Weekend To-Do List
6/30-7/2
1. SCOTUS Skirts Dress Code Case
READ: Linda Jacobson and Greg Toppo at The 74 reported on the Supreme Court’s decision to deny the petition to hear Charter Day School, Inc. v. Peltier. The North Carolina-based case could have opened the door for SCOTUS to reclassify charter schools as private schools. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barbara Keenan upheld the sector’s public school status last year:
The school, she wrote, is furthering the “state’s constitutional obligation to provide ‘free, universal’ elementary and secondary education to its residents” and contrary to being private, it “performs a function traditionally and exclusively reserved to the state.”
Though this decision could lead to less autonomy for charter schools (more regulation), members of the charter school sector are largely applauding this outcome:
“Charter schools are public schools and are, in fact, state actors for the purposes of protecting students’ federal constitutional rights,” said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.
“The actions of the high court affirm that as public school students, charter school students are entitled to the same federal protections as their counterparts who attend district schools,” Rees said in a statement.
Read more here.
2. Khanmigo Pilot Shows Promise in Newark
READ/LISTEN: Natasha Singer shared insights from Newark Public Schools’ pilot of Khanmigo, the AI tutoring tool developed by Khan Academy. The district has piloted Khanmigo in three schools, and the results are mixed. While one sixth-grade math teacher described the tool as a useful co-teacher, other classrooms struggled when the bot was too quick to give students answers:
“That’s our biggest concern, that too much of the thinking work is going through Khanmigo,” said Alan Usherenko, the district’s special assistant for schools, including First Avenue, in Newark’s North Ward. The district did not want the bot to lead students through a problem step by step, he said, adding, “We want them to know how to tackle the problem themselves, to use their critical thinking skills.”
Singer’s piece also raises questions about the cost of AI in larger districts. Read more in The New York Times here. Rikki and I discussed Khanmigo’s potential on a recent episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.
3. New AI Won’t Stretch Beyond Its Limits
READ: Alyson Klein at Education Week introduced readers to “Stretch,” a new chatbot from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). The organizations partnered with Google and Open AI to create the new tool. Stretch’s learning will be limited to materials vetted by ISTE and ASCD, and these guardrails could alleviate concerns from educators about AI’s expansive scope:
What’s more, unlike other large language models, Stretch cites its sources, giving it another layer of accountability, Culatta said. And if it’s asked about something outside of its areas of expertise, it will tell users it can’t help with the question, instead of making something up, a characteristic of most chatbots that pull information from the entire internet.
Read more here.
4. Morehouse’s Bet on Meta Pays Off
READ: Rebecca Cairns reported on Morehouse College’s first two years in the Metaverse. The college created the world’s first Metaversity as a solution for student attendance and recidivism during the heyday of the COVID pandemic, but even as students have returned to campus, the “digital campus” has yielded strong results:
Students “gain mastery of concepts much quicker than in a classroom,” and the immersive experience eliminates distractions like phones to make “efficient use of time,” says [Muhsinah] Morris [Morehouse’s Metaversity director], adding that class attendance rates increased by 10 percentage points, compared to in-person and online classes, and student achievement increased by 11.9%.
Morehouse currently offers 13 courses each semester in the Metaverse. Read more on CNN here.
5. Passing ESA Legislation Is the Starting Line
READ: While much of the reporting on Education Savings Accounts has focused on the legislative process, Nicole Garnett and Michael Q. McShane’s new report for the Manhattan Institute pushes readers to turn their focus to the actual implementation of these programs. They outline five key priorities for states and providers, including parental education and effective program regulations. Garnett and McShane remind advocates that the passion for the potential of these programs means little if they don’t put in the work required to ensure ESAs’ success:
ESA programs are not going to stand up on their own. It is going to take thoughtful management from both the public and private sectors to ensure that the rules, regulations, policies, and procedures drafted to implement the programs reflect the desires and intentions of the legislators who created them. It is going to take innovation in the tech space to create the kinds of platforms that will make navigating the onboarding families and use of ESA dollars seamless and straightforward. It is going to take schools and other providers stepping up to the plate to provide a quality education as well as to understand the immense opportunities that these new programs represent and their responsibility to the creation of a healthy marketplace. And it is going to take lawyers to protect these programs from their inevitable challenges.
Read more here.
6. Where Did All the Teachers Go?
READ/LISTEN: Matt Barnum took to the pages of Chalkbeat with part one of a two-part series on the nation’s post-pandemic teaching crisis. The piece quantifies the headlines around teacher stress and morale: nearly three-quarters of teachers reported that the 2021-22 school year was among the worst in their careers. The stress has caused more teachers to leave the classroom at the same time as schools struggle to build a pipeline of new educators:
Surveys show that fewer college and high school students are interested in teaching careers. There’s even been a persistent drop in the share of parents who want their kids to go into teaching. Last year, just 37% of parents said they wanted their children to go into teaching, the lowest since the question was first asked more than five decades ago.
