural Education en el campus de la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder. “Por otro lado, la co-enseñanza podría funcionar bien en matemáticas. Podría ayudar a los niños, pero eso depende de las estrategias usadas”.

Ester J. de Jong, profesora de educación cultural y lingüísticamente diversa en la Universidad de Colorado-Denver, dijo que los modelos de separación de los estudiantes pueden ofrecer entornos de aprendizaje seguros y funcionan mejor cuando ayudan a los estudiantes a aprovechar lo que aprenden en sus salón de clases regulares el resto del día.

Una vez que los estudiantes llegan a cierto punto en su aprendizaje de un idioma nuevo, no hay razón para sacarlos de un salón de clases de inglés sólo para que reciban más enseñanza en inglés, dijo de Jong. “Pero eso no significa que los estudiantes no tengan necesidades que no hay que cubrir”.

Los grupos aislados pueden ser especialmente útiles para estudiantes inmigrantes nuevos, que posiblemente tienen necesidades más específicas.

Los líderes del distrito dijeron que los estudiantes recién llegados todavía pueden ser sacados del salón para recibir apoyo durante los primeros meses en el distrito escolar, hasta que estén listos para recibir ayuda en el salón de clase regular.

Según los investigadores, ambos modelos requieren que los maestros estén bien preparados y tengan tiempo para coordinar.

Los maestros de la primaria Sánchez dicen que el cambio a la co-enseñanza ha sido un trabajo duro, pero que su estructura les ha permitido planificar bien, coordinar bien, y aprender los unos de los otros.

La planificación les ayuda a ajustar las clases para los estudiantes con capacidades diferentes, dijeron los maestros, pero nunca segregan a los estudiantes en el salón de clases simplemente por el hecho de que estén aprendiendo inglés.

Elizabeth Dawson, otra maestra de la primaria Sánchez, dice que los estudiantes pueden tener necesidades diferentes por traumas pasados, niveles de pobreza u otros factores externos.

“Hay muchas razones por las que los estudiantes podrían necesitar apoyo con el idioma”, dijo Dawson.

Luján, la madre del distrito de Boulder, es optimista, pero dijo que seguirá atenta para ver si el cambio contribuye a mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes latinos del distrito.

“Esa va a ser la pregunta”, dijo Luján. “El que estén haciendo este cambio pues ya es ganancia. Pero todavía hay que ver qué resultados da. Ese siempre fue mi punto”.

Yesenia Robles es reportera de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre temas sobre los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Programas bilingües de Denver enfrentan problemas por muy pocos estudiantes y amenaza de cierres

2022-07-12T11:55:00+00:00

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El primer día de la escuela de verano en Denver, seis niños que empezarán el primer grado tomaron un examen de deletreo. Usando lápices con gomas de borrar nuevas, deletrearon palabras como noche, jugo, pequeño y vecino.

“Número tres es la palabra — es un poco larga — ‘pequeño,’” dijo la maestra.

Una niña con espejuelos y un lazo grande color rosa miró el papel que tenía en frente y trató de hacer los sonidos.

“P–p-p-pequeño,” susurró en voz baja mientras escribía una “p” al lado del número 3.

Estos niños de 6 y 7 años están matriculados en el programa de educación bilingüe de las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, y por eso aprenden deletreo, lectura y matemáticas en español. Mientras van adquiriendo más destrezas académicas básicas, también aprenden inglés, y con el tiempo hacen la transición a una enseñanza que se da cada vez menos en español.

Los padres y educadores de Denver lucharon por este tipo de programa bilingüe — conocido como enseñanza de transición en el idioma nativo, o TNLI (transitional native language instruction) — y una orden de un tribunal federal requiere que el distrito lo ofrezca en cada escuela que tenga un mínimo de 60 estudiantes que hablan español y están aprendiendo inglés.

Sin embargo, los programas bilingües de Denver están enfrentando una gran amenaza: cada vez hay más escuelas con muy pocos estudiantes.

Los altos costos de vivienda y reducciones en las tasas de natalidad están reduciendo la matrícula en las escuelas públicas, y en especial en las comunidades históricamente latinas de Denver. Ha sido difícil llenar los salones de clase bilingües en las escuelas primarias, y los métodos alternativos, como combinar dos grados en un salón, no sirven bien los alumnos. El distrito ya había decidido cerrar cuatro programas pequeños TNLI — pronunciado “tin-li” — a principios de este año, pero después cambió de parecer.

El distrito también está considerando cerrar algunas escuelas completamente. Más de la mitad de las escuelas que cumplen los criterios recomendados para un posible cierre tienen programas TNLI. Esas 15 escuelas representan casi una cuarta parte de las 65 escuelas del distrito que tienen salones de clase bilingües.

Consolidar escuelas podría permitir programas más robustos, pero eso conlleva su propio costo.

“Esta escuela es parta de nuestra comunidad,” dijo Yuridia Rebolledo-Durán, madre de dos estudiantes de la Escuela Primaria Colfax, en una manifestación frente a la escuela el pasado mes de abril. “Es muy importante para nosotros como padres que nuestros hijos puedan hablar dos idiomas.”

Padres y maestros pelearon por educación bilingüe

Las investigaciones apoyan generalmente la eficacia de una educación bilingüe. En Denver, los estudiantes que aprenden inglés y adquieren dominio de ese idioma históricamente han tenido buenas puntuaciones en los exámenes estandarizados del estado. Los administradores de alto rango de las escuelas de Denver también apoyan esa idea.

“Nos entristece mucho el hecho de que la reducción en matrícula esté impactando nuestras escuelas bilingües,” dijo Nadia Madan Morrow, antigua maestra bilingüe que dirigió el programa de educación multilingüe del distrito hasta que fue recientemente promovida a Jefe de Asuntos Académicos, (CAO). “Estamos esforzándonos para determinar cómo ofrecer enseñanza en idioma nativo en las escuelas que están continuamente volviéndose más pequeñas.”

Las madres de los estudiantes de la Colfax Elementary School en Denver en la manifestación en abril en contra del cierre de Colfax por las Escuelas Públicas de Denver a causa de la reducción en matrícula.

No obstante, ese no siempre ha sido el caso.

Algunos educadores castigaban a los estudiantes que hablaban español en clase, una práctica que terminó en feroces protestas. En 1980, un grupo local llamado Congress of Hispanic Educators demandó al distrito por violar los derechos de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

La determinación del juez federal en ese caso fue en contra del distrito. En 1984, Denver entabló su primer decreto de consentimiento, un acuerdo legal de brindar educación bilingüe. Ese decreto se ha modificado dos veces.

La versión más reciente, en vigencia desde 2013, dice que el distrito tiene que ofrecer programas TNLI en las escuelas que tengan más de 60 estudiantes de habla hispana que estén aprendiendo inglés, emplear maestros bilingües calificados, y usar currículos y exámenes de alta calidad en español.

“Nuestros padres bilingües quieren que sus hijos sean bilingües,” dijo Kathy Escamilla, miembro del Congress of Hispanic Educators y profesora jubilada de la Universidad de Colorado de bilingüismo y alfabetización bilingüe, lo cual significa poder hablar, leer y escribir en dos idiomas. “Ellos quieren la oportunidad para que su cultura y su historia estén representadas.”

El decreto de consentimiento se aplica únicamente a los estudiantes que hablan español, y que representan la porción más grande de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en Denver. Los demás estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés reciben enseñanza totalmente en inglés, a veces con la ayuda de maestros o tutores que hablan su idioma. El árabe y el vietnamita son el segundo y el tercer idioma nativo más común.

La cantidad de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en Denver ha subido y bajado durante una década, y lo mismo ha ocurrido con la cantidad de estudiantes inscritos en programas TNLI y el número de escuelas que los ofrecen.

En el pasado, el distrito revocaba el programa TNLI de cualquier escuela que tuviera menos de 60 estudiantes de habla hispana que estuvieran aprendiendo inglés, dijo Madan Morrow. Pero cuando el distrito trató de hacer esto el invierno pasado en cuatro escuelas primarias — Colfax, Cheltenham, Traylor y Schmitt — los miembros del Congress of Hispanic Educators pusieron resistencia.

Se acercan posibles cierres de escuelas

Tres de las cuatro escuelas han perdido tantos estudiantes, que están en riesgo de ser cerradas en el futuro cercano. Esto aumentó la preocupación de la comunidad de perder el TNLI.

Hace un año, la junta escolar electa en Denver aprobó una resolución que dice que los padres, maestros y otras personas deben ayudar a desarrollar un plan para consolidar las escuelas pequeñas. Las escuelas de Denver reciben fondos por cada estudiante, y las escuelas pequeñas batallan para poder pagar cosas como clases electivas y personal de salud mental.

El distrito hizo una lista de 19 escuelas que participarían en el proceso. La meta era que las comunidades en esas escuelas sugirieran ideas de cómo consolidar las escuelas.

Pero la lista causó pánico, y el Superintendente Alex Marrero la eliminó.

Cambiando la estrategia, el distrito este año seleccionó un comité asesor de la reducción en matrícula y le asignó definir los criterios para cerrar una escuela con poca matrícula.

El comité reveló los criterios propuestos el mes pasado: Se deben considerar para consolidación las escuelas primarias e intermedias con menos de 215 estudiantes el próximo año, así como las escuelas con menos de 275 estudiantes que anticipen perder entre un 8% y 10% de los estudiantes en los próximos años; de igual manera se deben considerar las escuelas chárter independientes que estén teniendo dificultades financieras.

Veintisiete escuelas operadas por el distrito tuvieron menos de 275 estudiantes este pasado año. Como las 19 escuelas en la lista original, la mayoría de las 27 escuelas atienden a poblaciones estudiantiles con más de 90% estudiantes de minorías raciales, y más de un 90% provenientes de hogares de pocos ingresos.

Quince de las 27 escuelas tienen programas TNLI, incluida la Colfax Elementary, donde los padres y defensores tuvieron en abril una manifestación en contra del cierre de la escuela. Varias madres dijeron que viven cerca y caminan con sus hijos a la escuela porque no pueden manejar.

“Me preocupa, porque ¿cómo voy a llevar a mis hijos a otras escuelas?” Esto nos dijo Cecilia Sánchez Pérez, madre de dos estudiantes de Colfax.

Escamilla, del Congress of Hispanic Educators, también asistió a la manifestación.

La Escuela Primaria Colfax es una de cuatro escuelas de Denver que casi perdió su designación para ofrecer “instrucción transicional en idioma nativo” en este pasado año escolar debido a la reducción en matrícula.

“Entendemos que DPS está enfrentando decisiones difíciles con respecto a presupuesto y a la reducción en matrícula,” dijo. Sin embargo, agregó: “con demasiada frecuencia estos cambios afectan de manera desproporcionada a las comunidades de raza negra, latina y pobres.”

Si el distrito les quita la designación TNLI a la Colfax y las otras tres escuelas, los defensores temen que los estudiantes se van a quedar sin programas bilingües. Aún con autobuses gratis a una escuela TNLI cercana, las familias van a dudar en dejar las escuelas que conocen y aman.

El Congress of Hispanic Educators también cuestiona las proyecciones de matrícula del distrito y le preocupa que los padres no han sido consultados, dijo Escamilla.

Debido a la resistencia de los padres, Denver acordó mantener la designación TNLI en Colfax, Cheltenham, Traylor y Schmitt. Pero Madan Morrow dijo que la reducción en estudiantes de habla hispana significa que los programas podrían no ser tan robustos.

Menos estudiantes significa cambios en el salón de clase

Muchas de las escuelas TNLI de Denver todavía tienen una matrícula saludable. Pero en las escuelas que no tienen suficientes estudiantes que hablan español en cada grado, el TNLI se ve diferente.

A menudo, dijeron los educadores, las escuelas mezclan dos grados en el mismo salón, algo que no es académicamente ideal ni popular con los padres. O las escuelas combinan estudiantes que hablan español nativo con estudiantes que hablan inglés nativo, una asignación difícil hasta para los maestros de más experiencia.

Kim Ursetta, que enseña preescolar bilingüe en la Traylor, tuvo este pasado año una combinación de estudiantes de inglés nativo y de español nativo por segunda vez en sus 28 años de carrera.

“Es difícil,” dijo ella. “Uno está constantemente saltando de un idioma a otro, y no importa lo que hagas, solamente les podrás enseñar la mitad del tiempo que normalmente tendrías.”

Si combinar estudiantes no es posible, a veces las escuelas ponen estudiantes que hablan español en salones que solo enseñan en inglés y envía a otro salón para aprender ciertas materias en español. Eso puede hacer que los estudiantes se sientan marginados o que se pierdan algunas actividades electivas divertidas.

Esto es algo que Carrie Olson, miembro de la junta escolar que fue maestra bilingüe en Denver por 33 años antes de su elección, vio con sus propios ojos. A Olson le preocupa cómo la reducción en matrícula está afectando los programas TNLI y le ha pedido repetidamente a la junta que hablen del tema.

Madan Morrow dijo que los directores y el personal del distrito están trabajando en planes para el próximo año escolar.

“Sabemos que cualquier cantidad de enseñanza en el idioma nativo es mejor que nada,” dijo ella. “Lo que estamos tratando de determinar en estas cuatro escuelas es, ‘¿qué cantidad es perfecta? ¿Cuánto les podemos dar para que sea beneficioso sin que tengan que estar en un sistema así todo el día?’”

Melanie Asmar es reportera senior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, escríbele a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Martha Urioste, la ‘Madrina de Montessori’ en Denver, luchó por la educación bilingüe

2022-12-28T18:24:37+00:00

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Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación.

Cuando Martha Urioste visitaba las escuelas de Denver como defensora de la educación bilingüe, con frecuencia se acercaba a los estudiantes para decirles algo que su abuela le dijo a ella.

“No dejes tu español”.

Sus esfuerzos con el Congreso de Educadores Hispanos de Denver ayudaron a establecer programas bilingües que, con el paso de las décadas, beneficiaron a miles de niños en Denver. Urioste, que fue maestra y luego directora, también trajo la educación Montessori a las escuelas públicas de Denver, empezando en una comunidad en la que la mayoría de los estudiantes eran de familias negras y latinas de pocos ingresos.

Urioste falleció el 8 de diciembre, a la edad de 85 años, y siempre estaba pensando en la educación. Su amiga y colega Kathy Escamilla la visitó en el hospital un par de días antes, y dice que Urioste le pidió que le contara las últimas novedades en las escuelas de Denver.

“Se la pasaba instigando cosas buenas”, dijo Darlene LeDoux, educadora latina desde hace mucho tiempo que ahora trabaja en la oficina del ombudsman de las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, y que conoció a Urioste por décadas. “Siempre estaba asegurando que siempre fuéramos más lejos, hiciéramos más y nos esforzáramos más por los niños.”

Según su obituario y las personas que hablaron en su servicio de recordación esta semana, Urioste nació en Nuevo México y se mudó a Denver cuando era adolescente. Después de graduarse de universidad en 1958, inició una carrera como maestra de primer grado en la Escuela Primaria Gilpin, que ya está cerrada. Urioste fue maestra de primaria y de intermedia, y hasta dio clases de español para el distrito en la televisión pública.

Obtuvo dos maestrías y un doctorado, y con el tiempo llegó a ser directora asistente en la Escuela Secundaria North y luego directora de la Escuela Primeria Mitchel en el noreste de Denver a mediados de la década de 1980. Un tribunal federal ordenó que el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver dejara de segregar sus escuelas, pero la migración de estudiantes blancos a los suburbios y a las escuelas privadas hizo más difícil que la Mitchell y un par de escuelas más pudieran cumplir la cuota de estudiantes blancos ordenada por el tribunal.

En un breve documental producido por la ciudad como parte de la serie “I Am Denver”, Urioste contó: “Nos dijeron, ‘¿Qué van a hacer para asegurar que niños blancos y niños de clase media se suban a un autobús y vayan al noreste de Denver?’”

Urioste eligió la educación Montessori, que en ese momento no estaba disponible en ninguna de las escuelas públicas de Colorado. Fue a Roma a estudiar el currículo, que alienta a los niños a trabajar de manera independiente en tareas prácticas y aprender de los demás en salones de clase con niños de múltiples edades.

En su velorio, su amiga Erlinda Archuleta recordó cómo la maleta de Urioste se abrió cuando salía del vuelo de regreso a Denver.

En vez de recoger su ropa, Urioste le dijo a su hermano (que había ido al aeropuerto a buscarla): “‘¡Encontré la solución! ¡Montessori!’”, contó Archuleta. “Lo menos que le importaba era su ropa.”

La hija mayor de Honey Niehaus estaba en Kinder el primer año que se ofreció Montessori en la Mitchell. El programa era maravilloso, dijo ella. No obstante, Urioste y otros notaron que los estudiantes blancos estaban progresando más rápido que los de minorías, dijo Niehaus — una desigualdad que Urioste quería eliminar estableciendo un programa Montessori para bebés y niños pequeños.

Un edificio abandonado al frente de la escuela Mitchell fue la oportunidad. Niehaus miró adentro un día y le preocupó lo que vio. Dice que corrió a la oficina de Urioste y le preguntó a la directora qué iba a hacer con respecto a las actividades de drogas al otro lado de la calle.

“Ella me miró y dijo, ‘Cariño, ¿qué vas a hacer tú al respecto?’”, nos contó Niehaus. “Dondequiera que iba, conseguía más personas para el sistema. Siempre que conocía gente que auténticamente se preocupaba por los niños y la educación, ella los apoyaba”.

Con ayuda de los líderes de la comunidad, políticos y voluntarios, Urioste y otros compraron el edificio y lo transformaron en Family Star, una escuela Montessori de niñez temprana que abrió sus puertas en 1991. La escuela capacitó a las mujeres de la comunidad para ser las primeras maestras. Más tarde, Niehaus fue la directora ejecutiva.

Más de 30 años después, Family Star tiene dos escuelas en Denver y las Escuelas Públicas de Denver cuentan con cinco escuelas Montessori. A Urioste se le conoce como “La Madrina de Montessori”. El programa original de la escuela Mitchell ahora está en la Denison.

Además de ser la pionera de Montessori, Urioste fue miembro del Congreso de Educadores Hispanos (CHE), que demandó a las Escuelas Públicas de Denver por su tratamiento de los estudiantes que hablan español. La demanda resultó en el decreto modificado actual de consentimiento, que requiere que el distrito proporcione educación bilingüe para los estudiantes cuyo primer idioma es el español.

Urioste fue miembro del CHE por 50 años. Escamilla, que se unió al grupo en la década de 1990, dijo que aparte de por su defensa de la educación bilingüe, Urioste también será recordada por ser mentora de los maestros más jóvenes, a quienes alentaba a obtener diplomas de educación avanzada y ser líderes.

Carrie Olson, miembro del Consejo Escolar, fue contratada por Urioste como maestra bilingüe de primer año en la Mitchell en 1985. Olson recuerda cómo Urioste la encontró llorando un día en su salón de clases.

“Entró, me tomó de las manos y dijo, ‘Carrie, vas a ser una maestra excelente. No te puedes dar por vencida. No puedes dejar de ayudar a estos niños’”, dijo Olson en el evento de recordación.

Otros dijeron que Urioste tenía un excelente sentido del humor. Era bien fanática de los Denver Broncos, le encantaba jugar en las máquinas tragamonedas, y era una “bonafide groupie de Cher” que solía viajar a Las Vegas con su hermano Richard para ver a la cantante en concierto, dijo Archuleta.

Craig Peña, cuyo padre Robert trabajó junto a Urioste en el CHE, dijo que la recordaba como “una mujer increíblemente capaz, increíblemente atenta, sumamente amable y bien cariñosa.

“Pero tampoco era alguien que se dejara manipular”, dijo. “No se puede confundir la amabilidad y gentileza por debilidad”.

Melanie Asmar es reportera sénior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre historias sobre las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, envíale un mensaje a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

4 estudiantes de la Secundaria North dicen por qué Denver necesita más maestros de color

2022-05-23T18:53:47+00:00

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Martin Castañon, estudiante de duodécimo grado de la Secundaria North, creció en una comunidad en la que la mayoría de la gente se veía como él. Pero ahora, dice, los nuevos residentes blancos se muestran irritados con él, cuando ellos fueron los que “se mudaron a mi comunidad y me arrancaron la cultura.”

La decisión de la Secundaria North de no renovarle el contrato a Tim Hernández, maestro de inglés, Literatura Latinx y una clase de Liderazgo Latinx, y que también dirigía un club de estudiantes, todavía se siente como otro golpe para el estudiantado (en su mayoría de origen Latino) de una escuela situada en una de las comunidades más gentrificadas de Denver.

“Es triste. Es deprimente,” dijo Martin. “Fue como cambiar de muchos colores y alegría a un ambiente de depresión y oscuridad. Es terrible que le quiten eso a uno.”

Hernández creció en el Norte de Denver y comenzó a enseñar en la Secundaria North el pasado año escolar. Fue contratado nuevamente este año con un contrato de un año. Cuando solicitó seguir enseñando en North el próximo año, Hernández dijo que no le renovaron el contrato.

En una declaración, el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver no dijo por qué no se le renovó el contrato a Hernández. La declaración decía que el distrito está comprometido con reclutar y retener maestros de color calificados, y que la decisión de a quién contratar está de parte del comité de personal de la escuela (que en la Secundaria North incluye al director, Scott Wolf). Si el comité no puede llegar a un consenso, el director tiene la última palabra de conformidad con el contrato del sindicato de maestros.

Los estudiantes de Hernández dicen que ha sido devastador perder al maestro que les enseñó sobre el movimiento Chicano, sobre estudiantes activistas de Colorado como Los Seis de Boulder, y las marchas en la West High en 1969, cuando los estudiantes de Denver protestaron contra el racismo y la discriminación. Hernández mantuvo un refrigerador que los estudiantes del Club llenaban de despensa para distribuir gratuitamente. Su salón de clases estaba decorado con banderas y un cartel pintado a mano con la frase “casa de la cultura.”

“Sabemos que nuestra cultura no está destacada en ninguna otra de las paredes de nuestro edificio,” dijo Hernández, “pero sí en mi salón de clases.”

El maestro Tim Hernández posa cerca de la Secundaria North a principios de este mes.

Los datos del distrito y el estado muestran que un 75% de los estudiantes de Denver son minorías raciales. Sin embargo, solo un 29% de los maestros son personas de color. Los estudiantes hispanos o latinos representan un 52% del distrito, pero solo un 19% de los maestros de Denver son hispanos o latinos.

“Esto es y siempre ha sido algo más grande que el caso del Sr. Hernández,” dijo Nayeli López, estudiante de noveno grado de la Secundaria North, y que es miembro del club llamado SOMOS MECHA. “La razón por la que hablamos tanto sobre él es que era uno de los pocos maestros de color en la escuela. Retener maestros de color es más que solo ofrecerles empleo, es hacer que la escuela sea un lugar seguro para ellos.”

Durante las últimas semanas, los estudiantes de la Secundaria North han tenido una sentada y dos abandonos del edificio para exigir que la escuela vuelva a contratar a Hernández. El jueves, unos 50 estudiantes y apoyadores marcharon hasta las oficinas centrales del distrito para decir a voces, “¿A quién queremos? ¡Al Sr. Hernández! ¿Dónde? ¡En la Secundaria North!” Aproximadamente 20 personas se apuntaron en una lista para hablar sobre Hernández y la Secundaria North en la reunión de la Junta Escolar el jueves por la noche.

Al terminar la reunión, la junta votó unánimemente que Hernández fuese eliminado de la lista de maestros “sin renovación de contrato.” El superintendente Alex Marrero dijo que aunque eso no significa que Hernández regresará a la Secundaria North, sí significa que “lo apoyaremos en su camino a encontrar otro puesto dentro de DPS el año próximo.”

Chalkbeat habló con cuatro estudiantes — Nayeli, Martin, la estudiante de duodécimo grado Daniela Urbina-Valle y la estudiante de undécimo grado Viridiana Sanchéz — sobre Hernández y la necesidad de que el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver contrate y retenga más maestros de raza negra, indígenas, y de otras minorías raciales (categoría conocida como BIPOC, Black, Indigenous and People of Color). Esto es lo que nos dijeron.

Estudiantes de la Secundaria North protestan frente a las oficinas centrales del Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver el 19 de mayo.

¿Cuál ha sido su experiencia en cuanto a tener maestros BIPOC en la escuela?

Martin: En total he tenido dos maestros de color. … el Sr. Hernández fue uno de los únicos maestros que realmente mostraba orgullo por su raza y cultura. Es lamentable que no podamos aprender sobre nuestra cultura de los maestros. … Contratar maestros de color nos ayudaría mucho. Nunca sabremos quiénes somos en verdad si no aprendemos de dónde venimos.

Viridiana: Finalmente tener un maestro que habla exactamente como tú, que viene de un trasfondo exactamente como el tuyo... fue revelador. Fue algo refrescante.

Nayeli: Yo crecí en una comunidad de personas que fueron parte del movimiento Chicano. Así me crie, pero nunca había escuchado sobre eso en la escuela.

Daniela: Aunque tengamos maestros que se ven como nosotros, la expectativa es que se conformen a un sistema creado por hombres blancos… Muchas veces el hombre blanco piensa que la educación se trata de control, y el Sr. Hernández nos enseñó que eso no es cierto.

¿Qué aprendieron en las clases del Sr. Hernández? ¿Y cómo se sintieron?

Martin: Aprendí quién soy. Aprendí lo que significa ser Chicano. Por ser hijo de padres mexicanos, la palabra Chicano tiene bastante peso. La definición de ellos es completamente diferente a la verdadera. Para ellos, Chicano significa haragán; alguien que vive del sistema. Pero ese no fue el significado original. Chicano se trata del poder latino.

Las primeras semanas del año escolar, [el Sr. Hernández] nos llevó a la reunión de la West [Secundaria]. Y no era solo una reunión, fue una celebración de las protestas de la West. Lo primero que aprendí del Sr. Hernández sobre la raza latina fue eso.

Nayeli: Yo conocí al Sr. Hernández en la actividad de la Secundaria West. Mi papá [Paul López, Denver City Clerk y exmiembro del consejo de la ciudad] es exalumno de la Secundaria West y era uno de los oradores. Yo era la única estudiante pensando, “Uf, soy de la Secundaria North y aquí estoy, en la escuela rival.”

Fue entonces que vi un grupo grande de estudiantes marchando con un letrero que decía “From North to West, Chicano Power.” Entonces pensé, “Oh wow, ¡qué cool!” Nunca había escuchado la frase “Chicano Power” fuera de mi casa.

Daniela: Mi mamá nació en México y mi papá en Nicaragua, así que soy la primera generación nacida aquí. … no era normal que yo dijera que soy Chicana porque para ellos, es un término negativo. … [Hernández] nos enseñó a sentirnos orgullosos mostrándonos la historia. … no se trata únicamente de César Chávez. No se trata solamente de Dolores Huerta. Es mucho más que esas personas.

Viridiana: Yo conocí al Sr. Hernández cuando comenzó el año. … recuerdo que le dije lo mucho que odiaba estar en la clase de Lenguaje AP porque no sentía conexión con el currículo. Todos en la clase eran blancos. Solo éramos tres estudiantes de color, contándome a mí, y me sentía horrible. Me sentía sumamente aislada.

Entonces él me dijo que era el maestro de Literatura Latinx y que la clase era divertida. … tan pronto llegué, me sentí bienvenida, sentí comunidad, y él únicamente quería que uno se mostrara de manera auténtica.

La Secundaria North.

¿Qué les gustaría que los adultos a cargo del Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver sepan?

Nayeli: Queremos que nuestro maestro regrese. ... para nosotros no es un simple maestro. Es alguien que nos hace sentir seguros. … Él, siendo uno de los únicos Chicanos en la Secundaria North, era un excelente sistema de apoyo.

Martin: No solo queremos que nuestro maestro regrese, también queremos más maestros que se vean como él, que representen su cultura. No queremos gente que se vea como nosotros pero que no nos represente.

Daniela: Ser inclusivos y diversos es más que celebrar el Mes de la Historia LGBTQ+ o el Mes de la Historia Negra. … la North piensa que esa es la manera inclusiva de apoyarnos. Pero de ninguna manera lo es.

Martin: Es como que somos una inconveniencia para ellos.

Nayeli: Es como que nos anotan en un cuaderno pero luego nos desechan.

Daniela: Sé de personas que han dicho que les han dicho a los orientadores o maestros de AP que se van a inscribir en clases de estudios étnicos y les han dicho, “Eso no se verá bien en tu transcripción de créditos.” No creo que aprender y actuar de conformidad con quienes somos sea algo que nos haga menos atractivos para las universidades. Los maestros no deberían decirnos eso.

Viridiana: Nos han llamado “problemáticos.” O que los maestros saben cómo manejar a “estudiantes como nosotros” porque han trabajado en otras escuelas donde la mayoría del estudiantado es “como nosotros.”

Martin: Siempre usan frases como “you people” (la gente como ustedes).

Viridiana: Lo hemos reportado, pero no hacen nada.

Nayeli: Los mismos estudiantes que los maestros y muchos administradores tildan de “problemáticos” son los que maestros como el Sr. Hernández ven como chicos que van a lograr algo en la vida.

Melanie Asmar es reportera senior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre historias sobre el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, escríbele a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Pruebas para detectar dislexia: Colorado busca identificar a los estudiantes temprano

2021-04-02T20:35:20+00:00

El distrito escolar de Denver tendrá un programa piloto de pruebas para detectar dislexia este otoño, después de que los padres frustrados las pidieran por años, los grupos de trabajo del distrito las recomendaran, y la pandemia causara un retraso en la educación.

Y el programa piloto de Denver no es el único. El Distrito Escolar Boulder Valley empezó un programa piloto de pruebas de dislexia en 10 escuelas el otoño pasado y ya ha evaluado a 345 estudiantes de Kinder.

También es posible que comience un programa piloto estatal en los próximos meses, pero la escasez de solicitantes significa que su futuro es incierto.

Los funcionarios de educación en Colorado estaban listos para seleccionar cinco escuelas primarias para participar en el programa piloto de un año (con un costo de $92,000) a fines de abril. El viernes, último día para solicitar, solamente cinco escuelas lo habían hecho y los funcionarios de educación están todavía determinando si esas cinco cumplen los requisitos para participar.

Las nuevas iniciativas para detectar dislexia en Denver y Boulder (además del posible programa piloto del estado) han surgido en medio de un empuje nacional para mejorar la lectura, que incluye prestarles más atención a los estudiantes que tienen discapacidades que dificultan la lectura. Los expertos calculan que la dislexia afecta entre un 5% y 15% de la población. En Colorado, eso podría representar más de 100,000 niños en edad escolar.

La dislexia es una discapacidad de aprendizaje que dificulta la lectura. Las personas con dislexia tienen problemas para identificar sonidos, descifrar palabras, y deletrearlas.

“Estos niños no pueden distinguir entre los sonidos ‘eh’ e ‘ih’ de palabras en inglés como como ‘pen’ y ‘pin,’” dijo Robert Frantum-Allen, director de educación especial de las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, y que también sufre de dislexia. “Uno les puede mostrar letras, pero ellos no las entienden porque todas parecen iguales.”

Los tres programas piloto cubren diferentes grados escolares y usan diferentes herramientas de evaluación. Los programas de Denver y Boulder incluyen evaluaciones en español para los estudiantes que estén aprendiendo inglés, mientras que el programa estatal no las tiene.

En Denver, los padres han estado por años pidiéndole dos cosas al distrito: Una mejor manera de evaluar a los estudiantes para detectar dislexia, y el uso de métodos basados en ciencia para enseñar a leer.

En septiembre de 2019, Nicole Wallerstedt le contó a la junta escolar el caso de su hija Finley. El año antes, Finley se había ‘descarrilado por completo’ del tercer grado, dijo su mamá. Tercer grado es cuando muchos estudiantes cambian de ‘aprender a leer’ a ‘leer para aprender’. Finley no pudo hacer la transición y se quedó rezagada.

Fue un año lleno de lágrimas, ansiedad social, citas de terapia, y días de ausencia en la escuela. Wallerstedt dijo que observó cómo su hija, que siempre había sido bulliciosa y amigable, se retraía en su mundo. Finalmente, un diagnóstico de dislexia hizo que pudiera recibir ayuda y acomodos en la escuela, y logró que Finley regresara a ser como siempre, dijo ella.

“Imagínense qué tan diferente fuera si a Finley le hubiesen hecho una prueba de detección al salir de Kinder y [su dislexia] se hubiese identificado temprano,” Wallerstedt dijo. “Ella no se hubiese sentido tan mal. Habríamos tenido un plan. Y no hubiese habido ningún estigma.

“Aparte de que no se habría quedado rezagada en el tercer grado.”

‘No hay mala intención’

A principios de 2019, un grupo de trabajo de Denver formado por padres, educadores y defensores de las personas con discapacidad había recomendado que todos los estudiantes que entraran en el distrito fueran examinados para detectar predictores de futuros problemas de lectura, incluida la dislexia. Y en abril de 2020, un grupo de trabajo del distrito recomendó que se pusieran a prueba dos herramientas particulares de detección.

El grupo sugirió que se examinara a todos los alumnos de Kinder y primer grado de 20 escuelas utilizando una herramienta llamada Shaywitz DyslexiaScreen, que al parecer cuesta $1 por estudiante. Esta herramienta, administrada por un maestro, identifica a los estudiantes como “en riesgo” o “sin riesgo” de dislexia.

El grupo también recomendó que se pruebe un segundo método de detección, más caro, en 10 de las 20 escuelas. La evaluación, conocida como Predictive Assessment of Reading, cuesta $7 por estudiante y se les daría a los estudiantes que tuvieron una puntuación de “riesgo” en la evaluación Shaywitz. La meta sería darles más información a los maestros sobre dónde los estudiantes en riesgo pudieran necesitar ayuda adicional.

Y algo importante es que la Predictive Assessment of Reading está disponible tanto en inglés como en español, según el primer informe del grupo de trabajo. Eso es crítico para las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, que bajo la orden de un tribunal federal tienen que ofrecer materiales de currículo en ambos idiomas.

“Ha llegado el momento de iniciar nuestro programa piloto de detección de la dislexia”, escribió Holly Baker Hill, facilitadora del grupo de trabajo y especialista en educación especial del distrito.

Pero 11 meses más tarde, el programa piloto todavía no ha comenzado. El retraso ha frustrado a los padres y estudiantes.

En una reunión de la junta escolar celebrada el mes pasado, Forest Hansen, estudiante de segundo grado, dijo que había estado vendiendo mascarillas faciales cosidas por su abuela para recaudar dinero a fin de que Denver pudiera iniciar el proyecto piloto. Forest tiene dislexia, algo que no sabía hasta que su familia pagó por unas pruebas privadas. Con la ayuda de un tutor externo, le va bien en la escuela. Forest dijo que quiere que otros niños reciban ayuda también.

“Dr. Hill, yo creo que usted ahora está escuchando,” dijo Forest. “Mi mamá le enviará este cheque.”

El cheque era por la cantidad de $136.

Los funcionarios del distrito dijeron que ellos nunca abandonaron la idea de un programa de detección de dislexia. Frantum-Allen, director de educación especial de Denver, dijo que la pandemia de COVID-19 (que empezó justo antes de que el grupo hiciera sus recomendaciones) puso el proyecto piloto en pausa.

“No hay mala intención y no estamos tratando de ocultar nada,” dijo él. “Estamos tratando de lidiar primero y primordialmente con las prioridades de esta crisis.”

Ahora que los maestros están siendo vacunados y las escuelas han reabierto para el aprendizaje en persona, Frantum-Allen dijo que el distrito tiene planes de reanudar el trabajo relacionado con el programa de dislexia, el cual dijo será parte de un proceso más amplio para identificar a los estudiantes con problemas de lectura.

“Lo veo como una forma de identificar las verdaderas necesidades para poder ayudar a los maestros a satisfacerlas”, dijo Frantum-Allen.

Un examen estatal modesto

En 2019, los defensores de la dislexia impulsaron una ley estatal que autorizara la detección de la dislexia en todo el estado para los niños con problemas de lectura, pero terminaron respaldando una propuesta más modesta para un programa piloto en cinco escuelas. Se supone que comenzara el pasado otoño, pero se pospuso. Este invierno se abrió un nuevo plazo para solicitar, pero con menos solicitudes de las esperadas, el futuro del piloto está en el aire.

Si sigue adelante tal como está previsto, los estudiantes de Kinder a tercer grado de las escuelas participantes serán examinados a partir del otoño.

Un grupo de la Universidad de Oregón dirigirá el proyecto piloto, que además de detectar el riesgo de dislexia en los niños, busca mejorar la calidad de la enseñanza de la lectura y de los programas de intervención mediante un programa desarrollado por la universidad llamado ECRI (Enhanced Core Reading Instruction).

