Chalkbeat

The pandemic is over. But American schools still aren’t the same.

2023-09-20T20:17:22+00:00

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On a recent Friday at Gary Comer Middle School in Chicago, you had to squint to see signs of the pandemic that upended American education just a few years ago.

Only a handful of students wore face masks, and even then, some put them on to cover up pimples, staff said. The hand sanitizer stations outside every classroom mostly went unused, and some were empty. Students stopped to hug in the hallway and ate lunch side by side in the cafeteria.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal as much as it was before,” said 12-year-old Evelyn Harris, an eighth grader at Comer, whose lasting memory of pandemic schooling is that online classes were easier, so she got better grades. “The pandemic didn’t really affect me in a big way.”

Students are released from classes to attend a club sign-up event at Comer Middle School.

But inside Nikhil Bhatia’s classroom, the evidence was on the whiteboard, where the math teacher was shading in slices of a pie to illustrate how to find a common denominator. That day, his seventh graders were working to add and subtract fractions — a skill students usually learn in fourth grade.

Maybe you learned this before, Bhatia began. “Or, during the pandemic, you might have been on Zoom,” — a few students laughed as he dragged out the words — “put your screen on black, went to go play a couple video games. Snap if that sounds familiar?”

Clicking fingers filled the room. “That’s OK!” Bhatia responded. “That’s why we’re going to do the review.”

As the new school year begins at Comer and elsewhere, many students and educators say school is feeling more normal than it has in over three years. COVID health precautions have all but vanished. There’s less social awkwardness. Students say they’re over the novelty of seeing their classmates in person.

But beneath the surface, profound pandemic-era consequences persist. More students are missing school, and educators are scrambling to keep kids engaged in class. Many students remain behind academically, leaving teachers like Bhatia to fill in gaps even while trying to move students forward. Rebuilding students’ shaken confidence in their abilities is especially important right now.

“It’s OK that you don’t know this,” Bhatia tells his students. “It’s normal right now.”

Hands are raised as Nikhil Bhatia teaches a math lesson at Comer Middle School.

Nationally, many students remain far behind in math and reading where they would have been if not for the pandemic. There have been especially steep learning drops at schools that taught virtually for most of the 2020-21 school year, as schools did across Chicago and within the Noble charter network, which includes Comer. It’s an issue that’s even more pressing for older students, who have less time to fill in those holes.

At Comer, 28% of eighth graders met or exceeded Illinois math standards the year before the pandemic, not far off from the state’s average of 33%. But by spring 2022, that had fallen to just 2%, compared with 23% for the state.

In reading, meanwhile, 9% of Comer eighth graders met or exceeded state standards pre-pandemic, and that dipped to 4% in spring 2022, when the state’s average was 30%.

The school made gains they’re proud of last school year, with 10% of eighth graders hitting the state’s bar for math and 22% hitting it for reading, though school leaders say they know there is still work to be done.

“If you don’t have some foundational skills and basic skills, it will be almost impossible to keep up with the curriculum as the kids get older,” said Mary Avalos, a research professor of teaching and learning at the University of Miami, who has studied how COVID affected middle school teachers. “That’s a big issue that needs to be addressed.”

How teachers are addressing pandemic learning gaps

Most of Bhatia’s students missed key skills in fourth and fifth grades — the years that school was remote, then interrupted by waves of COVID — but they mastered more advanced concepts in sixth grade last year.

That’s left Bhatia, like many teachers across the country, with the tricky task of coming up with mini lessons to fill in those elementary gaps, without spending so much time on prior concepts that students fall behind in middle school.

Ja’liyah Pope, 12, listens during a math lesson in Nikhil Bhatia’s class at Comer Middle School.

On a day like Friday, that meant to get students ready to add negative fractions, a seventh grade skill, Bhatia first had to teach a short lesson on adding fractions, a fourth grade skill. At first, some students mistakenly thought they should use the technique for dividing fractions they learned last year.

“They’ll say: ‘Oh is this keep, change, flip’?” Bhatia said. “The gap isn’t exactly what you would expect it to be.”

This kind of teaching happened “once in a while” pre-pandemic, Bhatia said, but “now it’s like day by day I have to be really critical in thinking about: ‘OK what might be the gap that surfaces today?’”

Aubria Myers, who teaches sixth grade English at Comer, sees ways the familiar rhythms of school are just now returning, four months after federal health officials declared an official end to the COVID-19 emergency.

“This year, for me, feels the most normal,” Myers said. Students are saying: “Oh wait, what’s the homework again, can I get another copy?” she said. Last year when she mentioned homework, “they were like: ‘What is that?’”

On that recent Friday, Myers led an activity in her multicultural literature class that would have been impossible two years ago when students had to stay seated in pods of color-coded desks.

Her sixth graders huddled close to one another as they tried to hop across the classroom, an exercise designed to give her fidgety students a chance to move around, while exemplifying the communication and teamwork skills that would be at the center of Seedfolks, the novel they were about to read in class.

Still, Myers had chosen the book, with its short chapters and lines full of metaphors and irony, to meet the needs of this crop of sixth graders, who spent all of third grade learning online. Many, Myers knows, never logged on. They have shorter attention spans and doubts about their reading skills but love class discussions, she said.

“They remember that time in their life when they were stuck talking to only people in their house,” Myers said. “They’re in class wanting to engage with each other.”

Aubria Myers teaches an English lesson at Comer Middle School.

Myers has tried to prevent her students from getting discouraged by their learning gaps. At the start of this school year, for example, she’s pointing out spelling and punctuation errors, but not docking points yet. She wants to make sure her students first have time to learn some of the key skills they missed in earlier grades.

“We have kids who don’t understand how to put a period somewhere in your sentence, or how to put spaces between their words,” Myers said. “I see these very beautifully strung together ideas, these really well thought-out explanations, but they’re missing some of those key mechanics.”

Student mental health and engagement still top of mind

Comer has responded to students’ post-pandemic needs in other ways, too. The school expanded its team of social workers and other staff who work with students to resolve conflicts and address mental health needs, a trend that’s been observed nationwide.

The school has long felt the effects of neighborhood gun violence and student trauma, but staff say having more adults focused on those issues has helped students open up and seek help. Now, more students are requesting verbal mediations to head off physical fights, staff say.

“If you follow us through the building, you’ll see,” said Stephanie Williams, a former reading teacher who now directs Comer’s social and emotional learning team. “Kids will seek you out, or find you, and let you know: ‘Hey, I need this.’”

On left, a student plays chess during a club sign-up event at Comer Middle School. On right, students start their English class with Aubria Myers by reading.

And this is the second year the school has scheduled all core classes earlier in the week, so that students can spend part of Friday practicing math and reading skills on the computer, and the rest of the day taking two special electives. It’s a strategy meant to keep students engaged — and showing up to school.

The school offers classes that pique students’ interests, such as the history of hip hop, hair braiding, and creative writing. Brandon Hall, a seventh grader at Comer, blended his first smoothie in a “foodies” class and bonded with his basketball coach through chess. He came to see similarities between making plays on the court and moving pawns across the board.

“I learned a lot from him,” he said.

On “Freedom Fridays,” attendance is higher and student conflicts are rarer, school officials say. That’s been important as the school, like many others, has seen higher chronic absenteeism rates over the last two years. At Comer, 1 in 3 sixth graders missed 18 or more days of school last year. Before the pandemic, that number sat closer to 1 in 5.

The approach runs counter to the calls some education experts have made for schools to double down on academics and add more instructional time — not take it away.

A recent report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, for example, spells out the numerous ways students are still struggling, and calls for “a greater urgency to address learning gaps before students graduate.” Harvard education researcher Thomas Kane noted that few districts have lengthened the school day or year and warned that, “The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning.”

But JuDonne Hemingway, the principal of Comer, said devoting time to enrichment activities during the school day is worth it to ensure all students have access to them. These classes, she added, are helping students develop interests they may pursue in college or as part of a career.

“They’re not just random experiences for kids,” Hemingway said. “We think they are just as important as any traditional academic class.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Schools are cutting recovery programs as U.S. aid money dries up. Students are still struggling.

2023-09-06T04:01:00+00:00

This story is a collaboration with the Associated Press. Sign up for Chalkbeat’s free weekly newsletter to get essential education news delivered to your inbox.

DETROIT – Davion Williams wants to go to college. A counselor at his Detroit charter school last year helped him visualize that goal, but he knows he’ll need more help to navigate the application process.

So he was discouraged to learn the high school where he just began his sophomore year had laid off its college transition adviser — a staff member who provided extra help coordinating financial aid applications, transcript requests, campus visits, and more.

The advisers had been hired at 19 schools with federal pandemic relief money. In June, when Detroit’s budget was finalized, their jobs were among nearly 300 that were eliminated.

“Not being able to do it at this school is kind of disappointing,” Williams said in August at a back-to-school event at Mumford High School.

An unprecedented infusion of aid money the U.S. government provided to schools during the pandemic has begun to dwindle. Like Williams’ school, some districts are already winding down programming like expanded summer school and after-school tutoring. Some teachers and support staff brought on to help kids through the crisis are being let go.

The relief money, totaling roughly $190 billion, was meant to help schools address needs arising from COVID-19, including making up for learning loss during the pandemic. But the latest national data shows large swaths of American students remain behind academically compared with where they would have been if not for the pandemic.

Montgomery County schools, the largest district in Maryland, is reducing or eliminating tutoring, summer school, and other programs that were covered by federal pandemic aid. Facing a budget gap, the district opted for those cuts instead of increasing class sizes, said Robert Reilly, associate superintendent of finance. The district will focus instead on providing math and reading support in the classroom, he said.

But among parents, there’s a sense that there remains “a lot of work to be done” to help students catch up, said Laura Mitchell, a vice president of a districtwide parent-teacher council.

Mitchell, whose granddaughter attends high school in the district, said tutoring has been a blessing for struggling students. The district’s cuts will scale back tutoring by more than half this year.

“If we take that away, who’s going to help those who are falling behind?” she said.

Districts have through September 2024 to earmark the last of the money provided by Congress in three COVID relief packages. Some schools have already started pulling back programming to soften the blow, and the next budget year is likely to be even more painful, with the arrival of what some describe as a “funding cliff.”

In a June survey of hundreds of school system leaders by AASA, The School Superintendents Association, half said they would need to decrease staffing of specialists, such as tutors and reading coaches, for the new school year. Half also said they were cutting summer-learning programs.

As the spending deadline looms, the scope of the cuts is not yet clear. The impact in each district will depend on how school officials have planned for the aid’s end and how much money they receive from other sources.

State funding for education across the country has been generous of late. But states may soon face their own budget challenges: They also received temporary federal aid that is running out.

Many school officials are bracing for the budget hit to come. In Shreveport, Louisiana, officials say that next year they might have to cut some of the 50 math teachers they added to double up on math instruction for middle schoolers.

Schools there added the teachers after identifying deep learning gaps in middle school math, and there’s evidence it helped, with a 4-point increase in math scores, officials say. But at a cost of $4 million, the program will be in jeopardy.

“Our money practically is gone,” Superintendent T. Lamar Goree said.

Some researchers have questioned whether the money was sufficient or sustained enough to address the deep declines in learning. But with a recent deal limiting federal spending increases in education, more money from Congress will not be forthcoming.

Meanwhile, some lawmakers and commentators have pointed to anemic academic recovery to suggest schools didn’t spend the COVID relief money wisely in the first place.

Experts note that district officials had wide discretion over how to spend the money, and their decisions have varied widely, from HVAC upgrades to professional development. “Some of the spending was very wise, and some of it looks, in hindsight, to have been somewhat foolish,” said Lori Taylor, an education finance researcher at Texas A&M University.

To date, there is limited research on whether the federal money has helped address learning loss. One recent study of eight districts’ summer school programs found no impact on reading scores but improvements in math. Since only a fraction of students in each district attended, this made only a small contribution to learning recovery, though.

School officials insist the money has made a difference.

“I wonder what the counterfactual would have been if we didn’t have the money,” said Adriana Publico, the project manager for COVID relief funds at Washoe County School District in Reno, Nevada. “Would students have been even worse off? I think so.“

The Washoe system has cut hours for after-school tutoring in half this year and eliminated teacher coaches from many elementary schools. The district just finished a dramatically expanded summer school program, but officials aren’t sure if they’ll be able to afford to continue it next summer.

Some school systems are trying to maintain COVID-era additions. In Kansas City, Missouri, district officials say they’re planning to keep a number of the positions that were added with federal money, including intervention teachers and clinicians who work with students who have experienced trauma. The district will be able to do so, said CFO Erin Thompson, because of higher property tax revenue.

“This might not be as bad as what we thought,” she said. “We’re optimistic at this point.”

In Detroit, which received a windfall of federal COVID money, district officials say they budgeted carefully to avoid steep cuts when the money runs out. This included earmarking more than half of their federal relief — some $700 million — for one-time building renovations to aging campuses across the city.

But ultimately, officials said some reductions were necessary. Expanded summer and after-school programs have been phased out, in addition to the hundreds of staff positions, like the college advisers.

“In an ideal world, I would rather have college transition advisers,” said Superintendent Nikolai Vitti. “But it’s another example of making hard decisions.”

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Collin Binkley is an education reporter for the Associated Press.

Barnum reported from New York and Binkley reported from Washington, D.C.

Many Colorado students juggle college and parenting. Often they feel like outsiders on campus.

2023-09-05T18:39:58+00:00

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Deysi Parga Macias faced a dilemma last fall in the first week of classes at the University of Colorado Boulder.

She couldn’t find daycare for her son, Ramiro, and her grandparents, who were supposed to watch him, were sick.

Macias, then 19, began to panic. Her biochemistry lab only allowed four absences before she failed the class — but missing even one would make her feel like a failure. Desperate, she sent her professor an email before class and asked if she could bring her then-year-and-a-half-old son.

“I said, ‘I am so sorry, and I know that this is unprofessional,’” Macias said.

Students in the lab were scheduled to collect samples at Boulder Creek and analyze the results. Luckily, her professor agreed to let Ramiro come since it was a safer environment than in a classroom lab. While Macias worked, Ramiro played with rocks and threw them into the water.

“He thought it was just another day out,” she said.

Macias carries her son to the car to be dropped off at her grandparents’ home.

Macias, now a 20-year-old junior at CU Boulder, tries her best to separate parenting and coursework on campus, even if she alerts professors on the first days of class that she has a kid.

She doesn’t usually see other young children at CU Boulder. Many students can’t relate to her life.

It’s an isolating experience.

“Every time I tell my professors that I’m a mom and I’m an undergrad, they say, ‘You’re my first,’” she said.

How many student parents are on Colorado college campuses?

Many public Colorado colleges don’t know how many students are parents on their campuses.

Census data from the 2021 American Community Survey analyzed by Colorado’s demographer suggests that parents make up a little less than a third of undergraduate students at all of the state’s colleges and universities.

That’s close to what national data collected by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research showed in 2016: about 22% of all college undergraduates were parents. The institute found 42% of all community college students and just 17% of students at public four-year universities were parents.

Colorado, like many states, does not require colleges and universities to keep these numbers. Some colleges, including Colorado State University Fort Collins, have used voluntary surveys to get a better sense. But it’s still an estimate.

“We don’t know if we have 50 student parents or 5,000,” said Lisa Chandler, CSU Fort Collins adult learner and veteran services assistant director.

Some administrators worry that asking whether students have children could violate federal rules intended to prevent discrimination. Advocates say the lack of concrete data can limit the services and outreach students receive to help them through college, especially because this is a group that doesn’t have a lot of time to track down help.

Ramiro’s picture is displayed on Macias’ high school graduation cap at her home in Arvada, Colorado.

Student parents carry higher GPAs on average but are 10 times less likely to graduate, according to the women’s policy research institute. They are also more likely to be Black and low-income, take on more student loan debt, and struggle to find housing.

It matters to student parents that they succeed because they want higher wages to support their families. And, Colorado has a goal to get more residents — especially those from diverse communities — the postsecondary training they need to land good-paying jobs. Macias, for instance, studies biochemistry and wants to become a doctor.

In recent years, Colorado’s community colleges, with more student parents, have provided food resources, and connected students to housing, childcare, and financial support. Meanwhile, four-year universities offer fewer services.

Daycare is the priority for many student parents

Before Macias enrolled, she researched the schools that would offer her the most help while parenting. CU Boulder gave her scholarships, and she pieced together enough to pay for college. She also planned to use the university’s graduate and family housing so she could have more space for her and Ramiro, live on campus, meet friends, and be independent.

There was so much she didn’t anticipate as the first student in her family to go to college and as a new mother.

The rent in family housing proved to be more than she could afford. She struggled at times through her first year to pay for furniture and other household items – even things as small as a shower curtain and toiletries. Macias estimates a high school mentor spent about $1,000 to help her furnish her apartment. Her mom would cook for her and also bought her groceries and other daily items. Her sister helped babysit Ramiro when Macias had classes.

Macias looks for an outfit for her son at her home in Arvada, Colorado.

Macias is now living with her son’s paternal grandmother. It puts her minutes away from family members who can provide child care because she said she can’t afford CU Boulder’s childcare facility. It also makes it easier when she and Ramiro’s dad co-parent.

In Colorado, child care on average can cost about $1,360 a month at a center and about $960 at a home-based business for a toddler, according to Annie E. Casey Foundation’s 2023 Kids Count data book.

CU Boulder students pay based on the age of their child and how often they attend daycare. A student can pay up to about $1,900 a month for five-day-a-week care for an infant. The daytime hours don’t cover evening classes or study sessions.

The school surveyed undergraduates in 2021 to better understand how to help all students. Only a third of all students took the survey, and about 3% of respondents said they are responsible for the care of children or other adults, according to the university.

Other campus services for parents include a health and wellness center and mental health support, nap pods for tired students, and dedicated lactation rooms.

Macias said she no longer uses most of what CU Boulder offers. Child care continues to be her biggest struggle. In a perfect world, she said the school would provide free care, because college students don’t have a lot of money.

The biochemistry major works on an online class, “Academic Skills Resources,” in a study room in the Duane Physical Laboratories Building at CU Boulder.

Community colleges offer more built-in supports

Schools that serve more older students tend to think more about the needs of parents. Aurora Community College has sent out voluntary surveys to students and learned about 35% have parental responsibilities, said Reyna Anaya, senior student affairs officer and dean of student success.

The surveys helped the school create more help. The school has snack stations for kids, a free market for parents to get food, and play stations with toys. Advisors are available for support.

Colorado Mountain College’s Rifle campus hosts Family Fridays where students and community members can bring kids on campus to learn while their parents take classes, said Tinker Duclo, vice president and campus dean at CMC Rifle.

But four-year institutions are also doing more to offer parent services on campus. For example, Colorado State University Fort Collins has drop-in child care at its library that is paid by student fees. And like many other schools, CSU offers federal grants to subsidize child care.

Moving from community college to university

Zeke Dominguez, 41, is nervous about transferring from Front Range Community College to Colorado State University next fall. As a single parent of an autistic 11-year-old child, his second try at college has provided him a lot of what he’s needed as a parent, but he’s not sure what to expect at the bigger college.

Dominguez studied cybersecurity in 2012 at for-profit University of Phoenix. His daughter was born at about the same time. She spent months in the hospital, and he took family leave for a semester but felt overwhelmed when he returned. He needed to drop out.

“I didn’t have any support systems, either,” he said. “It wasn’t anything like what I have now.”

Community colleges have increased services in recent years for student parents.

Front Range brings student parents together to support each other. Dominguez also connected to the school’s TRIO program, a federal program to guide disadvantaged students through college that’s used at many college and university campuses. While not only for student parents, the program has connected him to tutors and helped him learn to advocate for his needs as a parent, such as how to reach out to instructors or deans so he doesn’t have to drop classes when he gets behind.

The school also has federal grants for child care, he said, and if Dominguez has a problem, Front Range officials try to help connect him to community resources.

It’s important for Dominguez to finish his degree. He wants to get a bachelor’s in fine arts to allow him flexibility to work and take care of his daughter. The demands of his previous job as a chef didn’t mix well with parenting.

He plans to expand his work in photography — he used to shoot food photos while a chef. He also wants to explore his career options, such as selling his paintings.

As he gets ready for CSU Fort Collins, he worries that he will get lost at such a large school.

“We really are a ghost,” he said. “We’re not seen.”

Students walk around the UC Boulder campus Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2023.

Higher education’s growing focus on student parents

Elsewhere, some states have figured out how to track student parents. Oregon and Illinois require colleges and universities to collect data on student parents to help them get what they need, according to Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder and CEO of Generation Hope. The nonprofit advocates for policies that support student parents and supports schools in their efforts.

Schools also want to increase support. Norfolk State University, a historically Black university in Virginia, has worked with Generation Hope in the last year to increase services, such as lactation rooms and parent groups. The school offers evening child care. School officials are also drafting guidelines around the presence of children on campus and how faculty and staff can help student parents.

Student parents want to feel more a part of the campus and be considered, said Andrea Neal, Office of Academic Engagement associate vice provost at Norfolk State. Small things like specific parking spaces or easy access to diapers on campus would make them feel included, she said.

Larger universities like The Ohio State University also are trying to find ways to serve parents.

Traci Lewis, director of the university’s Comprehensive College Experience for Student-Parent Success Program, said Ohio State makes parents and their kids a part of campus life. The school has a student-parent welcome week with bounce houses for their kids, offers child care during club meetings, and will allow students to walk with their kids this year in the homecoming parade.

Ohio State student parents receive a comprehensive resource support guide, but the school also provides advisors to offer more personal guidance. The school also offers emergency financial assistance.

Student parents need to advocate for themselves

Macias feels burnt out, but she rarely lets that stop her positive attitude.

She has found ways to feel like she’s a greater part of the campus. She wants to be a role model for other first-generation and Latina students in the sciences. She’s found supportive friends. She’s joined clubs like the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights.

She takes the tough days in stride because she’s determined to finish school.

Macias, left, listens to America Ramirez, program director for the Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights (COLOR), during the “Be Involved Fair” on campus.

“Life doesn’t wait for you to be OK,” Macias said.

Macias works within CU Boulder’s Office of Precollege Outreach and Engagement and gives campus tours to high school students. The program also hosts overnight trips.

She’s met hundreds of students, she said. But over the summer, a young woman approached her to read the college essay she prepared.

The teen, a rising high school junior, wrote that she was pregnant. She wanted to major in the sciences just like Macias. She documented her fears of telling her family about the pregnancy and never getting to college.

Tears streamed down Macias’ cheeks as she sat across from the student. The young girl’s struggle was her own. She finally didn’t feel so out of place.

“I told her to stay focused and keep going. To finish strong, as strong as you can because there’s going to be a lot of help,” she said. “Unfortunately, they’re not going to come and find you as a parent. You have to find the help yourself.”

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago closed 50 schools 10 years ago. What’s happened since then?

2023-07-25T10:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and statewide education policy.

Demetrius Hobson’s voice piped through the loudspeaker into every classroom at Matthew Henson Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side.

It was just before 3:45 p.m. on June 19, 2013. In a few minutes, the bell would ring to dismiss classes on the last day of the school year at Chicago Public Schools.

Hobson had arrived the previous year, fresh out of Harvard’s principal leadership program, with endless energy and new ideas. He had been ready to transform the 250-student school that served mostly Black students from low income families in North Lawndale and was “gearing up for the long run.”

Now, he had to do something no principal wants to do.

“Good afternoon, Matthew Henson Elementary School, and congratulations,” Hobson intoned. “This is our final few minutes as a school.”

That day would mark the largest mass closure of public schools in the nation’s history, as Henson and 49 other Chicago schools shut their doors for good. Some 17,000 students and 1,500 staff would scatter to schools across the city. Many others would leave the district altogether.

The promise made at the time by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel was that the students would go to better schools, and the district would save money by offloading expensive-to-maintain aging buildings.

“I know this is incredibly difficult, but I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future,” he said in a statement after the school board voted on the closures. “I am confident that … our children will succeed.”

The moment capped months of raucous public hearings, days-long marches, downtown protests, and even arrests of activists who demanded Emanuel and his hand-picked school board reverse course.

On that June day, as Hobson and others said good-bye to their schools, questions hung in the air: What would happen to neighborhoods being disrupted? Would buildings get new life or fall into disrepair? Would Emanuel’s promise of better futures for students come to fruition?

Henson security guard Kelvyn Cockrell was not as confident as the mayor.

“I just hope and pray that somehow this works,” he said, standing outside the school’s main office on the last day of school.

Nearby, Mia Bonds, then a soft-spoken eighth grader and the valedictorian of her class, helped a teacher pack up a box.

Boxes are stacked inside of a classroom on June 19, 2013, the last day of school at Matthew Henson Elementary in North Lawndale. It was one of 50 schools shuttered under what would become the largest mass closure of public schools in U.S. history.

She would be moving on from Henson anyway, heading to Whitney Young High School, one of the district’s top test-in high schools. But for her brother, then a second grader, the closure would mean being reassigned to Hughes Elementary a few blocks west.

“I don’t think it’s fair,” Bonds said at the time. “I want people to remember that Henson was not just a school — it was like a family.”

Before the bell rang at Henson for the last time, Hobson searched for words of comfort as he spoke to the students over the intercom:

“I want you to remember that education is the key to unlock the golden door to freedom,” he told them. “And I want you to know that every day at Matthew Henson Elementary School, education is liberation.”

A principal and his students ‘find community somewhere else’

About a week after the last day of classes, Hobson says he got a phone call from a district official telling him the school was about to be officially mothballed.

“Get to the school, get your things,” Hobson recalled the official saying. “We need to lock the doors and turn in your keys.”

Henson was one of 46 buildings that would be emptied out. Desks, chairs, books, bulletin boards, and everything else would be moved out — taken to other schools, warehoused, sold, or simply thrown away.

Chicago Public Schools would pay an Ohio-based logistics company to manage all the stuff from the shuttered buildings — a contract that would eventually double from $8.9 million to $18.9 million. Years later, metal desks, solid wood chairs, and other relics from the school closings would end up for sale on Craigslist.

The three-story, mint green and tan brick building once called Henson would be put up for sale the following year.

After his school closed, Hobson needed a break. At the time, he didn’t want to walk into another school building and start over again. He told his wife, ‘If I go back into another school, it’s going to be a school I start.’”

But near the end of that summer, Hobson said, Chicago Public Schools called again: Would he mind stepping in as interim principal at another school?

He was still on district payroll, so he took the job in Woodlawn. But midyear, Hobson was asked to go to Earle Elementary in Englewood, a school that had been designated as a welcoming school for Goodlow Elementary, another closed school.

In some of the buildings that welcomed displaced students in the fall of 2013, the transition was tough and sometimes even chaotic.

“They took two low-performing schools and put them together,” said Darlene O’Banner, a grandmother of four children at Goodlow and later Earle. “They were setting us up for failure.”

The shuffling of students was a monumental task for the district. Officials spent millions of dollars on additional staff, new iPads, and building repairs at roughly 50 schools designated to welcoming students from closed buildings. But instead, some of the students scattered. Just over three-quarters of students attended the welcoming schools that were designated to take them in. The rest fanned out to 200 other schools across the city, WBEZ reported at the time.

Hobson’s time at Earle turned out to be brief: He had gotten a job offer to open a new school. In San Francisco.

So Hobson and his wife packed up and moved West, where he would become the founding principal of a new public middle school named after that city’s first Black mayor, Willie L. Brown.

Many of those impacted by the closures also moved away. Data obtained by Chalkbeat showed that roughly a third of the students who attended closed schools transferred out of CPS. Some families and advocates said the loss of an anchor institution, like a school, would lead to more displacement and disinvestment in the segregated Black neighborhoods, not less.

Bonds started freshman year at Whitney Young, one of the city’s top high schools that accept students based on their test scores and where they live. It was far more diverse and less segregated than Henson, which served mostly Black children from low-income families. The year Bonds enrolled, the student body at Whitney Young was 30% white, 24% Black, 27% Latino, and 15% Asian American.

“I feel like I needed to be in a more diverse type of schooling,” she said. “I saw Whitney as an escape. So I was there early, leaving late.”

Her brother enrolled in third grade at Hughes, the school where Henson students were assigned. It was closer to their apartment, Bonds said, but they “just liked Henson better.”

“Once you close schools down like that, people have to find that community somewhere else and adapt,” she added. “In this situation we were forced to, it wasn’t like a choice.”

Vacant school buildings and new starts in and outside Chicago

By 2017, Henson’s building still sat vacant. The windows were boarded up. Litter blew across the cracked blacktop. The marquee outside the front door was blank, no longer emblazoned with the school’s name.

The marquee outside of Henson Elementary in North Lawndale is now blank. The school has sat vacant and boarded up since 2013, despite interest from a nonprofit housing developer.

The district had managed to sell only a handful of the shuttered schools — most on the north side — to luxury housing developers or private schools. They repurposed a few as district offices or transferred them to other city agencies and put the remaining 30 out to bid for a second time.

In May 2018, the Board of Education had an interested buyer for Henson’s property, which sits across six parcels. The Single Room Housing Assistance Corporation offered $55,000 and put forward a plan to convert the school into 80 mini-studio apartments for low-income people, including veterans, single mothers, and people with disabilities.

There were a lot of similar proposals — and dreams — for the vacant buildings left behind in the wake of the historic closings. A “teacher’s village” with a mix of housing and retail. A women’s center and artist incubator. A community center for formerly incarcerated people. Affordable housing for seniors.

Calhoun Elementary, one of 50 schools that Chicago Public Schools closed in 2013, is still vacant.

The old Genevieve Melody Elementary building at 412 S Keeler Ave. sits vacant. Windows are broken and inside classrooms, there is graffiti on the walls. The building was mothballed in 2013 when Melody relocated to Delano Elementary, 3937 W Wilcox St., which was closed.

The old Delano Elementary in West Garfield Park became the new Melody Elementary in 2013. It was one of about a dozen closures in which Chicago Public Schools relocated students from the school staying open to the building of a school being shut down.

The old Charles Earle Elementary building, 6121 S. Hermitage, closed in 2013. A Wisconsin-based developer purchased the building in 2017 for $200,000 with plans to convert it into affordable housing for seniors. It remains vacant.

The front entrance of the old Charles Earle Elementary building, 6121 S. Hermitage. In 2021, the new owner announced plans to convert the building into affordable housing for seniors.

The playground at the former Arna Bontemps Elementary, 1241 W 58th St., which closed in 2013, is overgrown and scribbled with graffiti.

A message is spraypainted on the side of the former Arna Bontemps Elementary school, 1241 W 58th St., which closed in 2013.

The old Laura S. Ward Elementary building at 410 N. Monticello Ave. in Garfield Park was closed in 2013. The school relocated to 646 N Lawndale Ave. in Humboldt Park and took over the old Martin A. Ryerson Elementary building.

Students play on the playground of the old Martin A. Ryerson Elementary, 646 N Lawndale Ave., in Humboldt Park closed in 2013. It is now home to Laura S. Ward Elementary.

The old Martin A. Ryerson Elementary, 646 N Lawndale Ave., in Humboldt Park closed in 2013 and is now Laura S. Ward Elementary.

The playground is locked and overgrown at the old Genevieve Melody Elementary building at 412 S Keeler Ave. The building was mothballed in 2013 when Melody relocated to the old Delano Elementary, 3937 W Wilcox St.

Faraday Elementary School, 3250 W Monroe St., used to be Garfield Park Elementary. In 2013, Chicago Public Schools shut down Garfield Park and relocated Faraday to this building, merging the students from both into one school.

The basketball court next to Henson Elementary, 1326 S. Avers Ave., in North Lawndale is empty on a hot June day 10 years since the school closed in 2013.

The marquee at Nathan Goldblatt Elementary School, 4257 W. Adams St., in West Garfield Park still has notes on it from the last time it served students in 2013.

The gate around Nathan Goldblatt Elementary, 4257 W Adams St., in West Garfield Park is locked. The school has gotten little to no interest from buyers when Chicago Public Schools has put it up for sale.

The site of the former William King Elementary, 740 S. Campbell Ave., is now home to 30 single-family, new construction homes built in 2020. The property was sold to a developer in 2017 for $1.5 million at a time when the Chicago Board of Education was approving multiple bids on vacant closed schools.

The former Dett Elementary building, 2306 W. Maypole Ave., sits vacant on Chicago’s West Side. Dett’s building closed and the school relocated to Herbert Elementary, 2131 W Monroe St., in 2013 when the Chicago Board of Education shuttered 50 schools. Despite plans to convert it into a women’s center, the property still sits vacant.

Hobson, in the meantime, was trying to bring a new school to life nearly 2,000 miles away.

He was “working day and night” to recruit students for a new STEM middle school in San Francisco, hiring staff, applying for grants, and designing curriculum with the district leadership.

But in late 2018, Hobson returned home to Chicago once the school opened. He remembers thinking: “‘Maybe I should just start over? Go back to the classroom. See what that feels like.”

Bonds, who had graduated from Whitney Young in 2017, became the first in her immediate family to go to college.

“A lot of people urged me to go. They said I needed to leave the west side of Chicago,” she said. “Every college I applied to I got accepted.”

She chose Northern Illinois University. “Nearby, but far enough away.”

Her brother finished elementary school at Hughes and enrolled at a Noble charter high school.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat show 59 percent of second graders from closed schools, like Bonds’ brother, are still enrolled across the district. It’s one of the cohorts of closed school kids who remained enrolled at slightly higher rates than comparison schools that were also on a list of 129 schools being considered for closure in 2012-13, but were ultimately spared.

But the closures had thrown other students off course.

A 2018 study by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research found that students impacted by the closures had academic outcomes that were “neutral at best, and negative in some instances.” For example, students from closed schools initially had lower reading and math scores. Reading scores recovered, but the gap in math scores persisted.

The school district had promised a five-year moratorium on school closings after 2013. When it ended in 2018, CPS closed four high schools in Englewood. But in exchange, it built a new state-of-the-art STEM high school.

Still, Chicagoans questioned if the district would return to an annual cycle of closing a handful of schools every year, as it did prior to the 50 closures.

How school closings were decided remains ‘hurtful’

On a hot June day this year, exactly 10 years and three days since the last day of school in 2013, the entrance to Henson was still blocked by boards on which someone had painted a mural.

It read: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

The front entrance of Henson Elementary in North Lawndale is boarded up, but painted with a colorful mural.

A City of Chicago Empowerment Zone sign, with Mayor Richard M. Daley’s name on it, hung above the mural. A weathered and crumpled piece of yellow paper from the Department of Water Management was stapled to the side, asking the owner to contact them within 10 days so workers could access the water meter and avoid a shutoff.

Chicago Public Schools still owns the building. There have been no micro-studios for veterans, single mothers, or disabled people.

The sale approved by the school board to the Single Room Housing Assistance Corporation never went through. Former alderman Michael Scott Jr. held it in the City Council’s Committee on Housing five years ago.

The blacktop where an inflatable bounce house stood on the last day of school was cracked and faded. Near a side entrance, a few men in their thirties were sitting on buckets, smoking. One swept broken glass off the ground and into a garbage can.

The blacktop behind Henson Elementary in North Lawndale where students used to play. A last day of school celebration was held here on June 19, 2013, before it was shut down by the school district.

Hobson has driven by Henson’s building a few times. One time before the pandemic, he remembers turning the corner to see Henson’s green and tan building.

“I was surprised to see how disheveled the building, the environment was,” Hobson said. “You could see vestiges of night parties, you know, bottles, and food bags, and everything just kind of collected on the stairs.”

The story is the same for many vacant schools. Approvals have stalled and some projects have languished as they wait for financing.

Hobson is back in the classroom now, teaching middle school social studies at an elementary school on the West Side closer to downtown than Henson was. It’s also named William Brown STEM Elementary, but after a different William Brown than the school he started in San Francisco.

It’s harder to know where the 252 students who were at Henson are today. One Henson student featured in a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times series said after fourth grade when the closure happened, he went to three different elementary schools and three different high schools in Chicago and the suburbs before getting his high school diploma at an alternative school.

Data provided by the district did not break down outcomes by school.

But data obtained separately by Chalkbeat Chicago shows that about 60 percent of Henson’s kindergarten through second grade students — those still likely to be enrolled — were at district schools during the 2022-23 school year.

Of all the students who attended schools that closed in 2013, fewer graduated and more dropped out when compared to the rest of the district. But these outcomes were similar to schools that were also on the chopping block in 2013, raising questions about whether the closures resulted in a better education for students.

Hobson said he still occasionally thinks about what it would’ve been like to “be a fly on the wall” in the rooms where the school closings decisions were made.

“Now that we can see on the other side, based on the data, there was no real transformation for the children,” Hobson said.

“What we were told and what actually happened are two different realities.”

As for Bonds, she moved back home to North Lawndale this summer after finishing her master’s degree at NIU. Her family is still in the same apartment about six blocks from Henson. She’s working for After School Matters this summer, as she has for the past several years. And next year, she’s doing City Year, an Americorps program that stations full-time mentors in high-need schools.

Looking back now, Bonds said the historic mass school closings weren’t “the end of the world.” People adapted. But it still felt like “a numbers game” that made communities like hers feel “powerless to a system.”

“It wasn’t like it was super detrimental,” Bonds said. “It was just hurtful.”

Her little brother is now entering his senior year at the same Noble campus he started at and is on track to graduate, she said.

Most Chicago students enrolled today have not experienced their public schools closing down for good. The kindergarten students of 2013 are set to graduate in 2025 — the same year state legislators have given the city’s school board permission to close schools again.

Mila Koumpilova and Samantha Smylie contributed reporting.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

ABOUT THIS STORY

I first met Demetrius Hobson and Mia Bonds at Henson Elementary on June 19, 2013, when I spent the day at the campus as a reporter for WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR station.

I was the age Mia is now. Just starting out in my career. Like many others, Chicago’s 50 school closings impacted my life in ways I’m not sure I realized until many years later. It shaped how I think about my work as a journalist and the responsibility I have to those who share their stories with me. It changed how I think about systems and structures.

In the years that followed, I stopped covering education and became a city politics reporter. I got married. I had two kids. Yet every time the name of someone I met or interviewed or the name of one of the closed schools came across my radar, my eyes and ears would perk up. Although I no longer covered education, I kept track of what was happening to the shuttered schools. I often updated a spreadsheet not thinking it would ever lead to anything. (Spoiler: It did.)

In thinking about how to mark the 10-year anniversary of this moment, in my current role as Chalkbeat’s Chicago bureau chief, I went back to my old files and re-listened to much of what flowed in and out of my tape recorder that year. I thought a lot about where all the students, parents, teachers, and activists were now. (One got elected mayor.) I reconnected with some. I talked to new people. I revisited past research. I filed multiple information requests.

I went back to Henson on a hot day in June, exactly 10 years and 3 days since that last day. I cried. And then, I wrote.

This story does not have all the answers. No story does. It seeks — once again — to add information to the public conversation around an important policy issue and to elevate the stories of those most impacted. As Mia said to me in our recent conversation: “The story is the people.”

This online tutoring company says it offers expert one-on-one help. Students often get neither.

2023-07-17T11:00:00+00:00

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Lauren Williams took a job with Paper, one of the biggest virtual tutoring companies used by U.S. schools, because she wanted to help kids.

Williams, a self-described English and history buff who lives just south of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, liked the work at first. As she helped students with their writing, it felt like students were getting personal attention they badly needed.

But as Paper ratcheted up the pace and volume of her tutoring assignments last year, Williams grew alarmed.

By this spring, she was routinely working with five students at once on the company’s online platform, which resembles a text-based instant messenger. She found herself toggling between kindergarteners learning to read and high-schoolers writing college essays, frantically trying to respond to each student’s message within Paper’s 50-second time limit.

Her breaking point came as Paper put new pressure on tutors to review essays faster — in part by recycling comments they’d written before.

“I was like: ‘No, I can’t do this,’” said Williams, who quit in March. That kind of help, she concluded, is “not doing what’s right by the kids.”

Lauren Williams

Tapping into the federal government’s historic investment in helping students recover from the pandemic, Paper has won contracts worth tens of millions of dollars telling schools it offers one-on-one tutoring with subject experts.

But the company often fails to deliver that basic service to students, a Chalkbeat investigation has found. In fact, tutors often juggle multiple students at once — a setup other virtual tutoring companies avoid — sometimes in subjects they don’t know well.

Paper argues that a student’s experience is always one-on-one, since students typically aren’t aware their tutor is working with others.

But the company’s practices and internal messaging suggest top officials know multi-tasking can be a challenge for tutors. It has even paid tutors “surge” bonuses of two to three times their normal pay rate for every minute they work with four or more students at once.

“At least when you’re in that stressful experience of having four kids in your classroom you know that you’re making double pay,” said Julia Drury, Paper’s senior director of operations, at a virtual company meeting last summer. “If you’re doing the work of two tutors, then you should be paid for the work of two tutors.”

School districts and state education agencies, meanwhile, are investing millions of COVID relief dollars in Paper’s services, sometimes none the wiser.

To report this story, Chalkbeat interviewed more than a dozen current and former Paper employees and reviewed hundreds of pages of company documents, including screenshots of internal conversations among employees.

In an interview, Paper’s CEO, Philip Cutler, did not dispute Chalkbeat’s findings that tutors are often working with more than one student at a time and that tutors sometimes work with students on unfamiliar subjects.

But he maintains that Paper is delivering one-on-one tutoring because tutors who work with multiple students do so in separate, individual sessions.

“The student’s experience is one-on-one,” Cutler told Chalkbeat in June. “The tutor can be supporting multiple people. The idea is that the attention I’m getting is dedicated to me.”

Several school officials said they were not aware that Paper tutors were often working with multiple students at once until Chalkbeat told them.

“The department will follow up with Paper about this and continue to monitor, throughout the upcoming school year, if this practice has any impact on student engagement and/or satisfaction of services,” wrote Jean Cook, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Education, one of Paper’s largest clients, in an email to Chalkbeat.

Paper tutors juggle multiple students at once

As students fell behind during the pandemic, many researchers and education officials encouraged schools to tutor their students. That recommendation was backed by years of research that has found tutoring can deliver positive academic results, especially when kids get one-on-one help.

Amid staffing shortages, many school districts struggled to find and hire in-person tutors. That’s why many schools were drawn to Paper, which relies on 2,000 mostly part-time tutors who typically log on virtually from their homes across the U.S. and Canada.

Today the nine-year-old, Montreal-based company holds contracts worth tens of millions of dollars to tutor more than three million students in 600 districts across the U.S. and Canada. Much of that is backed by federal COVID relief money.

Chalkbeat previously found that Paper’s tutoring often goes unused, particularly by students who most need help. The company lost a contract earlier this year with the state of New Mexico, after officials there said Paper had failed to meet students’ needs.

Paper has told potential clients, like New Mexico, that it provides “a 1:1 student-tutor ratio.”

“We tailor instruction for each student,” Paper wrote to New Mexico education officials last fall in a proposal to work with the state. “With our 1:1 support, your students will receive the personalized attention they need.”

Paper issued this guidance to tutors to help them manage multiple students at once.

But Paper tutors often can’t do that, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former Paper tutors. The company’s employee handbook tells tutors they should be able to work comfortably with three students at once.

“We’ve found this to usually be manageable without sacrificing quality,” the handbook states. It adds: “there is no maximum number of students a tutor can be matched with simultaneously.”

Paper offers tipsheets for tutors meant to help them work with multiple students at once. One guide obtained by Chalkbeat tells tutors to ask students questions about what they want to work on to “buy you some buffer time to navigate between students.” Tutors can also “LET STUDENTS TAKE THE LEAD!” to make it “easier” to toggle between sessions.

Cutler said it’s rare for tutors to work with more than three students at once and that it only happens for short bursts of times, or “surges.”

Paper’s own data, provided to Chalkbeat by the company, shows that tutors spent 33% of their working hours over the last school year helping two students at once, 10% of their time helping three students at once, and just under 2% of their time helping four or more students. The rest of the time, tutors worked with one or no students.

But several tutors said those rates don’t accurately reflect their workload, which spikes in the mornings and afternoons. Internally, Paper has acknowledged that tutors who work in high-demand subjects like math experience surges of four or more students “on kind of an ongoing basis,” as Drury said at the virtual company meeting last summer.

One math and science tutor told Chalkbeat he’d helped a dozen students at once. Another math and science tutor said she’d gotten 10 students during a surge.

“You just keep switching tabs,” the tutor said. “I feel bad for some of these kids who are using the platform.”

Paper has resisted making changes that could cut down on tutor multitasking, such as adding a waiting room or scheduling option, because they could result in fewer students using Paper, according to a former manager who left Paper last year after several years with the company.

“The response to it was just like: ‘We don’t want to turn students away,’” said the former manager, who asked not to be named because they signed a confidentiality agreement with Paper that prohibits sharing details about the company’s internal operations. “The quality of the service was always secondary.”

Cutler said “that’s certainly not the case” and that Paper has been “very focused on delivering a high level of quality over cost.”

This kind of juggling is not the industry standard. Many other virtual tutoring companies offer intentional group sessions where students work together on similar assignments. Others conduct tutoring sessions over live audio or live video, which makes toggling between students nearly impossible. Paper does neither.

And other companies that offer text-based tutoring limit the number of students a tutor has at once.

TutorMe, for example, said its platform allows tutors to conduct only one session at a time. Varsity Tutors said when a student requests an on-demand tutor, a tutor can’t get another student “until the session is resolved.” Tutor.com said the maximum number of students a tutor can have at once is two, and that happens in only 2% of sessions.

“We NEVER work with multiple students in DIFFERENT individual sessions at the same time,” Mike Cohen, the CEO of Cignition, a California-based company that contracts with the Denver, Los Angeles, and Baltimore school districts, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat.

Figuring out how to run a tutoring program that delivers quality help to a significant number of students without breaking the bank remains a huge challenge for schools, especially as COVID relief funds dwindle. One of Paper’s biggest selling points is that districts can offer unlimited virtual tutoring to all their students at a fixed price. If lots of students use it, it can be less expensive than pricey in-person tutoring programs.

Experts say they understand how those competing needs drove some districts to select on-demand homework help, like the kind Paper offers, even though it does not have many of the hallmarks of effective tutoring.

“It’s easy to implement,” said Jennifer Krajewski, who helps schools choose evidence-based tutoring programs through a Johns Hopkins University initiative called ProvenTutoring. “And it doesn’t necessarily require shifts in schedules. Those are real challenges that schools are facing.”

