Weekend To-Do List

9/30 - 10/1

and

Sep 30, 2023

1. San Francisco’s 11 Student School

READ/LISTEN: Jill Tucker reported on the uncertain future of San Francisco United School District’s Edwin and Anita Lee Newcomer School. The SFUSD is under pressure to address declining enrollment across the city, but previous movements to close or relocate the Newcomer School have ceded to community and union opposition. Interim Principal Lisa Kwong acknowledged the challenges of operating a school that only enrolls 11 students:

“A school without students isn’t a school anymore,” Kwong added.

The district will spend $832,000 to operate the school this year, or roughly $75,000 per student. Read more in the San Francisco Chronicle here. I also discussed this story on the most recent episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.

2. North Carolina’s Universal School Choice Championed by Progressives

READ/LISTEN: The North Carolina legislature has passed a state budget with an education savings account program open to all families. Students will be eligible for $3,200 to $7,500 annually, depending on family income. The fight to pass the bill is one of the first in the country to have been led by progressives:

The bill’s passage was the culmination of years of work for Marcus Brandon, a former Democratic state representative who considered himself a progressive and once thought vouchers were “evil.”
“My constituents are the ones that led me here. They’re the ones that talked about the lack of educational opportunities,” said Brandon.

North Carolina is now the ninth state to pass a universal school choice program. Read more from Linda Jacobson at The 74 here. Rikki and I also updated Lost Debate listeners on this passage this week. Listen here.

3. Newark Native Builds New Stories for New Jersey Students

READ: Barbara Martinez was 14 when she was kicked out of her Belleville high school for using a false address to avoid the failing Newark high school she was zoned to attend. The sense of inequity stayed with her through college and into her career as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal and as an executive leader at Uncommon Schools. Martinez took to the pages of Mosaic to re-introduce herself as the new executive director of the New Jersey Children’s Foundation, where she’ll work to ensure today’s Newark students can share a different story about their education:

In this story, a family doesn’t have to lie to get their child into a better school. In a city like Newark, where a number of schools, both charter and district alike, are already showing that a great education is possible, I see a path to a collective approach where different types of schools and organizations all over the city can work together toward our shared success.

4. Tennessee Says Maybe to Federal Government’s $1.8 Billion

READ: Tennessee may become the first state in the country ever to reject federal funding for K-12 students and schools. Despite already ranking in the bottom fourth of states in spending per pupil, the state has created a legislative panel to consider turning down up to $1.8 billion to evade the oversight tied to federal dollars, which includes civil rights protections based on race, sex, and disability:

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated government has challenged the spirit of those protections by passing laws in recent years to restrict classroom discussions and library books related to race, gender, and bias, as well as to prohibit transgender youth from playing girls sports and restrict which school bathrooms they can use.

The U.S. Department of Education called Sexton’s proposal “political posturing.” Read more from Marta W. Aldrich in Chalkbeat here.

5. LA Board of Education Limits Space for 20% Of Public School Students

READ: Howard Blume at the Los Angeles Times reported on the Los Angeles Board of Education’s decision to approve a resolution limiting the ability for charter schools to co-locate with traditional district-run schools. Charters enroll about one in five public school students within the district, and tensions have risen as competition for resources and facilities has gotten tighter. Critics say the resolution will only hurt students:

“All public school students should be treated equally and deserve to learn in a decent classroom — period,” said Myrna Castrejón, president of the California Charter Schools Assn. “That is what the law says.”

6. Take Away the Cellphones

READ: Doug Lemov says schools should ban cellphones. A recent visit to his daughter’s high school validated his stance:

Read Lemov’s tweets here and more on his case against cellphones here.

7. Will AI Threaten Computer Science’s Reign?

READ: Computer science degrees have become the go-to option for individuals seeking greater job security and higher average starting salaries, resulting in a 49% increase in enrollment since 2016. But advancements in AI have upended that sense of safety as new tools make it possible for bots to code more quickly than humans:

The potential decline of “learn to code” doesn’t mean that the technologists are doomed to become the authors of their own obsolescence, nor that the English majors were right all along (I wish). Rather, the turmoil presented by AI could signal that exactly what students decide to major in is less important than an ability to think conceptually about the various problems that technology could help us solve.

Read more from Kelli María Korducki at The Atlantic here.

8. New AI Software Sparks 32% Increase in Graduation Rates

READ: John Jay College saw a 32 percentage point jump in graduation rates after implementing an AI-powered software to analyze grades, courseloads, and schedules. James Barron at the New York Times reported on the platform’s ability to help academic advisors identify students who might benefit from more support:

The software generated a “risk score” for every student that told academic advisers which students to concentrate on. “It can be hard to know who requires a little more attention,” said Dana Prieto, one of two academic advisers at John Jay, who explained that students with risk scores that pointed to a chance of dropping out were given extra help, including one-on-one coaching.