Nancy Nelson, profesora de investigación de la Universidad de Oregón que está ayudando a dirigir el proyecto piloto, dijo que el objetivo es garantizar que los niños reciban el tipo adecuado de enseñanza de lectura: es decir, explícita y sistemática, con ayuda especial para los niños que tienen dificultades para leer y que está alineada con las lecciones de toda la clase. El proyecto piloto incluirá mucha capacitación para el personal de las escuelas, y posiblemente comience a finales de esta primavera.

“Pasar por una prueba de detección no significa que un niño va a ser asignado a educación especial,” Nelson dijo.

De todos modos, el formato del programa piloto tiene la intención de darles a los niños un acceso mucho más temprano a ayudas especializadas en vez de esperar hasta que se hayan rezagado demasiado, dijo ella.

El piloto incluye un sistema de detección de dos pasos, donde el primero se basa en la prueba de lectura Acadience, que ya está siendo usada en muchas escuelas de Colorado para cumplir con la ley estatal sobre la lectura, la Ley READ.

Los estudiantes identificados por la prueba Acadience recibirían 30 minutos diarios adicionales de instrucción sobre habilidades básicas de lectura, con lecciones que anticipen lo que se cubrirá al día siguiente durante las lecciones de toda la clase. Los líderes del proyecto calculan que un 20 a 25% de los estudiantes estarán en este grupo, pero la proporción podría ser más alta en algunas escuelas.

Después de dos meses, los estudiantes que no progresen con las clases adicionales pasarían por una segunda evaluación, esta vez con información proveniente de varios exámenes y fuentes, e incluyendo el historial familiar de dificultad para leer. El personal de la escuela entonces intensificaría la instrucción para los estudiantes identificados.

Los que todavía no mejoren probablemente calificarán para servicios de educación especial, estando en una categoría general (conforme a una ley federal) conocida como ‘discapacidad específica de aprendizaje’, y que incluye la dislexia. (Las escuelas no diagnostican la dislexia, y no se necesita un diagnóstico oficial para que los estudiantes entren en la categoría de discapacidad de aprendizaje específica.)

Nelson dijo que entre un 5% y 10% del total de estudiantes en los grados K-3 de la escuela podrían terminar calificando para educación especial.

El programa piloto del estado solamente incluirá exámenes de lectura en inglés. Nelson dijo que los protocolos del programa piloto requerirán modificarse para funcionar en español u otros idiomas, y que aunque eso es un paso importante, su equipo de trabajo quiere primero demostrar los resultados posibles para los estudiantes que reciban la instrucción en inglés.

Todos los niños del Kinder - eventualmente

El distrito Boulder Valley comenzó su programa de detección de dislexia el otoño pasado, evaluando a 345 estudiantes de Kinder en 10 escuelas, entre ellas una escuela chárter. Los funcionarios del distrito volverán a examinar una muestra aleatoria de esos niños esta primavera para determinar si el momento del examen durante el año produce alguna diferencia. Hasta entonces, el distrito no dará a conocer el número de estudiantes que resultaron tener características de “alto riesgo” de dislexia en el examen.

“Todavía estamos definiendo la validez”, dijo Michelle Qazi, directora de lectura de Boulder Valley, señalando que a los padres no se les notificó el pasado otoño si sus hijos estaban en la categoría de alto riesgo, pero se les notificará al final de este año escolar.

Para la mayoría de los estudiantes, el programa piloto de Boulder utiliza una evaluación gratuita llamada Mississippi Dyslexia Screener. Los niños cuyo primer idioma es español son evaluados con la versión en español de un examen de lectura común combinado con un examen de ortografía de otra evaluación.

Qazi dijo que los estudiantes que obtengan una puntuación de alto riesgo en el examen de dislexia no necesitarán automáticamente servicios de educación especial. El distrito ya usa un programa de fonética de alta calidad — llamado Fundations — para todos los estudiantes de primaria, dijo. Saber qué estudiantes de Kinder tienen rasgos de dislexia a través del proceso de detección ayudará a los maestros a darles una ayuda más intensiva a los que la necesiten, dijo.

“Este es un dato más que puede ayudarnos a reducir el número de niños que se quedan rezagados”, dijo Qazi.

El proyecto piloto de Boulder, de tres años de duración, se ampliará a 22 escuelas el próximo año y al resto de las 37 escuelas de primaria y K-8 del distrito el año siguiente. Qazi dijo que el otoño pasado el distrito capacitó al personal que normalmente administra los exámenes de visión y audición para realizar los exámenes de dislexia. Algunas pruebas de detección se hicieron en persona y otras en línea. El distrito cuenta con un presupuesto de $102,000 para el programa piloto.

Traducción por Milly Suazo.

Perry school opens a sensory room with space for students to wind down — or amp up

2023-12-13T12:00:00+00:00

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The first thing a student might notice in Burkhart Elementary School’s new sensory room is the light tube. Or maybe the slide. Or the trampoline and crash mat.

There are magnetic tiles on a wall to the right and scooter boards all over the floor.

The room invites play, but it also serves a purpose: To help students calm down — or wake up — and get ready to learn.

“It’s such a cool opportunity, because there’s not a child in the school who couldn’t benefit from it,” said Brooke McDonald, the school’s occupational therapist who supervises the room.

The sensory room at Burkhart opened last week thanks to a $9,000 grant from the Perry Education Foundation. It’s a first for the school and only the second such space in Perry Township elementary schools, said the foundation’s president, Mary Blake.

In addition to funding the project, foundation representatives assembled the furnishings, painted the room teal blue, and dimmed the overhead lights with fabric hangings.

The sensory room at Burkhart Elementary is open to all students who need it for a few minutes at a time.

It’s open to all students who need it for a few minutes at a time, said McDonald, who also trains classroom teachers to determine which students might benefit from a break in the room. Only a few students at a time will use the room.

It will also serve as an important space for students in the Comprehensive Intervention Program, the self-contained special education program. Two of these classrooms opened at Burkhart this year after Perry redrew its attendance boundaries.

What each student needs from the sensory room will vary.

CIP teacher Ailis McCarthy said her students who get overwhelmed with noise and activity benefit from spending a few quiet minutes in the room in the dim light or watching the bubble tower. After that, they’re able to rejoin the group for their regular activities, she said.

Before the sensory room opened, McCarthy’s students would try to take these breaks in her classroom — which can be distracting to others, she said.

“We make sure they have regular time in their schedule to decompress or bring them up, depending on what they need, and that room has enough activity that they could do both,” McCarthy said.

The sensory room will serve as an important space for students in the Comprehensive Intervention Program, the self-contained special education program.

McDonald said some students may use it as a space to calm down at the end of the day, do movement exercises, and watch the bubbles in the light tube. Others may jump on the trampoline or rock on the soft foam spinners to burn some energy and regulate their emotional state ahead of a lesson.

“All of that is good for your body, and they have no idea,” McDonald said. “They just think, ‘I’m playing on the slide.’”

The district hopes to open sensory rooms at each of its elementary schools, said Vickie Carpenter, assistant superintendent for foundational learning.

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

Middle school is rough. Here’s how Colorado’s Teacher of the Year helps students find their voices.

2023-12-12T00:20:00+00:00

When Jessica May was 11, her family fostered a baby who’d been severely neglected and didn’t make a sound.

But May’s mother had a plan to get Baby Isabella cooing, babbling, and laughing just like a typical 1-year-old. The whole family lavished her with attention, and eventually, the little girl caught up on every milestone.

May, who is now a family and consumer sciences teacher at Turner Middle School in Berthoud, Colorado, said her experience with Isabella encapsulates what she loves about her job. These days, she helps students find their voices as they traverse the rocky road from childhood to adolescence.

All her students are her own “Baby Isabellas,” said May, who teaches lessons on everything from child development to making a budget and doing laundry.

May, who was recently named Colorado’s 2024 Teacher of the Year, talked with Chalkbeat about growing up with nearly 200 foster siblings, how she helped students cope with a classmate’s death, and what she leads with when she speaks with parents.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Was there a moment when you decided to become a teacher?

No. I grew up wanting to hang out with all my teachers. I also gave assignments to my dolls and stuffed animals and graded them while they were at recess. The profession simply chose me at a young age.

A portrait of Jessica May, Colorado's 2024 Teacher of the Year.

How did your own school experience influence your approach to teaching?

I always loved school and had an innate longing to know my teachers on a personal level by keeping in touch with them. Growing up, I consistently asked them questions about teaching, searching for advice in order to figure out who I wanted to be as a teacher.

In fact, I still communicate with many of them. My first grade teacher just sent me a congratulations card the other day for my Teacher of the Year award. During my first year of teaching, I was paired with my former junior high school teacher, and now we are best friends!

You’ve mentioned that you like to tell students stories to connect lessons with the real world. Can you give an example?

My mom was a lifelong foster parent, starting when I was 3 years old. By the time I graduated from the University of Northern Colorado, I had 189 foster brothers and sisters. In that time, I learned a lot from my mom about kids with trauma. One of the stories I tell my students is the story about Baby Isabella.

When I was 11 years old, my mom told me we were getting a 12-month-old baby girl, but that she was the size of a 6-month-old. She explained that Isabella had learned early that when she cried, no one would respond or come to her aid — not to change her diaper, not to feed her, not to hold her. Because of this, she learned to stop crying. Therefore, she didn’t coo or babble, she couldn’t lift up her head, she couldn’t roll over, and she definitely didn’t crawl or walk.

Our job, my mom told me and my older sister, was to teach her how to cry again. The plan was to continually hold Isabella during the day and so my mom, sister, and I traded off while we went about our daily lives at home. My mom reminded us to talk to her in “motherese,” make eye contact when we spoke to her, kiss her cheeks, and sing to her. We did this for two weeks straight.

Then my mom told us “Step 2.” Every time we put Isabella down and she made any type of noise, we were to pick her up. We did this over and over until she finally realized that every time she made a peep, someone would interact with her. She started to coo and babble, she started to gain weight, she could lift up her head, and roll, and army crawl; she’d giggle and smile and squeal. By the time she was adopted at 18 months, Isabella had caught up to all the milestones of the average 18-month-old.

I explain the connection of this story to my students because they are stuck between being a little elementary kid and a young adult in high school. People, including their families, think they don’t want hugs anymore, that they don’t want to talk or play family board games, and that they want to be left alone. But that’s not accurate. They want to feel seen, heard, and talked to about life.

The reason I was meant to teach middle school and why I love it so much is because I can teach them how to “cry” again — to find their own voice, and tell others what they want and need.

Tell us about a favorite lesson to teach. Where did the idea come from?

A few years back, I had a seventh grade student with whom I had a close relationship. I dedicated several hours each week to helping him access content and overcome challenges he faced at home and in his social interactions at school. He tragically took his own life during the school year.

The loss of the student weighed heavily on my heart as he was the first current student I had ever lost. I knew I had to take immediate action for my students. I contacted the district’s restorative justice representative and requested she co-facilitate Peace Circles for each of my classes the following day. The students desperately needed an outlet to express their emotions and engage in the grieving process with their peers.

These circles evolved into experiences that profoundly impacted everyone present. They fostered a sense of safety, belonging, healthy emotional expression, and a sense of community. My hope was to make sure my students felt love, acceptance, and peace that day ... and hopefully for a lifetime.

Tell us about a memorable time — good or bad — when contact with a student’s family changed your perspective or approach.

I think all teachers are nervous about making phone calls home because it can go either way for us. However, I have learned when calling a parent about an issue to always start with why I enjoy their child or what strength they possess. When I start this way, the parent or guardian understands that I’m not out to get their child and I have their best interests at heart. We then have a really wonderful conversation about how I can support their student so they can become their best selves. I’m no longer a nervous wreck when calling home.

What are you reading for enjoyment?

I’m reading “Screwtape Letters” by C.S. Lewis. I’ve read this novel many times, but it continues to blow my mind. He wrote this fictional story in 1942, yet so many of the situations that Screwtape — a demon who is mentoring his nephew — talks about are actually occuring today. It’s also a good reminder to be mindful about my habits, thoughts, and actions on a daily basis.

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

NYC’s class size working group delivers recommendations — but some members dissent

2023-12-12T00:54:10+00:00

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After months of deliberation, internal clashes, and comments from nearly 2,000 people, a working group tasked with advising New York City’s public schools on complying with a landmark state law capping class sizes released its final recommendations Monday.

The 55-page report, which had an initial Oct. 31 deadline, includes more than 50 recommendations. Its prominent suggestions include capping enrollment at some overcrowded schools, moving pre-K programs out of district buildings and into community organizations, and offering financial incentives to boost teacher hiring.

The report, which is similar to a draft version released in September, is non-binding. Education Department officials still have final say in how they’ll meet the new legal mandates, which are expected to be phased in over the next five years. But the contentious process of putting the recommendations together illustrates how complicated meeting the new mandates will be.

The caps require K-3 classes to be no larger than 20 students, classes in grades 4-8 to be smaller than 23 students, and high school classes to be capped at 25 students.

Proponents of the law, including a wide array of parents, advocates, legislators, and educators, point to extensive research on the educational benefits of lower class sizes — and argue that the new recommendations give the city a clear roadmap for how to get there.

“Given these actionable proposals — many of them cost-free — the Chancellor no longer has any excuse for delay,” said Leonie Haimson, working group member and executive director of Class Size Matters, in an email. “If the DOE really cares about following the law and the goal of providing all NYC students with a better opportunity to learn, the time for action is now.”

But the law has also prompted fierce pushback from city Education Department leaders, who argue they don’t have the necessary funding to implement it. Parents concerned the law could restrict enrollment at sought-after schools and advocates worried about equity implications have also criticized the law.

Several studies suggest that the highest-poverty schools will benefit less because they are already more likely to have classes under the legal cap.

The working group’s deliberations got so contentious that nine of the working group’s 46 members declined to endorse the final recommendations — and several even authored a dissenting “minority report.” Those dissenters argue that the law itself is deeply flawed.

Dia Bryant, the former executive director of Education Trust-New York and one of the dissenters, said the law and the working group ignored practical concerns and are “very aspirational.”

“Ultimately, I think the implementation under the current conditions … is just bad for kids,” Bryant said.

In response to the report, schools Chancellor David Banks noted the city is currently in compliance with the class size law, but that “the work to remain in compliance will take changes, tradeoffs and additional resources across NYCPS.”

Currently, more than half of the classes across the city’s 1,600 public schools, or more than 73,000 classes, are out of compliance, the working group has said.

Here are some of the working group’s most controversial recommendations.

Cap enrollment at overcrowded NYC schools

Capping enrollment at oversubscribed schools and diverting kids to under-enrolled ones nearby was among the most divisive suggestions.

There are 386 schools across the city currently enrolled above their building’s capacity, the report noted, and in many cases, there are neighboring schools with plenty of room.

But many of the city’s overcrowded schools are also among its most popular and sought-after, meaning any efforts to cap their enrollment are likely to meet fierce opposition.

One way to decide who should get access to limited seats is by prioritizing those who live within a school’s geographic zone, the working group noted. Roughly 17,000 kids at overcrowded schools are attending those schools from out-of-zone, according to the report.

But the authors cautioned that decisions about if and how to cap enrollment should still be made “in harmony with the principles of equity and community cohesion.” For example, they pointed out that some out-of-zone students attend specialized programs like dual-language classes.

Meanwhile, the dissenting minority report argues that enrollment caps are a nonstarter because they would lead to increased travel times for families in overcrowded districts and fewer seats in popular programs.

Instead, the working group’s dissenters want to give parents a role in deciding when schools should be exempt from the law, according to Stephen Stowe, a working group member and co-author of the minority report who is also Community Education Council President in Brooklyn’s District 20. (Currently, under the law, only the chancellor and union officials can weigh in on exemptions).

Moving prekindergarten classrooms out of overcrowded schools

As the city works to fill empty 3-K and pre-K seats amid enrollment declines, the working group’s enrollment committee offered a possible solution: consider relocating 3-K and pre-K seats from schools that are overcapacity to nearby pre-K centers that are under-enrolled.

This could help struggling programs — which get funding from the city based on their enrollment — have “more sustainable budgets,” according to the working group report. The pre-K sector has long complained about the competition it faces from programs in district schools.

With nearly 14,000 empty 3-K classrooms, all 3-year-olds in school-based programs could move to community-based organizations, the report suggested, freeing up as many as 451 classrooms in schools. For pre-K, which serves the city’s 4-year-olds, nearly 17,000 empty seats could accommodate the majority of those in school-based programs, potentially opening up 1,000 elementary school classrooms.

The report did say that some members of the working group worried this solution might inconvenience parents, especially those with older children in public schools. In response, the group urged programs to have flexible drop-off and pick-up times, as well as longer days for families needing after-care.

Merge co-located schools, avoid opening new schools

The creation of small schools gained traction under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with nearly 470 new schools opening between 2003 and 2010. That has resulted in more administrative overhead and less classroom space, the report stated.

In light of that, the working group suggested merging schools that share buildings, “especially those that have similar or complementary designs, programs, and student populations.”

The working group also advised the city to reconsider the creation of new schools (except for schools in District 75 that serve students with significant disabilities).

“If there is a perceived need or idea for a valuable new program or service, existing underutilized schools should be given the resources and support to provide these new programs or services,” the report stated.

Pay teachers more in schools where hiring is hard

New York City will need to hire at least 17,000 new teachers to meet the class size mandate over the next several years, according to the Independent Budget Office. The Education Department put the figure at somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000.

Some working group members worried that a wave of new teachers could affect the quality of instruction — an issue that researchers have raised — and could dilute the intended impact of smaller classes.

At the same time, in public forums on the law, many teachers spoke out in favor of smaller classes. Some of them said it could improve their working conditions, reduce burnout, and cut down on attrition.

To address concerns around the influx of new teachers, the working group issued various recommendations, including providing teachers with “high-quality, research-based lesson plans” to reduce workload.

The group also wants to analyze whether teachers in non-teaching roles — such as deans, lunchroom supervisors, or grade advisers — could return to the classroom, giving greater oversight to superintendents of these so-called compensatory positions.

The report said such a change “would be a historical shift away from greater principal autonomy and defer control to a more centralized system.”

(Only one member of the working group dissented from this, the report noted.)

The working groups also wants to offer pay differentials to educators in hard-to-staff schools in places like the Bronx, Far Rockaway, and Central Brooklyn, as well as in difficult-to-hire subjects, including special education and bilingual education.

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

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

David Banks has a top priority: improving literacy. Will his agenda be overshadowed by budget cuts?

2023-12-08T10:00:00+00:00

Before running the nation’s largest education system, David Banks had never been responsible for supervising more than a single school.

He had years of on-the-ground experience and often ticks off the jobs he held — safety agent, teacher, principal. He helped launch the Eagle Academy, a network of six district schools devoted to boys of color, ultimately running the foundation that supports them. When Eric Adams, a longtime friend, tapped Banks to be his schools chief, the incoming mayor said he didn’t seriously consider anyone else.

Adams, who often spoke on the campaign trail about his own experience with dyslexia, never staked out a detailed education agenda. At the event formally naming him chancellor, Banks spoke in broad strokes about a “fundamentally flawed” system and a sprawling bureaucracy that isn’t set up to serve vulnerable children. The question remained: What direction would this chancellor take the city’s roughly 1,600 schools?

In contrast with his early comments about transforming a broken system, Banks has narrowed his focus. He’s staked out a goal above all others: improving the city’s dismal literacy rates, particularly for Black and Latino children. He also wants to create a stronger path to the workforce by expanding students’ access to career-focused coursework and paid internships.

To Banks’ supporters, focusing on a couple key issues is more likely to yield results. Still, others say that the administration has struggled to define a clear vision for improving the system as a whole, as many schools aren’t part of his signature initiatives.

Meanwhile, a looming set of budget cuts threaten to overshadow Banks’ agenda, as more than $7 billion in one-time federal relief money is drying up and Adams has ordered up to $2 billion in cuts on top of that.

Banks may have to maneuver to maintain funding for his top priorities. And he’ll have to navigate steady drum beats from politicians and advocates who are pushing to save a range of programs that serve high-need children.

“They are going to need to make tough decisions,” said Mark Dunetz, president of New Visions for Public Schools, an organization that supports a network of city schools. The challenge, he added, will be to make those choices “based on evidence of effectiveness rather than the push and pull of politics.”

A ‘realist’ at the helm?

Two weeks into the school year, Banks took the stage at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, the mammoth auditorium packed with hundreds of department staff, union leaders, parents, and elected officials. With a slideshow at his back, and the mayor looking on, Banks was selling his vision — and in his element.

The “State of Our Schools” speech laid out his case for requiring all elementary schools to use one of three approved reading curriculums by next fall, ticking off statistics that show half the city’s students aren’t proficient in reading, figures that rise to about 60% for Black and Latino children.

“I’m really staking my reputation on reading,” Banks told Chalkbeat in a recent interview. “If you don’t get that right all these other things don’t really matter.”

Banks touted his other signature initiative, FutureReadyNYC, which helps 100 high schools offer more early college credit and paid work opportunities in education, technology, business, or health care. The effort will expand to 50 more schools next year, he said.

To Banks, zeroing in on those two issues is essential to make his mark. Given the system’s size and complexity, “if you don’t focus the entire operation on a couple of areas, it will be just rhetoric,” he told Chalkbeat.

Some observers agree the moment demands a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer, especially as schools are still digging out from under the pandemic and grappling with learning loss, mental health challenges, and alarming rates of chronic absenteeism.

When Banks took office, some educators wondered if he would pursue changes in the mold of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s divisive schools chief, Joel Klein. Klein sought to overhaul the district’s structure and moved to shutter large high schools and replace them with smaller ones like Eagle Academy. Banks tapped Dan Weisberg, Bloomberg’s school labor strategist who often sparred with the teachers union, to be his top deputy.

But observers said Banks has charted a less disruptive path, bringing the teachers union on board with his two biggest initiatives.

“Joel Klein said ‘I’m going to break the system so hard nobody is going to put it back together,’” said David Adams, the CEO of Urban Assembly, a network of about two dozen schools across the city. “I think being really strategic around where your energies are going to be put forth can be a more effective way of changing the system.”

Still, others said it’s difficult to discern Banks’ broader plan to improve schools across the system, a tension with Banks’ initial diagnosis that the system is “broken.”

This administration’s approach is “pretty small bore,” said Clara Hemphill, founder of the school review website InsideSchools. At this point in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure, he had already added tens of thousands of pre-K seats, part of what is widely seen as a successful universal prekindergarten program.

“Having 70,000 pre-K seats was a huge, huge accomplishment. I don’t see a big issue like that with Adams,” Hemphill said. The current administration also seemed to be reversing course in some areas, she added, including abandoning de Blasio’s goal of expanding the program to include all 3-year-olds.

Hemphill acknowledged that improving literacy rates would be a major accomplishment, but she worries the most popular curriculum the city has mandated is not the strongest choice. Plus, the city disbanded an existing literacy coaching program in favor of training from outside vendors and scrapped a program that focused on improving literacy in middle schools, a move Hemphill found baffling.

For their part, school leaders have had mixed reactions to Banks’ tenure so far. Some expected the schools chief, a New York City principal himself for 11 years, to give them more freedom to innovate — something Banks signaled was a possibility.

De Blasio favored top-down supervision of principals, and many school leaders complained of burdensome compliance mandates. Banks has taken a step further, giving superintendents the authority to mandate which curriculums schools can use based on a list of approved options.

“The system is still running the way it was under the last administration which is: Schools are problems to be fixed rather than systems to be supported,” said one Brooklyn high school principal who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s just a whole lot more people out there trying to micromanage schools from afar.”

Banks said he believed strongly in principal autonomy when he was a school leader. “I also am a realist,” he said, adding that not every principal thrives with more freedom.

“If they were, we would have much better results than we have,” he recently told reporters.

Banks strikes a middle ground

Beyond his two main initiatives, critics and supporters alike say Banks has earned a reputation for hearing out opposing viewpoints and finding ways to compromise.

“If the evidence is there, he moves. He’s not ideological,” said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, a strong supporter of Banks’ reading curriculum overhaul.

When Banks took office, he faced a key decision about whether many middle and high schools could resume screening students for top grades and test scores after pandemic-related disruptions to the admissions process.

The debate over how to proceed was charged, with some parents arguing that strong students should have access to accelerated learning opportunities at top schools. Others worried a return to the pre-pandemic norm would exacerbate segregation and contended that public schools should be open to all children.

Though Banks has bluntly suggested some students deserve to be in top schools more than others, he struck a middle path: Selective admissions would continue with key caveats. High schools may no longer consider state test scores, though they can still use students’ grades. For middle schools, he gave local superintendents the authority to determine how to use selective admissions. The result: far fewer screened middle school programs.

Jasmine Gripper, a frequent critic of the administration, said the approach is emblematic of Banks’ leadership style.

“The finesse of this administration has been their ability to take on hot button issues and produce a solution that neutralizes the opposition,” said Gripper, previously the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education and now a leader of the state’s Working Families Party. Banks “leaves everyone walking away feeling like they won something.”

Financial challenges could derail Banks’ plans

The biggest obstacle on Banks’ plate right now may be one that’s much harder to control.

A brewing storm of fiscal problems could derail some of Banks’ existing initiatives, threaten to consume his agenda with painful fights over budget reductions, and make it difficult to find money for new programs.

More than $7 billion in one-time federal money is running dry. Starting with the previous administration, some of it has been used on recurring costs, including social workers, expanded summer programming, and new seats for preschool students with disabilities who had been shut out of universal pre-K. The funding has also been used to keep school budgets steady despite significant enrollment declines, raising the possibility of painful cuts at individual schools.

As the federal funds evaporate, Adams has also ordered the city to cut 5% of its contribution to all city agencies, a move he said is needed in part to finance services for thousands of asylum-seeking families. The Education Department recently outlined plans to reduce spending by $547 million, and it may need to slash roughly $1.5 billion more if Adams follows through on future rounds of cuts.

Advocates have warned that it will be impossible to make cuts of that size without affecting key programs, and the first round of cuts has already prompted political pushback.

A new state law mandating the city reduce class sizes looms over these fiscal pressures: The Education Department will need to spend billions more in the coming years to comply, city and fiscal watchdogs project.

On top of that, Banks may have another fight on the horizon. As enrollment declines accelerated during the pandemic, the city now has nearly 200 schools with 200 children or fewer.

Banks has suggested that mergers or closures could be on the table, a process that often generates outcry from parents and elected officials with deep roots in school communities.

“That’s kind of a ticking time bomb,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “It’s just not going to be sustainable to maintain very small schools.”

Banks has offered few hints about how he plans to navigate the growing budget pressures, including what criteria he’s using to determine which programs survive. He said he’s “fighting like heck” to preserve funding for the literacy overhaul and career pathways initiative. Everything else is on the table.

“It’s gonna be a tough negotiating season,” Banks said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Sustainability, arts, math: ‘Themed’ middle schools are spreading, but do they help students?

2023-12-04T10:00:00+00:00

This story about themed schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

On a sunny Friday in early November, four 10- and 11-year-old boys stand on the corner of 26th Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn, holding homemade clipboards and signs that read “Take our food equity survey.”

A young man rushes past the group, headphones on, eyes on his phone. Susan Tenner, executive director of the Brooklyn Urban Garden Charter School, or BUGS, where the boys are sixth graders, suggests they let him pass. The next passerby is a runner — even more unpromising.

When a guy in his 20s or 30s in a puffer coat with fur trim comes along a half a minute later, Elias, a 10-year-old, remarks that he looks busy too. But Tenner urges the students to pounce.

“Everyone in New York City looks busy,” she tells them. “You guys are cute; people are going to want to help you.”

And the man does. After the boys call out as he passes, the man doubles back to take the student-made survey. Their first success.

Over the next half hour, the boys and a group of girls positioned a block up will interview a postman, a construction worker, a pair of teenage girls in fleece Snoopy pants, and several others about their access to healthy, affordable food.

BUGS, one of hundreds of “themed” middle schools spread across New York City and the nation, fully embodies the “green” school concept. There are gardens out front and hydroponic produce growing inside, an indoor tank for raising trout and recycled furniture in the classrooms. Students take a weekly sustainability class and participate in monthly field study days that send them into the community to conduct research on topics like land use, pollution and food equity.

Adopting a theme like sustainability, the arts, or math and science can cement a middle school’s culture, give coherence to its curricula, and boost student engagement at a time when many students are losing interest in school. Done well, proponents say, a theme can help students connect what they’re learning in the classroom to some larger purpose or vision of their future.

But not all themed schools are as distinctive as BUGS, and some aren’t all that different from mainstream middles. It can be hard to tell, based on a name alone, whether a self-proclaimed “green” school offers a fully integrated sustainability curriculum, or is simply located in a net zero building.

Attending a themed school offers no guarantee of success in the focus subject, either. At some STEM-themed schools in New York City, students score below the citywide average on the state standardized math test.

Meanwhile, some high-performing themed schools remain out of reach to many low-income students, due to screenings — such as tests or auditions — that favor families who can afford private lessons and tutors.

This variation in scope, access and outcomes means that students and parents need to do their research before choosing a school with a catchy name, said Joyce Szuflita, a longtime school consultant to Brooklyn families. “Buyer beware,” she advised. “Sometimes there will be a name on a school that has nothing to do with what’s happening in the building. It’s more like branding.”

There’s no national count of the number of themed middle schools, which are less common than themed high schools. But they’re cropping up across the country, particularly in places where families aren’t limited to their neighborhood school zone, according to Andrew Maxey, a member of the board of trustees of the Association for Middle Level Education, or AMLE, an organization that supports middle school educators.

In cities like New York, where students can choose among public schools, public charters, and private schools, a theme can be a way for a program to stand out from the competition. It can also help convince some middle-class parents to stick with city public schools for the middle grades, instead of fleeing for private schools or the suburbs.

A theme, said Maud Abeel, a director in the education practice at the nonprofit Jobs for the Future, “is a signal to families and educators that you’re trying to make school relevant and engaging.”

It’s also a signal to business leaders, said David Adams, the CEO of the Urban Assembly, a school support organization that has opened more than 20 career-themed public middle and high schools in New York City since 1997.

When the Urban Assembly’s founder was looking for ways to get industry more involved in public education, back in the early 90s, he settled on themes as a way “to mobilize the private sector to invest in schools,” Adams said.

But there are downsides to proclaiming a specialty. Doing so can scare away parents who worry — sometimes needlessly — that their child will be pigeonholed or miss out on opportunities to explore other areas, Szuflita said. And claiming a theme creates real pressure to “live up to the moniker,” added Abeel.

“If you’re going to put it in your name, you have to show why it’s there,” she said.

Sophia, left, and other BUGS sixth graders talk with a construction worker for their food equity survey.

In New York City, where there are schools with straightforward names (the Middle School for Art and Philosophy), schools with clever or cute nicknames (BUGS), and schools that combine concepts in head-scratching ways (the Collegiate Academy for Mathematics and Personal Awareness), that “why” is more obvious in some cases than others.

On one end of the spectrum are schools like Ballet Tech, where middle schoolers dance five days a week, and Harbor Middle, where students pursue projects like boat-building and oyster reef monitoring.

On the other are schools that no longer fit their names, due to mission drift, leadership turnover or curricular change. A prime example is Brooklyn’s Math & Science Exploratory School, where leaders have asked the Department of Education for permission to drop the “Math & Science” from the name because “the curriculum has evolved” and the current name is “limiting and misaligned with the school’s value and goals,” according to a resolution in support of the change.

In between are dozens of schools that are implementing their themes in different ways and to varying degrees. Some, like the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women, offer an additional period or two in the theme, along with extras, like hydroponics and coding.

Others focus their electives on the theme. At New Voices, in Brooklyn, students sample six arts forms in sixth grade, then pick a major for the last two years. But parents whose children attended the school said the arts theme isn’t infused into the core subjects.

Broadly speaking, themed middle schools set aside less time for their target subject than their high school counterparts. That’s mostly because the school day is “too full to pile things on,” said Maxey, who, in addition to his work as a board member for AMLE, is director of strategic initiatives at Tuscaloosa City Schools, where there is a performing arts middle school.

Maxey said the most successful schools take an integrative, rather than an additive approach, weaving the theme across all subjects.

“You don’t carve out time for the arts,” he said. “You make them the essence of the school.”

The research on the effectiveness of themed schools is thin; experts on middle school teaching say they aren’t aware of any rigorous studies comparing themed and mainstream middles.

But a pair of studies by the Research Alliance for New York City Schools — one on turnaround middle schools and another on small high schools — suggest that themes can lend cohesion to the curriculum and facilitate collaboration across disciplines, said Cheri Fancsali, the Alliance’s executive director. They can attract students, as well as teachers, to a school.

Yet the studies also showed that themes sometimes lead to a narrowing of the curriculum and alienate students who aren’t interested in the theme, Fancsali said.

Nancy Deutsch, a professor of education at the University of Virginia and an editor of the Journal of Adolescent Research, said she has mixed feelings about themed middles.

On the one hand, Deutsch said, letting students select schools that align with their interests might prevent some of the drop-off in motivation and engagement that often begins in middle school. On the flip side, attending a themed school might limit students’ future options, if they can’t take courses — Algebra I, for example — that would allow them to pursue different interests in high school.

“I would want to make sure that while there may be specialization, it’s not cutting off potential pathways,” she said.

Equity can be a concern as well. Some themed schools admit students based on factors like test scores or grade point averages, or require them to submit a portfolio or undergo an audition. Others have moved away from such screening methods, in an effort to build more racially and socioeconomically balanced classes.

Brooklyn’s District 15, where almost half the middle schools have themes, switched to a lottery system a few years ago. The change has reduced segregation in the district’s schools, but it has also coincided with a sharp drop in test scores at some themed schools, including the Math & Science Exploratory School, which had historically drawn a disproportionate number of white and higher-income families. This has led to speculation that the move to change the school’s name was motivated by declining test scores — a charge the school has denied.

Even so, the school’s pass rate on the state math exam — 64% in 2021-22 — was still twice the citywide average for middle schools of 32% (and climbed back to 80% during the last academic year, recently released data show). Several STEM-themed schools weren’t even meeting that low bar.

BUGS, which shares a building with a District 15 public themed middle school, the Carroll Gardens School for Innovation, is required under state charter law to admit students by lottery, with preference given to students in the district. The school is fairly diverse — roughly half the students are white — and a quarter qualify for free and reduced lunch. Close to a third have disabilities.

Last year, according to data from the New York State Department of Education, two-thirds of BUGS students passed the state math exam, though pass rates were significantly lower for students with disabilities (48%), and economically disadvantaged students (32%). The citywide average for all middle schoolers was 46.3%.

BUGS CEO Susan Tenner stands in the hydroponic garden. Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report

When BUGS opened a little over a decade ago, its focus was squarely on environmental sustainability. But over the years, it has expanded its purview to social and economic sustainability, too, said Tenner, the executive director.

The school’s all-in embrace of the sustainability theme is fairly unusual, said Jennifer Seydel, executive director of the Green Schools National Network. The Network’s members include schools with a couple courses in environmental studies, those with after-school “green teams,” and schools with net-zero emissions, among others.

“Operating in a public school system, you can’t go as deep or be as innovative as BUGS,” she said.

Still, given the school’s name, Tenner sometimes has to correct parents’ misperception that it’s all about planting and harvesting.

“The garden is a great outdoor classroom, but it’s only one of many in the city,” she tells families.

Their confusion may not matter much, anyway. In interviews, parents whose children attend or attended themed middle schools in Brooklyn said they made their choice for a variety of reasons, often unrelated to the theme: a school’s location, academic reputation or small size.

Parents whose kids attended the Math & Science Exploratory School said it was an open secret among affluent families living near the school that the emphasis was on exploration, and not on math and science. They wondered whether families from poorer parts of the district, whose children now make up a large share of the school’s enrollment, would know that.

Sarah Russo, whose son is a seventh grader at BUGS, said it was the school’s co-teaching approach and nurturing environment that sold her. Her son has an Individualized Education Program (a plan for students with disabilities), and she worried he’d get lost in a big, competitive school.

BUGS students with one of the signs they made to advertise their food equity survey. Kelly Field for The Hechinger Report

The BUGS survey-taking sixth graders, meanwhile, had other reasons to like the school. Elias was really excited about the lockers, while Sophia, whose group had interviewed passersby on a different corner, was thrilled that they’d get released for lunch. Sena picked BUGS over New Voices, the school her two best friends planned to attend, after realizing that the arts “aren’t my thing.”

Back in the classroom after completing their survey, the students get a refresher lesson on converting ratios into percentages and tally their responses. They find that roughly half of respondents have more restaurants and fast-food chains than grocery stores in their neighborhood, and 40% don’t know what food equity is. Three-quarters spend more than $50 per person on groceries each week.

Armed with these statistics, the students take action, writing letters to Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso to urge him to bring more grocery stores to Brooklyn neighborhoods and install more community fridges in the district.

In his letter, Elias asks Reynoso to tackle inflation and add lessons on food inequity to the city’s curricula.