But when districts express interest in virtual, on-demand tutoring, Krajewski said she cautions school leaders to ask about how many students tutors will work with at once, and what kind of relationship students will build with tutors. Several companies, including Paper, match students with a new virtual tutor every time they log on.

“A big part of why tutoring is so powerful is that human connection with somebody who cares about you,” said Amanda Neitzel, a Johns Hopkins assistant research scientist who works with schools through ProvenTutoring. “If you are doing a virtual model with somebody who is juggling two other kids, even in the best-case scenario, how much are you actually doing that?”

Some schools left in dark about Paper’s tutoring practices

Tutors have repeatedly told Paper that they worry the company’s advertising is misleading schools, internal records and interviews show. In March, one tutor asked on Slack, the company’s internal messaging platform, if Paper would stop saying it offers one-on-one tutoring on its website because “it has not been that way, according to many tutors.” A top manager defended the description.

“You are working with a student in an individual session!” Caroline Schwim, Paper’s senior manager of teaching and learning, wrote in response. “We are open with our districts about tutors working with multiple sessions which helps us remain affordable for them!”

Cutler says school districts are informed that tutors may be working with multiple students at once “through the sales process” and that “districts are fine with that.”

But the Mississippi Department of Education, which is paying Paper $10.7 million to tutor up to 350,000 students across the state, told Chalkbeat it did not know. A state official there said the department would talk with Paper about this practice and monitor whether it was affecting student engagement or satisfaction with tutoring.

Clarissa Trejo, a spokesperson for Fontana Unified schools in California, said the district “has never had a conversation regarding how many students a tutor would be helping at a time.” The district, which has paid Paper $1.9 million to tutor some 38,000 students, had no concerns about the quality of Paper’s tutoring, Trejo added.

Meanwhile, officials with Arlington Public Schools in Virginia and Los Angeles Unified told Chalkbeat they didn’t learn that tutors may help multiple students at once until after they had agreed to work with Paper and were putting the program in place. Still, a Los Angeles schools spokesperson said Paper is “an essential component” of the district’s plan for giving students “individualized instruction.”

Other school officials said they were aware before they hired Paper. Clark County schools in Nevada, which is paying Paper nearly $13 million to tutor 302,000 students, said the district found out in its initial conversations with Paper that tutors “may conduct simultaneous one-on-one learning sessions with multiple students.”

The Tennessee Department of Education, which has a contract with Paper worth up to $1.3 million, said its contract permits Paper tutors to work with up to three students at a time — a limit that doesn’t typically appear in other Paper contracts.

“We have received no complaints or evidence that Paper is violating their contract,” wrote Brian Blackley, a spokesperson for the state, in an email.

Paper tells tutors to Google their way through sessions

When students log on to Paper’s platform, they expect to be matched with a tutor who knows something about the subject they need help with. Paper says it employs “experts across K-12 subject areas” on its website, and that it gives tutors aptitude tests to vet their knowledge.

But in practice, several current Paper tutors said they are routinely matched with students who need help with subjects they don’t know. Tutors who feel stuck can transfer a student to a colleague with more expertise, but they can be fired if they do that too often.

Paper advises tutors to consult Google for help when they are paired with a student in a subject they don’t know well.

Paper has told uncertain tutors to buy time by asking the student a question while they essentially Google their way through the session.

“Even if you’re uncertain, give it a go,” Schwim told tutors last fall during a video training, according to a screenshot viewed by Chalkbeat.

The result looks something like what happened to Shannon Dickinson’s daughter, a high school junior in Las Vegas. Dickinson, a kindergarten teacher, had heard Clark County schools was offering tutoring through Paper, and she urged her daughter to give it a try when she was struggling with her pre-calculus class in January.

But each time the 11th grader logged on and showed a Paper tutor her math problem, she waited for a long time only to find out the tutor couldn’t help.

“It would be like 45 minutes later: ‘Sorry I can’t help you, I’m going to transfer you to someone else,’” Dickinson recalled. “Then she’d have to do the process again.” After several failed attempts to get help, Dickinson’s daughter told her: “This is not worth my time.”

When Chalkbeat told Dickinson that Paper’s tutors are told to Google their way through sessions when they’re stuck, she was stunned.

“Oh geez,” she replied. “Well, high schoolers can do that too!”

Wendi Dunlap, who worked for Paper for just over a year before she quit in March, has seen this play out from the tutor’s side. Earlier this year, Dunlap, an English and history tutor, got paired with a middle schooler with a math question. Dunlap tried to help anyway, following the company’s protocols. But when the student checked the work they’d done against an answer key, she reported back: “That’s completely wrong.”

Dunlap apologized and scrambled to transfer the student to a math tutor, but it was too late. The student had signed off.

“I felt so horrible,” Dunlap said. “It wasn’t fair to her.”

A math and economics tutor who’s been with Paper for four years said she once spent 45 minutes trying to convince her manager over Slack that she needed to transfer a high school student with a chemistry question that she had “zero clue” how to solve. To stall for time, she asked the student for their notes. Essentially, though, the student spent that time “doing nothing,” the tutor said.

“It’s just leading to the student getting more frustrated,” the tutor said. “This is not right.”

Cutler said scenarios like those are uncommon. The guidance Paper has given to tutors, he added, is similar to what teachers are expected to do if a student asks a question the teacher doesn’t know how to answer.

“I don’t dismiss the student, I say: ‘Let’s figure it out,’” Cutler said. “‘Let’s pull up the internet.’”

Paper advertises that it offers one-on-one virtual tutoring with subject experts on its website.

Paper also puts pressure on tutors to work quickly. Tutors are expected to respond to students within 50 seconds, internal records show, regardless of how many students they have at once or how complicated the student’s question is. Tutors who review essays are told to spend no more than 30 minutes per assignment, no matter how long it is. To do that, several tutors said they copy and paste pre-written feedback.

When tutors miss those targets, managers tell them to speed up. Tutors have been fired for failing to meet their marks, internal records show.

Internally, Paper officials have justified the time limits by saying they allow the company to charge less “so that even underfunded districts (those who need us the most!) can afford us,” Schwim wrote to employees in March, according to a screenshot viewed by Chalkbeat. The company has marketed its tutoring as a way to address inequities among students, “especially those from marginalized groups.”

Several tutors said the breakneck pace makes it harder to help students. One tutor, who left the company in January, said they got a urinary tract infection from skipping bathroom breaks as they tried to keep up with students. Two other tutors said they carried their laptops into the bathroom so they could keep working on the toilet.

“You couldn’t take your hands off the keyboard,” said the tutor who got the UTI, who asked not to be identified because they signed a non-disparagement agreement with Paper, a copy of which Chalkbeat viewed.

Cutler said tutors have told Paper that they take their computers into the bathroom to keep working, but that the company doesn’t “encourage” this practice. Paper recently instituted a “chime” to remind tutors to take their break, he added.

Meanwhile, in Las Vegas, Dickinson figured out a way to get her daughter the math help she needed.

She dipped into her own pocket to pay for private tutoring.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Rico Munn discrimination complaint linked to long-simmering disagreements about approach to Black teacher retention

2023-06-29T18:38:35+00:00

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Update: On Wednesday the Aurora school board voted unanimously not to take action on the recommendations related to Rico Munn’s discrimination complaint.

For years Black and Hispanic teachers in the Aurora school district have complained of mistreatment and discrimination — even as the district was led by a Black superintendent and equity efforts to hire and retain more teachers of color ramped up.

Whether that superintendent, Rico Munn, did enough to support Black educators is behind a discrimination complaint Munn filed as he departed the district under a negotiated agreement.

According to two independent investigations, Munn alleged that Black board members Stephanie Mason and Tremaine Duncan called his Blackness into question and expected him to act in certain ways because he was Black while holding him to unwritten expectations — actions that he said ultimately created a hostile work environment and led to him being unjustly removed from his position.

Rodrick D. Holmes, an outside investigator who interviewed Munn, the seven board members, and a consultant who has worked with the board for years, concluded that poor leadership, interpersonal conflicts, and an intense focus on race all contributed to the board’s decision not to renew Munn’s contract. But Holmes did not find evidence of racial discrimination.

But a second outside investigator working off the Holmes fact-finding report reached the opposite conclusion.

Doug Hamill found that the board as a whole — and specifically Mason and Duncan — engaged in a pattern of discrimination, calling Munn’s “Black card” into question and that the board as a whole essentially fired Munn. That investigator recommended that the board censure Mason and Duncan, post the conclusions of the investigation online for the public to read, and that the board undergo training.

The board has an executive session scheduled Wednesday evening to get legal advice about the complaint. While the agenda doesn’t include a public discussion, the board could still choose to talk about it. School board members have refused interviews ahead of that meeting. Munn said he is dealing with a family medical issue and is not doing interviews.

The two investigations and conflicting conclusions shed light both on Munn’s departure and on long-standing challenges faced by one of Colorado’s most diverse districts when it comes to hiring and retaining educators who reflect the students they serve.

The district’s next superintendent, Michael Giles, will be charged with making improvements the board majority felt Munn couldn’t achieve, including to retain Black educators, to significantly improve outcomes for Black students, and to work with a board that has struggled to get along with each other and with their superintendent.

Aurora district’s focus on equity has evolved

The Aurora school district serves about 40,000 students, including 86% who are students of color. Aurora is home to many refugee communities.

In the 10 years of Munn’s tenure, the percentage of students of color in the district has increased slightly, even though the percentage of Black students has decreased slightly.

When a school board with no Black members hired Munn in 2013, equity was one of his stated priorities, but in recent years, other more diverse school boards pushed him to do more.

Munn worked to reduce the number of students who were expelled, attempted to increase the number of principals of color, and paired schools with programs that aimed to cultivate teachers from the district’s diverse student body. Later, he launched a mentoring program for young men of color.

The school board has created goals around equity targets and regularly has discussions about how that work progresses. At times, those discussions have been tense.

The district did see improvements in some student outcomes. Hispanic students made some of the largest gains in graduation rates in the state. Aurora Black students made huge gains too, and have a higher graduation rate than the state average for Black students. In one metric the board monitored — how many Black and Hispanic sixth grade students were on grade level in English tests — Black students made progress and were doing better than the district’s Hispanic students, though both groups still lag behind white and Asian American students.

But when it came time to evaluate Munn against these targets, the board decided to skip his evaluation, citing lack of test data during the pandemic. When the school board voted 4-3 late last year not to renew Munn’s contract, all they would say was that there had been a conflict in their vision. Munn negotiated to continue consulting for the district through this fall to help onboard a new superintendent.

After he stepped down from his superintendent position, Munn filed a discrimination complaint. According to district policy, such complaints are reviewed first by a fact finder and then by a separate decision maker who recommends corrective action if appropriate. In this case, the district decided to contract out both roles to avoid any conflicts of interest since the complainant was the former superintendent. The district spent more than $30,000 on the two contracts.

Much of the investigation centers on Mason, who joined the board in 2019 and whose term is up this year. She has not said if she’s going to run for re-election. Mason has focused primarily on teacher issues. In early 2020, she presented a resolution that would hold the district more firmly to goals around recruitment and retention of educators of color.

It helped spur more work, including with consultant Promise54 to draft a plan addressing the challenges teachers have identified, such as a lack of data, unclear goals, and inconsistent initiatives.

The district also has written more goals around equity, including one that at least 60% of respondents in staff surveys should report that they believe “APS has an explicit commitment to equity.” In 2020, 58% agreed but by May 2022, that dropped to barely over half.

Teacher retention goals central to complaint, fact-finding report

According to both Holmes’ fact-finding report completed in May and Hamill’s decision-making report released a month later, Munn’s discrimination complaint was closely tied to how the board interpreted district goals around equity, especially teacher retention.

At board meetings, Mason raised concerns she had heard from Black educators and questioned statistics that showed progress.

Munn alleges that Mason insisted Munn “act more Black” to achieve policy outcomes. He said the board judged him exclusively on retaining Black educators when the board goals talked about educators of color. He said that the way board members expressed their concerns frequently crossed the line into harassment. He said other board members allowed mistreatment to continue unabated.

After interviewing all seven board members, Holmes concluded there were insensitive communications and poor leadership on the part of the board, but he did not believe those problems constituted discrimination because board members Mason and Duncan are also Black. Holmes also states that because Munn negotiated a transition out of the district, as opposed to being fired, it means he doesn’t have an adverse outcome from the discrimination to be able to contest. And he said the evidence did not amount to a hostile work environment.

“Munn asserted in his complaint and during his interview that Board members commented on his Blackness and the racial makeup of his leadership team, both publicly and privately. However, not a single member of the Board substantiated Munn’s allegations,” Holmes wrote.

Based on Holmes’ fact-finding report, Hamill reached the opposite conclusion. Hamill cited court cases to say that if Munn resigned because he knew he was being pushed out, that constitutes being discharged, or fired, meaning he did suffer as a result of the harassment, and that it doesn’t matter his critics were also Black. Hamill also concluded that Mason and Duncan not believing that Munn was “Black enough” — as reported by Munn and some witnesses — is enough evidence to determine that the termination was racially motivated.

“Mr. Munn’s ‘Black Card’ was constantly questioned or ‘up for examination,’” according to Board consultant Crabill. Further evidence of pretext includes the lack of factual basis for the Board’s decision not to renew Mr. Munn’s contract,” Hamill wrote.

AJ Crabill, a consultant who has been working with the Aurora school board for years, told Holmes that it was obvious that some school board members wanted Munn to “focus his efforts on the retention of Black and Brown staff, rather than just people of color. Crabill emphasized that it is important for the Board to be explicit and candid about its goals and expectations,” and suggested that they change the language in their goals to reflect that.

The board did just that in September 2022 — updating their guidance to say the superintendent “will not allow the retention rate of Black and Hispanic/Latino educators to be significantly below the retention rate of all educators in APS-operated schools.” This was around the same time board members were privately discussing whether to renew Munn’s contract.

In November 2022, Munn gave his first and only progress report on that goal. The data he presented showed Black teachers have the lowest retention rates in the district — a worrying contrast from January 2020, when Munn reported that Black and Hispanic teachers had higher than average retention rates.

In his interview with investigators, Crabill noted that Munn’s data on retention rates for employees of color was often challenged, but that board members “never had any countervailing data to present, and the attacks on Munn’s data were supported only by opaque anecdotal experience.”

Since Munn was hired in 2013, the district has increased the number of non-white teachers. The number of Black teachers went from 74 to 104, or 4.3% of all teachers. Hispanic teachers went up from 205 to 230, to 9.7%.

The district also slightly increased the number of Asian teachers, from 49 teachers to 56, just barely more than 2% of all staff.

The Holmes report describes Munn accusing Mason of making anti-Asian remarks and not considering members of the Asian community to be people of color. The comments came in the context of criticizing Munn’s leadership team, which Mason did not consider to be diverse enough.

According to the report, Mason denied making anti-Asian remarks, but said she did tell Munn that “one Asian person does not make his Leadership Team diverse… [and] that his executive team was not diverse because it did not have adequate Black representation.”

When Munn stepped away from the role of superintendent, at least three of the members of his leadership team were Black.

In her interview with Holmes, Mason also admits that she “‘probably’ used the term ‘Black’ more often in reference to diversity, but during meetings with the Board she meant ‘everyone’ not just Blacks.”

Duncan, whom the decision-maker Hamill also found to have discriminated against Munn, denied wrongdoing in his interview with Holmes, the fact-finder. But he did say that when Munn asked for guidance on diversity work, “the Board told Munn the focus should be on retaining Black and Brown teachers.”

The reports could further drive a wedge between school board members who already struggle to agree on issues.

The Hamill report that concludes board members Mason and Duncan discriminated against Munn in part uses comments made by other board members to reach that conclusion. For example, board member Michael Carter, who is also Black, told Holmes that he thought firing Munn was “BS,” and “recalled APS staff and Board members remark that Munn was not black enough, but Carter could not identify any specific individuals.”

Hamill concludes with several major recommendations: that Mason and Duncan be publicly censured by their colleagues, that they be barred from holding leadership positions on the board, that the board publicly post the findings favorable to Munn on the district website for at least a year, and that the entire board receive training on the district’s anti-discrimination policy and federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws.

Crabill, who has worked with the board for years to try to prevent them from micro-managing Munn and stick to setting policy, told the investigator that training might not make a difference, because it would “not change engrained life-long beliefs.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago grapples with reengaging youth who are not in school or the workforce

2023-06-29T11:40:00+00:00

Last winter, Alonte Wilson had written off ever getting a high school diploma. He was 18, woefully short on credits and full of uncertainty about his future.

Then he got a series of texts from an outreach worker at Breakthrough Urban Ministries, a nonprofit on Chicago’s West Side:

“Here’s something that can help you so you’re not just sitting in the house doing nothing.”

Wilson could get another crack at finishing high school, the texts promised. He could also receive therapy, mentoring, and job readiness training — and get paid $250 a week while he was at it.

Wilson was skeptical, but intrigued.

In Chicago, an estimated 45,000 teens and young adults like Wilson are not in school, college, or the workforce. That’s roughly 15% of the city’s 16- to 24-year-old residents. City leaders and experts have long seen reengaging these young people — whom they call “Opportunity Youth” — as crucial to addressing poverty, racial inequities, and gun violence.

But the task has bedeviled the city for at least the past decade.

The pandemic triggered a renewed sense of urgency as the number of disconnected youth grew. Reconnection Hubs run by nonprofits in Roseland and Little Village added in-house therapists and street outreach. The school district launched Back to Our Future, which it sees as a first-of-its-kind program to reengage the toughest-to-reach dropouts with help from nonprofits such as Breakthrough.

But overall, Chicago’s programs are often fragmented and lack the big-picture vision and coordination between nonprofits and government agencies that experts say are key to success. Data on young people’s longer-term outcomes is scarce. And programs tend to reel in youth who are still somewhat connected — going to community college or working part-time, for example — not the most difficult to reach.

Now, newly elected Mayor Brandon Johnson, who pledged to double jobs and invest in programs for young people, has become the latest city leader hoping to solve the youth disconnection issue.

The stakes are high: Disconnected teens and young adults suffer a long-term toll on their health, social-emotional development, and relationships. In Chicago, more than 90% of young gun violence victims are not enrolled in school, the University of Chicago Education Lab has found. And according to one often-cited 2012 Columbia University study, each disconnected youth carries on average an almost $940,000 lifetime cost to society in lost tax revenue, higher government spending, and other costs.

“These are the most vulnerable youth in our community,” said Yolanda Fields, Breakthrough’s executive director. “What we’re trying to communicate is, ‘You’re worth it. We’ve come for you.’”

Chicago has grappled with youth disconnection for years

Wilson was in third grade – often viewed as a critical predictor of academic success – when the issue of out-of-school, out-of-work youth first loomed large in the national conversation. He was growing up on the West Side, in an area that has long struggled with disinvestment and gun violence.

In 2013, many Black families were leaving Chicago, and the city was in the midst of shuttering almost 50 elementary schools on the South and West sides, the largest mass school closures in the United States.

The Great Recession had left a lingering toll on youth employment. The Obama administration made reengaging out-of-school, out-of-work young people a signature initiative, spurring national campaigns and the birth of new organizations devoted to the issue. Chicago pledged to reckon with disconnection as well.

Advocates and city leaders at the time often cited a striking number: More than 50,000 youth ages 16 through 24 were not going to school or working.

While officials have tied the goal of reconnecting them to preventing gang recruitment and crime, many of these young people were derailed instead by poverty, parenthood, mental health issues, and a lack of jobs in some swaths of a segregated city.

In 2013, the school district opened Student Outreach and Re-Engagement Centers in Little Village, Roseland, and Garfield Park — its first attempt to track down and cajole back thousands of dropouts. But the centers could not help disconnected youth who had aged out of school or those who already had a high school diploma, which more than half of disengaged 16- to 24-year-olds do.

In the following years, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration helped launch Thrive Chicago, an organization meant to connect nonprofits and agencies who worked with disengaged youth. With grants from the city, Thrive helped start two Reconnection Hubs, in Roseland in 2018 and Little Village in 2019.

The Hubs, which share space with two of the school district’s reengagement centers, were designed to be a one-stop shop for youth grappling with disconnection — helping them with basic needs such as housing and transportation, and offering leads on jobs or job training programs.

Government investment in reconnecting youth can mean “the difference between a life of poverty and a life of prosperity,” Emanuel said in announcing a 2017 Opportunity Youth Summit that the mayor’s office co-hosted with Thrive.

By the eve of the pandemic in 2019, Thrive had also compiled a trove of U.S. Census data shedding new light on these young people. That year, their numbers had dropped to 37,000, but the decrease was not necessarily a sign of success. Mainly, there were fewer teens and young adults living in Chicago overall, while a resurgent national economy had given youth hiring a boost, said Matthew Wilson at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Great Cities Institute.

In Chicago, the rate of teens and young adults not in school, college, or the workforce had remained relatively steady at 12%. For Black youth, it was almost 25%.

And the highest concentration of such youth is in the area where Wilson grew up on the West Side.

Chicago launches another new program amid disconnect

The tenuous relationship Wilson had with school unraveled completely after the COVID pandemic hit. At Orr High School, “Zoom school” failed to hold his attention and gave him license to tune out altogether.

He failed a string of classes and fell short on credits. Gun violence in his neighborhood and across the city claimed friends, he said. Then in 2021, Wilson himself was shot, and his family sent him to live in Florida for a time, where he attended an alternative high school.

He returned to Chicago early the following year. Seven months later, according to a police report, Wilson was arrested on the West Side and charged when officers responding to a gathering of young people noticed he had a gun — illegal in Illinois for people under age 21 — which he later told police he carried for protection.

In the months that followed, as the city crawled back to normal after two years of COVID restrictions, Wilson sat in home confinement and took stock of his murky prospects.

“My life was paused, and I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” he said.

Wilson’s experience reflects a larger truth: Young people — especially Black youth — were hit harder by the fallout from COVID and, here in Chicago, they have been much slower to recover, according to a recent University of Illinois Chicago report. The jobless rate for Black women in their early twenties doubled from 2019 to 2021, climbing to almost 60%.

Nationally, experts and advocates hoped the pandemic would bring new energy and federal money to address the issue of out-of-school, out-of-work youth, as it did in the aftermath of the Great Recession, said Louisa Treskon, senior associate at the think tank MDRC. Largely, that hasn’t been the case.

“So many young people now have heightened needs and are struggling,” Treskon said. “That has overshadowed the more specific needs of opportunity youth.”

Chicago, however, set out to try a new approach. The district’s new Back to Our Future program launched last year aims to do “relentless engagement” — intensive outreach to persuade youth disengaged from school for more than a year and their families to give the program a chance.

During the initial 12 weeks of the program, they would get more services than the district’s Student Outreach and Re-Engagement Centers had ever offered: mentorship, mental health services, “soft skills” training, help with finding a job, and a $15.40 an hour stipend.

The catch: A price tag of $18,000 per student, along with the novelty of the approach, meant the district would start small. It would aim for reaching 1,000 students in 15 neighborhoods on the South and West sides during the program’s first year.

With funding from the Office of Firearm Violence Prevention at the Illinois Department of Human Services, the district signed one-year contracts last spring totaling almost $20 million with three nonprofits to run Back to Our Future, including Garfield Park’s Breakthrough, a faith-based organization that runs housing, violence prevention, and other programs.

Fields, the executive director at Breakthrough, says the nonprofit has long offered local public school students arts, sports, and other enrichment programs. But it had never before provided services for dropouts.

The contracts task Breakthrough and the other partners with targeting youth at high risk of becoming victims of violence or getting involved with the criminal justice system.

“This is where our investment should be,” school board member Elizabeth Todd-Breland said last summer after district officials touted the new program. “Not on the back end in criminalizing, in caging — but on the front end.”

Reengagement work happens one student at a time

Wilson started coming to Breakthrough for Back to Our Future in January, enticed by the texts from the outreach worker. The program put Wilson on the GED prep track, for students who are older and shorter on credits.

Other participants start on an online credit recovery program. For some, the program might lead to a return to a more traditional high school setting, but not until months down the road.

As the weeks went by, the staff chipped away at Wilson’s initial skepticism.

He started seeing a therapist. When his cell phone company blocked his account, the program covered his unpaid bill — what Breakthrough staff call a “sticky factor,” or help with day-to-day life challenges that shores up relationships with the students, factored into the cost of the program.

When he skipped days — something he had always felt caused barely a ripple in high school — staff texted and called right away, coaxing him back.

“It’s like a family, but it’s cool,” he said.

This spring, Wilson sat in a hushed room on the second floor at Breakthrough’s sleek, modern complex, off a hallway with yellow and purple lockers. There was a smattering of desks, a whiteboard, and a list of “rules and regulations” on the wall that proclaimed the space a “no judgment zone.”

Wearing a black shirt with “Born to Hustle” emblazoned along the sleeve, Wilson stared at a math problem on a laptop screen: If a painter rented a wallpaper steamer at 9 a.m., returned it at 4 p.m., and paid $28.84, what was the rental cost per hour?

Tamaya McGowan, 19, and her son at Breakthrough FamilyPlex on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, in Chicago. McGowan is working on completing her GED in the school district’s new Back to Our Future program. “It helps that I get to spend time with my son while pursuing my education,” she said.

A couple of young women holding toddlers by the hand rushed in and were handed their own laptops. One of them, Tamaya McGowan, was also working on her GED and eyeing a construction training program at Malcolm X Community College this fall.

To Myisha McGee, Breakthrough’s director of high school and postsecondary education, Wilson became a cross between resident recruiter and teacher’s aide. Half a dozen friends joined the program as well. When other teens showed disrespect, he would raise his voice so McGee didn’t have to, or he’d pull them aside to say, “Hey, we don’t do that here.”

Thanks to the job readiness training students receive, Wilson learned how to present himself to potential employers. He crafted a 30-second “elevator speech.”

“Hey, how you doing? My name’s Alonte Wilson, and I go to Breakthrough to get my GED, so I can go to trade school and start to change my jam and become an architect or engineer.”

Advocates say the latest efforts to connect with disengaged youth are paying off.

Sidney Johnson, a soft-spoken, avuncular therapist hired by the Reconnection Hub in Roseland during the pandemic, urges clients to “focus on what you can control” and “create your own narrative.” He says almost all the young people the Hub serves have experienced childhood trauma, and unmasking how it’s shaping their self-esteem and behavior now can be powerful.

Chicago Public Schools officials also say Back to Our Future is off to a promising start. So far, 465 students have taken part — short of the program’s Year 1 goal of 1,000 students spelled out in its contracts. Attendance has ups and downs, but most teens have stuck with the program.

Some of the 86 students Breakthrough has served dropped off after the end of the first paid 12 weeks. Three have gotten arrested. One 19-year-old was shot and killed in the neighborhood earlier in June.

But most are engaged, said McGee, and her hope is that some will have earned enough credits to return to traditional school this fall.

Are Chicago’s efforts reconnecting young people? It’s tough to say.

At the Reconnection Hub in Little Village, many young people walk in seeking something specific: help with removing a gang tattoo, finding child care, or getting a public transit pass.

Director Pedro Mendez says his team has specialized in trouble-shooting these hurdles to reengagement. Staff at the Hub — an area with cluttered desks and a couple of classrooms in the back of a nonprofit above a shopping center — try to build a longer-term relationship with youth they help, steering them to, say, an in-house GED, photography, or coding classes, or job training.

Sidney Johnson mentors Ti’Shawn Clark as part of Roseland Reconnection Hub’s services for youth ages 16 to 24 at Phalanx Family Services in the West Pullman neighborhood in Chicago.

But here and in Roseland, staying in touch longer term is a challenge. And it’s hard to come by data on education and employment outcomes for participants in Chicago’s patchwork of programs.

Data Chicago Public Schools provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act shows its Student Outreach and Re-engagement Centers — the program the district started a decade ago to reengage dropouts — have seen the number of students they serve shrink dramatically, from 3,245 in 2016 to 655 in 2022, even as the district launched a new center in Englewood in partnership with City Colleges of Chicago in 2021.

About a quarter of the students who visited a reengagement center in 2022 graduated that year, district data shows. But the district doesn’t track how many graduate beyond the year they make contact with the program — or what happens afterwards. The district did not respond to questions about the centers, except to say that officials will reassess the program in the fall.

This year, Thrive Chicago completed an evaluation of the Reconnection Hubs program, but did not make it public. Several former employees who have seen the report and spoke with Chalkbeat anonymously said it echoed what staff at the Hubs told Chalkbeat: The Hubs have provided important services for almost 3,000 young people.

But there is no data on how they have fared in helping youth complete their education or find jobs.

According to the former employees, the report also said that the Hubs veered from a vision for the program in which they would size up young people’s needs, make a plan — and then refer them to nonprofits or government agencies that can best serve them. That vision was an awkward fit for a nonprofit ecosystem in which local and state funding is based on the number of clients on the Hubs’ own caseloads.

Then in May, Thrive shut down abruptly. The group’s board president, Timothy Schwertfeger, did not respond to requests for comment.

The state did not respond by the time of publication to a Chalkbeat request for attendance and other outcome numbers for Back to Our Future. The University of Chicago’s Education and Crime Labs is slated to produce a more formal evaluation, with some findings set to come out later this summer.

Nationally, the relatively small number of reengagement programs that have been rigorously studied have generally yielded modest increases in high school completion and earnings.

“There’s been this thread of, ‘Nothing really works,’” said Treskon, the MRDC expert.

In fairness, she notes, these programs work with youth with extremely high needs, many of whom have experienced trauma and other hardships. Programs are often too short-lived to effectively bend the trajectories of young people’s lives. Few cities have perfected what experts believe are all-important “smooth handoffs” — partnerships between the nonprofits and government agencies that together can meet this group’s complex needs, free of competition for grants and other funding.

In Back to Our Future’s first 12 weeks of intensive support, Treskon says, the program seems to deliver the gold standard: engagement with families, trauma-informed mentoring and counseling, a stipend, and “soft skills” job readiness training. The big test is what happens after that.

On his first day in office in May, Chicago Mayor Johnson signed an executive order directing his team to come up with a detailed plan for how to double the number of youth jobs, starting with opening more positions for young people in city government. His deputy for education, youth, and human services, Jen Johnson, recently told Chalkbeat that cross-department and agency collaboration will be key in tackling disengagement — and touted the Back to Our Future program as a promising approach.

Alonte Wilson, 19, takes a GED practice test at Breakthrough FamilyPlex in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood.

For his part, Wilson, now 19, has continued to show up at Breakthrough even though he stopped receiving his stipend weeks ago.

No longer on home confinement, he said he now has a part-time job at Walgreens and is close to taking his GED exams.

“I’ve learned how to switch my ways,” Wilson said.

Wilson’s post-GED game plan is still “all over the place,” says McGee, Breakthrough’s education director. But the program has a “Trades Day” coming up, and McGee hopes to take him on some college tours.

In the meantime, Wilson has a job interview outfit picked out: white button-down shirt, black slacks, black dress shoes. “You gotta look like you really want the job,” he said.

And he has kept practicing his elevator speech, tweaking it with input from staff and peers to swap out his dream job of architect for mechanic.

“I have soft skills like communication skills, listening skills, time management, and teamwork,” he recited during a mock interview day at Breakthrough one recent Friday. “I am very interested in discussing my skills and would like to schedule an interview with you at your earliest date.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Denver’s first big merger of charter school networks poses leadership test

2023-06-28T20:48:25+00:00

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It was portrayed as an exciting plan with lofty goals: Two of Denver’s homegrown charter school networks would join forces to strengthen academics, support students’ mental health, and better prepare them for life beyond high school. English learners and students with disabilities would achieve exceptional results.

The merger of Rocky Mountain Prep and STRIVE Prep, announced last summer, also would help the organizations survive a host of challenges: declining enrollment, tighter budgets, and more scrutiny of their academic records by a skeptical school board.

To shepherd the merger, the schools’ leaders chose a charter school executive named Tricia Noyola, who had overseen a major charter expansion in Austin, Texas.

But the past year has been tense and chaotic, with hundreds of employees from the two networks leaving, an about-face by network leaders on which name the new network will carry, and a chorus of concerns about Noyola’s leadership. Now, with just days until the merger becomes official, it remains to be seen if the two networks will be stronger together or an ill-fated match.

The new network will take the Rocky Mountain Prep name and serve nearly 5,000 students in preschool through 12th grade across a dozen campuses. It will be the second largest charter network in the city and carry the hopes and dreams of thousands of Denver families, many of them low-income parents of color and immigrant families who fear their children won’t get the education they deserve in district-run schools.

Meanwhile, STRIVE Prep, once a key player and thought leader in the charter sector, will cease to exist.

Supporters of Noyola, who has been CEO of both networks for the past eight months though they are still separate organizations, see a Latina leader who comes from the same background as many students, champions student achievement, and brings a strong hand to management decisions.

Patrick Donovan, chair of the Rocky Mountain Prep board, said Noyola has tremendous expertise in running schools, particularly when it comes to academics and school culture.

Detractors paint a different picture, describing a leader who rules through fear, drives away experienced educators, and fails to support new teachers. They also see a single-minded pursuit of higher test scores and a diminished focus on student mental health, support for students with disabilities, and programming that elevates student voices, such as middle school speech and debate classes and social justice-themed events for high schoolers.

Tricia Noyola, CEO of STRIVE Prep and Rocky Mountain Prep

Under Noyola, who’s on track to earn $340,000 from the two networks this school year — more than any superintendent in Colorado — teachers have been urged not to unionize and warned not to talk to the media about the merger.

“There’s only one reason people want to unionize, and it’s because there’s mistrust and dissatisfaction, and you feel unappreciated,” said Jenny Bisha, whose job as STRIVE Prep’s director of continuous improvement is being cut at the end of June. Bisha has not been involved in any unionization efforts.

Several educators said their recent experiences at Rocky Mountain Prep or STRIVE Prep schools were so toxic or upsetting, it soured them on charter schools or teaching for good. Two said they counseled families to leave Rocky Mountain Prep because the schools weren’t meeting their children’s needs.

Chalkbeat spoke to more than three dozen people for this story, including current and former employees, network board members, parents, students, and education policy experts. Some asked that their names not be used for fear they could lose their jobs, have trouble getting references, or face retaliation.

Noyola declined repeated requests for interviews, but provided written answers to questions.

“I certainly set a high standard and expect everyone to meet it. To do any less would be a disservice to our students and families,“ she wrote. “I may be demanding, but I always strive to be fair.”

Board members from both networks suggested that Noyola’s critics are holding her to a higher standard than they did the former leaders of STRIVE and Rocky Mountain Prep, both of whom were white men.

“As a woman of color in this space, sometimes you’re subjected to more criticism than, I think, white men,” said Amber Valdez, vice chair of the STRIVE Prep board. “I think that Tricia came in with a clear vision and made no apologies. She’s not conflict averse, because she wants to get things done.”

STRIVE, Rocky Mountain make plans to merge

Leaders from STRIVE Prep and Rocky Mountain Prep publicly announced plans to join forces last August, saying the merger would create a cohesive preschool through 12th grade pathway — something they said families had sought for years.

Rocky Mountain has four elementary schools and STRIVE, since the closing of two middle schools this month, has eight mostly secondary schools.

Last summer, both organizations were in moments of transition.

“No [charter] network that I know of came out of a pandemic feeling like they were in a strong position,” said STRIVE Prep founder and former CEO Chris Gibbons.

Schools were also facing the end of a huge influx of federal COVID stimulus dollars that had helped pay for extra staff and services over the last few years, he said. Budget cuts were inevitable.

Valdez also said STRIVE families and stakeholders told leaders “that what STRIVE was missing was a clear vision, a clear goal.”

She and other board members say that’s what Noyola brought to the table.

Noyola had moved to Denver from Austin in spring 2021 to take the helm of Rocky Mountain Prep when founder and CEO James Cryan left.

In spring 2022, Gibbons announced he was leaving STRIVE for a job with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. (The foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat. See a full list of our funders and read our ethics policy.)

Noyola applied to replace Gibbons, proposing that STRIVE and Rocky Mountain Prep merge and that she lead the combined network, according to STRIVE Board member Ulysses Estrada, who chaired the network’s CEO succession task force.

Gibbons said STRIVE leaders had previously considered the possibility of merging with another charter school or network. Rocky Mountain Prep had gone further, doubling the size of its network by taking over two struggling schools — a charter school in Denver and a district-run school in Aurora — by 2018.

STRIVE Prep and Rocky Mountain Prep serve similar populations, mostly students of color, with many coming from low-income families. About half of Rocky Mountain Prep students and nearly three-quarters of STRIVE students are English learners.

“Quite frankly, we were evaluating Tricia as any other CEO candidate,” said Estrada. “If we didn’t think Tricia had the right skills to lead STRIVE, we wouldn’t pursue [the merger].”

By July of 2022, the board decided that Noyola and the merger both were right for STRIVE. The two networks decided she would continue leading Rocky Mountain Prep for another year and become CEO of the united network when the merger was final on July 1, 2023.

Denver is a tough market for charter school expansion

Experts say the number of charter school mergers around the country has ticked up in recent years, sometimes fueled by the departure of founders who launched networks in the early 2000s, declining enrollment, or financial pressures.

STRIVE has closed three schools in the last three years, including the Lake and Kepner campuses earlier this month. Denver has seen a spate of other charter school closures and other networks have slowed their growth.

“Sadly, this wasn’t a merging. It was a takeover.”

A 2021 analysis by the Charter School Growth Fund concluded that if charter networks want to grow in the Denver market, mergers are the only reasonable path. The growth fund, which has provided funding to both STRIVE and Rocky Mountain Prep, helps fund charter school expansion around the nation.

Gibbons said the step is an important long-term strategy to address shrinking enrollment, financial sustainability, and a political climate in Denver that’s become less friendly to charter schools.

As for the recent spate of staff departures and simmering discontent in some quarters, he said, “We always knew this would be a very disruptive strategy in the short term.”

Merger prompts major cultural change at STRIVE Prep

When leaders from the two charter networks unveiled the merger plan last August, they said the new network would bear the STRIVE name. STRIVE leaders tapped the network’s lead attorney, Jessica Johnson, to serve as interim CEO until the union was official.

But within three months, Johnson was gone — a major personnel change that current and former employees said happened abruptly with no explanation.

Both Johnson and the network agreed to “communicate to everyone that Ms. Johnson’s departure from STRIVE Prep was voluntary,” according to a copy of Johnson’s severance agreement obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request. The agreement promised Johnson would receive her interim CEO salary through June 30.

Johnson declined to comment for this story.

On November 2, the STRIVE Prep board named Noyola the new CEO of STRIVE Prep, making her the leader of two different charter school networks simultaneously. She received a base annual salary of $220,000 from Rocky Mountain Prep and, when she took the top job at STRIVE, her monthly consulting fee was upped from $4,000 to $5,000. In April, that consulting fee was doubled to $10,000 a month, retroactive to Oct 1.

That means Noyola’s pay, including a $24,000 bonus she received from Rocky Mountain Prep this year, totals $340,000. That’s more than the CEO of DSST, Denver’s largest charter school network, or the superintendents of Denver and Jeffco, Colorado’s two largest school districts, earned this year.

Noyola wrote, “I was asked to do the job of two individuals when I became CEO of both networks, and my compensation remains lower than that of the combined compensation of both roles.”

Next school year, Noyola will earn a base salary of $290,000, with the possibility of a bonus.

In February, STRIVE board members announced a reversal on the new network’s name. Rocky Mountain Prep’s name, practices, and standards would replace those of STRIVE. They cited data from a consultant’s report that showed better academic and instructional results at Rocky Mountain Prep than STRIVE.

In 2022, fewer than 10% of students at five STRIVE schools were proficient on state math tests. The same was true in literacy for one STRIVE school. About 30% of all Rocky Mountain Prep students were proficient on math and literacy tests, still below the state average.

Parent Tracy Hill said her fourth grader has had a good experience at Rocky Mountain Prep–Berkeley since preschool. Keeping the Rocky Mountain Prep name feels like a win.

But this spring, Hill was surprised to learn from a reporter that the closest STRIVE school — the Lake campus — would close and won’t be an option when her daughter goes to sixth grade.

“That is a shame, because that’s walking distance from our house,” she said.

Meanwhile, the name change rocked some STRIVE students and families.

“Everyone in my neighborhood has probably gone to a STRIVE Prep school,” said Jacobo Gracia-Meza, who graduated from STRIVE Prep–SMART Academy in June and is headed to Colorado State University in the fall.

“The thought of our name being taken away, it’s also taking the hard work we put in,” he said.

His parents, meanwhile, are worried about the cost of buying new school uniforms for his younger brother.

This summer, STRIVE Prep–SMART will become Rocky Mountain Prep–SMART.

Educators see new emphasis on test prep amid merger plans

Zion Gezaw, an assistant principal at STRIVE Prep’s Westwood middle school for most of the 2022-23 school year, noticed a shift around the time Noyola was named CEO of STRIVE schools.

First, it was little things. Teachers were told they had to use the same colors and borders on their bulletin boards. Then rules came down requiring strict adherence to the lessons and pacing in the curriculum.

The adaptations that Gezaw and the school’s eighth grade English teacher had made to create more culturally responsive and engaging lessons, such as adding the young adult novel “The Poet X,” were no longer acceptable.

Student grades and interest in those classes plummeted, Gezaw said.

“They made sure we knew they didn’t like it,” she said. “They would just not do it. They would put their heads down; they would sleep.”

Jeremy Story, a public relations contractor who emailed answers to Chalkbeat on behalf of the networks, said STRIVE schools continued to use their own curriculum, and there were no pacing guides last school year. He didn’t address questions about whether modifications were allowed to make lessons more culturally responsive.

As a Black educator, Gezaw said she’d been attracted by STRIVE’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, but grew disillusioned as the emphasis shifted to test scores and uniformity. She quit in April.

Some former Rocky Mountain Prep employees say this approach is typical of the network’s philosophy, even with the youngest children, and they’re dismayed to see it spread.

Ellarie Anderson said when she learned of the merger, she thought, “Wow, we really don’t need more schools becoming like Rocky Mountain Prep.”

Anderson spent two years at Rocky Mountain Prep, starting a year before Noyola’s arrival. Throughout that time, she said her students, kindergartners and third graders, were expected to sit up straight at their desks, with their hands folded and eyes following the teacher. She said when supervisors observed, they’d count the number of students who met those standards. Those children were considered “engaged.”

Rocky Mountain Prep officials denied that students are expected to sit this way, with Story writing, “Absolutely not.”

Anderson also said she was expected to follow rigid lesson plans prescribed by the network.

“You’d show up every day and read your script to the kids, and if the kids got it or didn’t, it didn’t matter. You just moved on the next day,” she said.

Story said Rocky Mountain Prep schools do use scripted curriculum, but that teachers can make adjustments based on the needs and best interests of students.

Annie Nelson, a former fifth grade teacher at Rocky Mountain Prep who left a year ago, said as state tests approached during the 2021-22 school year, she was asked to put more focus on students who were on the cusp of reaching proficiency at the expense of students who were far behind.

An English teacher at one of STRIVE’s high schools described a change this year that required math and English teachers to drop their regular lessons starting in February to focus on SAT prep until the tests in April.

“It’s been SAT all day every day for kids, which has not been great,” the teacher said in late March. More kids were missing classes and their behavior was getting worse, he said.

But Adam Lenzmeier, the vice president of schools for STRIVE, sees test prep in a different light. “The best thing we can do for kids is to position them to go into those assessments with the confidence they deserve,” he said.

Asked about whether there is a growing emphasis on test prep and test scores, Noyola wrote that test scores are “only one way we measure success,” and that other measures include state ratings, student attendance, and whether students and teachers return each year.

STRIVE Prep evolved to focus more on equity

The history of STRIVE Prep traces the evolution of Colorado’s charter sector. STRIVE launched in 2006 with a single school called West Denver Prep. The idea was to provide a rigorous alternative to district-run middle schools with low test scores. Gibbons promised the mostly Latino families in southwest Denver eight hours of school per day, no summers off, strict discipline, and a focus on getting their children to college.

With high test scores and a long wait list, West Denver Prep opened more schools. By the time the network changed its name to STRIVE Prep in 2012, it was growing from four schools to seven. That same year, Rocky Mountain Prep opened its first school in southeast Denver.

By 2014, test scores at STRIVE’s eight schools began to fall. Gibbons pointed to high teacher turnover, curriculum changes, and too many innovations at once. Around that time, STRIVE began accepting a larger share of students with disabilities than in the past, part of the network’s “equity agenda.”

Josue Bonilla, left, gets a high five from special education teacher Wendi Sussman at STRIVE Prep–Federal in 2016.

In many ways, it signaled a shift away from the network’s “no excuses” style origins and a commitment to serving all students.

Bisha, STRIVE Prep’s director of continuous improvement who oversaw a grant related to special education, worries that Gibbons’ legacy is “being destroyed” through the relentless push for better test scores and the state’s top green rating.

“Is that the be-all end-all that gives kids equitable access after high school?” she said. “No, it’s not.”

Some current and former STRIVE employees worry the merger will rob the schools of STRIVE’s unique traits, including its focus on antiracism, its commitment to serving students with disabilities, and its robust college and career readiness programming.

A current STRIVE employee who helps oversee college and career programs said impending staff cuts will make it impossible for the merged network to continue offering overnight college trips, extensive concurrent enrollment classes, work-based learning, and career and financial aid advising for alumni.

“College and career readiness is not a priority from this new central team,” the employee said. “Sadly, this wasn’t a merging. It was a takeover.”

Noyola acknowledged the cuts and said each high school “is now empowered” to lead its own college and career programming.

Noyola disputed that the focus on students with disabilities and antiracism is diminishing, and said the network’s commitment to both “is greater than it has ever been.”

Through the changes, Noyola has maintained the support of both boards.

Estrada, the STRIVE board member who himself attended the network’s first middle school, said it’s misleading to say the network is moving away from its commitment to antiracism.

“I think our priority as an organization and the most antiracist work we can do is giving each student a college prep education,” he said.

Who is Tricia Noyola?

Noyola grew up in the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas and has often talked about being underestimated by her teachers growing up. She has described herself as opinionated and headstrong, and said she fell in love with education while working in an elementary school during college.

