Weekend To-Do List
5/18 - 5/19
1. Did Integration Help Black Students?
READ: This week marked the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that said segregated schools were unconstitutional and inherently unequal. While 86% of Americans today say they support the 1954 decision, a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 1 in 3 Black Americans say integration has failed to improve the education of Black students:
“It never worked the way it was supposed to,” said Candace Northern, 43, of Sacramento, who is Black. She had a mixed experience with integration as a child growing up in the area. Now, as mother to four children who went to or will attend public schools, she sees how the system keeps most poor students of color concentrated in certain schools and wealthy, mostly White students in others.
“The intention behind [Brown] was good, but it really didn’t make sense to integrate the schools if you were still going to have separate neighborhoods and then only give the resources to the rich people,” she said. “It was more of an appeasement — ‘Let’s give these Black people something so they’ll shut up.’”
Read more from Laura Meckler, Emily Guskin, and Scott Clement at The Washington Post here.
2. Charter School Attendance Increases Consistent Voting Records
READ: When Sarah R. Cohodes and James J. Feigenbaum studied the adult voting records of students in Boston. they found that adults who had attended charter schools in the city were more likely to vote. The study found five possible explanations for this trend: the development of cognitive skills, civic skills, social networks, the degree to which charter attendance politicizes students, and non-cognitive skills. Cohodes and Feigenbaum’s findings also suggest that charter schools shift noncognitive skills for girls more than boys:
Studies have shown that girls enter kindergarten with greater noncognitive skills than boys, maintain their advantage through elementary school, and have greater self-discipline than boys in 8th grade. Other research has found that these differences explain 40 percent of the gender gap in college attendance. There is also research showing that girls may gain more noncognitive skills from educational interventions, and that conscientiousness and emotional stability increase voter turnout for women, but not men. Thus, girls—perhaps because of socialization—are more likely to turn gains in noncognitive skills into voting.
Read more in Education Next here.
3. FAFSA Awareness Lags Among College Students
READ/LISTEN: One in five current college students say they’re not aware of changes to FAFSA or are unconcerned about the updated form’s well-documented issues. The finding helps explain why financial aid officers are scrambling to find ways to educate current students and keep them enrolled:
Many students depend on their financial aid packages to determine their enrollment status, and [MorraLee] Chandler worries that a lack of information around how delays may impact institutional and federal aid will impact retention rates or students’ financial situations.
“If students don’t have their information, you risk them going from full-time to part-time or leaving college or taking on student loan debt,” Chandler says.
Read more from Ashley Mowreader at Inside Higher Ed here, and listen to Keri, Ariel, Bernita, and Tafshier discuss all things FAFSA on this week’s episode of The National Parents Union Podcast here.
4. 2U’s Downward Spiral Continues
READ: Melissa Korn reported on the demise of ed-tech company 2U, the once widely-heralded platform now facing $900 million in debt. The company set out to operate online courses for elite schools like Georgetown and USC but struggled to find sustainability due to its pricy online tuition, aggressive marketing style, and inability to strategically scale while maintaining quality. As 2U winds down contracts with colleges like Tufts and American, the company now says they’re focused on a “shrink-to-grow” strategy:
“We’re all waiting with bated breath,” said one president whose school partners with 2U. If the company can’t invest in marketing the programs, the president said, “that could lead to a slow death for everyone.”
Read more in The Wall Street Journal here.
5. AI Usage Grows in Special Education Programs
READ: Alyson Klein spoke with special education teachers about how continued innovations in AI could revolutionize special education instruction — and why some aspects of the work could never be replicated by technology. 32% of schools have used or tested AI in their special education programs:
Relying solely on AI tools for lesson planning or writing reports “takes the individualized out of individualized education,” Morin said. “Because what [the technology] is doing is spitting out things that come up a lot” as opposed to carefully considering what’s best for a specific student, like a good teacher can.
Educators can tweak their prompts—the questions they ask AI—to get better, more specific advice, she added.
“A seasoned special educator would be able to say ‘So I have a student with ADHD, and they’re fidgety’ and get more individualized recommendations,” Morin said.
Read more at Education Week here.
6. Illinois Parents Turn to New York To Keep Their Children Safe. This School May Do the Opposite.
READ/LISTEN: Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards took to the pages of ProPublica to report on Shrub Oak, a New York-based for-profit facility utilized by Illinois families as a boarding school for students with disabilities. Illinois law allows public money to fund tuition at special education boarding schools, even those that, like Shrub Oak, don’t receive vetting or monitoring. Shrub Oak, which houses more students from Illinois than any other state in the country, now faces reports of abuse, neglect, and staffing shortages:
District Superintendent Scott Tingley wouldn’t say whether he thought Shrub Oak was providing an appropriate education or experience for the student. He lamented the lack of options in Illinois and said parents have asked districts to pay for their children to go to Shrub Oak. Some have taken legal action.
“These aren’t districts that are going out and saying, ‘Here is an option,’” Tingley said. “We wish there were more facilities readily available in the state of Illinois.”
Read more here, and listen to Chris and Kate discuss what regulations are needed for boarding schools on The Citizen Stewart Show here.
7. Progressive School Finds Itself At Odds
READ/LISTEN: A progressive Quaker school in Brooklyn says it won’t pick a side in the Israel/Palestine conflict, but the attempt at neutrality may start a new war on campus. The school has faced complaints and threats from parents with different views on the Israel/Hamas war, and their attempts at a response deeply rooted in Quaker values has not (yet) paid off:
Cáceres says the school “has not taken stands on any one perspective” except for “upholding human life” as a Quaker school and pacifist community. On October 9, two days after the Hamas attack, she issued a statement mourning the Israeli loss of life. “I ask that we hold in the light all impacted by the war raging on in Israel, including many in our own BFS community who have cultural ties to the region and may, in fact, have family members who are living within Israel,” she wrote. “To hold others in the light, one does not have to hold a position or side.”
Read more from Sarah Jones at New York Magazines’s Intelligencer here. I broke down the latest with the campus protests on a recent episode of Lost Debate. Listen here.