“Please, Mr. Reynoso, we must do something!” he concludes, and adds his signature: a smiley face giving a thumbs up.

Some social studies teachers wary as national conference meets in increasingly censored Tennessee

2023-11-30T22:54:25+00:00

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About 3,500 social studies teachers converge on Nashville this weekend for their annual national conference, but not without some pushback for meeting in a state with multiple laws aimed at classroom censorship and restrictions related to discussing race and gender.

“Some of our members have worried that this could be a hostile environment for them,” said Wesley Hedgepeth, a social studies teacher in Henrico County, Virginia, and this year’s president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

Even so, attendance is set to surpass last year’s convention in Philadelphia, the group’s first in-person gathering since the pandemic. The last pre-COVID conference, in 2019, drew about 4,000 participants to Austin, Texas.

“There have been concerns about Tennessee’s divisive-concepts law and perceived censorship by the government, as well as the suppression of certain identities,” Hedgepeth said on Thursday, the eve of the three-day conference.

“We’ve been working tirelessly to make sure this is an inclusive conference and remind people that Nashville is a welcoming place,” he said.

Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by GOP legislative leaders, speaks during a press conference at the close of the 2021 session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Under the leadership of Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the GOP-dominated legislature, Tennessee was one of the first states to impose legal limits on classroom discussions about racism and white privilege. It gave a state commission new authority to ban certain library books statewide. It also enacted restrictions on the rights of transgender students in school. One new law ensures that school and university employees can opt out of implicit-bias training.

And earlier this year, the predominantly white and older House of Representatives ousted two young Black Democratic members for the way they protested the body’s failure to pursue significant gun reforms after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Nashville school.

Related: The ‘Tennessee 3′ made history. Will their story be taught?

Add in a 2023 state law restricting drag shows — which has since been overturned by a federal judge — and some social studies teachers from elsewhere in the nation were balking at coming to the Volunteer State.

That spurred the council, which is the nation’s premier professional organization for social studies, to issue a three-page statement this spring titled “Why Nashville?”

The paper noted that, in addition to its renowned music scene, Tennessee’s capital city is home to key moments and movements in U.S. history.

On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women across America the right to vote.

And in 1960, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a group of college students including Diane Nash formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Nashville. The chairman was a young John Lewis, a student at Nashville’s Fisk University, who went on to become a civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia before his death in 2020.

“We remain committed to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all social studies educators to come and learn with us in Nashville,” the organization’s statement said.

The last time the group held its national conference in Tennessee was in 1993. The state’s affiliate organization submitted a 2017 pitch for a return to Nashville, and organizers soon signed contracts with local hotels and convention facilities. That was before the national racial reckoning spurred by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a conservative backlash to subsequent anti-racism protests. Tennessee has been at the forefront of culture wars ever since.

Related: How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum

This spring, after the legislature expelled the two young Black Democratic members, the National Council for the Social Studies issued a four-page rebuke of the Tennessee House of Representatives. The statement called the ouster an attack on the foundational principles of democratic and republican norms and said that, intentionally or not, the state was sending its students a message that the rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and holding their elected officials accountable are “reserved for those who have a specific view or perspective.” (The two lawmakers were later reelected by their local constituents.)

Rep. Justin Pearson raises his newly signed oath of office after being reinstated to the Tennessee General Assembly on April 13, 2023, days after the Republican-controlled legislature ousted him and another Democratic lawmaker over the way they protested the state’s lax gun laws.

The vagueness of Tennessee’s censorship laws also is having a chilling effect in classrooms and school libraries. In Memphis this fall, for instance, the co-authors of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Floyd were told not to talk about systemic racism during an appearance at Whitehaven High School.

“It’s like walking on eggshells,” said Laura Simmons, an eighth-grade U.S. history teacher from Bedford County, south of Nashville. “We want to give our students the information they need, including multiple viewpoints and narratives. At this point, I think most social studies teachers are just feeling out the climate of their school, their parents, and their administration.”

As president of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, Simmons is co-chair of this year’s national conference and helped to plan it, along with Hedgepeth, the national president. Attendees represent all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and nine other countries. About 10% are faculty at colleges and universities.

The 2023 conference theme is “Social Studies: Working in Harmony for a Better Tomorrow,” with sub-themes about inclusivity, elevating local narratives, and seeking partnerships beyond physical and political borders.

Featured speakers include Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Caste” and “The Warmth of Other Suns,” and Albert Bender, a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance journalist. Jelani Memory, author of the bestselling “A Kids Book About Racism,” will talk about tackling difficult topics with young learners.

“We are not shying away from controversial issues,” said Simmons, a 22-year teacher in Tennessee. “Our philosophy is to make sure we’re giving our educators the things they need to best help their students.”

Ultimately, said Hedgepeth, the conference is focused on the future of social studies, which research shows is systematically marginalized in the U.S. education system, from kindergarten to college.

“This is a critical time right now, with the war in Israel and Palestine, the upcoming presidential election, and how politics have divided our country after COVID and other traumatic events,” he said. “I think we are seeing the consequences of a lack of social studies education echoing across our country — from how we relate to others to how we digest media to how we discern between what is true and false.”

“If you don’t teach social studies,” Hedgepeth said, “you don’t get those skills. It’s as simple as that.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Raucous protest against pro-Israel Queens teacher is ‘teachable moment,’ Banks says

2023-11-28T02:11:23+00:00

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks vowed Monday that last week’s chaotic student rally for the ouster of a pro-Israel teacher at Hillcrest High School can be a “teachable moment.”

The turmoil unfolded on Nov. 20 when hundreds of students filled the halls of the Queens school in protest of a social media photo of a teacher holding an “I Stand With Israel” sign, according to students and officials. Social media videos show a raucous gathering with students dancing in hallways and a water fountain ripped from the wall. The health teacher at the center of the protest, who is Jewish, took cover in an administrator’s office on a separate floor, officials said.

Multiple students were disciplined for their role in organizing the protest, but officials declined to provide details because of privacy restrictions.

The incident drew a wave of condemnations over the Thanksgiving break, including a statement from Mayor Eric Adams calling it a “vile show of anti-semitism.”

During a visit to the school Monday, Banks, an alum of Hillcrest, tried to strike a balance between denouncing students’ actions and pushing back on what he described as overly broad criticism of the students.

“A teacher … was targeted based on her support for Israel, expressed in a permissible way outside of school hours, and her Jewish identity, and that is completely unacceptable,” Banks said Monday.

He added, in reference to media coverage of the incident and statements from some elected officials, that “the notion … these kids are radicalized and antisemitic is the height of irresponsibility, and I for one will not accept that at all.”

Students used social media to organize the walkout, which started during a changeover between classes, officials said. An estimated 400 students participated in the initial protest out of Hillcrest’s roughly 2,300-person student body. A followup student protest was planned for Nov. 22, but administrators were able to shut it down before it started, officials said.

School officials said they got wind of the Nov. 20 protest in time to alert police, who responded quickly. The teacher targeted in the protest, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding to protect her privacy, was already in an administrator’s office on another floor talking with police when the protest began, and she stayed there throughout, officials said.

Banks maintained the teacher was “never in direct danger.”

The educator didn’t reply to a request for comment, but previously told the New York Post that she was “shaken to my core by the calls to violence against me that occurred online and outside my classroom last week.”

Several students and elected officials also reported students threatened the teacher and posted her address online.

Banks said the teacher is expected to return to work this week and promised that the school will “ensure her safety” and that staff and students will “wrap arms around” her.

The school is partnering with an organization called Operation Respect to help lead conversations about improving school culture, officials said.

Students at Hillcrest acknowledged Monday that the protest had gotten out of hand, but maintained that the students who escalated the action weren’t the ones who’d organized it.

“It was meant to be a peaceful protest in the very beginning,” said Muhammad Ghazali, the senior class president. “But some of these students lack maturity. These are teenagers.”

Many of the students who participated didn’t “think of it as a serious moment or a moment to actually go out and protest,” but “did it for their personal enjoyment,” he added.

Another student who spoke to Chalkbeat anonymously pushed back on the accusation that the protest was antisemitic.

“The intent … was just to be pro-Palestine,” the student said. “It was not, it was not to attack her for being Jewish. We have teachers that are Jewish, and we love them to death.”

Banks said he came to Hillcrest Monday not just to offer a condemnation but to listen to students and try to better understand what sparked their anger.

Roughly 30% of Hillcrest’s students are Muslim, and some “came from warzones” like Yemen, said one Hillcrest educator who spoke on the condition of anonymity. What’s happening in Gaza is “traumatic” for them, the educator added.

“They consume their information through social media,” Banks said. “And what they are seeing on a daily basis are children and young people in Palestine … being blown up.”

“When they all of a sudden saw this image of the teacher that says, ‘I Stand With Israel,’ the students articulated to me they took that as a message that I’m affirming whatever is happening to the Palestinian family and community,” Banks said. “That made sense to me.”

Schools across New York City have struggled with how — and if — to talk to students about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, in which militants killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 hostage, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment, which has killed more than 14,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Students told Chalkbeat they’re inundated with graphic images of the violence on social media and often struggle to make sense of conflicting sources of information. Many crave safe spaces to talk about those issues in school.

But many educators are wary of wading into such a potentially explosive conversation — some more so after Banks reminded teachers not to share their political beliefs in class and cautioned about out-of-school political activism.

Several Hillcrest students said they had few chances to talk about what is happening in Gaza and Israel before last week’s events.

“Don’t just think you can just skate by it,” one student said. “Because these [issues] are in these children’s hearts, and they’re going to feel a type of way about it. So it’s best to address it … It’s a boiling pot. Now, that exploded, and this is what happened.”

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

NYC students want to talk about Israel and Gaza. Schools are struggling to keep up.

2023-11-21T23:21:34+00:00

For many New York City teenagers, the violence that’s unfurled thousands of miles away in Israel and the Gaza Strip over the past seven weeks has felt startlingly close to home.

Both Muslim and Jewish students told Chalkbeat they’ve noticed an uptick in hurtful and derogatory comments from classmates at school or over social media, echoing a recent state review that found Islamophobic and antisemitic rhetoric have each jumped by more than 400% on social media since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the country’s retaliation.

Students, meanwhile, are glued to their phones. They’re trying to keep up with an endless stream of often-graphic social media content about the ongoing war while attempting to sift through a barrage of conflicting information and viewpoints, they said.

It’s “scary … to be teenagers and dealing with antisemitism and Islamophobia,” one Brooklyn high school student said, adding that they were “grappling with how to feel about this horrible thing that’s going on that we don’t have any control over.”

School can feel like one of the few safe places to make sense of the Israel-Hamas war, learn about the historical underpinnings of the crisis, and try in some small way to take action, teens said.

Hamas militants killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis and took another 240 hostage, and Israel’s subsequent bombardment of Gaza has killed at least 11,000 Palestinians, including thousands of children.

City schools, however, are taking divergent approaches to navigating conversations about the war, and in some cases largely avoiding it, according to interviews with educators and students at six high schools, most of whom spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

At some high schools — particularly large ones — pressure to keep up with fast-paced curriculums, fears about further inflaming tensions, and caution about steering clear of political landmines, especially after a warning from schools Chancellor David Banks to keep personal views out of the classroom, have made it difficult to create dedicated spaces to talk about the war, educators and students told Chalkbeat.

“It’s kind of like an elephant in the room for many students,” said a senior at Midwood High School in Brooklyn. “There haven’t been any discussions in classes.”

“It’s very sensitive … and no one wants to get written up or lose their job,” added a Brooklyn Tech staffer. “No one wants to say anything because no one wants to get into trouble.”

The Education Department provided school leaders with a resource guide to “help them work with their staff to support instruction based on facts about the war in the Middle East as well as resources on supporting students during this difficult time,” spokesperson Chyann Tull said.

Banks’s warning about political speech was only meant to reiterate existing city rules and to encourage teachers to remain objective when discussing charged issues, according to officials.

At one Brooklyn high school, students frustrated by the lack of opportunities to talk about the conflict during the school day organized an after-school meeting, supervised by teachers at school, between Jewish and Muslim student groups. They plan to invite expert speakers to give students more background, according to a student who helped organize the events and spoke anonymously for fear of retaliation.

“Having these conversations is really important, and if we can have them in a setting that’s monitored and we have access to concrete information, that’s really helpful,” the student said. “It’s something that 16-year-olds should not have to organize … but I think teachers are scared to be talking about it.”

Some schools and teachers wade into difficult conversations

That’s not to say there aren’t educators and schools across the city wading into difficult conversations.

Kate Cook, a Spanish and senior advisory teacher at Brooklyn Tech, doesn’t normally teach about Israel and the Palestinian territories, and she was nervous about upsetting kids and doing justice to the complex history of the conflict. In each of her classes, she knew she’d likely have multiple students with ties to the region, heightening the stakes. But she decided the risks of avoiding the discussion outweighed the potential pitfalls of diving into it.

“If teachers don’t address it, it sends the message it’s not important and we don’t care about it,” she said.

Cook started with several informal check-ins shortly after Oct. 7 and again after the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began, and asked students to check in on both their Jewish and Muslim classmates. Several weeks later, she led a lesson meant to help students think through all of the ways they process news about the war – intellectually, emotionally, and as a matter of conscience.

There were challenging moments, including a spirited debate between a student forcefully arguing “Hamas needs to be eradicated” and another saying you “can’t ignore” decades of occupation, Cook said.

But she knew it was the right decision when the mother of one of her students approached her at parent-teacher conferences to thank her. The girl had family in Israel and “came home in tears because she was so happy” Cook had checked in with her students, the mom said.

“Particularly at a big school, we can often underestimate our impact as teachers,” Cook said. “But when something big happens in the world, we need to say something.”

Other educators who’ve led classroom lessons about the conflict said they prompted valuable discussions about the relative advantages of social and mainstream media.

Teachers said they tried to help students approach social media more skeptically and spot misinformation without dismissing their arguments that social media has galvanized young people and made information accessible to them in a way mass media hasn’t.

“With the mass media, you are fed information, but on social media, you get to contribute to the message,” one Brooklyn Tech teacher recalled a student saying.

At several smaller schools, teachers have organized optional “teach-ins” during lunch periods and after school for students who want more background on the conflict.

“It was very informative and it didn’t try to force a stance and gave students a chance to make their own conclusions,” said Alexander Calafiura, a senior at East Side Community High School in Manhattan who attended one such session to get a better factual understanding of the conflict. (Calafiura is currently a Student Voices fellow at Chalkbeat).

Teachers who led lessons on the conflict said they were acutely aware that it’s emotional for students and took pains to keep their classrooms feeling safe.

One Brooklyn Tech teacher said he had students frequently flash “thumbs-up” signs to each other to indicate they were OK continuing the lesson. Sari Beth Rosenberg, a history teacher at the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan, started her lesson by asking students to agree on the shared principle that all death is bad.

“I think you’re more likely to have a civil discourse if you start it off by framing it as ‘what do we agree on,’” she said.

Students, teachers, and pro-Palestinian allies march through Midtown Manhattan during a student walkout protest calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas on Nov. 9, 2023 in New York.

Politics loom large

The crisis in Israel and Gaza has reignited long-standing debates about the appropriate role of politics in school.

On Nov. 8, the day before a planned student walkout calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, Banks sent the message to all city schools staffers reminding them that city rules bar teachers from expressing their personal political views in class, and that even out-of-school political activity could be out of bounds if it causes a disruption in school.

An Education Department spokesperson said Banks’ warning wasn’t in response to any single event, and Banks told the publication City & State that his intention was not to “silence anybody.”

But critics including New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman argued the missive would “likely have the effect of stifling political discussion both inside the classroom and in the broader community.”

Some educators said that’s indeed come to pass.

“I think it’s egregious that our voices are being censored right now,” said a social worker who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “As faculty and staff we’ve been clearly discouraged from supporting these students.”

Some students and staff argue, moreover, that condemning Hamas’s attack – like Banks did on Oct. 10 – without also acknowledging the ongoing siege of Gaza is itself a political stance.

One Midwood High School student who participated in the Nov. 9 walkout said it “symbolizes our anger towards the Department of Education for their neutral stance and support of the genocide,” a term that has been hotly contested as a way to describe Israel’s siege of Gaza.

At Brooklyn Tech, students sent a letter last week to Principal David Newman criticizing his decision to send an Oct. 10 email acknowledging the Oct. 7 atrocities in Israel without sending a subsequent message acknowledging the deaths in Gaza.

“The Palestinians currently being killed in Gaza at overwhelming rates, most of whom are women and children, are, above all, innocent civilians,” the students wrote. “They, just as innocent Israeli civilians addressed in Mr. Newman’s email, do not deserve death or suffering in any way. They deserve the same amount of respect as the Israeli civilians that Mr. Newman addressed in his email.”

The students also called for more dedicated spaces in school to talk about the conflict, and additional counseling resources.

Newman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

But it’s not only statements about the violence in Gaza that have proven controversial: At the Museum School in Manhattan, administrators declined to include a statement from the Jewish Student Union condemning the Oct. 7 attacks in the school newsletter out of concern it violated Education Department rules on political speech, the school’s newspaper reported.

The debates over political speech also play out on the smaller stage of individual classrooms.

For some teachers, keeping a firewall between personal political beliefs and classroom teaching is critical.

“We shouldn’t be talking about our political beliefs in the classroom, I don’t think that should be controversial,” said Rosenberg, the Manhattan history teacher, adding that teachers’ backgrounds also shouldn’t play a role in how they discuss current and political events.

“Your classroom is not the place to work out your identity issues,” she said.

But other teachers argue it’s not so simple, and that shielding students entirely from their political beliefs and biases is unrealistic and counterproductive.

“If people ask me, I will have separate conversations,” said one Bronx history teacher, who said her students know she is both Jewish and “anti-occupation.”

“I have no problem with people seeing my point of view as one point of view.”

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

IPS board approves new teacher contract with average of 3% raises

2023-11-15T01:04:36+00:00

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The Indianapolis Public Schools board unanimously approved a new two-year labor contract on Tuesday that gives teachers an average of 3% in raises plus more time off.

The contract, which Indianapolis Education Association members voted to ratify last month, bumps starting pay in the district from $50,400 to $51,900 in 2023-24, and raises it again to $53,460 in 2024-25. Current teachers can also increase their base salary based on their educator evaluation ratings, their years of service in IPS, and whether they serve in high-need subject areas.

Those pay increases range from $1,850 to $2,790 for 2023-24, and $1,900 to $2,870 for 2024-25. Teachers who were rated as ineffective or needing improvement, however, are not eligible for an increase.

Teachers will also receive two floating holidays each academic year that can be used at their discretion. These holidays are designed to benefit those employees whose religious holidays are not recognized on the traditional school calendar.

The agreement, heralded by both IPS and the IEA as a positive collaborative effort, will guide compensation and bonus pay at a critical time for the district, which will shift teachers to different schools next school year when IPS breaks up its K-8 schools.

“I’m extremely proud of the agreement that we were able to build together by working collaboratively to find solutions to the fiscal and logistical obstacles that we face as a district,” Tina Ahlgren, the bargaining chair for the IEA, said at the meeting.

A new pilot program in the contract will allow teachers to receive additional pay if they are forced to give up their preparation periods to cover for an absent teacher in another class. Teachers can receive $25 per hour under this new provision.

Teachers can also receive that extra pay if principals increase their class size by at least 30% because of another teacher’s absence.

“We are both proud of and grateful for the collaboration that we’ve had with our partners at IEA to get to this point this evening,” Superintendent Aleesia Johnson said at the meeting. “Thank you to the team, both the bargaining team as well as my administrative team, who really did engage in this deep collaboration, positive conversations and discussion.”

The contract also provides new pay for staff who serve as certified school psychologists, social workers, or teachers of English as a new language.

Teachers who are approved to serve as long-term substitutes in addition to their regular teaching roles can also get additional compensation under the new contract.

The contract increases the payout for unused sick time that teachers can cash out upon retirement, from $35 for every seven hours to $50. That payout had not changed in over 15 years.

The district, however, will no longer pay for long-term disability insurance. Teachers can opt in to the insurance but will pay premiums on their own.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s new algebra curriculum mandate divides educators

2023-11-10T21:08:58+00:00

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The ninth graders in Katie Carson’s Algebra I class had only a foggy memory of how to use the “greater than” and “less than” signs that appeared in their warm-up exercise on a recent Tuesday afternoon.

One student said he hadn’t seen the symbols since elementary school.

Carson, a teacher at Energy Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens, gave her class no explanation. Instead, she asked students what they noticed about how the signs work.

“If the open side is pointing to the left, it’s less than, and if it’s to the right it’s greater,” volunteered a student named Adam.

The answer wasn’t right, but Carson gamely copied it onto the whiteboard and began testing it on sample problems. A minute later, Adam interjected. “It doesn’t work. I think it’s whatever the open side is on, that’s greater.”

Dropping students into unfamiliar math problems with minimal introduction and refraining from correcting their errors can seem counterintuitive in a subject where the answers are black and white. But those practices are at the core of an approach that Carson says has transformed her teaching. It’s one that New York City officials are hoping can spark a sea change in how math is taught across the five boroughs.

Carson’s school was an early adopter of Illustrative Math, the curriculum New York City officials began rolling out this year as part of an unprecedented effort to improve and standardize the way algebra is taught across the city’s more-than-400 high schools.

This year, more than 260 schools are using Illustrative Math for Algebra I, while receiving extra coaching, professional development, and supervision from the Education Department. The Algebra I curriculum mandate is set to expand next year, though a department official didn’t say whether it will reach all high schools by then.

A message on the whiteboard of Katie Carson's Algebra I class at Energy Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens.

The stakes are high: Fewer than half of the city’s elementary and middle school students scored proficient on state math exams this year.

The pandemic has only heightened the challenge. Passage rates for high-schoolers on the year-end Algebra II Regents exam, which builds on Algebra I, fell a whopping 24 percentage points over the course of the pandemic, from 69% in 2019 to 45% in 2022, according to state data.

There are also gaping disparities in math achievement between schools: At some selective high schools, 100% of students who took the Algebra I Regents exam last year passed. At others, where almost all students are Black or Latino and low-income, zero did, city data shows.

Two months in, the experiment in shared curriculum has divided educators. Some argue it’s a long-overdue shift toward teaching that prizes deep conceptual understanding of math over rote practice and memorization. But other teachers say the curriculum lacks the kind of structure and built-in repetition that many students — particularly struggling ones — need.

“We show them something and don’t tell them anything, and it’s ‘What do you think?’ with no guidance,” said one special education math teacher in Queens participating in the pilot this year, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “For a special education student who already needs a little more help, it makes it almost impossible, they check out, they lose interest.”

Proponents of the curriculum, especially teachers who’ve used it for multiple years, say they’ve found just the opposite: The curriculum’s open-endedness can help draw in even the most resistant students.

“You typically have students who walk into a math class and have heard … that they’re either a math person or they’re not,” Carson said. “But when they walk into an [Illustrative Math] class, the curriculum doesn’t care if you’re ‘good at math…’ it just makes you explain and prove and share and discuss in a way that it’s going to be challenging for everyone.”

To standardize or not to standardize?

Schools Chancellor David Banks has bet big on the idea that standardizing curriculum can move the academic needle citywide in a system where that’s notoriously hard to do.

Alongside the math push, he’s requiring the city’s elementary school superintendents to choose among three pre-selected reading curricula that officials say better align with a growing body of research about how kids learn to read. The literacy push has gotten significantly more attention, but educators say the math initiative is no less important – or controversial.

Traditionally, high schools and secondary math educators have had wide latitude to select or create their curriculum. For some teachers, especially experienced ones, that freedom can be helpful and spark innovation. Banks, however, argues that as a citywide policy, curricular autonomy has produced mediocre and inequitable results.

“Everybody is not ready for that level of autonomy,” he recently told reporters. “Because if they were, we would have much better results than we have.”

Why Algebra I?

Banks’s curriculum mandate isn’t the first time city officials have tried to boost math achievement by targeting algebra.

An initiative called “Algebra For All” under former Mayor Bill de Blasio attempted to give every student a chance to complete Algebra I by the end of eighth grade – a goal that has become a flashpoint in national debates about equity and math instruction.

That experiment yielded some positive results: In 2023, about 45% of the city’s 62,000 eighth graders took the Algebra I Regents exam, according to the Education Department – up from 30% in 2015. About three-quarters of them passed.

But disparities remain: A higher proportion of white and Asian American students took the test in eighth grade than Black and Latino students, and they were far more likely to pass it, according to a Chalkbeat review of 2022 Algebra I Regents results in more than 200 middle schools.

For the remaining students who either never took the course in eighth grade or flunked the exam, finishing it in ninth grade is critical, educators argue.

Without that, there’s little chance students will be able to advance to higher-level math courses like precalculus or calculus.

Algebra I teacher Katie Carson works through a problem on the whiteboard during a recent class at Energy Tech High School in Long Island City, Queens.

Teachers of high school Algebra I say there are significant obstacles to that goal, including a large number of students who are far behind grade level.

In many cases, teachers feel pressure to return to what feel like safer approaches, like relying on rote practice and pausing grade-level instruction to focus on remediating basic skills like multiplication, multiple educators said.

Jason Ovalles, a math teacher at Chelsea Career and Technical Education High School and master teacher through the professional organization Math for America, knows that pressure well. He began his career as a middle school teacher in East New York without a set curriculum. He tried finding interesting problems and activities on his own, but was often “pulled back” into the way he was taught: “Just tell them how it’s supposed to be, so that they can copy what you did.”

Switching to Illustrative Math allowed him to keep up with grade-level math without alienating or discouraging his struggling students, Ovalles said. Proponents hope it can do the same thing citywide.

Curriculum draws mixed reactions

Illustrative Math was created in 2011 by a University of Arizona professor in the wake of sweeping changes to math teaching during the 2009 rollout of the Common Core standards, a set of benchmarks meant to give states shared academic goals.

Other large school districts, including Los Angeles, are also rolling out the curriculum at scale.

Teachers participating in New York City’s pilot get eight professional development sessions and between eight and 12 visits from an instructional coach throughout the school year, according to the Education Department.

But multiple educators said there are major flaws in the curriculum, and the Education Department’s approach to rolling it out.

Some students don’t have the necessary vocabulary or background knowledge to engage in the open-ended discussions, said one Brooklyn educator who used the curriculum last year at his administrators’ behest. He compared it to asking students in an automotive class who’ve never seen a car engine before to fix a muffler.

“All the investigative time in the world will not make them successful at making it run quietly,” said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The lack of built-in practice time can make it difficult to verify whether students fully understand concepts before moving on, several educators added.

Katie Carson, standing (in gray shirt), teaches Algebra I at Energy Tech High School on Oct. 31, 2023 in Long Island City, Queens.

Teachers who have used the curriculum for years countered that part of what makes it work is that students don’t need vocabulary up front. They can describe concepts in their own words – a feature that’s especially helpful for English language learners – and teachers can bring in the technical terms later.

Ovalles said he’s learned that it’s okay – and expected – to move on before every student understands 100% of the lesson because the curriculum builds in future opportunities to revisit topics.

Education Department officials are holding teachers to a pacing guide, reminding teachers when they should wrap up units, according to communications reviewed by Chalkbeat.

Several educators said the pacing expectations are unrealistic and have made it harder to adjust to the new curriculum. An Education Department official said the pacing guide is “not a mandate” and teachers have freedom to spend longer on individual lessons if they need.

Regents loom large

A big question hangs over the entire experiment: Will the new curriculum improve results on the year-end Regents exams?

Multiple educators who are using the curriculum for the first time said they’re worried that it doesn’t align well with the Regents. The test is mainly multiple choice and it phrases questions in specific ways.

Energy Tech has been using Illustrative Math since 2020 as part of a pilot funded by New Visions, a network that runs and supports public schools, and the school saw its percentage of students who passed the Algebra I test rise from 64% in 2019 to 72% last year, even as citywide numbers declined, according to state data.

Kiran Purohit, the vice president of curriculum and instruction at New Visions, said overall, the schools in the pilot “saw a better post-Covid recovery” in Algebra I than the city average, with an especially big bump for English learners.

Sixteen-year-old Energy Tech student Mostafa Aboelfadl said he’s “not the best test-taker” and would often freeze up on open-response questions on the Regents. But after spending a year chipping away bit-by-bit at complex problems in his Illustrative Math algebra class, he said he realized he could “extract points” from Regents questions even if he didn’t know the full answers.

An Education Department spokesperson said the pacing guide includes some designated Regents review days and suggestions about which lessons can be “deprioritized” because they don’t appear on the exams.

It’s also likely that the Regents test itself and its role will continue to shift. The Algebra I Regents exam is changing this year to better reflect a new set of learning standards. And a Blue Ribbon commission is poised to release a set of recommendations about how and whether Regents exams should continue to serve as graduation requirements.

Ovalles said after several years of using the curriculum, he hasn’t seen much change in his students’ Regents scores – but that’s okay.

In the past, he’d spend “spend weeks and months” on Regents prep, only to see scores stay flat as well.

Now, at least, the tone seems to have shifted among students. “They’re actually understanding math better and are more confident talking about it,” he said. “It feels like a net positive.”

Alex Zimmerman contributed.

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

You’re invited: Hear true stories told by local teachers at this storytelling event

2023-10-12T11:30:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

The infamous “teacher voice” — we all know it, and now you can hear directly from local educators about the times they may have needed to use it.

Join us for the “Don’t Make Me Use My Teacher Voice” teacher story slam from 6 to 8 p.m Thursday, Nov. 16, at Ash & Elm Cider Company, 1301 E Washington Street in Indianapolis. The event will be hosted by Teachers Lounge Indy along with Chalkbeat Indiana and Indy Kids Winning.

Teachers Lounge Indy was formed to help early-career teachers build community, said organizer Ronak Shah. The group last hosted a story slam in 2019. Since then, many in the group have moved on and are no longer early in their careers.

However, Shah said a current teacher encouraged him to bring the event back, so he revived it.

To attend, register here for a free ticket on Eventbrite: https://ckbe.at/3FSCr6z.

Also, if you’re an educator and want to tell your story, contact: teachersloungeindy@gmail.com.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education and Warren Township Schools. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Tentative IPS teacher contract includes average 3% pay raises, more time off

2023-11-09T01:06:49+00:00

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Teachers in Indianapolis Public Schools could see average raises of 3% and more days off under a tentative contract agreement between the district and the Indianapolis Education Association.

The new contract, which would cover the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, would raise starting salaries from $50,400 to $51,900 for 2023-24. The contract’s maximum salary for teachers would also increase to an estimated $94,000.

The estimated salary range for the 2024-25 school year would be $53,460 to $94,000.

No teacher would make below the minimum salary for each school year unless given an evaluation of “ineffective” or “needs improvement.”

The tentative contract would offer special increases to base pay for special education teachers, English-as-a-new-language teachers, school psychologists, and social workers.

As required by state law, only teachers rated “highly effective” or “effective” will receive increases to their base salary. But recent data indicates the vast majority of teachers would receive those raises under the proposed contract.

In 2022-23, nearly 35% of teachers were rated highly effective and roughly 64% were rated effective, according to district data obtained through a public records request. Only 15 out of the 1,586 teachers who were evaluated were given ratings of “improvement necessary” or “ineffective.”

Increases in base pay for qualifying teachers would range from $1,850 to $2,790 for 2023-24 and $1,900 to $2,870 for 2024-25. Salary increases for the current school year would be retroactively paid dating back to July 23 of this year. Raises for the 2024-25 school year would take effect during the first contract day of that year.

The school board will vote on the contract next week.

Here are some major changes in the proposed contract.

Base pay increases by teacher evaluations

Teachers who receive a rating of “highly effective” for the prior school year would receive:

$1,290 in year one (reflecting their 2022-23 rating).
$1,310 in year two (reflecting their 2023-24 rating).

Teachers who receive a rating of “effective” for the prior school year would receive:

$1,050 in year one (reflecting their 2022-23 rating).
$1,070 in year two (reflecting their 2023-24 rating).

Base pay increases for in-demand positions

Employees who served as certified school psychologists, social workers, special education teachers, teachers of English-as-a-new-language, core content teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), STEM career and technical education teachers, or credentialed dual-credit course teachers in the prior school year would receive:

$530 in year one (if employed for 2022-23).
$550 for year two (if employed for 2023-24).

This provision would exclude teachers working in these areas on emergency permits.

Base pay increase by years of service

Teachers who were employed by IPS for at least 120 contract days in the prior school year would receive:

$530 in year one (if employed for 2022-23).
$550 in year two (if employed for 2023-24).

Teachers who completed one to seven years of effective IPS teaching as of the effective date of salary increase would receive:

$440 in year one (if teacher completed one to seven years by July 23, 2023).
$460 in year two (if teacher completed one to seven years by the first contract day of 2024-25).

Teachers who completed eight or more years of effective IPS teaching as of the effective date of salary increase would receive:

$270 in year one (if teacher completed eight or more years by July 23, 2023).
$280 in year two (if teacher completed eight or more years by the first contract day of 2024-25).

Pilot program to pay teachers for class coverage

The district would launch a pilot program for 2023-24 and 2024-25 to pay teachers for class coverage when another teacher is absent.

Teachers would receive $25 per hour when they give up their designated preparation periods to cover a class with an absent teacher.

Academic coaches, interventionists, and International Baccalaureate coordinators would only receive this compensation if they cover for at least three hours and lose their prep period. Job-sharing teachers would not receive this compensation when their co-teachers are absent, unless the coverage also requires them to give up their prep period.

Teachers would also receive an extra $25 per hour if principals place additional students in their class that increases their total class size by at least 30% due to the absence of another teacher.

More days off during the school year

Teachers will receive two floating holidays for each academic year that can be used for any reason. Unlike sick or personal time off, these days do not roll over from year to year and cannot be cashed out upon retirement.

The tentative contract would provide for two additional bereavement days for extended family, bringing the total to three full paid days off to attend the funeral of an extended family member. Such family members are defined as aunts, uncles, nieces, or nephews.

The contract would give more flexibility for bereavement days for immediate family, a term that would extend to an unborn child.

Employees would have five bereavement days for immediate family as in the old contract, but could take three within 14 days of the death and reserve the other two for up to a year after the death to attend to affairs of the deceased.

Compensation to serve as a long-term substitute

The new contract allows licensed teachers to accept a role as a long-term substitute to cover vacancies outside the classroom instruction hours of their current teaching position.

This scenario could cover teachers who, for example, finish their school day sooner than other schools and may have the ability to travel to another school still in session to cover a class there.

Teachers would be paid at their standard hourly rate for this long-term assignment, which would end either at the end of the semester or until the vacancy is filled. Priority for vacant positions would be given to teachers whose schedule, licensure, and endorsement matches the needs of the vacant position.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Vitti gives update on the state of DPSCD schools

2023-10-20T14:59:51+00:00

Detroit Public Schools Community District has come far since its days of emergency management, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in his State of the Schools address Tuesday evening.

In the wide-ranging speech, Vitti touched on ways DPSCD has improved since he took on the top job in 2017: The district has re-established Parent–Teacher Associations (PTAs) at every school in an effort to get more parents involved in their students’ education. Students have improved their M-STEP, PSAT, and SAT scores in literacy and math. And DPSCD created a newcomer program for immigrant students at Western International High School.

“Our work as a superintendent/board team was to rebuild the district and the way that it would function and how it would operate before emergency management, but also think to the future and be transformative to modernize the school district so that it can actually lead to change for children,” he said. “And we did that by starting with a plan.”

Vitti also noted that the district has increased teacher salaries, invested in art and music classes after they were cut under emergency management, and created a facility master plan to rebuild and reopen aging school buildings.

An invitation-only crowd of teachers, students, parents, and community members filled the auditorium at Renaissance High School. When promoting State of the Schools, the district sent out emails to the school community, asking recipients to RSVP on Eventbrite. An edited video of the event will be available at a later date, a district spokeswoman said.

Vitti touts improvements in attendance

In his speech, Vitti addressed the struggles DPSCD has faced over the years is chronic absenteeism. During the 2021-22 school year, 77% of students were chronically absent at a time when COVID-19 cases in Michigan reached their peak. But even before the pandemic caused a spike in absenteeism in school districts across the country, students in the Detroit district and charter schools were missing school at crisis numbers.

Vitti noted the many barriers students face to get to school, such as poverty, crime, and health problems such as asthma. However, he said the district is starting to improve its attendance rates.

During the 2022-23 school year, the district’s chronic absenteeism rate was 68%. While it is better than the previous year’s rate, the percentage is still above pre-pandemic levels. Vitti attributed that to school attendance agents, counselors, principals, and teachers engaging with students and getting parents involved with schools.

One school he highlighted was Pulaski Elementary-Middle School, which saw a 36.5 percentage point decrease in chronic absenteeism and 10 percentage point increase in daily attendance.

“Beyond Pulaski, there are multiple people in this room that have urged students to come to school when they’re tired. They have urged families to do their best to get kids to school,” Vitti said. “There are people in the audience that even in the snow, in negative 10 degree weather, still visited homes to get the kids to school.”