On the weekly podcasts Noyola records with updates for STRIVE and Rocky Mountain Prep staff, she strikes a conversational tone, discussing movies she plans to see with her husband and children and network goals like getting students to read a million words.

Noyola started her career at a large Texas-based charter network called IDEA Public Schools, which promotes a no excuses, college-for-all philosophy. Prior to her arrival in Colorado two years ago, Noyola helped IDEA grow from four to 16 schools in the Austin area.

Lenzmeier, who started as a STRIVE principal in 2020 and will manage four principals in the new network, said Noyola is uncompromising in what she believes is possible.

A former army officer, he believes that “Tricia Noyola shares a lot of similarities with the best commanders I worked with.”

But many STRIVE and Rocky Mountain Prep employees describe her as harsh and intimidating, with little tolerance for dissent. Under her leadership, staff have been fired with little or no notice, and others have been notified of impending job cuts on group Zoom calls that lasted just a few minutes, according to current and former employees.

“At my campus, staff were very afraid of her,” said one former mental health provider at Rocky Mountain Prep. “I’m very afraid of her. I do not want to be on her list or her radar.”

Noyola’s most recent performance review from the 2021-22 school year at Rocky Mountain Prep credited her with achieving three of five key goals and praised her for showing “leadership, resolve, and courage to make the necessary changes to achieve student results.” The review urged Noyola to give more attention to how changes are communicated, show more “vulnerability and humility,” and work with the board to avoid the strained relations that sometimes occurred over the previous year.

Gibbons said he hasn’t followed every change that Noyola has made, but said, “Tricia is coming into this experience with a lot of urgency, appropriately so, around raising results for kids,” he said. “I have tremendous confidence in her.”

Cryan, the founder and former CEO of Rocky Mountain Prep, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Hundreds of employees left their jobs before the merger

About half of STRIVE Prep staff and two-thirds of Rocky Mountain Prep staff — nearly 400 of 730 total employees — left their jobs between June 2022 and mid April 2023, according to numbers provided by the networks. Districts around the country are grappling with high turnover and teacher burnout, but teachers and staff interviewed by Chalkbeat say the level of turnover reflects a punitive network culture and hurts students.

Several educators told Chalkbeat the flood of departures meant that students missed out on legally required special education services, English language development instruction, or mental health support. Sometimes, students felt confused or hurt after a trusted teacher disappeared without notice.

Among the departures, which resulted from resignations, firings, and job cuts, were more than 160 teachers and 40 principals, assistant principals, deans, or principal fellows. STRIVE lost 32 high-level central staff — chiefs, directors, and managers — and Rocky Mountain Prep lost 24. The networks lost 18 mental health providers, including social workers, social emotional learning specialists, and a psychologist.

Eleven STRIVE employees, most of whom are Black or Latino and half of whom were central administrators, have left since last June with severance agreements that awarded them between one and eight months of pay but also banned them from criticizing the network. Chalkbeat obtained the agreements through a public records request. No Rocky Mountain Prep employees received severance pay or signed separation agreements during that period.

“We want teachers in our network who are behind our new mission, all of our values, and our new leadership.”

Noyola attributed some of the turnover to the so-called “Great Resignation,” a pandemic-era trend in which many employees, including teachers, left their jobs. More STRIVE administrators left because their network is undergoing bigger changes, she said. Some of the employees who left were in temporary positions, and their departures may have inflated the turnover rate, she added.

Noyola acknowledged that the networks have suffered from a shortage of special education providers but said her team aims to rectify problems immediately when they are identified. She did not address the claim that English learners have missed language development sessions.

Valdez, vice chair of the STRIVE board, said, “We knew with the change of leadership … some people were going to leave and that we were okay with that because we want teachers in our network who are behind our new mission, all of our values, and our new leadership.”

Donovan, the Rocky Mountain Prep board chair, said the board has monitored departures and that turnover is slowing.

Nelson, the former fifth grade teacher, said the network struggles with teacher retention in part because it recruits young, inexperienced teachers, provides them insufficient support, and holds them to an impossible standard.

Noyola said the network “has a number of positions whose responsibilities include directly coaching and supporting teachers. I’m confident based on our outcomes that our system is effective.”

Even as Noyola cut some employees in response to purported budget pressures, she gave generous raises and bonuses to others — a move she said was warranted by the additional work those employees are doing and the value they provide to students.

School staff protest their working conditions

Throughout fall of 2021, teachers or other staff members at Rocky Mountain Prep–Berkeley seemed to be quitting almost every week, said Meghan Mallon, a former music teacher at the school. Teachers who stayed were constantly juggling extra kids or classes to cover for departed colleagues. For students who were supposed to get daily instruction to improve their English language skills, that meant sometimes missing three or four sessions a week because their teacher was assigned elsewhere, she said.

In late January 2022, after one lead teacher was told she’d be removed from her position and reassigned elsewhere in the building, Mallon and a colleague organized a one-day sick-out in protest. About a dozen teachers participated, sending an email to Noyola and other Rocky Mountain Prep administrators with a list of the group’s concerns, including the teacher’s abrupt demotion, the missed sessions for students learning English, and the lack of coaching for teachers.

Cesar Chavez Academy, a struggling single-site charter school, was taken over and became Rocky Mountain Prep–Berkeley in 2018.

Mallon and the other main organizer were fired the day of the sick-out, and other participants were given a warning and told they couldn’t talk about it, according to a charge later filed by Mallon with National Board of Labor Relations.

A lawyer for Rocky Mountain Prep responded to the labor board’s charge with a nine-page letter arguing the case should be dismissed because charter schools don’t fall under the labor board’s jurisdiction. The labor relations board ultimately agreed and dismissed the case.

Grievances describe ‘worst’ work environment

Shortly after Mallon and the other sick-out organizer were fired, Ana de Vries, the principal of the Berkeley campus, filed a grievance against Noyola.

In response to a public records request, Rocky Mountain Prep provided a copy of the grievance that was heavily redacted to protect the privacy of minors. A less redacted copy of the complaint obtained by Chalkbeat contends Noyola used her power to “harass, intimidate, discriminate against, and coerce RMP staff.” It describes a meeting in which Noyola demanded that a teacher “admit her white privilege” as well as wrongdoing unrelated to the reason for the meeting.

De Vries, who is Latina, said in an interview she felt Noyola’s demands of the teacher were inappropriate. She filed the grievance after Noyola refused to meet with her to discuss the meeting. After she submitted the complaint, she said Noyola cut her out of all communications related to the Berkeley campus.

It “created the worst environment I’ve ever worked in,” said de Vries, who resigned in February 2022 after two and a half years with the network and 12 years in the charter sector.

Rocky Mountain Prep officials said de Vries’ grievance prompted the board to adopt a policy outlining how conflicts should be addressed in select circumstances. (Chalkbeat is not describing the circumstances to protect the privacy of children.)

In a second grievance, a Berkeley teacher named Alyssa Papiernik described a culture of fear and constant hostility between Noyola and some employees.

Papiernik closed by writing, “I dread coming to work everyday ... I am hoping next year Tricia changes her attitude towards her staff.”

The Rocky Mountain Prep board found no substance to Papiernik’s claim.

A third grievance came last November, shortly after Noyola was named CEO of STRIVE Prep and was conducting a series of town hall meetings to introduce herself to STRIVE staff. Mallory Tozier, a white assistant principal at STRIVE’s Smart Academy, described a tense exchange during the question-and-answer period in which she felt Noyola implied she had a white savior complex.

A staff member of color whose account was included in the grievance echoed Tozier’s account and said Noyola’s reaction “seemed cruel and unnecessary” and “painfully silenced people like me.”

Chalkbeat obtained Tozier’s grievance through a public records request. STRIVE Prep officials said an investigation found no wrongdoing by Noyola.

“I doubt there is a principal or CEO in [Denver Public Schools] who hasn’t had a complaint filed against them at some point,” Noyola wrote in response to questions. “Grievances reflect a single point of view, and we have a process that takes every grievance seriously.”

Rocky Mountain Prep enters a new era

When the new school year starts in August, STRIVE Prep will no longer exist, and Rocky Mountain Prep will have triple the schools it had last year.

Some current and former staff from both networks have serious misgivings. They say Rocky Mountain Prep’s “rigor and love” slogan now rings hollow.

But for Noyola and other network leaders, it’s an exciting time.

They say student achievement is increasing, and almost all families are planning to return next year. Enrollment projections provided by the network suggest K-12 student numbers will hold steady at about 4,700 even with this summer’s closure of two STRIVE schools.

“The sheer optimism is remarkable,” Rocky Mountain Prep’s Chief of Staff Indrina Kanth said in an email.

In a recent message to staff, Noyola thanked those who remain and those who have joined her for the “awe-inspiring” results produced this school year.

“I know this came at costs and sacrifices that each of us made to further the mission,” she wrote.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago schools tapped hundreds of academic interventionists to catch students up after COVID. Is it working?

2023-05-25T11:00:00+00:00

In a classroom on Chicago’s West Side one morning last November, Teresa Przybyslawski sat side by side with a soft-spoken sixth grader. She read a script off her computer screen while he peered at his own tablet.

“On your screen, you will see some addition problems,” read Przybyslawski. “I want you to do as many of them as you can in one minute.”

She glanced at the sixth grader, John. His back was taut, his face tense.

Down the hall, the boy’s classmates at Brunson Math and Science Specialty School, a high-poverty elementary school, geared up to tackle dividing fractions. But here, alongside Przybyslawski, one of the district’s new interventionists tasked with helping students who fell behind during the pandemic, John was about to work on math normally taught in first grade.

“Are you ready? Three. Two. One.”

Numbers flashed on John’s screen: “2 + 7. 5 + 10. 10 + 4.”

At the start of this school year, John, whose real name Chalkbeat is not using to protect his privacy, read at a first grade level and did second grade level math. It would be Przybyslawski’s job to get him caught up – fast.

School districts around the country are pushing to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s profound academic damage: expanding literacy tutoring in Detroit, cutting class sizes in New York City, and buying science-backed reading curriculums in districts across Colorado.

Instructional materials are seen inside Brunson Elementary School in Chicago. School districts around the country — including Chicago Public Schools — are pushing to help students bounce back from the pandemic’s profound academic damage.

Chicago Public Schools has turned to academic interventionists — a cadre of hundreds mostly classroom teachers already on the district’s payroll, tapped this year to turbocharge the learning of struggling students one-on-one or in small groups.

These newly-minted catchup specialists are tackling three years of COVID fallout layered upon pre-pandemic learning gaps and traumas, at schools that experts and educators agree should have been staffing interventionists all along.

Research has backed Chicago’s intervention approach, and emerging data here and in other cities shows school districts are making headway. But experts say the effort is in its infancy: A recent study by nonprofit test maker NWEA found students are rebounding, but schools are likely a few years away from returning to pre-pandemic achievement, especially for younger learners.

Meanwhile, educators face their own version of Przybyslawski’s countdown.

Three, two, one. Before children like John arrive in high school unprepared, lowering their odds of graduating, starting college or careers, and escaping poverty.

Three, two, one. Before districts like Chicago run out of federal COVID relief dollars.

Three, two, one. Before society at large moves on, and the energy required to remain in full-on recovery mode fades.

As Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, put it at an academic recovery event this past fall: “If we fail to act differently to catch students up, to ensure every student graduates with everything they need, we will have failed this generation and future generations of students.”

One school on Chicago’s West Side tackles academic recovery

Brunson Elementary is in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood, one of the hardest hit by COVID and by a surge in the city’s other epidemic: gun violence.

Of Brunson’s 400 students, almost 90% are Black, and almost all are poor. Almost 60% were chronically absent last year, meaning they missed roughly 20 or more days. This year, Brunson has deployed “attendance heroes” — teachers, paraprofessionals, and cafeteria workers — who check in daily with truant students. But across the district, attendance and disruptive behaviors continue to interfere with learning.

“It’s heartbreaking what kids here carry on their backpacks that we can’t see,” principal Carol Wilson said.

Principal Carol Wilson at Brunson Elementary School on Friday, February 24, 2023 in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. The school was one of the hardest hit by COVID and by a surge in the city’s other epidemic: gun violence.

Since the pandemic hit in 2020, Chicago Public Schools — like districts across the country — has seen drops in the portion of students meeting reading and math standards on a required state assessment. The district’s latest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card,” showed nearly a decade of growth in math had been wiped out while reading results held fairly steady.

When Chicago schools tested students this past fall to gauge where they stood, two-thirds of John’s sixth grade peers districtwide did not hit grade-level benchmarks in reading. A third were flagged as needing urgent interventions. The picture was similar in math.

Przybyslawski used to teach a classroom of 25 students math and science. Now, her focus is on 15 or so struggling middle schoolers at Brunson.

She set out to create an orderly, efficient operation, using new digital platforms that constantly size up how students are progressing in mastering skills they should have learned in earlier grades — and dictate what they work on next.

In her role as an interventionist at Brunson Elementary, Teresa Przybyslawski works with struggling students one on one or in small groups. She also “pushes into” classrooms to help fellow educators build academic interventions into their routines.

In reading, the school piloted an artificial intelligence program that gave students passages to read back to it based on their level and flagged mistakes they made.

She wanted John to divide fractions along with his peers eventually. But in the meantime, Przybyslawski, who also supervises the school’s new team of three tutors, all Brunson grads, measured progress in small increments.

During that session in November, John hesitated briefly before answering 6 + 5.

He was stumped on 3 + 8.

But on the rest, he rattled off the correct answers before Przybyslawski had even finished reading them out.

“We got to the third row,” she told the boy when the minute-long assessment was up. “Very nice work!”

After students left, she logged in their results into Branching Minds, a new platform used for tracking interventions.

Wilson, the principal, and district officials lean on the technology to monitor the progress students are making. Soon, Wilson would also get a second round of standardized tests — administered around the middle of the school year — she hoped would tell her if the school’s efforts were paying off.

‘How can we reach more kids?’

In the bid to speed up students’ academic recovery, Chicago leaders have bet on an arsenal of strategies. They’ve expanded after-school programs, started an in-house tutor corps, and poured millions in teacher training and a new in-house lesson bank called Skyline.

They also tapped some 250 educators to serve as new academic coaches. There are more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

All in all, the district earmarked $730 million in COVID recovery dollars this school year for its recovery efforts.

Academic interventions — by tutors, classroom teachers, or the new interventionists — are at the heart of the strategy. The district budgeted for at least one interventionist on each of its roughly 500 campuses, though not all schools used the money for such positions, and some schools combined the duties with existing positions. And it required all schools to use the same digital platform to track interventions that Przybyslawski is using.

Across the district this past fall, new interventionists chipped away at catching up tens of thousands of students. One math problem and one sounded-out word at time.

“How do we get students a lot of extra support with so few people?” -Teacher Elizabeth Battaglia

At Moos Elementary on Chicago’s West Side, where most of the 430 primarily Latino students enrolled needed intervention in the fall, Elizabeth Battaglia and the tutors she oversees could reach about 60 students across all grades — not nearly enough.

“How do we get students a lot of extra support with so few people?” she kept asking herself, even as she was encouraged by her students’ growth.

In reading, Battaglia tried a blitz tactic: 20 minutes each day over two weeks when stronger readers are paired with struggling peers to read passages to each other and help correct each other’s mistakes. It helped.

At Sadlowski Elementary on the Southeast Side, where most of the school’s 620 students were flagged as needing intensive help at the start of the year, Emily Gasca has 38 students on her caseload — some of them third and fourth graders reading at kindergarten level.

She enlisted fellow teachers to build interventions into daily classroom instruction, but some colleagues felt she was laying more work on already full plates.

Interventionist Teresa Przybyslawski at Chicago’s Brunson Elementary School combines technology and old-school methods such as flashcards in working with students who are behind grade level in math or reading.

Gasca tried to remind herself she was helping build from scratch a sort of academic safety net that the district has needed all along.

Even before COVID, many Chicago students made it to high school unable to read well. The pandemic just made it harder to look away.

To experts and educators such as Gasca, it’s clear that trauma and social-emotional challenges — that invisible load in students’ backpacks — complicate academic catchup. But struggling to keep up in the classroom is also a daily source of stress, eroding students’ confidence — baggage they carry back home.

Educators search for signs interventions are working

By February, John’s sessions with Przybyslawski were a well-worn routine.

“On your screen you will see a story to read,” Przybyslawski read off her screen to him one morning that month. “I would like you to read this story for me.”

“We’ll begin in three, two, one.”

John looked relaxed in a black face mask, hoodie, and Nikes as he read a passage about a family visit on a farm. At the one-minute mark, a bell dinged, and Przybyslawski smiled broadly. John’s reading had been largely free of mistakes — a huge leap from the start of the school year when he struggled to make it through a sentence or two during those fleeting 60 seconds.

“Good job overall,” she said. “I’ll get your score in a few minutes.”

“We’ve seen kids make leaps and bounds but still remain below the benchmarks. We’re catching kids up constantly.” -Principal Carol Wilson

Przybyslawski’s students were making headway. But now, her caseload looked different.

A few students “graduated.” They still need added help, but should be able to get it in the classroom. A few left the school, part of the customary churn at a high-needs neighborhood campus. And some were no longer on Przybyslawski’s caseload after being identified as needing services for students with disabilities.

Around this same time, Wilson, the principal, had gotten the school’s midyear test results.

Students in all grades were showing solid growth except eighth graders, on that all-important cusp of high school, who were flagged across the district for making little midyear progress.

Wilson was encouraged. Still, these tests predicted that fewer than 10% of Brunson students would meet state standards this spring.

“We’ve seen kids make leaps and bounds but still remain below the benchmarks,” Wilson said. “We’re catching kids up constantly.”

Districtwide in the early grades, there were double-digit increases in students scoring at grade level. Overall, Chicago Public Schools’ scores were in line or better than other urban districts. But much work remained: In the second grade, for example, more than half of students remained one grade level below in math, and a quarter were still two grade levels below in both math and reading.

Paul Zavitkovsky, an expert on testing at the University of Illinois at Chicago,

“If the kids at the lower levels of achievement are only making expected gains, that’s not moving the needle for them. Average gains are not going to be enough.” -Paul Zavitkovsky, assessment specialist at the University of Illinois Chicago’s College of Education

said standardized tests are a helpful snapshot of how students are doing, but he cautioned against relying on them to drive recovery efforts. Remediating one skill at a time based on test results must happen alongside engaging, grade-level instruction — a tough balance to strike, Zavitkovsky said.

Based on an analysis of results on a standardized test named STAR 360 many Chicago elementary schools are giving three times a year, Zavitkovsky found almost all schools made four months of gains in the first four months of the year in math — an encouraging return to a pre-pandemic pace of growth.

But, he said, “Average gains are not going to be enough.”

Dan Goldhaber, who leads the University of Washington’s Center for Education Data & Research, said it’s not clear how long schools can remain in full recovery mode, which requires resources and sustained effort.

When the COVID money runs dry, Chicago’s army of interventionists hired in recent years could land on the budgetary chopping block, leaving classroom teachers to pick up the difficult work of recovery.

Bogdana Chkoumbova, the district’s education chief, says the district is encouraged by testing, grading, and other data; it will cover interventionists at each school and grow the tutor corps next year.

That’s because there’s more work to be done, Chkoumbova recently told the school board. Data show 20% of students have gotten some intervention, and of those, only about a third are on track to meet their goals — an improvement over earlier in the year.

But, as district leaders have noted, a lot of intervention work is not captured by the data. At Brunson, a girl recently asked Przybyslawski for help with multiplication and division off the screens. The interventionist set up stacks of flashcards, quizzing her the old-fashioned way.

“Confidence!” she told the girl. “Just be confident.”

Behind them, in the back of Przybyslawski’s classroom, a bulletin board was covered with certificates of achievement.

One was John’s. It showed a figure looking over a wheat field, a mountain peak rising in the background.

“Congratulations!” the certificate read. “Your reading POWERS are getting stronger, and it’s time to celebrate your hard work.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

Shaped by the pandemic, racial unrest, and debt fears, Colorado’s class of 2023 steps into the world

2023-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

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The class of 2023 were freshmen when the world shut down in March 2020.

Now poised to enter the adult world, they’ve been shaped by the pandemic and everything that followed.

Their academic careers and social lives were upended. They lived through the murder of George Floyd and the racial reckoning that followed. They questioned their futures amid economic uncertainty and wondered about the value of a college degree as the nation debated student debt relief.

The choices the class of 2023 make about their future are inevitably tied to their experience of the last four years.

“When we started school, there was a lot of energy and a lot of hype around college,” said Seline Mesfin, 17, a DSST: Montview student in northeast Denver. “As time went on there was a gradual lessening of this energy and motivation. It became less of how do I push through this next year and more of how do I get through day by day by day.”

For Mesfin, the pandemic solidified that she wants to go to college. She’s considering Yale University, Colorado College, and Pomona College.

But many students are making other choices. It’s too soon to get solid numbers on the class of 2023, but college enrollment dropped by about a million students from 2019 to 2022, according to National Student Clearinghouse numbers. In Colorado, the class of 2021 was less likely to go to college than those who graduated in 2020.

“In different ways, the pandemic put our own lives in perspective, and our own values and motives and made us consider what really matters to us,” Mesfin said.

Chalkbeat talked to over a dozen other students across the state about their plans after high school. Here are five of those stories in their own words, as told to Chalkbeat Colorado. The pieces have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Jess Gonzalez, left, Alexander Mam, Izaias Pérez, and Jose Hernandez Diaz wait for commencement ceremonies for Aurora’s William Smith High School. Graduation was held May 17 at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Denver. The senior class was in its freshman year at the start of the pandemic.

Jerilynn Arnold, holding a fan, and her sister Aliysha

Jerilynn Arnold, 17

Montezuma-Cortez High School | Will go to Pueblo Community College

“It’ll be up to me — what I do and where I go from here.”

I grew up in a really hectic situation. Both my parents are alcoholics, so I was teetering on the edge when I was very young. My life never really revolved around my education. My life always revolved around getting through the day.

College really wasn’t an option growing up. I didn’t get serious about school until the end of my freshman year. I moved in with my grandmother. I was around the age of 14.

But that’s when COVID hit. I did not do well because I wasn’t used to online learning. I really didn’t pick myself up until my senior year.

I wanted to go to Fort Lewis College. I wanted to start my own life as an adult and move out. I’d be living on my own, get a job, and go to college. But I’m also really scared of going out into the world. I’m Native American and you don’t find a lot of us out there. I wanted to be close with my community.

My heart broke a little when I got the email saying I was rejected. It hurt. I let myself feel it. But I also said, “you know what? It’s not the only option.” I have backup plans. I told myself that if I do a year or two at community college and I get myself back up, then I can switch to a four-year. It’ll all work out. It doesn’t matter where I go. I just need to get the education that I hope to get. I’ve decided on my career in nursing.

The most exciting part about college is I am going to be on my own after all the ups and downs. I will still have the support of my family and I am still going to have the support of my tribe. But it’ll be up to me — what I do and where I go from here.

Isenia Fregoso

Isenia Fregoso, 18

Central High School | Will stay in Grand Junction to attend Colorado Mesa University

“Considering finances is a hard decision.”

Neither of my parents went to college, but it’s something they’ve wanted for me. Even since elementary school, it’s never not been a choice.

But my parents are not going to be able to help me with money. I do have a couple of scholarships, but a lot of the scholarships I have are one-year scholarships and not renewable. And because of my dad’s income, I don’t qualify for any Pell Grants even though I don’t have the funds to pay for college.

My biggest goal is not having loan debt. I’ve heard different stories, like two of my cousins. They both have considerable student debt. They’re struggling to pay it off. I do not want to leave school with all that debt.

I knew if I tried to get into an Ivy League or CU Boulder or CSU Fort Collins or any of the bigger schools in the state that I’d have to seek out loans.

By going to college in my town, I can live at home and I’ll save a lot of money. I didn’t even apply to any other colleges. I just applied to Colorado Mesa University.

At the end of the day, considering finances is a hard decision. I feel like I’ve done the work to get into any college and it almost feels like I don’t have options.

Fen Erickson, second from left, Jasmine Salgado Simental, Nathanial Rodriguez Duran, Daniel Perez Mariscal, and other seniors at Aurora’s William Smith High School wait for commencement ceremonies May 17 at the Newman Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Denver. Students are weighing whether to go to college, work, take an apprenticeship, or pursue other options.

Jakob Manchego, 17

Fowler High School senior | Will apprentice with K.R. Swerdfeger Construction as a welder

“I knew I didn’t necessarily want to go to college.”

Halfway through my senior year, after applying to a few colleges, I still didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I was a little bit stressed. I thought about going to work with no further experience. I knew I didn’t necessarily want to go to college because I am more of a hands-on learner.

Jakob Manchego

At my school, I feel like they do push college a lot. They’re big on seeing kids being successful after high school, which I get. Once the Tulsa School of Welding came and talked to our class, they inspired me to go into welding.

It was my dad who really ended up putting me on this route. He’s been in the trade industry his whole life. He’s helped me a lot in deciding if I should go to trade school or do an apprenticeship where I can get paid to also learn. And that’s what struck me. I like the idea of making money while learning.

It’s a four- to five-year apprenticeship and you have to go to class. But it’s not like school. It’s a couple classes and they train you. My sisters are really successful — my sister is a registered nurse and my other sister has gone into law — and I want to be successful as they are.

I am grateful. Eventually with welding being a really high-paying job, it should pay off.

Lily-Ann Smith, 16

Estes Park High School | Will graduate early to attend Denison University, a private four-year institution in Ohio

“College never really was the goal. I wanted to be financially stable.”

I am graduating two years early. My mother is very, very sick. And my father just a couple years ago was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Lily-Ann Smith

I wanted to be in a position to fight for custody of my sister in case of my mother’s passing. I can be emancipated if she happens to die, but for my littlest sister, she’s only 10. She has eight more years to go.

College never really was the goal. I wanted to be financially stable. I want to go into global commerce and I want to work for a big international company.

I want to make sure that I will be ready.

And I knew that if I didn’t figure out how to pay for college myself, I wouldn’t go. I’m the first in my family to go to college. So the whole college process was me trying to figure out everything by myself.

Luckily, I have the QuestBridge scholarship. I got to apply to 15 schools for free and rank them. My top choice was Denison University. They had some of the best financial aid. I have free room and board, and I also have tuition covered.

I just hope that by getting a college education, it will help show my sisters that if they really want to do something, they can actually do it.

Student Manuel Chavez shows his heritage in the decorative stole he wore for commencement ceremonies for Aurora’s William Smith High School. During high school, the class of 2023 witnessed a racial reckoning and student-debt debate. Some students were deterred from going to college.

Jonathan Sykes, 17

East High School | Will attend Morgan State University, a historically Black university

“I wanted to be in an environment where my opinions and my thoughts mean something.”

I decided on Morgan State University. My goal is to study physical therapy, as well as try to walk onto the football team. The school also has that community culture I want.

The vast majority of my family went to an HBCU. When I went to Howard University’s homecoming, I got to be exposed to my own culture. Being from Colorado, there’s just not as many African American people. Being there definitely gave me a sense of hope. It gave me a feeling of belonging.

Jonathan Sykes

The last couple of years, we’ve had some real challenges around race as a country. I feel like now more than ever, we need to stick together. We have to spend this time uplifting each other instead of tearing each other down.

I’ve always wanted to be at a place where I could feel safe — a place where people would understand me, and a place where I didn’t have to explain every single thing I did. I wanted to be in an environment where my opinions and my thoughts mean something to other people.

My brother also attends Morgan State. He’s a senior. He has so many amazing stories about the people he’s met. It’s a community that is loving and supportive.

I’m really excited about it. I just want to go stay on track and graduate and be as successful as I can be. College is a privilege. Not everybody gets a chance. I want to make the best of it.

2023 election results: Democratic and Republican primary elections for Philadelphia mayor

2023-05-17T03:23:57+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s free twice-weekly newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

This post will be updated.

Cherelle Parker, a former City Councilmember and state representative, is poised to become Philadelphia’s first Black woman mayor after securing the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s primary election.

The Associated Press called the election Tuesday night for Parker, who cleared a crowded Democratic primary race. Parker will face off against Republican nominee David Oh in November’s general election.

The race was tight. In the lead up to Election Day, public poll forecasts put the top five Democratic candidates within a few points of one another. Philadelphia is a deep-blue city — registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly seven to one — meaning whoever wins the Democratic primary has a significant upper hand in the fall’s general election.

Parker was seen by many as the establishment candidate. She garnered support from some of the most powerful labor unions in the city and ran on a campaign promise to be a dealmaker in Harrisburg and bring back more state funding for Philadelphia.

Her election could have big implications for Philadelphia schools. She’s said she wants to reform the much-maligned lottery admissions process for selective schools, and work toward year-round public schools and a longer school day.

Parker will challenge Oh, the only Republican candidate on the ballot Tuesday.

With 72% of expected votes counted, the unofficial election results are:

Democrats

Cherelle Parker 32.89% (53,906 votes)
Rebecca Rhynhart 22.33% (36,600 votes)
Helen Gym 20.65% (33,842 votes)
Allan Domb 12.16% (19,925 votes)
Jeff Brown 9.47% (15,528 votes)
Amen Brown 1.41% (2,317 votes)
James M. “Jimmy” DeLeon 0.60% (985 votes)
Delscia Gray 0.23% (382 votes)
Warren Bloom 0.19% (310 votes)

Republicans

David Oh 95.77% (10,584 votes)

While the mayor has no direct governing power over schools, the mayor does appoint the nine school Board of Education members who oversee all policy and budgetary decisions made by the district. The board is also the authorizer for all charter schools in Philadelphia.

The current board members’ terms will expire when Mayor Jim Kenney leaves office in January. That means whoever wins in November can choose to remake the board in its entirety, or keep some or all of the current members.

At a 9 p.m. press conference Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said there were “only a few minor and isolated issues” reported “sporadically” across the state at polling locations.

Schmidt said staff at the Department of State responded to an estimated 600 calls to their voter hotline, “which is lower than recent comparable municipal election cycles.”

“We know everyone wants to result of the election as soon as possible,” Schmidt said, “but counties must first make sure that every eligible ballot is accurately and securely counted.”

More than 186,000 voters cast ballots in the primary election Tuesday; 56,394 of those were mail-in ballots and 129,944 were cast at polling locations, per data from the Philadelphia City Commissioners’ office. There are 1,025,354 registered voters in the city.

Tuesday’s election results are unofficial until the Philadelphia City Commissioners, the office that oversees the city’s elections, certifies results 20 days after Election Day.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

The schools that take Colorado’s ‘most vulnerable’ children are disappearing

2023-05-11T10:59:00+00:00

Erin Schneiderman used to get calls in the middle of the day two or three times a week to pick her son up from his Denver elementary school.

The third-grader had run away or was standing in the hallway screaming. Meltdowns could last for hours. School was just too loud and crowded, with too much unpredictability, for a child with autism who craved routine.

Denver Public Schools decided Schneiderman’s son should go to a privately run school that specializes in serving children with intense behavioral, mental health or special education needs. But when it came time to start fourth grade, he still didn’t have a spot. The boy spent two months at home, most of that time getting no education at all.

Today, nearly five years later, the few options for Colorado students like Schneiderman’s son have dwindled further. In 2004, Colorado had 80 of these specialized programs known as facility schools. Now there are just 30 that serve an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 children a year. A single school serves all of western Colorado. On the Front Range, another school is set to close soon.

Meager state funding, dire staffing shortages, and changes to federal law have pushed the system to the brink. Lawmakers hope a cash infusion and regulatory changes will spur the opening of new schools — even as school districts are seeking their own solutions.

When there’s no open facility school seat, children may languish at home. They may remain in a mental health facility longer than they need to, taking up a bed that could be used by another child stuck in a hospital emergency room. Or they may stay in classrooms, struggling to learn, coming undone, lashing out almost daily, and disrupting the learning of their classmates.

Parents pay the price in lost jobs, and children pay the price in squandered potential.

Public schools have an obligation to educate every child. Facility schools — which operate at the crosscurrents of education, mental health, disability, and trauma — serve as placements of last resort when public schools can’t or won’t meet a child’s needs.

“K-12 was set up to educate the masses,” said Cori Woessner, a career public school educator who isn’t sure her own son with disabilities would have finished high school without the more supportive environment provided in facility schools.

“We’re not talking about the masses. We’re talking about the kids with the most severe needs that need the most support to be a productive member of society. To even have a chance at it.”

Facility schools balance academics and therapy

Facility schools are neither mental health facilities nor schools in the way most people might think about them. Operating in day treatment centers or residential facilities or tucked into hospitals, they offer academic programs within larger therapeutic settings.

Some critics say facility schools too often end up warehousing kids who, with more support, could have stayed in their home schools. Oversight is spread across multiple state and local agencies. When a school district recommends a facility school, parents have no easy way to know if the school is good or safe, though they rarely get a choice about placement.

The goal is to help children stay on an academic path while developing the skills they need to function in a public school before sending them back.

Some facilities serve children in foster care who need mental health care, or children in the juvenile criminal system who need treatment before returning home. The more common scenario is that students live at home and school districts send them to day treatment programs.

“Once we make that decision, it’s not because we don’t like kids and we’re sending them somewhere else,” said Callan Ware, the executive director of student services in Englewood Schools, a small district south of Denver. “We are saying we like them so much, we care about them so much — and we’re admitting to you we don’t have what it takes to support them and we’re going to find it and we’re going to pay for it.”

The Tennyson Center for Children is a facility school located in a bright, modern building in a residential Denver neighborhood. It serves about 50 metro-area students in kindergarten through 12th grade. The staff seems to have endless patience for behavior that would likely get a student kicked out of public school.

On a recent Friday, a middle schooler raged in a stairwell and called the principal a “fucko” because the school removed the game platform Roblox from its computers.

A high schooler who couldn’t sit still tossed a foam basketball at a staff member’s face as she drank from a water bottle, soaking her shirt.

And an elementary student ran up and down the hallway letting out a series of screams between his spelling words and math problems.

The boy was working with a staff member in one of the “nooks” — a small recessed room without a door where students can retreat if they’re feeling overwhelmed.

“I don’t want to do any more work!” the boy said, coming out of the nook and kicking the wall.

“To earn our positive breaks with staff, we have to complete work,” the staff member said, reminding the boy that he was working toward earning computer time in the library.

“It’s hard for me,” the boy said. He asked why his classmates, who had just completed a worksheet on Presidents Day, were earning points for good behavior and he wasn’t.

“Because they stay in class,” the staff member calmly told him as he pouted and fumed. “Part of the expectation of being in school is staying in class.”

The boy went back into the nook and screamed again.

The Tennyson Center For Children, founded in 1904, provides community programs, schooling, and day services to children with intense needs.

When funding dries up, kids are funneled down

Children with these challenges were once institutionalized.

“Almost every general hospital had a kids’ psych unit, and they were all full,” said Skip Barber, a retired child psychiatrist who worked at state mental health institutions and facility schools.

The psychiatric facilities created their own schools. But since the 1990s, the philosophy has shifted away from institutionalization and toward community-based care. Residential treatment programs began receiving kids in crisis who previously would have gone to hospitals. Day treatment programs took kids who would have been placed in residential facilities.

And more kids just stayed in public schools.

The Medicaid dollars that supported the previous system dried up. Twenty residential treatment facilities closed in Colorado between 2007 and 2017, according to newspaper reports. On the heels of those closures, Congress passed the Family First Prevention Services Act, which sought to keep more children with relatives or foster families and placed limits on government-funded residential care.

More residential programs closed, taking their associated facility schools with them or reducing capacity. Options in rural Colorado — where the nearest school might be hours from home — became even scarcer.

“Great if we move away from facilities that aren’t cutting the mustard or doing what we need, but now we’ve gone too far,” said Becky Miller Updike, executive director of the nonprofit Colorado Association of Family and Children’s Agencies, which represents residential facilities.

More children in crisis are now funneled into day treatment programs. But the funding hasn’t increased in tandem.

In a 2020 survey, administrators at 19 facility schools told Miller Updike they were nearly or solidly in the red. One reported having to fundraise $1 million a year.

“The program loses money on a regular basis,” another wrote.

Most funding comes directly or indirectly from the state. Facility schools get $55.05 per student per day in direct state funding, an amount that’s barely increased in the last eight years, said Judy Stirman, director of facility schools for the Colorado Department of Education.

School districts pay tuition fees on top of that, ranging from $75 to $348 per day. Students come and go throughout the year, which means the daily funding comes and goes. But the salaries of the experienced specialists and one-on-one aides who make the system work are constant.

Students at Third Way Center in Denver, a facility school that primarily serves children in foster care and youth corrections, can earn points to “purchase” items like snacks, stationery, games, personal care items, clothing, and more.

Low funding means it’s hard to hire staff. Facility schools often pay their staff less than school districts, which struggle to fill the same positions. That limits how many students they can serve.

“Every hire, we can bring in a student,” said Amy Gearhard, founder of Spectra School, which started as a therapy clinic for children with autism. Most students need one-on-one aides.

But the job is hard, and new hires don’t always stay. The aides at Spectra take 40 hours of behavior technician training and often wear bite guards and spit shields.

Despite those precautions, Gearhard said in January that three Spectra staff members had suffered concussions on the job, and two were out on workers’ compensation claims.

“You can’t pay them $15 an hour,” she said.

Two longtime facilities that closed last year — the Hampden Youth Campus in Aurora, which ran three day treatment programs, and the Youth Recovery Center at Valley View Hospital in Glenwood Springs — cited low funding and staffing shortages.

“Last year this program lost over $300,000, which made it very difficult to be able to hire enough staff to work with the level of acuity that we were seeing in the students,” Aurora Mental Health Center Chief Clinical Officer Kirsten Anderson told the Sentinel Colorado.

Officials with Devereux Cleo Wallace, a day treatment program in Westminster that’s set to close this year, said in a statement that “the continued regional staffing shortages have made it no longer possible to operate our flagship programs at the levels our families deserve.”

But the staff who stay at facility schools say they’re drawn to working with this student population. Renée Johnson, executive director of Third Way Center, a residential facility that serves kids in foster care or youth corrections, said these kids are “used to being thrown away.”

“These alternative schools give kids chances to do it again and be successful,” Johnson said. “That feeling of success is so important to build on.”

Denver-area job postings fill a bulletin board at the Third Way Center’s Joan Farley Academy.

Fewer schools means longer waitlists

Colorado is not alone in its hiring struggles. A nationwide shortage of special education staff means it’s harder for schools to provide the consistent support that would help kids with severe needs be successful in their home schools. At the same time, the inability to hire and retain staff has caused specialized schools nationwide to close or reduce their capacity, leading to students with disabilities being put on long waitlists, according to an October letter to Congress from the National Association of Private Special Education Centers.

“We’re seeing a supply and demand crisis on a national level,” said Danielle Damm, the association’s executive director and CEO.

In Colorado, the number of students served by facility schools has decreased. Thousands of students come and go throughout the year, but there are only so many spots at one time. A statewide snapshot taken on Dec. 1 each year found 1,266 students in facility schools in late 2017 but just 769 students in these schools in 2022. That’s a 40% decrease.

It’s not because the demand has decreased.

“We’re all on waiting lists because the facilities can only accept so many students and they’re short-staffed as well,” said Courtney Leyba, senior manager of extended school support for Denver Public Schools.

In Jeffco Public Schools, the number of students in out-of-district placements dropped 35% — from 211 students six years ago to 138 students this school year. In Denver, it went from 254 to 119 students in the same time period, a whopping 53% decrease.

Fifteen years ago, when Leyba started working for the Denver district, she said students would wait just two or three weeks to get into a facility school. “Now we can wait anywhere between two, three, or sometimes even six months for a placement,” she said.

In the wait, students can unravel even more.

Until he got into a facility school two months into his fourth grade year, Schneiderman’s son would have meltdowns over literally anything, she said.

She and her husband struggled to cobble together care for him. Grandparents from both sides of the family flew in to help, but Schneiderman ended up having to take a leave from her job. An in-home tutor the district promised didn’t start working with him until he’d already been home more than a month.

“It felt like we were completely lost in a system that we had no idea how to navigate,” Schneiderman said. “That had to have been one of the worst periods of our lives for sure.”

Erin Schneiderman and her 13-year old son sit outside their home near City Park in Denver.

‘Effective in some cases, but not in all’

Many advocates and experts say students belong in their own communities, not separate schools that may be hours — or even states — away from home.

“Students don’t need to be segregated in order to have their needs met and be successful in school,” said Lewis Bossing, senior staff attorney with the Washington, D.C.-based Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “We think that there are a number of different kinds of supports that can be put in place so that, for the most part, students can be served in general education settings.”

Advocates like Connie McKenzie with The Arc Pikes Peak Region worry about a lack of oversight, and about students getting stuck and never returning to public school.

One student McKenzie worked with attended a facility school from kindergarten through 12th grade. Another was a kindergartener who was referred to a facility school because the child kept running out of the classroom, she said. The child had gone through a traumatic event.

“Removing the child from the school, sending them to a different school, just reinforced to the child that they weren’t safe at school,” McKenzie said.

Facility schools, she said, “are effective in some cases, but not in all.”

People who work in the system say the typical stay is about a year, though it varies widely based on the facility and whom it serves — from less than a week for acute psychiatric hospitalizations to years at schools for students with intellectual disabilities.

The state education department doesn’t track how many facility school students return to their home districts or how they fare later.

But even critics acknowledge there are times when a separate setting is justified.

Zoe Gross, director of advocacy for the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said that while inclusion is ideal, “if your school district just refuses, or is unable to meet the needs of your kid, then you have really limited options outside of that.”

That’s how Woessner, the career educator whose son attended facility schools, feels.

Her son, now 18, was first referred to a facility school when he was 8. Woessner and her husband adopted him out of foster care as a baby, and he has several diagnoses, including fetal alcohol syndrome, which affects his cognitive ability.

He couldn’t read or write his name in second grade. At 7, he made a plan to kill himself by running out into the street. At 8, he put a belt around his neck at school.

“We were very fortunate that happened when he was 8 and there were still 70-some-odd facility schools and they popped him into a facility school because of the severity of his behaviors,” Woessner said.

Her son spent the next 10 years in six different day treatment and residential programs, including one out of state. He completed 12th grade at a Denver facility school and is now in a small transitional program for older students with disabilities through his home school district.

“He made it a lot further academically going through facility schools than he ever would have in a traditional school,” Woessner said.

Moving ahead toward an uncertain future

A state law signed by Gov. Jared Polis this spring boosts funding for facility schools and revamps the funding model so small schools are less vulnerable to fluctuations in enrollment.

A new technical assistance center will provide consulting services and training in rural districts so that more students could stay close to home. And a new way of approving new schools should make them easier to open.

In advocating for changes to the law, the working group described facility school students as some of Colorado’s “most vulnerable.” Parents, advocates, and special education experts all say that meeting the needs of these children will require more than just saving the schools, however: Families need more options all along the spectrum of inclusion and separation, and children need more care as they make precarious transitions from one setting to another.

Schneiderman’s son did so well at Tennyson Center in Denver that everyone agreed he should go to public middle school, she said. He enrolled at Denver’s Merrill Middle School. But even in a small program with a dedicated teacher and a classroom where he could go when things got overwhelming, going to school with 600 other students proved tough.

Wanting to fit in, Schneiderman’s son rejected help from an aide in traditional classes. He got into fights because he misunderstood regular kid banter as bullying. His meltdowns — which can turn violent and have landed him in the hospital — returned both at home and at school.

Schneiderman began getting calls again to pick him up midday.

Erin Schneiderman’s son, who is 13, plays Journey, an indie adventure video game.

The controlled environment at Tennyson had made it hard to predict how or if her son might struggle once he returned to public school, she said.

Partway through seventh grade, an advocate suggested Schneiderman’s son try something different. Evoke Behavioral Health is not a facility school, but a private day treatment program specializing in a type of intervention called applied behavioral analysis, or ABA. Evoke calls itself a “school alternative.”

Denver Public Schools and the family’s health insurance company agreed to pay — despite previously rejecting a similar placement.

“A lot of this feels like dumb luck,” Schneiderman said.

Evoke, she said, has been life-changing. Now that she’s not picking her son up midday, she’s able to work full-time again. And her goofy 13-year-old eighth grader, who loves video games, science fiction audiobooks, and skiing with his parents, is thriving.

He does ABA — which Schneiderman describes as “work-reward, work-reward” — eight hours a day and has both a one-on-one aide and a caseworker. He’s able to do schoolwork for 20 minutes without getting upset, and he’s working on not arguing with his teacher.

His meltdowns now happen once a month instead of five or six times a week, she said.

But that progress means his time at Evoke is coming to an end.

Because he’s doing so well, Schneiderman said the school district wants him back in public school. That probably means Thomas Jefferson High, which offers the same type of small program he had at Merrill — but in an even larger school with about 1,300 students.

“As a parent, that is terrifying. Absolutely terrifying,” Schneiderman said. “There’s no in-between options that we can find. We can’t figure out what our next step is.”

KFF Health News’ Rae Ellen Bichell and The Colorado Sun’s Erica Breunlin contributed reporting.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Erin Schneiderman’s 13-year old son walks the family dog, Ernie, in their Denver neighborhood near City Park.

Illinois Teacher of the Year helps students process gun violence through writing and poetry

2023-04-28T22:22:43+00:00

East St. Louis teacher Briana Morales and a group of her students at Gordon Bush Alternative Center had just started their regular morning task of making school announcements when their routine was interrupted.

State Superintendent Tony Sanders and Bush principal Darnell Spencer had stopped by with some unexpected news: Morales had been named Illinois Teacher of the Year.

Morales, who has been in the classroom only six years, teaches English at Bush, an alternative school that serves a majority of Black students from low-income families. She was recognized for using writing and poetry to help her students process poverty, personal loss, and violence.

The first thought that came to her mind after she learned of the award on April 17 was “You really, really outdid yourself with this one!” – a phrase she often says to her students.

With state funding that she will receive from winning the award, Morales will take a year off, starting in July, to work with other teachers across the state, mentor early-career teachers, and represent Illinois in the National Teacher of the Year program.

Chalkbeat Chicago spoke with Morales to talk about her time as a teacher so far.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Illinois Teacher of the Year Briana Morales and students she works with at Gordon Bush Alternative School.

Why did you want to become a teacher?

