Weekend To-Do List

2/24 - 2/25

and

Feb 24, 2024

1. SCOTUS Punts Race and Schools Case

READ/LISTEN: The Supreme Court passed on reviewing Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology’s admissions practices this week and in doing so, avoided another battle over affirmative action in education. The elite magnet school in Northern Virginia will be allowed to keep its current policies, which it says are intended to increase diversity. Erin Wilcox, an attorney representing the parents’ group that sued the school, says the move may cause more schools to consider “race-blind” policies:

“I do think we’ll see a lot of colleges and universities now following TJ’s playbook and saying, ‘Well, now that the Supreme Court said we can’t consider race at all, we’re in the same boat as these high schools. Let’s do what they did, and we’ll find a proxy for race,’” she said.

Read more from Bianca Quilantan in Politico here and listen to my take on the case here.

2. Why More Philadelphia Families Have Turned to Microschools

READ: Kerry McDonald took a walk down memory lane to commemorate 45 years of microschools in Philadelphia and explore the city’s recent surge of new alternative education movements and models. While many families initially sought different schooling options because they were frustrated with the city’s handling of the pandemic and extended remote schooling, McDonald argues that the reason they’ve stayed has less to do with the pandemic and more to do with microschools’ ability to create more customized learning experiences for their children:

“Microschools like Wildflower can meet children where they are more quickly and pivot when necessary,” [Sunny Greenberg] said. “Because of their size, it is easier to build community and the sense of belonging that can be missing in larger school settings.”

3. The Limit Does Exist for Khanmigo (For Now)

READ/LISTEN: The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Barnum reported on the newspaper’s recent experiences testing Khanmigo, Khan Academy’s ChatGPT-fueled AI tutoring bot. The testers found the app made basic math errors, didn’t correct mistakes when asked to double-check its work, and couldn’t round numbers. While Khan Academy says the tool is still evolving, AI experts caution that large language models will often struggle with math and other complex, data-based topics:

“Asking ChatGPT to do math is sort of like asking a goldfish to ride a bicycle—it’s just not what ChatGPT is for,” said Tom McCoy, a professor at Yale University who studies AI. “We shouldn’t really be surprised that it often makes mistakes.”

Read more here, and learn why I’m still bullish on the tool’s potential by listening to my interview with Sal Khan here.

4. Has Private Equity Found Its Next Prey?

READ: Adam Harris wrote for The Atlantic about private equity’s growing interest in child care and why advocates of public funding for early education worry the intrusion of private-equity-backed child-care providers will cause more harm than good, even as the country remains embroiled in a child care crisis:

Though private-equity-backed child-care providers can—and often do—offer good services to families, their business model can also prove ruinous. In other sectors, private-equity groups have been notorious for extracting exorbitant fees from businesses they’ve acquired in leveraged buyouts; when they’ve had a chance to raise wages for workers or pay down their private-equity debts, they’ve regularly opted for the latter.

5. Bringing Business Back to the (K-12) Boardroom

READ: Former Massachusetts Secretary of Education James A. Peyser took to the pages of Education Next to call for a return of the “era of engagement” between business leaders and education reform. While Peyser acknowledges that few CEOs would be willing to step into the culture war landmines today’s educators face, he says leaders may be overlooking the long-term value proposition their involvement can bring, especially if they want their companies to be able to hire smart, well-educated, and thoughtful workers in the future. Of course, that doesn’t mean the work will be easy:

Public education is not a business. It’s an inherently political institution whose educators and leaders have to play by a set of rules they don’t control and answer to multiple stakeholders, including elected officials, who often have sharply conflicting ideas and interests. Public education is not susceptible to quick changes in strategy or structure, let alone quick fixes. And it’s not for people who have thin skin or are looking for the thanks of a grateful nation.

6. Making the Grade: Outcomes-Based Tutoring Contracts Prove Successful in Boosting Academic Growth

READ: As the clock runs out on COVID-related federal funding, some school districts have begun to experiment with outcomes-based contracts that pay tutors based on academic growth rather than services provided. Schools in Florida and Texas have piloted the approach in the hopes that the incentive for increased pay will make a positive impact on student learning. Liz Cohen at The 74 reports that early results show promise:

50% of Ector County students who scored below grade level on the previous year’s state assessment and received at least 20 hours of tutoring scored at grade level or higher after one year. And about 30% of students tutored in math scored in the 66th percentile or higher on the standardized Northwest Education Association’s MAP exam after one year, reflecting more growth than would be expected in a school year.

7. Could Reformed Admissions Standards Reshape the Teaching Profession?

READ: Emily Tate Sullivan at USA Today reported on the growing number of states reconsidering mandatory teacher preparation exams. Only 11 states now require a skills test for admission to a teacher preparation program, a 56% decrease since 2015. While many educators support the shift, saying it will decrease the teaching profession’s barriers to entry for marginalized groups and help curb declining enrollment in teacher prep programs, some question if reducing rigorous standards could eventually harm students:

“For states to drop standards without replacing them with another meaningful measure of academic aptitude doesn’t do anyone a favor in the long-term,” notes Heather Peske, president of the NCTQ. “States are making it easier to become a teacher, though the job of being a teacher hasn’t gotten any easier.”