Students show improvement on standardized tests

Vitti also talked about student achievement and the efforts the district is making to get students to perform at grade level and ready for college.

For students in grades 3-7, 2023 English language arts and math M-STEP proficiency results improved at 13% and 9.1%, while the 2022 results were at 10.9% and 6.2%. PSAT and SAT scores also improved. For eighth graders, the percentage of students who were proficient in reading and writing on the PSAT increased to 24% in 2023, while those proficient in math rose to 8.6%. This is compared to 10.9% proficiency in reading and writing and 6.2% proficiency in math the previous year. For high schoolers taking the SAT ,reading and writing proficiency levels increased to 32.9% and math to 11.7%. In 2022, those percentages were 26.9% and 8%, respectively.

However, Vitti said the district’s goal is for students to rise above single-digit performances on the standardized tests.

“We still have work to do since the pandemic, but we’ve definitely improved,” Vitti said. “If we look at our literacy data, you can see that 75% of schools improved at or above grade level performance the year after the baseline year.”

District plans to renovate school facilities

Facilities were also on Vitti’s agenda. He brought up a 2018 review of school buildings, which found that 50% were considered deficient and only 7% were considered in good condition.

But DPSCD is planning to improve the state of its buildings with its $700 million facility master plan, which includes rebuilding, reopening, or demolishing certain schools. The plan calls for rebuilding the following schools: Cody High School, Paul Robeson/Malcolm X Academy, Pershing High School, Carstens Academy, and Phoenix, a building that closed in 2016. Meanwhile, a handful of school buildings, including Ann Arbor Trail, Sampson Webber, and Clark, would close, but not immediately. The district would phase out enrollment in those schools, eliminating a grade each year until the buildings are empty.

Vitti showed a rendering of Pershing to give the audience a sneak peek of what to expect from the plan.

A rendering of the plan to rebuild Pershing High School in the Detroit school district was shared with the audience at a state of the schools event Wednesday.

“We love our advanced schools, we love our application schools, but we have to invest in our neighborhood high schools,” he said. “In building a new Pershing and Cody, we believe it keeps people in the city, they keep people in the public school system and there’s a legacy that has continued from previous years.”

Tramena O’Neil, a parent outreach coordinator at Southeastern High School, said the points that stood out to her during the address were improvements in student achievement and how parents, students, and school staff are working together to improve the district.

“DPSCD is a good district and if we continue to work together, it can be a great district,” she said. “If we can have more parental involvement, we wouldn’t have too many incidents in certain schools. For me, he (Vitti) is doing a fair job so far.”

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Many school district tax measures on November ballot would pay for teacher salaries

2023-11-02T21:54:53+00:00

Many of the more than a dozen tax measures Colorado school districts put on the ballot for the Nov. 7 election are intended to fund teacher and staff salary increases that officials say are urgently needed.

District leaders say they are facing budget crunches from various factors such as drops in enrollment and an end to federal COVID-relief funding. Some districts say they’re having a hard time hiring enough teachers and keeping them.

Alan Kaylor, superintendent of the Weld Re-8 school district in Fort Lupton, said his district started this school year with 18 vacancies out of about 210 certified teachers.

That’s more than in the past, he said.

“It used to be in special education, math, science, but it’s kind of across the board right now,” Kaylor said. “It’s hard to recruit teachers.”

School districts around the metro area have been raising salaries. In Westminster, the school district raised starting pay to $61,000 this year. According to the Colorado Education Association, 30 unions have won an 8% or higher raise this year. A few districts, including Aurora and Sheridan, have struggled to negotiate raises.

Weld Re-8 is asking voters to approve a $4 million mill levy override and a $70 million bond request. For at least the first year, the measures would not cost homeowners any more in property taxes. The bond issue would go to funding building upgrades, but the mill levy override would help raise the starting salary for teachers from $45,000 to $52,000.

Kaylor said that even though Re-8 is considered a rural district, with about 2,500 students, it borders larger urban districts including St. Vrain Valley School District, where the starting salary for teachers is $56,000. On top of that, he said, houses in the community are priced in the $500,000 range, similar to the metro areas.

“My teachers are locked out from that market,” Kaylor said. “We don’t have many multifamily units either. Those tend to be filled. Most of my teachers live out on that I-25 corridor. They drive right through St. Vrain to get here.”

Re-8 is growing in enrollment, one of few districts in the state that is. But Kaylor said other budget issues coming up are related to the end of COVID relief funding.

The relief money wasn’t used in his district to fund teacher salaries, but he did use it to pay for new support positions such as instructional coaches that may not have funding to continue next year.

Kaylor is also concerned about the upcoming cost of renewing licenses for online programs purchased during the pandemic that teachers still use and whether he’ll be able to find funding to maintain an online program the district still offers as an option for about 50 students who preferred the model.

In Englewood, another small district requesting a $4 million mill levy override, the district has had to spend down reserves, or savings, in order to increase salaries for teachers over the past few years.

The Englewood district, south of Denver, has had a drop of more than 11% in enrollment in the last five years.

If the measure is approved, the district already negotiated an increase of 5% for teachers and a minimum increase of 7.5% for classified staff, both effective Jan. 1.

Englewood’s tax request would not increase property taxes for homeowners because the measure would simultaneously lower the taxes for the bond approved in 2016.

In Douglas County, the district is trying a second year in a row to ask voters for a mill levy tax measure. The $66 million mill levy override would pay for teacher raises. Last year, the same measure failed by less than 1% of the vote.

Superintendent Erin Kane said average salaries for teachers in the Douglas County school district are $19,000 less than in neighboring districts. It has meant more vacancies at the start of the school year.

At one elementary school, a teacher who took another job elsewhere over the summer was not able to be replaced in time for the school year to start. The school had to combine three second grade classrooms into two, with 33 students each.

“That’s the very real impact,” she said.

In talking to the community about the need for the measure this year, Kane said that voters understand that teachers deserve a raise, and that a teacher hired at $45,209 — the current starting salary — can’t afford living in Douglas County.

“It’s a shift in our community,” Kane said, of having more teachers commuting into the district for work.

But the challenge, she said, is helping voters understand how Colorado school districts are funded.

“Our community is under the impression that since their local property taxes are going up that their schools would be benefiting from that,” Kane said. “Higher local property taxes just means less money from the state.”

Colorado runs a formula that dictates how much money each district should have per student. The money comes first from local property taxes, and then the state fills in the gap, to get the funding to what the formula says it should be. Districts get more money than the formula says they should only when voters approve local tax measures that are on top of the regular property taxes.

In Douglas County, Kane tells voters the district is getting $2,000 less per student than neighboring districts because of those local measures, meaning the salaries she can offer are less competitive.

“I would have told you last year it was urgent,” Kane said. “This year it’s a crisis.”

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 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.

Detroit student who fought for ‘right to literacy’ is still in the fight

2023-10-31T13:15:02+00:00

For four years, Jamarria Hall rode the city bus 13 miles from his home on the west side of Detroit to Osborn High School on the east side, a nearly two-hour trip along Seven Mile Road.

He spent the time looking out the window and meditating on the state of his hometown, as the bus passed block after block of dilapidated houses and shuttered buildings.

Hall recalls the bus rides and his time at Osborn, one of the city’s lowest-performing schools, as “a waste of time.” Students were forced to learn in buildings in bad condition, with poorly qualified teachers and a shortage of textbooks. He remembers often seeing rodents crawling on the floor and having to teach class himself when regular teachers were absent.

His high school years would not be a waste, though. At age 16, Hall became the lead student plaintiff in a class action lawsuit against the state of Michigan, Gary B. v. Snyder, claiming that state officials had failed to provide Detroit students a basic reading education when they oversaw the Detroit school district between 2009 and 2016 under emergency management.

“Joining the lawsuit really gave me an outlet to be able to kind of tell our story,” Hall told Chalkbeat in an interview. “It felt like we had no control over the conditions and ecosystem that we were living in.”

A 2020 settlement in the so-called right-to-literacy, or “right to read” case called for the creation of two Detroit-based education task forces and earmarked $94 million in state money for the Detroit Public Schools Community District to support evidence-based literacy interventions.

Now, after years of delays, that money is finally in the school aid budget and headed to Detroit. And the two task forces have invited the community to weigh in on how best to spend it to improve reading education in the city.

The task remains huge: Reading scores among Detroit students have ranked among the lowest in the nation over the past decade and a half. In fourth- and eighth-grade reading, the Detroit district’s test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress rank near the bottom statewide and nationwide.

Hall, now 23 years old, is a public speaker and social entrepreneur focusing on education activism. And he remains connected to the effort he helped start. Most recently, he’s participated in those task force meetings about where the lawsuit money should go.

Hall spoke to Chalkbeat about how he got involved in the lawsuit, his vision for the future of Detroit education, and how he would like to see the settlement funds spent.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Before you joined the lawsuit, how did you feel about attending school?

By the time I got to Osborn, school was easy. Like too easy. We never got homework. The classwork we were doing was work that I had done in prior years.

Detroit right to read lead plaintiff Jamarria Hall, stands beside Osborn High School college advisor Andrea Jackson and attorneys for the lawsuit in 2016.

I only attended school and thrived academically because I knew I had to for sports. I knew if I wanted to be the best athlete, I had to be the best student-athlete. I really used those four years of high school to train and build a resume academically and athletically so that I could get into a Division I school, hopefully on a scholarship.

That was my objective, but to be honest, I felt like school was a waste of time. If I didn’t have basketball practice, most of the time, I wouldn’t go to school. Because it was like, I know the work. I can make it up in a snap of a finger. I know I’m not missing anything academically. And then the other thing that I’m truly passionate about — basketball — is not going on today. So why am I getting on the bus for an hour and 45 minutes to go to school?

Was there any other school you could have attended? Or was Osborn the only option?

If I wanted to go to the top schools, I could have.

I went to a charter middle school. So our feeder schools were (examination high schools) Cass Tech, Renaissance, and King. All of my classmates from middle school, that’s where they went. It was more an athletic choice (for me) than an academic choice.

What was going on in your life at that moment when you were chosen to be a plaintiff? What changed for you once you were a part of the lawsuit?

I bounced around to a couple of different states with different family members throughout middle school, so now in high school having stability, I was still kind of unstable.

Even though I had stability, I didn’t want to lean on it, because I wasn’t comfortable with it. And that wasn’t just in my home, or my family. It was just me as a young adult trying to find myself as a young man. I found the lawsuit, or it found me.

James Baldwin has an amazing quote. He says: “As one begins to become conscious, one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”

Being able to connect with (attorney Mark Rosenbaum) and being able to just tell my perspective on the educational atmosphere at that time … was great. Just talking to somebody who also understood that these things were wrong, sharing that made me feel heard and seen.

Why did you think the lawsuit was so important at the time?

It was presented to me that we were going to go after a minimum requirement for quality education as a constitutional right. That sounded amazing, and for me, it was really simple. We obligate children to go to schools, but we don’t obligate schools to teach.

But to be honest, I never thought past what was that minimum requirement. So that’s when the conversation started to happen about what would that look like. And that’s how it came up to be reading.

I didn’t care too much about reading. I could read, but I never thought too much of it until it kept being brought up within the lawsuit, and then I started to see the relevance of it.

If you can’t read, then you can’t do simple things such as fill out a job application, vote or be a part of the democratic process. This plays a part in unemployment. This played a part in society’s impacts and problems that were going on at that time.

What is motivating you to stay involved in this cause?

Figuring out the solution. What are we going to do to make sure that this doesn’t happen again? That’s the most important part because we have seen a lot of lawsuits where those same issues play out in different facets, because the people who were defendants in the case are now the same people who provide solutions for the community.

I want to change education. If you look at the last century, education has not changed at all. The classrooms, the way we teach, the building foundations, the one teacher to 30 students in a class — all these things have not changed at all. Our students are actually worse off than our ancestors were when they were segregated. In the age of artificial intelligence, our students are nowhere near as proficient as we need to be.

What role do you think students should play in deciding how the district spends the settlement money?

This class action lawsuit wasn’t just for current students. It was for the students before us. And the students after that.

They need to at least be at the table. I attended four of the six task force community meetings, and the other two, I had representatives go in a team. There were no students.

We have to be a part of the conversation, and we have to understand the conversation that we’re being a part of. A lot of people still don’t even understand the importance of the lawsuit, what happened, and what we were fighting for.

We have to focus on young people and find out how to get them engaged and involved in their own education. Some of that money should go to employ these students, especially when we have teacher deficits and teacher shortages. We need to use this as a precedent to create a student-to-teacher pipeline that is sustainable.

There’s a program I like called the Young People’s Project, where students are paid as organizers within their community, teaching math to younger students. We know a lot of students have the option between providing for their families or going to school. A program like that would bring both of those options together.

How prepared did you feel for college? What was that feeling like when you were in your first college seminar? What have you struggled with in college?

I definitely felt prepared — until I got there. “If I have the highest SAT score in my school, I’m second in my class, if I’m going and not being proficient, then nobody is” was kind of the mindset that I had within my mind.

I wound up going to a community college and taking remedial classes. So I was thinking, “If I went to university, how far would I have been behind if I’m already behind at a community college?”

It was really just a huge reality shock. I always felt like, “OK, after I get out of Osborn, I know I can turn it back on.” But when a professor asked me for a 500-word essay, it made me realize that in the past four years, I hadn’t even written anything remotely close to that. I haven’t had to work that hard or actually challenge my mind at that point.

How do you feel about your education journey now, versus when you were experiencing those initial challenges with community college?

I think it was all for a reason. Times have changed drastically to where we no longer feel like we only can get an education in school. There are so many different outlets out there now to not only get certified education, but to get experience. And experience is one of the best forms of education, especially for someone such as myself, and someone from poverty.

My world has been opened up from the Algebra Project, from Earn Your Leisure, from multiple connections to different organizations.

Jamarria Hall. “We obligate children to go to schools,” says the 23-year-old social entrepreneur, “but we don’t obligate schools to teach.”

I’m really trying to set a precedent for young people, because a lot of young people when they see me feel like I have it all figured out. But I’m still very connected and close-rooted to the grassroots. I don’t have a doctorate. I don’t have a bachelor’s degree. I don’t even have an associate’s degree. But I have qualifications that can get me there.

So understanding and letting them know that there isn’t one route to success, that was important for me, because I used to believe that the only way I was going to be successful was if I took this certain specific route, because that’s how it was taught to me my whole life.

You mentioned culturally relevant curriculums. What do you think could actually work for Detroit students that hasn’t been tried before? What do you think culturally responsive lessons would look like and mean for students here?

It would be a very unique and different approach. A lot of our students know about things that they shouldn’t know about but don’t know about things that they should know about. So when we say those students know about all the lyrics to rap songs, but can’t read a book, or can’t read on grade level, how can I bring that rap song into the classroom to help this student be or get more proficient on their grade level?

Even if that means letting them do a performance, create lyrics, or do some type of engagement. Maybe even a process where they act as producers, or they are directors. So now these students are getting experience being judges and hosts, doing these different things that they are having fun with, but they all have a script that they have to read. Now this is a component where they’re actually learning but they’re having fun at the same time.

What is your message to the next generation of student activists?

You already have the power. Power is not something that you obtain solely through education. It’s once you understand who you are and what you are.

I always tell them: You are the future, but you are also the present. So don’t just think you can lollygag around. Always think about, how can I make a change? How can I be productive? How can I make an advancement for society, not only for myself and my family but for others also?

I push a lot of social entrepreneurship on students because a lot of young people are becoming entrepreneurs, but they aren’t familiar with social entrepreneurship. So even students who often do nonprofit work, just letting them know that being woke doesn’t mean being broke. So make sure that you’ve taken care of yourself or your family, and making the most of the knowledge that you already have by just being yourself — a young person.

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

How Michigan teacher evaluations would change under proposed reforms

2023-10-30T10:30:00+00:00

Proposed legislation in Michigan that would eliminate student test scores as a factor in teacher evaluations would represent a victory for teachers if it passes, and a turnabout in an education reform effort that began nearly a decade ago.

Current state law requires that student scores on standardized tests count for 40% of a teacher’s performance rating. Under two proposed bills that passed the Senate last week, that requirement would go away, and the districts would be able to use their own criteria for evaluating teachers, such as classroom observations, samples of student work, rubrics, and lesson plans.

The bills would also de-emphasize evaluations as a factor in districts’ decisions to fire or demote teachers or deny them tenure. But they would require districts to take action against teachers who don’t improve after repeated interventions.

The House Education Committee is expected to take up the bills on Tuesday.

Here’s some background on the current law, and highlights of the new proposals:

Michigan law followed a push for more accountability

Michigan’s law on test scores and evaluations grew out of a push for greater accountability in education that began in the 2000s. Some advocacy groups theorized that more rigorous reviews would generate detailed feedback that could be used to improve teachers’ performance.

In 2009, under the Obama administration, the federal government offered money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to states that made policy changes, including revamping teacher evaluations to include test scores.

In response, Michigan passed a law in 2015 requiring that teacher evaluations be 25% based on student growth, as measured by changes in test scores from one year to the next. The requirement went up to 40% at the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Skepticism of test-based evaluations has grown

Teachers have long argued that growth in test scores is an unfair way to measure their job performance, because it compares the performance of two different cohorts of students.

And in recent years, many education experts and policy analysts have become more vocal in questioning the changes that were made in the 2010s.

By 2019, nine states had stopped requiring that test scores be considered in teacher evaluations. Many other states have considered making the same change.

Proponents of returning to the old evaluation method say there is no evidence to suggest the current system benefits students, and that tying ratings to test scores contributes to burnout amid persistent teacher shortages.

Critics are concerned that de-emphasizing student test scores could lower standards for teachers while students are still struggling to recover from pandemic learning loss and need high-quality instruction.

How the proposals would change teacher evaluations

The bills proposed in Michigan would be a return to the system that was used before 2015. Districts would have more power to set their own standards to decide how and when teachers are evaluated.

But the proposals would still require districts to set up a common rating system, and they prescribe some consequences for teachers who don’t measure up.

School districts would have to start using teacher and administrator rating systems by July 1, 2024, that include four possible ratings: “highly effective,” “effective,” “minimally effective,” and “ineffective.” After that, districts would have to add “developing” and “needing support” ratings as well.

Teachers rated “needing support” would get individualized development plans from their districts to improve their performance within 180 days.

Districts would not be allowed to fire, deny tenure to, or withhold full certification from teachers rated “ineffective.” But they would be required to terminate teachers or administrators who are rated “needing support” three years in a row. Those who receive that rating could request reviews of their evaluations.

Staff who conduct evaluations would have to take “rater reliability training” from their districts.

A Senate analysis of the proposals said local districts might face some new costs to update teacher and school administrator evaluations and to incorporate collective bargaining agreements as part of that process.

On the other hand, it says, schools could save money by not having to calculate testing data, and by evaluating consistently effective teachers less often.

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

Berthoud teacher named Colorado’s 2024 Teacher of the Year

2023-10-28T00:11:45+00:00

Growing up, Jessica May saw her mother nurture many foster children over the years — 189 to be exact.

“I got to see her be a mother and a voice for those who didn’t have a voice,” she said.

May sought to continue that legacy by raising her own voice on behalf of children as a teacher at the front of the classroom.

“This is my way of doing it,” she said on Friday afternoon after being named Colorado’s 2024 Teacher of the Year in a ceremony at Turner Middle School in Berthoud.

After speeches in the gym by state and district officials and the promise of an ice cream party for the school, a beaming May headed toward the bleachers where she was deluged by students offering congratulatory hugs.

The family and consumer science teacher was one of seven finalists for the award, which is given annually by the Colorado Department of Education and other sponsors. She’ll spend the next year serving as an ambassador of sorts for the state’s teachers and will join the education commissioner’s Teacher Cabinet, a state advisory panel of educators. She’ll also represent Colorado in the National Teacher of the Year competition, visit the White House, and participate in NASA space camp.

May, who last year taught at Conrad Ball Middle School in Loveland, is in her 21st year teaching middle-schoolers in the Thompson school district. It’s an age group she appreciates. They still like hugs, want stickers, and enjoy playing Twister, but they’re also finding their way to the next stage of life, she said.

“Middle school is unique because they’re stuck between being elementary little kids and young adults in high school,” she said. “And I’m trying to help them find their voice.”

May, who has four children of her own, also helps students with life skills that run the gamut from cooking and couponing to personal finance and relationships.

“Everything that I do, if I can’t hook it to real world relevance, I don’t teach it,” she said.

Take her rice baby assignment, for example. Students learn about child development (and the challenges of parenting) by using panty hose, five pounds of rice, and a styrofoam head to fabricate a “baby” that will go everywhere with them for two weeks.

In addition to imparting real-life lessons on students, several speakers at Friday’s awards ceremony noted May’s enthusiasm and her ability to connect with kids.

“You are emblematic of excellence here in our school district,” Thompson Superintendent Marc Shaffer told May. “I couldn’t be more proud of you.”

During a short speech, May, who grew up in the northern Colorado district, described herself as “feisty” and pledged to fight for teachers’ needs in her role as teacher of the year. She also told students she loved them.

“You give us the greatest job on the planet,” she said. “Life is not about money. It is about going for your passion and knowing it in every part of your body.”

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

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

2023-10-27T19:24:21+00:00

An hour before dismissal on a recent Friday afternoon, eight Brighton Park Elementary School students huddled in a classroom with Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English language learners.

They were there for a voluntary, biweekly support group run by Moorhouse and Stephanie Carrillo, a school counselor, for students grappling with the upheaval of immigration and the adjustment to a new country, new city, and new school.

She asked the children — a mix of sixth through eighth graders who had recently arrived in Chicago as part of an influx of migrant families — to share the best and worst part of their week.

One boy said the best thing was that his family had moved to a new house. Another child looked up, her hair slightly covering her face. She shrugged her shoulders and struggled to come up with a worst moment.

That’s OK, Moorhouse said in Spanish, she doesn’t have to have a low point.

The girl then added, “No mejor,” meaning there was no high point either. After a moment of silence, the whole group burst into laughter.

These students, who arrived in Chicago between last year and this year, are among the more than 20,000 newly arrived migrants in Chicago since last August, with many fleeing from Central, South American and African countries experiencing political and economic turmoil, according to city officials.

Chicago Public Schools does not track immigration status and has not shared how many migrant students have enrolled in schools. But the district has pointed to clues of an increase, including 7,800 more English learners enrolled this school year, compared to an annual average increase of 3,000 such students.

As of mid-September, 2,250 migrant children were housed in the city’s shelters, according to records from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications that were obtained by Chalkbeat.

Educators have raised concerns that many Chicago schools don’t have the resources, such as staff, to provide new migrants with the right language instruction, recently pleading with the state to send more help.

But there are also questions about whether newcomers have the social-emotional support they need at school. These students have potentially endured dangerous journeys to the United States, on top of the stress of leaving their homes behind for shelters or other temporary living arrangements in a foreign place.

That latter concern led Moorhouse to launch the support group at Brighton Park last year after she met a migrant student who was showing signs of trauma. The student, whom Moorhouse met in January, didn’t want to be in school and sometimes, the student’s body would shake uncontrollably, she said.

At one of the sessions Moorhouse held, the student shared a personal story about his journey to the United States. Afterward, Moorhouse recalled, the student said: “My chest isn’t hurting. I can breathe.” Moorhouse felt it was a sign of healing.

In some ways, Brighton Park is well-positioned to host this support group. As a community school, it partners with a nonprofit organization to provide wraparound services for its students. Carrillo, the school counselor who helps Moorhouse with the support group, works with the school on behalf of its partner nonprofit, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Brighton Park Elementary’s community schools funding also helped to pay for the training on the model that the support group is based on, according to Cecilia Mendoza, the school’s assistant principal.

The model is known as STRONG, or Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, which focuses on teaching children how to understand and cope with their stress before they’re invited to share more personal details about their journey to the United States, if they choose.

It’s unclear how many schools have specific support groups for migrant students like the one at Brighton Park. About $35 million of the district’s budget this year was allocated for social-emotional curriculum, behavioral health supports for students, and additional social workers and counselors, according to a district spokesperson.

This year, Moorhouse and Carrillo are starting with the basics.

On that recent Friday afternoon, in the classroom where Moorhouse gathered with eight of her students, bright orange and blue strips of paper on the dry erase board described concepts of melting and freezing in English and Spanish: “Que le pasa al chocolate que se deja al sol?” (What happens to chocolate left in the sun?).

A plastic cupboard sat against the wall, filled with shoes, socks, and clothing donations Moorhouse had collected through her Amazon Wishlist. Sheets of paper taped to the wall have words of affirmation in both languages: “Tus emociones son validas.” (Your feelings are valid.)

A classroom for English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School has brightly colored phrases translated in English and Spanish on the dry erase board.

After their icebreaker, Moorhouse passed around crayons and a worksheet with the outline of a human body. She explained that stress can cause physical pain and asked her students to color in the part of their bodies that hurt when they are stressed.

“Entonces para mi, cuando yo estoy estresado, mi estómago me duele,” she told the students, explaining that her stomach hurts when she’s stressed.

One girl, wearing a pair of sneakers donated through the Amazon wishlist, used a green crayon to fill in the top of the head. She colored the shoulders with a green-yellow.

When Moorhouse asked students to share, one boy said stress gives him a headache, and then he feels like throwing up. A low “hmm” spread through the group, as if others recognized the boy’s feeling.

At 2:35 p.m., about halfway through the session, the students received a new worksheet. This one had a large triangle on it, and each point represented something different: pensamientos, sentimientos, y acciones. Thoughts, emotions, and actions. Moorhouse wanted the students to reflect on how a thought may lead to a feeling, which ultimately leads to an action.

After a couple minutes jotting down their thoughts, the students shared their responses. One boy smiled as he described an example: When he’s talking to other students and they suddenly begin speaking in English, he feels as if he’s been removed from the conversation.

“How does that make you feel?” Moorhouse asked him in Spanish.

“Bad,” he replied.

“What’s your action?” Moorhouse responded.

“I walk away,” he said.

That day, Mendoza, the assistant principal, was peeking in.

“I don’t think students or people in general sometimes realize the effect that has on others who only speak one language,” Mendoza said later. “So that really stuck with me, and I thought about how we could have that conversation, perhaps, with the students … because they might not be aware that they’re doing that.”

Moorhouse then presented a challenge for the students: How can they change their thinking about a situation, in order to elicit better action? One boy gave the example of taking a hard math test that he doesn’t know the answers to, so instead, he asks to go to the bathroom.

He was stumped when Moorhouse asked him to think of a better action. She opened the floor to the group, but no one came up with an answer good enough for Moorhouse. When she pressed them to think harder, they hit on a solution: He could ask the teacher for help — for understanding the exam, or perhaps even asking to take it another day.

With about 15 minutes left, Moorhouse and Carillo passed around stress balls shaped like bee hives. They asked the students to squeeze hard and pretend that they were squeezing out the juice.

A couple of kids laughed as they squeezed their fists and then released pressure.

Around 2:55 p.m. Moorhouse handed out a blank calendar worksheet. For the following week, students would be expected to log how they’ve practiced relaxation strategies, such as grabbing an ice pack from the nurse or using a stress ball, when feeling stressed. One student shared that drawing helps.

It was time for dismissal. The students didn’t run out the door. They stayed back to chat with each other. A few grabbed extra bags of Skinny Pop.

As the weeks go on, Moorhouse and Carrillo will meet individually with each student to assess whether they want to talk more about their personal experiences of coming to the U.S. and what would be appropriate to share with the other students.

In those conversations, students may show signs of needing more individual counseling provided by the school, such as bursting into tears while recounting a story, Carrillo said.

Some students take a while to open up, so it’s unclear how much they’ll participate going forward, Moorhouse said. One of those quieter students is the child who had shared that there was no highlight or lowlight of her week. During the hourlong session, this student gradually opened up a little more.

And when most of the other children left at the end of the day, that student stayed behind. She wanted to talk some more one-on-one with Moorhouse.

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

Perry Township teachers will receive performance stipends through new grant funding

2023-10-27T16:07:59+00:00

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Perry Township schools will receive over $6 million in federal grant funding over three years to help hire and retain teachers, and to support efforts to improve literacy.

It’s the only district in Indiana and one of 29 nationwide to receive a Teacher and School Leader (TSL) grant from the U.S. Department of Education this year. The funds are aimed at increasing teacher compensation, retention, and diversity, according to the department, in part by helping districts create performance-based compensation models.

The bulk of the total funding — over $5 million — will go to performance-based pay and stipends for Perry teachers, while the remainder will fund two more literacy coaches at the district. The district will receive $2.5 million from the TSL grant in fiscal 2023.

Under the grant, the district will develop a formula to award teachers these bonuses. For every teacher, $1,000 will go into a fund, which will then be distributed according to teacher effectiveness, officials said. The district hopes to retain its master teachers, who model teaching and lead professional development, with the bonuses.

While the district already employs a literacy coach for elementary school students, one of the new coaches will focus on training teachers on reading skills for older students, officials said. Perry, which has a large population of English learner and immigrant students, has recently seen more new immigrant students enroll who can’t read fluently in English or another language, Southport High School principal Amy Boone said at a Thursday press conference.

As Indiana pushes to implement new literacy strategies tied to the science of reading, Perry officials said they hope to adapt some of those strategies to older students as well. In its grant application, the district said it hopes to grow overall student achievement in math and literacy by three percentage points per year, and narrow achievement gaps among Black and Hispanic students by 10%.

Another new coach will focus on literacy data for all students.

“It’s difficult for them to be successful if they lack the foundational ability to interact with the text,” said Jeff Spencer, the district’s assistant superintendent for K-12 services.

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

Colorado loan forgiveness program for teachers accepting applications through Oct. 31

2023-10-27T00:41:35+00:00

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Colorado teachers have a few more days to apply to the state’s temporary student-loan forgiveness program for educators, after the higher education department extended the deadline.

The program, in its second year, taps federal pandemic relief money to provide newer educators in the state with $5,000 to help reduce their student loan balances. The new application deadline is Oct. 31.

Lawmakers intended to hand out about 2,000 such awards. But the state has rejected more than half of all applicants, and so far only about 1,200 have received the aid.

Part of the problem, some educators say, is confusion between two Colorado loan forgiveness programs for educators. The one funded through federal pandemic relief money is for educators who started working after the 2019-20 school year. Most of the rejected applicants had been in the profession longer, and some thought they were applying for a similar but separate program approved in 2019 that’s for teachers at all levels of experience.

Nonetheless, the large number of applications points to wide demand for debt relief.

The newer loan forgiveness program was part of a $52 million package of measures funded by federal relief money to help Colorado address teacher shortages. It also included programs that provide aid for educators to pay for certification tests and stipends for student teachers.

Colorado lawmakers set aside $10 million for the loan forgiveness plan through December 2024. So far the Colorado Department of Higher Education has distributed about $6.25 million of that and expects to spend the rest in the latest round. Educators can apply for an award even if they previously received money.

Teachers have had issues navigating the program, and some educators haven’t completely filled out the required paperwork, according to department spokeswoman Megan McDermott.

“We believe that teachers and special service providers are busy in their classrooms and may not have the time to complete the paperwork,” said McDermott. “Also, there is confusion between the federal programs and the state of Colorado programs, which is confusing to educators determining which programs are available.”

In the first year, the pandemic-era program served only rural teachers or those in hard-to-recruit fields, such as math or special education, who were in their first few years on the job.

That year, 359 educators received $5,000 awards, according to the higher education department. Of that group, the state has data on 281 applicants. They represented 52 districts and were mostly teachers in their first two years on the job. Most had less than $51,000 in total debt.

To reach more teachers, lawmakers broadened eligibility this year by removing the stipulation that teachers must be from rural districts or teach in hard-to-recruit subjects. The updates also increased the income limits.

After that change, the state gave aid to 884 more applicants.

Many more — over 2,250 applicants — have had their applications rejected.

Sarabeth Smith, a 12-year educator in East Grand School District, said she didn’t realize she had applied for the program for newer educators. Both programs use the same online form.

She said the directions weren’t clear, and she didn’t get a reason for her rejection the first time she applied.

More educators need help, she said, and not just those within their first few years.

Smith said many educators in their seventh or eighth year of teaching have a hard time staying in the field because of financial constraints. She said she works multiple jobs and is paying off loans for her master’s degree.

She used a federal loan forgiveness program for teachers to help pay off her bachelor’s degree loans and is hoping for more help.

“Any help towards the professional is just always going to make it a little easier to keep teachers and attract new teachers,” she said. “We know these shortages are not getting any better.”

The state’s other loan forgiveness program, which began before the pandemic, was slated to last five years and help rural teachers and those who specialize in hard-to-fill subjects. It’s open to educators of all levels.

Lawmakers were forced to put that program on hold because of budget shortfalls. The program will distribute money in 2024 to this year’s applicants, according to the higher education department.

Instructions on the top of the current application form say: “The Original rural educator application is closed at this time. You can apply for the Temporary Educator program.” But they don’t specify that the temporary program is only for newer teachers.

The program for new teachers has received about 600 applications in the latest round, the state said when it extended the deadline. This may be the last application period, or there could be one more round in the spring, the higher education department said.

McDermott reminded applicants to answer all questions and to submit required items such as a copy of their teaching license, if applicable, and employment verification.

Also, applicants must include their student loan information for the state to be able to make the payments, she said.

Despite the confusion, the program has helped, said Frank Reeves, who retired as East Grand’s superintendent last year and is the director of operations and strategic partnerships of the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance.

Districts like East Grand that are in resort areas have less trouble recruiting teachers, he said. But housing is expensive, and teachers need help, especially with student loan payments that cut into their expendable income, he said.

“It’s been more incentive to keep people, not really attract,” Reeves said.

Meanwhile, research shows the longstanding federal loan forgiveness program for educators isn’t succeeding at helping districts keep teachers and attract new ones.

That program, established in 1998, forgives $5,000 of debt for teachers, and possibly more for teachers in certain subjects. But a study released this summer found that attrition patterns among participants were the same as for those who didn’t get loan forgiveness.

The program also ran into issues getting applicants to properly fill out the forms, and researchers recommended streamlining the process.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

How running track led this Bronx middle school teacher and coach full circle

2023-10-25T10:00:00+00:00

Running track changed the course of Elías Cruz’s life.

At his Bronx middle school, Cruz joined a track team started by his English teacher. Now a Bronx middle school English teacher himself, Cruz started a running team for his students in the fall of 2021.

He credits his middle school English teacher, Shawanda Weems, who started a track team at P.S./M.S. 15 through the Rising New York Road Runners’ free youth program. Besides its robust youth programming and races that Cruz’s students are training for, the New York Road Runners is renowned for hosting the TCS New York City Marathon; this year, the marathon is scheduled for Nov. 5.

Cruz recounted how he and his friends wanted to become fast runners, so they joined the running group immediately.

“Looking back on that one decision, it changed my life in countless ways,” Cruz said.

Cruz started teaching six years ago at New School for Leadership and the Arts, near where he grew up in University Heights. He became an English teacher, like his first coach, Weems, who continues to offer him mentorship and advice.

Cruz brought the Rising New York Road Runners program to his students about two years ago, when school buildings reopened to all students after the majority of New York City children learned remotely for more than a year.

Worried how the students would transition back to being in person after prolonged isolation, he thought track could be as transformative to his middle schoolers as it was for him.

“The need to develop their social-emotional skills, teamwork, and help them improve their physical and mental health was at the forefront of my thoughts,” he said. “It triggered the memory of middle school track with Ms. Weems.”

As a student on the track team, he bonded with friends outside of the classroom. They began to think about their health and what they were eating, and they formed “lifelong memories” at their track meets, Cruz recounted. His middle school teammates, Cris, Jose, and James, continue to be a “huge” part of his life.

“Till this day,” Cruz said, “we still speak of the many races at Central Park, Washington Heights, the dreaded hills of Van Cortlandt Park, the meets at Icahn, and the bus rides back to school after a day running.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

It’s amazing to hear that you still live and teach in the neighborhood where you grew up. How and when did you decide to become a teacher?

During my high school years, my track team would practice Monday through Thursday, and I would write down all our workouts, drills, stretches, and my own personal times in a little notebook. Every Friday I would go back to my middle school and help the younger runners — help them improve with what I learned. I would demonstrate to them how to do new drills, how to improve their form on old drills, and help them improve on their own individual events they wanted to run at their track meets.

Little did I know, I was already forming a culture of teaching within myself.

What’s your favorite lesson to teach and why, whether in the classroom or the field?

During our track practices, I love when we do our buddy runs. For this activity, the upperclassmen must find a buddy in the sixth or seventh grade and run with them for the practice. You can actively see the upperclassmen not only mentor the younger runners but also teach them all the skills I have taught them over years.

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your school?

Our school is located in the northwest section of the Bronx. We are able to go outside for runs, have practices in local parks, and walk to some of our track meets at Van Cortlandt Park. Even with all these great benefits, we cannot escape the economic perils that hold back many Bronxites.