I became a teacher because I had a phenomenal middle school English teacher. In seventh grade, I was struggling with complex life changes at home and I experienced a lot of trauma as a child. My teacher at the time tried to equip me with the skills to battle everything that I was going through. She taught me how to write poetry as a way to cope. I wrote my first poetry book in her class and I never stopped writing. It was powerful to have an adult to see me for what I was going through and not just as some random kid in their classroom.

You’ve spent the majority of your career teaching at an alternative school. Why?

I think alternative education is representative of the underdog in all of us. They are the kids that you’re rooting for to turn the tide and be who they want to be with the right resources. These are kids who may have unmet needs and lagging skills, but one caring adult can break the chains for so many children. We have a moral responsibility to ensure that every child has access to equitable experiences that allow them to be their authentic selves, especially in alternative education.

Writing and poetry were a way for you to process trauma in your life as a student. How have you used those experiences to work with your students today?

I was named an early career educator of color by the National Council for Teacher of English in 2021. Along with working with a cohort of educators across the country, I was able to work on a two-year research project with our students where we focused on writing poetry. Some of the lessons that we used in class were asking students to write about group up in East St. Louis because while every kid in that community may have overlapping experiences, their lived experiences are vastly different. In order to dismantle single stories and provide counter narrative for marginalized communities, poetry allows students to decide for themselves “What am I seeing and What do I make of it?”

What’s something happening in the community that affects what goes on inside your classroom?

Gun violence. I have lost a lot of students to gun violence. We are fortunate to have a wraparound wellness center in East St. Louis that has a 24-hour on-site trauma response team for some of the adverse experiences that my students might be dealing with. However, when we think about the toll that adverse childhood experiences have not just on a student, but also their family, the community, and then the educators that serve them. Not only am I trying to support a young person through navigating what it looks like to lose a sibling or classmate, I’m trying to figure out what that looks like for me. Having to console students, take them to funerals, helping families fundraise for a headstone and other things have greatly impacted my career.

Throughout Illinois, communities are being hit hard by gun violence. It’s often difficult for teachers to talk about it with their students. How do you start a conversation with students about gun violence?

I’m Mexican, something that is important to me and sharing with my students is the belief that there is more time than there is life. We may live a different life on the other side, and the only way that we can do that is if someone keeps our memory alive. I’m big on talking about memories and the legacies that people leave behind every year. I allow my students to share memories of loved ones, think of activities to do to honor that person, and brainstorm organizations that we want to donate to in that person’s spirit, so that we can carry their life on.

As a teacher, you prioritize your students’ mental health. What else can districts or the state do to support teachers and students?

We need to honor the fact that mental health needs to be addressed by a professional who is not a teacher. There need to be changes to legislation and policy to ensure that all students have access to mental health professionals in their school building on a daily basis, at the level that they need. There need to be resources available for school districts to create partnerships with community organizations that may not be able to afford a mental health professional in schools to meet with students and their families.

What’s the best advice you’ve received in your career, and how have you put it into practice?

“Find your marigold.” Educators use the term “marigold” to think about the people you gravitate towards, get advice from, and sustain you in the work that could be a colleague or a friend. It’s really important for newer educators to find people to support you and remind you of your why. You need people to guide you through difficult times, because as high as the mountains are sometimes in education, the valleys are also very low.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis school district’s superintendent search: Here’s the latest on the applicants

2023-04-27T16:52:53+00:00

The search for Memphis’ next school superintendent attracted several Memphis-area educators as well as current and former district leaders from across the country, a Chalkbeat Tennessee review of candidates found. But several of the leading contenders have dropped out. And one applicant who withdrew has asked to be reconsidered.

Outside search firm Hazard, Young, Attea and Associates released a near-complete list of applicants last week at the behest of board members, many of whom were dissatisfied with the selection process and the initial finalist slate the firm presented at an April 15 meeting. Board Chair Althea Greene paused the search after that meeting, derailing the monthslong quest for a successor to former Superintendent Joris Ray.

Board members will determine the next step during an upcoming nonvoting meeting. Greene, who had been leading the search, passed the torch to board members Stephanie Love and Joyce Dorse-Coleman after board member Amber Huett-Garcia called for a leadership change.

Among the candidates who have withdrawn from consideration are Brenda Cassellius, who was one of three initial finalists, and Keith Miles Jr., a proposed addition to the finalist slate who accepted another job. According to Max McGee, president of Hazard Young, only three of the seven people whom the firm considered top contenders were still pursuing the job a few days after the firm presented finalists.

But since then, one applicant, Marie Feagins, has asked to be reconsidered, according to an email obtained by Chalkbeat. The firm called her a “high scoring candidate” in an email to board members. But it is unclear if Feagins is part of the expanded top candidate slate, or if she will be added to the finalist pool. Her application materials indicate she was among the top 12. (Read more about her below.)

“At this point, the board has not decided to expand the pool and allow additional candidates. That will be part of the discussion at the upcoming board retreat,” Love said in a statement through KQ Communications, which has assisted the board throughout the search.

The board could decide to expand its candidate pool beyond the remaining top contenders and offer interviews to lower-scoring applicants. It is also poised to decide whether interim Superintendent Toni Williams, whose background is in finance, is qualified for the role. (The search firm did not screen candidates against the board’s minimum requirements.)

Hazard Young publicly released a list of names — without resumes — for the remaining candidates. Other than the top contenders, it is unclear how these applicants scored. The district received applications from 34 people; 21 met the basic criteria, and 12 made the final round of interviews.

Here’s a look at what Chalkbeat has learned about the leading contenders, the ones who withdrew their names, and others who are still pursuing the job. Candidates in each category are listed in alphabetical order.

Who are the remaining top applicants for Memphis superintendent?

Carlton Jenkins announced plans to retire as superintendent of Wisconsin’s Madison Metropolitan School District in February. He assumed the role in August 2020 after a career in education that the Wisconsin State Journal wrote included a superintendency in suburban Minneapolis. In Madison, Jenkins was the district’s first Black superintendent, according to Lake Geneva Regional News, and has been the president of the African American Superintendents Association.

Jenkins is one of the initial three finalists whom Hazard Young presented to the MSCS board.

Angela Whitelaw is a longtime educator and administrator in the Memphis school district who was one of two acting superintendents for a month and a half this summer. She has since returned to her post as deputy superintendent overseeing academics. Whitelaw has held the role since February 2019, when she was one of Ray’s first two appointees to his cabinet. She was previously the chief of schools.

The search firm recommended that the MSCS board add Whitelaw to the finalist pool.

Toni Williams became the interim superintendent of MSCS last August on the premise that she was not interested in the role permanently. She then changed her position and applied for the job last month. She has enjoyed support from community and board members alike as she focused on accountability measures during her interim tenure. She has nearly a decade of experience in public education focused on finance, but not academics.

Williams is one of the initial three finalists whom Hazard Young presented to the MSCS board.

Who are the leading contenders for Memphis superintendent who withdrew?

Brenda Cassellius was recently the superintendent at Boston Public Schools for three years, and was the statewide education commissioner in Minnesota for almost a decade before that. Cassellius wanted to stay longer in the Boston leadership position, The Boston Globe reported, but left the job last summer. Her departure was announced as a mutual decision, but Cassellius told the Globe that recently elected Boston Mayor Michelle Wu “should be able to pick her own team.”

Cassellius, who was also a recent superintendent finalist for a suburban Minneapolis school district, dropped out of the Memphis search after her announcement as a finalist, citing the board’s discussion and suspension of the search on April 15. She has since accepted a non-profit sector job.

Keith Miles Jr., superintendent of Bridgeton Public Schools in New Jersey, has been a school and district administrator in several districts in the northeastern United States, according to his current biography.

The search firm recommended on April 18 that the MSCS board add Miles to the finalist pool. The next day, the firm told board members Miles accepted an offer for the new job, superintendent of the School District of Lancaster in Pennsylvania.

Who else applied for the role?

Morcease Beasley is set to step down as superintendent of Metro Atlanta’s Clayton County Schools at the end of the school year, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported last fall. Beasley was elevated to the role from an internal position in 2017, the newspaper previously reported, after administrative roles at Metro Atlanta’s DeKalb County School district.

Tonya Biles was, in 2011, a top education administrator at Memphis Academy of Health Sciences, a local charter school.

Stephen Bournes is the top academic administrator for Chester Community Charter School in a town near Philadelphia. According to his biography, he was a top administrator of a suburban Chicago school before that and has 25 years of academic experience.

Lee Buddy, according to his LinkedIn profile, is a top administrator in Cleveland’s school district. He was elevated to the role in 2021 after several years as a teacher and school administrator in various districts.

Vallerie Cave has been the superintendent of schools in Colleton County, South Carolina, near Charleston, since 2021. In February, board members considered terminating her contract, according to local news reports. Before this, she was an education administrator in Savannah, Georgia, and her resume includes additional experience, mostly in the South.

Marie Feagins is a top academics official in Detroit’s public school district where she has overseen district leadership and high schools since 2021, according to application materials obtained by Chalkbeat. Before that, she was a principal and administrator in Cleveland and in Huntsville, Alabama. Her early career included counseling and teaching in Alabama schools in Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. She was recently among six applicants interviewed for the superintendency in Fayetteville, Arkansas, according to news reports.

Cynthia Gentry is a longtime education administrator who has sought top Memphis leadership positions before, including the Memphis superintendency in 2003, The Commercial Appeal archives show. Gentry narrowly lost a bid for an at-large Memphis school board seat in 2008, receiving more than 80,000 votes, the newspaper reported.

Cedrick Gray, now an education leadership consultant, was the first education liaison for Shelby County. He was among the finalists for Tennessee’s turnaround superintendent, and has been a superintendent twice before. At Jackson Public Schools, Mississippi’s largest district, he was named national superintendent of the year before resigning.

Alexis Gwin-Miller is listed as the executive director of Memphis’ Power Center Community Development Corp. and was, for a short time, principal of Crosstown High School, a local charter school. Power Center CDC is an urban development group linked to Gestalt Community Schools, a charter operator of several schools in Memphis.

Vincent Hunter is the longtime principal of MSCS’ Whitehaven High School, where seniors score millions of dollars in college scholarships, and recent leader of the neighborhood-based school turnaround program. Hunter enjoys support from both the Whitehaven neighborhood and Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.

Alisha Kiner rose to her position as an MSCS district leader after a decadelong tenure at Booker T. Washington High School. The school’s graduation rates rose dramatically during her tenure, prompting then-President Barack Obama to visit the school to deliver its 2011 commencement address.

Derrick Jones Lopez is an education administrator in Detroit’s school district focused on high schools, according to his LinkedIn profile. Lopez was fired without cause from his position as superintendent of schools in Flint, Michigan. A subsequent settlement agreement voided a disciplinary memo alleging poor performance, MLive news reported.

Roderick Richmond is a longtime, high-ranking MSCS academics administrator who has been a finalist for superintendent for Tennessee’s Nashville and Jackson school districts. Within the district, Richmond was an architect of the iZone, Memphis’ school turnaround program.

Terry Ross is a former Memphis principal who was reassigned to a district-level academic adviser position after an investigation into alleged harassment and improper grade changing. According to his online resume, Ross also works with a group supporting teacher retention.

Art Stellar was named vice president of the National Education Foundation in 2013 after a career as an educator and administrator, including tenures as superintendent. Test scores improved under Stellar’s leadership at a Massachusetts school district, the Taunton Daily Gazette reported, but disagreements with teachers led to his dismissal there and later from a North Carolina district.

Bernard Taylor is an education administrator in Pittsburgh, documents show. Taylor returned to the district as a principal in 2017 after a tumultuous tenure as superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish schools in Louisiana, but was later suspended over abuse claims. He was a superintendent twice before, according to his biography.

Reginald R. Williams is the principal at MSCS’ Overton High School. He has been a Memphis school administrator for decades. Prior to his Overton tenure, Williams was the principal at Memphis Academy of Health Sciences, where his firing over test scores was the first public challenge to a law aimed at protecting certain school personnel from such actions.

Antwan Wilson was the top education official for Oakland, California, and Washington, D.C., schools between 2014 and 2018 after nearly a decade climbing the ranks in Denver public schools. He resigned from his Washington post after side-stepping a school lottery process for his child, and months after The Washington Post reported Wilson left Oakland schools in financial disrepair. He has since become an education consultant.

Five other applicants were on the list Hazard Young provided: Donald Boyd, Eric Henderson, Tameka Henderson, Anson Smith, and Darrell Williams. Chalkbeat was unable to confirm their identities and professional backgrounds.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

How Wisconsin uses race and income to label students ‘high risk’

2023-04-27T12:00:00+00:00

This article was co-published with The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates how powerful institutions are using technology to change our society. Sign up for The Markup’s newsletters.

Last summer, administrators at Bradford High School in Kenosha, Wisconsin, met as they do every year to plan for the incoming class of ninth graders. From a roster of hundreds of middle schoolers, Assistant Principal Matt Brown and his staff made a list of 30 to 40 students who they suspected might struggle the most to graduate.

Over the course of the summer break, Brown and his team went down the list and visited each child’s home. The staff brought T-shirts for the students, introduced themselves to parents, left behind their contact information and, they hoped, a positive first impression.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, we want to hook you up with some Bradford gear. You’re gonna be part of a Bradford family now,’” Brown said. “It’s kind of coming out from that standpoint of, ‘Hey, we’re here to support you,’ not necessarily, ‘Hey, your kid really messed up last year’ … because we don’t want parents to feel like you’re already labeling their kid as somebody that’s a troublemaker.”

But in most cases, the students on Bradford’s list for summer visits land there because of a label — “high risk”— assigned to them by a racially inequitable algorithm built by the state of Wisconsin, one that frequently raises false alarms.

Since 2012, Wisconsin school administrators like Brown have received their first impression of new students from the Dropout Early Warning System, an ensemble of machine learning algorithms that use historical data — such as students’ test scores, disciplinary records, free or reduced-price lunch status, and race — to predict how likely each sixth through ninth grader in the state is to graduate from high school on time.

Twice a year, schools receive a list of their enrolled students with DEWS’ color-coded prediction next to each name: green for low risk, yellow for moderate risk, or red for high risk of dropping out.

Education officials once held up DEWS as a key tool in their fight against the state’s graduation gap. While 94% of white students graduated on time last year, only 82% of Hispanic and 71% of Black students completed high school in four years. DEWS was intended to put personalized predictions in the hands of educators early enough that they could intervene before a child showed obvious signs of falling off track.

But after a decade of use and millions of predictions, The Markup has found that DEWS may be incorrectly and negatively influencing how educators perceive students, particularly students of color. And a forthcoming academic study from researchers based out of the University of California, Berkeley, who shared data and prepublication findings with The Markup, has concluded that DEWS has failed at its primary goal: improving graduation rates for the students it labels “high risk.”

An internal Department of Public Instruction equity analysis conducted in 2021 found that DEWS generated false alarms about Black and Hispanic students not graduating on time at a significantly greater rate than it did for their white classmates. The algorithm’s false alarm rate — how frequently a student it predicted wouldn’t graduate on time actually did graduate on time — was 42 percentage points higher for Black students than white students, according to a DPI presentation summarizing the analysis, which The Markup obtained through a public records request. The false alarm rate was 18 percentage points higher for Hispanic students than white students.

DPI has not told school officials who use DEWS about the findings nor does it appear to have altered the algorithms in the nearly two years since it concluded DEWS was unfair.

The DPI presentation summarizing the equity analysis we reviewed did not include the underlying false alarm rates for Black, Hispanic, and white students that DPI used to make its calculations. It also did not include results for students of other races. The department declined to answer questions about the analysis and, in response to a subsequent public records request, DPI said it had no documentation of the equity analysis results beyond the presentation. (A video of the presentation can be seen here.)

A separate DPI validation test of DEWS’ accuracy in March 2021 shows it was wrong nearly three-quarters of the time it predicted a student wouldn’t graduate on time.

Students we interviewed were surprised to learn DEWS existed and told The Markup they were concerned that an algorithm was using their race to predict their future and label them high risk. “It makes the students of color feel like they’re separated … like they automatically have less,” said Christopher Lyons, a Black student who graduated from Bradford High School in 2022.

Wisconsin DPI spokesperson Abigail Swetz declined to answer questions about DEWS but provided a brief emailed statement.

“Is DEWS racist?” Swetz wrote. “No, the data analysis isn’t racist. It’s math that reflects our systems. The reality is that we live in a white supremacist society, and the education system is systemically racist. That is why the DPI needs tools like DEWS and is why we are committed to educational equity.”

In response to our findings and further questions, Swetz wrote, “You have a fundamental misunderstanding of how this system works. We stand by our previous response.” She did not explain what that fundamental misunderstanding was.

To piece together how DEWS has affected the students it has judged, The Markup examined unpublished DPI research, analyzed 10 years of district-level DEWS data, interviewed students and school officials, and collected survey responses from 80 of the state’s more than 400 districts about their use of the predictions.

Our investigation shows that many Wisconsin districts use DEWS — 38% of those that responded to our survey — and that the algorithms’ technical failings have been compounded by a lack of training for educators.

DEWS is a voluntary program, and DPI encourages educators to use the predictions in combination with other local data about students to make decisions. The agency does not track whether or how schools use the predictions. Principals, superintendents, and other administrators told The Markup they received little or no explanation of how DEWS calculates its predictions or how to translate a label like “high risk” into the appropriate intervention.

In districts like Kenosha, students of color don’t need data to understand the consequences of being judged by biased systems. In 2020, the city grabbed national headlines following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. And earlier this year, the family of a 12-year-old Black student sued the Kenosha Unified School District after an off-duty police officer working security placed her in a chokehold in the lunchroom of her school.

In 2018, the year Lyons entered Bradford High School, a teacher there was filmed repeatedly using a racial slur in front of students. That year, DEWS labeled 43% of Black ninth graders in Kenosha high risk, compared to 11% of white ninth graders.

By that point, Lyons said he’d already lost motivation academically. “It kind of felt like we weren’t expected to do much,” he said. “It felt like they knew that we were just destined to fail.”

Then something unexpected happened his sophomore year: The COVID-19 pandemic hit, classes went virtual, and, as he put it, his grades “skyrocketed” from a 2.9 GPA pre-pandemic to a 3.8 GPA after the switch to remote learning. What for many students was a disorienting interruption to their education was for Lyons a reprieve that allowed him to focus. “I didn’t have that social pressure of, like, the teachers around me or the administration around me,” he said. “It was just me, the computer, whoever I was talking to.”

Last year, Lyons began his freshman year at Carthage College in Kenosha on a full-ride scholarship. His journey illustrates the quirks in personality, learning style, and environment that, some experts say, make it counterproductive to predict an individual student’s future based on a population-level analysis of statistically similar students.

Nonetheless, early warning systems that use machine learning to predict student outcomes are common in K-12 and higher education. At least eight state public education agencies provide algorithmic early warning systems or are currently building them for future use, according to a Markup survey of all 50 states. Four states did not respond. Montana was the only state besides Wisconsin that said it had examined how its early warning system performed across different racial groups. Montana Office of Public Instruction spokesperson Brian O’Leary said that his state’s equity study was not yet finished.

‘Is DEWS Fair? No ...’

At the beginning of and midway through each year, DEWS calculates how likely each incoming sixth- through ninth-grade student is to graduate from high school on time on a scale of 0 to 100. A score of 90 indicates that students with similar academic, behavioral, and demographic features have graduated on time 90% of the time in the past. Any student whose DEWS score (plus margin of error) is below 78.5 is labeled high risk of not graduating on time.

To make it easier for educators to understand the predictions, DPI translates DEWS scores into a simple, color-coded format. Next to every student’s name in the DEWS tab of the statewide information system is a label showing their score and a green “low,” yellow “moderate,” or red “high” risk designation.

During the 2020-21 academic year, more than 32,000 students — 15% of the state’s sixth through ninth graders — were labeled “high risk.”

Examples of how students’ DEWS predictions are displayed in the statewide information system.

Experts say the system is designed in ways that may inadvertently bias educators’ opinions of students and misdirect scarce school resources. Of particular concern is how heavily DEWS draws on factors like race, disability, and family wealth, which are likely to encode systemic discrimination and which neither the school nor student can change. Other data points fed into DEWS, like discipline rates, have clear racial disparities — DPI knows this and has written about it on its website.

“I wonder at the ways in which these risk categories push schools and districts to look at individuals instead of structural issues — saying this child needs these things, rather than the structural issues being the reason we’re seeing these risks,” said Tolani Britton, a professor of education at UC Berkeley, who co-wrote the forthcoming study on DEWS. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing that students receive additional resources, but at the same time, creating algorithms that associate your race or ethnicity with your ability to complete high school seems like a dangerous path to go down.”

When DEWS predicts that a student will graduate, it’s usually right — 97% of the time those students graduate in the standard four years, according to the 2021 validation test, which shows how the algorithms performed when tested on historical data. But when DEWS predicted a student wouldn’t, it was usually wrong — 74% of the time those students graduate on time, according to the same test.

This is partially by design. DPI calibrates DEWS to cast a wide net and over-identify students as being at risk of dropping out. In a 2015 paper describing DEWS in the Journal of Educational Data Mining, former DPI research analyst Jared Knowles wrote that DPI was “explicitly stating we are willing to accept” 25 false alarms that students won’t graduate if it means correctly identifying one dropout.

But in its equity analysis, DPI found the algorithms don’t generate false alarms equally.

A screenshot from a DPI presentation summarizing the results of the department’s DEWS equity analysis.

“IN LAYMAN’s TERMS: the model over-identifies white students among the on-time graduates while it over-identifies Black, Hispanic and other students of color among the non- on-time graduates,” a DPI research analyst wrote in notes for the presentation. The presentation does not specify what DEWS scores qualify as on-time graduation, for the purpose of the equity analysis.

The notes for the slide, titled “Is DEWS Fair?” end with the conclusion “no….”

“They definitely have been using a model that has systematic errors in terms of students’ race, and that’s really something that’s got to get fixed,” said Ryan Baker, a University of Pennsylvania education professor who studies early warning systems. “They had demographic factors as predictors and that’s going to overemphasize the meaning of those variables and cause this kind of effect.”

A decade of DEWS demystified

Recently, a team of researchers working primarily out of UC Berkeley — doctoral candidate Juan Perdomo, Britton, and algorithmic fairness experts Moritz Hardt and Rediet Abebe — have examined DEWS’ efficacy through a different lens.

Their research using nearly 10 years of DEWS data — which DPI voluntarily shared — is the largest ever analysis of how a predictive early warning system affects student outcomes. While previous studies have asked how accurately early warning systems perform when tested against historical data, the UC Berkeley study examines whether DEWS led to better graduation rates for actual students labeled high risk.

The researchers tested whether graduation rates improved for students whose DEWS scores were just below the 78.5 threshold to put them in the high risk category compared to students whose scores were just above that threshold, placing them in the moderate risk category. If the system worked as intended, students in the high risk category would see improved graduation rates because they received additional resources, but the study found that being placed in the high risk category had no statistically significant effect on whether students graduated on time.

“There is no evidence that DEWS predictions have in any way influenced the likelihood of on-time graduation,” the authors wrote.

If the system was working as intended and schools were directing more resources to students labeled high risk, the UC Berkeley study suggests, it would have a different but also inequitable impact. “If schools select students for intervention by ranking their [DEWS] scores and selecting those with the lowest predicted probability of graduation, underserved students would be systematically overlooked and de-prioritized,” the authors wrote.

That’s because DEWS’ predicted graduation rates don’t accurately reflect students’ true graduation rates. White students, in particular, graduate at much higher rates than their DEWS scores would suggest, according to data shared with The Markup by the UC Berkeley researchers.

For example, students of color who received DEWS scores of 83 went on to graduate on time 90% of the time. That’s the same as Wisconsin’s statewide average graduation rate last year. White students who received the same DEWS score of 83 went on to graduate on time 93% of the time, above the state average.

But crucially, white students who received significantly lower DEWS scores of 63 graduated on time at essentially the same rate as the higher-scoring white students: 92% of the time. But students of color who received DEWS scores of 68 graduated on time only 81% of the time, below the state average.

In other words, if educators followed DEWS’ advice and prioritized white students with scores of 63 for help over students of color with scores of 68, they would have prioritized students who ultimately graduate at above-average rates over students who ultimately graduate at below-average rates.

That particular quirk of the algorithm likely hasn’t exacerbated inequality in Wisconsin, the study concluded, because DEWS isn’t improving outcomes for anybody labeled high risk, regardless of race.

Advanced algorithms, ‘second-class school system’

From its earliest days, DPI promoted DEWS as a cost-effective tool to combat the state’s “unacceptable” graduation gap. But the early warning system wasn’t the agency’s first-choice solution.

As part of its biannual budget proposal in 2011, DPI, which was under the leadership of Tony Evers, who is now the state’s governor, requested $20 million for an “Every Child a Graduate’’ grant program that would send resources directly to struggling districts. That year, 91% of white students in the state graduated from high school on time compared to 64% of Black students.

But then-Gov. Scott Walker had a different plan for public education. He cut nearly $800 million, about 7%, in state funding for public schools from the two-year budget. That included the $20 million for “Every Child a Graduate,” of which Walker’s administration redirected $15 million to build a statewide student information system to house all pupil data in one place.

Denied its grant program but in possession of a wealth of new data, DPI looked for a high-tech solution to its graduation gap. In 2012, it began piloting DEWS.

At the time of its creation, DEWS was one of the most advanced predictive early warning systems in the country. Its accuracy was “on par with some of the most well regarded systems currently in use, but is done at a larger scale, across a more diverse set of school environments, [and] in earlier grades,” Knowles, the former DPI research analyst who built the system, wrote in the 2015 Journal of Educational Data Mining paper.

DPI quickly decided to expand its use of predictive analytics and in 2016 launched a sister algorithm, called the College and Career Readiness Early Warning System, which predicts whether students are “ready” or “not ready” for the ACT and college. In The Markup’s survey of Wisconsin school districts, seven out of 80 respondents said they use CCREWS in some capacity, compared with 30 districts that reported using DEWS.

In 2019, DPI piloted yet another algorithmic model based on DEWS that purported to predict which students would succeed in AP courses. Schools in 11 districts signed up for the pilot, but the project was abandoned after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

Over the past decade of the state’s experimentation with predictive algorithms, Wisconsin’s educational inequality has hardly improved.

The graduation gap between Black and white students has shrunk by only four points since 2011, from 27% to 23%. Meanwhile, the gulf between Black and white eighth graders’ reading scores in Wisconsin has been the worst of any state in the nation on every National Assessment of Educational Progress going back to 2011. It has also had the widest gap of any state between Black and white eighth graders’ math scores on every NAEP since 2009.

“The question I always ask when that data comes out is not just how bad are Black kids doing, [but] how is it that white kids are doing so well?” said Gloria Ladson-Billings, a national expert on education inequality and a retired University of Wisconsin–Madison professor. “It’s not like we don’t know how to get these kids through. The problem is they have to look like Division I athletes for us to care enough.”

Black and Hispanic students in Wisconsin told The Markup that they often feel part of a second-class school system.

Kennise Perry, a 21-year-old student at UW-Parkside, attended Milwaukee Public Schools, which are 49% Black before moving to the suburb of Waukesha, where the schools are only 6% Black. She said her childhood was difficult, her home life sometimes unstable, and her schools likely considered her a “high risk” student.

“I was the only Black kid in all of my classes. No other representation of anyone who looks like me, and my peers were extremely racist,” she said. “It was really traumatic.… I was just so angry and I didn’t know how to place my anger. I was miserable. So then, of course, the labels and stuff started. But I feel that the difference between people who make it and people who don’t are the people you have around you, like I had people who cared about me and gave me a second chance and stuff. [DEWS] listing these kids high risk and their statistics, you’re not even giving them a chance, you’re already labeling them.”

Waukesha’s school district did not respond to The Markup’s survey or request for comment. However, documents obtained through public records requests show that Waukesha North High School, which Perry attended, signed up to participate in the pilot for DPI’s algorithm designed to predict which students would succeed in AP classes.

Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s largest district, does not use DEWS or any kind of machine learning for its early warning system, spokesperson Stephen Davis wrote in an email to The Markup. Like many districts and states, it instead uses a low-tech approach that identifies students as on or off track based on whether they’ve hit certain benchmarks, such as being absent for a predefined number of days.

Last year, students at Cudahy High School created its first Black Student Union in response to racist incidents they felt the school’s administration wasn’t properly addressing.

Mia Townsend and Maurice Newton started Cudahy High School’s first Black Student Union.

“You know that [white students] already have a leg up,” said Mia Townsend, a junior and vice president of Cudahy’s Black Student Union. “You already feel that separation.… They have more opportunities and they have more leeway when it comes to certain things.”

Students in the BSU have organically provided the same kind of supportive interventions for each other that the state hoped to achieve through its predictive algorithms.

During the 2020-21 school year, 18 percent of white students in Wisconsin took AP exams compared to 5% of Black students. Townsend, an honor roll student, said she was on path to avoid AP courses until fellow junior Maurice Newton, the BSU’s president, urged her to accept the challenge. She asked to join an AP English class next year.

“They make it seem like it’s more challenging and it’s honestly the same,” Newton said. “You can pass the class with a good grade.”

In response to The Markup’s questions about DEWS, Cudahy district Superintendent Tina Owen-Moore shared an email thread in which staff members expressed that they hadn’t known about and didn’t currently use the predictions but that counselors were “excited about this resource.” After reviewing our findings, however, Owen-Moore wrote, “That certainly changes my perspective!!”

“They just handed us the data and said, ‘figure it out.’”

Many districts who responded to The Markup’s survey said they use DEWS predictions similarly to the way Brown and the staff at Bradford High School in Kenosha do — to identify which new students in their buildings may require additional attention.

In the city of Appleton’s school district, high school case managers use DEWS and other data to identify incoming first-year students in need of support and to determine special education caseloads, for example. Relying “heavily” on DEWS data, Winneconne School District sends letters to parents informing them their child may be at risk, although those letters don’t reference the algorithm.

But some schools have found other, off-label uses for the data. For example, Sara Croney, the superintendent of Maple School District, told The Markup that her staff has used DEWS’ “perceived unbiased data” to successfully apply for a staff development grant focused on reaching unengaged students. In the city of Racine, middle schools once used DEWS to select which students would be placed in a special “Violence Free Zone” program, which included sending disruptive students to a separate classroom.

The Racine School District is “not currently utilizing DEWS or CCREWS,” spokesperson Stacy Tapp wrote in an email.

Many administrators The Markup interviewed said they had received little or no training on how DEWS calculates its predictions or how to interpret them.

“They just handed us the data and said, ‘Figure it out,’” said Croney. “So our principals will analyze it and decide who are the kids in the at-risk area.”

DPI provides documentation about how DEWS works and its intended uses on its website, but much of the public-facing material leaves out a key fact about the system: that its predictions are based in part on students’ race, gender, family wealth, and other factors that schools have no control over.

For example, the department’s DEWS Action Guide makes no mention that student race, gender, or free or reduced-price lunch status are key input variables for the algorithms.

DPI’s webpage describing the data used to generate DEWS predictions lists four distinct categories of information: attendance, disciplinary record, number of districts attended in the prior year (mobility), and state test scores. It states that “demographic attributes are used,” but not which ones or how they influence the predictions.

Similarly, when educators view students’ DEWS predictions in the statewide information system, they can examine how students’ attendance, disciplinary record, mobility, and test scores affect the overall risk label, but they are not shown how students’ demographic features affect the prediction.

Shari Johnson, director of curriculum and instruction for the Richland School District, said her schools were starting to create action plans and assign staff mentors to “high risk” students with the goal of getting them out of that category, especially those at “most risk” because she said it wouldn’t be possible to mentor everyone.

However, when she spoke to The Markup, she didn’t know that characteristics such as a disability or being economically disadvantaged affected a student’s score.

“Whose responsibility is it that we know about these things? That’s my concern in this position, for me to only have found out by chance,” Johnson said. “What I do is directly correlated to DEWS and the information that’s there, and that’s scary to me.”

The disconnect between how DEWS works and how educators understand it to work isn’t news to DPI.

In 2016, researchers with the Midwest Regional Education Laboratory wrote a report for DPI that was never published, based on a survey of middle school principals’ experiences with DEWS. The report, which The Markup obtained through public records requests, concluded that respondents “desired more training and support on how to identify and monitor interventions” and that “time, money, and training on DEWS” were the top impediments to using the system.

Bradford High School Principal Brian Geiger said he remembers hearing about DEWS around the time of its launch, back when he was an assistant principal at another Kenosha school, and has used it for various purposes, including summer home visits, ever since. Now Brown, his assistant principal at Bradford, has picked up the practice. Even knowing there are flaws with DEWS, Brown said the predictions are the best data he has for incoming students.

“It’s not a 100% predictor. My perception on this is that we kind of use it as a guide,” he said, adding, “I wish we could go visit every single house of all 1,400 kids [enrolled at Bradford High School]. We don’t have a summer school budget to do that.”

Correction: A previous version of the map in this article incorrectly included Hawaii, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Michigan. The states use early warning systems, but they do not use algorithms or machine learning to predict student outcomes.

Expulsions are low in Denver, and that’s how it should be, district officials say

2023-04-14T23:24:10+00:00

Over the past decade, Denver Public Schools’ approach to discipline has swung decidedly toward keeping students in school rather than kicking them out.

Safety begins with positive relationships between staff and students and a positive school climate, the district’s discipline policy says. Bringing a gun to school is the only offense that automatically results in an expulsion hearing for a student. Even students facing serious criminal charges can stay in school as long as they are not behind bars.

Last month’s shooting of two East High School deans by a student who was being searched for weapons has placed renewed scrutiny on discipline in Colorado’s largest school district.

But so far, Denver Public Schools has held firm to its approach.

“We are a welcoming environment,” DPS Deputy Chief of Staff Deborah Staten said in an interview this week. “We really want students to be in their school environment.”

The debate now playing out in Denver — with some saying the pendulum has swung too far toward tolerance and others fearful of a return to policies that harm marginalized students — illustrates the difficulty of striking the right balance on discipline amidst rising gun violence.

“There’s just no discipline, there’s no accountability, there’s no structure,” said Heather Weldon, whose daughter is an eighth grader at McAuliffe International School, where the principal spoke out about DPS denying his request to expel a student charged with attempted murder.

“Right now, there’s no consequences, it feels like,” Weldon said.

She and other parents say there has to be a better way — some middle ground between anything-goes and zero-tolerance. The Denver principals union has called for changes too, including revisions to the district’s discipline guide and a new process for deciding on appropriate school placements for students who might harm others.

But advocates who have worked for years to keep young people out of the criminal justice system worry that the shooting at East — a high-profile school where the city’s power brokers send their children — will tip the scales back toward punitive punishment that disproportionately affects Black and Latino students.

A day after the shooting, the school board lifted its policy banning armed police on campus.

“It terrifies me,” said Elie Zwiebel, a Denver attorney who represents kids in school expulsion hearings and juvenile court — kids who he said in past decades might have been unfairly painted as violent and hardened criminals. “The ultimate problem is that everyone is buying into the myth again and forgetting that we’re talking about children.”

Denver approach to discipline keeps kids in school

On March 22, East High student Austin Lyle shot two deans who were searching him as part of a safety plan that was in place due to his past behavior. The deans survived. Lyle, who was 17, later died by suicide. He was on probation for a weapons charge, according to media reports, and had been expelled from the suburban Cherry Creek School District.

But expulsions aren’t forever. By the time Lyle transferred to East mid-year, his Cherry Creek expulsion had expired. He was living in the East boundary and that’s why he enrolled there, Staten said.

That a student with a weapons charge, who was being searched daily by school staff for guns, was able to enroll in and remain at a traditional public high school has put heightened focus on DPS’s discipline matrix. The matrix is a guide for school staff about when they should or should not call the police and when they can suspend or expel a student.

The matrix was last amended in the fall of 2021. At that time, DPS added bright red letters at the top. “You make a difference in breaking historical patterns of inequity,” it says. “Disrupt bias, fight disproportionality, and apply the discipline matrix in an anti-racist and trauma-informed manner.”

Under the matrix, the only offense that automatically results in an expulsion hearing is bringing a gun to school. Everything else, including sexual assault and selling drugs, is up to district administrators.

The number of expulsions in Denver has fallen over the past decade. In the 2011-12 school year, Denver expelled 63 students, according to state data. In 2021-22, it expelled just 21.

Compare that to Cherry Creek, a smaller district that suspended 142 students last school year.

The language and tone in the two districts’ policies could not read more differently.

Denver: “School safety and academic success are formed and strengthened when all school staff and personnel build positive relationships with students and are actively engaged in their lives and learning. … Effective discipline is built on consistent and effective classroom management, and is supported by a positive school climate.”

Cherry Creek: “The administration has the right to expect full cooperation of employees in the planning and execution of discipline and control procedures including support for removing students who persistently or flagrantly misbehave.”

Cherry Creek officials declined an interview request for this story.

Denver and Cherry Creek differ on expulsion

The districts’ differing philosophies were clear at a legislative hearing at the state Capitol on March 2, just three weeks before the East shooting. Both districts testified on a bill that would have given students more rights in expulsion hearings and made it harder to expel students for nonviolent offenses or for behavior that occurred off school property.

Denver was the only district to testify in favor. Denver Public Schools attorney Elise Logemann said during testimony that the district already does much of what the bill would have mandated, including requiring there be a “direct and substantial nexus between the student’s alleged conduct committed off school grounds and the risk of physical harm to other students or school personnel.”

Denver students and current and former staff members testified in favor too.

“Many people thought I was a bad kid and that I was a bully, but my anger was actually sadness,” said Lorenzo Gomez, a 16-year-old student at AUL Denver who told lawmakers he frequently got into fights before going to AUL, a small charter school for students who’ve struggled elsewhere.

“All kids deserve a second chance and a supportive place to go to school,” he said.

Cherry Creek joined the Harrison and Fountain-Fort Carson districts in Colorado Springs, along with the Colorado Association of School Executives, the Colorado Association of School Boards, and the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, in opposing the bill.

Cherry Creek doesn’t require a connection to school to expel a student for off-campus behavior. Sonja McKenzie, an attorney for the district, said requiring one would prevent Cherry Creek from expelling potentially dangerous students.

She gave an example she said happened this year: A Cherry Creek student shot another teenager in a park. The victim attended a neighboring school district. Under the bill, she said, there would have been no grounds to expel the shooter because the victim didn’t go to Cherry Creek.

“But you tell me, would you want your child attending that school with that child who had a gun — and maybe had that gun on school grounds and we just didn’t know it?” McKenzie said.

More people testified in support of the bill than against it. But after the East shooting, state lawmakers killed the bill and introduced a scaled-back version instead.

Students have repeatedly flooded the Colorado State Capitol this year to call for stricter gun control in response to shootings. Some Denver parents, meanwhile, are calling for changes to district discipline policies.

Educators struggle to balance safety, learning

Attorney Lindsay Brown said she’s seen Denver’s approach to discipline change over time. Ten years ago, she said DPS was more punitive. She remembers representing a student athlete with a supportive family who was expelled for bringing brass knuckles to school.

While Brown said that would still happen in many suburban districts, she has for years now felt like Denver is more likely to give students a fair hearing.

“Denver has historically been a place where you can go in and speak to the hearts and minds of teachers and administrators,” Brown said. “I’ve always felt like they were really trying to do the right thing.”

She worries that the recent violence will change that.

“I am concerned that schools are going to start to wash their hands of quote-unquote problem kids using this umbrella of, ‘Well, these things happen, so we can’t be too safe,’” she said.

Elsa Bañuelos-Lindsay has the same fears. She’s executive director of Movimiento Poder, a Denver community organization formerly known as Padres & Jóvenes Unidos that for years led the fight to reduce suspensions and expulsions in DPS and statewide. She said putting police officers back into Denver schools is a sign that DPS is going in the wrong direction.

“It’s going to harm more of our students, especially students of color,” Bañuelos-Lindsay said.

Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, is somewhere in the middle. Asked if the pendulum had swung too far toward keeping students in school, he said yes and no. If given the choice of smaller class sizes or more metal detectors because of limited funding, educators would choose the former, he said.

“We’re still trying to figure this out,” Gould said.

But attorney Igor Raykin, who also represents students in expulsion proceedings, said he thinks that after the racial justice protests of 2020, Denver and other urban districts “overcorrected and began to be tolerant of behaviors they shouldn’t be tolerant of.”

While he believes expulsion is disruptive to a student’s life and should be used sparingly, he said that needs to be balanced with keeping other students and teachers safe. Expelling a student just means they can’t go back to their current school. It doesn’t mean they can’t access an education, Raykin said, even if that’s through remote learning online.

Former DPS principal Kimberly Grayson said she moved students to remote or hybrid learning — over the objections of the district — if she felt their presence put other students at risk.

Last school year, after one of her students at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College was killed by gunfire on a weekend and police arrested another student on suspicion of the crime, Grayson said she and her staff figured out which of their classmates were involved in the rivalry.

Each was handed a computer and a message: “You’re going to finish this year out at home on your Chromebook. It’s dangerous for you to be here. For you and for everybody else here,” Grayson recently told activist and podcast host brother jeff Fard.

“The district told me I couldn’t do it,” Grayson said. “Oh yes, I am. We’re going to support them with their education. We’re going to give them a Chromebook.”

Grayson said she thinks DPS’s approach to discipline shifted too far over the years.

“They went from zero tolerance to complete tolerance,” she said in an interview. “I realize you want numbers [of suspensions and expulsions] to decrease for Black and brown kids. However, there still needs to be some consequences for some actions.”

Staten, the deputy chief of staff for DPS, said the district’s position is that a student can be in their regular public school — even if they’re facing criminal charges — as long as a judge has decided that the student can be out in the community and not behind bars.

“There are times where we may need to talk to probation to see what the terms and conditions are,” Staten said. “But if somebody in the judicial system has deemed that it’s OK for the student to be in the community, it’s OK for the student to be in a school setting.”

Superintendent Alex Marrero and Denver school board members address the media after deciding to return armed police officers to Denver high school campuses.

New plans and policies in the works

Ultimately, the responsibility for district discipline policy lies with the elected school board. But Denver board members are more hands-off now due to a new governance model that emphasizes letting the superintendent run the district’s day-to-day operations.

When school board members asked for a safety update at a recent meeting, Superintendent Alex Marrero gave little information.

“Yes, we will engage the community, and I appreciate the invitations to assist,” Marrero said. “But this is where I have to lean on the experts.”

Back in 2020, when the board voted to remove police from schools, it also directed the then-superintendent to “redefine school safety” in DPS, clarify the role law enforcement should play, and create a monthly school discipline report that would show the number of students ticketed and arrested, and the number of times police were called to schools.

But pandemic recovery and turnover in the superintendent role stymied some of that work. As of two weeks ago, a spokesman for the Denver Police Department said the department did not have an updated intergovernmental agreement with DPS, even as police return to schools. And Staten said the monthly school discipline reports were never created because of COVID.

The East shooting seems to have reignited the work. The board has directed the superintendent to develop a long-term safety plan by June 30. The district is also reviewing the discipline matrix — a review that was planned before the shooting at East, Staten said.

“Regardless of this behavioral incident at East, that was on the calendar to do this,” Staten said. “East has nothing to do with it. East has nothing to do with the overall district discipline.”

Though the board doesn’t vote on revisions to the discipline matrix, they do review it, she said. Several board members did not return messages for this story or declined to comment.

But Vice President Auon’tai Anderson, who worked as a restorative practices coordinator at a DPS high school before getting elected to the board in 2019, said he still believes that the district’s philosophy of erring toward keeping students in school is the right one.

“We’re a restorative practice district,” he said. “We’re not in the business of kicking kids out for a mistake. Because people have bad days. We can’t say you’re not worthy of an education here.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Is Colorado ready to serve English learners under new universal preschool?

2023-04-05T22:39:35+00:00

Leer en español.

Every morning, students in the Early Excellence Program in north Denver start their day with a song in Spanish and English. Story time and reading circles also happen in the two languages. Kids are encouraged, but never forced, to speak both.

These are some of the ways teachers at this highly-rated preschool try to give students a strong foundation in their home language as they prepare for school — something researchers agree is helpful for young bilingual learners.

As the state prepares to roll out universal preschool, a new taxpayer-funded program starting in the next school year that offers preschool hours for free to all 4-year-olds and some younger children, officials have given priority to children who don’t speak English at home. The state will offer those children more hours of tuition-free preschool and is promising — for the first time — that programs will need to use teaching strategies proven to help multilingual learners.

But with the launch just months away, big questions still remain about whether enough is being done to get the word out, what programming will look like, and what help providers will get to improve their offerings.

Early Excellence leader Jennifer Rodriguez-Luke says the families she works with are confused about how to apply or if they qualify. She has assigned a staff member to help them through the process, but has had limited success in getting new applicants.

So far, the only preschoolers that appear will match to her program are the ones it already serves, who they have helped walk through the application.

“For a level 5 in the heart of Denver, we were hoping to at least have 10 new students,” Rodriguez-Luke said.

She’s worried it means vulnerable families across Colorado may not be applying for universal pre-K — and may miss out on learning that has been shown to set children on the path to educational success.

Under Colorado law, 4-year-olds identified as English learners are eligible for additional hours of preschool. The additional hours — 30 instead of 15 — are dependent on state funding. The state first has to make sure it can cover the cost of some preschool for all 4-year-olds who apply. Three-year-old multilingual learners can qualify for 10 hours per week of free preschool.

English language learners are among the children who could most benefit from preschool, which is one of the reasons these students are eligible for more preschool hours.

But in the current school year, only 29 preschool students statewide are currently identified as English language learners, according to data provided by the Colorado Department of Education.

Although it’s unclear what the new system will look like this fall, creating a process to identify multilingual learners and establishing standards for how they are taught will be a benefit for students, even if it’s still a work in progress, researchers say.

“You’re trying to create a system that I don’t even know is there,” said Guadalupe Díaz Lara, assistant professor in the Department of Child and Adolescent Studies at California State University. “If we’re thinking of these investments, why don’t we do it in the way that’s the most high quality for kids?”

Number of families with multilingual learners applying is still unclear

Colorado leaders have rushed to set up new universal pre-K, which will replace a smaller state-funded preschool program for children from low-income families or who have other risk factors.

But even as applications opened in January, critical parts of the program are still not in place.