Why do fewer people want to be teachers? Researchers don’t have definitive answers, though many point out that teacher salaries have fallen further and further behind those of other college-educated workers.
Read more here. Rikki and I did a deep dive into the country’s teaching shortage on a January episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.
7. It’s Not Just Teachers: Now Hiring School Psychologists
READ: Kelly Field at The Hechinger Report investigated the increasing shortage of psychologists in schools. In 2020-2021, there was one school psychologist for every 1,127 K-12 students, more than two times the recommended psychologist:student ratio. While the federal government has distributed $286 million over the past six months to support the training and hiring of school-based mental health practitioners, Field’s reporting serves as a sober reminder that funding is only part of the challenge:
The number of students graduating from programs in psychology, counseling and social work isn’t keeping pace with districts’ growing demand for mental health services. Opening up the programs to more students isn’t really an option, either — there aren’t enough faculty or site supervisors to train them, according to Strobach.
Read more here.
8. Gender Imbalance in Education Leadership
READ: My good friend Julia Rafal-Baer highlighted learnings from her experience founding Women Leading Ed and laid out five recommendations to help close the gender gap in education leadership. Women hold the top leadership role in less than one-third of the country’s 500 largest school districts, and Rafal-Baer argues that the gap has only widened over the last two years:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a wave of superintendents joined the Great Resignation, opening hundreds of top district jobs. It was a chance to reset the balance and make the superintendency look more like the nation’s classrooms. But that’s not what happened. In fact, nearly half of the 500 largest school districts in the country conducted superintendent searches between March 2020 and March 2022, and men were selected for the job more often than women. In fact, men were chosen to replace both male and female outgoing superintendents 70% of the time. A post-pandemic opportunity was missed, and it is a reason to push harder.
Read more in The 74 here.
9. Pew Data Highlights Partisan Divides
READ/LISTEN: Jenn Hatfield at Pew Research Center analyzed recent surveys on partisan differences in K-12 education. The data confirms that the country is divided when it comes to the current performance of schools, what parental or government involvement in curricula decisions should look like, and the impact of teachers’ unions. Most notable was the data on the role of the federal government in K-12 schools:
About half of Republican parents of K-12 students (52%) said in a fall 2022 Center survey that the federal government has too much influence on what their local public schools are teaching, compared with two-in-ten Democratic parents. Republican K-12 parents were also significantly more likely than their Democratic counterparts to say their state government (41% vs. 28%) and their local school board (30% vs. 17%) have too much influence.
On the other hand, more than four-in-ten Republican parents (44%) said parents themselves don’t have enough influence on what their local K-12 schools teach, compared with roughly a quarter of Democratic parents (23%). A larger share of Democratic parents – about a third (35%) – said teachers don’t have enough influence on what their local schools teach, compared with a quarter of Republican parents who held this view.
Read more here. I continue to believe the 2024 election will be one of the most consequential education-focused elections in recent memory, and Democrats and Republicans must get clear on their education narratives. Chris and I also debated this topic on an episode of the Citizen Stewart Show. Listen here.
10. Youngkin’s Report Card Still Loading
READ: As Glenn Youngkin’s first full school year as Virginia governor wraps up, Scott Calvert did a deep dive into the direction of the state’s schools for The Wall Street Journal. After a campaign focused on education-related promises, supporters suggest Youngkin has more to do. The Governor agrees his work is far from done:
“As far as the policy issues, there’s not much that has changed,” said Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, a Loudoun-focused political-action committee that opposes what it claims is a pivot from academic rigor.
“That’s just ultimately the way local government works,” said Prior, who spoke at Youngkin campaign events in Loudoun, among the highest-income counties in the nation and one that has trended Democratic.
Youngkin said his administration had made substantial progress in improving public schools but that he shares a sense of impatience.
“I am fully aware and sympathetic to the fact that people who want change want it yesterday—and I do, too,” he said in an interview.
Youngkin’s critics argue that education in Virginia has largely gone unchanged because Youngkin’s platform focused on “phantom” concerns. Read more here.
11. Shapiro’s Fight for Keystone State Vouchers
READ: The Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board penned an op-ed supporting Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s work to pass Lifeline Scholarships through the state’s legislature. The initiative would support private school tuition and related expenses for students learning in Pennsylvania’s lowest-performing district schools. Lifeline Scholarships faces the most resistance from Shapiro’s fellow Democrats, backed up by the state’s teachers’ unions. But the governor is pressing on:
“I believe every child of God deserves a shot here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and one of the best ways we can guarantee their success is making sure every child has a quality education,” the Democrat said on Fox News last week. He added that he wouldn’t “take a dollar out of our public schools” to achieve that.
Read more here. I’ve written before about whether Democrats could support ESAs. Read the piece in Imbroglio here.