Our first year with the Rising New York Road Runner program, we began with a core of around 15 students. The following year, 2022-2023, our numbers ballooned to 40 or so students. After our first month of practice, it was immediately clear that we had a nutrition and running attire issue.

With so many of our student-athletes living severely under the poverty line, it was almost impossible for all of them to go out and purchase running sneakers, something they drastically needed. I still remember one of our returning runners confessing to us that he had to stop running because his feet were in too much pain for him to keep on going any longer.

Thankfully, with the partnership of the New York Road Runners, we were able to gift to our runners and many from our school student population brand new New Balance running sneakers.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, and how have you put it into practice?

The best advice I’ve ever had is to make anything you do in the classroom or in practice engaging. A student who can’t wait to accomplish a goal is a student who has bought into your program and philosophy.

Have you ever run the NYC marathon?

Next year will be my first-ever marathon. I took a break from running to focus on teaching and just recently began running again. Slowly ramping up my mileage in hopes that in 2024, I cross the finish line of the New York City Marathon.

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

NYC eyes middle and high school literacy overhaul. It’s asking families to weigh in.

2023-10-19T21:42:25+00:00

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On the heels of a sweeping mandate to overhaul elementary school reading programs, New York City officials now have their eyes on middle and high school — and they’re asking families to weigh in.

The city’s Education Department is launching focus groups for parents and students this month with the goal of “evaluating ELA curriculum for grades 6 to 12,” according to a notice sent to parent leaders.

The online focus groups, which will take place on Oct. 25 and 30, are the latest sign that city officials are interested in standardizing curriculums at the middle and high school level even though they have not announced concrete plans and appear to be keeping the public engagement process fairly quiet.

Education Department officials declined to answer questions about the sessions. After Chalkbeat inquired about the online registration form — which initially included a list of possible curriculums under consideration — those names were removed.

“We’ll delve into the ELA curriculum options under consideration,” the notice initially stated. The post indicated that families would have a chance to discuss curriculum options, review materials, and provide feedback. But that language was also removed and a department spokesperson did not explain why.

New York City principals have long had wide leeway to select their own curriculums. Schools Chancellor David Banks is pushing against that approach, concerned that it can lead to inconsistency in the quality of instructional materials educators use in their classrooms.

In Banks’ “State of Our Schools” speech last month, he said the department “will announce new approaches to instruction across all our core subject areas, in all grade levels, just as we have for early literacy” — though he indicated the process will take years.

Some high school superintendents have already begun mandating specific reading programs, though there is no centralized directive for them to do so. The city has also begun rolling out a standardized algebra curriculum at a subset of high schools.

One education department official familiar with the city’s literacy efforts said budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams could complicate the Education Department’s efforts to swiftly move forward with broader curriculum changes beyond elementary school.

“It costs a good amount of money to add curriculum to schools across the board,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The department “probably doesn’t want to promise that … and then not be able to do it.”

Creating focus groups for middle and high school families represents a shift from the Education Department’s strategy for choosing elementary school reading curriculums. That ambitious change, which began in about half of districts this year and will reach all districts next year, involved little input from the public. (An Education Department spokesperson did not say whether there will be similar input sessions for middle and high school educators and school leaders.)

Susan Neuman, a New York University literacy expert and former federal education official, said it’s a “promising trend” that the city is considering strengthening schools’ curriculum choices at the middle and high school level.

“We’ve ignored them completely,” she said.

But Neuman also expressed concern about whether the Education Department would take input from focus groups seriously. The city did not solicit input on the mandated elementary school curriculums from its own Literacy Advisory Council, composed of outside experts and advocates, according to multiple participants.

“There was really a good deal of frustration on that,” said Neuman, a member of the council.

Dannielle Darbee, principal of the Brooklyn Academy of Global Finance, said a more standardized curriculum could have benefits at the high school level, exposing students to rigorous texts consistently and ensuring teachers have more free time for other activities.

“Part of me welcomes the change because teachers spend a lot of time trying to build curriculum and tailor curriculum,” Darbee said.

Still, she said any curriculum mandate should include a long runway for training on the new materials. And, more importantly, she hopes high school teachers receive training to reach students who arrive significantly behind in their reading skills.

“High school teachers are not really trained at all to teach reading or assess reading levels,” Darbee said, “which brings me to the concern: What would professional development for high school teachers look like?”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 12’s first newcomer center offers students support and a path to graduation

2023-10-19T19:04:03+00:00

Leer en español.

About 23 students from mixed grades were taking a math quiz on exponents at the newcomer center at Thornton High School one recent Friday afternoon.

The class was buzzing. Students were helping each other.

“If we’re not sure, it’s OK,” teacher Adria Padilla Chavez assured her students. “We go back and relearn.” Then she repeated her instructions in Spanish.

Padilla Chavez and other staffers at the newcomer center work to help students who are new to the country adjust to life in an American high school. As the program grows, students are gaining much more than English lessons. They’re making friends from around the world, engaging in their learning, and getting on a path to graduation. It’s helping them dream of futures they might not have imagined before.

“We like to welcome our students into a community where they feel like they belong,” said Frida Rodriguez, a youth and family advocate at the center. “It’s so important to have a place where you know you belong. They connect with staff that provide them a sense of help and support and love. Truly feeling loved is really important.”

Seventeen-year-old Joan Madrigal Delgado has been a student at the newcomer center for a month, his first experience in a U.S. school. He already feels his life changing.

He’s impressed by how teachers help him, and ask him to think and participate in discussions.

“I really didn’t have any possibilities in my country,” said Madrigal Delgado, who came from Cuba. “It feels good. Now I aspire to everything.”

He’s starting to think about college and considering a career as a veterinarian.

The newcomer center, the first in Adams 12 Five Star Schools, opened in August with 30 students. Now, a couple months into the school year, the center has more than 90 students, with new students enrolling every week and families spreading the word in the community.

The students come from many countries, but one of the main drivers for the development of the center was the influx of refugees arriving from Afghanistan around two years ago. Many live in the Thornton area around the high school.

Adams 12 was one of four school districts to receive a grant from the Rose Community Foundation this year to help support education for newcomers, particularly from Afghanistan.

The foundation worked with the Colorado Refugee Services Program — a unit within the Colorado Department of Human Services — to set up the Refugee Integration Fund, which gave away the grants.

The district used that money, along with some federal COVID relief money, and pulled $868,000 from the general fund to start up the center and pay for staff. The center has its own registrar, who calls families flagged to her by other schools and invites them to attend.

The district is offering transportation. About 45 of the newcomer center students get bused to the high school. And advocates like Rodriguez, who speaks Spanish, and Imran Khan, who speaks Pashai and Dari, also help families find resources in the community.

One unique feature of the center, says director Manissa Featherstone, is that it has its own counselor to help students map their way to graduation. She said many newcomer centers focus on teaching students English, and sometimes that means delaying classes that would earn them the credits required to get on track to graduate.

At the Thornton High program, students take all their core classes within the center, but are integrated into the mainstream high school for elective classes, or when they need a more advanced class. An instructional coach who works for the center helps customize the help for students.

“We’re able to provide those classes,” Featherstone said. “It just depends on the individual student’s needs and what schooling they’ve had.”

Newcomer Center teacher Aria Padilla Chavez, top center, works on a math quiz with her students.

Students also participate in extracurricular activities, clubs, and sports at the high school.

The program can accommodate up to 150 students, Featherstone said. It’s designed so that students spend a year there after they first arrive in the U.S., and then move on to regular high school programming.

Mohammad Ali Dost, 14, arrived from Afghanistan a couple of years ago, and was initially attending a middle school in the district without a dedicated newcomer program. Now at the center, he said he’s happy it’s helped him improve his English.

Dost said he tells other students: “If you want to improve your English quickly, come to the newcomer center.”

Dost also helps students who speak his home language of Pashai, the kind of peer-to-peer learning and interaction that staffers celebrate.

Featherstone said current students often volunteer to give new students tours and to help familiarize them with their new school.

“We see students jumping in and saying. ‘I’ll take them,’” Featherstone said. “They’re really excited when a student arrives.”

The advocates teach students the basics at first, like how to use a locker. Recently students also enjoyed learning about homecoming and spirit week.

“A lot of students had no idea what it was. What was the big deal about the football game?” Rodriguez said. “We showed them videos. They were just excited to have that experience. They kept saying, ‘I get to go to a dance.’”

Some students also say they’re impressed by the security of schools in the U.S., having come from other environments where they didn’t always feel safe.

“They’re very prepared,” Madrigal Delgado said.

Ismael Piscoya, 17, from Peru, said he’s amazed at the amount of technology available. All students in the district, not just the center, get a Chromebook.

It takes no time to look up information, Piscoya said.

Maria Fernanda Guillen, 18, from Mexico, said she feels empowered in her education.

“In Mexico, we didn’t have a voice in school,” Guillen said. Now thinking about a future in biotechnology, she’s excited about the start she’s getting at the center.

“It’s nice to have friends from other countries,” she said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Dyslexia support proposals are back in the Michigan Legislature

2023-10-18T15:17:20+00:00

Four bills introduced in the Michigan Legislature this month would aim to better identify and teach students with dyslexia, and jumpstart reform initiatives that have stalled in the past.

The new legislation comes with bipartisan support and follows years of failed efforts to better address dyslexia in school — most recently last year, when a package of bills calling for better screening of students for dyslexia languished in the Legislature.

Dyslexia is a hereditary reading disability that affects an estimated 5% to 20% of people. Students with dyslexia who go undiagnosed and don’t receive interventions are more likely to struggle in school, and studies show most people with the learning disability who get high-quality instruction early on will become average readers.

“We have to do something about it now,” said Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, a Republican from Jackson who introduced one of the bills. “When we know how to fix something and we’re not doing it, that’s on us, and our children shouldn’t have to suffer because we can’t get it together.”

The legislation includes two bills in the House and two in the Senate. All four were referred to their respective education committees. Here’s what they would do:

A bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, would tighten the state standards for the literacy screeners schools use to ensure that they can identify a student who has dyslexia or has difficulty decoding language. The bill also aims to provide evidence-based support early on for students who are identified as having a reading disability.
Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat who represents parts of Canton and Livonia, introduced a bill that would set standards for teacher education programs to ensure future educators have the tools to help students with dyslexia.
In the House, Rep. Carol Glanville, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, introduced legislation that would create a dyslexia resource guide and advisory committee in the Michigan Department of Education.
Schmaltz’ House bill would require school districts to have at least one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham, a multisensory teaching methodology that research suggests helps students with dyslexia.

Rep. Mike McFall, co-sponsor of Schmaltz’ bill, said the additional resources will give teachers “more tools to ensure positive student outcomes and educational growth.”

Lawmakers who back the bill say the measures would help students who have difficulty reading and processing language due to dyslexia. But some advocates disagree, citing Michigan’s restrictive parameters for determining whether schoolchildren are eligible for special education.

The percentage of students in the state identified as having a specific learning disability, which includes students who schools identify as having dyslexia, decreased from 35% in 2013-14 to 25.9% in 2022-23, according to data from the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information. Nationally, the number went up during the same time period, aside from a dip during COVID.

“It is meaningless if they don’t incorporate changes to the criteria for determining specific learning disabilities,” said Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate.

Lipsitt also said requiring schools to have one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham methodology presents its own challenges.

“To say you’re training Orton-Gillingham, does that mean the teacher does four hours of training and then they are considered the Orton-Gillingham teacher?” she said.

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

Author: Black teachers’ resistance to segregation 60 years ago holds lessons for teachers today

2023-10-16T21:41:34+00:00

As a Birmingham, Alabama, native, Tondra Loder-Jackson was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. She was especially inspired by the 1,000-plus Black children who walked out of school in Birmingham on May 2, 1963, to protest Jim Crow segregation in what would be known as the Children’s Crusade.

Still, one question lingered for Loder-Jackson. Where, she wondered, were the Black teachers?

Now a professor of educational foundations at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Loder-Jackson sought the answer to that question — and wound up debunking a narrative that Black teachers either shied away from the movement or were hostile to it.

In her 2016 book, “Schoolhouse Activists: African American Educators and the Long Birmingham Civil Rights Movement,” and in a 2023 book she co-edited, “Schooling the Movement: The Activism of Southern Black Educators from Reconstruction Through the Civil Rights Era,” Loder-Jackson details how many Black teachers, at the risk of losing their jobs and, in some cases, their lives, organized quietly and supported the movement through their scholarship and their teaching, and through associations with outside groups.

Loder-Jackson recently talked to Chalkbeat about her work and the lessons teachers in states like Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and others where teaching about race is being restricted, can learn from those 1960s schoolhouse activists on how to resist new state-sanctioned attempts to whitewash Black history.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Why did you want to explore the role of Black educators in the Civil Rights Movement?

This seemed to be a relatively untold story, although some scholars began to unearth some archival data and tell new stories decades ago. But no one that I knew of in Birmingham was focused on educators, and really, on the contrary, I discovered there was a false narrative in Birmingham that Black teachers and principals were categorically tepid about getting involved in the movement. In fact, there’s one narrative about a Black principal who stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent his students from skipping school during the Children’s Crusade in 1963.

Why is it important to correct this narrative — that Black teachers weren’t involved in the movement — at this time?

The false narrative that Black teachers in Birmingham, and in the southern region, were not active in the Civil Rights Movement leaves our teachers today with a lost memory of the kind of activism that teachers were involved in. There was an active network of below-the-radar teachers and administrators who contributed to the Alabama movement in various ways that were typically aligned with their professional practices. They formed Black teachers associations … . There is clear evidence, in national and local archives, that Black Alabama teachers joined ranks with the Alabama State Teachers Association. They were involved with them, they were involved in the NAACP, they were involved in the Alabama Christian Association, they were involved in all the civil rights organizations. It’s important for all educators to know, irrespective of race or ethnicity or nationality, the role that educators played in voting rights and in all aspects of the movement.

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised by this underground railroad of Black educators and how they came together as a collective to fight for civil rights. They were instrumental in putting together reports to document racial discrimination, they fought for voting rights, they sponsored Black history programs, and they were involved in strategizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They came together as a collective to fight for civil rights.

It was true that some didn’t feel comfortable protesting, but many blended in with crowds during the mass meetings, which was one of the core activities of the movement. I have interviewed teachers who said they have attended every one of those meetings.

Did you think that in 2023, 60 years after the Children’s Crusade, that states like Tennessee and Florida would adopt laws that make it hard for teachers to teach about that crusade and, by extension, the role that Black teachers played in it?

Everything goes around in circles. We had a backlash against multiculturalism in the 1980s, but then things died down a bit. The backlash today, however, seems especially vitriolic. I have to consider the role that the first Black president elected two times, and a pandemic that opened up classrooms virtually with some students’ parents looking over their shoulders, and the George Floyd protests may have played in this.

What is especially troubling about these laws and their potential consequences?

The attacks on civic education are disconcerting to me. That is the space in public schools where students learn how a democracy should work. One teacher I interviewed told me one important lesson she taught during the movement was to help students understand why they were going out to march in the streets, and she would use her civics lesson to make a connection between their actions and what they were doing. So teachers play an important role in laying the intellectual foundation for any social movement, and teachers, and Black teachers in the South particularly, played that role.

What can educators in states where teaching about race is restricted learn from Black teachers in Birmingham who found ways to resist unjust laws that wouldn’t cause them to lose their jobs or lives?

Today, we definitely don’t want to have situations where we have educational gaps and orders keeping teachers from teaching social studies authentically and with fidelity.

So I would say that the lessons that teachers of today can learn from teachers of the past is to find ways to organize at their schools on a local, state, and even a national and international level. Beyond unions, there are a lot of professional associations and informal coalitions that are emerging.

In Birmingham, I’ve become part of a group called Coalition for True History. It’s an emergent grass roots organization that is made up of educators, civic leaders, and community members. We are advocating rigorous, authentic, and critical approaches to teaching history. We’ve had the NAACP and other groups to help interpret legal leeways (around laws that restrict lessons on race).

So, (teachers) are going to have to work in solidarity. Based on my scholarship and research, that is the model that we have from the past.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit students indulge their curiosity about nature in place-based lesson at Belle Isle

2023-10-16T20:13:23+00:00

As dozens of koi swam around a pond, a group of Detroit elementary and middle school students let out a chorus of oohs and aahs. Up close, the carp were dazzling — some with orange and white patterns, others painted yellow and with black spots.

Peeking over the metal railing along the koi pond, the students peppered their instructor with questions.

“What do they eat?”

“How long do they live for?”

“How do fish get pregnant?”

Kids can get awfully curious in the presence of nature. And that was the point of this exercise on a cloudy October morning, far away from the classroom.

The students were taking part in a weeklong lesson at Detroit’s Belle Isle Aquarium and Nature Center designed to help them investigate the natural wonders at the city park.

Koi swim in a pond at the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory on Detroit’s Belle Isle.

At a time when school leaders are grappling with the academic and emotional repercussions of the pandemic and waning engagement in the classroom, more educators are embracing immersive place-based learning as a way to capture the interests and curiosity of their students.

The case for nature- and place-based learning is growing, with more research arguing that such opportunities can provide students with a host of positive outcomes, such as increased motivation, improved critical thinking, and stronger student-teacher relationships.

In Detroit, former Michigan Teacher of the Year June Teisan has been working with the Detroit Public Schools Community District over the past year to provide students with hearing disabilities the opportunity to visit and explore Belle Isle, a vast island park that many young Detroit residents consider inhospitable or inaccessible.

Every day over the past two weeks, students in grades 1-8 from Detroit’s Bunche Preparatory Academy were bused to Belle Isle for the field trips.

“So many of us just take for granted having access to nature, and the mental and physical health benefits of understanding the outdoors,” said Teisan, a retired teacher and founder of the nonprofit InnovatED (313).

“Not everybody’s going to love bugs like I did, or not everybody’s going to enjoy reading a book here and there,” Teisan said. “But connecting with (students) and understanding more about them and saying, ‘How can I meet the needs, the interests and the passions that you bring with you?’ is important.”

The field trips take inspiration from the Big Lesson, a similar program started by fellow Teacher of the Year Margaret Holtschlag that serves students across mid-Michigan.

InnovatED (313) founder June Teisan (middle) speaks to a group of students at the Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit as a sign-language interpreter translates her questions.

Outside learning piques student curiosity

That day at Belle Isle, students armed with a magnifying glass, a plastic spoon, and a pipette began to inspect Petri dishes full of water collected from the nearby marina. Almost immediately, they discovered mayflies and dragonflies.

“This is what ducks and fish are digging for. This is what they eat,” said Amy Emmert, director of education at the Belle Isle Conservatory and the instructor for the week’s lessons.

The lesson was exciting for eighth grader Husam Alnsiwi, who hopes to one day become a scientist.

“I know there’s writing involved, but I want to study chemistry and learn about real things and experimenting,” he said.

The students are accompanied by a classroom teacher and a group of sign-language interpreters. Teachers say the weeklong lesson is an important opportunity to expose students to what’s available in their own community and include them in activities that often are not tailored to their needs.

“Our teachers have said that this helps them,” Teisan said. “When kids are this excited, you can more easily say, ‘Now let’s write some of these words together. Let’s compose sentences about what our experience was.’’’

Teisan balanced trips with test prep

Teisan, who describes herself as “the kid who laid on her stomach and on the sidewalk looking at ants and chewing on bubblegum,” turned her early curiosities into a lifelong commitment to increasing youth interest in the sciences.

“I had the best job because I had the most toys,” she said of her 27-year tenure as a science teacher in Harper Woods, a city on the northeast border of Detroit.

In her role as an educator, she bridged the gaps between her students and the surrounding community, whether conducting history lessons inside the Detroit Institute of Arts or accompanying experts from the Audubon Society for bird-watching expeditions.

“Teachers are the ones I think who can build those connections when we’re not so busy doing standardized test prep,” Teisan said. “I caught a lot of flak from some administrators because I was not as into test prep, but what I was into is connecting with students and making learning engaging and tied to more of their interests.”

Detroit elementary and middle school students pose for a picture in between science lessons at Belle Isle Aquarium.

Later that day, students got out their black-and-white journals and began to take notes on the creatures they saw at the aquarium, sitting down in front of the animal of their choice to draw a picture and write down their observations.

With hundreds of species to pick from, Husam chose to write about the clownfish and blue hippo tang, a pair made famous by the lead characters in the Pixar film “Finding Nemo.”

“I imagined I was one of them. I feel like I’m really popular,” he said. “I’m in the movies, so you know who I am.”

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

A teachers union wanted to bargain over pay. Its president ended up barred from the classroom.

2023-10-16T11:00:00+00:00

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What started as an Indiana district’s proposal to retain teachers has led to allegations of unfair labor practices, public anger at school board members, and officials’ decision to bar the teachers union president from the classroom.

In May, Richmond schools announced one-time bonuses for teachers in an effort to staunch turnover rates of more than 25% in some buildings. All teachers in good standing would receive supplemental payments of $525. The district targeted additional money at mid-career teachers whose compensation hadn’t increased in line with their experience.

But the Richmond Education Association argued that the plan affected compensation, and thus would need to be discussed during the fall bargaining season that began Sept. 15, per Indiana law. It filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the district.

In the months that followed, the union said the district retaliated by disinviting its representatives from a back-to-school event before eventually placing president and longtime educator Kelley McDermott on leave and threatening to cancel her teaching contract. Union representatives also say teachers have been instructed to inform the superintendent if they want to speak to school board members.

The situation in Richmond is unfolding against a long history of the winnowing of teachers’ collective bargaining rights in Indiana, in addition to an ongoing shortage of educators in certain fields and classroom subjects. Over roughly the past decade, the number of people entering the teaching profession has dipped in Indiana, while the number of people leaving it has risen, the state reported last year; enrollment also fell over the same period. And across the nation, more teachers than usual left the profession after the 2021-22 school year, a Chalkbeat analysis showed.

A state law enacted this year and sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Raatz, a Richmond Republican, nixed a requirement for school districts to discuss changes to working conditions with union representatives at monthly meetings. Advocates said the change would reduce red tape — observers say it has hurt teacher morale. (Raatz did not respond to a request for comment.)

Representatives of Richmond schools did not respond to Chalkbeat’s requests for comment on the situation. Both the district and the union have said they want to keep classrooms staffed by experienced teachers — but they remain at an impasse on the best way to do so as bargaining officially begins.

What must school districts negotiate with teachers unions?

Lawmakers stripped Indiana teachers of the right to collectively bargain over working conditions like class sizes and schedules under a 2011 law. The topics that teachers can bargain over during the fall bargaining window are salaries, wages, and benefits, including pay increases.

That put Richmond’s compensation plan squarely in the union’s territory, representatives said.

The district’s plan delineated the amount teachers would receive in one-time supplemental pay on top of the $525 bonus based on their current salary, their years of experience, and their education. For example, a teacher with eight years of teaching experience and a bachelor’s degree whose base salary is $44,000 would receive a supplemental payment of $4,750.

But the union said that passing this plan to boost the pay of around 60% of teachers left less district funding to negotiate raises for the remaining teachers when bargaining began in the fall. Moreover, the board approved the plan without talking to the union, representatives said.

“We’re not opposed to fixing this problem,” McDermott said to the board. “What we are opposed to is stripping the association of its collective bargaining rights, which are legally protected.”

Board members argued that Indiana law also gave them the flexibility to offer supplemental pay in order to retain teachers, or to reduce the difference between minimum and average salaries in the district, without input from the Richmond Education Association.

“It has been a problem without a solution for a very long time,” board President Nicole Stults said at the May board meeting. “This does provide us with a solution that addresses the immediate bleed, so to speak, the immediate retention issue that we have.”

District representatives said offering supplemental pay was critical in order to stop losing teachers to neighboring districts. Data indicated that Richmond teachers have to work for 13 years in order to make the starting salary of a neighboring district.

“The consistency that students see is important, those relationships that students build with their teachers is critical to academic success, so the retention of teachers is critical to their academic success,” board member Pete Zaleski said in May.

‘This will lead to educators leaving the profession’

A September board meeting drew a large crowd of union members and supporters outraged over how the district has handled the pay issue and McDermott’s teaching contract.

By keeping McDermott out of the classroom, the district has left her students without a consistent teacher, speakers said — the opposite of its stated goal.

“Look at how many teachers are leaving and how many teaching openings there are each year. Please think this through and return the teacher to her teaching position, where she is needed to teach the youth of Richmond,” one speaker said. “Make this again a place to be proud to teach, not a temporary step along the way.”

McDermott could not be reached for comment. She remains on administrative leave after the district announced it would consider canceling her teaching contract, according to union Vice President Jay Lee.

Lee said that talks with the district have never been so contentious in the past.

The union opted to wait to begin bargaining until after Oct. 2, when schools will tally up how many students they’re educating in the fall semester — an event known as Count Day — in order to understand how much funding would be available.

“This is a Band-Aid,” Lee said of the district’s pay plan.

In a video posted to the district’s YouTube channel after the September board meeting, Richmond board president Stults said neither the district nor the board could comment on the personnel situation regarding McDermott. She said that apart from that issue, “relationships among the board, administration, and teachers are quite positive and stronger than they have been in recent years.”

She cited positive feedback from teachers regarding the supplemental pay, as well as a series of meetings throughout the year between district employees and upper administration.

Finally, she said the district has tried to implement the new law ending monthly discussions between administrators and union members positively, “allowing for a more focused approach to building level issues.”

Jennifer Smith-Margraf, vice president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, said it’s not clear why Richmond schools did not do what it did in previous years and wait for the bargaining season to discuss compensation this year.

But the cumulative effect of the unilateral changes to pay and the new law that lets districts avoid discussing working conditions with unions have made the situation worse, she said.

“The two main reasons people leave education are low pay and benefits, and not having their voices heard,” she said. “In the long run, this will lead to educators leaving the profession.”

It’s not clear if lawmakers will make further changes next session — but Smith-Margraf said the union supports the right to bargaining and discussion.

“Places that do both bargaining and discussion are doing a much better job of retaining educators,” Smith-Margraf said. “Where there is a clear indication that my voice doesn’t matter causes people to leave and go other places.”

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

Detroit special ed aides call for increased hourly pay

2023-10-11T15:40:40+00:00

Special education aides and paraeducators in the Detroit school district are calling for higher hourly wages as demanding workloads, staff vacancies, and inflation amid the pandemic have taxed support staff.

Members of Local 345 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees came to Tuesday’s school board meeting to criticize the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s offers in its current negotiations with the union.

“Despite the love and passion that we all share for our students, our wages remain mediocre,” said Sheila Wilson, a special ed paraeducator at Moses Field Center. “On any given day we perform multiple roles, from being a security guard to a substitute teacher. We desperately need a raise to support ourselves and our families.”

The board on Tuesday approved contracts with other employee unions representing security officers, office employees, and school administrators. District officials also reported improvements in the number of students enrolled in college courses, and encouraging enrollment trends following Count Day last week.

Special ed aides call for increased wages

In 2021, AFSCME and DPSCD agreed to a two-year deal that increased hourly wages to roughly $15 to $17.66 for the union’s district employees, who include trainable aides, custodians, bus attendants, and food service workers. Special ed aides currently make $16 an hour.

Michelle Lee, president of AFSCME Local 345, said union members “expect the recognition of our sacrifices and dedication. However, all the district can offer us is a mere 3% to 5% increase.”

“When the world faced the daunting challenges of the COVID pandemic, it was the members of Local 345 that stepped up,” Lee said. “We put our lives and our family’s lives on the line.”

DPSCD and other Michigan school districts have struggled to recruit and retain school employees in light of statewide staffing challenges and budget cuts. In recent years, the district has hosted monthly hiring fairs for hard-to-staff positions such as security guards, cafeteria workers, and bus attendants. This past spring, the district moved to cut and consolidate hundreds of positions due to enrollment losses and the loss of federal pandemic aid.

The district has about 20 special ed paraeducator vacancies, according to Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. The district employs roughly 400 special ed paraprofessionals and aides.

DPSCD’s negotiations with AFSCME come on the heels of a one-year contract the board approved with the Detroit Federation of Teachers in September. The contract raised pay for senior teachers by 6% and provided retention bonuses to all members. In recent years, the district has prioritized improving teacher salaries to compete with neighboring districts.

In the past several weeks, the board also approved contracts with other unions for hourly employees.

AFSCME members “deserve a fair contract, or the district will continue to shed staff,” said DFT Vice President Jason Posey, and AFSCME members’ duties will fall on the shoulders of DFT members.

Crystal Lee, a DPSCD special ed teacher, said that when she was a paraprofessional at Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency 25 years ago, she made $14.51 an hour, only a dollar less than what district employees currently earn.

“That is not a livable wage for no one,” Crystal Lee said.

Vitti said the district remains committed to increasing salaries and wages for teachers and support staff. Hourly wages for special ed aides, he added, have improved from $13 at the beginning of his tenure in 2017.

Vitti did not say what the district’s current offer for special ed paraprofessionals and aides is, but said it is above Michigan’s livable wage. That would be $16.27 for an adult with no children according to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator.

“That offer is there and could possibly increase,” he said. Another bargaining session between AFSCME and DPSCD officials will take place Wednesday.

More DPSCD students flock to college-level classes

College-level course enrollment in DPSCD is back to pre-pandemic levels, following a sharp increase in the number of students seeking credit recovery over the past several years.

Fifty-five percent of high school students are currently enrolled in college and career-prep courses this year, the same percentage as the 2018-19 school year. During the 2021-22 school year, only 39% of students were enrolled.

“We’re starting to make inroads in the damage that was created by the pandemic when students were losing credit,” said Vitti.

The number of DPSCD high school students enrolled in credit recovery programs jumped from 2,742 in 2019-20 to 4,901 the following year. By 2021-22, credit recovery enrollment was 7,480, over half of the roughly 14,000 high school students the district enrolls each year.

School districts have long used credit recovery programs to give students another chance to earn course credits. However, the numbers increased in Detroit and around the country as schools tried to recover from pandemic-related disruptions that left many students off track for graduation due to failing grades, absences, and challenges with online learning.

“As we have more students catch up and (get to) where they should be as far as credits by grade level, then we opened the schedule up for more dual enrollment, more advanced placement, more international baccalaureate classes, more JROTC and general elective classes,” Vitti said.

District enrollment trend looks positive following Count Day

DPSCD student enrollment is projected to be up from this time last year, Vitti said.

The district reported that it has 47,843 students, roughly 350 more than last October. DPSCD schools, however, are still struggling to keep students. The district’s re-enrollment rate has remained roughly 70% since before the pandemic.

“We’re bringing in new students to the district, the lower grades and ninth grade in particular, which is again positive,” Vitti said. “What’s happening, though, is we’re not retaining students that are already in the district from year to year.”

That’s primarily due to the “high transiency rates of our families just moving around the city and out of the city,” he added, as well as competition with city charters and neighboring school districts.

Despite that, Detroit-area charters have consistently reported greater enrollment losses than DPSCD in recent years.

Vitti said he will give a more detailed account of the district’s enrollment trends at the November board meeting.

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

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

New York to rethink how teacher prep programs approach literacy instruction

2023-10-11T15:04:44+00:00

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Teacher preparation programs in New York and across the country have long faced criticism for not adequately training future educators to teach literacy, in part by failing to embrace long-standing evidence about how children learn to read.

Now, top New York education leaders are taking an incremental step to address that issue.

On Wednesday, officials announced a yearlong process to come up with an “action plan” for infusing “science-of-reading” principles into higher education programs that train thousands of new teachers every year. The science of reading refers to an established body of research about how children learn to read.

The Hunt Institute, a nonprofit affiliated with Duke University, is leading the effort and has worked with a dozen other states to create similar plans. Known as “The Path Forward,” the program is now adding at least five additional states, including New York, Idaho, Illinois, New Mexico, and Washington.

The goal is for state leaders to come up with a roadmap to ensure higher education programs are using research-backed methods to train teachers in literacy instruction, holding them accountable through changes in state policy or new legislation, and marshaling help from philanthropic organizations. The state’s action plan is expected next June.

In New York, the group will be helmed by the state’s top education leaders, including State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa; Board of Regents Chancellor Lester Young; New York City schools Chancellor David Banks; and the leaders of CUNY and SUNY — Félix Matos Rodríguez and John King. Several other academics, elected officials, and education leaders will also participate.

“Those are the types of people that are really going to have the respect of the higher ed faculty,” said Javaid Siddiqi, president and CEO of the Hunt Institute. “We don’t want to be coming in in an adversarial sort of space.”

Siddiqi said that states “self selected” to be part of the process. In New York’s case, the effort is being coordinated by the state’s Education Department and the Literacy Academy Collective, a grassroots organization launched by New York City parents who successfully pushed the city to open a school devoted to students with reading challenges.

Bolstering literacy instruction takes center stage across nation

The effort in New York comes as momentum is growing across the country to rethink how to teach reading and jettison more dubious practices, such as encouraging children to guess at a word’s meaning using pictures.

In New York City, officials are encouraging a greater emphasis on phonics — explicitly teaching the relationship between sounds and letters. The city also launched a new mandate this fall that will eventually require all elementary schools to abandon materials that have been widely criticized and replace them with one of three approved curriculums.

Improving teacher preparation programs could bolster New York City’s curriculum overhaul, as some educators have noted they did not receive rigorous instruction on how to teach children to read. An analysis of 38 teacher preparation programs across New York released this year by the National Council on Teacher Quality found that the state’s programs generally ranked well below others across the country when it comes to reading instruction.

Some advocacy groups, including Education Trust-New York, have also placed some blame on teacher preparation programs, calling them a “major obstacle to improved reading outcomes” in a report released this year.

Katie Pace Miles, a literacy expert at Brooklyn College who will also participate in the Hunt Institute process as part of its steering committee, said it makes sense to focus on statewide reforms to teacher preparation programs.

“There’s a lack of evidence-based instruction in our teacher preparation programs, both in New York City and across New York State,” she said, pointing to test scores that show about half of the city’s students are proficient in reading. “We can’t just keep talking about how [the scores] are unacceptable. We actually have to do something substantial to change outcomes in teacher training.”

Third grade teacher Mara Ast said her master’s degree program didn’t give her much practical help teaching children to read nearly a decade ago. At the time, her first grade son was struggling to read, so she wound up searching for strategies to help him and ultimately attended a separate summer program focused on structured literacy.

“I didn’t learn it in graduate school at all,” said Ast, who now teaches at the South Bronx Literacy Academy, the city’s first standalone district school devoted to struggling readers. She said many teachers are craving better preparation, and reforming teacher education programs could make educators more comfortable using higher-quality curriculum materials.

“A school can buy all the curriculum it wants, but if the teachers aren’t trained in how to use it, it just ends up collecting dust,” she said.

The group is expected to meet virtually every other month and will receive help from a coach to research and develop their plans, though Siddiqi said the organization does not draft legislation or push specific proposals. They’ll also have access to national experts and will convene once a year with leaders from other states. (The coaching, access to national experts, and annual meetings with other state leaders last beyond the first year.)

It remains to be seen how effective the yearlong series of meetings and action plan will be in spurring change. Despite movement in dozens of state legislatures designed to overhaul reading instruction and teacher training, New York is one of five states that has not advanced similar efforts in recent years, raising questions about the appetite for significant action in Albany.

Asked whether convening state leaders to hold meetings on improving teacher preparation programs would likely spur more dramatic efforts, Siddiqi said he understood some might be skeptical.

“We don’t want to waste a precious slot on a state that is not ready to do the work — and we believe New York is ready to do that work,” he said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Aurora school district and teachers union deadlock on pay, call for outside help

2023-10-11T00:48:56+00:00

Negotiations between the Aurora school district and its teacher union have failed to produce an agreement on this year’s pay, and now the groups are again calling on an outside party to help them, using a step called fact-finding.

In this step, an outside investigator researches arguments from both sides and then provides an opinion and possible recommendations. It’s part of a series of steps laid out in the teachers union contract to resolve disputes when an agreement can’t be reached. In Aurora, the results of the fact-finding report are not binding.

The two sides already went through a previous step in the process, a negotiation session with an arbitrator. That happened earlier this summer after months of negotiations produced no agreement. But it didn’t help.

It could take a few months for a fact finder to complete the investigation and submit a report. In the meantime, teachers in Aurora have not received any raise this year, and don’t know if they will.

“Our teachers aren’t feeling valued or respected,” said Linnea Reed-Ellis, president of the Aurora teachers union. “It’s definitely having an effect on morale.”

Salaries and distribution of raises at issue in Aurora

The master contract for the union in Aurora is in effect through 2028, but each year, certain issues can be renegotiated in addition to salaries. The contract bars teachers from striking while the contract is in effect, but protracted negotiations raise the risk that teachers will leave the district.

In some cases, Reed-Ellis said, teachers who recently completed a higher education credential like a master’s degree expected a pay bump as laid out in the past salary agreements, but haven’t gotten it, pending a new salary agreement.

