1. Schools Sue Big Tech
READ: Nearly 200 school districts and hundreds of families have sued the parent companies of Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube over claims that the platforms cause classroom disciplinary problems, mental health issues, and more. The schools say they seek reparations to undo the harms caused by social media:
“Most of us would agree social media is out of control,” said Jill Adams, a board member in Washington state’s Tumwater School District, at a March board meeting. “I think it would behoove us to have some funds to help the kids.”
The tech companies have argued that any alleged harm is protected under Section 230, but the plaintiffs claim the damage comes from the design of the product, not third-party consent. Read more from Sarah Randazzo and Ryan Tracy in the Wall Street Journal here.
2. Detroit Suspends Restorative Discipline
READ: Ethan Bakuli at Chalkbeat reported on a new proposal from Detroit Public Schools Community District that would make it easier for school leaders to issue out-of-school suspensions. The move comes five years after the district implemented policies to reduce punishments and encourage restorative justice practices such as conflict resolution or peer mediation. But some students, including rising high school senior Shantinette Lowe, say the State already overuses current discipline strategies:
She recalled her experience in 2022, when she and a peer got into a physical fight at school. She alleges that despite district policy and state law that favored restorative practices, she was suspended without any attempted intervention from teachers or administrators.
“Before I got suspended, I didn’t know that there was a process … so when I found out my suspension could have been prevented, I was upset,” Shantinette told Chalkbeat in late May.
Under Michigan state law, schools must consider seven factors, including age, disability status, and disciplinary history, as they consider suspensions and expulsions. Read more here.
3. Keeping Underenrolled Schools Open Is a Policy Choice
READ: Chad Aldeman wrote for The 74 about the lessons learned from school closures in the ten years since Chicago shut down 49 elementary schools. The piece is timely, given the continued decline in public school enrollment:
Estimates are that public school enrollments will fall in 42 states, topped by West Virginia, with an estimated decline of 20%. In numeric terms, the biggest losers are likely to be New York and California, with forecasted declines of 149,000 and 530,000 fewer students, respectively.
That translates into a lot of districts with a lot of underenrolled schools. The infusion of $190 billion in federal ESSER funds, not to mention state “hold harmless” provisions, has allowed districts to hold off difficult school closure conversations.
But that’s a mistake.
Read more here.
4. How the Democratic Party Changed Its Mind
READ: Jonathan Chait took to the pages of New York magazine to argue that the Democrats were able to make an about-face on COVID school closures in large part due to the party’s “norms of internal dialogue:”
Getting liberals to reverse their position on school closures was not easy. Economist Emily Oster, one of the first figures to publish data showing schools were not a major vector for COVID transmission, became a hate figure on the left. Many progressive activists bitterly contested growing evidence both that in-person schooling was relatively safe and that school closures had created catastrophic learning loss.
But the evidence did eventually win out. By the start of the 2021 school year, schools were open almost everywhere.
Read more here.
5. As It Turns Out, Parents Like Their Schools
READ/LISTEN: The gap between parents’ perspective of their children’s school and the general public’s view is at its widest in 20 years. Matt Barnum broke down the latest data from Gallup, which found that while 80% of parents are somewhat or completely satisfied with their child’s school, only 42% of American adults report similar levels of satisfaction:
What could explain this? Local schools may have taken parents’ preferences into account in how they approached the pandemic and what they teach. Smarick said that in general people also tend to give institutions that they interact with directly, including schools, the benefit of the doubt.
“You know what they’re dealing with. You know what they’re trying to solve,” he said.
Read more in Chalkbeat here. Rikki and I also discussed this on yesterday’s Lost Debate. Listen here.
6. Arizona’s Voucher Program Grows Despite the Critics
READ/LISTEN: Sarah Mervosh at the New York Times reported on the effort to give more families more educational options in Arizona, the state hailed as “a vanguard of school choice.” While enrollment is expected to grow to 100,00 students by next year, critics argue that in its current form, the state’s ESAs don’t do enough to support the families who could benefit most from financial support:
Nearly 15,000 voucher recipients resided in ZIP codes with a median household income over $100,000, according to state data from May. Just 6,400 or so recipients lived in ZIP codes with a median household income under $50,000. About half of students using vouchers have never been enrolled in public school — suggesting that many families were previously paying for home-schooling or private school.
Read more here. Chris also interviewed Beth Lewis, the director of Save Our Schools Arizona, in this week’s episode of the Citizen Stewart Show. Listen here.
7. Florida Policies Stoop to New Lows
READ: The Washington Post’s Editorial Board condemned Florida’s latest educational guidelines for teaching Black history in schools. Among other updates, the curriculum mandates teaching that enslaved Black people “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” The Editorial Board said the guidelines reflect a new level of distortion and censorship for Ron DeSantis’s administration:
Diluting the horrors of slavery does not serve or protect children. It deprives them of the liberating power of knowledge, and a comprehensive education that readies them to shape the future by understanding the past. There is no historical counterargument to the atrocities of slavery or the racial violence that resulted from its abolition.
Read more here.
8. It Pays To Be Rich
READ/LISTEN: Children from families in the top 1 percent are 34% more likely to be admitted to an elite college than applicants from less affluent families with the same SAT or ACT score. The finding comes from a new study from Opportunity Insights, which dispels the myth that colleges enroll more rich students simply because more rich students apply. Rather, children from affluent families are more likely to gain admissions as recruited athletes, beneficiaries of legacy admissions practices, or receive higher ranks for nonacademic virtues like extracurricular activities and volunteering. As Ian Bremmer tweeted, this is “the real affirmative action:”
Read more from Aatish Bhatia, Claire Cain Miller, and Josh Katz in the New York Times here. Rikki and I discussed whether this data could spell the end of legacy admissions on yesterday’s episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.