The law that created universal preschool also directs the new state department to establish quality standards that participating preschool providers will have to meet. Those will include standards on identifying, testing, and serving students who are dual language learners. But those standards haven’t been created yet.

Previously, under various state and federal programs for preschool age children, providers followed different rules for educating the youngest English learner students. Preschool, unlike K-12, has had no consistent requirements for identifying children in need of language support and no standards for how they should be taught.

The state’s new department overseeing the rollout of universal preschool has not been able to provide numbers on how many children so far enrolled for the fall checked the box indicating limited English proficiency. Officials say they are asking each provider to speak to families to verify that parents correctly checked those boxes.

A different way to screen students may be required eventually. It’s one of the requirements the law lays out for universal preschool.

When families, including those who indicate their child has limited proficiency in English, apply for universal free preschool, they can search providers and list their top choices. They can also search providers and learn which have bilingual staff or programs. The online application is available in three languages: English, Spanish, and Arabic.

The matching process will prioritize a family’s preference, regardless of whether that program has bilingual staff or programs. That means providers who have not previously been expecting to serve this population of children could end up with students enrolled identified as English learners. Depending on what standards are created, they may have further to go to meet the children’s needs.

State leaders say preschool providers will not be allowed to deny a child a spot because of language proficiency, but recognize that some won’t be prepared right away.

While much of the system is still being created, the infrastructure for English language learner students is furthest behind because research, standards, and practices have previously been limited.

Dawn Odean, the state’s universal pre-K director, said the state creating a system from nearly nothing represents opportunity.

“We do have a unique opportunity here to make more significant gains in the multilingual environment,” Odean said. She wants the department to help providers, she said, and won’t penalize them for not immediately meeting the standards.

“We can make it an act of compliance but that’s not what’s going to serve students well,” Odean said.

Instead, Odean said, the department will focus on helping all providers improve.

Families face confusion about their eligibility

Ana Paola Burrola Bustillos has two kids in Jeffco, including a 4-year-old enrolled in preschool at Foster Dual Language PK-8. She said she didn’t know the state was rolling out free universal preschool, and thinks it’s a good thing even though her daughter, who is moving on to kindergarten this fall, won’t benefit.

Burrola Bustillos said she likes Foster for her children because she believes they’ll benefit from being bilingual.

“I feel that if they can learn in both languages they’ll be better off when they’re older, in everything, in communicating with other people, in their jobs, in everyday life,” Burrola Bustillos said.

Patricia Lepiani, president of The Idea Marketing, said her group was contracted in January to market universal preschool, just days before the application opened.

Lepiani said that 25% of the $527,000 marketing budget is dedicated to reaching non-English speaking families — a larger percent than most projects would allocate, she said. In Colorado, Lepiani estimates, 21% of the state population speaks Spanish, though not all are monolingual.

The fastest thing to set up, she said, were social media ads, and later some banners that were set up at local dentist offices and shops such as the Carniceria/Mercado Los Dos Toros in Denver, the Panaderia Contreras in Denver, and Ay Wey Snack in Aurora.

The large banners say “Medio día de preescolar gratis para todos los niños de Colorado” — “Free half-day preschool for all Colorado kids” — and include a QR code and a link to the state’s preschool homepage. A smaller Spanish-language poster notes that kids who start kindergarten unprepared tend to stay behind and urges parents to “make sure your kids are ready.”

A large banner on the side of an ice cream counter at Neveria la Unica in Aurora promotes universal preschool.

The budget wasn’t enough to cover any radio or television ads, Lepiani said.

The larger campaign Idea Marketing has planned includes having community navigators and ambassadors trained to help get the word out and help families fill out the application. That part of the work launched mid-March. Among the organizations they’re partnering with are Latinos Unidos of Greeley, The Rocky Mountain Welcome Center, and Padres Adelante Family Services.

The focus is also on educating families on the importance of preschool.

“We have been doing everything we can as fast as we can, in the smallest amount of time,” Lepiani said. “The deployment of boots on the ground across the state takes a bit more time.”

Part of the work needs to be reaching out to community leaders to get the message to families about why preschool is important and about how their children can be supported, Díaz Lara said.

In California, many of the families Díaz Lara works with mistakenly think that putting their children into bilingual programs might confuse them and lead to developmental delays. But home language support can benefit students, she said, and preschool staff just need to know how to support that development.

At Early Excellence, where a staff member helps walk families through the application, some families think they won’t qualify because they think they make too much money or are already bilingual and don’t consider their children to have limited English proficiency. Some who are undocumented or have mixed immigration status are unsure if they are allowed to apply.

“It’s already scary to get on a website and give so much information,” Rodriguez-Luke said. “We just don’t want them to get lost in the system.”

So now, Rodriguez-Luke is working on also translating the school website into Spanish, hoping to put out more information, and offering an open invitation to help walk families though the application for free preschool.

From left, Ava Gabriella Garcia Seleey, 5, and Andrea Gonzalez Robles, 5, are learning names of architecture materials from teacher Rosario Ortiz at Early Excellence Program of Denver.

Researchers say teacher preparation will be key

More studies are necessary to identify the best strategies to teach multilingual preschool students, researchers say, but some things are clear.

“Being bilingual is not enough,” said Cristina Gillanders, associate professor in early childhood education at the University of Colorado Denver. “You have to have the preparation to teach these children. You have to understand bilingualism and how bilingual children learn languages.”

Some preschool providers that serve children who don’t speak English do focus primarily on having bilingual staff to help.

Joe Ziegler, education director at The Family Center/La Familia in Fort Collins, which serves a primarily Spanish-speaking population, said his program for children from six weeks old up to age 5, isn’t officially bilingual based on his curriculum, but he’s focused on hiring diverse and bilingual staff. About 50% to 70% of the young students start off only understanding Spanish.

When the program first started, he said, the school often had to rely on older siblings to help staff communicate with families. They’ve since been able to move away from that by hiring more bilingual staff, and now the focus is on making sure all staff understand inclusive best practices.

“We’re more intentional now,” Ziegler said. “There’s more of an emphasis now on understanding what a family and a child’s experience is.”

In Aurora Public Schools, preschools have long been using a test to identify how students progress in their acquisition of the English language. The district says 54% of the district’s 2,100 preschool students are English language learners.

Researchers say traditional tests used with older students are difficult to administer to 3- and 4-year-olds who may not be able to sit still long enough, use a computer, or hold a pencil.

Cynthia Cobb, the early childhood education director for the Aurora district, said the test teachers use in Aurora preschools aren’t sit-down tests. Teachers observe students in the classroom to track progress in many areas, including language skills.

“Young children are usually terrible test-takers. Their development is fluctuating all the time,” said researcher Gillanders. “In order to have a much more complete picture of the child’s development, you have to be with them for a longer period of time.”

That’s why teacher training to understand what they’re seeing in children is key.

Cobb said the Aurora district strongly believes that being able to identify and support students is a benefit. And, she said, students are more likely to eventually be proficient in English when they begin education in preschool.

While there may be changes preschool providers need to make, Cobb said it should all be for the best.

“It’s a learning process,” she said.

Ziegler knows the standards the state is likely to create for educating students like his will probably include additional training for staff, which he knows can be a good thing, but he said that accessing additional training for his staff has been a challenge.

He has partnered with the local school district to do some professional development for his teachers around supporting students who might not yet understand English. But when teachers seek out additional classes themselves, many are only offered in Denver, about a 90-minute drive away.

Other staff, who primarily speak Spanish, struggle to find classes offered in Spanish. Ziegler said his center is working with a community college to try to develop some classes for staff that can be offered in Spanish.

“In our community, I don’t really see those resources,” Ziegler said, who believes a universal pre-K program will eventually be beneficial. “But right now, it’s very stressful. We’re building the plane as we go.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago students get swimming lessons and a chance to learn life-saving skills

2023-03-27T18:32:53+00:00

About half a dozen second grade students perched on a pool ledge, feet dangling in clear water at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Boys and Girls Club on Chicago’s West Side. They giggled as they waited in swimsuits, goggles, and multi-colored swim caps for the next swimming test: flutter kicks.

With the green light from their instructor, the 7- and 8-year-olds unleashed a flurry of kicks. Squeals of joy and sloshing of water echoed inside the spacious natatorium on a mid-February morning.

Over the last year, LEARN Excel Charter in Garfield Park has partnered with the Boys and Girls Club for free, eight-week-long swim lessons for its students. The partnership helps provide enrichment opportunities and teach life-saving skills, Principal Sekou Robertson said.

“A lot of our kids can’t swim,” Robertson said. “They’re afraid of the water. It’s mostly due to access.”

For Robertson, it’s important to create opportunities that go beyond academics.

“Of course we are here for reading, math, speaking, and getting good test scores,” Robertson said. “But we also know at the end of the day life skills that our kids need and swimming is one of them.”

Drowning is the second leading cause of unintentional injury deaths for children under 17 in the U.S., with Black children dying of drowning at higher rates than white and Latino children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most drowning deaths among children between 1 and 13 years old occur in swimming pools, and in natural bodies of water such as rivers for young people ages 14 to 17, the CDC found.

In recent years, some legislators across the country and local communities have pushed to make swimming lessons more accessible.

A LEARN Excel Charter student jumps into a pool at Martin Luther King Jr. Boys and Girls Club, 2950 W Washington Blvd., Chicago. The Boys and Girls Club partnered with the school to offer free swim lessons for its students.

Since LEARN Excel Charter started piloting the swimming program in spring 2022, the lessons have been a big hit with students. The school and the Boys and Girls Club partnership has expanded to allow three sessions in the fall, winter, and spring.

On the February morning, second grader Supriti Collins was eager to get back in the pool. It was her third round of swim lessons since the charter school partnered with the Boys and Girls club last spring.

“They teach us paddling,” said the 7-year-old, who wore a bathing suit decorated with palm tree silhouettes and a red swim cap . “I love paddling.”

A push to teach life-saving skills in school

“We’re going to go over some pool rules,” Andrea Lopez, aquatics coordinator, said during the lessons last month. “Can you raise your hand and give me one pool rule?”

All 13 students’ hands shot up, ready to share.

“No running,” one student said.

“Don’t go in the deep end,” said another.

“No diving on the shallow end,” a third added.

LEARN Excel Charter student raise their hands to share pool safety rules at Martin Luther King Jr. Boys and Girls Club in Garfield Park.

The instructors take two students at a time to test their skills after running through the full list of pool rules.

Cynthia Bedolla, aquatics director at the Boys and Girls Club, said the organization has been focused on providing free swim lessons and other water safety and awareness programs for the community, especially with warmer weather around the corner.

The Club aims to provide customizable aquatic programs that fit the needs of the kids, Bedolla said.

Students are evaluated on the first day and put into two separate groups based on their skillset and lessons, Bedolla said.

They are assessed — two by two — on a few skills including blowing bubbles, floating on their back, and paddling.

Andrea Lopez, aquatics coordinator, tests two LEARN Excel students at a West Side Boys and Girls Club on whether they can blow bubbles.

Tia Wilson, the Excel teacher who helps coordinate the swimming program, said the school is committed to giving their students experiences.

“Our kids don’t necessarily get to do this all the time,” Wilson said. “We look for opportunities where we can allow our kids to have these types of experiences.”

Wilson said these lessons are also a motivator, something students look forward to.

“They love it,” Wilson said. “It builds their confidence. Each time they get better and better.”

In the pool in February, Tyler Nelson hesitated as he leaned back attempting to float. With the help of the instructor, the 8-year-old relaxed and stretched his arm as if lying on a bed.

He smiled.

He’s been coming since the first session last spring. His favorite things about the lessons are getting to learn how to swim and chatting with his friends.

He hopes to get better at swimming with this latest round.

His ultimate goal: Master the deep end.

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

Complex community needs and a divided board: Next Aurora superintendent must tackle big challenges

2023-03-24T22:11:59+00:00

A divided board. A mistrustful public. Lagging academic achievement. Rising youth violence.

The Aurora school board is searching for a new superintendent, who will face these issues and more.

“It’s the superintendent who sets that tone and builds that team and drives that momentum,” said Aurora school board President Debbie Gerkin. “So what’s at stake is whether we get a leader who can do that or one who can’t.”

Aurora’s next superintendent will be the district’s first new leader in nearly a decade. That person will have to navigate a feuding board, restore trust with the community, and get buy-in for their vision. At the same time, the ideal candidate would figure out how to meet the needs of a diverse student body, improve mental health services and academic performance, and find a fair way to deal with school closures and shifting enrollment.

A look at recent years shows how challenging the job is. Superintendent Rico Munn abruptly announced in December that he’d leave at the end of the school year, and stepped into the background while the board named an interim leader.

Board members declined to speak on reasons for Munn’s departure and about whether they want a change in course for his long-term projects. Recent disagreements in public meetings included anger over school closures and a lack of trust in efforts to engage the community.

School board members are interviewing six unnamed semi-finalists from among 28 applicants and are expected to announce three finalists as soon as next week.

The search profile describes an ideal candidate as having a background in education, something that the previous superintendent didn’t have, and a track record working with diverse communities and in a large school district.

An immediate challenge would be navigating dynamics of a divided board, which could change in the fall, when three of seven members are up for election.

A divided board splits on priorities

How the school board relates to its next superintendent will affect how much trust people feel in the district.

For a superintendent to be effective, they need clear guidance from the board. But the school board has struggled to agree on how the superintendent should manage the district.

A report on the community’s views of the district named board governance as one of the district’s main challenges.

“Comments included that the Board does not appear to understand their role and the governance model, can be ineffective in their communication, unfocused, and have appeared divisive and not aligned on priorities resulting in the appearance to work against each other and district leadership,” the report presented earlier this month said.

Board members have not contradicted the finding. In an interview, Gerkin said that it didn’t come as a shock.

“It is hard to see it in writing of course, but not a surprise,” she said.

She said that the board is committed to addressing their challenges and is united in understanding the importance of selecting the next superintendent.

“We’re seven different individuals, and every one of us is passionate about kids and passionate about education,” she said. “Different people with different ideas and lots of passion don’t always agree on how to put that together.”

Linnea Reed-Ellis, president of the teachers union, said she thought “productive disagreement” among the board members was OK. The board majority often has voiced similar criticisms of the district to those of the union, particularly in discussions about the facilities plan Blueprint APS and certain pandemic-era measures.

The report also mentioned a lack of trust across the organization, which search firm associate Scott Siegfried speculated was driven by issues with the Blueprint APS.

Reed-Ellis framed the issue as “a lack of clarity in vision as to what we are pursuing as a district.”

Whether or not the district’s next leader and the board want to change course, they still will face the same issue of changing enrollment patterns.

Aurora enrollment has fallen as families flee the western parts of the district closest to Denver, where rents and home values are rising faster than family incomes, and as lower birth rates contribute to fewer students. However, new developments out east are attracting more families with children. The demographics of the two sides differ. Munn wanted to make changes equitable, to avoid putting the new schools only in the east and closing campuses only in the west.

Gerkin said that ensuring that the Blueprint changes are implemented transparently and equitably will be a critical task for the new superintendent.

“We definitely don’t want the east side of town to be all new and shiny and older parts of the district to just look old and uninviting,” she said. “It depends on what the buildings look like, what kind of resources you’re putting into the buildings, all those things are important for the next superintendent to be working on.”

Aurora Public Schools opened a college and career center at every high school in the district, including this one at William Smith High School.

Achievement has risen in Aurora

Munn’s administration boosted student achievement. Graduation rates rose, expulsions dropped, and the gap in graduation rates of students of color and their white peers narrowed. Together, those gains lifted Aurora off the state’s watchlist for low performance.

Still, some schools have struggled to raise academic achievement. Student engagement plummeted when the pandemic forced students to learn remotely. And now, academic achievement at those schools still lags.

That worries Mordecai Brownlee, president of the Community College of Aurora and a parent in the school district.

To boost opportunities for Aurora graduates, the community college partners with Aurora schools on concurrent enrollment — where students earn college credit for classes taken in high school — and plans for a new program in construction management on the college’s CentreTech campus.

“You’ve certainly got to look at the amount of students who are failing to achieve a credential of higher education once they leave APS,” Brownlee said. “We owe it to this community to figure that out together.”

The school board set goals to close achievement gaps and accelerate learning but set them aside two years ago to focus on the emotional and social needs of children.

Munn worried that would hurt school ratings once the state’s accountability system returned in full force. In Colorado’s system, schools that have five years of low ratings face state-mandated improvement plans that could include closure. This past year’s ratings were meant to only give the public an indication of where academics stand and don’t move schools closer to outside intervention. But if Aurora schools score similarly this year, many more may be on a path toward state intervention.

For schools with multiple years of low ratings, Munn’s approach was to create district plans to turn them around before the state stepped in. He succeeded in preempting state-ordered plans. That approach is one of many things that may change with new district leadership.

Reed-Ellis said she hopes that the new superintendent will be willing to see students “holistically” and investigate other ways to measure learning and growth besides standardized testing.

“We all know our students are more than a test score,” she said.

Aurora’s diversity is a strength and a challenge

The superintendent search firm’s community surveys and forums found that people view the diversity of the Aurora school community as special and a challenge. The district struggles at times to meet the needs of all of its students and to retain a workforce that is reflective of its student body.

According to the district’s website, the district’s 38,000-plus students come from over 130 countries and speak more than 160 languages. About 56% of students are Hispanic, 18% are Black, 13.4% are white, and 5% are Asian. Nearly 75% of the district’s students qualify for subsidized meals, an indicator of poverty.

“We need a good leader in our school because schools often serve as anchors for the community and often serve as safe spaces for immigrants and refugee youth,” said Harry Budisidharta, executive director of Aurora’s Asian Pacific Development Center.

“We need a leader that has experience working with diverse communities and has a track record of building bridges.”

Aurora Mayor Mike Coffman said he hopes the district continues its after-school programs, supported by a 2018 voter-approved tax increase. They are a great place for kids when parents are working late, he said, and the city needs to offer students safe spaces. These programs also offer physical activities and help students with academics and social and emotional needs.

“Here you have essentially working families that are relatively poor and to relieve them of essentially a lot of day care costs and in a great environment for the kids, we couldn’t replicate that as a city, yet it’s something we’re trying to do,” Coffman said.

Community members overwhelmingly said APS needs someone who has a record of addressing the needs of a diverse student body, including breaking barriers for non-English speaking students and their families.

“We’re quick to talk about diversity, how diversity-rich Aurora is, but that also comes with responsibility,” said Brownlee of the Community College of Aurora. “We can’t just dwell here; we’ve got to take care of and create these pathways for economic mobility for these families. The American dream has to be realized, and education is critical in that.”

Students in an Aurora elementary school work on massaging pressure points in their hands that help relieve tension. Many Aurora leaders want the next superintendent to focus on mental health support.

Student needs include mental health alongside academics

Several people said the next superintendent must ensure the district cares for its diverse community — including its mental health.

Students in Aurora are dealing with a lot. Teachers report that many are disengaged after frequent pandemic-related school disruptions. Some are juggling jobs and caring for siblings or have lost housing due to rising rents.

In 2021 two shootings outside high schools injured nine students and renewed conversations about gun violence and youth gang activity. More recent shootings haven’t occurred on school property, but community violence continues to affect students.

In focus groups with high school students, the search firm found that two main issues were violence and drugs in schools. Some students don’t feel safe walking to school and have called for better transportation options.

Aurora’s school district added mental health supports for students and staff and budgeted millions of dollars in federal pandemic relief funding for social and emotional learning programs designed to boost students’ well-being.

Reed-Ellis said that she believes continuing to provide these types of support — for employees as well as students — is paramount.

“How do we create schools that are truly responsive to our new world?” she said. “A lot of that seems to be around mental health and social emotional learning for students and adults.”

Budisidharta agrees that youth mental health is one of the area’s most pressing issues.

“We need a leader that will champion and prioritize mental health services and work with local community partners to make sure these youth get the mental health services they need regardless of their ethnicity or immigration status or income,” he said.

None of this will be easy, but the right superintendent candidate will see more than challenges, community leaders said.

“You don’t see problems, you see opportunities,” Brownlee said. “For someone that’s looking at this opportunity, it needs to be purpose work. It needs to be why you’ve been put here to do this work.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Carina Julig is a reporter for Sentinel Colorado covering education in Aurora. Contact Carina at cjulig@sentinelcolorado.com.

One of Denver’s innovation zones could be dissolved, while another is shrinking

2023-03-16T22:53:07+00:00

Innovation zones are an invention of Denver’s education reform era that grant traditional public schools some of the same flexibility and freedom enjoyed by charter schools.

A new Denver Public Schools board and administration is less supportive of these experiments in school autonomy, and the future of some zones is in doubt.

Superintendent Alex Marrero is recommending the school board dissolve one of the zones, Beacon Network Schools, and delay approval for the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone, or NDIZ, until district officials can be sure its plan aligns with district policy.

Meanwhile, NDIZ is losing its largest school, Northfield High, after teachers there overwhelmingly rejected an innovation plan they feared threatened their contract rights and then voted Thursday to leave the zone. Northfield is the third school to leave the zone in two years.

Innovation zones are groups of semi-autonomous schools known as innovation schools. The idea behind innovation schools is that freeing them from rules, laws, and teachers union contract provisions allows them to do things they believe will help student learning.

For example, one school extends each school day by seven minutes, which lets it hold extra teacher training days while still giving students the legally required amount of instruction. Others hire non-licensed teachers for gardening classes or after-school Spanish programs. Many innovation schools start hiring teachers before the district’s hiring cycle, giving them first pick.

The idea behind innovation zones is that freeing schools from district management allows for more tailored support for principals and for idea-sharing among like minded schools.

Denver Public Schools has three innovation zones. The oldest, the Luminary Learning Network founded in 2016, appears to be going strong. But the other two face challenges.

The challenges come after a difficult three years for innovation zones, which a former school board member once called “one of the most exciting things we’ve done.”

A union-backed school board paused approving new innovation schools and expanding zones, then imposed limits on freedoms that innovation school leaders said made their schools work for students. School board members said their aim was to expand job protections for teachers who previously waived them to work at innovation schools.

Innovation zones account for 12 schools and 7,200 students, a small portion of Denver’s 88,000 students. But observers say the recent challenges are yet another sign that political winds have shifted in DPS, which was once known nationwide as a model of education reform.

“I would call it adversarial,” Eliot Lewis, chair of the Beacon Network Schools zone board of directors and a former Beacon parent, said of the new administration’s relationship to zones. “For reasons we can’t fathom, they’re against it.”

Who works for whom?

In November, Alex Magaña, executive director of the Beacon Network Schools zone, said he met with Marrero to talk about adding another school to the zone — a request the school board had rejected the year before.

Magaña said Marrero told him he wouldn’t support the Beacon zone at all because of its current employment structure. Magaña and Lewis said district officials gave them two choices: Dissolve the Beacon zone and revert Magaña to district supervision, or have Magaña resign as a district employee to work for the zone, a move that could reduce his pension benefits.

“I was dumbfounded,” Magaña said.

Unlike the two other innovation zones, where the executive directors work for the zones, Magaña is a district employee and the zone reimburses the district for his salary.

Beacon’s structure goes back to the zone’s origins, when Magaña moved from being the principal at Grant Middle School, where test scores were improving, to oversee both Grant and struggling Kepner Middle School. In 2018, when the two schools became a new innovation zone, then-Superintendent Tom Boasberg allowed Magaña to remain a district employee.

But a DPS memo says this arrangement doesn’t allow for proper oversight and “is no longer supported by DPS.”

“Before, you were supported by DPS,” Magaña said. “Now you’re fighting DPS.”

Alex Magaña, executive director of Beacon Network Schools, greets students in Ms. Bienz’s class at Kepner Beacon Middle School in March 2022.

District cites test score concerns

DPS reviews innovation zones every three years. Zones must submit a new innovation plan outlining their structures and goals. Under state law, the school board has options including to approve the plan, revise it in collaboration with the zone, or revoke the zone altogether.

Marrero is recommending the board revoke the Beacon zone at its March 23 meeting. The reasons, as explained at a board meeting last week, are that Kepner Beacon’s test scores are low and that DPS has concerns with the zone’s organizational health, including the employment structure and an accounting issue that’s now been fixed.

Zone supporters wonder if there’s another reason. Magaña testified in support of a bill — opposed by Marrero — that gave innovation zones a limited right of appeal when leaders disagree with school board decisions. The bill is now law.

Shortly after the testimony, Denver Public Schools sent a letter to principals prohibiting them from advocating for proposed state laws during work time if their opinion differs from the district’s position, as was the case with the innovation zone bill.

“I do not have any concrete evidence that this is personal,” said Lewis, chair of the Beacon zone board, “but it sure feels like it is.”

In a statement, Marrero said his recommendation has nothing to do with the innovation zone bill. He recommended unconditional renewal for the Luminary Learning Network, whose executive director and principals also testified in favor of the bill.

District officials pointed to Kepner Beacon’s test scores. Only 21% of students met expectations in reading and writing on state tests last spring, while just 6% met expectations in math.

Seven Denver middle schools scored lower than Kepner Beacon in math. Marrero pointed out that four of them will close at the end of this school year, including STRIVE Prep - Kepner, a charter school that shares the building.

Marrero isn’t recommending Kepner Beacon be closed, but both zone supporters and board members questioned how dissolving the zone would raise test scores.

“If the zone goes away, how does that address the academic outcomes of the students on campus?” board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson asked at the meeting.

“It brings it over to my administration and the resources and expertise we can trust,” Marrero said. Zones, he added, have “blind spots.” Bringing the Beacon schools back under district control allows for “a line of sight” and “the entire organization” behind those schools, he said.

Northfield High School, as pictured in a photo from April 2021.

Northfield teachers cite confusion, vote to leave

Marrero is recommending delaying approval of the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone plan until later this spring. District staff said new plans for the four schools within NDIZ — Northfield High, McAuliffe International, McAuliffe Manual, and Swigert International — contain provisions that conflict with new school board policies.

By the time that’s sorted out, the zone will have just three schools.

On Thursday, Northfield teachers voted to leave the zone. According to multiple sources, including an email from a Northfield administrator, only 27% of educators voted to stay in the zone. Teachers had requested the vote. Marrero said he got a petition signed by more than 70 Northfield educators who wrote, “We feel held hostage to the NDIZ.”

Teachers at two elementary schools, Willow and Montclair, voted to leave NDIZ in 2021.

Northfield will remain an innovation school. But it needs a new innovation plan. Earlier this month, Northfield educators overwhelmingly rejected a proposed plan because it contained wording they feared undermined union contract rights now protected by board policy.

NDIZ Executive Director Colleen O’Brien acknowledged that language in the plan that was meant to provide clarity about next steps instead caused confusion, which O’Brien said “unfortunately leads to distrust.”

An email from a Northfield administrator obtained by Chalkbeat says educators now have 10 working days to review a new, non-zone innovation plan for next year before another vote.

“We fully commit to working with educators to ensure that our revised plans reflect the desires of the Northfield community,” Northfield Principal Resident Jessica Rodriguez Bracey wrote.

In a written statement after the vote, O’Brien and NDIZ board members said they respected the Northfield teachers’ decision, and they would work to make the transition as smooth as possible. There would be no immediate changes, but Northfield’s departure could affect the zone’s budget and programming next year.

O’Brien said the smaller zone will still be financially viable, and zone leaders are working with the district to align the remaining schools’ plans with board policy.

“My north star is, what do the educators and community want for children?” O’Brien said. “NDIZ schools are doing their very best to make a really coherent plan for our dreams for our kids.”

Political shift contributes to challenges

Mary Seawell, a former school board president and fierce zone supporter, said all of this — the possible revocation of the Beacon zone, the confusion in NDIZ — feels like evidence of a shift.

She said it seems as though the current board and superintendent don’t understand the purpose of innovation, which she said is to empower educators to design schools that best serve their students. With the exception of Northfield, teachers at the other 11 zone schools voted overwhelmingly to support their school and zone plans.

“I feel worried that we actually have this pretty unique and special set of schools in DPS where the educators are really managing themselves, they are really empowered to figure out the best way to serve their students, and it’s discouraging that no one will take a deep breath and pause and say, ‘Why do teachers want to stay in these schools?’” said Seawell, who is president of Lyra Colorado, which helps innovation zones get outside funding.

Van Schoales, an education policy expert who favors innovation, said he’d describe the shift as going “very much back to a traditional model of one-size-fits-all with the same schedule and the same programming and everybody reporting back up to the superintendent.”

“It’s of no surprise to me that the district is trying to claw back power and control from schools that they think they can,” Schoales said.

Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, sees it differently. He said the school board’s recent policies have strengthened innovation because teachers know they’re not giving away key contract rights when they approve the plans. Even though DPS only has three innovation zones, about a quarter of its schools are innovation schools.

“In the past, it was a top-down creation,” Gould said. “And now it is a bit more bottom-up.”

Anne Rowe, another former school board president who now sits on the NDIZ board, said she wonders to what end. “It does feel like a shift to a new direction,” she said. But she said it’s unclear to her “what the end goal from the district is.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Tutoring help reaches few students despite nationwide push

2023-03-10T11:30:00+00:00

This story is a collaboration with the Associated Press.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

David Daniel knows his son needs help.

The 8-year-old spent first grade in remote learning and several weeks of second grade in quarantine. The best way to catch him up, research suggests, is to tutor him several times a week during school.

But his Indianapolis school offers Saturday or after-school tutoring — programs that don’t work for Daniel, a single father. The upshot is his son, now in third grade, isn’t getting the tutoring he needs.

“I want him to have the help,” Daniel said. Without it, “next year is going to be really hard on him.”

As America’s schools confront dramatic learning setbacks caused by the pandemic, experts have held up intensive tutoring as the single best antidote. Yet even as schools wield billions of dollars in federal COVID relief, only a small fraction of students have received school tutoring, according to a survey of the nation’s largest districts by Chalkbeat and The Associated Press.

In eight of 12 school systems that provided data, less than 10% of students received any type of district tutoring this fall.

A new tutoring corps in Chicago has served about 3% of students, officials said. The figure was less than 1% in three districts: Georgia’s Gwinnett County, Florida’s Miami-Dade County, and Philadelphia, where the district reported only about 800 students were tutored. In those three systems alone, there were more than 600,000 students who spent no time in a district tutoring program this fall.

The startlingly low tutoring figures point to several problems. Some parents said they didn’t know tutoring was available or didn’t think their children needed it. Some school systems have struggled to hire tutors. Other school systems said the small tutoring programs were intentional, part of an effort to focus on students with the greatest needs.

Whatever the reason, the impact is clear: At a crucial time for students’ recovery, millions of children have not received the academic equivalent of powerful medication.

“It works, it’s effective, it gets students to improve in their learning and catch up,” said Amie Rapaport, a University of Southern California researcher who has analyzed students’ access to intensive tutoring. “So why isn’t it reaching them?”

The Indianapolis school district last year launched two tutoring programs that connect students with certified teachers over video. One is available to all students after school, while the other is offered during the day at certain low-performing schools.

District officials say a trial run boosted student test scores. Parents give it high marks.

“The progress that he made in just a couple months last semester working with his tutor was kind of far beyond what he was grasping and doing at school,” said Jessica Blalack, whose 7-year-old, Phoenix, opted in to after-school tutoring.

Jessica Blalack watches as her son Phoenix, 7, works with a tutor on his laptop in his Indianapolis home.

Still, the two programs combined served only about 3,200 students last fall, or roughly 17% of students in district-run schools. Two additional tutoring programs operate at a handful of schools.

Only 35% of the students who registered for after-school tutoring last fall attended more than one session, according to district data.

Indianapolis Public Schools spokesperson Marc Ransford said the district is working to improve attendance and hopes to enroll more students in tutoring next school year. It’s also trying to accelerate student learning in other ways, including with a new curriculum and summer school.

Shaan Akbar, co-founder of the firm Tutored by Teachers, which runs the video tutoring programs, said his team is focused on maintaining quality.

“Trying to shoot for scale quickly is a recipe for disaster,” he said.

Nationwide, schools report that about 10% of students are receiving “high-dosage” tutoring multiple days a week, according to a federal survey from December. The real number could be even lower: Just 2% of U.S. households say their children are getting that kind of intensive tutoring, according to the USC analysis of a different nationally representative survey.

Schools trying to ramp up tutoring have run into roadblocks, including staffing and scheduling. Experts say tutoring is most effective when provided three times a week for at least 30 minutes during school hours. Offering after-school or weekend tutoring is simpler, but turnout is often low.

Harrison Tran, a 10th grader in Savannah, Georgia, struggled to make sense of algebra during remote learning. Last year, his high school offered after-school help. But that wasn’t feasible for Harrison, who lives 30 minutes from school and couldn’t afford to miss his ride home.

Without tutoring help, he started this school year with gaps in his learning.

“When I got into my Algebra II class, I was entirely lost,” he said.

Relatively low family interest has been another challenge. Though test scores plunged during the pandemic, many parents do not believe their children experienced learning loss, or simply are unaware. The disconnect makes it more important to offer tutoring during school, experts say.

“Parents just aren’t as concerned as we need them to be,” said USC education professor Morgan Polikoff, “if we’re going to have to rely on parents opting their kids into interventions.”

Even when students want the help, some have been let down.

In Maryland’s Montgomery County, 12th-grader Talia Bradley recently sought calculus help from a virtual tutoring company hired by the district. But the problem she was struggling with also stumped the tutor. After an hour trying to sort it out, Talia walked away frustrated.

“My daughter was no farther along,” said Leah Bradley, her mother. “Having an option for online tutoring makes sense, but it can’t be the primary option if you’re looking for good results.”

Repeated in-person tutoring tends to be more effective than on-demand online help, but it’s also harder to manage. District rules add complexity, with safeguards like tutor background checks and vendor bidding rules slowing the process.

In Wake County, North Carolina, the school district began planning a reading tutoring program last summer. The program did not launch until November, and district officials said last month that volunteers are tutoring fewer than 140 students — far fewer than the 1,000 students the program was designed to reach.

“We’re always looking to serve more students,” said Amy Mattingly, director of K-12 programs at Helps Education Fund, the nonprofit managing that program and another serving about 400 students. But, she added, it’s important to “see what’s working and make tweaks before trying to scale up and serve everyone.”

Sixteen states have established their own tutoring programs using a collective $470 million in federal COVID aid, according to an analysis by the Council of Chief State School Officers. But even those statewide programs have reached a limited number of students.

Ohio awarded $14 million in grants to more than 30 colleges and universities to provide tutoring in local schools. They served just 2,000 students statewide last fall, according to a state spokesperson, who said the goal is to eventually reach 10,000 students.

Some districts defended their participation numbers, saying tutoring is most effective when well targeted.

In Georgia’s Fulton County, 3% of the district’s 90,000 students participated in tutoring programs this fall. Most of the tutoring was offered by paraprofessionals during the school day, with one hired to give intense support in each elementary school.

The district says time and staffing limits how many students can get frequent, intensive tutoring.

“We don’t want to water it down, because then you don’t get the impact that the research says is beneficial for kids,” said Cliff Jones, chief academic officer for the system.

Others worry too few are getting the help they need even as programs continue to grow.

This school year, about 3,500 students are getting reading tutoring from the North Carolina Education Corps. Meanwhile, in fourth grade alone, more than 41,000 students statewide scored in the bottom level on a national reading test last year.

“Who we are serving,” said Laura Bilbro-Berry, the program’s senior director, “is just a drop in the bucket.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Collin Binkley is an education reporter for the Associated Press.

Teacher turnover hits new highs across the U.S.

2023-03-06T10:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing.

The data is in: More teachers than usual exited the classroom after last school year, confirming longstanding fears that pandemic-era stresses would prompt an outflow of educators. That’s according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from eight states — the most comprehensive accounting of recent teacher turnover to date.

In Washington state, more teachers left the classroom after last school year than at any point in the last three decades. Maryland and Louisiana saw more teachers depart than any time in the last decade. And North Carolina saw a particularly alarming trend of more teachers leaving mid-school year.

The turnover increases were not massive. But they were meaningful, and the churn could affect schools’ ability to help students make up for learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. This data also suggests that spiking stress levels, student behavior challenges, and a harsh political spotlight have all taken their toll on many American teachers.

“Education had changed so dramatically since COVID. The issues were getting bigger and bigger,” said Rebecca Rojano, who last year left a job teaching high school Spanish in Connecticut. “I just found myself struggling to keep up.”

Across eight states, more teachers left the classroom after last school year

Since the pandemic threw U.S. schools into disarray, many educators and experts warned that more teachers would flee the profession. But in 2020, turnover dipped in many places as the economy stalled, then in 2021 it ticked back up to normal or slightly above-average levels.

As this school year began, widespread reports of teacher shortages suggested that turnover had jumped more significantly.

Data was hard to come by, though. The federal government doesn’t regularly track teacher quit rates. Many states don’t either, with education officials in California, New Mexico, Ohio, and Pennsylvania saying that they don’t know how many teachers leave each year.

But Chalkbeat was able to obtain the latest teacher turnover numbers from eight states: Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Washington. These figures encompassed turnover between the 2021-22 year and this school year.

In all cases, turnover was at its highest point in at least five years — typically around 2 percentage points greater than before the pandemic. That implies that in a school with 50 teachers, one more than usual left after last school year.

“I am struck by just how consistent these patterns are looking at all of these different states,” said Melissa Diliberti, a researcher at RAND, which has monitored teacher attrition during the pandemic.

In Louisiana, for instance, nearly 7,000 teachers exited the classroom last school year, or about 1,000 more than usual. That’s a turnover rate of 14%, up from between 11% and 12% in a typical pre-pandemic year.

There was variation among the eight states. Mississippi’s teacher workforce was the most stable: Turnover was 13% this year, only slightly higher than the two years before the pandemic. North Carolina saw the largest spike: 16% of teachers left after last year, compared to less than 12% in the three years before the pandemic.

For Kimberly Biondi, who taught high school English for 21 years in a district outside Charlotte, her reasons for leaving were wrapped up in the politics of education. She advocated for remote instruction as well as in-school safety rules, such as masking, but faced personal criticism from a local group opposed to these measures, she said. Biondi was also worried that politics could eventually limit what she taught.

“I taught AP language where we were supposed to teach very controversial work. I taught Malcolm X. I taught all sorts of philosophers and speakers,” she said. “I could only imagine how I would be targeted for continuing to teach this.”

Other former teachers cited growing workloads and more difficulty managing student behavior.

Rojano said that student engagement plummeted as students returned to class in fall 2021, some for the first time in over a year. “A lot of these students are really hurting and suffering with intense emotional problems and high needs,” she said. “The needs just grew after the pandemic — I noticed a lot more emotional outbursts.”

It didn’t help, she said, that her class sizes were large, ranging from 25 to 30 students, making it hard to form close relationships with students. Plus, the school was short staffed and had many absences, forcing Rojano to constantly cover other teachers’ classes, losing her planning time.

She left in the middle of the last school year, something she never imagined doing because it was so disruptive for the school and her students. “It got so bad,” she said. “I was very overwhelmed and stressed. I was anxious and tired all the time.” Rojano ended up taking a job at an insurance company, where she is able to work remotely when she wants.

State reports hint that rising frustration has pushed more teachers out of the classroom. In Louisiana, the number of teachers who resigned due to dissatisfaction increased. In Hawaii, more teachers than usual identified their work environment as the reason for leaving. (In both states, personal reasons or retirement were still far more common explanations.)

While the eight states where Chalkbeat obtained data may not be representative of the country as a whole, there are signs that higher attrition was widespread. In a recent nationally representative survey from RAND, school district leaders reported a 4 percentage point increase in teacher turnover. Data from a handful of districts show a similar trend. For instance, turnover among licensed staff, including teachers, spiked from 9% to 12% in Clark County, Nevada, the country’s fifth-largest district. In Austin, Texas, turnover jumped from 17% to 24%.

Other school staff appear to be leaving at higher rates, too.

Hawaii experienced a jump in aides and service staff who exited public schools. North Carolina saw over 17% of principals depart last school year, compared to an average of 13% in the three years before the pandemic. The RAND survey also found a sharp increase in principals leaving.

Why rising teacher turnover is concerning

A degree of staff turnover in schools is considered healthy. Some new teachers realize the profession just isn’t for them. Others take different jobs in public education, becoming, say, an assistant principal. But in general, research has found that teacher churn harms student learning — students lose relationships with trusted educators, inexperienced teachers are brought on as replacements, and in some cases classrooms are left with only long-term substitutes.

“Teacher attrition can be destabilizing for schools,” said Kevin Bastian, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, where he calculated the state’s turnover rate.

He found that effective teachers were particularly likely to leave the state’s public schools last year. Mid-year turnover, which is especially disruptive, increased from under 4% in prior years to over 6% in the 2021-22 school year in North Carolina. The state also ended up hiring fewer teachers for this school year than it lost, suggesting that some positions were eliminated or left vacant.

Biondi is now seeing the effects on her own children, who attend school in the district where she taught. “My daughter lost her math teacher in December,” she said. “They don’t have a replacement teacher — she’s struggling very much in math.”

This year, schools may have been in a particularly fraught position. Teachers appear to be leaving at higher rates, and there’s been a longer-standing decline in people training to become teachers. At the same time, schools may have wanted to hire more teachers than usual because they remain flush with COVID relief money and want to address learning loss. That’s a recipe for a shortage.

Typically, shortages hit high-poverty schools the hardest. They also tend to be more severe in certain areas including special education, math, and science.

Benjamin Mosley, principal of Glenmount Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore, has been buffeted by these pressures. He’s had multiple teachers leave in the middle of this year, and has not been able to replace them or some others who left at the end of last year.

On a recent visit to the school, students in a math class listened to a teacher based in Florida teach a lesson virtually; the class was supervised by an intervention teacher who was originally meant to provide small group tutoring. A social studies class, whose teacher had recently resigned, was being overseen by a staff member who had been hired to serve as a student mentor.

Mosley is still actively trying to find teachers, and is now considering candidates whom he might have passed over in years past.

“We can put a man on the moon, but yet we can’t find teachers,” he said.

Matt Barnum is a Spencer fellow in education journalism at Columbia University and a national reporter at Chalkbeat covering education policy, politics, and research.

Meet 10 inspiring educators from Chalkbeat’s 2022 coverage

2022-12-28T14:55:00+00:00

Over the past year, Chalkbeat has shared stories from dozens of teachers, principals, and educators sharing what motivates them and what it’s like to be an educator in America today.

One teacher pushes her students not to despair, but to act in the face of climate change. Another discussed the importance of showing up to school after a student’s death. And a principal talked about what it was like to inspire former students to become teachers — she recruited four of them to work at her school.

These are just a few of the thousands of educators making a difference in U.S. schools. After you’ve met these 10, we invite you to read more from our pages.

She shows students how to fight climate change locally

New York City teacher Sarah Slack’s award-winning career as a science educator began with a desire to share accurate information about the world with students, such as the fact that Pluto has not, thus far, exploded.

Over 14 years in middle school classrooms, Slack has learned to draw on students’ passion for their communities. To teach about the climate crisis, she shows students that they don’t have to save the whole world right away. They can begin by working to save their neighborhoods.

She helps her students gain media literacy

Tara Cocanower wants her world studies students to have a diverse diet of news media and cite evidence for their opinions about current events. And she wants all of it discussed in a respectful way.

The 2023 Indiana Teacher of the Year, whose approach to teaching is inspired by her grandmother Phyllis’ emphasis on humility, is also a voracious reader whose historical interests stretch from ancient Egypt to World War I. And she doesn’t want her lessons to be confined to her classroom walls.

“I love hearing that what I’m teaching overflows from the classroom to the dinner tables, couches, and patios of my students,” she said.

A principal’s ex-students can’t stay away

Marla Travis, the principal of West Philadelphia High School, calls four of her teachers “my children.” They’re not literally her offspring, but she’s got a good reason for using that phrase: Jean-Claude Forte, Yaseemah Foster, Robert Green, and Brittney Smith all used to be students of hers at a different Philadelphia high school.

While they took different paths into the teaching profession, all four talked about Travis’ influence and what it’s like to work for her now. And two of them said they are studying to become principals one day.

He fell in love with teaching while incarcerated

Ryan M. Moser was less than thrilled he entered the Florida Department of Corrections and a classification officer assigned him the role of teaching assistant. But he became dedicated to the work, helped fellow inmates earn their GEDs, and learned to become a mentor in the process.

Moser, who says he “hated school” as a student, also learned about prison bureaucracies and the inequities he and his peers faced. Eventually, his cynicism transformed into pride in his students’ curiosity and successes.

She wants more students to read Native authors

When it comes to depictions of Indigenous peoples and nations that today’s adults might remember fondly from childhood books, Dr. Debbie Reese has some basic advice: Let go of them.

Reese has written extensively about the harm that such stereotypical presentations — from “Little House on the Prairie” to university mascots — can do. She’s also advocated for students and teachers to read more books by Native authors.

He inspires students of color to new heights

Colorado science teacher Eddie Taylor came to teaching the same way he came to summit Mount Everest: through serendipity.

Taylor sees other parallels between the teaching profession and the world of outdoor sports, such as a lack of diversity. Taylor, who is Black, said he thinks that just like his (ultimately successful) quest to climb the world’s highest mountain, his lessons and his presence in the classroom inspire his students, including students of color.

“Sometimes that kid’s just going to connect with that person a little better,” he says.

His healing music earned a Grammy nomination

When the pandemic shut down schools in 2020, Chicago music teacher Trevor Nicholas drew on his childhood experience and composed songs for his students. His belief in the “healing power of music” ultimately led to a Grammy nomination for his work.

Nicholas has also helped raise more than $300,000 in grants, donations, and free music lessons for Chicago Public Schools students. “As a teacher, I give my students space to work individually, to jam out, and have some fun,” he says.

Tennessee teacher faced grief and found hope

During his career in Memphis schools, veteran math teacher Adrian Hampton has many fond memories, like the time he and his students met President Barack Obama at commencement. But one day before a scheduled interview with Chalkbeat, one of his students, Damien Smith, Jr., was shot and killed. At the time, police said 23 children in Memphis had died by homicide during the 2021-22 school year.

An emotional Hampton discussed how he and others deal with gun violence’s impact on schools, why he showed up to work instead of taking the day off after his student’s death, and what gives him hope.

Why one teacher tells students to ‘trust your pen’

English teacher Talena Lachelle Queen infuses poetry into her writing lessons in Paterson, New Jersey, to help students learn about their creativity. And her favorite lesson is what she calls the “science of writing,” in which she creates parallels between math instruction and essay writing so that students can better understand how to express themselves powerfully.