Requesting fact-finding during union negotiations isn’t common. Jeffco went to fact finding in negotiations with support staff in 2021. According to the Colorado Educators Association, that’s been the only one in recent years. But now, besides Aurora, Sheridan is also scheduled for fact-finding in December, and Lake County in January.

According to CEA, 30 unions won an 8% or higher raise for their licensed staff this year. That includes Aurora’s neighbors, Denver and Cherry Creek.

“We have seen more activity, not just in the education sector,” said Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of CEA. “People are really at a point, and especially in education, we’re just so intensely feeling the ramifications of decades of underfunding, and we’ve been talking about it for a while, about how people are having to work two to three jobs just to make ends meet.”

“Different districts are approaching that differently,” she said.

In Aurora, part of the issue is how raises might be distributed.

The Aurora school district set aside $21.5 million in its budget to cover raises for this current school year, but wants to devote most of that to raising the district’s starting salary, which district leaders say has fallen behind neighboring districts.

In Aurora, the current starting salary for a new teacher with just a bachelor’s degree is $46,894. In Cherry Creek, by comparison, it’s $58,710, and in Denver, it’s $54,141.

Brett Johnson, chief financial officer for the Aurora school district, said that over the past 10 years, the district’s raises for veteran teachers have been double those for starting teachers. Experienced teachers — those with at least 10 years but less than 25 years in the classroom — have seen their salaries go up between $18,000 and $19,000 over the last decade, Johnson said, while the district’s starting salary has increased by just $9,500.

“I would argue that’s in part why we’re here, and why it is hard for us to fill vacancies,” Johnson said.

The district said that from 2019 through 2021, each first day of school, the district started with more than 98% of positions filled. In fall of 2022, that dropped to 94.88%, and this fall school started with 95.92% of positions filled.

Both proposals would allow teachers to get a raise for a gaining an additional year of experience and for having completed more education,

The teachers union proposal would also bump up all salaries in the salary schedule by another $5,500 per year.

Reed-Ellis, the president of the local teachers union, said that surveys of their members show that teachers don’t want uneven raises.

“The proposal from the district came back as incredibly disrespectful to our members,” Reed-Ellis said. “Veteran educators, these are the people who have stuck it out through COVID and the Great Recession and remained dedicated to our district.”

Aurora school district cites last year’s raises

Johnson, the district CFO, believes that the union proposal would cost the district four times what it has budgeted.

Johnson said that while the district does have an increase in revenue, half of it was already factored into covering the nearly 8.5% raises teachers got last year.

“School finance has a one-year lag in terms of how it applies inflation,” Johnson said. “We didn’t want to wait. We wanted to give relief for our staff one year early, so we spent one-time money of our reserves to do that.”

The district was counting on this year’s increase in revenue to maintain those increases moving forward, he said, meaning only the $21.5 million that has been budgeted is available for raises.

That is one of the factors that the union and the district disagree on.

Aurora Superintendent Michael Giles said the district is “extremely motivated to appropriately compensate our educators.”

“My greatest hope is that we’re able to sooner rather than later,” he added.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

At six Illinois college campuses, advocates seek to create ‘comfort’ for foster care peers

2023-10-02T10:00:00+00:00

Grace Ward spent four years in foster care before enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. On campus, 200 miles south of her hometown of Rockford, she felt alone.

Before Ward entered care, she had missed three years of school and had briefly lived in homeless shelters with her mother. In her foster home, she was expected to prioritize chores over homework, babysit younger children, and call the police if a child was having a mental breakdown, she said.

A few months before coming to the university, she had a violent disagreement that involved her foster parent, leading Ward to end that relationship and head to school without knowing anyone well on campus.

“You kind of have to figure out and navigate for yourself now,” Ward said. “How do you find comfort in your life?”

Now a junior studying animal sciences, Ward has taken up a new role: peer advocate for youth on campus who have experienced foster care. The new gig, she hopes, will create the support system for others that she craved as a freshman.

Ward has joined the state’s new Youth in Care - College Advocate Program, or Y-CAP, which pairs peer advocates like Ward with other college students who have experienced foster care. The goal is for the advocates to check-in regularly with their mentees, help them navigate college life, and ultimately create a support system they’re missing.

A 2021 study found that of Illinois youth in foster care who turned 17 between 2012 and 2018, 86% enrolled in community college. Of those, just 8% graduated, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Students told researchers that they felt alone, largely weren’t aware of financial aid options, and that they needed more specialized attention.

As for what would help them, some interviewees said they wanted someone to help monitor their academic progress. Others said they wanted a support group, the study said.

“Young people with a background in foster care on college campuses are not getting the supports they need to be successful,” said Amy Dworsky, a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall at University of Chicago who co-authored the study and helped the state create the advocate program.

The state’s Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, launched the $200,000 program this year after its youth advisory board signaled that college-bound foster youth needed more support on campus, said Chevelle Bailey, deputy director of DCFS’s office of education and transition services. Some colleges have similar mentorship programs, but “there’s no consistency” across all Illinois campuses, Bailey said.

The program has launched one year after a new state law went into effect requiring each Illinois college to have a liaison that is charged with connecting students who are in foster care or are homeless with resources and assistance.

Department officials want colleges to be more “foster-friendly,” Bailey said, noting that foster youth need extra support in a new environment like college. These youth are at higher risk of dropping out of school, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In Chicago, which houses the most foster youth of any jurisdiction, 40% graduated on time from the city’s public schools last year, compared with 83% of all CPS students, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

DCFS contracted with Foster Progress — an advocacy organization for foster youth that runs its own high school mentorship program — to oversee YCAP on six college campuses this year. That includes University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Harold Washington College, and Kishwaukee College.

“One reason we started small is to make sure we do this right and not take on too much we can’t handle,” Kim Peck, DCFS’ downstate education and transition services administrator.

Nearly 20,000 Illinois children were in foster care as of last month, according to DCFS data. These youth have likely experienced abuse or neglect that led them into the system, and often cycle through multiple foster homes before they age out of care at 21.

So far, Foster Progress has hired three advocates on Ward’s campus, and they’ve identified four mentees, said LT Officer-McIntosh, program manager for Foster Progress. She’s expecting to hire a total of 10 peer advocates, who are paid $15 an hour, to support up to 100 mentees across all the campuses.

There are three parts to the mentor-mentee relationship, Officer-McIntosh said.

Advocates are supposed to hold regular check-ins, where they’ll track goals for what the mentee would like out of the experience and will also navigate college questions and deadlines, such as for financial aid.

Peer advocates and mentees will also pick a short group training they want, such as on resume building, and volunteer together so that they feel more rooted in the surrounding community.

Beyond this framework, program leaders want peer advocates and their mentees to figure out a support system that works best for them.

“Our goal with YCAP is to not tell them, ‘This is how you build community from our perspective,’” Officer-McIntosh said. “It needs to be rooted in the things that they identify, that they want out of a campus community and the experience in YCAP.”

Ward wants to help mentees with whatever they need to grow, whether that means being “a shoulder to lean on” or just instructions for how to do laundry.

Sometimes when she walks around campus, Ward thinks about how different her life is now. She wants her mentees to similarly feel like they have a “safe space” that doesn’t involve talking about required paperwork or upcoming court dates, if they don’t want to.

“It’s not something to be like, ‘You’re a foster youth,’ Ward said. “It is something to be like, ‘You have gone through challenges in your life; this is a time to ease those challenges, so you don’t constantly struggle and feel like you’re struggling.’”

Correction: Oct. 2, 2023: A previous version of this story said a 2021 study was conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago. The study was conducted by researchers at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.

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

What advice do you have for new teachers?

2023-09-28T13:00:00+00:00

As students settle into a new school year across the nation, Chalkbeat wants to hear from educators: What do you wish you knew before you started teaching?

The back-to-school season can be an exciting but daunting time, even for veteran teachers. The last few years of pandemic learning have carried immense stress for school communities. More educators have left the profession than normal, according to the best available data, cementing predictions that the pandemic led to more teacher turnover.

Teachers who have remained are still feeling the lingering effects of pandemic pains: Chronic absenteeism, dipping student test scores, and dwindling federal aid money for recovery programs. But the turn of the calendar year springs new hope for a better season.

Whether you are a recent or veteran teacher, Chalkbeat wants to know your advice for new educators. What’s one thing you wish you knew when you first started teaching? What gives you hope right now?

Tell us in the form below, or click here to access the form directly. We look forward to hearing from you.

Caroline Bauman is the deputy managing editor for engagement at Chalkbeat.

How to shrink class sizes in NYC? A working group shares its recommendations

2023-09-26T23:29:44+00:00

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Capping enrollment at high-demand schools. Merging schools located in the same buildings. Moving some 3-K and prekindergarten programs out of K-12 schools. Paying extra to bring more teachers to hard-to-staff schools.

Those are some of the steps New York City may have to consider in the coming years to comply with a new state law requiring schools to shrink class sizes for hundreds of thousands of students, according to preliminary recommendations from an Education Department working group.

The recommendations, unveiled at a public hearing Tuesday night, are in the early stages and haven’t been adopted by the Education Department. The group is set to deliver its final recommendations Oct. 31. But the initial recommendations give the most detailed look yet of some of the complicated tradeoffs and challenges ahead as the city attempts to shrink class sizes across hundreds of schools in accordance with the state legislation.

Under the law, K-3 classes must have fewer than 20 students, 4-8 classes must be under 23, and high school classes can have no more than 25 students. The caps will phase in gradually over the next five years before fully taking effect.

Currently, more than half of the classes across the city’s 1,600 public schools are out of compliance — over 73,000 classes, according to the 48-member working group, which includes parents, teachers, administrators, union representatives, advocates, and education department officials. Bringing all of those classes under the legal limits will likely require creating thousands of new classes –- and a multi-pronged effort that involves shifting enrollment policies, moving around existing programming to maximize physical space, significantly boosting teacher hiring, and building some new facilities, according to the recommendations.

The recommendations didn’t come with a specific price tag, but included a suggestion that the city should “aggressively pursue new opportunities for potential funding” to cover the costs of implementation.

Previous estimates from the Independent Budget Office have put the cost of the additional staffing alone at between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion a year.

“We tried to take on a challenging and vexing problem of, ‘How are we going to do this,’” said Patrick Sprinkle, a history teacher at the Lab School for Collaborative Studies in Manhattan and chair of the working group’s staffing sub-committee.

Deborah Alexander, a Queens parent and working group member, added, “we were really focused on … how to use our diverse perspectives to guide the [Education Department] in ways we are hopeful… will not have too many costs along with the benefit of smaller class sizes.”

Since its passage last year, the law has drawn fervent praise from many educators, union officials, and parents, along with criticism from city officials, and some parent groups and experts.

Research has consistently shown that lowering class sizes can increase student achievement, and lowering class sizes is a major priority for educators and many parents.

Mark Henderson, an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often has classes of 34 students, which is the limit outlined in the teachers union’s contract. Bringing the number down to 25 would mean “the classes, the teaching, every element of the school experience would be better,” he said.

But city officials contend that the state hasn’t provided sufficient resources to meet the new mandate, and that it will require shifting resources away from other critical programs. Several analyses, moreover, suggest that the highest-poverty schools will benefit less from the law because they are already more likely to have classes under the legal cap.

Working group eyes enrollment changes

One method the city can use to control class sizes is shifting its enrollment policies. The working group acknowledges that the Education Department will likely have to “limit enrollment at overcrowded schools that do not have the space to comply with the new class size caps.”

Working group co-chair Johanna Garcia, the chief of staff for state Sen. Robert Jackson, explained that many oversubscribed schools sit right next to under-enrolled ones. Spreading out enrollment across nearby schools “could lead to benefits at both sets of schools, creating more space for smaller classes and less chaos at the overcrowded schools” while saving the city the cost of building new facilities.

Many of the city’s most oversubscribed schools are among its most popular, and multiple parents voiced vehement objections in Tuesday’s public forum to any efforts to cap or reduce enrollment at overcrowded schools.

“For high schools, in particular, cutting seats” at the most in-demand schools “would have a devastating, cascading impact” resulting in fewer students getting their top choice schools, said Shane Harrison, a parent of a seventh grader.

There is a provision in the law that would temporarily exempt schools from the class size requirements when a lack of space, overenrollment, a shortage of teachers, or “severe economic distress” make it impossible to comply, but the law offers no specifics about the thresholds for qualifying for an exemption.

Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, a parent advocacy group that supports selective schools and programs, has called for legislators to amend the law to exempt “high-performing” schools and programs from the class size law.

But Tom Sheppard, a Bronx parent and member of the Panel for Educational Policy who also served on the working group, countered that offering a blanket exemption to high-performing schools would “allow schools that people ‘want to go to’ to stay bursting at the seams while schools where you have issues with enrollment, it perpetuates that.”

The working group also recommends instituting multiple shifts at overcrowded schools — so that not all students would be in the school building at the same time — as a temporary stopgap in place of capping enrollments. Some of the city’s large high schools already have multiple overlapping shifts of students.

Some schools will need more space and teachers

The working group suggests shifting school programming in order to maximize all available space to create additional classes. That could involve moving 3-K and pre-K programs out of district school buildings to free up space and merging separate schools co-located in the same buildings to streamline operations, according to the recommendations.

Garcia said relocating pre-K classes from district schools to community-based organizations with “thousands of unfilled seats” in their city-funded pre-K programs could open space in elementary schools without sacrificing quality of the preschool programs.

But Martina Meijer, a Brooklyn public school teacher, raised a concern that such a move would make staffers from those programs ineligible to be members of the United Federation of Teachers.

The group cautioned that spaces for physical education, art, or elective classes shouldn’t be taken over to create more space for core classes.

Opening new facilities should be a last resort — and in cases where the city does need additional school space, it should prioritize leasing existing buildings like shuttered parochial and charter schools, rather than building new schools, according to the preliminary recommendations.

The city’s School Construction Authority recently estimated that between 400 and 500 schools will need additional space in order to comply with the class size law. An estimated 40% of those schools — between 160 and 200 — would likely need entirely new facilities, according to the estimates.

Finding enough physical space, however, is only one part of the equation. The city will also need enough teachers to staff newly opened classes. Education Department officials have estimated that the city’s teaching force, currently at around 76,000, will need to grow by 9,000 by the time the law takes full effect.

Suggestions for boosting teacher hiring include easing the process for paraprofessionals and teacher aides to earn their teacher license and offering pay incentives for teachers who work in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas — an idea the city has experimented with before.

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

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

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

In ‘State of our Schools’ speech, NYC schools chief emphasizes literacy and career readiness efforts

2023-09-20T22:17:31+00:00

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In his 20 months as chancellor of New York City’s schools, David Banks has repeatedly emphasized the need to boost literacy rates and expose more students to career opportunities before they leave high school.

Those ideas were front and center in a “State of our Schools” address he delivered Wednesday at Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Boys and Girls High School, in an auditorium packed with school staff, administrators, union officials, and parent leaders.

The speech hewed to priorities Banks has repeatedly advanced and provided some insight into how he’d like to expand existing efforts.

A program that gives schools resources to spin up new career tracks and offer early college credit is set to grow next year, he said. And Project Pivot — a $15 million initiative that pairs schools with community organizations that provide counseling, mentorship, and violence interruption — will expand to 250 schools this year, up from 144.

Banks didn’t name any new education initiatives, which could indicate that the chancellor’s focus this year will be on implementing existing programs rather than scaling up new ones. It could also reflect budget constraints, as the city grapples with dwindling federal relief dollars and a new round of budget cuts mandated by City Hall.

Here’s what Banks’ speech did — and didn’t — focus on. We’d also love to hear from you about what you think the chancellor should prioritize. Let us know by filling out this survey.

Literacy, literacy, literacy (and maybe other subjects, too)

Banks’ speech focused on his highest-profile policy initiative: boosting the city’s middling literacy rates by overhauling school reading curriculums. Beginning this fall, elementary schools in nearly half the city’s districts are required to use one of three reading programs — with the rest of schools following a year from now.

For years, principals enjoyed wide latitude to pick their own curriculums — and hundreds selected “balanced literacy” programs that Banks has blamed for poor reading outcomes. During his speech, the schools chief played a video of a student using illustrations to guess the words in a picture book instead of sounding them out, a common element of balanced literacy programs that has been widely discredited.

“That is how we’ve been teaching the kids to read — it’s a completely misguided way,” Banks said. “We are fixing that playbook starting right now.”

Banks signaled that he’s interested in changes beyond elementary school literacy. Already, the city has tapped 250 high schools to use a single algebra curriculum. In a less coordinated effort, some high school superintendents are beginning to institute their own reading program mandates. And early childhood centers are also moving to a uniform curriculum. More curriculum changes could be on the horizon across a range of subjects and grade levels, a process Banks suggested would take years.

“Teachers need more support,” Banks told reporters after the speech. “They need a little bit more of a script of what we’re expecting from them.”

A focus on career and technical programs

Banks framed the event with a philosophical question: “What is the purpose of school?”

Part of the answer, he said, is better-preparing students to enter the workforce, a shift that comes as college enrollment is dipping locally and nationally. This year, 100 high schools are part of a program called FutureReadyNYC that gives schools resources to launch new career tracks and paid work opportunities in education, technology, business, or health care. Officials said they sent about $18 million to those schools to support new programming.

“Historically, too many 12th graders leave our school system with a diploma but not much else,” Banks said. “Our pathways work is rewriting the script.”

Banks said FutureReady will grow by at least half next year, in line with previous promises to expand the program. By 2030, officials also vowed to create plans for every student that outline their postsecondary goals and map out a strategy to achieve them. About 70% of students have similar plans right now, officials said.

The new career tracks created through FutureReady are typically less intensive than state-certified career and technical programs and are easier to quickly scale up, allowing the city to reach more students. However, some observers worry that in an effort to expand those offerings to a wider array of schools, the programming will be less rigorous. (City officials contend that the programming is just as rigorous.)

Principals generally said they’re glad the Education Department is making it easier to set up work-based learning experiences, but it may prove challenging for officials to offer them at a large scale. A department spokesperson said that just over 2,800 students have received paid work opportunities through FutureReady so far.

A separate initiative aims to provide students with paid apprenticeships, and officials have previously said their goal is to offer those opportunities to 3,000 students over three years. About 150 students began apprenticeships last school year and another 257 are expected to start in October, a spokesperson said.

What didn’t get mentioned

Banks’ speech didn’t touch on some of the biggest looming challenges, including a fresh series of budget cuts ordered by Mayor Eric Adams, which could initially require a $700 million reduction to the Education Department’s budget but could exceed $2 billion if the city follows through with all of the planned cuts. The city’s schools are also facing the expiration of billions in federal relief funding, enrollment declines that raise the specter of mergers and closures, and alarming rates of chronic absenteeism.

The federal relief funding has supported a slew of initiatives, including expanded preschool for 3-year-olds, summer school, and hundreds of social workers. It also supports bilingual staff for English learners — a growing need as 26,000 children in temporary housing, many of them new migrants, have enrolled in the school system over the past year and half, Banks said.

Taking questions from reporters, Banks said decisions about cuts have not yet been made.

“Anytime you’re talking about cuts of that magnitude, it’s going to impact some of the programs that we already have in place,” Banks said.

The chancellor added that the department hopes to avoid slashing school budgets and will prioritize the city’s literacy and career pathways initiatives.

“That’s where we’re going to be making sure that the investments are still there,” he said.

This story has been updated with additional responses from the Education Department, which were provided days after this story was published.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@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.

Michigan bill to tackle teacher shortage would remove barrier for retirees to return to work

2023-09-19T22:14:07+00:00

Michigan lawmakers advanced legislation Tuesday that seeks to address school staffing shortages by allowing retired public school teachers to return to the classroom immediately without forfeiting their pensions.

Under current law, retired teachers must wait at least nine months before taking jobs in the public school system if they want to continue collecting their retirement benefits.

The measure that cleared the Michigan Senate Education Committee unanimously Tuesday would allow those retired from the public school system to come back and earn up to $15,100 within a six-month period, while still receiving their pensions and subsidies for healthcare benefits. After that, teachers would be able to negotiate their salaries with school systems.

The changes would be in effect for five years — by which time school leaders hope that new grow-your-own workforce development programs will produce more educators and ease the teacher shortage.

Under the bill, retired superintendents would not be allowed to return to work in public schools as superintendents.

“It’s not perfect — it’s far from it,” Robert McCann, executive director of the K-12 Alliance of Michigan, said of the bill. “But it makes the law better, and it will be helpful for us.”

McCann said he has heard from superintendents across Michigan who say they are still having trouble filling open jobs weeks into the new school year.

“Michigan is the only state I know of that has an arbitrary nine-month sit-out,” said McCann. “It puts us at a disadvantage. The reality is we are opening schools this year with dozens of unfilled positions we are desperate to fill.”

The Senate committee votes Tuesday were on substitutions to House Bill 4752. Those changes will now go back to the House for a vote.

An earlier version of the bill, passed by the House in June, retained the nine-month waiting period, but allowed retirees to return to work during that time and make up to $10,000.

The teacher shortage is an issue many districts in the state are facing, said Rep. Matt Koleszar, a Democrat from Plymouth who introduced the legislation in the House.

The retiree bill is “another way where we can attack this shortage,” said Koleszar, chair of the House Education Committee.

The state is investing millions of dollars in teacher development programs that will launch this fall in an effort to attract more talent to the profession amid a shortage of qualified applicants. Graduates of those programs won’t be ready to become full-time educators for several years.

“This is a temporary solution to a problem we wish we didn’t have but believe it’s necessary in the times now so we can staff our classrooms with the best professionals, the most highly trained professional that we can,” Eric Edoff, superintendent of L’Anse Creuse Public Schools, said of the bill during committee testimony.

The nine-month waiting period in the current law was created in 2010 to discourage “double dipping” by high-paid administrators who could retire and immediately return to work to receive both a pension and a salary. The law lets retirees return after nine months, and earn a salary without limits, without giving up their pensions.

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

NYC schools are tightening cybersecurity. Some educators fear unintended consequences.

2023-09-18T20:50:57+00:00

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Following two high-profile data breaches, New York City’s Education Department has moved to shore up its cybersecurity protocols, increasing its vetting of software vendors and tightening email access for schools and parent leaders.

Because of the new protocols, the school year has started without approvals for scores of programs, including popular ones like Class Dojo, technology teachers told Chalkbeat.

Meanwhile, roughly 1,000 of the city’s 1,600 or so schools have abandoned school-specific websites and email addresses, and moved their communications under a centrally managed Education Department domain — a move an Education Department spokesperson said was “critical in ensuring the security of students’ personally identifiable information.”

Department officials also notified parent leaders last week of a plan to shut down shared email accounts for parent groups to reduce the chances they could be breached.

Experts say it’s good that school systems — which have increasingly become targets of cyberattacks — are taking data security more seriously, even if it’s still unclear how effective some of the new steps will be.

But some parent leaders and educators are raising concerns about unintended consequences of the new restrictions. They argue that the changes could hamper access to critical digital tools.

“Parent leader accounts had nothing to do with the data breach and should not be the scapegoat for that issue,” Randi Garay, a member of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee and Brooklyn parent, said at a meeting last week about the plan to close shared email accounts used by some parent organizations. “It’s honestly a poor excuse to change these accounts to keep us separated and excluded from accessing information.”

The backlog of approvals for outside software vendors has some technology teachers worried about lost educational opportunities.

“Thousands of NYC kids won’t be allowed to use websites that help them,” said a technology teacher who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This also means that instruction will be stifled, as everything is digital these days.”

Education Department officials say the safety of student data is paramount, and all the new restrictions are working towards that goal. Outside vendors were targeted in both of the city’s recent data breaches, making them a top priority for additional protections.

“Every vendor’s participation is critical to keeping our students and their families’ data safe and secure,” said department spokesperson Jenna Lyle.

School districts scramble to respond to cyberattacks

In recent years, a growing number of cyberattacks have targeted school districts. School districts store reams of student data, which can be especially valuable for hackers, and often don’t have the same level of cybersecurity as other sectors.

New York City’s public schools have been no exception.

In early 2022, Illuminate Education, the company behind the widely used grading and attendance platform Skedula, suffered a hack that breached personal data for an estimated 820,000 current and former students. Experts said it was likely the largest single school system data breach to date.

Then, earlier this year, officials revealed that roughly 45,000 city students had data compromised during the hack of MOVEIt, a file-sharing program.

After those attacks, school systems across the country are recognizing the need to vet all of their suppliers for privacy and security, said Doug Levin, the national director of the K12 Security Information eXchange, which tracks cyberattacks against school systems.

But figuring out how to do that can be tricky.

New York City’s Education Department has asked vendors to sign data privacy agreements for years, but in the case of Illuminate, department officials alleged that the company misrepresented its data security practices, promising that it was encrypting all student data when it was not.

In general, Levin said, many school districts are “not well equipped to be making those judgments” about software vendors’ data security practices, especially without more help from the state and federal governments and other groups with more expertise and resources.

New York City’s vetting process for vendors has been in place for several years, but officials say they added new steps to the process last spring and began enforcing it more tightly. The process now includes signing a data privacy agreement, filling out questionnaires about their data security practices, and undergoing a review by the city’s Office of Technology and Innovation.

An Education Department spokesperson acknowledged the process can take months, and Levin said that particularly for smaller companies, the vetting process can be a “very heavy lift … and potentially a very expensive one.”

In the past, schools were largely bound by an honor system not to use vendors before they’d completed approval, according to one tech teacher. But now, the DOE’s website tells school staff they are not permitted to use vendors that have not completed the approval process, and the department has disabled the “Sign in with Google” function on unapproved platforms, making it harder for schools to access those programs.

According to tech teachers, there are scores of platforms still listed as in the process of receiving approval, including ClassDojo, a widely used classroom management and messaging program.

A spokesperson for ClassDojo said the company supports the DOE’s vetting process and has been working with the agency to complete it. “We don’t anticipate any challenges,” the spokesperson said.

Educators, parents question email changes

Another part of the city’s efforts to fortify its data security is tightening access on school and parent email accounts.

Historically, many city schools have operated independent websites outside of the schools.nyc.gov domain, and have used email addresses tied to those independent websites.

That practice continued during the pandemic, as the Education Department helped schools set up their own Google accounts that would give them access to features like Google Classroom and Google Drive for use in remote instruction.

Now, the city is pushing schools to abandon those local domains and move their emails and Google activity back under the Education Department’s central domain to ensure that data stored on those servers is well-protected.

That means transferring years worth of data — a process one principal said has been “laborious” and has required multiple meetings with the tech division.

The principal is also leery of bringing all of the school’s homemade curriculum materials under central Education Department control, and said some of the Google settings under the centralized domain, including the prohibition on students sending emails outside the department’s domain, didn’t make sense for their students.

“How do they email people for research and interviews?” the principal asked.

The move to shut down shared parent leader email addresses has also upset some parent leaders.

At last week’s meeting of the Chancellor’s Parent Advisory Committee, the leaders argued that the shared email addresses are helpful for transferring information when parent leadership changes, and that it’s important to have generic addresses for the group not tied to specific parent names. Parents are already familiar with those addresses, they noted.

An official with the Education Department’s tech division said the new Education Department external accounts would function just like the old accounts, and would give parents access to all Google Suite features.

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

NYC principal threatens to suspend students who follow specific Instagram accounts

2023-09-15T21:37:31+00:00

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A New York City principal issued an unusual threat this week: All students who follow anonymous social media accounts connected to the school community could face suspension and lose out on a recommendation letter for college or work.

In a Wednesday letter to more than 4,000 students at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, Principal David Marmor identified the handles of two Instagram accounts he said are posting “horrifying content” including “graphic and direct threats to specific children with bullying comments,” according to a copy obtained by Chalkbeat.

Beginning Sept. 18, “any student still following either of the two sites or any other [similar] ‘confession’ type site, will be disciplined,” he wrote. “This will likely include suspension.”

He added: “The ability to use social media anonymously is the most destructive and dangerous challenge that society has faced, possibly ever, in my opinion.”

The threat of disciplinary action immediately drew fierce criticism from civil rights advocates who say punishing students based on the social media accounts they follow is a violation of their free speech rights.

“It’s unconstitutional in a number of ways,” said Justin Harrison, a senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “The right to speak anonymously and the right to receive information anonymously — without having to identify yourself to the government — is one of the oldest First Amendment protections there is.”

Plus, there are a number of logistical complications in disciplining students for following specific accounts. It’s unclear how the school could prove the identities of all the students who follow the Instagram accounts and then discipline them in a consistent way, since many students don’t use their real names on Instagram.

Marmor also vowed to cancel a range of “celebratory extracurricular activities” until the accounts are shut down or lose all of their followers, including a senior trip, prom, and an upcoming pep rally. Any students with information about who runs the Instagram accounts will “receive an appropriate award,” the letter notes.

Education department spokesperson Chyann Tull defended Marmor’s threat to suspend students. She noted the department’s policy allows for disciplining students who access or post hateful, discriminatory, harassing, or inflammatory material while on school premises or using school resources, such as WiFi.

“Our school leaders are empowered to take action against matters that threaten [the] wellbeing of the school community, and the principal’s actions are in line with the New York city Public Schools’ Internet Acceptable Use Policy and Discipline Code,” she wrote in an email. “We encourage our students to be upstanders and not bystanders, which includes upholding the values of their school communities.”

Marmor did not respond to an interview request.

One of the Instagram accounts identified in the letter had already been shut down by Friday, and Marmor indicated that the other site had already lost hundreds of followers in a note to school staff.

Chalkbeat reviewed hundreds of posts connected to one of the Instagram accounts Marmor cited. It solicits anonymous comments that are then republished. Many of the posts include musings, gossip, and crushes. “I lowkey miss my ex,” one post reads. “Being special Ed is embarrassing I hate it,” another said. One post links to a petition to change the school’s bell schedule.

Still, many others are sexually explicit, single out specific students, or include racist language. One post declares: “I dont like black people” and is signed with a first name. Another names a student who allegedly had a sexually transmitted infection. A handful of posts mention Marmor in vulgar or offensive ways.

Harrison noted that the school may be within its rights to discipline students who specifically target other students or school officials, though the anonymous nature of the messages makes that challenging.

“I’m not unsympathetic to the principal’s situation here,” he said. “The better responses are positive ones. You can’t threaten your way into a good school climate.”

One student at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the principal’s reaction seemed extreme given that the Instagram accounts didn’t appear to be causing major disruptions.

“I haven’t heard much about the account at all,” the student said. “I think the big deal he’s making of it actually made it more popular.” Canceling events, the student added, made students angrier with the principal than whomever is behind the Instagram accounts.

The student said it’s not the first time the school has grappled with anonymous social media accounts, noting that school administrators have raised concerns about them in the past.

Shirley Aubin, president of the school’s parent association, said she supports the principal’s crackdown on students who follow the social media accounts.

“He can’t prevent them from following [the accounts] but he can create deterrents,” Aubin said. “It is a reasonable response,” she added. “The reality is there are consequences for your actions.”

Still, Marmor hinted in his letter that some members of the community may perceive the new disciplinary measures as draconian and he invited those with concerns to set up an appointment to speak with him.

“I am aware that the above steps are serious and dramatic,” he wrote. “The problem warrants it; this is a matter of life and death to me.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

All 7 finalists for Colorado’s 2024 Teacher of the Year award teach middle school

2023-09-15T20:17:19+00:00

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Middle school teachers swept the contest this year to become the 2024 Colorado Teacher of the Year, according to an announcement Friday.

All seven finalists for the honor teach middle school or junior high in districts spanning the state from Loveland to Denver to Mancos.

The Colorado Department of Education will choose a winner in October. That educator will become Colorado’s nominee for the National Teacher of the Year competition.

“I’m thrilled to introduce this exceptional and worthy group of educators,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said in a statement.

“Each finalist has demonstrated an unwavering dedication to his or her practice, and they have made a profound impact on their students, schools and communities,” she said. “Any one of them would make Colorado proud as our 2024 Teacher of the Year.”

The 2023 Colorado Teacher of the Year is Jimmy Lee Day II, the band director and instrumental music teacher at East Middle School in Aurora Public Schools.

The 2024 finalists are:

Rawa Abu Alsamah, a middle school special education teacher at Rocky Mountain Prep, formerly STRIVE Prep, on the charter network’s Sunnyside campus in Denver Public Schools.

Danielle Cerna, a sixth grade math and science teacher at Trailside Academy in Mapleton Public Schools, a district north of Denver.

Ivy Dalley, a sixth grade English language arts and social studies teacher at Mancos Middle School in the Mancos School District in southwest Colorado.

Miles Groth, who teaches sixth-grade Mountain Academy of Arts and Sciences, a curriculum he created that focuses on experiential learning and environmental stewardship, at Ute Pass Elementary School in Manitou Springs School District 14 in southern Colorado.

Kimberly Kane, a sixth grade English language arts teacher at Delta Middle School in Delta County School District 50J on Colorado’s western slope.

Jessica May, who at the time of her application taught a course focused on social emotional learning, life skills, and reading in the real world to all sixth, seventh and eighth grade students at Conrad Ball Middle School in Loveland’s Thompson School District. She now teaches family and consumer science at Turner Middle School in Berthoud.

Tiffeny O’Dell, a junior high science and CTE health teacher at Byers Junior-Senior High School in Byers School District 32-J east of Denver.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Eric Adams vowed all NYC students would get dyslexia screening. So far, 1,500 have.

2023-09-14T09:00:00+00:00

This is part of an ongoing collaborative series between Chalkbeat and THE CITY investigating learning differences, special education, and other education challenges in city schools. Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s daily newsletter and THE CITY’S Daily Scoop newsletter to keep up with our reporting.

Mayor Eric Adams has made dyslexia screening a centerpiece of his education agenda, often citing his own reading challenges as a motivation for more intensive testing.

He’s even suggested every student is being assessed.

“We’re the first city of this size to have dyslexia screening for all of our children,” Adams said last November.

New York City began screening most children for reading challenges just before Adams took office in response to pandemic-related academic concerns. Adams subsequently launched a program that uses a second round of screeners for students who are struggling, to identify whether they are at risk of dyslexia.

But the effort has reached a fraction of kids across the five boroughs thus far.

About 1,500 students across 133 schools were assessed for risk of dyslexia last school year, according to city Department of Education figures obtained by THE CITY and Chalkbeat.

Officials say they are planning to use those screeners more widely this school year, promising to expand to all elementary schools serving grades K-5 and 50 middle and high schools.

Dyslexia screening is popular with many advocates, parents, and elected officials who have long argued that too many struggling readers have fallen through the cracks. Conducting more rigorous testing could help identify students before they fall far behind, they argue, and keep parents from having to arrange their own pricey assessments and tutors to help their children catch up, a major equity concern.

Identifying students who are struggling can also spur known remedies, particularly structured, sequenced literacy instruction that is phonics-based.

But multiple literacy experts said the secondary tests — which flag students who are at risk of dyslexia rather than offering a specific diagnosis — don’t reveal much beyond what the first set of tests already show.

Of the 1,000 children in elementary school who were given the secondary assessment, 95% of them were identified as being at risk of dyslexia — suggesting schools already had a clear sense of which students were struggling. (In middle and high school, about 80% of students were flagged for extra help by the additional screeners.)

More important, experts said, is ensuring teachers have the tools they need to figure out why a student is struggling and to intervene.

“Teachers already know who needs more help,” Adrea Truckenmiller, an associate professor at Michigan State University who has studied literacy screening, said of the second layer of testing. “What they need to do is figure out what to teach the kids the next day, and this information is not really giving them that.”

Jonah Allon, a City Hall spokesperson, defended the secondary screening, saying it is part of “the most comprehensive approach to supporting dyslexic students in our city’s history.”

While the initiative’s expansion “will not happen overnight,” Allon wrote in an email, “Mayor Adams laid out an aggressive plan to bring this screening to all New York City students, and we are executing that plan right now.”

Education department officials said they were paying close attention to schools that are part of the city’s sweeping new literacy curriculum mandate — starting with nearly half of all elementary campuses this year. They will have access to educators who are trained to deliver the screening and provide more individual help to address students’ reading challenges, said Carolyne Quintana, the Education Department’s deputy chancellor of teaching and learning.

“We need that kind of more targeted information — more specific information that a secondary screener gives you that those others don’t,” Quintana said

Carolyne Quintana, the Education Department’s deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, observes a reading lesson at P.S. 125 in Manhattan during the first week of school.

Who has been screened, and what happens next?

In the wake of the pandemic, New York City began to standardize regular screening in reading and math to track disruptions to student learning and help teachers intervene.

That effort began during Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final year in office. Last school year, roughly 500,000 students in kindergarten through 10th grade were given general literacy assessments spread throughout the year.

Teachers are supposed to use the results of those assessments to adjust their instruction and provide individualized help. The Adams administration added a secondary layer of screening for students who performed poorly on the first set of assessments at about 133 pilot schools. (Last year, schools used Acadience Rapid Automatized Naming and Normed Spelling Measure for kindergarten and first grade students, and Acadience Oral Reading Fluency for students in grades two and up.)

