Weekend To-Do List
11/3 - 11/5
1. Embrace Competition, Meritocracy, and Even Stress?
READ: Is America ready to forfeit its competitive edge in global academics and technology? In his new piece for Education Next, Doug Lemov warns that a lack of emphasis on academic meritocracy and an increasing dependency on an international STEM “supply chain” could lead to this exact crisis. To ensure children achieve their potential and secure America’s safety, Lemov offers five key solutions, from expanding assessments to embracing stress. Most notably, he implores readers to combat the idea that lower standards are an equity win:
One could almost imagine it as a conspiracy. A few people get to the head of the line and are prosperous. They want their children to maintain a place in the world that affords them opportunity and success. They argue that there should be no more competition, that competition hurts people. For those already at the top of the heap, it’s a great strategy for perpetuating status. It’s just not very fair—or very useful for a country that tells itself it’s a meritocracy.
Read more here.
2. The Question the $1.8-Billion Teacher Test Lawsuit Didn’t Answer
READ: After Peter Wilds-Bethea failed the National Teacher Exam for the tenth time in 1991, he co-founded the Committee for a Fair Licensing Procedure. The group eventually sued New York City and State based on findings that the Exam favored White test-takers, and while the case took over three decades to decide, it resulted in payouts of roughly $1.8 billion. But was the test itself racist, or does it reflect deeper issues within teacher preparation programs? Emma Green wrote for the New Yorker about why the answer to this question will only become more critical over the next decade:
Even if states could devise the perfect test for teachers, fewer and fewer people are entering the profession. The pay isn’t great: the Census Bureau reports that teachers make less on average than their peers with the same education level, and teacher pay has fallen over all since 2010. The pandemic made a difficult profession harder: reports of mental-health crises, unmanageable classrooms, and staggering learning loss are everywhere.
All this has primed the field of education for an anti-test moment. “Because of this shortage of teachers, we’re going to have to become more creative about how we identify who could be a good teacher,” Pedro Noguera, the dean of the School of Education at the University of Southern California, said.
Read more here.
3. NYC Homeless Student Population Reaches Record High
READ: One in nine New York City students experienced homelessness at some point during the 2022-23 school year. With this year’s number likely to increase as thousands of asylum-seeking families arrive in New York, Michael Elsen-Rooney at Chalkbeat reported on how this crisis has impacted students, families, and schools. The city’s plans to hire additional support staff are on hold due to budget cuts, an issue that advocates say will further exacerbate the challenges students and schools face:
“Losing the shelter-based Community Coordinators would almost certainly increase the already sky-high rates of chronic absenteeism and make it even more difficult for students in shelter to succeed in school,” said Kim Sweet, the executive director of Advocates for Children, said in a statement.
Read more here.
4. Is Home School the Newest Old School Innovation?
READ: The nationwide struggle with enrollment decline is in part due to the fastest-growing form of education in the country: homeschooling. Washington Post reporters Laura Meckler and Peter Jamison embarked on a year-long journey to understand who today’s 1.9 - 2.7 million home-schoolers are, where they live, and why they’ve continued to choose homeschooling post-pandemic. The reporters found a diverse group of families motivated by education solutions that help keep their children physically and emotionally safe, serve special education needs, and avoid politics in the classroom. Homeschooling’s growth has also helped accelerate its evolution:
Home-schoolers today also find a large menu of in-person programs have popped up in communities all over the country — the poll found about 1 in 10 home-school families using microschools or learning pods, for instance. Other options include hybrid schools, where students spend part of the week at school and part at home, and charter schools, where teachers offer some support but students learn from their parents at home.
Read more here.
5. Texas Microschool Remains in Limbo During Special Legislative Session
READ: One of homeschooling’s fastest-growing evolutions is the microschool. The Texas Tribune’s Sneha Dey profiled a group of mothers near Dallas who want to launch this new form of “outsourced home-schooling” to serve Black children in the region better. Their plans hinge on the Texas legislature, now entering its final week of a special legislative session focused on a long-debated voucher program. While microschool founder and mother Chantel Jones-Bigby understands the concern that vouchers could mean less money for traditional public schools, she argues critics miss the point:
“As much as I would love the public school system to work for my child, it doesn’t,” Jones-Bigby said. “Am I responsible to the system or am I responsible to my child?”