Queen, who previously worked in broadcast journalism and ran a preschool and day care before becoming a teacher, also says that praise even for seemingly trivial things is a big help. “Love creates sincere feelings of safety. It prompts scholars to confide in me and want to get higher grades because they know they are valuable,” she says.

A mother’s journey inspires an adult education career

Christian Young’s mother dropped out of school when she was 17. Yet she didn’t give up on education, and went on to get her GED, bachelor’s degree, master’s degree, and finally her doctorate.

That experience inspires Young’s work in Michigan, where in March he was named the Adult Educator of the Year by the Michigan Reading Association. Most of his students are parents, and he empowers them to get involved in their children’s schools to share their important perspectives as adult learners.

College funds for NYC’s kindergartners: How to get and give seed money for higher education

2022-12-22T19:11:39+00:00

In January, all New York City’s public school kindergartners will receive a seed investment of $100 in their city-sponsored college savings accounts.

It’s the second year that 5-year-olds citywide will automatically get the NYC Scholarship Accounts — a giant experiment aiming to help thousands of families who historically have faced steep barriers to postsecondary education.

The push has some research to back it up: In addition to the tangible benefits the money itself brings, the act of opening a college account for a young person has intangible benefits of motivating kids to focus on educational achievement and getting to college.

“The research suggests: Just having a small-dollar account, you’re three times more likely to go to college and four times more likely to graduate,” said Debra-Ellen Glickstein, founding executive director of NYC Kids RISE, a nonprofit that manages the Save for College program in partnership with the city’s education department.

And children who attend college tend to earn higher salaries and are less likely to be unemployed, research shows. This has exacerbated the racial wealth gap: A typical Black or Latino family has a net worth only about a tenth of a typical white family’s, according to Brookings. Addressing these disparities has propelled a big push for publicly funded college saving programs across the nation. Roughly 1.2 million children participate in more than 120 programs across dozens of states, according to a Prosperity Now analysis of 2021 data.

The centerpiece of New York City’s program focuses on making the college-bound effort a communal one, by creating grassroots-led “scholarship” opportunities for children to earn more money in their accounts in various ways, including through civic associations, PTAs, local businesses, or philanthropies. For example, two churches in Long Island City and Astoria organized a “Concert for College,” a Black History Month gospel concert to raise money for the accounts of students at eight schools in their neighborhoods, many of whom live in public housing. About 1,000 people attended the concert, which raised $18.86 for more than 1,000 kindergarten and first graders, according to Glickstein. The churches are planning the concert again for February.

“At its essence, it’s a decentralized wealth-building platform for New York City neighborhoods,” Glickstein said. For her, it’s been powerful to see the efforts like the concert chip away at the barriers to college for families who have historically lacked access “not because it’s an act of charity but because it’s a collective responsibility.”

Here’s what else you need to know about the program:

When did the program start?

NYC Kids Rise piloted the program with support from the Gray Foundation in 2017 in Queens’ District 30 — which includes Long Island City, Astoria, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Corona and Woodside. Last year was the first time the program expanded to all public school kindergartners. The program expanded from about 3,000 kids to more than 74,000.

Who is eligible?

All New York City kindergarten students in district and charter schools will automatically be enrolled in the program as of January. To activate their accounts, they should visit the NYC Kids Rise website and click an “activate account” button. Once a family activates the account, they earn another $25 as a reward.

If families don’t want to participate, they can opt out. About 97% of the city’s first graders, who started with the program last year, are participating in it, Glickstein said.

To activate the account, families will need an email address plus their child’s date of birth, ZIP code, and the nine-digit number used to activate their child’s MySchools account. All families can be part of the program regardless of income or immigration status. (No social security numbers or credit card numbers are needed.) Instructions are provided in nine other languages.

“This was very much designed on purpose to maximize inclusivity and ease,” Glickstein said.

How does the account work?

The money is invested in the state’s 529 plan, a college-savings account that accrues interest over time — the compound interest is earned on the original balance plus on the interest earned over time, which is why it’s important to start the investment early.

The money can only be used for higher education purposes, including college, trade schools, and online degree programs. It can be used for tuition, some room-and-board costs, and textbooks.

If a student does not claim the funds within 20 years after completing kindergarten, the money goes back to NYC Kids Rise to be used for other scholarships in the program, the organization explained.

How can you get more money in the account?

Money can only be put in the account through NYC Kids Rise, but families will have opportunities to earn rewards over time, starting with the $25 they get upon activating the account. If a family opens their own 529 college savings account and links that tax-deferred account to their NYC scholarship account, they can earn another $25. Kids Rise offers step-by-step instructions for opening a 529, including how-to videos in several languages to help families. (The organization continues to advocate for the state’s 529 online application and materials be translated in the nine languages most used by city families since language access remains a barrier to get an account.)

When families deposit at least $5 in their own accounts, NYC Kids Rise will add another $25 to the scholarship account. Once a child is in first grade, the program will match up to $100 of a family’s investment into their own account.

With the seed and reward money, plus community scholarships, NYC Kids Rise estimates that an account of an average kindergartner might have about $3,000 for college and career training by the time that child graduates high school.

Who can contribute to the scholarships?

Individuals as well as organizations can help support the scholarship program through the NYC Kids Rise donations page. Donations will be pooled with others to support future community scholarships across the five boroughs.

The program is hopeful to see communities get creative with targeted campaigns to support kids’ educational futures. So far, the program has seen 21 community scholarships, including the concert organized by the two Queens churches.

NYC Kids Rise Chief of Finance Murray Abeles at his alma mater in Queens, P.S. 69, in June 2019 talking with kindergartners, who received about $50 in their accounts through Community Scholarship money from Seamless.

Another effort led by the Astoria Houses Resident Association raised $1,000 for every kindergarten, first, second, and third grader in its public housing complex who attended one of the school’s in the program’s pilot program. A group of Brooklyn parents who recently sent their kids off to college banded together through a donor-advised fund to support children at P.S. 92 in Corona Queens, awarding $60.48 to nearly 250 first and second graders from the pilot program.

Most recently, 1,200 first graders in East Flatbush and Canarsie, Brooklyn, received $1,000 in their NYC Scholarship Accounts thanks to a $1.2 million donation from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative and Brooklyn Community Foundation’s Donor-Advised Funds. (Bloomberg Philanthropies is a Chalkbeat donor.) This initiative selected Brooklyn’s District 18 because its neighborhoods are at least 86% Black, the largest proportion across the city.

NYC Kids Rise helps groups interested in creating community scholarships for specific groups of students (for more info reach out to communityscholarships@nyckidsrise.org), and the organization deposits the donations into the student accounts.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado recruits providers for its free preschool program. Parents are next.

2022-12-20T23:42:23+00:00

Jennifer Piper, a longtime home-based child care provider in Loveland, is brimming with questions about how Colorado’s new universal preschool program will work when it launches next fall.

She recently sent a bulleted list of 14 questions to local officials, including basic ones about teacher qualification and curriculum requirements.

The state needs to win over providers like Piper to meet its ambitious goal of quickly building a preschool program capable of serving every 4-year-old in the state as well as some 3-year-olds.

And there are early signs that they are ready to sign on. More than 250 preschool providers, offering a total of 12,000 seats, have signed up for the universal program so far, according to state officials.

Colorado’s universal preschool program is one of Gov. Jared Polis’ signature priorities and represents a major expansion of tuition-free preschool in the state. The $335 million program is slated to serve 30,000 4-year-olds next year and even more in future years, according to state estimates. It will replace a smaller state-funded preschool program that currently serves about 19,000 children from low-income families or who have other risk factors.

In addition to serving more children, the new universal program will provide more class time to most students and, in most cases, pay preschool providers a higher per-pupil rate than the current program does. The state’s early childhood department, which was created less than a year ago, will run the universal program, with early childhood councils or other groups administering it locally.

For many early childhood leaders and advocates, recent rapid-fire decisions on the new program have prompted excitement and hope that more Colorado children will benefit from high-quality preschool. When the preschool application opens for families on Jan. 17, officials hope to offer a variety of placement options — in schools, churches, child care centers, and state-licensed homes.

But some key questions remain, including what quality standards universal preschool providers will have to meet. Those rules won’t be out until spring.

It’s a “building the plane as we fly it situation,” said Christina Taylor, CEO of the Early Childhood Council of Larimer County, which will run the preschool program in the county.

“I’m feeling optimistic but … this first year is kind of a crapshoot,” she said.

A key money question answered

One major question about the program has already been answered.

In mid-November, state officials released the per-pupil dollar amount they’ll pay to providers in the universal preschool program. The annual rates will play a major role in determining whether providers join the universal preschool system, and whether they’ll be able to pay their staff a living wage, as state leaders promised.

On average, providers will get $4,834 for preschoolers attending 10 hours a week; $6,040 for 15 hours a week; and $10,646 for 30 hours a week. Preschool classes will run 9 months a year on a similar schedule to K-12 grades.

Generally, preschool providers are pleased with the rates, which vary somewhat by county or region.

“I do think some places are going to be able to increase pay for their staff with this funding,” said Diane Smith, director of the Douglas County Early Childhood Council, which will coordinate universal preschool programming in the county.

Mark Arbitrio, who owns Ivybrook Academy in Castle Rock, said the rates are about the same as the tuition he currently charges for 15 hours a week of preschool. He hopes to fill all 48 of his center’s 4-year-old seats as part of the universal program next year.

Arbitrio, whose own 4-year-old son will be in the inaugural universal preschool class, opened his Ivybrook franchise in 2020 after he got laid off from General Electric. He’s hopeful the offer of free preschool for 4-year-olds next year will boost enrollment for younger children too — potentially convincing parents to enroll the siblings of 4-year-olds who otherwise would have stayed at home because of the cost.

“We’ll get a lift from this,” he said.

Taylor said Larimer County providers have mostly been positive about the rate, which is more per child than what the state currently pays for 10 hours — although one corporate-run preschool leader told her it “wasn’t quite as attractive as they were hoping.”

But the bigger issue is finding enough staff to lead preschool classes, she said. Ongoing worker shortages, exacerbated by the pandemic, have forced some local preschools and child care centers to close classrooms even when they have enough children to fill them.

In rural Elbert County, all five school districts plan to participate in universal preschool, said Llan Barkley, executive director of the county’s early childhood council, which will coordinate universal preschool there.

But the county’s preschool rate — $4,724 per child for 10 hours a week — is less than what most of the districts there get for preschoolers in the state’s current program. Unlike the universal preschool rate, the current preschool rate is based on the K-12 school finance formula, which gives some small rural districts substantially more per-pupil funding than most urban or suburban districts.

Barkley said she’s emphasized to district officials that despite the lower per-pupil rate next year, they’ll be able to have preschool classes of 20 children instead of the current 16, which will bring in additional funding. She expects most districts will stick with the current 10-hour-a-week schedule next year even though universal preschool rules allow 4-year-olds to get 15 tuition-free hours a week.

Schools in Elbert County, like those in many rural areas, operate only four days a week. Barkley said it will be more feasible for the districts to stick to a 10-hour-a-week preschool program so schools have time to offer morning and afternoon sessions.

Getting the message to parents

Colorado officials estimate that half of the state’s 4-year-olds will attend free preschool next year, but with the application set to open in less than a month, many Colorado parents know little to nothing about the program.

Barkley described a typical parent reaction this way: “What? What is this? Can you explain it? I don’t understand.”

She said local districts have sent informational fliers home in students’ take home folders, but it can be hard to answer parents’ questions when some details aren’t yet available from the state.

Piper, the home-based child care provider in Loveland, said the vast majority of her families haven’t paid much attention to universal free preschool because they already get free or nearly free child care. That’s because they qualify for state child care subsidies for low-income families. Some pay nothing. Others pay $24 to $240 a month, she said.

Leaders from the Larimer County early childhood council have already sent out postcards about universal preschool to all county families with 3- or 4-year-olds, and plan to send out another in January. State officials said they’re planning to launch a public awareness campaign about universal preschool in early 2023.

Arbitrio, of Ivybrook Academy, said, “I think our families are going to be thrilled.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

A Detroit youth activist carries the torch for better student mental health services

2022-12-19T15:54:24+00:00

As a voice for Detroit students, Perriel Pace has been unafraid to call attention to important issues facing her peers — whether or not adults want to hear about them.

An 11th-grader at Martin Luther King Jr. Senior High School, Pace just completed a nearly one-year term as a student representative to the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s school board, where she pressed the district to address concerns such as student mental health, transportation challenges, and more.

Perriel got her introduction to activism through an art project, but she now works on behalf of a dozen youth-led organizations, including Detroit Heals Detroit, 482Forward, Young Voices Action Collective, and MIStudentsDream, and she advocates for causes including youth empowerment, immigration rights and restorative justice.

With her school board role complete, she spoke with Chalkbeat about how young people can get more involved in advocacy, as well as how she responds to criticism, and what the district can do to help students.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What or who got you into organizing and activism?

It is so random, but my art teacher, Ms. Loomis, who is also my godmother, we painted a mural one day, and a group of kids we were working with said (they’re) with an organization which focuses on transforming trauma into power. I decided to join them, and my career kind of took off from that, because they introduced me to all these other kinds of organizations doing great work. And the next thing I know I sit on 13 organizations.

Does it feel unique for you to be a student organizer or a youth advocate?

When I first started, I thought that I was literally the first … youth leader that I knew. So I kind of carried my title with so much pride. And then I got into these other organizations, these other spaces, and I’m like, “OK, there’s a lot more of us. So everything doesn’t have to be a burden on me.” In the past couple of years, I came across a lot of youth who are excellent leaders. And you know, it’s kind of nice that I don’t have to stand alone. But I do wish that more youth would get involved and be more aware of what’s going on.

What do you think would encourage more youth to get involved in causes?

I would say probably to get them to actually understand what’s happening. I feel like that will motivate more people to do something, especially youth.

What made you decide to join the school board as a student representative?

It was literally so random. We were in a DEYC (meeting), which is the District Executive Youth Council. And a lot of the adults there were just telling me like, “You’d make a good member on that team. You could represent for the district. You do so much in the community.” And I was just like “No, no, politics and stuff like that is not really my cup of tea.”

We had an election process and nobody really stepped up to the plate. So I said I’ll give it a shot. And surprisingly, I did win, but I won as an alternate (representative). So if the other original reps were absent, then I could come into play.

I was watching the student reps on the board, and I noticed they were kind of shy. And I told them, “You’re a student rep. It’s OK to be new to things, but you’re not just here for you. You’re not just representing yourself. You have to speak for everybody.” People saw that, and they bumped me up to one of the main student representatives.

What was that experience like on the school board?

I’m not gonna lie … school board meetings were kind of boring. I was there from 5:30 to 8 p.m. and just listened to (agenda item) numbers and numbers and numbers. It’s like, “Oh my goodness, I’m in school once again.”

Most of the time, I kind of zoned out. I felt like I was kind of there just so they could say we have a student rep on the board.

But then once I started telling them that I need to at least speak, to at least do something … (that) I don’t feel like just sitting there, then they started letting me talk on the mic.

Over time, I got a little bit more comfortable. But then the next thing I know, people started gunning for me in the public comment section.

What was it like when you spoke out at times during the school board meetings and received some criticism from community members?

I wasn’t fazed by it, honestly, because I’m used to being in this space where kids are not being seen or heard. The district staff was very supportive, but as (the public commenters) were talking and responding to me, I was writing down responses, and (the district staff) told me you can’t respond to those comments. That kind of made me frustrated, because I wanted to defend myself. I’m used to giving comebacks. It made me realize a little bit how to let things roll off my back.

But it got to the point where people started coming for me on social media. It was definitely a slightly traumatizing experience, and then to know that it’s grown adults doing it. To have an issue with there not being enough students’ voices being heard is one thing, but when you hear a student’s voice and you immediately antagonize them when they’re saying something you don’t want to hear, that doesn’t make any sense.

What were some of the issues that you brought directly to board members?

My very first concern I brought was about the student representatives, how they were not allowing us to speak really.

My second one was about mental health. How we need more SEL — social emotional learning — between students and teachers in order to better their relationship.

And my third concern was about transportation for students. What are y’all gonna do about the way that transportation is set up? Because for me personally, I get up at 5 in the morning just to get to school on time, and I still get to school late, and the city buses are disgusting. There are creepy men on there. It’s honestly scary, especially for me because I’ve been taking the bus since I was 12.

I talked to them about that, but they didn’t provide me with the answer I was looking for, that they will do something about it, such as contacting DDOT (Detroit Department of Transportation). They just left me on the cliff with that one. So I definitely want to follow up probably later on this school year.

Do you think students have enough of a voice in the district? What do you think would improve that?

I feel like we don’t have enough of a voice. I mean yes, we have the District Executive Youth Council, which meets once a month, but we have issues going on every day. I wish that it could be changed to at least biweekly meetings, where we can actively engage and work on these issues as they are happening.

The district is focused on issues like chronic absenteeism, enrollment, and academic achievement. What are students passionate about?

I don’t care what anybody else says. Our top priority should be student mental health. My attendance is low not because of my bus situation but just because I get up and I’m just like “I don’t want to come to school anymore.” Literally the third day of school, as I walked into the building, I said, “I should drop out,” because I literally didn’t feel motivated anymore to come to school.

I spoke to a few students yesterday who told me that they don’t want to do this anymore. School is mentally draining. It’s not engaging. It doesn’t feel like we’re happy anymore. It’s just work, work, work. We kind of had a crying moment there, because everything we shared was understandable. This is why our attendance is the way it is, because we mentally don’t want to be there. Mentally, we cannot have the capability of doing this work right now. We need a break. A mental break. We barely came out of this pandemic, and we’re barely out of it still.

To my knowledge, King (High School) does have SEL mental health stuff, but I don’t think a lot of people are made aware of it. Or it’s just not appealing in a way to students. I am planning a mental health week for King in January or February to make sure students are aware of what tools are available to them already.

It’s important to build one-on-one relationships with teachers, because even then if you don’t want to say something during class, you can speak with them after. You have someone to confide in.

What do you think would better support students struggling right now?

At my old school (Legacy Academy), we started each school year with SEL — social emotional learning. We did that for about two weeks, just so we could build that relationship with teachers. So we have that one-on-one relationship where at any moment, you can stop and go talk to them if you’re ever feeling down or anything like that.

But now I’m at King and you can’t do that. But it would be nice if we tried to get some of those things happening. We could really use this.

Why do you think students in Detroit feel so drained?

Everybody is going through something different. You’ve got to battle your work, and you’ve got to battle your personal life, and then just even with being in Detroit itself, you’re constantly watching over your shoulder because, again, every day is not promised, and Detroit is chaotic.

You’ve got a lot on your plate. How do you take care of yourself when you’re not constantly studying or organizing?

One thing that I love to do currently is ice skating. I usually just randomly tell folks, “You know what, I’m going to be unavailable for this week.” And I cancel everybody. Turn the phone off, turn off my emails, etc. And I’ll probably go hang out with my best friend, or go ice skating, or go to the movies. Or I love to crochet, so I will just binge watch a show on Hulu or Netflix and I will crochet.

Or I’ll just sleep my day away.

Correction: Dec. 20, 2022: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Ms. Loomis, the art teacher and godmother to Perriel Pace whose art project led to Perriel’s student activism.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan education leaders join push to help youth in foster care graduate on time

2022-12-16T22:01:36+00:00

Christian Randle expected to spend his senior year in a dual enrollment program that allows Michigan students to receive college credit while still in high school.

Instead, he’s working toward just a high school equivalency certificate.

He told the State Board of Education on Tuesday that he’s frustrated and feels like he’s starting high school over at age 17, because he’s been unable to get credit for schoolwork he did over the last five years while living in a series of foster homes and residential facilities.

Christian, who now lives in a group home in Farmington, addressed the board at its December meeting along with several other teenagers and young adults who were removed from their homes because of abuse and neglect. They’re asking the board to help ensure that others like them can graduate on time and with a solid education.

More than 10,000 children are in foster care in Michigan, according to the Children’s Defense Fund. About 40% of Michigan students in foster care graduate high school in four years, compared with 80% of all students.

That has to improve, State Board of Education members said Tuesday after hearing from the students and representatives of the Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services.

“We want systemic change,” said board member Tiffany Tilley, a Democrat, who introduced a resolution asking the Legislature “to amend laws that will guarantee that vulnerable youth receive credit-bearing educational programming that will keep them on target to receive high school diplomas and allow them to access post-secondary opportunities.”

Board members unanimously approved the resolution but did not specify what legislative changes they want to see.

Foster youth and their advocates have a lot of ideas.

Above all, they want a law ensuring that foster children have access to accredited education programs.

Because of a shortage of traditional foster families, abused and neglected children are sometimes placed in group homes or in large residential facilities alongside children with mental health issues, drug addiction, or histories of juvenile delinquency, said Saba Gebrai, director of the Park West Foundation, which advocates for foster children. Students in these settings have restricted freedoms and often aren’t allowed to leave even for school, she said.

Instead, the facilities run classes themselves, and the programs might not be accredited, attorney Judith New of the Michigan Children’s Law Center said in a telephone interview. “These kids could be spending years of time in residential placement and then coming back to a regular school and having that school say, ‘You have no transferable credits at all. You have to start over in ninth grade.’”

Current law requires residential facilities to provide education services but does not require that the programs be accredited, which means their courses may not count toward state graduation requirements.

The Department of Health and Services, which contracts with residential facilities, did not immediately respond to questions about the lack of accreditation requirements.

Consequences for students can be dire

Tilley, the board of education member, learned about the systemic academic struggles of foster youth over the summer when she met a group of teenagers at a meeting convened by the Park West Foundation, which works with young people as they age out of the foster care system. Several believed they were earning high school credits during stays in residential care or juvenile justice facilities but left the programs years behind their peers, she said.

“My heart really went out to them,” Tilley said.

She wanted the rest of the state board to hear what she did, so she invited advocates and clients of Park West Foundation to December’s board meeting and introduced the resolution.

Consequences can be dire for children who are moved from place to place without consideration of their educational progress and continuity, Gebrai said in a telephone interview. Many drop out of school in frustration and live out their lives in poverty, because they don’t qualify for jobs that pay enough to support themselves, she said.

“They’ve already experienced so much trauma in separating from their families and from having experienced abuse, and this is another trauma of the same kind,” Gebrai said. “This is one more thing that’s going to exclude them from society.”

Gebrai wants courts and social workers to think about each child’s education plan before moving them to new foster homes or residential facilities. It’s not just about academics, she said.

“It’s having the same friends,” she said. “There’s dances, activities, sports, building memories and connectedness to a community.”

The Park West Foundation advocates only for foster care children — those removed from their homes for their own protection — but those placed in residential facilities for other reasons also would benefit from the changes advocates are requesting, Gebrai said.

NBC News previously reported on the state’s failure to provide a quality education to children in residential facilities.

How a student scrambled to make up credits

Bryanna Cook, now 21, was never in a residential facility, but she, too, fell behind her peers as she was raised in a series of foster homes starting at the age of 5. During high school alone, she changed schools more than 10 times, sometimes moving in the middle of a semester — too early to take final exams, but too late to receive credit in the new school, she said.

“It’s hard to get a footing anywhere or get the proper help or even know what school is about when you’re constantly moving,” she said in a phone interview Thursday.

As she entered senior year, Cook knew she wouldn’t have enough credits to graduate, so she enrolled in an online program on top of her regular classes at Lincoln High School in Warren. She took eight classes a day in person and five online to make up credits.

“My counselor told me she didn’t think it would be a good idea, that it would be too much, but I decided to do it anyway,” Cook said.

She remembers juggling “The Outsiders” for a 10th-grade English course while reading “Lord of the Flies” for 11th-grade English and practicing persuasive writing techniques for 12th-grade English.

“It was a lot,” she said.

That was three years ago, but the memory of that stressful time was fresh, she said, as she testified before the state school board.

“All foster children and youth in Michigan must have the same access and opportunities as everyone else to prepare for high school graduation, earn post-secondary credentials, and reach their full potential,” testified Cook, now a student at Macomb Community College.

Foster youth advocacy group outlines its proposals

Cook and other current and former foster youth presented a slate of legislative proposals they developed as members of Empowering Foster Youth Through Technology, an advocacy group supported by the Park West Foundation.

Among their proposals are laws that would:

Ensure that youth in residential placement have easy access to accurate transcripts.
Require foster parents to enroll foster children in school within one day of placement. (Current law allows five days.)
Ensure student transportation to school.
Require judicial oversight of student transfers between schools.
Increase stipends for foster parents to promote placement with families instead of residential facilities.
Provide support for children in foster care who are behind academically.

“A lot of that needs to happen,” Tilley said after the presentation.

State Superintendent Michael Rice agreed.

“First thing we need to do is get into the Legislature and make sure there’s no such thing as a non-credit-bearing course in Michigan public education, not for anybody,” he said. “Not acceptable.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

NYC promises affordable child care to undocumented families through voucher program

2022-12-15T19:03:30+00:00

Next month, New York City will begin providing subsidized child care to low-income, undocumented families, who typically can’t access such services because of their immigration status.

The $10 million initiative, called Promise NYC, is expected to serve 600 children over the next six months, city officials announced Wednesday. It also aims to help the influx of asylum-seeking families from South America who have come to New York City over the past several months.

Because children from undocumented families typically don’t qualify for state or federally subsidized child care, advocates had pushed state lawmakers to expand care for undocumented children earlier this year. But that effort failed.

In the spring, city lawmakers pushed the mayor to include $10 million in this year’s budget expanding childcare for undocumented children. In June, Mayor Eric Adams committed to funding the initative, which would pay for vouchers and “develop a mechanism for families to seek care without compromising the confidentiality of their immigration status,” according to his “Blueprint for Child Care & Early Childhood Education in New York City.”

The city tapped four community-based organizations with “deep ties to immigrant communities in their respective boroughs” to help launch the program: the Chinese American Planning Council in Queens, Center For Family Life in Brooklyn, Northern Manhattan Improvement Corporation in Manhattan and the Bronx, and La Colmena will help Staten Island families.

The four organizations, which are contracting with the city’s Administration for Child Services, will be responsible for signing up eligible families.

Beginning in January, low-income undocumented families will be eligible to participate in the city’s child care voucher program, which provides free or low-cost child care to families with children ages 6 weeks to 13 years old. (To qualify, they must earn less than 300% of the federal poverty level.) Child care providers — licensed center-based or registered home-based care — will get reimbursed by the community organizations overseeing the program, city officials said.

Many asylum-seeking families residing in shelters are having trouble finding work without access to child care, according to Gothamist.

In a statement, Adams said his plan will alleviate the challenges that come with being a new immigrant.

“Navigating obstacles in a new city and a new country are tough, and coupling those issues with a lack of child care can prevent parents and families from achieving the dream they so desperately set out to achieve,” Adams said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

‘I want Black students to feel valued’: Newark Global Studies students describe pattern of racism

2022-12-15T11:00:00+00:00

When Brenda Brown read what the Newark School of Global Studies had to offer, she knew her son had to go.

Brown’s son, Terril Coley, was excited about being immersed in a high school that offered a global perspective, where he could study different cultures and prepare to study abroad in Taiwan or the Middle East. It seemed like a good deal for a young Black man from Newark, but three years after starting at Global Studies, Coley is about to transfer out after enduring racism and harassment from his peers.

During last month’s board of education meeting, Coley spoke out about the ongoing harassment and described being bullied in front of his teacher and classmates because of the color of his skin.

“I was called a ‘smart chimpanzee’ in my English class,” said Coley to district leaders during the board meeting.

Interviews with students, parents, and teachers reveal a pattern of racist harassment at Global Studies against Black students, who are the minority at the school where Hispanic students make up 70% of the student body, according to state enrollment data from last fall.

Black students and parents at the school have complained to school and district leaders but describe an administration that isn’t taking the situation seriously enough. They have also said there are delays in reporting incidents to parents and lax enforcement of disciplinary action against offending students, forcing some parents such as Brown to transfer their children out of the school. Community leaders say leaving these issues unattended could lead to further strife between the groups of students.

The ongoing harassment prompted one student to start the Black Student Union and rally his peers to speak out at the November school board meeting.

Black Student Union members and their parents are calling for a leadership change at the school, specifically a replacement for principal Nelson Ruiz, and stronger policies to prevent and discipline students who engage in racism.

The district’s student discipline policy, which was revised in July 2022, notes that “the school district will not tolerate acts of harassment, intimidation or bullying.”

District spokesperson Nancy Deering, Global Studies Principal Nelson Ruiz, and Vice Principal Hoda Abdelwahab did not respond to requests for comment.

Global Studies first opened its doors in 2020 welcoming 114 ninth graders to the high school where they study diplomacy, learn Arabic, or take courses in economics while gaining fluency in Chinese culture and language. Of those students, more than half identified as Hispanic, while 31% identified as Black at the time. Last school year, the number of Black students dropped to 26% while Hispanic students rose to 70%, according to state enrollment data from last fall.

Enrollment data for this school year is not available, but Black students say representation on campus has declined due to “consistent instances” of racism against them, according to David Allen, a junior at the high school who founded the school’s Black Student Union at the end of last year.

Allen, who is also student body president, said he started the club to give Black students a safe space on campus. The fact that the club wasn’t created when the school opened is “telling of the culture” within the school, he said.

“The issues that happened last year were a lot more verbally violent,” Allen told Chalkbeat Newark while describing the threats and racial slurs he’s heard from his peers over the years. “But it’s also been a little ostracizing because, obviously, people know that the few Black students are the ones that are reporting the racism.”

The incident targeting Coley this October sparked outrage with his peers and mother, who said it took days until the school told her what had happened even after the teacher who witnessed the incident filed a report with administrators. It took nearly three weeks until administrators met with Brown on Nov. 3 and took action, which ultimately resulted in the suspension of one student, Brown said.

The frustration felt by Black students reached a tipping point at the end of last school year when Allen’s best friend, a Black and Muslim student, was called a racial slur used against Black people and a terrorist as they were walking down the hallway. The student who insulted Allen’s best friend was previously suspended for two days for using similar language against another student, Allen said.

“He still says the same things, so obviously, the disciplinary action wasn’t severe enough,” Allen said of the student who said the slurs. “People need to be disciplined for these things. Like, it’s not just words, these kinds of things can lead to violence on both parts.”

D’Renna Johnson is the director of the Newark Community Street Team’s Safe Passage program, which helps students get to and from school safely. Johnson said it’s important for schools to cultivate a space of trust so students feel comfortable reporting instances of bullying or harassment.

The Street Team, a community-based organization that works on violence reduction strategies, also monitors conflicts between students and works to intervene in instances of harassment, intimidation, and bullying before they lead to violence.

“As an adult, our responsibility is to try to get in front of that situation,” Johnson said.

In the past, the Street Team has dealt with racial conflicts among high schoolers and has heard of students calling on “older brothers and sisters to handle things in a dangerous way” or other adults who may resort to violence to settle issues, Johnson said. The Street Team resolves issues by bringing students together to talk about their differences before conflict can turn into physical confrontation, Johnson said.

“Let’s come to a medium where we could coexist together in this city and know that we’re not going to cause each other any harm,” Johnson added.

Allen’s best friend is the daughter of Newark’s board of education president Dawn Haynes and no longer attends the high school due to the ongoing racism she experienced at the school, Haynes said. Her daughter, a “super honor roll” student and the former student body secretary, did not feel comfortable continuing her education at the school, Haynes said.

“If a child’s school is not welcoming, how are they going to learn?” said Haynes to Chalkbeat Newark.

Administrators slow to address complaints about racism

Before the incident with his best friend, Allen recalled, a group of students made racist jokes about blackface and Black stereotypes in his history class last year.

The district’s Harassment, Intimidation, and Bullying policy require the high school’s two anti-bullying specialists to investigate “any gesture, written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication, whether it is single incident or series of incidents,” reported to administrators, especially if the incident “is perceived as being motivated by race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation,” among other characteristics.

Prior to the incident with his best friend in June, Allen and four of his friends compiled audio recordings of students using racial slurs during class and made a list of instances when Black students faced harassment and reported it to the school’s vice principal, Hoda Abdelwahab, last November. She promised she would investigate the situation, Allen said.

After turning in their compilations to administration last fall, Allen said the harassment continued from the same group of students. According to Allen, he and his best friend met with administration in June to report the racial slurs said in the hallway. That’s when they found out it was the first time administrators were hearing about the racism they were experiencing, Allen added.

“We found out that she never shared any of what we shared with her with the rest of the administration,” Allen said. “So, this is kind of a pattern with them. They’ll pretend they’re going to do something, and then kind of just sweep it under the rug and pray for the best and hope it just goes away.”

Allen was part of the group that attended the November board of education meeting and, like Coley, he told board members how he and his friends have been called “the n-word, a monkey, a slave, a caricature.”

At the November board meeting, Superintendent Roger León made a promise to fix the problems at Global Studies and visited the high school the following day to chat with Allen and other students, Allen said. But three weeks since students presented their concerns to the district, there has been no change, Allen added.

“It’s unacceptable today, in the past, and tomorrow for you to be raising an issue that adults are supposed to fix. You will help us fix it, but I promise you, it will be fixed,” said León to Allen during the November board meeting.

A teacher at Global Studies who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of retaliation said they see how the situation is “psychologically damaging” to Black students. During lunchtime, the teacher said they have seen Black students sitting alone. When asked why they seem sad, students say they feel uncomfortable at school. The teacher said parents, educators, and students have tried to handle these issues internally, but nothing has changed.

“The kids tried, they’ve been trying for years while they were there and the adults who were put there in charge to take care of them and make sure they’re treated fairly turned a blind eye to stuff,” the teacher said.

Johnson, a Newark native, said she hopes administrators can find solutions to the racist harassment Black students are describing because “she loves her community” and the people that make up her city.

“Keeping our kids safe is our priority because there’s so much stuff going on in this world, so much stuff going on in the city,” Johnson said.

In the meantime, Allen, the Global Studies junior, says he is juggling roles as student body president and founder of the Black Student Union, as well as a busy schedule and heavy class load, so he can only do so much to help. He hopes the district and leaders at his school find a way to make the experience of Black students better at the high school.

“They handle these matters the way a lot of non-Black people do. It’s very uncomfortable to talk about race, very uncomfortable. I understand that,” Allen said. “But the conversations are important, especially when they’re not being had.”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

As family homelessness climbs, calls grow louder for solving school attendance woes

2022-12-12T11:00:00+00:00

Nine-year-old Ameerah remembers when her commute to school was a five-minute walk. That was before her family left their Queens home for a shelter in another part of the borough.

During the year they lived in the shelter, Ameerah was at the bus stop with her mom and sister at 6:30 a.m., commuting at least 45 minutes on two buses and two trains. They often returned nearly 12 hours later, her mom said, and the girls were sometimes too tired to complete their homework in the evenings.

“My legs, sometimes they hurt. My backpack, it’s heavy,” Ameerah said during one of her bus rides last spring when she was in third grade. She fell behind in math, requiring her to go to summer school. (Chalkbeat is using pseudonyms to protect the family’s privacy.)

Last school year, nearly 30,000 New York City public school students lived in shelters. For these students, getting to school is often a problem, as many are placed far from their current schools. Nearby shelters may lack space, or if the family is in a domestic violence situation, they may be deliberately placed far from home. Shelter transfers can be hard to come by. So families must often choose between punishing commutes like Ameerah’s or transferring schools, which research shows can lead to chronic absenteeism and the need to repeat a grade.

Chronic absenteeism — often a key indicator of academic performance — is a growing problem for students citywide following the pandemic. But for homeless students, it’s a crisis: 64% of students living in shelters were chronically absent in the 2020-21 school year, meaning they were absent for at least 10% of school days, according to the most recent data obtained by Advocates For Children. That’s compared with about 30% of students citywide.

Advocates fear attendance problems could worsen as homelessness continues rising to historic levels in New York City amid rising inflation, the end of the eviction moratorium, and the threat of a recession. Additionally, an influx of asylum-seeking students from South America have entered the shelter system. Last month, more than 12,100 families with children were in shelters run by the Department of Homeless Services, compared with roughly 8,500 in November 2021.

Ameerah’s family had little help navigating the shelter system and their school-related transportation needs, they said. This left her mom, Huma, an immigrant from Pakistan who sometimes struggled with English, to wade through bureaucracy while trying to work enough hours to qualify for subsidized housing. Many advocates believe that families can benefit from having a dedicated, shelter-based coordinator to support them and have been pushing the city to hire such staffers for the past year.

By June, the city had committed to hiring 100 such coordinators — 75 of them funded for the next two years with about $17 million of the $33 million in federal relief money earmarked for homeless students, according to Advocates For Children. (The education department declined to share how much the initiative would cost.)

But in the nearly five months since then, the city has hired just 45 of these coordinators, with another 33 in the hiring process, according to an education department spokesperson, who declined multiple times to explain why there has been a delay.

Dozens of advocacy organizations had originally called for 150 of these staffers, given that the city has more than 160 family shelters serving children. But now they’re concerned that the city hasn’t yet hired all of these staffers and are wondering what happens when the relief dollars run out in two years.

They also note that the problems go deeper than such a role can address and intersect with a variety of systemic issues, large and small, from intergenerational poverty to transportation issues.

Historically, there has been a failure to cooperate and minimize disruptions to students’ schooling between the multiple agencies connected to homeless children, including the education department and homeless services, said Jennifer Pringle, director of Project Learning In Temporary Housing at Advocates for Children.

This moment, in particular, is critical for figuring out solutions, said Pringle, whose organization is one of more than three dozen calling for an inter-agency task force focused on how to tackle a slew of issues, including reducing chronic absenteeism among homeless students.

“This is an opportunity to figure out, OK, as families are coming in, how can we make sure that kids are connected with school, connected with their peers, with their teachers,” Pringle said, “so that while the family is going through this process and ultimately finds permanent housing, the kids’ education doesn’t get derailed.”

One of Huma’s daughters holds on to a pole on a city bus during her commute to school.

Transportation from shelters to schools remains difficult

A longstanding federal law attempts to create some stability for students who become homeless. Under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987, later expanded in 2001, school districts are required to provide transportation to and from a child’s “school of origin,” or the school they attended before becoming homeless.

But in vast New York City, students crossing between boroughs may have hours-long commutes between shelter and school. In response to news reports in 2017, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio pledged to ensure more families were placed in the same borough as their youngest child’s school.

His administration began to deliver on that promise. In 2018, about half of families were initially placed in shelters located in the same borough as their youngest child’s school. By last fiscal year, that grew by 11 percentage points, to three in every five families — including Huma’s.

But even a shelter placement in the same borough can mean a challenging commute to school.

When there are school attendance issues, many shelter providers’ default position is to encourage families to change schools, Pringle said, rather than to revisit shelter placements and try to move families closer to their schools.

“In a city where we have so many shelter locations, the needs of children are not being prioritized as a part of this process,” she said.

For its part, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services said their teams, along with the Department of Homeless Services, reach out to families in shelters “with longer commutes to schools, offering them shelter placements close to their youngest school-aged child’s school.” Last fiscal year, 75% of families were in shelters in the same borough as their youngest child’s school; however, advocates noted that it’s unclear how much of that reflects children transferring schools instead of shelters.

When Ameerah’s family moved into one of New York City’s family shelters in April 2021, they had escaped what Huma described as an emotionally abusive home she had endured for many years. Adjusting to the shelter was tough. Even after the girls managed to fall asleep while sharing a bed in the small roach-infested room, the shelter’s 9 p.m. bed-check often woke them up.

Huma’s case worker had asked where she wanted the children to attend school when they first entered the shelter. She thought that transferring schools felt disruptive, as the girls were returning to school for the first time since the onset of the pandemic while adjusting to a new, strange place.

“My kids, the big one especially, she is so sensitive now because of all this stuff,” Huma said, noting that they’d moved several times in the past. “She said, ‘I’m so tired from moving, every single time I change my school, but this time I don’t want to change my school. I like my school.’”

And for her younger daughter, arriving at school each day felt like a silver lining. She enjoyed seeing her friends and said that “time goes a little bit faster there.”

After exiting their final bus, Huma and her younger daughter walk to her school.

Transferring schools can have significant drawbacks for students without stable housing. One study from 2015 found that New York City students who transferred schools were more likely to be chronically absent, missing at least 10% of school days. Chronically absent homeless children were three times more likely to repeat the same grade, compared to their homeless peers who missed fewer than five days of school, that report found.

Students in shelters in kindergarten through sixth grade are eligible for bus transportation to their schools, no matter where they are. Older students, like Huma’s eldest daughter, Ayaneh, who was about to start seventh grade, receive a MetroCard, though some seventh and eighth graders can get busing on a case-by-case basis, such as if they have a disability. But Huma, who felt that Ayaneh wasn’t yet ready to take public transportation on her own, said this information wasn’t shared with her until weeks into the school year. (The city’s yellow bus system is also notoriously problematic, and a recent City Council report found that service delays have been higher this fall than the past five years.)

After Huma called the girls’ schools for more information on busing, school staff directed her to a general education department telephone line for transportation issues, she said. She didn’t call it.

“I said, ‘I just need the answer if you’re not providing a bus,’” she said of shelter staff. “They just kept promising it, but it never came.”

Huma didn’t trust that calling the education department would solve her issues. That might be why officials there said they did not have records of transportation issues or complaints related to her children.

Navigating the shelter system feels like a second job

There are 117 “family assistants” working across shelters, who are supposed to inform families about their school transportation rights, provide route information, and help with enrollment. But those employees don’t work year-round and often are not equipped to untangle more complicated problems, such as why a child may be chronically absent, advocates said.

The newly added shelter-based community coordinators would have broader responsibilities and are expected to proactively reach out to families living in shelters. They’re supposed to ensure students are getting to class, helping families navigate problems with transportation and enrollment using data compiled by the city. The education department is also using stimulus funds to better track homeless student attendance in hopes of working with shelters to address chronic absenteeism.

“There should be support services for families both at the shelter and at school that can help them with issues they might be facing, especially if there are attendance issues,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy director for Coalition for the Homeless, an organization that advocates on behalf of homeless New Yorkers. “If someone is struggling to get to school, and it’s the proximity of the shelter to the school, then there should be, in an ideal world, a team that would identify the issue.”

At 6:30 a.m. on a day this past spring, people line up to board a bus in Queens.

Bus service eventually was set up for Ameerah by October of last year, a few weeks into the school year, Huma said. Ultimately, she decided against it because it no longer made sense. She would still need to accompany Ayaneh to school — and she would need to be with both girls to get back to the shelter since minors can’t go inside without a parent or guardian. This would prove a complicated juggling act as Huma tried to increase her work hours.

Like all shelter residents, Huma was eligible to apply for rental assistance after 90 days of her placement, but she needed to work at least 30 hours a week. After months of struggling to find employment, she took a job as a home health aide. Her job locations frequently changed, which made it more challenging to coordinate her daughters’ transportation to school, she said.

Meanwhile, Huma had been told that she needed a more stable work schedule in order to meet the qualifications for rental assistance.

Catherine Trapani, executive director of Homeless Services United, said she’s often found parents who struggle to meet their required number of work hours while also taking care of other responsibilities and following all shelter rules, such as ensuring children are accompanied at the shelter.

“It’s very difficult to get your employment in with that schedule, plus your obligations to cart your children to and from school, particularly if you don’t have a robust network of support,” Trapani said.

In a sign that job requirements had become too burdensome to qualify for the city’s rental subsidy requirements, city officials recently cut in half the required weekly work hours from 30 hours to 14.

The family chooses a new school, after all

After a lot of back-and-forth providing pay stubs and other employment documents, Huma was approved for subsidized rent in March of this year — seven months after her caseworker informed her that she would start the process. That was much longer than the median 26 days it took for families to receive vouchers after completing applications last year, according to the annual Mayor’s Management Report.

Huma moved her family into their own apartment in May. Nearly 5,200 homeless families found permanent housing last fiscal year, a 30% drop from the previous year, according to city data.

Their new commute still required two buses for the girls to get to school, but their travel time was cut by 20 minutes.

Huma waits for a subway train.

But the instability has not gone away. Shortly before school started, Huma had attached a $622 utility bill to the fridge, marked with a bolded “final notice.” Huma was bringing in about $450 a week, and typically had nothing left after paying rent and other bills. Food stamps help provide some respite, she said. But she left her job in October after tensions with a patient’s caregiver, and she was still looking for work in December.

They’ve acknowledged that the apartment is not perfect. Their oven broke in the fall, and her landlord hadn’t arranged for it to be fixed. Carpet curled up at the edges of the walls. Still, the family seemed happy.

“At least they have their bed and they can sleep good,” the mom said.

Ayaneh still attends her middle school from last year. Her mother said she is seeing a therapist to deal with the family issues that caused them to seek shelter in the first place.

In the end, Huma decided to change Ameerah’s school to one around the corner from their new apartment.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

58% of NYC charter schools shrank during COVID, even as the sector grew overall

2022-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

Before the pandemic, Principal Laurie Midgette’s Brooklyn charter school maintained a waitlist 300 names deep. But over the past three years, demand has receded, and her school’s enrollment has dropped by 16%.

It’s forced her to dial up recruitment efforts, advertising in movie theaters and on bus stops. With more open seats, the school is in the process of enrolling about 35 asylum-seeking students who recently arrived in New York.

“This is definitely, for us, a new phenomena,” said Midgette, who runs Cultural Arts Academy Charter School in Brownsville, referring to enrollment drops.

For years, New York City’s charter schools have been known for their steady growth and long waitlists. Even as the number of K-12 students in the city’s district schools plunged about 9% since 2019, charter schools grew by 8% over the same period.

But that overall growth obscures an important part of the story: 58% of the city’s charter schools shrank over the past three years, not including schools that opened or closed during that time. (The official enrollment data sometimes groups multiple campuses under the same charter school.) Some of the city’s flagship networks are also struggling to fill all their campuses, including Uncommon Schools and Success Academy, the city’s largest charter operator.

“There’s a misconception that charter schools aren’t getting hurt by enrollment during the pandemic. But we clearly, clearly did — no question,” said Ron Tabano, the principal and CEO of John V. Lindsay Wildcat Academy Charter School, which saw its enrollment decline 26% over the past three years. (Tabano said enrollment rebounded somewhat this year, though official counts are not yet available for the 2022-23 school year.)