Overall, 1,500 students received secondary screening across those schools, with 1,350 identified as being at risk of dyslexia. That’s about 2% of the 63,000 students enrolled across those campuses. Teachers were trained on administering the screenings and on interpreting the results, as well as on providing extra support, department officials said.

Students who were flagged by the secondary screeners should receive four days per week of 30- to 45-minute sessions of “explicit, systematic, evidence-based reading instruction” for the students deemed at risk, according to an Education Department spokesperson. Students not flagged by the secondary screeners but who are still struggling with reading are eligible for 30-minute sessions three days a week.

At P.S. 125 in Harlem, which has given teachers intensive training to address reading challenges, Principal Yael Leopold said the school uses a range of assessments and observations to determine why a student is struggling — a process that isn’t always straightforward.

“Maybe a child’s not hearing sounds correctly,” she said. “For another, it could be vision. For another, it’s their processing or their expressive language. I mean, there’s a million reasons why a child may struggle — and so that’s where we put all of our heads together.”

P.S. 125 Principal Yael Leopold said a range of literacy assessments help the school determine which students need extra help in small groups.

The school typically provides students who need extra help with small group instruction in their regular classrooms for about four weeks at a time instead of pulling them out for special sessions. Leopold said that keeps children from feeling like they’re being singled out.

“Children felt still part of the classroom community,” Leopold said. “They’re like, ‘I’m a great reader — I’m making improvement.’ And that’s really important to us.”

Experts say the tests aren’t worth it, but politicians push for more

Experts who are familiar with the secondary screeners stressed that they flag students for risk of dyslexia — rather than offering a more formal diagnosis — and generally aren’t much more sensitive than the first round of screening.

“This notion of ‘Let’s test them again and see if they need more’ — I’m not sure that actually buys you a whole lot,” said Timothy Shanahan, a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has written about the research on literacy screening. “If you say a kid is dyslexic, that doesn’t tell me at all what he needs,” he added. “It’s really a whole set of different disabilities all kind of lumped together.”

The screeners the city is using to identify students at risk of dyslexia identify broad issues like challenges with spelling or decoding words that can predict other reading problems, including dyslexia, Shanahan said. But they aren’t detailed enough to give educators a roadmap of what specific instructional tweaks might help.

Shanahan and others said the main downside to the additional screening is potentially taking time away from instruction. But they generally said it isn’t harmful and may signal to advocates and parents that the city is serious about addressing literacy deficits.

For Naomi Peña, a longtime public school parent leader who has four kids with dyslexia, the shift in how the mayor has placed struggling readers squarely at the forefront of the city’s efforts represents a sea change.

“As long as I’ve been in the public school system, the last two years is honestly the first time this ever has been discussed,” said Peña. “It’s unfortunate that it took someone who is dyslexic finally to become mayor and be in a position of power to want to center it, but this is where we are.”

The administration has won praise from many experts for focusing on literacy and requiring elementary schools to begin using curriculums that officials say are more aligned with research on how children learn to read. The administration has also launched some smaller-scale efforts, including more intensive training programs at a handful of schools and a first-of-its-kind district school focused on students with dyslexia and other print-based learning disabilities.

Additional screening for dyslexia is also popular with many elected officials who see the measure as addressing a significant equity issue.

State Assembly members Jo Anne Simon and Robert Carroll of Brooklyn have been vocal proponents of providing greater support for students with dyslexia and embraced the mayor’s efforts. They said that while the number of students who have been screened is low, the ball is moving in the right direction.

“Systematizing anything in a school system takes time, and in a large school system it’s going to take significant time,” said Simon, a former disability rights attorney.

Carroll said the city’s efforts are well-meaning but that fully implementing the program in every school could take years. He said with that trajectory, a more specific plan for getting there needs to be shared publicly.

Adams and schools Chancellor David Banks created a Dyslexia Task Force that was charged with producing a policy paper on the city’s “vision and approach to supporting students at risk of and/or living with dyslexia.” Though the report was set to be released in August 2022, Education Department officials did not provide a copy or explain the delay.

“At least we’re moving in the right direction,” said Carroll, who was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child. “We’re talking about it. I think they are sincere in trying to solve problems. I think it’s how do we perfect it, how do you scale it?”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

DPSCD labor contracts with pay increases win board approval

2023-09-13T15:09:28+00:00

Collective bargaining agreements between the Detroit school district and its employee unions for 2023-24 won approval Tuesday from the school board.

The Detroit Federation of Teachers, the Detroit Federation of Paraprofessionals, the Teamsters union, as well as nonunion staff such as security guards, principals, and central office administrators, all reached agreements with the Detroit Public Schools Community District in late August and early September.

The one-year deal ratified by DFT members in August raises pay for senior teachers by 6% and provides retention bonuses to all members.

“Our most veteran teachers deserve the increase,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said at Tuesday’s school board meeting, adding: “And they deserve even more than that. But we also have to get more competitive … . We’re losing mid-career teachers, and we have to pick up in that area as well.”

He said he’s optimistic that next year’s contract can provide more competitive salaries and incentives to attract teachers to DPSCD.

School districts across Michigan have had to contend with challenges in recruiting and retaining employees in recent years, and DPSCD in particular faces competition with surrounding and suburban districts that can pay enough to lure away DPSCD educators.

Among the other school employee unions, Teamsters Local 214 members and paraeducators received 5% wage increases, as well as retention and seniority bonuses. Nonunion staff get a 4% salary increase and a holiday bonus.

Wages for food service workers, among the hardest-to-staff positions, rise 17% from $15 an hour to $17.55, an increase that the district said would help with recruiting and retention.

Some union members complained during the meeting that the bargaining process wasn’t open enough to input from rank-and-file members.

Bargaining processes are intentionally held behind closed doors, Vitti said.

“There are times when there are questions that are asked, and we may answer them at a high level, but we try to always respect the bargaining process,” he said.

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

First day of school for NYC: Smiles, sweat, and fears of a possible bus strike

2023-09-07T21:54:13+00:00

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Bronx student Avery Collazo began the school year on Thursday with an annual tradition: donning a bright blue T-shirt proudly exclaiming, “First Day of Second Grade.”

“He likes to stand out, to be a little different,” said Avery’s dad, Albert Collazo, who also brought a uniform shirt just in case.

The family joined dozens of others dropping off their children in the P.S. 121 schoolyard as the first day of school for New York City’s nearly 900,000 students brought out an array of emotions.

Some caregivers shed tears as they watched their kids walk inside the school building. Some kids smiled confidently; some shyly. There was also some sweat. High temperatures prompted a National Weather Service heat advisory, and the Education Department directed schools to limit outdoor activities after 10 a.m. Some educators and parents reported broken or non-existent air conditioners while some families were also concerned about overheated students on school buses.

Avery is enrolled in P.S. 121’s “gifted and talented” program, which pulls students from different neighborhoods. His mom, Elida, praised the city’s move to expand such programs, calling it “a great opportunity for a lot of other children.”

From left, Elida Collazo, Avery Collazo and Albert Collazo pose for a portrait on the first day of school at P.S. 121 in the Bronx.

Because the family has to travel outside of their zoned school to bring Avery to the program, they rely on a yellow school bus for transportation. Even though school bus drivers vowed to stay behind the wheel this week, families were still on edge about a possible strike, which could affect an estimated 86,000 students, or more than half of the children who ride yellow school buses.

“We’re definitely hoping no strike happens,” Collazo said.

For P.S. 121 mom Phyllis Moore, the new school year represented a fresh chance to get involved in her daughter’s education following her recovery from a stroke last year.

“I’m ready to be here, to get involved, to be on the school board, to do what I need to do,” said Moore. “We’re excited.”

Her daughter Lanyah, a fourth grader, has been in the school since kindergarten. She was excited to return to school with more age and experience, she said, but the 8-year-old was still nervous to find out who her teacher and classmates would be.

Schools Chancellor David Banks joined Mayor Eric Adams at P.S. 121, in the Bronx’s District 11, which is one of the districts in the first wave of the NYC Reads initiative. In a major shift in how the nation’s largest school system teaches its youngest children how to read, elementary schools in 15 of the city’s 32 local districts must switch to one of three literacy programs this year, with the rest following next year. District 11 selected EL Education, a curriculum that some schools in the area had already implemented.

“What I am going to be laser-focused on is ensuring every single child in the school system is on grade level no later than third grade,” Banks said. “The broader issue is, for even kids who don’t have dyslexia, they can’t read. And that’s because we haven’t taught them properly how to read.”

The push to change literacy instruction comes after years of attempts to improve the city’s middling reading scores — and after a widely used curriculum, which focused heavily on independent reading without enough explicit phonics instruction, was largely discredited.

Outside of P.S. 165 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, most parents said they hadn’t heard about the city’s curriculum mandate. The school, along with every elementary campus in District 23, is required to use a curriculum called Into Reading — by far the most common program that superintendents have mandated.

Sherifa Adams said her 6-year-old daughter Kaydence was already picking up reading skills, and Adams has mixed feelings about the change. “It’s first grade, so she’s already used to something,” said Adams, who learned about the curriculum mandate from a reporter. “I hope that this new reading curriculum only makes it better and not worse for her.”

The school plans to hold a curriculum night next week and will share more information about the new reading program with families then, an Education Department spokesperson said.

The literacy mandate may signal a wider effort to come, Education Department officials noted. The city is already pushing such changes for early education and ninth grade algebra. Some high school superintendents have opted to implement literacy instruction mandates on their own accord.

Students and families on the first day of school on Thursday at P.S. 165 Ida Posner in Brooklyn, NY.

Meanwhile, the city also continues to grapple with how it will accommodate the influx of children from asylum-seeking families. Banks announced Thursday that the city is hoping to address the chronic shortage of bilingual teachers by reducing a bureaucratic hurdle. For educators who are already certified in bilingual education but teach other areas, they will no longer lose tenure by switching subjects, Banks said. The move would affect about 500 teachers.

Despite the ongoing challenges, the first day of school also marked the tremendous progress that many of the newcomers have made since arriving last year.

At I.S. 93 in Ridgewood, Queens, one student who arrived in the country six months ago speaking no English made enough progress to enroll in an honors dual-language class this year. He was part of a team that won a classwide engineering competition Thursday, said his teacher Sara Hobler.

“This sort of thing is why I teach,” Hobler said. “It makes you take a step back for a moment and remember why you go through all the difficult parts of the job — for those looks on those kids’ faces when they realize they’re going to thrive.”

Busing woes, even without a strike

It has become all too common for students to have problems with yellow school buses, particularly on the first day of school. This year was no exception, as union officials continue negotiating with the city over a new contract. There were nearly 1,300 bus delays reported on the Office of Pupil Transportation’s website as of 4 p.m.

Brownsville mom Anika Smith said she received limited information about bus service and had yet to receive pick up and drop off times, even though her second grade son is entitled to transportation because of a disability.

Smith accompanied her son on Thursday to greet his teachers. Though the family lives a few blocks away from school, the mom said ongoing disruptions would be a “catastrophe,” forcing her to scramble to find relatives to help with transportation or rearrange her nursing shifts at a local hospital.

“I’m gonna have to take off a couple of days, switch around my hours,” Smith said. “I lose wages. I could get a write up … the hospital’s already short staffed.”

Outside her son’s school, P.S. 165, a staff member told a small group of families gathered in the schoolyard about the city’s contingency plans, including MetroCards or rideshare services for children with disabilities, those in temporary housing, or children in foster care.

Students and families arrive for the first day of school at P.S. 165 in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Naomi Peña, a mother of four children with dyslexia and co-founder of a Bronx-based literacy program, said her son’s bus arrived at their home just 10 minutes before his school was scheduled to start. By the time he arrived on campus, he was more than two hours late, meaning he missed his entire morning literacy block, she said.

The late bus – along with her daughter’s class having no working air conditioning – led to a disappointing first day of school, Peña said.

“It’s frustrating because I am just one parent that experiences these things, but it’s part of a larger ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of parents,” she said. “It shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t. Our kids deserve better, especially on their first day.”

Enrollment, mergers, and navigating the system

Over the past five years, K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000, which can have big consequences for schools since funding is tied to student headcount.

At Brooklyn’s P.S. 165, for instance, enrollment dipped below 200 students last year — one of a growing share of elementary schools in central Brooklyn and across the city below that threshold. Though small schools can be more expensive for the city to run on a per-student basis, several parents said there are benefits, too.

“With a small school environment, she will get the help that she needs,” said Crystal Salgado, referring to her 6-year-old daughter, Cianna. “The teachers actually know the kids.”

For her part, Cianna was so excited to be back at school that she zoomed past her mother into the schoolyard. She said she was most excited for lunch, preferably pizza.

Crystal Salgado and her 6-year-old daughter, Cianna, arrive for the first day of school at P.S. 165 in Brooklyn. Cianna hoped for a pizza lunch.

Some school communities began to see controversial mergers last school year, like one at Lafayette Academy, which joined with West Side Collaborative.

Despite opposition from both of these small Upper West middle schools, the proposal passed. Morana Mesic, a former PTA president at West Side Collaborative who opposed the merger, said her seventh grade son cried last night as the realization hit that he wouldn’t be returning to the small school that had felt like home. Instead, he’ll be attending West End Secondary School, a much larger 6-12 school on the Upper West Side that he transferred to over the summer.

“He’s going into a whole new environment all over again, so he did have a really emotional reaction,” she said. “He was anxious, frustrated, and scared, saying, ‘I don’t know if I’m gonna be accepted.’”

Just over 30 blocks north, on the Upper West Side campus Lafayette shares with two other schools, families fanned into a crowded street, greeted by welcome signs and an energetic traffic conductor shouting, “Good morning! Good morning! Happy first day!”

Some students matched the excitement as they approached the building.

One Manhattan School for Children student said she couldn’t wait for “math, seeing my friends, writing, and anything I learn.”

Nearby, Jeanelle and Zaki Jarrah, stood next to their eighth-grader Finn. The family is new to the city, having just moved from Flagler Beach, Florida, a few weeks ago.

They said they were looking forward to their son developing closer connections in a smaller school environment. But they didn’t have a clear idea why they picked the Manhattan School for Children.

“We have absolutely no idea what we’re doing,” Jeanelle Jarrah said, laughing. “The school system here is so overwhelming.”

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

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

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

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

5 things we’re watching this school year in NYC

2023-09-07T10:00:00+00:00

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More than 900,000 New York City public school students are slated to resume classes on Thursday with the customary mix of excitement, jitters, and joy.

In recent years, one acute crisis after another has overshadowed the start of classes, from chaotic efforts to restart in-person classes during the height of the pandemic to a bruising battle over budget cuts and an influx of asylum seekers that began last summer.

This year is proving to be no exception in the nation’s largest district: Families and educators are bracing for a school bus driver strike that could affect some 80,000 students, including many of the city’s most vulnerable. Union officials promised that the first week of service would not be interrupted, but the threat of a strike still looms.

Climate-related issues also affected this year’s start, just as they impacted the end of last school year. The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for Thursday, forcing schools to limit outdoor activities between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m, school officials said.

But it’s not just acute challenges facing the city as the school year resumes.

Thorny long-term enrollment and budget issues that have been simmering for years could also come to a head this year with a fiscal cliff looming.

It will also be a pivotal school year for schools Chancellor David Banks, as his signature initiative to overhaul literacy instruction starts rolling out.

Here are five big issues we’ll be watching closely as this critical school year begins:

Asylum seekers continue arriving

The influx of asylum seekers to New York City that began last summer has shown no signs of abating. The Education Department has enrolled an estimated 21,000 newly arrived students since last summer, including 2,500 since this July.

There’s plenty of room in city schools: K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000 over the past five years.

And educators and families across the city have mobilized over the last year to welcome the newcomers with everything from basic needs to language support.

But lingering challenges continue to undercut the city’s efforts to support the newcomers, starting with gaps in the process for quickly enrolling them in school.

And once they arrive, many won’t attend schools with bilingual teachers. A report last year from the Independent Budget Office found that under half of the schools that enrolled asylum seekers last year had a certified bilingual teacher on staff, reflecting a long-running shortage.

Banks has said new efforts are in the works to step up recruitment of bilingual teachers.

A fiscal cliff looms

New York City schools have been profoundly reshaped by an infusion of $7 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds meant to help school districts climb out from under the shadow of the pandemic. Among the big ticket items entirely or largely funded by that money are:

Summer Rising, the city’s free summer school program combining recreation and academics for roughly 100,000 kids each of the last three summers. The program has proven so popular that 45,000 families were turned away this year.
500 new social workers spread across the city to help address mounting mental health challenges.
A program to shore up school budgets after enrollment losses. Prior to the pandemic, when schools lost students, their budgets were slashed accordingly. But the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to blunt the impact of those budget cuts.

All of those programs and more will be on the chopping block next school year, since the federal relief money must be spent by October 2024. That will likely spur some fierce and thorny battles over prioritizing existing money, or finding new sources of funding.

Banks’ signature initiative takes off

Banks has largely defined his tenure around a single goal: improving the teaching of literacy.

At the center of that goal is a sweeping initiative to overhaul the curriculum that schools use to teach reading in an effort to standardize practices across schools and abandon approaches that have been increasingly discredited. Fifteen of the city’s 32 community school districts will start this year using one of the three new pre-approved curriculum options, with the rest following next year.

But mandating new curriculums is just the first step. Changing something as deeply ingrained as how schools teach reading will require buy-in from staff and ongoing supervision and training. Officials have promised a robust training plan, but recently scrapped the department’s large in-house literacy coaching program and have so far largely outsourced professional development to curriculum publishers and other outside groups.

It’s not just elementary literacy in Banks’ crosshairs: the Education Department is also mandating a ninth-grade algebra curriculum at some high schools, as well as an early childhood curriculum, and First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg said Wednesday that the agency plans to look “very, very closely” at the curriculums used in all core classes across all grades in the coming years.

Teachers: We want to hear from you about what kind of training you are receiving — and need — to effectively use the new curriculum.

Enrollment and attendance challenges linger

The influx of asylum seekers over the past year helped slow the enrollment bleeding, but the long-term trends are unmistakable: New York City’s public schools are losing students.

The reasons are complex, including a drop in young students entering school during the pandemic, and a surge in families leaving New York City for more affordable destinations.

But the impact for the school system is profound. As of last year, the Education Department had 201 schools with fewer than 200 students. That’s more than twice the number of tiny schools 15 years earlier.

Since school budgets are largely tied to enrollment, ultra-small schools often struggle to offer enough courses and extracurricular variety to function. In the long run, there will likely be increasing pressure on the city to consider closures or mergers.

It’s not just enrollment patterns reducing the number of children in city schools on any given day: Chronic absenteeism has also spiked, jumping from an average of around 25% before the pandemic to 36% last school year (down slightly from 41% the year before), officials said. Chronic absenteeism is closely linked to adverse academic outcomes, and the city’s efforts to improve attendance could be a core part of efforts to recover from pandemic losses.

NYC students, staff face ongoing academic, emotional challenges

The ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and disrupted years of schooling continue to reverberate, touching everything from standardized test scores, to elevated levels of absenteeism, to teachers’ and students’ mental health, to spikes in youth violence.

The city has launched a grab bag of both big ticket and smaller scale programs to address those sweeping challenges, some of which will be at risk when federal stimulus money expires next year.

But others are still getting off the ground, including a telehealth initiative to expand therapy access to teenagers. Banks said Wednesday that the program will roll out by the end of 2023 and will be free and open to all city teenagers ages 13 to 17.

In many ways, all of the city’s big educational initiatives, from the literacy curriculum overhaul to efforts to preempt and prevent youth violence can be seen through the lens of addressing the lingering scars of the pandemic — and recovery remains a core challenge for the school system.

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

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

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

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s what NYC’s teacher workforce looks like as a new school year begins

2023-09-06T22:05:44+00:00

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New York City hasn’t seen the kinds of severe post-pandemic teacher shortages plaguing other parts of the country.

But the teaching force in the nation’s largest school system hasn’t emerged from the pandemic unscathed.

Last year, New York City public schools saw a higher rate of teacher attrition than any time in the last decade, and the pool of educators shrunk by roughly 2,000, mirroring the yearslong decline in student enrollment, according to Education Department data.

Hiring for certain hard-to-fill positions also remains a big challenge, with bilingual educators and high school special education teachers near the top of the list of shortage areas.

Efforts to diversify the disproportionately white teaching force continue making slow progress, with recent classes of new teachers that are far more representative of the city’s student body than the teaching force as a whole, which was 55% white in 2022, according to city data. The student body is just 16% white.

City officials say the teaching workforce is still in a strong position for now, and that both hiring and attrition are trending in better directions than last year, though numbers aren’t finalized until October.

“We should be thankful that we are in a better position than a lot of districts, including some large urban districts,” said First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg.

More help is also on the way. Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Wednesday that New York state is investing $30 million in a teacher residency program that subsidizes the cost of master’s degrees and certification requirements for new teachers. The state will also award funds to districts that come up with promising plans to diversify their teaching forces.

But there are big challenges on the horizon as the city struggles to continue hiring bilingual educators to keep pace with a historic influx of English language learners and prepares to comply with a new state class size law that could ultimately force the city to increase its teaching force by an estimated 9,000.

Here’s a look at how the disruptions of the past few years have reshaped New York City’s teaching force, and some of the changes that lie ahead:

The teacher workforce has shrunk

In the years prior to the pandemic, and even during its height, the city’s teaching force stayed at a relatively stable number, usually hovering between 78,000 and 79,000, according to Education Department data shared earlier this summer.

But that number dropped below 76,000 last fall – the biggest reduction in recent years.

That’s not altogether surprising: The city’s K-12 enrollment has fallen by more than 120,000 over the past five years. Schools that lost enrollment faced budget cuts last year after the city began phasing out federal pandemic relief funds. And the percentage of unfilled teaching positions in city schools remains low, under 2% citywide in the 2021-2022 school year, with the highest vacancy rates at the poorest schools.

But it’s worth understanding the forces behind the drop.

The reduction was due to an unusually high rate of teachers leaving between fall 2021 and 2022, and a comparatively small hiring class last fall.

More than 8% of the city’s teachers left the Education Department between fall 2021 and fall 2022, the highest rate of attrition in at least the past decade.

Much of that higher-than-usual attrition likely came from an exodus of teachers who refused to comply with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for school staff. But educators are also confronting mounting levels of burnout and stress.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew sounded the alarm this week, warning that New York City is not immune from the national teacher staffing challenges.

“For years, everybody said, ‘Well New York City would never deal with it.’ Well, we are,” Mulgrew said at a press conference Wednesday. “It was always, ‘People will come from all over the country to live in New York City and teach.’ Well, that’s no longer true, and this is a big problem.”

On top of the higher attrition, the Education Department hired fewer than 3,900 new teachers last fall – down from 4,500 in 2019. Officials have pointed to national trends including low percentages of teacher certification candidates completing their programs as part of the problem.

A spokesperson said the Education Department is anticipating 4,500 new teachers this year, but won’t have a final count on new hires or attrition until October.

Shortage areas persist

The overall numbers don’t tell the whole picture of teacher hiring in New York City.

Specific teaching roles have long been harder to fill – what education officials call “shortage areas.”

The number of candidates per open position fluctuates wildly depending on the specific teaching role. At one end, the position of early childhood educator got about 30 applicants for every hire last year. At the other, applications for the role of high school special education teacher fell hundreds short of the number of open positions.

Math and bilingual education are also among the areas for which the Education Department gets the fewest applicants per job.

The shortage areas can create staffing crunches for schools and even threaten to put schools out of compliance with laws governing staffing ratios for students with disabilities and English language learners.

The citywide teacher workforce numbers also mask significant differences between schools. In general, higher-poverty schools see more teachers leave every year and have more open positions at the start of each school year.

In the highest poverty schools, more than 1 in 6 who started at the school in fall 2021 had left by fall 2022, either to go to another New York City public school, or out of the system. In the wealthiest schools, by comparison, just 1 in 10 teachers left last year. The constant churn at high-poverty schools means less continuity for kids and higher proportions of inexperienced teachers at schools with the highest levels of need.

It also translates to more vacant positions at high-poverty schools when the year starts – forcing some schools to scramble to find substitutes or even ask teachers to cover courses outside of teaching license.

Challenges are on the horizon

Even as New York City seeks to regain some of its footing with teacher recruitment this year, there are big challenges ahead.

In the immediate term, an influx of roughly 21,000 asylum seeking students since last summer has increased the need for bilingual teachers, both in Spanish and other languages.

The Education Department made some small-scale efforts last year, including a program to bring in 25 teachers from the Dominican Republic that was soon mired in controversy. Currently, the city has roughly 1,700 bilingual teachers — and just half of the schools that enrolled asylum seekers last fall had a bilingual educator on staff, according to an analysis from the Independent Budget Office.

Schools Chancellor David Banks said in a press conference last week that the city has been in conversations with the teachers union and the state about ways to bring in more bilingual teachers, but he declined to share details.

Mulgrew said some teachers who speak multiple languages have certificates to work as bilingual teachers, but opt not to because the “state requires them to go back into a probationary status if they want to switch… we don’t feel that should be there any more.”

In the longer-term, city officials are already sounding the alarm about the teacher recruitment implications of the new state law capping class sizes across the city.

Education Department officials are estimating the law will eventually require the city to increase its teaching workforce by 9,000 members in order to shrink class sizes.

That means hiring significantly more teachers in the coming years, on top of the normal 4,000 to 5,000 the city has to hire every year to replace those who left. That’s sparked concerns among some experts that the quality of new teachers could fall, offsetting some of the educational benefits of the lower class sizes.

Education Department officials pointed to some homegrown efforts to expand the new teacher pipeline, including a program that allows paraprofessionals to get their teaching license, and vocational classes to help high school students prepare to become teachers.

But Weisberg said a big part of the pipeline problem is that “particularly in New York state, it’s really expensive to become a teacher.” A “big chunk” of would-be teachers can’t afford to get their credentials, he added.

The program Hochul announced Wednesday could help with that — and send additional teachers into the pipeline right as the city needs to up its hiring, Mulgrew argued. New York City was not among the first round of districts to receive the state grant money, but the city has an application in and expects to be approved, according to a union spokesperson.

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

Hundreds of Las Vegas and Tampa area schools drop Paper’s online tutoring

2023-09-06T16:35:12+00:00

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Hundreds of schools in two of the nation’s largest districts have stopped offering online tutoring through the company Paper following questions about quality and cost.

Hillsborough County schools in Florida dropped Paper altogether, while around 150 schools in Clark County, Nevada decided not to work with Paper this school year, according to district records obtained by Chalkbeat.

“After evaluating usage rates, return on investment, and student achievement data, we decided not to renew the contract,” Tanya Arja, a Hillsborough County schools spokesperson, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat last week.

Paper has lost other major clients recently, including Boston Public Schools, which cut ties with the virtual tutoring company this summer, a year earlier than expected, after a small share of students used the virtual tutoring.

The cutbacks come as many districts are evaluating which academic strategies to keep — and which to toss — as they head into the final full school year to spend billions in federal COVID relief dollars. The decisions indicate that at least some educators have grown disillusioned with Paper and perhaps opt-in virtual tutoring more broadly.

Some districts are instead investing in regularly scheduled virtual or in-person tutoring sessions during the school day, following the high-dosage model backed by research.

Paper’s online tutoring practices under scrutiny

COVID funding helped fuel significant growth for Paper, a company that landed contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to offer virtual tutoring to more than three million students in districts across the U.S. and Canada. Demand for the company’s services soared during the pandemic as many schools looked to get extra help to their students and had new money to spend.

But Paper has come under scrutiny from Chalkbeat and others for often failing to deliver the one-on-one expert help that the company advertises to schools. Some younger kids and struggling students have found the tutoring platform — which looks like a text-based instant messenger with a digital whiteboard — difficult to use. Some districts previously cut ties with Paper after a small share of students logged on for help.

Recently, the company has laid off many of its corporate staffers and tutors, and several top executives are set to depart this month.

In an email, Ava Paydar, a spokesperson for Paper, declined to comment on the changes Hillsborough County and Clark County are making. “We will defer comment to the school districts,” Paydar wrote.

In previous interviews, Paper CEO Philip Cutler defended the quality of Paper’s tutoring, and said the student experience on the Paper platform is always one-on-one because tutors work with students in an individual session — even if tutors are juggling multiple students at once. It’s uncommon for students to be matched with tutors who are unfamiliar with their subject, he added.

Cutler also said that Paper has worked to boost student usage by training teachers and conducting outreach to students and families.

Hillsborough County schools, which serve the area around Tampa, had previously paid Paper around $4 million over the last two years to offer virtual tutoring to 110,000 students in middle and high school. When the district renewed its contract last year, it did so at a reduced price, after raising concerns about low usage. The district had said it would drop Paper if too few students used the tool — and evidently followed through.

Boston school officials cited similar concerns. “For the number of students it was reaching for its cost and our assessment of how it’s been working, Paper has not been worth it,” Max Baker, a spokesperson for the district, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat last month.

Clark County had planned to spend $6.6 million to offer Paper in every school this year, district records show. Schools were told to come up with a plan to get every student in grades 3 to 12 to log on early in the school year.

But the Las Vegas-area district did an about-face shortly after Chalkbeat published an investigation in July that found Paper tutors are often juggling multiple students at the same time and working in subjects they don’t know well — leaving many students frustrated and without needed help. Instead of requiring schools to use Paper, Clark County principals were given the option to keep working with the company or to stop. The schools that opted out serve 102,000 students, or around a third of the district.

Clark County schools appears to have taken public reporting into account while making its decision to cut back on Paper’s services.

The day Chalkbeat published its investigation, a top school official shared the story with Clark County’s superintendent, Jesus Jara, according to emails obtained through an open records request. A few hours later, Jara asked a top academic officer to come see him, then added: “We may need to review this contract and move some funds to FEV Tutors.”

A few weeks later, the school board approved spending $4 million on FEV Tutor, another virtual tutoring company that, like Paper, relies on text-based chat and a digital whiteboard, but has the added feature of live audio for students to speak to their tutors.

In an email, a Clark County schools spokesperson said the district had “reallocated funds previously designated for Paper Tutoring services to include an additional option, FEV Tutor,” but would not say how much the district is now spending on Paper.

Paper also lost a contract with the state of New Mexico earlier this year, after education officials there said the company had failed to get academic help to enough students.

But many other school districts are maintaining their relationship with Paper, which still holds contracts with the states of Mississippi and Tennessee, and several large districts, including Los Angeles Unified and Palm Beach County schools in Florida.

The Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada agreed to pay Paper up to $2 million to offer virtual tutoring to middle and high school students this school year and last year. The district recently cut back on paying teachers to tutor students after school, justifying the move with the addition of Paper.

“With the introduction of Paper on-line tutoring, in-person tutoring has been reduced,” spokesperson Victoria Campbell said in an email.

In Clark County, Spanish teacher Carmen Andrews will continue to have access to Paper at the Nevada Learning Academy, where she teaches students online.

When Andrews tried the tool last year — a district requirement — she found that some of her high schoolers waited a long time to be paired with a tutor, and some were matched with tutors who didn’t speak Spanish but tried to help anyway.

(Paydar, the Paper spokesperson, said the company always has Spanish tutors available, though acknowledged that mismatches can occur. “While very rare, we find that this type of experience can happen when a tutoring session starts with a focus on one area and then crosses over to Spanish as a subject,” Paydar wrote.)

Andrews sees some value in the kind of virtual support that Paper offers, especially for students whose parents work late in the Las Vegas hospitality industry. This year she’s planning to use Paper to give students extra feedback on written assignments in Spanish. But she’s glad the district gave schools the choice to opt out.

“If a school sees no use for it,” she said, “why pay the money for them to have it?”

Matt Barnum contributed reporting.

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

Educators: Do you feel prepared for NYC’s new reading curriculum mandate?

2023-09-05T10:00:00+00:00

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A sweeping new curriculum mandate is rolling out to hundreds of New York City elementary schools this fall, requiring thousands of teachers to deploy new reading programs.

The mandate has won praise from many literacy experts, as schools have long had freedom to use a wide range of materials — with uneven results. But they note its success hinges on how strong the new materials are and how well they’re implemented.

Education department officials say they have a rigorous training plan and that all teachers using new reading curriculums will receive introductory training by the first day of school, including planning their first lessons. More intensive support and coaching is expected this fall.

If you’re an educator or school leader who is switching reading curriculums this year under the new mandate, Chalkbeat wants to hear from you. We’re interested in learning about whether you feel prepared to make the transition, what training you’ve received so far, and how you feel about the new curriculum materials your school is using.

If you teach reading in the first phase of schools to be covered by the mandate this fall — which includes districts 5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 29, 30, 32, and some schools in District 75 — please let us know using the form below.

Nearly all of the schools in the districts mentioned above are required to use one of three programs: Wit & Wisdom, from a company called Great Minds; Into Reading from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; and Expeditionary Learning, from EL Education. Superintendents were given the authority to pick the reading curriculum for all of the schools under their purview — all but two have selected Into Reading.

Even if you’re not an educator, you can still fill out the form below to let us know what questions you have about the big changes underway.

If you are having trouble viewing this form, go here.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit students show slight gains on Michigan’s standardized test

2023-09-01T17:56:32+00:00

Detroit students across charter and traditional public schools performed slightly better on Michigan’s standardized test this spring than a year ago, a reassuring sign for school officials eager to see academic achievement recover after the pandemic.

But local results remained well below the statewide numbers in math and reading, a gap that community advocates said highlights the need to redress historical disinvestment in Detroit education.

The results also spotlight the challenges the Detroit Public Schools Community District faces now that it has run through its federal COVID relief funding. The district received $1.27 billion in aid, and that money has helped pay for academic recovery work such as expanded tutoring, summer school, and after-school programming. Only some of those initiatives will continue when the federal aid runs out.

Results of the 2023 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as M-STEP, were released Thursday.

In reading, DPSCD students made small improvements across grade levels, in most cases exceeding pre-pandemic results. In third grade, 12.4% of DPSCD students scored proficient or higher in 2022-23, compared with just 9% the previous year, and 11.9% in 2018-19. Fifth grade reading results remain below pre-pandemic levels, but improved a bit from last year.

On math tests, DPSCD students improved on last year’s results, and topped pre-pandemic results in fourth and sixth grades.

Wide as they are, the gaps in performance between DPSCD and the state appear to be narrowing, particularly among Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students, who are moving toward the statewide average faster than those demographics across the whole state.

“We are not surprised by this improvement,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said. “The significant investments made in our staffing, curriculum, professional development, and school student resources over the years are reflected in these results. We have more work to do, and I want our community to know that the formula we have at DPSCD is working. Results do not lie.”

The results, however, cannot mask how much progress needs to be made to bring Detroit students in line with surrounding districts. Statewide, 43.9% of students scored proficient or higher in reading, and 35% did so in math.

Among charter schools in Detroit, results were mixed.

Detroit Edison Public School Academy saw year-to-year gains in both math and reading, but was still below 2019 results. Math results for grades 4 through 7 declined, while third grade saw an increase.

Detroit Enterprise Academy surged above its pre-pandemic results in math: The biggest gain was for seventh grade, where 32.9% of students were proficient in math, compared with 15.3% in 2019. However, reading results in many grades lagged behind pre-pandemic levels.

At Detroit Innovation Academy, fourth and seventh graders made improvements in math, with proficiency rates of 6.8% and 11.1%, respectively. Reading results for grades 3 through 6 were all below 2019 results.

Local education advocates said that despite the improvements, the 2023 results signal that more investment is needed to close gaps in Detroit and accelerate the recovery from the pandemic.

“I think we should be grateful that these scores were not lower, said Christine Bell, executive director of Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, adding that “it’s criminal that before the pandemic less than 50% of our kids were reading at grade level.”

Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, said Thursday’s results were a call for state legislators to pass literacy bills and “invest more deeply in equity, high quality tutoring, and special education supports.”

Education Trust-Midwest, an education research and advocacy organization, said the results pointed to “persistent opportunity gaps for our most underserved students, including Black and Latino students, students with disabilities and students from low-income backgrounds.”

There is more money coming, even with the loss of federal COVID relief aid, which districts have a year left to spend.

Michigan’s new school aid budget includes funding for early literacy and expansion of pre-K programming, and increased funding for special education students and at-risk students.

Districts can also apply for a share of a new $150 million state program to fund tutoring and other academic support initiatives. The funding is based on how many students are considered to not be proficient on statewide assessments.

Among the measures DPSCD has budgeted for is the placement of academic interventionists at select schools. Those educators will work closely with students struggling in reading and math, and are funded in part by a $20 million donation DPSCD received from billionaire MacKenzie Scott last fall. Individual schools also had the option going into this school year of using their Title I dollars to fund after-school tutoring.