She doesn’t have to think twice — she picks her daughters every time.
Read more here.
6. Mississippi Legislature’s Moral Imperative
READ: Kim L. Wiley took to the pages of the Hechinger Report to advocate for additional funding for Mississippi schools. The state, which spends 55% below “adequate” levels in its highest poverty districts, has seen long-standing issues with racial segregation and educational inequality exacerbated by the continued impact of COVID-19. Wiley implored the state’s legislators to take advantage of the $3.9 billion surplus of state revenue in 2023 to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program:
It is past time for lawmakers to make education in Mississippi a priority for all students, especially those in historically under-resourced districts. The state must begin investing in education to overcome historical inequities and post-pandemic challenges. This is the only viable path toward dismantling the systemic barriers that have perpetuated disparities for far too long.
Read more here.
7. SCOTUS: Can School Board Members Block You?
READ: Should school board members be able to block their critics on social media? The Supreme Court will have to answer this question after hearing arguments in O’Connor-Ratcliff v. Garnier, a free speech case focused on school board members in California who blocked critical parents on Facebook and Twitter. The court has focused its questions on whether board members and other public officials must disclose when they’re speaking in an official capacity:
“Government officials can operate in their personal capacity and in their official capacity,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said, agreeing with Mooppan, the members’ attorney. But she added, “Why should they get to choose whether or not they’re doing one or the other without making a clear disclaimer? How do we know which you have chosen?”
Read more from Linda Jacobson in The 74 here.
8. Denver School Board Candidates Face Tough Questions
READ: Melanie Asmar at Chalkbeat Colorado profiled the three candidates running for Denver’s District 5 school board. The victor will represent a historically Latino district experiencing gentrification and grapple with complex questions concerning declining enrollment rates, school safety, and continued academic racial disparities.
Read more about the candidates here.
9. A GOP Trifecta in Virginia?
READ: All eyes are on Virginia as the state’s voters head to the polls next week. With control of the State Assembly up in the air, the results will determine Governor Glenn Youngkin’s ability to further pursue his education agenda. The race is expected to serve as a bellwether for the national mood:
More than policy victories, unified GOP control in Virginia would send a chill through Democrats just 12 months from a presidential election. The state has gone blue in every such race since 2008, but Youngkin has managed a successful balancing act halfway through his governorship. One recent survey showed him enjoying a 54-38 approval rating, trouncing President Biden’s rating in what should be a redoubt of the Democrats’ victory coalition.
Read more from Kevin Mahnken in The 74 here.
10. Do Cellphone Bans Work?
READ: 16% of U.S. high school students reported being bullied online or by text message in 2021. The New York Times’ Natasha Singer reviewed the impact of cellphone bans worldwide to understand whether similar policies could be an effective combatant in the U.S. Not only did the research produce mixed results, but a recent UNESCO survey cautions that such bans in the age of technology may leave students at a disadvantage:
“Students need to learn the risks and opportunities that come with technology, develop critical skills, and understand to live with and without technology,” UNESCO said. “Shielding students from new and innovative technology can put them at a disadvantage.”
Read more here.
11. School Districts Sprint Towards Funding Cliff
READ: Matt Barnum’s first byline in the Wall Street Journal focused on the impending funding cliff schools face as pandemic aid runs out at the end of the 2023-24 school year. High-poverty districts face particularly precarious situations. Take New York City, where increased funding allowed the district to expand pre-K, add social workers and nurses, and grow summer programming:
“Unfortunately a lot of these investments are on temporary dollars and that is a challenge ahead of us,” said Emma Vadehra, the chief operating officer for New York City schools. The district is planning to advocate for more funding from other parts of government, she said.
However, Barnum notes that declines in student enrollment and tax revenue mean many states may be unable to cover the projected gap in funding. Read more here.