The declines on many campuses also may complicate the sector’s push to lift the current state cap on charter schools in New York City, as new schools would compete to attract a shrinking student population.

The reasons for enrollment declines are complex, and there likely is not one cause. Multiple charter leaders said they’ve seen an increase in families leaving the city, a claim consistent with district data that showed a spike in the number of students who left last year. Others pointed to broader demographic trends, including falling birth rates, and even competition from new charters in certain neighborhoods.

Principal Laurie Midgette

Midgette, the charter school principal, said her staff surveyed the families who left during the pandemic. The same answer came up again and again: The high cost of living, especially rent, “is driving people away,” she said.

Still, the charter sector — which educates about 14% of the city’s public school students — is adding students overall. One source of that growth are grade expansions, such as a K-5 school that launches with kindergarten and adds a new grade each year. Charters that have added grades or opened have seen enrollment increase 37% since 2019, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state data. About 4 in 10 charter schools expanded or opened over that period.

Among charter schools that are fully built out, however, enrollment has contracted by 4% over the same time frame. (Unlike charters, few district schools are adding new grade levels. But even among those that are, enrollment has fallen overall.)

Falling enrollment can have financial consequences — forcing staff layoffs or cuts to other programs such as clubs or extracurriculars. Charters are privately managed and typically fundraise, sometimes commanding hefty donations, but they depend on public funding that is largely tied to enrollment.

James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, said maintaining enrollment is crucial, noting that the city’s education department kept school budgets steady for much of the pandemic despite enrollment declines, a boost that charters generally did not have.

“Enrollment is especially important in the charter sector, because in our world there are no hold harmless clauses, supplemental appropriations and legislators won’t be riding over the hill to save us,” Merriman wrote in a statement. Still, he added, “despite the challenging environment, the fact is that charter enrollment grew overall.”

Some NYC charter school networks struggle with enrollment declines

Some of the city’s largest charter networks, which have helped propel the sector’s growth, are also grappling with cooling demand and enrollment declines.

Uncommon Schools, which operates 24 schools in Brooklyn, has seen its enrollment fall by nearly 4% since the 2019-2020 school year. Barbara Martinez, a spokesperson for the network, said that families leaving the city was a “primary reason” for the drop.

“We have seen declines in enrollment like most other NYC schools,” Martinez said in a statement. “We are hopeful that as the world returns to ‘normal,’ that we will see enrollment figures stabilize.”

Success Academy, the city’s largest network with 47 schools, saw enrollment dip about 1% last school year, a notable decline for a network that often boasts of its lengthy waiting lists and whose leaders have previously outlined ambitious plans to reach 100 schools. Still, Success’ enrollment over the past three years has increased nearly 12%, according to state figures. (Success officials said the state data differed from the network’s own enrollment tallies. The network’s data, which Chalkbeat could not verify in state or city reports, still shows a 1% enrollment dip last year and a 9% gain over the last three years.)

“We’ve seen demand slacken in some areas, but we have many schools that are wildly oversubscribed such as our schools in Queens, Bensonhurst and areas of the Bronx,” Ann Powell, a Success Academy spokesperson, wrote in an email. “We intend to expand in those areas.”

In a significant change, Success is also altering its admissions policies next year in ways that could help fill more seats. For the first time, officials are allowing new students from other schools to transfer to Success in the fifth and sixth grades. Network officials previously argued they could not accommodate new students beyond the fourth grade because they might be too far behind.

Powell said the network is making the admissions change because “we’ve gotten more skilled at remediating” and noted that the network has incrementally expanded its backfill policies, though Success remains an outlier as other networks typically backfill across most grade levels.

Ray Domanico, a senior fellow and director of education policy at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute, said tweaks to admission policies on top of aggressive recruitment weeks after the school year started indicates that charters are competing for a shrinking pool of students, especially as birth rates have declined.

“They’re getting fewer kids and they want to maintain the size of their network and they want to get the funding they need to keep their teachers in place,” Domanico said. “It suggests that something has changed in the environment, which is that there are fewer kids to go around.”

Enrollment drops raise questions about the NYC charter school cap

Loosening demand for seats complicates a long-simmering argument about whether charter schools should be allowed to continue adding campuses in New York City. Opening new charters while the number of students stagnates or shrinks could create significant financial pressure on existing schools or even lead to closures.

For now, the sector is constrained by a quota on the number of charters that can be issued — 290 — which was reached in 2019. But many charter leaders and advocates have pushed to raise the limit, arguing that families should have many schools to choose from.

“Our goal is to provide an excellent education to the highest number of students possible — and in order to do that, we need to lift the cap,” wrote Jane Martinez Dowling, a spokesperson for KIPP, which has seen its enrollment grow during the pandemic and opened three new schools last year that were approved before the cap was reached.

That argument recently gained a powerful ally: Gov. Kathy Hochul said during a gubernatorial debate in October that she supports raising the cap, a position also held by her (since-defeated) Republican opponent, Lee Zeldin.

Raising the cap may still be a longshot, as many Democratic state lawmakers, who hold majorities in Albany and must approve the change, have resisted the idea. A spokesperson for Hochul did not respond to a request for comment about whether raising the cap is a priority.

Meanwhile, others in the charter sector have been more circumspect, including some small charter operators.

Franklin Headley, the principal of VOICE charter school in Queens, said demand for seats has become less predictable than in the past. With less certainty that all seats would be filled, the school admitted about 70 asylum-seeking children after the school year started.

Headley said it’s important that new charter schools continue to take into account where there is the most desire for seats in the application process.

“Is there parent demand for this?” Headley said. “Anybody who is considering lifting the cap, that’s the question they have to ask.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data & graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how these Colorado students learn about the state’s deadliest day

2022-11-29T11:00:00+00:00

Teacher Sarah Malerich read a letter to the students gathered in her history classroom in the southeastern Colorado town of Kiowa.

The eyewitness account described how U.S. soldiers attacked a peaceful creekside camp at daybreak, killing more than 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho villagers.

“It was hard to see little children on their knees have their brains beat out by men professing to be civilized,” Malerich said, quoting the letter.

Students murmured “oh my God” and “geez” as Malerich read about the atrocities — the most graphic of which she’d excised. In that moment, the horrors of the Sand Creek Massacre, which unfolded on Colorado’s Eastern Plains more than 150 years ago, became uncomfortably real.

“I’m so upset with history,” said Mariah Vigil-Gonzales, a 17-year-old junior at Kiowa High School. “I wish we had a time machine.”

Other students quickly chimed in, imagining how they could change the events of that long-ago November day. A girl said, “Expose Chivington,” referring to the colonel who led the attack.

So much about the classroom scene was unusual. Few Colorado students learn much about the Sand Creek Massacre — the deadliest day in Colorado history — and even fewer spend several days studying the topic as part of a Native American history class as Malerich’s students did.

The new course is timely, coming as efforts to commemorate and elevate the Sand Creek Massacre are gaining steam across the state. Colorado’s history museum in Denver unveiled an exhibit on the massacre this month, and earlier this fall, federal officials announced a major expansion of the national historic site marking the massacre — about a two-hour drive from Kiowa. In addition, new social studies standards include the Sand Creek Massacre on a list of genocides that Colorado students should study before graduation.

Visitors at the opening of the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at the History Colorado museum in Denver.

The Sand Creek Massacre occurred on Nov. 29, 1864, when U.S. troops attacked a camp of Native Americans who’d been assured by territorial officials that they’d be safe at that site. Many Cheyenne and Arapaho chiefs who’d sought peace with the U.S. government were among the murdered, upending the tribal power structure and fueling decades of war in the West.

“It’s a story that needs to be told. It’s a story that needs to be respected,” said Gail Ridgely, a Northern Arapaho tribal elder who lives on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

Ridgely, who is the great-great-grandson of Little Raven, a peace chief who survived the massacre, said the episode contributed to the displacement of the Cheyenne and Arapaho from their homeland in Colorado.

“After the massacre, we were hunted,” he said.

It was only last year that the state formally rescinded the 1864 proclamation that allowed settlers to “kill and destroy” Native Americans and steal their property.

Malerich believes there’s lots of good things to highlight in American history, but that it’s important to teach about shameful episodes like the Sand Creek Massacre, too.

“What can we learn from that?” she said. “We can’t go back and save those peoples’ lives or anything, but what sort of ways can we kind of atone for that?”

Mascot law begets new class

Malerich’s Native American history class exists largely because of a 2021 state law banning Native American mascots in Colorado schools — a measure lawmakers saw as a step toward “justice and healing to the descendants of the survivors of the Sand Creek Massacre, most notably the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes.”

A panel at the new Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at the History Colorado museum in Denver.

Following the law’s passage, the 318-student Kiowa district, which is crisscrossed by streets with names like Ute Avenue and Comanche Street, sought to retain its Indians nickname. Leaders there asked the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma to approve continued use of the name and mascot, a scenario allowed under the law. The tribe agreed to the request, updating a 2005 agreement, as long as the district met certain conditions, including providing “a curriculum that teaches American Indian History.”

Strasburg High School, which also uses the Indians nickname, and Arapahoe High School in Centennial, which uses the Warriors nickname, have similar agreements with the Northern Arapaho tribe.

The agreement to keep the mascot was “a gigantic win for our community,” said Kiowa district Superintendent Travis Hargreaves. “Teachers are coming with more and more ideas of how we can honor that.”

One of those ideas was the new semester-long history course, which will be a graduation requirement for district students starting with the class of 2025. Malerich said she was excited to launch the class this fall, but also nervous because she wanted to do it justice and couldn’t find many resources designed for high school students.

Students started out by learning about the many tribes that have called Colorado home over the centuries, making maps outlining where each lived. They also discussed the culture and traditions of those tribes, and more broadly, the influence of Native Americans during colonial times and beyond.

Brooke Mills, left, a junior at Kiowa High School, talks with teacher Sarah Malerich and classmates during an October lesson on the Sand Creek Massacre.

“It’s really cool to think about the roots of the land,” said ninth grader Alyssa Edwards, “like, what was here before.”

Several of the 11 students in Malerich’s class — a typical class size at the rural high school — signed up for the new course because they wanted to, not because they had to.

Mariah, who started at Kiowa High this year, said her family is Apache, and she wanted to learn more Native American history. “There’s just a lot of Indians that came through Colorado and so it’s like, a lot of this originated here … and no one ever really talks about that.”

Who learns about the Sand Creek Massacre?

It’s not clear how many Colorado students learn about the Sand Creek Massacre at school — either during their Colorado history unit in fourth grade or any other time.

Representatives from the Colorado Council for the Social Studies and the History Colorado Center in Denver, where the new Sand Creek exhibit opened earlier this month, both guessed the numbers are relatively small.

Hargreaves, who used to be a fourth grade teacher in the Cherry Creek district, said the textbook he used at the time included about a half page on the Sand Creek Massacre.

“It was about a day dedicated to it,” he said.

Malerich, who teaches in the same Kiowa High School history classroom where she once sat as a student, said her first distinct memories of learning about the massacre were not from school but from the TNT miniseries, “Into the West,” which she watched before sixth grade.

Some students in Malerich’s Native American history class said they’d learned a little about the Sand Creek Massacre in other classes. Others never had.

Josie Chang-Order, school programs manager at History Colorado, said there are no children’s books about the massacre and few materials designed for older students either.

“Teachers coming to Indigenous history when we ourselves didn’t get very much of it in schools is a huge challenge,” she said.

She and other museum staff hope the new exhibit will help turn the tide. They’re creating special lessons for fourth- to 12-graders who take field trips to the exhibit and an online list of Sand Creek Massacre resources for educators.

The opening day of the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at the History Colorado museum in Denver.

Elishama Goldfarb, whose class at Denver’s Lincoln Elementary includes fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-graders, covers the Sand Creek Massacre at least every three years, interspersing primary source accounts of the massacre with excerpts from a miniseries on Colorado history called “Centennial.”

He wants students to understand the massacre within the context of ongoing conflict, broken treaties, and mistrust between Native Americans and white settlers who wanted gold, land, or other resources.

Goldfarb, who plans to take his students to the new Sand Creek exhibit in January, also connects the prejudice that fueled the massacre to the human temptation to judge people or deem certain people superior to others.

He wants to help students understand that “when we see each other as worthy of dignity and love and care,” horrific events like the Sand Creek Massacre don’t have to happen.

Voices of the people

History Colorado had a Sand Creek Massacre exhibit once before. It closed a decade ago after pressure from tribal leaders, who didn’t feel it accurately reflected their history.

“It was a fairytale, Barbie dolls, misprints,” Ridgely said.

But the new Sand Creek Exhibit — subtitled “The betrayal that changed Cheyenne and Arapaho people forever” — has been done right, he said, with tribal leaders consulted extensively on the details.

Children try out a language app at the opening of the Sand Creek Massacre exhibit at the History Colorado museum in Denver.

“It’s a historic milestone for Colorado and it’s sacred,” he said. “Every time I go down to the museum, it’s a real good feeling because the victims are speaking.”

The exhibit starts years before the massacre, grounding visitors in the tribes’ culture and way of life. Besides maps, timelines, and larger-than-life photos, the exhibit features oral histories from tribe members telling the stories of Sand Creek that have been passed down over generations. The exhibit incorporates Cheyenne and Arapaho language throughout.

Shannon Voirol, director of exhibit planning at History Colorado, believes the new exhibit will help make the Sand Creek Massacre part of the state’s lexicon in the same way the museum’s Amache exhibit raised awareness about the southern Colorado camp where Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during World War II.

“More people now understand that we had Japanese internment camps in Colorado. We get more and more teachers asking about it. We get more students having some knowledge of it. It’s part of the canon as this will become,” she said, gesturing to the photos and artifacts, in the Sand Creek exhibit.

Ridgely, one of several tribe members who worked with museum officials on the exhibit thinks students will become more humble and respectful — “better citizens” — by learning about the Sand Creek Massacre.

Sarah Malerich, the history teacher at Kiowa High School, writes out the definition of “massacre” on her white board.

In October, Malerich began a series of lessons on the Sand Creek Massacre by discussing the history of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes — their traditions, language, and culture. During the third lesson, she and her students read five accounts of the massacre, including from Col. John Chivington; Silas Soule, an army captain who refused to fire on the Native Americans; and a survivor named Singing Under Water, whose oral account was written down by her grandson.

Malerich read aloud from Chivington’s 1865 testimony to Congress, which falsely portrayed the massacre as a battle where only a few women and no children were killed.

“I had no reason to believe that [Chief] Black Kettle and the Indians with him were in good faith at peace with the whites,” she read.

But students were skeptical and indignant.

“Literally, [they] had the white flag up and the American flag up,” Mariah said of the tribes.

She and her classmates concluded that Chivington knew the Arapaho and Cheyenne were camped peacefully but didn’t care. Other firsthand accounts didn’t support his claims, they said.

After the lesson, Alyssa said knowing how and why the massacre happened might help prevent something similar from happening again.

“That was really inspirational,” responded Brooke Mills, a junior whose mother is partly descended from the Blackfoot tribe. “Like the saying that, if you don’t know your history, you’re doomed to repeat it. I feel like that’s a huge part of all of this, too.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Midterm Elections 2022: Voting results for school boards in Marion County

2022-11-22T20:30:17+00:00

This story has been updated with certified election results from Nov. 21.

Most of the incumbents running in Marion County school board races won reelection on Tuesday, and newcomer Hope Hampton won the only contested race for the Indianapolis Public Schools board, per election results.

And in the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, Steven Chase Lyday topped incumbent Jimmy Ray by one vote to join the board; Ray was the only incumbent on the Decatur school board who lost.

There were 47 candidates on ballots for 29 school board positions in Marion County on Tuesday. While 11 candidates, mostly incumbents, were running unopposed, a vast majority faced at least some opposition. Roughly half of the school board candidates were incumbents.

Indianapolis Public Schools was the only district where no incumbents were on the ballot.

The role of the school board is not day-to-day operations, but rather district oversight, creating and enforcing policy, making sure bills are paid and employing a superintendent. School board races are non-partisan.

Winning candidates will start four-year terms in January.

Below is a list of results by district. The Marion County Election Board certified results on Nov. 21 and no candidates sought a recount or contested the election by the Nov. 22 deadline, said Brent Stinson, the board’s deputy director, in an email to Chalkbeat Indiana.

Beech Grove

At-large (Top three candidates win.)

Rob Challis (I) 33.15%

Jannis King (I) 32.52%

Rick Skirvin (I) 34.33%

Decatur Township

At-large (Top three candidates win.)

Judith Collins (I) 27.27%

Dale Henson (I) 26.43%

Steven Chase Lyday 23.16%

Jimmy Ray (I) 23.15%

Franklin Township

Southeast district

Larry J. Walker (I) 100%

Northeast district

Andrew Filler 47.75%

Zach Smith Howard (I) 52.25%

At-large (Top candidate wins.)

Dawn Downer (I) 46.04%

Tim McVey 45.89%

Adrian D. Pettis Sr. 8.07%

IPS

District 3

Hope Hampton 55.17%

Kristen Phair 44.83%

District 5

Nicole Carey 100%

At-large

Angelia Moore 100%

Lawrence Township

District 2

Patricia Brenamen 17.39%

Janet Jacobs 34.3%

Marta Lawrence 35.06%

Nichole Sledge 13.25%

At-large (Top candidate wins.)

Morgan Bailey 13.7%

Jessica Dunn 42.18%

Reginald McGregor (I) 29.64%

Jennifer Tursi 14.47%

Perry Township

At-large (Top three candidates win.)

Cameron Clark 14.98%

James Hernandez (I) 15.23%

Chris Lewis 15.77%

Hre Mang 18.37%

Lee Shively (I) 17.75%

Samuel Snideman (He ended his campaign and won’t serve if elected.) 6.97%

Astin Vick 10.93%

Pike Township

At-large (Top three candidates win.)

Alonzo Anderson (I) 27.37%

Guy Lowry 17.66%

Wayne Moore 26.35%

Terry Webster (I) 28.62%

Warren Township

At-large (Top three candidates win.)

Terri L. Amos (I) 26.25%

Rachel Burke (I) 30.96%

Kevin Humphrey 25.1%

Dennis Orellana (I) 17.69%

Washington Township

District 2

Kristina Frey 56.12%

Donald Kite (I) 43.88%

At-large (Top candidate wins.)

William (Bill) Turner (I) 100%

Wayne Township

At-large (Top four candidates win)

Brandon Bowman (I) 26.1%

Raimeka Graham (I) 24.71%

Michael D. Nance (I) 25.12%

Benjamin Wakefield (I) 24.07%

*(I) indicates the incumbent candidate.

Speedway Schools is not included in this list because the school board is appointed by the town board, not elected.

MJ Slaby is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Schools across the U.S. have turned to Paper’s online tutoring. Some worry it’s falling short.

2022-11-17T16:45:15+00:00

Officials in Columbus City Schools were looking for a solution last year to some of the educational fallout of the pandemic — and they thought they found it in Paper, a popular virtual tutoring company that says it offers high-quality support for students at a lower price point.

The district spent $913,000 in COVID relief funds for Paper to provide its middle and high school students with access to 24/7, on-demand tutoring.

But Columbus quietly cut ties with the company in September because too few students were using the tool. District records obtained by Chalkbeat show that less than 8% of students with access logged on last school year. Half of those students used it just once. In some schools, not a single student logged on.

“I’ve had personal experience with it with my student,” school board president Jennifer Adair said of her rising seventh grader at a June meeting. “It was frustrating, and annoying, and she didn’t want to use it again.”

School districts across the country have spent millions in COVID relief dollars to purchase services from virtual tutoring companies to try to plug pandemic learning gaps. Paper, an eight-year-old company based in Montreal, has emerged as one of the most popular players in the market. It holds multi-million dollar contracts with some of the nation’s largest school districts and has splashy billboards in cities like Tampa and Chicago.

But educators and officials in districts that were among the first to contract with Paper say its text-based tutoring service often frustrates the students who need the most help, isn’t easily used by the youngest students, and can go unused altogether.

Philip Cutler, the co-founder and CEO of Paper, says the company has made several changes to respond to student and district feedback, with more in the works. Paper is piloting a voice notes feature aimed at helping younger children and English learners more easily use the platform. And the company has taken several steps to try to boost usage.

At a time when many students need academic help, Cutler says his company has proven it can deliver that on a large scale.

“It would be fantastic if we could have a tutor who sits next to a student for eight hours a day while they’re in class and helps re-explain everything to them,” Cutler said in a November interview. “Are we able to do that for 60 million students? I don’t think so. We need to make sure that there is something that actually can be applied to millions of students, that they can take advantage of.”

Still, schools’ reliance on programs like Paper worries observers like Allison Socol, a vice president at the education civil rights group The Education Trust who wrote a guide to spotting quality tutoring programs. Even with staffing challenges, she says, schools can do better.

“I am purposely not going to call it tutoring, because it’s not,” said Socol, of on-demand virtual help. “It doesn’t mean it’s not useful to some students. But is it useful at the scale that we need, and is it worth the amount of money that a lot of districts are spending? My gut says no, and a lot of the emerging data also says no.”

Why on-demand tutoring, and Paper, took off during pandemic

Paper traces its origins back to when Cutler saw firsthand how private tutoring can fuel academic inequities. While attending a teaching program at McGill University, Cutler ran a tutoring business that catered to children of wealthy families. “The other 90% needed the help the most but didn’t have the resources at home,” he said in an interview last year, “and no one was serving that side of the market.”

Cutler co-founded Paper in 2014, shortly after he graduated, and within four years the company had some district clients. But Paper really took off during the pandemic.

Schools, flush with COVID cash, wanted to offer tutoring to their students, but often struggled to staff and schedule those programs. Many districts couldn’t find enough teachers, who were often too exhausted and stressed to tutor for extra pay. And in a tight labor market, other adults were hard to recruit, too.

Paper offered a solution: It found and hired the tutors, and connected them to students whenever they needed help. Paper said its on-demand model could help schools reach struggling students who had to work or care for siblings after school, or who didn’t have a parent at home to help them with assignments.

“Paper aims to address the inequities facing all students, especially those from marginalized groups,” the company said.

Paper says it now works with 400 districts across the U.S. and Canada. Among its clients are four of the nation’s 10 largest districts: Los Angeles Unified, Clark County in Nevada, and Palm Beach and Hillsborough counties in Florida. Other big clients include the school districts in Boston; Prince William County, Virginia; and Jefferson County, Kentucky. Together, those contracts are worth $24 million and counting, records obtained by Chalkbeat show. (Los Angeles’ contract has yet to be finalized, Cutler said.)

Paper also holds statewide contracts worth $12 million total to provide virtual tutoring to students in grades 3-12 across Mississippi and to high schoolers in Tennessee.

Here’s how the service works: Students log on to Paper, type in a question, and get matched with a tutor. Students chat with the tutor over text message, and they can draw a problem on a virtual whiteboard. But the student can’t see or hear the tutor in real time, since there’s no live audio or video.

Even Paper’s marketing materials illustrate why that setup can be hard for some kids.

In transcripts of real tutoring sessions Paper provides to potential clients as “exemplary,” the company includes a session in which an elementary schooler needs help with basic math.

“I need help taking away,” the student types.

The tutor asks if the student knows why they’re having a hard time with subtraction.

“10000 - 0872,” the child responds. Drawing on the virtual whiteboard, the student reaches an incorrect answer: 2666.

“Can you explain what you did on the top with the 0’s?” the tutor asks. The student struggles to explain, starting with, “well I crossed it out.”

“Yeah! Do you know why you had to do that?” the tutor asked.

The student then left the session before getting guidance. But Paper noted they “left a glowing review for the tutor.”

Lucetta Holbert with her 14-year-old son, Zion Holbert, inside Berwick Alternative K-8 School in Columbus. Zion used Paper last year to get feedback on a writing assignment, but did not use it again.

Costs balloon when few students use Paper’s online tutoring

In Columbus, 14-year-old Zion Holbert used Paper last year to get feedback on a writing assignment comparing themes in “The Hunger Games” books to historical events. He found the site confusing at first, but eventually he figured out how to upload his work and he took some of the tutor’s editing suggestions.

His mother, Lucetta Holbert, appreciated how quickly the feedback came in. “It was really nice because I’m not a really good writer,” she said, “so that took the pressure off me to try to figure out how to do all this comparing and contrasting.”

But Zion never tried Paper again, though he was struggling with some math concepts, like fractions, that he learned when school was remote. When he wanted math help, he’d stay after school to review problems with his homeroom teacher or visit the library to work with a volunteer tutor.

His advice to other students? Paper can be helpful for English class, “if you’re stuck and you got work you want someone to read and you’re at home.” But if you have a more complicated question, seek out a teacher at school. “In person, you can just show them and they can help you,” Zion said.

One of Paper’s biggest selling points is that districts can offer unlimited virtual tutoring to many students at a fixed price. A Chalkbeat review of 13 recent district contracts show the cost per student can range from $21 to $183, though the median price was around $40. (Cutler says rates vary based on district size, contract length, and how much help the district needs to get started.)

But when students like Zion don’t return to the service or don’t use Paper at all, the true per-student cost is much higher.

Zion Holbert, 14, studies at Berwick Alternative K-8 School in Columbus.

Paper charged Columbus schools $38 per student for tutoring access, but district officials noted that the cost ballooned to $446 per student who actually used the service.

Santa Ana Unified in California paid Paper over $1.1 million last year to provide access to nearly 41,000 students. But just over 1,000 students logged on for tutoring or essay help from December 2021 to May, district records show, ultimately costing the district nearly $1,100 per child. (The district is no longer using Paper.)

Cutler says he believes Paper’s product is worth the cost when the number of help sessions roughly equals the number of students with access to the tool. Even by that generous standard — which can count the same student multiple times — the company often falls short.

In Hillsborough County, Florida, around 16,000 students used Paper from September 2021 to this September, or just under 14% of the middle and high schoolers with access. Those students logged around 47,000 tutoring sessions and essay reviews, district officials said — less than half of what Paper had projected. The usage was so off that the company ended up owing the school district over half a million dollars.

Usage looked similar in Palm Beach County, Florida. Some 104,000 middle and high schoolers had access to Paper, and they completed around 53,000 tutoring and essay review sessions last school year, district records show. That was within the projection in the district’s contract, but under what the company considers a good deal.

But school board members there had another concern: students from high-poverty schools used Paper less than their peers at more affluent schools.

Paper says usage rates improve when the company and district make concerted efforts to reach out to teachers, students, and families to tell them about the service. But others say the numbers reflect a problem baked into Paper’s opt-in model.

“It’s not necessarily the virtual part of it,” said Socol of The Education Trust. “Online homework help puts the responsibility on the student to say: ‘I don’t understand this individual question on my homework, let me reach out to a potentially random adult who I don’t have a relationship with.’”

Research released last month seems to back that up. In California’s Aspire charter school network, only 1 in 5 of the middle and high school students in the study used Paper in spring 2021. But higher-achieving students were almost twice as likely to use the platform as students who’d gotten at least one D or F the prior semester — the exact students the charter network had hired Paper to help.

More struggling students did try Paper when school leaders urged them and their parents to do so, but “take-up remained low,” the researchers wrote.

“If you expect them to bring their questions to the tutoring, that’s very difficult, too, because many students don’t quite know what they understand or don’t,” said Susanna Loeb, an education professor at Brown University who co-authored the study. “As a strategy for supporting students in need, it’s not a good strategy.”

Jillian Eichenauer, a middle school math teacher at an Aspire school just south of Los Angeles, has seen that in her classroom. Last year, she had her eighth graders redo problems they got wrong on their tests with Paper, but she didn’t turn to the tool if they were struggling with a concept, like writing an equation.

“I usually try to direct them to do that when it’s like a check for your answer, rather than get help,” Eichenauer said. “Some of them require re-teaching, which Paper is not very beneficial for.”

Paper’s shortcomings for young kids, English learners

Young students and students learning English as a new language have an especially hard time using Paper, educators say, though the company markets itself as being accessible to both. Paper employs tutors who can speak Spanish, French, and Mandarin, which has been a draw for many district clients.

But in several places, usage was especially low for those two groups of students. In Santa Ana Unified, a mostly Latino district where 40% of students are English learners, just four students used Paper in Spanish, data provided by the district for last school year show. No first or second graders logged on, and only two third graders did.

In Palm Beach County, only about 1% of tutoring and essay help sessions were conducted in a language other than English last school year, though 11% of students who had access were English learners.

Several districts, including Boston, Clark County, and Los Angeles, are paying Paper to use with children as young as 5, though experts in early literacy say kindergartners and first graders typically aren’t able to read and respond to a virtual tutor over text-based chat. Struggling readers in second grade are likely to have trouble, too.

Amanda Samples, the executive director of academic support and school improvement for DeSoto County schools in Mississippi, which uses Paper in grades 3-12 through the state’s initiative, says that when she reviews tutoring session logs, she can tell some younger students don’t realize the virtual tutor is a real person.

A student “might say: ‘I need help with vocabulary,’ and so the tutor will ask a question back, and then they may just not respond,” Samples said.

In Chicago’s west suburbs, middle school teacher Hannah Nolan-Spohn has used Paper to help English learners practice their conversation skills. But some have found the platform challenging without a voice option. The speech-to-text feature hasn’t helped much, either.

“The bot doesn’t always understand what it is that they’re trying to say,” Nolan-Spohn said, “and then they get frustrated.”

Paper officials have acknowledged the challenges English learners and younger students might face with the platform.

Paper makes changes as more schools seek online tutoring

Paper has acknowledged some of its shortcomings and says it’s working to improve.

“We realized for the younger students, in particular, they don’t necessarily have the ability to sit in a live chat,” Cutler told Chalkbeat earlier this summer, acknowledging that setup can be challenging for students with disabilities and English learners, too. “They’re just learning a language.”

As a fix, the company introduced a voice notes feature in Los Angeles’ schools this fall. It allows students to upload a recording of themselves speaking, but they still can’t have a live two-way conversation with a tutor. Cutler said it’s shown promise so far, and students who use the voice memos are more likely to return to the service. Paper intends to test it out in Boston before making it widely available next year.

Many virtual tutoring competitors now have live audio and video options, but Cutler says Paper doesn’t plan to change that part of its model because student focus groups haven’t shown a demand for that.

The company says it’s also stepped up efforts to make students and families aware of its services, running contests with prizes for schools that use Paper a lot and hiring staff who train teachers and demonstrate the tool for students.

Asked why students from high-poverty schools used Paper less, Cutler said that challenge is not unique to Paper. The company has worked with some districts, such as Clark County, to launch virtual tutoring in high-need schools first.

“What we need to do, and we are doing, is really focusing a lot of the messaging on: How do you support students who don’t really trust the system?” Cutler said this summer. “They are not the first ones to say, ‘Hey I think this is going to help me.’”

In the meantime, school districts are deciding how long they should give Paper to prove its worth as the deadline for spending federal COVID funds looms. Earlier this month, for example, the Hillsborough County school board renewed its contract for 10 months at a significantly reduced rate after raising concerns about low usage rates. District officials said they’d drop Paper if the plan to get more students logging on didn’t work.

“This is a lot of money,” Superintendent Addison Davis said, adding he wanted “to make certain that we’re getting the return on investment.”

How effective Paper is at helping students also remains an open question. The Aspire study found that when students and families got extra nudges to use Paper, and did, those students were 4 percentage points more likely to pass all their classes. Paper is involved in other ongoing research, but there’s not much else to go on for now.

Cutler maintains that Paper is “a critical piece to recovery.”

“I would 100% disagree with the fact that it’s not a solution that can address learning losses,” he said. “It absolutely is. And it’s being used that way by districts across the country.”

Leaders in districts like Mississippi’s Jefferson County schools are banking on it. Superintendent Adrian Hammitte jumped on the chance to use Paper through the state’s initiative.

“Coming from a school district with not many resources,” he said, “with it being free and offering 24/7 support, I was pretty much sold.”

Elsewhere in Mississippi, districts are using Paper to approximate “high-dosage tutoring” — a highly effective strategy in which students attend multiple tutoring sessions per week, during the school day. Cutler and the company’s marketing materials say Paper can be used in a high-dosage way, though its model is missing key components of that research-backed strategy, such as providing students with a consistent tutor.

Others say the kind of help Paper offers isn’t enough to catch up struggling students — and the fact that so many districts have turned to it raises questions about the country’s capacity to truly help the students who need it most.

Tony Solina, who oversees 16 Aspire schools in California, says it’s unrealistic to think Paper is going to “close the learning loss gap” the way most schools use it. His strategy to do that was to make sure the schools he manages had an after-school program staffed by educators who build relationships with students and their teachers.

“That’s, to me, the gold standard,” he said. “I don’t believe any online system is going to do better than or trump that.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Final election results: Democrats expand majority on Colorado State Board of Education

2022-11-16T17:48:43+00:00

Democrats have expanded their majority on the Colorado State Board of Education in an election that many education observers called one of the most important on the ballot.

Democrat Kathy Plomer, a former Adams 12 school board president, won decisively in the election for a new statewide at-large seat on the Colorado State Board of Education. She was running against Dan Maloit, a St. Vrain Valley parent who organized others in support of in-person school.

And former Greeley-Evans school board member and Latina community activist Rhonda Solis came out ahead in the closest race this year, the contest to represent the new 8th Congressional District in Adams and Weld counties.

Two incumbents are returning to the State Board of Education as well.

In the 6th Congressional District, incumbent Democrat McClellan defeated Republican Molly Lamar, a Cherry Creek parent and former teacher.

And in the 5th Congressional District representing Colorado Springs and El Paso County, incumbent Republican Durham defeated long-shot Democratic challenger Joseph Shelton, a campus security guard and LGBTQ community activist.

Starting in January, Democrats will hold six seats on the State Board, up from four. The State Board is growing from seven members to nine due to Colorado’s growing population.

“I’m feeling very excited and honored,” Plomer said by phone from an election party at Denver’s Art Hotel. “I’m very glad I got a chance to talk to people all over Colorado about what matters to them in education.”

The election comes at a time when more voters think schools are on the wrong track, yet they’re deeply divided about what the right track would look like. Republicans had hoped victories by conservative school board candidates last year might open a path to take back the State Board, which Democrats have held since 2016. But Colorado voters favored Democrats in most races up and down the ballot.

Plomer said she hopes Democratic wins help put to rest some of the debates that dominated the campaign, and that seemed to play out two days after the election, when, in a party line vote, the current State Board adopted more inclusive social studies standards that call for students to learn more about the contributions and experiences of diverse groups.

The decision concluded a lengthy process that saw a progressive coalition advocate for more inclusive social studies content required by state law and conservatives push back against standards they described as divisive and contrary to some parents’ values. The social studies standards became an election issue despite the vote being scheduled to be decided by the current board.

Republicans proposed — again — adopting the conservative American Birthright civics program as the basis for Colorado civics standards, and Democrats — again — rejected them.

Plomer said she’s looking forward to working on other issues, such as the school accountability system and addressing teacher shortages.

The next State Board will be responsible for overseeing unprecedented state intervention in the long-struggling Adams 14 school district, guiding recovery from pandemic learning disruptions, hearing charter appeals in school districts grappling with declining enrollment, and setting academic standards amid widespread polarization around what schools should teach.

CD-8 has been considered the most competitive district in the state and one of the most closely watched. It contains a large share of Hispanic voters and unaffiliated voters and went narrowly for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

It lived up to its reputation and was by far the closest race among the four State Board seats. Solis prevailed by roughly 2,000 votes over Republican Peggy Propst, a longtime educator and former State Board of Education member who previously represented El Paso County.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Big win for 27J, tough loss for Douglas County in school tax measure votes

2022-11-09T23:21:36+00:00

Voters approved about two-thirds of 22 school district tax measures around Colorado Tuesday, partial election results show, with a particularly big win in the Brighton-based 27J district where seven previous mill levy overrides failed. In part, the district’s successful override measure will fund teacher pay raises — possibly up to 7.5%.

“I’m so excited for our 2,000-plus employees,” said Superintendent Chris Fiedler on Tuesday night as he celebrated with supporters at a Brighton brewery. “This will be a vote of confidence for them.”

Meanwhile, in the 64,000-student Douglas County district, where a conservative board majority pushed out the superintendent last February leading to months of turmoil, voters likely rejected two tax measures. One, 5A, a mill levy override that would fund 9% teacher raises, was down by 1.3 percentage points Wednesday afternoon with some votes uncounted. The other, 5B, a $450 million bond issue that was losing by a much larger margin, would have paid for new schools and building upgrades.

Sarah Mesmer, interim president of the district’s teachers union, called the losses disappointing, saying they will hurt the district’s ability to attract and retain teachers.

“I know that there are teachers who are going to leave because their compensation in neighboring districts is better,” she said. “We lose teachers to Littleton. We lose teachers to Cherry Creek, and that’s unfortunate.”

Conservative opponents of the tax measures circulated false claims that new money would support “woke” instruction, while some observers said the divisiveness on the school board and the recent churn in leadership likely hurt voter support for the measures.

“A community needs to feel that there is a plan, that there is stability, that this has been well thought out,” said Tracie Rainey, executive director of the Colorado School Finance Project.

In Douglas County, “I think a lot of that got disrupted,” she said, noting the district has had three superintendents in three years.

Despite the double defeat in Douglas County, it was a good year for school district ballot measures generally, according to unofficial results tallied by the Colorado School Finance Project. Fifteen measures were passing as of midday Wednesday, including in Boulder Valley, Greeley-Evans, Mapleton, and Delta County in western Colorado, though some votes were still being counted.

Most of the ballot measures will pay for capital projects such as school construction or building upgrades. A handful, including in District 27J and Mapleton, will fund recurring expenses such as pay raises for staff.

In 27J, the mill levy override 5B passed soundly, representing the first time in 22 years that district voters approved such a measure. (Last year, the district narrowly passed a bond issue.)

In addition to pay raises, the mill levy override will pay for armed security officers at district elementary schools and for additional staff and resources to expand career and technical education programs at district high schools.

Fiedler said the district decided to add the provision for new security staff after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last spring.

“That definitely brought some voters to a yes who maybe hadn’t been there before,” he said.

In the Windsor-based Weld RE-4 district, its bond measure 4B and mill levy override 4C appeared to be passing comfortably midafternoon Wednesday with about 55% of the vote, but district officials were reluctant to declare victory since some votes were still being counted in Weld County.

There’s “no definitive call,” said a district spokeswoman.

Rainey said the success rate of school ballot measures this year was pretty consistent with prior years, though the number of school districts with ballot measures was lower than usual. This year, there were 22 measures, compared with 30 last year and 28 the year before.

She said the pandemic limited the ways school districts could engage their communities to gather input as they consider such measures.

“I would anticipate in the next year or two you’re going to start seeing that pent-up demand for districts wanting to go [for a ballot issue],” she said.

Besides Douglas County, five other districts faced tax measure defeats Tuesday, including neighboring Lewis-Palmer, and four rural districts: Bennett, Ellicott, Kiowa, and Platte Canyon.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Hope, healing, and the return of an annual camping trip for Brooklyn high-schoolers

2022-11-09T19:50:17+00:00

Surrounded by her classmates on a bright October morning in the woods of Fishkill, New York, Diana Ramirez had no trouble making herself heard.

The 14-year-old enthusiastically initiated chants and cheerfully shouted instructions to her peers during team-building activities on a multi-day camping trip organized by their Brooklyn public high school.

Speaking up hasn’t always been so easy for the high school freshman — especially during the past several years overshadowed by the pandemic.

“Socialization was really hard, stuck in my home for months doing nothing but talking to myself,” Diana said. The teen still gets so nervous sometimes talking to new people that she shakes. “It’s hard to talk to people, and it’s hard to have an actual conversation face to face, not on the phone,” she said.

Helping teenagers like Diana find their voice is central to the mission of Leaders High School, a small public school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, that’s part of a network of NYC Outward Bound Schools across the five boroughs. The network’s model focuses on forging tight-knit relationships between kids and staff, often through shared outdoor experiences.

Nearly three-quarters of teenagers across the country reported at least one traumatic experience linked to long-term mental health difficulties during the pandemic.

That mission has taken on extra urgency for this year’s freshmen, whose entire middle school experience was upended by the pandemic, and who are still cautiously emerging from its shadow as they begin high school.

Nearly three in four teenagers nationwide reported at least one “adverse childhood event” — a traumatic experience linked to long-term mental health challenges — during the pandemic, according to a recent survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thirteen percent of teens experienced at least four.

Yodit Stevens, a Leaders High School special education teacher.

“These were the COVID babies,” said Yodit Stevens, a special education teacher at Leaders, and Diana’s chaperone during the camping trip. “They’re just coming out of their shells.”

The school’s annual camping trip, where kids spend several days in the woods with classmates, a teacher, and trained guides, is a cornerstone of Leaders’ approach. It serves as a foundational bonding experience and a chance for teens, many of whom have never spent a night away from home, to get a taste of independence.

The excursion was canceled for the past two years because of COVID-19. But the trip was back this year, and school staffers hope it can offer the new class of ninth graders a fresh start and a way to process the lingering pain of the past three years to begin healing.

For Diana, it’s already working.

“Everything has changed,” she said. “I’m talking to people, I’m a little more social … you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”

Mental health tolls add up

Schools across New York City resumed full-time, in-person classes last year after more than a year of fully remote or hybrid instruction. But COVID still loomed large.

Mask rules remained in place until the spring, and a COVID wave last winter kept kids home in droves, driving up chronic absence rates at schools across the city, including at Leaders.

“A lot of kids were getting sick, and then once they were sick, they were also just scared and isolated … it was like we have to stay home to protect ourselves,” said Tom Mullen, the principal of Leaders.

Stevens, who worked with eighth graders last year, noticed that even when her students were in school last year, they were often reluctant to open up to classmates or teachers.

“There was a lot of pain, resistance. It was hard to get them to speak in class,” she said. “As far as the interpersonal relationships, they were very closed off.”

COVID took a large toll on students, between illness, trauma, and social isolation.

Diana remembers those fears vividly. She watched multiple family members get sick one by one, and spent long stretches barely leaving her room.

For a teenager who thrived on interaction and social experiences, the isolation was devastating.

“It hit her very, very hard,” said Diana’s mom, Rosa Ramirez. “She had a lot going on in her head … it was worse for her to think, ‘What’s going on with my mom, my cousin? Are we going to be able to survive?’”

Mental health challenges for teens were widespread during the pandemic.

Across the country, 44% of teenagers reported feeling persistently sad or hopeless at some point in 2021, a different CDC survey found.

At Leaders, staffers are just starting to scratch the surface of what their new students may have gone through before arriving.

“Some of them come from some really hard backgrounds, some traumatic situations,” Stevens said.

Convincing wary families to let kids travel

Administrators at Leaders High School knew that restarting the annual camping trip would be a critical part of their efforts to give incoming ninth graders a positive start to their high school experience — and a chance to start to heal pandemic wounds.

Students spend the trip getting to know peers in their “Crew,” a signature NYC Outward Bound course that lasts all four years of high school. “Crew leaders” like Stevens serve as faculty advisers for the same group of students throughout their time at Leaders, and act as chaperones on the camping trip.

In New York City, where middle school students fan out to high schools across the five boroughs and often start ninth-grade knowing few or no other classmates, that social home base can be a lifeline.

Leaders High School ninth grade students play a game called Zombie-Zombie at Sharpe Reservation Camp ABC. Students work together in their “Crew” for their entire time in high school during Outward Bound.

“Going out and having this experience together is a catalyst for really intense bonding,” Mullen said. “They’re craving it. They know what they’ve missed and … they want to connect with each other and they want their high school experience to be special.”

But school officials knew it would also take some work to convince wary families and kids to leave their homes, city, and cell phones behind after three years of being largely hunkered down.

Diana’s mom Rosa said she was nervous about sending her youngest daughter — who has never spent a night away from home — on the camping trip, even after watching her two older sons thrive on the excursion years earlier.

“Being that she’s the only girl, it was a little more difficult,” she said.

School leaders didn’t shy away from families’ concerns and dispatched alumni and older siblings to share their experiences to help ease fears. They talked through communication and safety plans with families, and some staffers, including Stevens, offered to keep in touch with parents by text throughout the trip.

That openness and proactive communication ultimately won Rosa over.

“I see how they get along with the children, they treat them like family and don’t treat them like students,” she said. “They’re very vigilant.”

Convincing families to send their kids on this trip required the school to relax their concerns after almost three years of staying at home. NYC Outward Bound also had to recruit new staff and refresh training for all of their employees for the camping trip.

Getting families on board wasn’t the only hurdle.

NYC Outward Bound, the nonprofit that supports schools like Leaders and funds the annual excursion, had to staff up and refresh existing employees’ training after two years without a camping trip.

“Before anyone’s on site, we go through simulations and trainings with our staff,” including what to do if a student is injured or lost, said Vanessa Rodriguez, the CEO of NYC Outward Bound Schools.

The nonprofit ultimately decided to shorten the trip from five days to three to ease the transition.

A chance to ditch screens and unplug

For teens who spent years glued to their devices as crucial academic and social outlets, they initially found the no-phone rule of the camping trip hard to take.

One 2021 survey of more than 5,000 12- and 13-year-olds from across the country found that middle schoolers reported an average of nearly 8 hours a day on screens during the pandemic, up from an estimated average of 3.8 hours a day for the same group before the pandemic.

But once the teenagers got out in the woods, they were surprised by how quickly they forgot all about their devices.

“Everyone’s actually saying, ‘Oh I realize I haven’t been looking at my phone, I haven’t been grabbing for it because I’ve been enjoying myself,’” Diana said.

Without phones, students were forced to focus more explicitly on the tasks at hand — and on each other.

For 14-year-old Gabriel Alexandre, that meant trying something completely new: preparing dinner with his classmates.

“The materials were already there, but it was cool putting them together for our class as a community, that’s … bonding,” he said. The experience has even given him some more confidence to experiment in the kitchen at home, he added.

(Top) Leaders High School ninth grade students play a game called French Fry. (Bottom, from left) Leaders High School students Gabriel Alexandre and Diana Ramirez, both 14 years old.

Mullen said offering activities that don’t feel contrived or have a prescribed outcome is key to making the camping trip a meaningful learning experience.

“We let the kids get lost sometimes, and they’ll see like, ‘Hey I don’t think we’re going the right way,’ and reset their course,” he said. “I think education is most powerful when students are grappling with non-routine problems where the answers aren’t obvious.”

