Weekend To-Do List

8/4 - 8/6

and

Aug 04, 2023

1. Democrats Lose on Education

READ: Democrats now trail Republicans in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina when it comes to trust in education, according to a new poll commissioned by Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Democrats once held a double-digit lead on this issue, and DFER CEO Jorge Elorza pointed to school choice as one rationale for the shift:

“The crisis in education has mounted into one voters simply cannot ignore,” said Elorza. “Voters—especially parents—want to see more choices for their children. Republicans are capitalizing on this. Embracing public school choice isn’t just the right thing today, but it will help Democrats reconnect with frustrated voters and families who know that more of the same won’t fix our public education system.”

Read more here and read the full poll results here. Readers of Imbroglio won’t be surprised by these results – I wrote about the need for stronger education messaging within the Democratic party in March. In April, I also cautioned that unless more Democrats start to support school choice, the party will lose voters ahead of the next election cycle.

2. Teacher Loan Forgiveness Makes Little Difference

READ: Matt Barnum at Chalkbeat reported on new research that suggests the federal Teacher Loan Forgiveness program does little to attract or retain educators. The program forgives between $5,000 and $17,500 for teachers who teach for five consecutive years in a low- or moderate-income school. Still, eligible schools don’t have noticeably higher retention or recruitment rates. Researchers suggested a few reasons for the program’s low utilization, including heavy bureaucracy and more appealing forgiveness options:

Public Service Loan Forgiveness, an alternative program available to those working in government or nonprofits. This option may be more appealing to some teachers because it will eventually forgive all remaining loan debt. Unlike the teacher-focused forgiveness, though, it only applies after 10 years rather than five.

Awareness is also an issue. One survey found that only 38% of teachers with loan debt knew the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program’s guidelines. Read more here.

3. Cyber Gangs Target Schools

READ: 80% of schools suffered ransomware attacks last year, making the institutions the leading target for cyber gangs and hackers. Mark Keierleber wrote for The 74 about this new trend, which he attributes to a lack of cybersecurity safeguards and a greater willingness to make ransom payments compared to other industries:

“If a given sector pays more often than another sector, then they get targeted more often and if a given sector is really insecure and it’s super easy to break in, they’ll also get targeted more,” Chester Wisniewski, field chief technology officer of applied research at Sophos, said. “In the case of education, unfortunately, it’s a double whammy because they do pay very often and they also are really easy to break into.”

Sophos reported that data was encrypted in 81% of last year’s cases. Read more here.

4. California Will Cover Cost of College for CA Foster Youth

READ: 93% of foster youth in California want to attend college, but only 4% will graduate with a degree. The state’s legislature moved to close this gap by signing SB 307 this week, which will cover the entire cost of college for foster youth attending a University of California, California State University, or California community college. State Senator Angelique Ashby introduced the bill and called it life-changing:

"They don’t have a family to fall back on, to help them with housing or school loans or cars or shoes or backpacks or laptops. So, closing those gaps for these kiddos makes all the difference in the world," Ashby said. "Anything we can do to help young people who want to pursue college do so and not come out with crippling debt, I think is really important, regardless of where they are on the socioeconomic spectrum."

The program will cover tuition, books, food, and lodging. Read more from Myja Gary at KTLA 5 here.

5. Denver School Segregation Leads to Disparate Resources and Outcomes

READ: Erica Meltzer reported on the impact of school segregation in Denver, where three-quarters of white students attend schools comprised of majority white and higher-income students despite making up just a quarter of the city’s overall student body. A new report found that Denver’s Latino students and English learners are most harmed by the separate and unequal education, particularly notable in a city where more than half of students are Hispanic or Latino and a third of all students are English learners. In light of the findings, Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero pledged to work towards solutions:

“It is vitally important that we leave no stone unturned in finding the root causes, even if the findings make us uncomfortable,” he said. “While many factors led to this outcome we are not without blame. It is time for DPS to take a look in the mirror and see if any of our own actions may have contributed to the re-segregation of our schools. As Superintendent it is my duty to advocate for all our students by breaking down the systems of oppression when we find them.”

6. Are We in an Era of Trauma Creep?

READ/LISTEN: Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score has sold 3 million copies and spent over 248 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. Danielle Carr at New York Magazine profiled the psychiatrist’s quest to define trauma in the 80s and 90s and his rise to public prominence. Van der Kol’s theories have widened trauma into a spectrum instead of a binary, but this shift has also led many to question if “anything” can be classified as trauma:

If you’re the type of person who gets Instagram ads for online therapy, your algorithm has doubtless ushered you toward the archipelago of #attachmenttheory and #complexptsd. There, you can learn how growing up in a dysfunctional family can quite literally deform your nervous system, as often through “invisible traumas” like “parentification” as through outright abuse or neglect. These ideas, leaping off the scientific legitimacy of van der Kolk’s work, posit a ubiquity of trauma that seems to leave hardly anyone in the “non-traumatized” category.

Read more here. Doug Lemov and I interviewed George Bonnano, author of The End of Trauma, for Sweat the Technique earlier this year. We discussed whether society is having the wrong conversation about trauma and how it impacts the K-12 space. Listen here.

7. Fixing Higher Education

READ: William Deresiewicz took to the pages of Persuasion to lay out new proposals for overhauling higher education: make college free, triple tenure-track faculty, raise taxes on the top 10-15% of Americans, make significant cuts within higher ed, and eliminate intercollegiate athletics. Deresiewicz also advocates that the “input” be improved:

As of now, some 40-60% of entering students—another stunning figure—need remediation. Colleges, in other words, especially community colleges, are being tasked with giving freshmen the education that they should have received in high school. Improving K-12 (a monumental undertaking of its own) would also help reverse another dismal trend: credential creep. If a high school diploma actually meant something, employers wouldn't feel the need to ask for quite so many bachelor's degrees, and fewer people would have to go to college in the first place.