Weekend To-Do List
3/2 - 3/3
1. Should Democrats Support Education Savings Accounts?
LISTEN: I joined Marcus Brandon, executive director of North Carolina Campaign for Achievement Now, Graig Meyer, a North Carolina state senator, and Bethany M. Little, the managing director at Education Counsel, to discuss whether Democrats should support ESAs in a recent debate hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.
Listen here and let us know where you stand on the issue.
2. How New City Policy Impacts Migrant Students
READ/LISTEN: Gwynne Hogan and Michael Elsen-Rooney spoke with migrant families in New York City who have been impacted by the newly implemented policy that says migrant families in certain shelters may only stay in the shelter system for 60 days. Critics say the policy is cruel, and cite the impact on schooling in particular, as families struggle with moving their children to another new school or add hour-long commutes in order to stay at the same school:
“I’m more concerned about all the emotional distress those children already experienced and now again moving them from something I thought was settled for them,” [Carolina Zafra, a teacher at P.S. 46 in Clinton Hill] said.
Read more in Chalkbeat here, and listen to my interview with White House correspondent Michael Shear about the ongoing migrant crisis here.
3. Uvalde Superintendent Urges Congress to Prioritize School Funding
READ: Ashley Chohlis took to the pages of The 74 to advocate for more funding to help school districts get sufficient resources for safety and mental health. Chohlis, the superintendent of Uvalde Independent School District, says Congress must do more to ensure districts receive aid as the number of school shootings continues to rise:
There must be significant policy and funding improvements if America hopes to secure the nation’s schools and give children the support they need to be successful. Already this year, there have been 54 school shootings. The money and heartache it takes to recover from these tragedies is far greater than the money districts needed to prevent them.
Read more here.
4. Closing the Gender Gap: The Case for Recruiting More Male Teachers
READ: Richard Reeves penned an op-ed for Education Next calling for more investment in efforts to recruit and retain male teachers. The gender gap in college degrees is larger today than it was in 1972, and the disparity widens among Black boys and boys from lower-income backgrounds. Reeves cautions that a lack of male teachers won’t just impact academic outcomes:
But I have come to believe that the value of male teachers is captured not only in improved academic outcomes but also in the role they play in our educational institutions and the lives of students as mentors and role models. I worry that the very idea of educational excellence is becoming “coded” as female. If boys see mostly women teaching, girls doing better at school, and women dominating colleges, it is harder for them to see learning (and teaching) as being for them. As the feminist slogan has it, “You have to see it to be it”.
Read more here.
5. The Ivies Return to Standardized Testing
READ/LISTEN: Dartmouth and Yale both recently announced reversals to their test-optional admissions policies. The colleges will require standardized test scores again, beginning with the class of 2029 applicants:
Officials from both Yale and Dartmouth explained that they decided to reinstate test requirements in part due to new research showing that test-optional policies were actually adversely affecting prospective applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. The policies, it seemed, discouraged some of these applicants from including test scores that may have increased their chances of admission.
Read more from Elizabeth Heubeck at Education Week here. I also talked about this reversal on a recent episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.
6. From A Nation at Risk to Today: A Former Superintendent’s Perspective
READ: Cami Anderson reflected on the lessons she learned as superintendent for Newark Public Schools from 2011 - 2015 and how America’s school system has changed in the four decades since A Nation at Risk was released in 1983. Anderson says one of the greatest lessons today’s school leaders could take from the past four decades is that to ensure every child has access to a high-quality school, it’s important to break bureaucracy:
A fundamental way to clear a runway for accelerated school improvement is to actively tear down past practices and federal, state, and local policies that block individual schools from innovating. We need more of a “whiteboard” approach than one that tweaks decades of dysfunction. Policymakers and community leaders need to wake up every day wondering what they can do to ensure that people running schools have the time to do the right thing as opposed to managing byzantine policies and procedures from competing departments.
Read more here.
7. Investing in the Future: Record-Breaking Donation to Einstein Med
READ: Praveena Somasundaram at The Washington Post reported on Ruth Gottesman’s $1 billion donation to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the largest gift to any medical school in the country. The donation will make medical school free for Einstein medical students. Professor Peter Campbell said the gift won’t only free students from the burden of debt:
He hopes the donation will help some students choose their specialties.
”Those students are probably now better empowered to do the kind of medicine that they want to and not the kind of medicine that pays the best,” Campbell said.
Read more here.