The biggest boost for DPSCD will be the $94.4 million it received from the state to settle a 2016 lawsuit that claimed the state denied Detroit schoolchildren proper instruction in reading. The funds are dedicated to programs that support literacy.

Vitti has said he would like to use the money to hire more interventionists, increase literacy support for high school students, and expand teacher training on how to help students who are several grades below reading level.

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

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Chicago Public Schools reverses policy that docked pay from teachers taking religious holidays

2023-08-31T18:42:54+00:00

Chicago Public Schools teachers will no longer be docked pay when taking a religious holiday.

The Board of Education approved the change last week, overturning a yearslong policy that deducted the cost of hiring a substitute from the teacher’s salary. Different types of substitutes are paid at different daily rates, ranging between $170 to $264, according to the teachers union contract.

“I have friends who couldn’t afford to take off for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur because they couldn’t afford to lose that money,” said Wendy Weingarten, a physical education teacher at Lasalle II Magnet School, who’s advocated for a change since 2016.

Teachers will still get three paid days off for religious holidays, such as the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur. But now, they must provide seven days advance notice before taking their holiday, instead of the previously required two days.

In a statement, district spokesperson Samantha Hart said the change was the result of feedback from teachers, school leaders, families, and others in the community.

“This is an important first step in ensuring that CPS’ holiday pay policy better reflects the values and diversity of the District and our staff,” Hart said.

During the board meeting, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said it was “shameful” that the policy had remained unchanged for so long.

Chicago’s public schools are off on seven federal holidays, including Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day and Memorial Day, according to the calendar.

Weingarten and Davis Gates noted that the district’s holiday schedule aligns with Christian holidays. While not denoted as an official holiday, Christmas is included in the district’s two-week winter break. Good Friday is typically included at the end of the weeklong spring break.

The district said the old religious holiday policy for teachers stretches back at least a decade. Weingarten, who has worked for CPS for 25 years, said she’s always been docked pay for taking off on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

Eliminating that requirement will cost the district about $250,000 a year, a spokesperson said.

Weingarten said she began formally pressing the board for a change in 2021, when the start of the school year clashed with Rosh Hashanah. But she didn’t receive an explanation for why the district didn’t want to change the policy.

The next year, Weingarten said she filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates employee discrimination. She does not know the status of that complaint. She mentioned it to district officials during a joint meeting this April with the teachers union and CPS over the school calendar, after getting pushback about changing the religious holiday policy.

A district spokesperson did not directly say whether the policy change was sparked by the federal complaint. However, they said the change was a “preliminary step in remediating the inequities related to pay,” and that the district will review other board rules “to ensure our policies reflect the values of our diverse workforce.”

Correction: Sept. 1, 2023: A previous version of this story said Wendy Weingarten began advocating for a policy change in 2014. She began advocating for the change in 2016.

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

Michigan students gain on M-STEP, but results are still down from pre-pandemic levels

2023-08-31T14:00:14+00:00

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Michigan standardized test results for grades 3 through 7 last year remained below pre-pandemic levels in math and English language arts, but there were also some year-to-year gains.

Results on the spring’s Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as the M-STEP, were released Thursday. The data underscore continuing challenges that reverberate beyond Michigan, as U.S. schools attempt to steer students back on track after years of disruption tied to COVID.

The M-STEP is an important marker of academic progress, affecting everything from the amount of aid districts receive for tutoring, to teacher evaluations and, potentially, which low-performing districts are targeted for state intervention.

State and district leaders will examine the results closely as they make decisions about how to most effectively distribute what remains of the $6 billion in federal COVID relief funding that Michigan received, before that money runs out this year.

“If these scores show stalling, then we really essentially have between now and the end of this school year to figure it out for kids. Otherwise their lives will be permanently impacted,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab and research professor at Georgetown University. “It’s sort of now or never.”

Key takeaways from the results released Thursday:

Of the 20 assessments given to students across grades, results in 15 areas improved in 2023 from spring 2022 testing. Results fell in four others and remained the same on one test.
Michigan students in grades 3 through 7 showed slight improvements in math during 2022-23 from the previous year.
But students still have far to go to reach pre-pandemic levels. The drop in the proficiency levels when compared with 2018-19 was widespread. That was true for low-income students and for students from more affluent families.
In almost every grade and in both English language arts and mathematics, proficiency rates fell between 2018-19 and 2022-23, with a persistently wide gap between poor children and those from more affluent families.
In third grade, 27.6% of students from low-income families were proficient in English language arts in 2022-23, a drop of 3.7 percentage points from 2018-19. Among the non-poor, 59.2% were proficient, a drop of 3.6 percentage points.
The drops were steeper in sixth and seventh grades for students of different income levels in English language arts and math. For instance, 15.7% of low-income sixth graders were proficient in math in 2022-23, down 4.4 percentage points. More affluent sixth graders saw a bigger drop, from 52.1% in 2018-19 to 46.8% this year.

The M-STEP is given each spring to students in grades 3 through 7 in English language arts and math. Fifth grade students also take the science and social studies M-STEP. (Eighth graders take the PSAT 8/9 test for English language arts and math, and 11th graders take the SAT for English language arts and math.)

In typical years, schools would be able to compare M-STEP results year by year to measure student progress. But the pandemic upended that rhythm — with the annual test being canceled in 2020 as COVID-19 ended the school year early. Disruptions continued through 2020-21, when the test was optional, resulting in fewer than 75% of Michigan students taking the exam.

That has left educators to compare this year’s results with scores dating back to 2018-19, the last year of full testing before the pandemic, to gauge learning loss.

Third graders had big setbacks

Just 36.9% of Michigan seventh graders were deemed proficient in English language arts this year, compared with 42.7% in 2018-19, a 5.8 percentage-point drop.
Among sixth graders, 29.6% were proficient in math this year, down from 35.1% in 2018-19.
Some populations of at-risk students showed even greater learning loss than the overall student populations. In Detroit public schools, for example, English language learners dropped from an 18% pass rate in English language arts during 2018-19 to 14% in 2022-23. In math, the same group dropped from a 16% pass rate to 11%.

Michigan third graders, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit, took state standardized tests for the first time this spring as third graders. Just 40.9% of these students were deemed proficient in English language arts, compared with 45.1% during 2018-19. The latest results were also below the 41.6% level for third graders in 2021-22.

“This past year’s third graders were perhaps the most adversely affected of any age cohort, as they had pandemic-influenced school years during grades kindergarten through second grade, a challenge that was particularly noticeable in reading,” State Superintendent Michael Rice said in a statement. “Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade are pivotal in early literacy efforts, which may help explain the slight decline in the third grade ELA proficiency rate.”

Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the third grade reading scores “reflect the unfinished learning during the COVID and post-COVID years.”

She highlighted several investments contained in the new state school budget, including tutoring expansion, funding for early literacy, expansion of pre-K programming, and increased funding for special education students and at-risk students. But she also said she wants her committee to take a closer look at what research says about reading instruction.

“I would like to see education professionals take a closer look at word recognition or phonics versus the whole language comprehension,” she said.

How test results are being interpreted

Nikki Snyder, Republican member of the State Board of Education and a U.S. Senate candidate, said the M-STEP results underscore the importance of getting funds to parents through education savings accounts to help them pay for literacy services for their children.

“We can’t let the slowness of the implementation or the political argument about not having enough money get in the way,” she said.

“Anything slight right now does not match the huge gaping hole and need that the pandemic created.”

But Pamela Pugh, the Democratic president of the state board who is also running for U.S. Senate, said recovery efforts are paying off.

“Michigan’s students and educators are working hard to emerge from the disruption of the pandemic, and it’s making a difference,” she said. “We need to continue to invest in our schools and educators and provide the supports needed to help our kids continue to grow academically, socially, and personally.”

Niles Community Schools Superintendent Dan Applegate said his district uses M-STEP to assess whether the district curriculum is working. The district is now in its second year of implementing a new elementary English language arts curriculum.

To address learning loss, Applegate said, the district has taken some high-quality teachers out of the classroom to work as academic interventionists and classroom consultants. They lead small group instruction, coordinate academic interventions, and help other teachers ensure they are following the curriculum correctly.

Jasen Witt, superintendent of Redford Union Schools, noted that M-STEP results are only one measure of student achievement, and the district also gives students periodic assessments throughout the school year to make more timely interventions. Witt said it is clear the district still has more work to do to improve literacy and math skills across the board.

“Students are making gains … but we still have a long way to go as a district,” he said. “That period of time they lost during the pandemic, we are still working all the time to overcome those gaps.”

Ypsilanti Community Schools Superintendent Alena Zachery-Ross said the district uses other assessments throughout the year to get real-time feedback and will look to see if M-STEP results align with results from those tests.

At the national level, policy experts are concerned that academic recovery has stalled and is not on pace to get students back on track to pre-pandemic achievement.

“I don’t think there was as much urgency around academic recovery as there could have been, given how far kids were behind,” said Roza, the Georgetown professor.

Because districts across the country did not receive much guidance on how to use federal COVID relief funding, Roza said there were vast differences in the way school leaders chose to use the money.

“We’re seeing a lot of different things at once,” she said. “Some districts are seeing more progress than others, and there really are no uniform patterns.”

In Michigan, M-STEP results have ramifications for students, teachers and school districts. Districts can apply for a new $150 million state program to fund tutoring and other academic support initiatives. Districts will receive funding based on how many students are considered to not be proficient on statewide assessments.

Beth DeShone, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, a group focused on school choice, said she has “little faith that (the) bureaucracy is going to find its way to getting the money direct into the kids’ hands or direct into teachers’ classrooms to make an impact on the kids that are struggling.”

Jennifer Mrozowski, senior director of The Education Trust-Midwest, an education and advocacy organization, praised the most recent state education budget but said Michigan must invest in “evidence-based interventions” and have a clear system “to monitor if dollars are indeed reaching the classrooms of the students for whom the funding is intended” and if the interventions are speeding up learning.

Under Michigan law, standardized test results play a major role in teacher evaluations. School districts must base 40% of a teacher’s evaluation on student growth as determined by testing data. For teachers who teach subjects and grades that are assessed by state standardized testing, at least half of that 40% must be based on the state assessment. (Democratic lawmakers are aiming to remove student growth data as a factor in future teacher evaluations.)

Ron Koehler, superintendent at Kent ISD, which services about 20 traditional school districts and 25 charter schools, said one area of focus will be seventh grade English language arts, where his team’s analysis of local students showed 42.8% of students are proficient, compared with 46% before the pandemic. He said member districts showed gains in fifth and eighth grade social studies compared with pre-pandemic levels, but 11th grade social studies is significantly down from spring 2019.

Koehler said districts also will be working with community groups to emphasize the importance of consistently attending school.

“Attendance has a direct relationship to student performance in many ways,” he said.

Isabel Lohman covers K-12 and higher education for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

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

Mike Wilkinson is a data reporter for Bridge Michigan. You can reach him at mwilkinson@bridgemi.com.

One Detroit school’s multilayered effort to get absent students back to school

2023-08-31T13:06:56+00:00

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After missing four days of classes last fall at Gompers Elementary-Middle School, Jay’Sean Hull was called into the cafeteria with 100 other students with similar attendance records.

The group was introduced to attendance agent Effie Harris, a key figure in the school’s efforts to improve on a dismal statistic. The previous school year, a staggering 82% of students in the northwest Detroit school were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days.

Harris explained that the students had been selected for a relatively new program pairing students at risk of becoming chronically absent with 20 adult mentors in the building.

Jay’Sean’s mentor: Harris herself. Over the next few weeks, she would greet the sixth-grader at a side entrance designated for middle schoolers, visit him in his classrooms on days that he arrived late, and regularly check in with his family.

This high-touch, relationship-based investment was part of a multipronged approach at Gompers last school year to tackle a problem with tragic consequences: Chronically absent students are more likely to become disengaged from school and more likely to drop out, research shows. Frequent absences also make it harder to get students on track academically, a pressing need coming off pandemic-fueled declines in academic achievement.

Gompers Principal Akeya Murphy, a veteran educator, tapped just about every staff member to help with the effort. Along with the mentorship program, the school dispatched staff to students’ homes to help families solve problems contributing to absenteeism, used data to track attendance patterns, and offered incentives ranging from field trips to the local movie theater for students to grocery store gift cards for parents.

Students eat lunch at Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. In 2021-22, a staggering 82% of the school’s students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more school days.

Murphy, Harris, and other leaders at Gompers set an ambitious goal for last school year: to shave 20 percentage points off the school’s chronic absenteeism rate.

To get there, they would need to reach students like 13-year-old Jay’Sean, and dozens of other students whose absences put them at risk of missing out on their education.

“By the time they’re 16, they’re already thinking about going to work or exiting out of the educational system, because it is rigorous,” Murphy said. “We know the curriculum is rigorous, and so we want to prepare them, and the way we do that is by them being at school every single day, so that they’re not missing anything.”

Attendance struggles reflect Brightmoor’s economic challenges

Across the Detroit Public Schools Community District, 77% of students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, when COVID-19 cases in Michigan reached their peak. But even before the pandemic caused a spike in absenteeism in school districts across the country, students in Detroit district and charter schools were missing school at crisis numbers.

The reasons for that vary, but they’re largely rooted in the economic challenges that accompany Detroit’s high poverty rates — transportation hurdles, health problems, family and housing instability.

Brightmoor, where Gompers is located, is one of the most economically challenged areas in the city, with a high concentration of housing instability, poverty, and transportation challenges. They contribute to a high level of transiency among the school’s student population, school officials say.

At Gompers, 91% of students come from low-income homes. The list of reasons for missed school days ranges widely at Gompers, from inflexible parent work schedules to student illnesses and bullying.

By January 2023, Haydin Griggs had missed about 50 days of the school year, primarily because her mother, Shetaya Griggs, had health problems that often prevented her from walking her daughter to school, and she didn’t want the sixth-grader walking to school on her own in their rough neighborhood.

Many parents “don’t have a bunch of money, they don’t have a whole bunch of resources,” said Harris, the attendance agent. “They’re thinking about just surviving.”

The Detroit school district’s strategies to reduce absenteeism have increasingly focused on these economic challenges. The district’s Family Resource Distribution Center regularly offers toiletries, dry goods, school supplies and winter coats.

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.

Students wait in line in the main hallway at Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. The reasons for missed school days range widely at Gompers, from inflexible parent work schedules to student illnesses and bullying.

One issue that came up at Gompers ahead of the school year was how many parents were holding their children back from school because they did not have a uniform or clean clothes. Murphy said she sent out a back-to-school letter encouraging parents to send their kids to school regardless of what they had to wear.

“We would prefer them to be at school and just have them wear their regular clothes versus feeling like they can’t come to school because of a uniform,” she said.

When Murphy became principal at Gompers at the start of 2022-23, she made sure to move the attendance agent’s office into the main office, a decision she hoped would amplify the importance of student attendance to families as they walked into the building.

Harris spends a portion of her days reaching out by phone and in person to parents and caregivers, trying to help them make plans to get their kids to class. It can be difficult, she said, stressing to families how two absences a month can quickly add up to a student being chronically absent. Some are unaware of how significant the absences are, and many are weary of the pandemic’s impact on their health, jobs, and households.

“The dust is still settling,” Harris said in February, during a spike in absenteeism. “Families have been affected, loved ones have been lost. There have been readjustments, people have had to adapt to whatever their new normals are and a lot of shuffling.”

A student’s absence, whether excused or unexcused, still counts toward the total number of missed school days they accumulate in a given year.

Gloria Vanhoosier’s three elementary school-age children each accumulated over 80 absences (out of 180 days) during the 2021-22 school year.

In Vanhoosier’s case, a bedbug infestation that lasted more than a year was a contributing factor. She was often too exhausted to take her children to school after spending so much time trying to rid her home of the critters, while also doing her children’s laundry nightly so they didn’t bring the bugs to school. They also missed school because of multiple of COVID infections, because of car problems, and because the children sometimes overslept.

Alarmed by the absences, Harris reached out multiple times asking Vanhoosier to meet with her at the school.

“‘I’m not superwoman,’” Vanhoosier remembers telling Harris when they finally met. “‘I got too much on my plate. I’m trying to take care of my kids and trying to take care of my family.’”

“Once I opened up to her, it’s like her whole face changed,” Vanhoosier recalled. “Now I feel that she sees my struggle and is concerned for me.”

The conversation with Harris motivated Vanhoosier to rethink her attitude about her children’s absences and its impact on their grades. Seeing her daughters happy and thriving after they began attending school more regularly has also helped. The girls participated in volleyball step dance, and after-school tutoring programs.

“I’ve gotten a lot better,” Vanhoosier said in the spring. “We still miss days, but I’m open with her now.”

Absenteeism has ripple effects on students in the classroom

Brittany Parker, who has been teaching for 10 years, wrestles with what to do when her kindergartners don’t show up for class. Absences can create lasting turmoil in a child’s education — children who are chronically absent in early grades are less likely to read at grade level by the third grade.

They can also hamper the rest of the class. “The question for me is: Do I push ahead to the next lesson or do I wait for them to come back?” Parker said.

“As a district, they want us to keep going,” she said. “If it’s four kids out, I’m going to push ahead. Sometimes if it’s a larger number I’ll hold back. I’m also looking at: Are these kids who can catch up?”

An instructor works with students at Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. Children who are chronically absent in early grades are less likely to read at grade level by third grade.

By May, more than half of the 50 third-graders La’Dawn Peterson taught between her morning and afternoon math classes were chronically absent. An additional nine were severely chronically absent, meaning they had missed more than 36 days of school.

One of them missed more than 60 days during the year.

“He would be so good if he came to school,” Peterson said of the boy. When he did show up, he was able to grasp the material, but she worried whether he’d retain the information.

Despite her many attempts to communicate with his family, she said she’s not entirely clear why he was absent so much.

Peterson said she’s tried exhaustively to impress upon her students and their families the importance of daily attendance, and the harmful impact of missing school. It shows up in their academic performance, she said, and explains why some students can become classroom distractions.

One day in June, when extreme heat prompted the district to shorten the school day, just nine students showed up — about half as many as usual. One of them was the boy who had missed 60 days.

On that day, while other students quickly got to work on their online multiplication and fraction exercises, he was slow to get started. He rubbed his eyes with the sleeves of his black and white Adidas tracksuit, and rested his head on one hand as he clicked through the exercises.

About 10 minutes later, he raised his hand, and a classroom tutor walked over to his desk in the back corner of the room. With a little bit of support, he seemed to grasp the lesson and began to work through the exercises.

Teachers like Peterson are cramming in four to five lessons a week, and they depend on weekly small-group lessons to catch up absent or struggling students. But if kids miss those opportunities, the challenges multiply.

“They’re missing out on so much and then, most of the ones that are absent all the time … there’s no motivation at home,” Peterson said. “So they come to school, and they’re not motivated to do anything.”

Over 18 absences: ‘You can’t bounce back from that’

Eighteen days. Thirty-six days. Fifty days. Sixty days. Eighty days of missed school. How does a student’s attendance record ever get so bad?

That’s the question that haunted Murphy and her team at Gompers, and motivated them to work on curbing absenteeism long before it becomes chronic.

Third grade teacher DeAnna Weeden, far right, instructs a group of students during an English lesson at Gompers Elementary-Middle School. Teachers depend on weekly small-group lessons to catch up absent or struggling students.

“You want to, for lack of a better word, stop the bleeding,” with students just below chronic absenteeism, Murphy said in January. “We need (families) to know that they’re on their way to being over the 18 absences … you can’t bounce back from that.”

In Jay’Sean’s case, it was four missed days of school by the end of October, too many so early in the school year. Jay’Sean blamed inconsistent school bus service that prompted him to start walking to school.

That was enough to warrant an intervention from the new mentorship program for him and the other students at risk of becoming chronically absent. The school’s mentoring program is an offshoot of a national initiative launched by the U.S. Department of Education.

The program’s premise sounded easy enough to Jay’Sean. “I just had to keep coming to school,” he recalled.

In reality, it took more effort than that from Harris and others on the team to ensure that Jay’Sean stayed on track. But it worked.

“By the beginning of the new year … he was always coming,” Harris told Chalkbeat this summer. If Jay’Sean came in late some days, she’d stop by his classroom to check in.

“He always wants to go to school,” said Shamika Hull, Jay’Sean’s mom. “He’ll go stand outside, and it’ll be raining, and he’s out there waiting for the bus.”

Hull also has an 11-year-old son at Gompers who got the message on attendance.

“The only times they have been absent from school since (the program began) has been either they were having a doctor’s appointment, or I wasn’t able to wash their clothes.”

For those whose absences are already beyond the “chronic” threshold, Murphy said she and her staff “continue to work with the family. We continue to make those calls. We continue to try to remove barriers.”

Those efforts won’t help the school improve its chronic absenteeism rate, Harris said, “but it’s still going to help the kid.”

“I tell them, ‘OK, let’s just take it a week at a time. Just five days. Four more days. Just three more days,’” she said, adding: “It’s going to make a difference for the kids and their scores.”

Attendance incentives are a ‘means to an end’

The conference room at Gompers is testament to the school leaders’ determination to make a dent in absenteeism. On all four walls are dozens of easel paper sheets, with handwriting in bright pink, green and orange marker. Each sheet details strategies Gompers staff have employed to try to make kids come to school every day.

Posters hanging in the conference room at Gompers Elementary-Middle School highlight some of the school’s strategies to combat student absenteeism.

Field trips to the local movie theater and bowling alley. Gas and grocery store gift cards for parents. Arts and crafts activities in the gymnasium. A mobile video game truck. “Gator Bucks,” named after the school’s mascot, for students who complete classroom assignments and exhibit positive behavior.

“These are the kinds of things that we’re discussing, constantly thinking and trying to be innovative about,” Murphy said. “How can we entice kids and make sure that families are consistently bringing their children to school?”

“It’s a means to an end … initially to draw them in and then to get them into the habit” of going to school, said Harris, the attendance agent.

A line of plastic trophies sit on a shelf behind Harris’ desk. Every two weeks, the awards go to the classrooms that have the most students with perfect attendance.

Gompers deploys some of these incentive programs when students are more likely to be absent, such as before and after holiday breaks or crucial days such as Count Day or state testing periods.

But while incentives are a significant part of Murphy’s vision to encourage student attendance, relationship building remains the core tenet of the school’s efforts.

“Children need to know that you care for them, that they’re in a safe space, that they have a trusted adult that they can communicate with and someone that is building a relationship with them, because that’s going to open the pathway for learning,” she said.

When absences go unexplained

For all their efforts — and progress — the sense of crisis is never far away.

On a Friday morning in early February, a handful of master teachers and administrators gathered in that same conference room for a weekly meeting to discuss academic performance, attendance, and behavior.

It had been close to a month since students and staff returned from winter break. And yet, teachers were still reporting near-empty classrooms.

“It’s that two-week break, where a lot of our students are moving,” said Shannon Harper, a fourth grade master teacher. “They may have been (evicted from) their homes. They may be living now with a relative, and there’s some friction there. And cars break down in the winter, especially here with all the potholes.”

“I just had a student that was out for 10 days,” Harper told the group. “We don’t know why, and he doesn’t either.”

Despite a barrage of robocalls going home when a child is absent, many parents don’t send their children back to the building immediately. And even when students do return, some may not have notes or reasons explaining why they missed school.

“If you never say this is your issue, we can’t help you,” said Adrian Harrell, Gompers’ parent outreach coordinator. “We can’t see what our next solution is to help you. All we know now is they are absent.”

Gompers Elementary-Middle School in the Brightmoor neighborhood is one of the Detroit district’s newer buildings. But Brightmoor is one of the most economically challenged areas in the city.

After a year of effort, Detroit students and leaders reap the rewards

On the last day of school, the grin on Jay’Sean’s face was hard to conceal, even behind the black hoodie that shrouded his head.

He was one of nine students who won a new bike in an end-of year-raffle to reward students who showed up every day over the last weeks of school.

As he took a seat on his red and black Mongoose bicycle, Jay’Sean welcomed the compliments and cheers from his friends.

The whole school had something to cheer about, too. By the end of the year, the chronic absenteeism rate declined to 64% — just shy of the 20-point decline school officials were aiming for, but down significantly.

The district experienced a similar decline, from the peak of 77% in 2021-22 to 68% last year. District officials attribute some of that to the end of quarantining requirements that forced many students to miss school.

Encouraged by the progress last year, Gompers school staff plan to continue their strategies in the new school year that began this week.

The mentoring program will remain in place, along with the range of incentives the school experimented with. But most significant for Gompers will be the addition of a second attendance agent to work alongside Harris.

Superintendent Vitti announced earlier this year that the district would shuffle its 80 attendance agents to schools in areas with the highest concentration of chronically absent students and poverty.

The added resources provide validation that attendance agents with a coordinated, hands-on approach can make a difference.

Harris said she is proud of seeing her mentees like Jay’Sean avoid chronic absenteeism. He finished the year with 13 absences, five days below the threshold.

Under Harris’ guidance, he found an accountability system that worked for him. By the end of the winter break, for all the attempts he made to get to school on time and every day, he and other students earned snacks and mini-parties every month.

With a challenging sixth grade year behind him, Jay’Sean is ready to get back to school.

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

Tracie Mauriello covered state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. Reach the team at detroit.tips@chalkbeat.org.

New school year and new challenges on the first day of class in metro Detroit

2023-08-28T15:52:01+00:00

Brooklyn Anderson’s first day of third grade on Monday at Pleasantview Elementary School in Eastpointe began somberly, consumed by nerves over a new school. Then a classmate shared crayons with the 8-year-old, and giggled with her over a shared affection for late-night fruity cereal.

And near the end of the day, Brooklyn declared, “I love this school.”

In Detroit, adults who lined up on opposite sides of a sidewalk clapped, and a brass band played as students entered Fisher Magnet Academy. And in Southfield, one elementary school started the year in a different building as their old digs get renovated.

As the new school year began in the Detroit Public Schools Community District and others across Michigan, students are facing familiar challenges — with the promise of fresh solutions.

The 2023-24 year marks the fourth full school year since the pandemic started, and offers the state’s public schools an opportunity to recalibrate academic recovery programs, tackle mental health issues, and address longstanding problems, some of which began long before the pandemic.

The problems include chronic absenteeism, food insecurity, and sustained learning loss following the pandemic. State leaders have attempted to address some of those issues through a budget designed to send more money to schools that serve the most vulnerable students. This is also the first year the state has sent enough funding for every student, regardless of income, to receive free breakfast and lunch.

Over the summer, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer promised a more fierce approach to education at the state level in announcing a new education agency, called MiLEAP. Whitmer said she hopes the new department — the creation of which has drawn opposition from some members of the Michigan State Board of Education — bridges the gaps in the state’s approach to public education, from the very early years of learning to the later years in school.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gives high-fives to first-grade students after stopping in their classroom during a visit to Forest Park Elementary in Eastpointe on Monday.

It was Whitmer herself who declared the first school day finished over the PA during a visit to Forest Park Elementary School in Eastpointe, after a few minutes of high-fiving some of the school’s learners and delivering a box of Dunkin’ donuts for staff.

“I hope you all had a great day,” she said. “This is going to be a fun school year, and I hope you make friends, learn new things, and make some great memories.”

Frederick Douglass Academy, Detroit

Anthony Buford made a dash for the doors of his new school building.

“I’ve been expecting this for like two years,” Anthony said, heading into his senior year at Frederick Douglass Academy for Young Men.

The 2023-24 school year marks a fresh start for Douglass students and staff after a decade and a half at their old school building. Their new school is the formerly vacant Northern High School building, about 3 miles north of the old location near Midtown Detroit.

For students, a new year in a new building marks a chance to leave another lasting impact.

“I have a good feeling,” James Coleman, a senior at Douglass, said of the new space. “Hopefully the new building will be more vibrant.”

The reactivation of the old Northern High School is part of the district’s $700 million facility master plan, which used COVID relief dollars to rebuild, renovate, and reactivate current and former school buildings across the city.

As part of the design process, Douglass students were able to contribute to their vision of the new building, which will include a renovated gymnasium, a new room dedicated to the school’s program in geographic information systems, and a change to the school’s colors, from classic orange and green to black and gray.

With construction still underway, students made their way in through the building’s back entrance. By the double doors was school administrator Ayanna Morales-Henderson, who greeted returning students with open arms and fist bumps.

“Welcome to Frederick Douglass,” Morales-Henderson exclaimed to a group of underclassmen dressed in pressed white shirts and black slacks.

Top of Anthony’s mind is winning a state championship with either the school’s basketball or track team. Douglass Academy won its first state championship in basketball in 2021, his freshman year.

For much of last school year, discussion at Douglass revolved around a potential name change, envisioned to attract more students and veer away from the building’s past reputation as an alternative high school to a STEAM-focused school, a learning approach that incorporates science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.

“I feel like the name should have stayed Fred D in the first place,” Anthony said. “Regardless of whether or not our name is built around being an alternative school or not, we’re changing that reputation now.”

Pleasantview Elementary School, Eastpointe

In Eastpointe, third grade teacher Elizabeth Bur directed her new crop of third graders throughout the first hour of the morning to hang up their coats and backpacks (tie-dye backpacks are popular this year), start coloring name tags, and unpack fresh supplies.

Setting a routine is foundational for Pleasantview students, both Bur and Principal Falicia Moreland-Trice said. The principal said she wants to work with parents and students to improve student attendance. About 71% of Pleasantview students missed 10% or more of the 2021-22 school year, according to the most recent data available from the state.

Principal Falicia Moreland-Trice gets a hug from Nyla Overall during the first day of school at Pleasantview Elementary School in Eastpointe on Monday, Aug. 28, 2023.

Moreland-Trice said she called more meetings with parents last year to help improve attendance, having them line up in front of the school, file into classrooms, and put their things away, so they would know their children’s routines.

“The kids that come every day, they’re less likely to have behavior issues because … they know the expectations,” Moreland-Trice said.

The first day is all about “shaking the nerves and setting expectations” for new students, many of whom she greeted with a hug as they stepped off the school bus at 7:45 a.m.

Routine helps easily distracted third graders focus on learning rather than where to hang their coat or throw away trash from breakfast, Bur said. And this year they have a big task ahead of them: Bur wants her students to learn to be strong writers before they have to write an essay for the state M-STEP assessment. Researchers often cite third grade as a milestone grade in both writing and reading.

Some in Bur’s classroom were already starting to read messages their teacher left for them stapled on brown paper bags filled with candy and a few school supplies, welcoming them to third grade, and proclaiming, “I am so glad you are here!” Adrianna Ydrogo, eating apples and wearing both a T-shirt and pants with an apple design, was among those whisper-reading the message on the bags.

Her mother, Natalie Banfield, and father, Christopher Allen, were at school to see Adrianna off. The couple also has a kindergartner and a sixth grader.

“I’m just excited about seeing them grow,” Allen said, before he watched his daughter walk into school.

Barton Elementary School, Detroit

Rosa Glover-Adams was all smiles Monday morning as she welcomed a stream of children coming through the blue double doors of Barton Elementary School in Detroit.

“Did you have a good summer?” she asked a group of students as she held the door open for them, yellow pom-pom in hand.

The school principal then made her way around the building, popping into classrooms to check on teachers and stopping in the halls to hug a student or give them “Bear Bucks,” a school-only currency kids can use to buy school merchandise.

Glover-Adams said she’s excited to have her students back in the building again, especially as Barton continues to expand. This year, the school added preschool and sixth grade, turning Barton into an elementary and middle school.

“I’m excited about being able to keep my sixth graders here with me, because I want to continue to watch them grow as they prepare for high school,” she said.

In addition to the expansion, Glover-Adams is welcoming back a full school and staff. Barton, which has close to 160 students, had 60 additional students enroll this year. All of the core and elective positions have been filled, with the principal hiring four new teachers this year.

One of Glover-Adams’ goals for the year is increasing student reading and math levels. She said students made progress last year, and she wants to continue moving upward.

“That is the plan in process: to continue what we’ve been doing so that our kids can become better readers and mathematicians,” Glover-Adams said.

One of the teachers the principal checked in on during her walk-through was Nicole Washington. The former third grade teacher is now one of the new sixth grade educators. Washington started the morning by having a “grand opening” for her classroom, complete with balloons, rose petals and a ribbon cutting.

She then had her 12 students get to know each other with an icebreaker scavenger hunt and bingo game. Washington, who taught middle school at Mackenzie Elementary-Middle School, said she’s ready to get back in her “middle school groove.” She wanted to make sure her students feel welcomed.

“I want them to know this is a safe and comfortable environment,” she said. “And I want them to get used to sharing and knowing that they matter, that their feelings matter.”

Ta’Lani Fritts, 12, said she’s glad to be reunited with Washington since she was a coach for Academic Games, where students compete in games of math, English, social studies, and logic.

“She’s nice and she teaches math,” Fritts said of Washington.

Also there to welcome students on their first day was DPSCD Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. He said he made Barton his first stop due to the school becoming another option for West Side parents to take their kids. Barton reopened in 2019 to relieve overcrowding at Mackenzie and Gompers elementary schools.

“We’ve seen a lot of improvement and student achievement at Barton, and we’re including a preschool here, which is also part of our new initiatives for the district,” he said. “And obviously, I think we’re going to have a great year there and a lot of demand in the classroom.”

Detroit Public School Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, left, and Angelique Peterson-Mayberry, the president of the Detroit school board, speak with a class at Bethune Elementary-Middle School on the first day of school on Monday.

Vitti, who visited multiple schools Monday, said one of his goals for the new school year is to improve student achievement, particularly in math and literacy. He said the district is above pre-pandemic levels in literacy and saw growth in literacy and math at the high school levels for the SAT.

Another goal is continuing to work on reducing chronic absenteeism numbers. During the 2022-23 school year, the district’s chronic absenteeism rate was 68% — down from 77% the previous year, but still above pre-pandemic levels.

“We’ve been talking a lot that if our students only miss nine days or less, they’re three to five times more likely to be at and above their level for reading and math and to be college ready,” Vitti said.

Adler Elementary School, Southfield

Adler Elementary School staff enthusiastically greeted students with “Welcome Back to School” signs and flags, pom-poms, and cheers as they entered a building they weren’t familiar with, the recently updated Eisenhower Elementary School building.

Eisenhower will be a temporary home for Adler students as that school is updated this year, as part of a Southfield Public Schools bond approved by voters in November. Principal Alma Deane said Eisenhower will be a home for a different school each year, as renovation efforts are carried out across various buildings.

Fourth grader Bryce Williams, 8, is recorded by his mother while being welcomed to his first day of school at Eisenhower Elementary School in Southfield on Monday, Aug. 28, 2023.

When students return to the Adler building, they will return to a new heating and cooling system, enhanced security features, new windows, and various other infrastructure upgrades.

“We’re just excited about being in a new building, and we’re welcoming the transition back,” said Monique Jackson, a resource teacher at Adler Elementary School. We’re most excited about having air conditioning; it can be a disruption to learning when kids are so hot.”

Walking in with his parents, 8-year-old Brendan Yopp said he was excited to start fourth grade but was nervous about meeting his new teacher.

“Everybody is making the transition to a new building, but it’s still the same Adler family with all the same teachers and the principal. It’s very similar to their previous school but we’re just kind of getting adjusted,” his father, Brian Yopp, said. “This year, we’re going to keep working on the basics — reading and math — but also making friends and having positive experiences as he’s becoming a young man.”

Honey Pressley said her 6-year-old daughter, Harley, was at the top of her class last year. While the family had a lot of fun attending festivals, fairs, cookouts, and picnics this summer, they also made time for reading at the library.

Harley, now in first grade, said her favorite book is “Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus.”

Fisher Magnet Academy

A crowd of community leaders, neighborhood service organizations, and educators lined up at the main entrance of Fisher Magnet Academy armed with free backpacks and applause to welcome students back to school, with the Gabriel Hall Brass Brand providing the soundtrack.

The “clap in” was organized by Justin Kimpson, senior director of the Ford Resource and Engagement Center, and was sponsored by the Ford Motor Co. Fund.

“This is our sixth annual clap in,” Kimpson said.

“We’re just happy to support the kids every year and provide them with school supplies, backpacks, and words of encouragement.”

Among the community leaders present was longtime activist Sandra Turner-Handy, president of the Denby Neighborhood Alliance. She said it’s very important that young people recognize their community is their support system.

“We are determined for them to get the educational learning that they need to be successful in life,” Turner-Handy said.

The event came as a surprise to some students.

“It was just awesome to see them and their eyes light up while so many people came out just to welcome them back to school,” Turner-Handy said.

The engagement center opened adjacent to Fisher Magnet Upper Academy inside Detroit’s Heilman Recreation Center in 2017.

Lily Altavena is a reporter for the Detroit Free Press covering educational equity. You can reach her at laltavena@freepress.com.

Orlando Bailey is the engagement director for BridgeDetroit. You can reach him at obailey@bridgedetroit.com

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

Nour Rahal is a breaking news reporter for the Detroit Free Press. You can reach her at nrahal@freepress.com.

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.