The open-endedness of the trip gives kids with a wide range of personalities and skill sets a chance to shine, staffers said.

That’s especially important for a school like Leaders, where students come from a broad array of racial, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds.

One student, a native Urdu speaker, won praise for being especially observant during group activities. Another, an accomplished athlete, volunteered to cart her classmates’ heavy backpacks when they got tired and hoisted her peers up a steep hill during a hike. A third, who had arrived at the school just a week before the camping trip, leapt into the role of navigator, directing his classmates around the Sharpe Nature Reservation in Fishkill.

And then there was Diana, the group’s vocal leader, who displayed a special ability to “bring everyone together with a lot of love,” according to Stevens, the group’s faculty adviser.

“They are all leaders. Each in their own way, and literally each one of them brings something special,” she added.

(Top, from left) Leaders High School ninth grade students play a game called Fox Walk. Leaders High School ninth grade students review the map during their hike. (Bottom) A Leaders High School student helps one of her peers as they hike up a hill.

But the most memorable moment of the trip came when the kids shed their individual labels, dropped their guard, and came together as a group.

It happened around the campfire on the second night. Stevens set the tone by sharing some raw and painful news: She’d recently learned that a family member had fallen seriously ill.

“I had them just close their eyes and sit for a moment and just feel the breeze, feel their own heartbeats, listen to the sounds around them, and check in with themselves,” she said. “I told them … life waits for no one at all.”

Stevens’ disclosure opened the floodgates and gave students permission to share some of their own lingering traumas.

“She set an example that feeling your feelings are OK and ... we’re all here for each other,” said Diana. “Everyone was kind of letting it out. There was a lot of tears.”

The conversation opened a window for Stevens to bring up the importance of mental health support, and the stigma surrounding therapy.

“We talked about needing therapy … in some of our communities it’s not big for you to go and get therapy, but it’s needed, it’s absolutely needed,” Stevens said.

Diana hopes the feelings and honesty from that night will linger when the kids get back to school, much like the smoke that clings to clothes after a campfire.

“We’re going to be talking about this trip for years,” she said.

Leaders High School students put their hands in together during a group exercise.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Hope Hampton defeats Kristen Phair in IPS election results for District 3 race

2022-11-09T16:26:58+00:00

This story has been updated with certified election results from Nov. 21.

Hope Hampton has defeated Kristen Phair in the race to represent District 3 on the Indianapolis Public Schools board, after receiving backing from education groups with well-funded political action committees.

In certified election results, Hampton had 55.17% of the vote with 8,966 votes. Her opponent Phair had 44.83% of the vote with 7,287 votes.

Hampton, a small business owner who previously worked as a dean and school counselor, has received endorsements and significant campaign donations from the charter-friendly groups Stand for Children Indiana and RISE Indy and their affiliated political action committees.

She significantly outraised Phair with about $85,100 collected since Aug. 18, the majority of which came from PACs for both groups and the Indiana Chamber Business Advocacy Committee.

Phair, meanwhile, raised about $12,600 and received an endorsement from the Indianapolis Education Association in October.

In a statement late Tuesday, Hampton thanked her son — a student at Shortridge High School — for canvassing with her.

“I am humbled and honored by the amount of voters that came out and voted for me today. For me, this entire campaign was about the families that IPS serves,” Hampton said, adding, “I’m excited to serve on the IPS board and continue to support the communities and families across Indianapolis.”

District 3 encompasses about a dozen schools, including two Center for Inquiry schools, the district’s two Butler lab schools, James Whitcomb Riley School 43, and Shortridge High School.

The district also includes diverse neighborhoods in the core of Indianapolis, from Meridian-Kessler to part of Martindale-Brightwood.

Hampton could help oversee the rollout of the district’s Rebuilding Stronger proposal, which the current board will consider for a vote on Nov. 17.

The plan is a major shakeup of IPS as it grapples with a decline in enrollment and future financial instability — the latest version proposes closing six schools and reconfiguring grades throughout the district to help schools run more efficiently. It also seeks to bring specialized academic programs to more students of color.

Phair said in a statement Wednesday morning that she is proud of how hard her team worked on her campaign.

“I’m looking forward to how our new board members will work in partnership with the communities, families, and teachers of IPS to provide high quality education for our students,” she said.

Major challenges await IPS election winners

The two other races for IPS school board had one candidate each.

Nicole Carey was the unopposed candidate for District 5, which includes the neighborhood of Riverside and parts of Fall Creek Place and the Old Northside. Angelia Moore was the sole contender for one of two at-large seats.

In a statement Tuesday night, Carey said her unopposed race gave her the opportunity to have “rich conversations” with teachers, students, and families.

“We are in a moment of great transition for the district, and I am now imbued with a deep sense of responsibility for what it will mean to serve this community,” Carey said. “I’m looking forward to January with a strong commitment to working for equitable, quality public schools for every student in our district.”

Moore said in a statement that she had enjoyed getting to know families and educators as part of her campaign.

“We have some huge issues on the horizon, and I know that the upcoming four years will be faced with different challenges and decisions,” Moore said. “However, no matter what I’ll make myself accessible and will make every decision with a students-first effort.”

District 5 commissioner Taria Slack and at-large commissioner Susan Collins both chose not to seek reelection after one term.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis just won re-election. Here’s what he said about education.

2022-11-09T04:05:49+00:00

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who made education the centerpiece of his first term, has won re-election, defeating Republican challenger Heidi Ganahl by a wide margin.

As governor, Polis made full-day kindergarten free to families and passed landmark legislation to create a universal preschool system. He also oversaw two years of major learning disruptions during the COVID pandemic.

On the campaign trail, Polis focused on the positive, pointing out schools have more funding than before, teachers are getting raises, and children are getting a better start. He reiterated those themes in a speech to supporters Tuesday night.

“We created free full-day kindergarten and universal preschool which launches next fall,” he said. “It’s not only important for every child regardless of their background or where they live or who they are to get a strong start, but it also saves families $5,000 a year, and that’s what folks need right now.”

Polis also acknowledged big challenges lie ahead, and he promised to keep working to make Colorado more affordable, including working to address the cost of college.

During the campaign, we asked Polis eight questions about education policy. Below, see how he answered:

What is the most important education problem in Colorado right now and what would you do to fix it?

Every Colorado family should have access to their choice of a high-quality education. My administration has made major progress to improve our schools by increasing per pupil funding by nearly 20%, allowing for reduced class sizes and increased teacher pay, and ensuring that no matter where you live, your kids can attend preschool and kindergarten for free. Our biggest challenge is to ensure that every child has access to a terrific education no matter where they live in Colorado. We need to — and will — do more work to turn around underperforming schools and attract and retain great teachers.

In your current role, what education accomplishment are you most proud of? What does it tell voters about your approach and your priorities?

Successfully delivering a high-quality education for every child is the great passion of my life. I’ve started public charter schools and chaired the State Board of Education. Four years ago, I promised that we’d pass free all-day kindergarten and universal pre-K while increasing funding for our education system. That’s exactly what we did — providing all-day kindergarten and starting soon, free universal preschool as well — to families across Colorado, making it easier for parents to balance their families and their careers while saving families almost $10,000 per child. We also increased per pupil funding for public schools by nearly 20%, a record investment in local schools that is reducing class sizes and increasing teacher pay.

Given that Colorado is a local control state, what is the role of the governor in determining what gets taught in schools or other school policies?

Strong school districts, schools, and educators are the foundation to making sure Colorado has the best education system in the nation. I know how important it is that the state sets a high bar and provides the resources for schools to meet those expectations with accountability for results. It is the role of the governor to ensure that every Colorado kid has a chance to succeed in school and in life. We need to do more work to train excellent teachers, including supporting partnerships between school districts, community colleges, and colleges to ensure that our future workforce needs are met.

Colorado is set to roll out universal preschool in the fall of 2023. What does a successful preschool program look like? How will you ensure the benefits reach the most vulnerable and the program strengthens the early childhood sector as a whole?

Decades of research shows that high-quality early childhood education improves academic achievement, increases graduation rates, and prevents achievement gaps. As a businessman and a dad, I could not think of a better investment in Colorado’s future. The Colorado Universal Preschool Program will adopt nationally recognized best practices to help ensure that children are learning and supported during these critical years for child development, while also supporting parents so that they can work and save money. We got the funding and program in place, and now we’re going to implement universal preschool successfully across our state.

Colorado funds its public colleges and universities at low rates, leading to a higher tuition burden for families. Colorado high school graduates attend college at lower rates than in most other states, limiting their opportunities later in life. What will you do to help more Coloradans access high-quality postsecondary options?

We’re working hard to make high-quality education options affordable and accessible for every Coloradan. Partnering with the legislature, we ensured tuition was kept flat at nearly every public college and university in the state. We followed that up by capping tuition increases at most state colleges at 3% and tied scholarship amounts to the rising cost of attendance. We’re expanding concurrent enrollment opportunities to help high school students decrease the cost of attendance and time to degree. To expand access to higher education opportunities, we provided $44 million to support high-needs school districts and institutions and support innovation.

How will you increase funding to Colorado schools and more specifically raise teachers’ pay?

We can’t have great schools without great teachers, and to do that, we need to increase teacher pay. Ultimately, this is an issue controlled by school districts, but that doesn’t mean we can’t work together to improve it. The most important step we can take is to increase funding for our schools, which I’ve worked to do consistently as governor. I have also strengthened other programs that help teachers, such as expanding loan forgiveness and making licensing renewal free for teachers. We have more work to do on this issue, and I will continue to advocate for increasing teacher pay.

What does a comprehensive plan for addressing the mental health of our youth look like in a Colorado you are leading?

My administration is working to completely transform what has been an insufficient mental health system for Coloradans and their families. We have created the new Behavioral Health Administration to streamline state services, implemented the free 988 suicide and crisis hotline, and launched the successful iMatter program to provide therapy and drug treatment sessions to Colorado youth — all for free. To date, the iMatter program has already been used by more than 3,300 Coloradans ages 18 and under.

What steps are needed to improve school safety?

Making sure our kids have a safe space where they can learn is a top priority for my administration. We’ve strengthened physical infrastructure in schools through investments in everything from door locks and entrance systems to comprehensive training for school staff on threat assessment and response. Additionally, we have worked to invest in comprehensive behavioral health care support in schools, such as the iMatter program, and have increased school-based behavioral health professionals. It’s also important that a culture of support for all learners exists across our schools, and as governor I will always do my best to set a positive tone.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee election: Gov. Bill Lee wins second term, will prioritize education again

2022-11-09T01:26:16+00:00

Gov. Bill Lee cruised to a second term in office in Tuesday’s election, partly on his campaign pledge to Tennessee parents and teachers to “make the most of the next four years” on education. But he offered few details on exactly what that will mean.

The Associated Press reported that election results showed the Republican governor easily defeated Dr. Jason Martin, a Nashville physician and the Democratic Party’s nominee, whom he declined to debate. The ruby-red state hasn’t elected a Democrat to statewide office since 2006.

Lee’s landslide victory sets up the governor to claim a mandate for whatever he proposes through 2026, or to support any ambitions he might have for national office.

In his victory speech Tuesday evening, the governor said he will continue to elevate parental rights. He also touted public school investments under his administration, as well as expanding choices for families “who want something a little different for their kid” than traditional public schools.

“I’ll remind you for the next four years ... that those two ideas are not in conflict with each other,” Lee said. “We can fund public schools and provide alternative opportunities for children at the same time if we are committed to funding students and not systems.”

During his campaign, Lee has been short on details about his second-term agenda for education. Instead, he’s emphasized staying the course on his first-term accomplishments, including rewriting Tennessee’s 30-year-old education funding formula, expanding middle and high school access to career and technical training, and grounding reading instruction in phonics.

Lee’s final 30-second campaign ad — part of a $3.2 million campaign spending blitz in October — also touted safer classrooms and ended with this promise: “Parents and teachers, you have my word that we’ll make the most of the next four years.”

Campaign spokeswoman Laine Arnold said the ad signaled Lee’s “intent to continue making education a top priority.”

Asked on the eve of Election Day for specifics about his education priorities for his second term, Lee said he again wants to invest more money toward teacher pay and further expand education choices through charter schools and private school vouchers. He also wants to continue prioritizing vocational, technical, and agricultural education.

“These are all things that we have implemented in the last four years, but we now have to make certain that those are growing, that they’re invested in, and that there’s significant improvement in all areas,” the governor told reporters during his final campaign stop in Franklin, south of Nashville.

Gov. Bill Lee speaks to a small crowd during his final campaign stop on Nov. 7, 2022, in Franklin, Tennessee, where Lee graduated from a public high school in 1977.

But Democrats — who are still smarting that Lee pushed through a private school voucher law with a controversial, razor-thin vote during his first year in office — are interpreting the governor’s vague TV promise on education as an ominous threat.

They expect Lee and another GOP legislative supermajority to try to expand his education savings account program to shift more taxpayer money from public to private schools. Currently, the program is limited to Memphis and Nashville.

Democrats also expect more proposals to censor books and instruction in public schools.

In 2021, Tennessee became one of the first states to enact a law, which Lee signed, to restrict K-12 classroom discussions about the legacy of slavery, racism, and white privilege.

This year, Lee pushed through a law requiring reviews of school and classroom library collections. He signed a second measure that authorizes the state textbook commission to ban challenged materials statewide if its appointed members deem them “inappropriate” for students’ ages and maturity levels.

As for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Lee has said students should be taught that the deadly 2021 insurrection was a day of “lawlessness” by individual attackers. He has not referenced the broader plot, still under federal investigation, to disrupt the transfer of presidential power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

“Republicans have already started to systematically eradicate history in textbooks and ban teachings related to race, gender identity, and sexuality,” said Rep. Vincent Dixie, a Nashville Democrat who chairs his party’s House caucus. “Four more years under this leadership will only lead to more micromanagement of school curricula and stricter fines and punishment for our already overworked and underpaid educators.”

Lee won big despite a major misstep

A businessman and farmer from affluent Williamson County, near Nashville, Lee surprised both political parties four years ago when he survived a bruising primary race and won his first bid for public office to become Tennessee’s 50th governor.

Campaigning for more education choices for families and vocational training options for students, he made education a top priority and used the state’s GOP muscle to pass much of his agenda.

But Lee suffered a humiliating blow this year after inviting the president of Michigan’s conservative Hillsdale College to bring up to 100 charter schools to Tennessee, only to have a Hillsdale-linked charter group withdraw its first three applications after a Lee-appointed panel found the proposals weren’t up to snuff.

Lee also was stung by public outrage — and criticized by numerous members of his own political party — after a leaked video showed him sitting silently at a private reception in June as Hillsdale’s president, Larry Arnn, mocked teachers, their training programs, and diversity officers. The governor declined to disavow Arnn’s remarks or disaffiliate with Hillsdale. Instead, he blamed “left-wing activism in public education” as hurting the “genuine work of our teachers.”

At the time, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally called Arnn’s comments “ill-conceived, unfortunate and untrue.” This week, the legislature’s top GOP leader said Lee’s accomplishments have offset any of the governor’s missteps over Arnn’s comments.

“I think voters have been looking at his entire record,” said McNally, who’s from Oak Ridge. “He was dealt the worst hand of any governor I can remember — with COVID, floods, tornadoes, and protests. I think he’s handled it very well.”

Dr. Jason Martin campaigns to be governor.

But Martin, a critical care doctor, said it was the governor’s hands-off approach to the COVID pandemic that spurred him to run against Lee. The Democratic nominee also criticized Lee-backed school voucher, charter, and censorship policies for giving the state ultimate control over those decisions at the expense of locally elected officials.

Other critics have said it’s hypocritical for Lee’s campaign ads to claim that children, families, and moms have been his “top priority,” when he has not supported expanding Medicaid. That position has cost Tennessee billions of dollars in federal health care benefits for the working poor.

The governor also helped to grow the state’s rainy day fund to record levels while its Department of Children’s Services — the state agency charged with caring for abused, neglected, and foster children — is severely understaffed and short of beds for children taken into custody.

Next steps: Shaping another term in office

Fresh from his Election Day victory, Lee will kick off budget hearings Wednesday to prepare for his 2023-24 state spending proposal, which he’ll present to the Tennessee General Assembly several weeks after lawmakers convene on Jan. 10.

Budget discussions about K-12 education with Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn are listed second on the four-day schedule.

Months before his reelection, Lee pledged to invest an additional $1 billion in students and schools next fiscal year, when federal pandemic relief funding is set to run out and the state’s new funding formula kicks in.

But while Lee was considered a heavy favorite for a second term in office, many education stakeholders have wondered privately whether Schwinn will stay on.

The former Texas academic chief shepherded the governor’s major initiatives, including strategies to improve literacy and help students recover from pandemic learning loss, as well as expanding grow-your-own teacher training programs and implementing a new education funding formula that lets money follow the student, plus sets aside more money for students with higher needs.

But in her first nine months on the job, nearly a fifth of the education department’s employees left, mostly from resignations. And early on, she frustrated lawmakers for rolling out initiatives and taking administrative shortcuts without ample legislative input, review, or approval, even as she led Tennessee through the pandemic, considered the biggest education upheaval in modern history.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn

Asked last month if she expected to continue her role for a second term, Schwinn said she and Lee “have had those conversations.”

“I plan to be here, and we’re moving full steam ahead,” she told Chalkbeat.

She cited the state’s strategic plans on literacy, student acceleration, innovative school models, grow-your-own teacher training programs, and the state’s new funding formula.

“We are really proud of these big pieces of legislation that have passed and the interventions and work,” she said. “Now we have to double down and stay the course.”

Clarification: Nov. 21, 2022: A previous version of this story said early employee turnover had been high in the education department and that Schwinn’s future in the second term of Gov. Lee’s administration was less certain than his. This version reports early employee turnover data and clarifies that numerous stakeholders have wondered if Schwinn would stay in her role for a second term.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Not ‘present,’ and paying a steep cost

2022-11-07T21:23:41+00:00

Two-thirds of Detroit students missed at least one of every 10 school days last year.

That’s one day every two weeks, or more than three weeks between the first day of school and the start of summer vacation.

That’s at least half a year of learning over five years — half a grade of instruction lost for roughly 60,000 students in Detroit’s charter schools and city district.

High levels of absenteeism are a disaster for students and schools. Low attendance sabotages pandemic recovery efforts, tanks school reforms, and disrupts entire classrooms, research shows.

As absences pile up, masses of individual students — especially students experiencing poverty — are consigned to a demoralizing cycle of academic catch-up, asked to keep up with other students while receiving fewer lessons.

“School is hard enough, but then when you have to catch up, it’s overwhelming, and they just give up,” said Janine Scott, a math teacher in the Detroit Public Schools Community District who serves on Chalkbeat’s reader advisory board.

Absenteeism across Michigan has risen to alarming new heights, driven in part by quarantine policies. Half a million students were chronically absent statewide last year. The problem is especially acute in Detroit and other cities statewide, where child poverty, unaffordable housing, and patchy transportation fuel some of the nation’s highest rates of chronic absence.

Across Detroit and the state, schools have tried to solve the problem. They’ve hired attendance agents, set up alerts for students at risk of becoming chronically absent, and created messaging campaigns about the cost of missing school. But many of these efforts are small-scale, or built on the notion that absences mostly reflect families’ motivation to attend school, rather than social barriers that research shows are the drivers of absenteeism.

At the same time, schools have gotten little help addressing a problem that is far bigger than them, experts say, one whose roots lie in society-wide failures of housing, employment, and public health.

“We can’t see it just as a schools issue,” said Hedy Chang, executive director of Attendance Works, a national initiative that aims to reduce chronic absenteeism. “Some of what chronic absence reflects is economic inequities in our societies, lack of access to healthcare, flexibility in work, lack of access to decent transportation.”

The scope of missed school days

For the most part, no one was able to escape the rise in missed school days. As the pandemic closed Michigan schools and sent millions of children to learn at home, the rates of chronic absenteeism, when students miss 10% of the school year, shot up across all demographics.

But even before the pandemic, Michigan struggled to get students to come to school. Cities, in particular, had high rates of absenteeism, with Detroit’s rate topping the list of all large cities in the U.S.

The spike in absenteeism during the pandemic prompted state officials to sound alarms.

“I encourage parents and districts to work together to focus on student attendance so that they can make the best use of the time that is available to them for student instruction,” said state Superintendent Michael Rice in a statement this fall.

Before the pandemic, Detroit had committed to a multi-pronged effort to reduce absenteeism. The district’s 2018-19 attendance plan outlined a holistic approach to improving attendance through wraparound services for students, hiring attendance agents, and partnerships with community organizations. By the end of that school year, in part due to those efforts, the district reduced chronic absenteeism to 62%, down from 70% in the 2017-18 school year.

But the pandemic derailed those efforts. Last year, the rate rose to 79%.

That alarming trend held across the city and state.

Detroit charter schools had a chronic absenteeism rate of 58%. In the Lansing school district, it was 90%. In Flint, 80%. In Pontiac, 72%. In Eastpointe, 71%.

“Chronic absenteeism is now the big elephant in every room,” said Sonya Mays, a Detroit school board member, who was elected in 2016 as local control returned to the district. With staggering rates in front of school leaders across the state and country, Mays hopes it will contribute to more substantive discussions.

“I’m not super interested in a blame conversation,” she said. “I’m much more interested in unpacking the reasons that that number is so high and using data as much as we can. I do think that there still is a bit more anecdotal decision making than I would care for, not just in our district but broadly in all school districts.”

Misconceptions

Absenteeism, with its obvious consequences for learning, has troubled educators for as long as there have been schools in the United States.

Yet public understanding of the issue is rife with misconceptions that undermine solutions.

Take this seemingly simple question: Who is responsible for children’s attendance at school?

American popular culture, from Huckleberry Finn to Ferris Bueller, gives a simple answer: students and their parents. In turn, some efforts to improve school attendance in Michigan treat absenteeism as a choice that can be influenced with carrots or sticks.

But absences seldom boil down to a decision to skip school, experts say. Interviews with parents and researchers show that families generally understand the importance of regular attendance and do their best to get their children to class.

Instead, absences often result from painful but rational choices between a family’s basic well-being and attending school. Problems with housing, health, work, or transportation can quickly spiral into a crisis for a family that lacks money or a social support system. Even if attendance is a top priority, it does not trump the need for shelter, food, safety, and reliable child care.

“They go to school every day unless it’s impossible,” said Jasmine Person, whose three children attend Bow Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. Transportation is a challenge for Person, who lives far enough from Bow that her children aren’t eligible to be picked up by the school bus, and who sometimes struggles to cover the cost of fuel.

“If I don’t have gas money, it’s hard to get them to school and also get to work,” she said.

Parents who can’t bring their children to school because of car problems, an eviction, or a health crisis likely won’t change their behavior simply by changing their minds, said Larry Simmons, director of the Brightmoor Alliance.

“This level of chronic absence has a systemic root,” Simmons said. “It’s poverty and the consequences of poverty. When the car breaks down, that crisis isn’t easily accommodated because families’ resources are so thin.”

Simmons leads an attendance initiative called Every School Day Counts, which is backed by major philanthropies and nonprofits in Detroit.

In 2019, the group embarked on a messaging campaign designed to convince parents of the importance of attendance.

It didn’t work.

“Parents actually were resentful of the campaign because they felt like we were blaming them,” Simmons said.

The initiative has pivoted, Simmons said, to working directly with five Detroit schools. They are helping the schools pilot new programs to improve attendance with the goal of sharing their most promising findings with educators across the city.

Simmons is particularly optimistic about a plan to expand after-school programming, which encourages attendance for working families who can’t pick their children up from school until after 5 p.m.

Falling behind

For years, absenteeism got little attention from researchers and policymakers, perhaps because they assumed that regular school attendance — a legal requirement in every state — was the norm.

In fact, absenteeism is widespread. In Michigan, hundreds of thousands of students miss at least 18 school days every year.

All those absences have catastrophic results.

Students who are frequently absent tend to score lower on reading and math exams, get lower grades, and struggle more in college.

They are far more likely to drop out of high school.

One Baltimore-based study found that students who were otherwise similar — in the quality of their teacher, prior academic achievement, behavior, effort, and demographics — were less likely to close test score gaps in math if they were chronically absent.

A 2008 study in Chicago found that eighth graders’ absences predicted their success in the next school year eight times better than their test scores.

“We can’t educate children the way we want to and we can’t see the student achievement that we want to see if students aren’t consistently in school,” said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of Detroit Public Schools Community District, Michigan’s largest school district.

In the Detroit district, Vitti said, students perform significantly better against grade-level standards when they miss fewer days.

Widespread absenteeism isn’t just a problem for the absent students, but also for their classmates, research shows.

In classrooms where students are frequently absent, teachers must make tough decisions about whether to slow their instruction down for students who missed class.

“We’ve got some kids who still come to school every day, we have some kids who are doing everything that we’ve asked them to do,” Scott said. “And it’s not fair (to them) to hold up our lessons.”

Why absenteeism is so difficult to solve

Reducing chronic absenteeism in Michigan can seem like a steep uphill climb.

Think of the powerful Detroiters — emergency managers, celebrities, superintendents, philanthropists — who set out over the last decade to get more kids to class but barely put a dent in the problem.

Think of the consensus among researchers that absenteeism is driven by social problems that have outlasted decades of reform efforts in Michigan.

“Chronic absenteeism is a complex problem with no one solution,” said Sarah Lenhoff, a professor of education at Wayne State University and director of the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research, which has published numerous studies of attendance in Detroit.

PEER studies point out that Detroit is a “uniquely challenging context” for absenteeism because the conditions that researchers have linked statistically with absenteeism — things like asthma prevalence, poverty, and residential vacancies — are all present to an unusually high degree in the city.

“Reducing absenteeism in Detroit, with some of the most challenging structural conditions to attendance, requires more from schools, communities, the state, and other agencies,” Lenhoff said.

While she focuses on Detroit, many of the same headwinds show up in high-absenteeism communities across Michigan.

If nothing is done, half a million frequently absent students in Michigan will have “unequal opportunities to learn,” as one researcher put it. These students will struggle to make normal progress, much less make up for falling behind during the pandemic.

Chang, the Attendance Works leader who has worked extensively in Detroit, argues that responsibility for lackluster attendance needs to be as broad as the problem.

“It takes all of us,” she said.

Getting at the root of the problem

A long list of root causes underlies high rates of chronic absenteeism.

The list of potential solutions is long, too.

Some are already being put into practice as the Detroit district expands efforts to increase attendance. DPSCD has begun to work to strengthen relationships with families and help them navigate barriers to attendance. Officials are helping parents manage evictions and pay power bills, and a new district office distributes dry goods and school supplies.

The district has also begun to increase its focus on after-school programming, which has been shown to improve school day attendance over the past two decades.

But to some, the school district’s range of solutions can only do so much. Detroit Superintendent Vitti, while touting DPSCD’s recent efforts, believes chronic absenteeism warrants greater enforcement of truancy laws.

“Our role is to create an environment where students want to come,” he said. “But there is a point where there has to be more accountability and I think that is a city, really, a county function at the prosecutor’s level.”

A revamp of Detroit’s school transportation policies, too, could have great ramifications for student attendance. DPSCD currently provides yellow bus service to students who are attending their neighborhood school and live a certain distance away from the school.

The district also pays the city to provide free rides on DDOT buses to all high school students. While parents rely on that solution, DDOT’s bus routes and schedule are often misaligned with families’ transportation needs. Again, student ridership of city buses isn’t tracked. And bus routes don’t seem to account for families’ preferences or school locations.

Improving health services — both mental and physical — for students can also improve absenteeism, Lenhoff said. The same goes for reducing suspensions, which keep students out of school and are included in absenteeism statistics.

Child poverty, which is intertwined with absenteeism, is itself a solvable problem. During the pandemic, increased Child Tax Credit payments from the federal government sent hundreds of extra dollars a month to families, leading child poverty rates to decline even as much of the economy ground to a halt. In other words, giving people money helps, experts say. But the increased payments have stopped, and Congress hasn’t moved to renew them.

“I would argue that the best attendance policy that could possibly be passed would be for the federal government to reinstate the federal Child Tax Credit,” said Jennifer Erb-Downward, a researcher at Poverty Solutions, a University of Michigan think tank.

To better understand the problems driving absenteeism, experts say we need data that show why students are absent. For instance, we know that chronic absence was up in 2021-22, but not how much of that increase is due to illness or quarantines.

“We just need to, in my opinion, quantify as best as possible what those drivers (of chronic absenteeism) are, so we can really develop a plan to improve school attendance,” Mays said.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Interest in running for Indianapolis school board drops to new low

2022-11-04T19:53:45+00:00

This article was co-published by Chalkbeat Indiana and WFYI as part of a collaboration ahead of the 2022 school board elections. Miss Chalkbeat Indiana and WFYI’s IPS school board candidate forum? Read the recap here and watch the event here.

Vying for a seat on the Indianapolis Public Schools board of commissioners is usually a heated battle.

In 2012, 10 people raised more than $200,000 combined to win one of four open seats on the IPS board of commissioners — elected officials who have the power to vote on the district’s budget, set strategic goals, and oversee other priorities.

In 2018, eight other candidates collected more than $192,000 competing for three seats. And in 2020, nearly $600,000 was raised by 10 candidates seeking four open seats.

But this year, interest in leading IPS has dropped to the lowest level in at least the past decade — just four candidates have filed for three open seats. Only the race for District 3, which encompasses parts of midtown Indianapolis, is contested. The three incumbents are not seeking reelection.

Why are fewer people stepping up to govern the state’s largest school district? The answers people give range from polarizing politics to the daunting task of raising big campaign donations.

The waning interest comes right as the district embarks on its Rebuilding Stronger plan, a major overhaul to address declining enrollment and an impending fiscal cliff. The superintendent is proposing the closure of seven schools and the creation of standalone middle schools, among other things.

VOTER GUIDE: Meet the four candidates seeking three seats on IPS school board

IPS board members, including the three who chose not to seek reelection, are expected to vote on the plan in November.

“The district’s going through some huge changes right now, and it’s interesting to me that the people who are on the board now are going to vote on those changes and then go off,” said Jim Grim, Director of University and Community School Partnerships at IUPUI who lost a bid for school board in 2016. “So the people who come on are going to have to deal with those changes.”

Why are potential IPS school board candidates walking away?

But the decline also comes after years of school board races in which certain candidates received tens of thousands of dollars from political action committees. These PACs and other out-of-state donors have strong ties to the charter school movement, and support education policies that traditional public school advocates say are harming IPS.

That money has ultimately deterred people from running a race they won’t win, argued Jim Scheurich of the IPS Community Coalition, a nonprofit group consistently critical of the district’s partnerships with charter schools.

ELECTION FORUM: Candidates for IPS school board would vote no on Rebuilding Stronger

“To me, they basically ended local democracy,” Scheurich said of PACs associated with local nonprofits Stand for Children Indiana and RISE Indy. “The amount of money they have is so huge.”

Both organizations say their campaign support and community engagement efforts push education issues to the forefront of what’s at stake on the ballot.

Since 2012, large-scale campaign donations have also come from groups like the Indy Chamber’s Business Advocacy Committee and the Metropolitan Indianapolis Board of Realtors PAC.

The PAC of the state’s largest teachers union has also boosted candidates with more cash than some opponents.

The race to raise big donations may certainly be deterring potential candidates from running, said Rebecca Jacobsen, co-author of the book “Outside Money in School Board Elections,” which studied the influence of campaign contributions in Indianapolis and four other cities.

“Some of the candidates that we spoke to when we were doing this research actually joked that it would have been cheaper, would have required less money, to run for state legislature,” said Jacobsen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University. “Because the elections were getting so focused on [the fact that] you really had to raise quite a bit of money in order to be a viable candidate.”

But campaign finance may not be the only reason for the low turnout.

School board officials in Indiana and across the country have faced increased scrutiny, anger, and even threats over a range of issues, from COVID-19 protocols to curriculum during the pandemic. And the highly charged atmosphere has made some question if they would remain on their board.

Even though IPS has largely escaped such problems, that overall political environment might still be depressing interest from possible candidates.

“The current climate and the rhetoric that we’ve seen, and the coverage that we’ve seen of school boards, I think is probably making many people pause when they think, ‘Well, A) Do I really want to do this?’ and then ‘B) Do I have the means to do this?’” Jacobsen said. “And the combination of those two might mean a lot more people are saying no.”

The growing cost of school board campaigns

Elizabeth Gore remembers running her first election for Indianapolis school board in 2008 with just a few hundred dollars.

But things started to change in 2012, the year money from PACs and outside donors began to flow to Indiana.

Stand for Children Indiana, a branch of the national K-12 parent advocacy nonprofit based in Oregon, spent an unknown amount from its national parent. Its status as a social welfare organization allowed the group to avoid disclosing detailed expenses on individual candidates.

But some of Stand’s spending was visible in the form of things like glossy mailers targeting voters. Stand now discloses its spending through a political action committee.

Voters cast their ballots at the Indianapolis City-County Building in the 2020 election. Advocacy groups such as RISE Indy say they have helped increase voter turnout by increasing community engagement.

In the coming years, Gore won and lost against candidates financed with direct and in-kind support from Stand and later RISE Indy. RISE, a nonprofit formed in 2019, describes itself as drawing attention to issues around student achievement and equity in local schools. Some of its board members are high-profile charter school advocates.

Gore pulled off a major upset in 2016 against one such candidate, Sam Odle, who raised $40,011 in comparison to her roughly $1,000.

But in 2020, multiple PACs and individual donors flexed their financial muscle and provided a combined $266,052 for Kenneth Allen, Gore’s opponent. Hoosiers for Great Public Schools, a Carmel-based committee that supports “educational opportunities for all students,” donated $80,000 of that amount to Allen.

The PAC is run by Bart Peterson, who is a RISE board member, president of the educational non-profit Christel House International, and a former Indianapolis mayor. In 2020, it was funded by two donors outside Indiana: Netflix CEO Reed Hastings contributed $700,000 and Texas philanthropist John Arnold gave $200,000.

During the election, Stand for Children Indiana and RISE Indy also contributed more than a combined $100,000 to Allen in direct cash and in-kind support, like telemarketing.

Yet Gore, who raised around $22,000, lost by just two percentage points.

“There are a lot of things that go on that you need money for,” Gore said of running a campaign. “And if people have more than you, it might make a difference.”

Within IPS circles, Gore’s story is used both to support and refute the argument that money can buy school board races.

And organizations like Stand and RISE aren’t the only entities that have shelled out big dollars in recent years. The Indiana Political Action Committee for Education, or I-PACE, the political arm of the Indiana State Teachers Association, has financed candidates to serve as formidable opponents to the reform movement.

State campaign finance filings show that in 2018, I-PACE gave a total of $68,400 for three races, including $28,500 to Taria Slack to unseat Dorene Rodriguez Hoops, who was backed by the Indy Chamber and raised a total of $40,724. Slack won.

Susan Collins also defeated a candidate with more money. I-PACE donated $15,000 to her campaign.

In 2020, I-PACE supported Gore with $18,200 and Brandon Randall with $11,000 in their failed races.

But is money deterring people from running at all?

“It takes a lot of time if you are going to run a campaign properly,” said Deborah Heath, a former member of I-PACE, which makes decisions on endorsements and contributions using recommendations of local association members like the Indianapolis Education Association. “And there’s the potential overhaul of the district. If that passes the board, the incoming people in January that are going to be part of the implementation. If you read through the district website — that is a really huge overhaul.”

So to Heath, a 24-year IPS teacher and IEA secretary, there are a multiple reasons, including cost.

“I don’t think any amount of money raised through Stand’s committee will prevent them from running,” said Justin Ohlemiller, executive director of Stand for Children Indiana.

Ohlemiller said he hasn’t seen such low candidate filings during his 10 years in this position. But he disputes the notion that specific factors, like more finances, contribute to someone’s ability to win an election.

“It’s hard to say what factors contribute to a candidate winning or losing,” Ohlemiller said. “In fact, there’s really no data that kind of show what those factors are.”

But over the past decade, 14 out of the 17 candidates who raised more money than their opponent ended up winning their race.

Still, these advocacy groups point to positives they’ve had on the political school board landscape — Ohlemiller believes the increase in parent advocates leading text and phone banks has helped increase the number of voters.

“What is a largely sort of down ballot, low-information race for school board has certainly, I think, garnered more attention” over the last several years, Ohlemiller said.

Jasmin Shaheed-Young, founder of RISE Indy, also credits her organization with helping improve voter turnout in the 2020 election.

Successful candidates have strong community ties and have “a history of being focused on issues around educational equity,” Shaheed-Young said.

She also noted that three of the candidates this year for each seat — Hope Hampton, Angelia Moore, and Nicole Carey — are Black women, notably higher than in previous school board races.

“That to me is the evidence of power shifting to community members,” she said. “So regardless of what’s being spent in elections, the fact that we have three Black women that have been steeped in community and prioritizing students is, is an incredible victory for IPS and our city.”

What more money means for IPS school board elections

Scheurich, however, feels differently about the state of the school board.

The leader of the IPS Community Coalition, a grassroots group of parents and other organizers, believes it’s not worth the effort to run.

Unless candidates have major financial backing from groups like Rise and Stand, Scheurich said, they are entering a losing battle: “To me, it makes no sense to run. You can’t run. You have no legitimate chance to win.”

His coalition has thrown support behind various candidates in the past, people who would more likely oppose or at least question the charter school growth.

This year, Scheruich said, the group tried and failed to recruit candidates.

“People are not dumb. They see the amount of money that’s being spent,” he said. “And even if they’re considering it, you’ve got to tell them, ‘Hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent against you. They’ll have as much money as they need. They’ll have more than they need. And the best you’ll get is union support for maybe $20,000.’”

Money in school board elections has played both a positive and negative role, Jacobsen said.

More money brought increased attention to elections, enabling candidates to run more professionalized campaigns that potentially made them more informed of the issues.

But education reform money also shifted policy conversation towards nationalized issues — such as teacher unionization and charter schools — leaving little attention to localized issues uniquely important to the community, Jacobsen said.

“It does narrow, then, the agenda of what issues are being talked about,” she said. “And I think that for many people it becomes out of reach, when you are thinking you have to raise $80,000 to run for a school board when there often is no pay or very little pay.”

2022 is a quiet election year for IPS school board races

This year, at least, IPS school board races will likely be sleepy.

Stand for Children Indiana and RISE Indy endorsed the two unopposed candidates, at-large candidate Angelia Moore and District 5 candidate Nicole Carey.

Both groups also endorsed Hope Hampton for District 3 over Kristen Elizabeth Phair.

Whether that endorsement will come with funding — and if so, how much — is unclear. Pre-election campaign finance reports are due Oct. 21.

Hampton, the mother of IPS students, graduated from RISE Indy’s Circle City Leaders program, which has produced two other school board members elected in 2020, Will Pritchard and Kenneth Allen.

Ultimately, many education advocates said the disputes over politics and campaign strategies aren’t what matter most.

“Students that have been failed by the system really don’t care about what’s going on with IPS school board elections,” Shaheed-Young said. “But [what] they do care about is ensuring that they have folks that are on that board that are in urgency in ensuring that we make changes for a system that has been broken.”

Early voting at the City-County Building opens on Oct. 12. The November midterm election is Nov. 8.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Elizabeth Gabriel covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for WFYI. Contact Elizabeth at egabriel@wfyi.org

Cam Rodriguez is a data and graphics reporter on Chalkbeat’s data visuals team. Get in touch with Cam at crodriguez@chalkbeat.org.

A look inside Colorado’s yearslong push to change how schools teach reading

2022-11-02T17:02:45+00:00

A roomful of second graders spent a recent fall morning learning about a bossy mother named “Mama E” who follows her kids around reminding them to say their names.

The whimsical story was part of a phonics lesson at Denver’s Bradley International School. The point was that adding an “e” at the end of a word changes the first vowel from short to long — for example, pin becomes pine because the “i” says its name.

Teacher Megan Bobroske challenged the children sitting elbow to elbow on a rainbow striped rug in front of her — could Mama E live at the front of the word instead of the back? A little boy named Peter piped up: “She has to be at the end of the word.” he said. “Imagine if she’s on the front of the line, she’s going to be too busy saying her name.”

Peter and his classmates were learning a rule about the English language that they applied over and over that day — when reading and writing “hope,” “cute,” “tape,” and “slide.” Such lessons reflect both a districtwide and statewide shift in how children are taught to read in Colorado.

Gone by the wayside are reading programs that encourage children to figure out what a jumble of letters says by looking at the picture or using other clues to guess the word — a debunked strategy still used in some popular reading curriculums. Now, there’s a greater emphasis on teaching the relationships between sounds and letters in a direct and carefully sequenced way. It’s part of the science of reading, a large body of knowledge about how children learn to read.

Some teachers are pleased with the new reading curriculums rolling out at their schools, but there are bumps, too — confusing technology, new ways of grouping students, or an overwhelming amount of material, to name a few.

The hope is that better curriculum materials combined with a recent statewide teacher training effort will transform reading instruction — and boost reading achievement — across Colorado.

“Those are definitely the biggies,” said Floyd Cobb, associate commissioner for student learning at the Colorado Department of Education.

But is it enough to propel a statewide reading turnaround? And if so, when?

Cobb said the timeline isn’t clear — in part because curriculum shifts are still underway in some districts and because the most immediate results will show up in routine K-3 reading assessments given by school districts rather than state tests given at the end of third grade. Scores from those routine assessments aren’t posted publicly in a central location like state test results are.

This year, about 41% of Colorado third graders scored at or above grade level on state literacy tests, which combines reading and writing. While that proportion matches 2019 levels — a piece of good news after pandemic-era declines — it still means that tens of thousands of children are struggling with basic literacy skills.

Krista Spurgin, executive director of Stand for Children Colorado, said she believes the state’s curriculum and teacher training initiatives have changed the mindset about how reading should be taught in Colorado.

“I’m really hopeful that in a couple years, we’ll start to see outcomes for third graders,” she said.

Big districts make the switch

Colorado’s largest school districts, including Denver, Jeffco, Douglas County, Cherry Creek, and Aurora, are among those phasing in new reading curriculum. A major state reading law passed in 2019 prompted the shift by requiring schools to use scientifically based reading programs in kindergarten through third grade.

Previously, Colorado schools were allowed to pick any reading program or none at all. Now, there are tighter guardrails in place — though districts can still pick from more than a dozen core programs. A year ago, state officials began enforcing the stricter curriculum rules, ordering a host of districts to replace unacceptable programs.

The move was unprecedented and some districts initially pushed back, arguing that they layered in state-approved programs with state-rejected ones. State officials didn’t relent.

The second grade teachers at Bradley International knew something needed to change in early 2021, even before state oversight came into play. Their reading program at the time had big holes when it came to phonics. Often, if students got stuck, they were told to “look at picture clues and guess what would make sense or even just skip the word,” Bobroske said.

Lessons didn’t clearly state — and consistently review — how letters and sounds work together. She said, for example, that students might have learned part of the “Mama E’’ rule, without understanding that a consonant sound must occur between the vowel and the “e” at the end of the word. That omission would lead students to misapply the rule and get frustrated when words didn’t make sense.

“Students did not have the tools to actually break down the words and there was a lot of guessing and hoping for the best,” she said.

Bradley’s second grade team began using the phonics portion of a new reading curriculum — Core Knowledge Language Arts — and saw impressive results. The following year, when the school piloted the whole program in some grades, Bobroske’s students made 1½ years worth of reading growth.

“It was crazy,” she said. “In all honesty, I’ve never seen anything like that happen before.”

A student in Megan Bobroske’s second grade class writes a passage related to insects during the daily “knowledge-building” literacy block.

Besides a stronger focus on phonics, new reading programs in Denver and some other districts include science and social studies-themed units meant to build students’ background knowledge about the world — an approach that helps students understand what they’re reading.

Molly Veliz, a Denver teacher who works with struggling readers at Marie L. Greenwood Early-8 school, said the knowledge-building units of Core Knowledge Language Arts have grabbed students’ attention.

“First graders can tell me every body system and how they work together and [they’re] using appropriate vocabulary,” she said.

Strengths and weaknesses

Ibeth Leon Ariza teaches at a dual language immersion school in western Colorado where all elementary students get both English and Spanish instruction. She said the old reading program included Spanish passages that were inauthentic translations and didn’t capture the meaning conveyed in the English version. Leon Ariza, a native Spanish speaker from Colombia, tried to fix such shortcomings by substituting more appropriate vocabulary or modifying the stories.

She doesn’t have to do that now. The district’s new state-approved curriculum, Into Reading and its Spanish counterpart ¡Arriba La Lectura!, has better Spanish materials.

About half of all Colorado students identified as far below grade level in reading are also English learners, raising questions about whether schools are detecting weak reading skills or limited English proficiency, and whether students have access to appropriate instruction. A recent state audit of Colorado’s reading efforts flagged both issues and recommended changes.

While Leon Ariza generally likes her district’s new reading program, which rolled out last year, there are weaknesses too. She finds the online platform hard to navigate and said teachers can’t fit everything the lessons suggest into the daily reading block.

“We are still having struggles with time,” she said.

Megan Neitzel, a third grade teacher at Rocky Mountain Elementary in Westminster, directs students to write a retelling of the King Midas myth.

Along with the inevitable learning curve that comes with new curriculum, many Colorado schools continue to face a host of challenges that impact student learning, including staff turnover, residual COVID disruption, and family stress. Rocky Mountain Elementary in the Adams 12 district north of Denver is one of them.

“The historical story of our school is that it had been chronically underperforming for almost a decade. I’m their fourth principal in 10 years,” said Principal Kate Vogel, who took the reins during the pandemic.

Last spring, nearly 40% of the school’s kindergarten through third grade students were significantly behind in reading. In addition, about half the school students are English learners and nearly 90% qualify for subsidized meals, a measure of poverty.

On a recent morning in Megan Neitzel’s classroom, third graders worked on writing a summary of “The Tale of King Midas,” which was one of the stories in their new curriculum, Benchmark Advance 2022. For some students, it was easy. One girl blazed through her retelling of the Greek myth to a visitor, correctly noting which part was the climax of the story and explaining the king’s bad choice. (He turned his daughter to gold.)

Meanwhile, other children struggled. In a small group gathered at a table around Neitzel, one boy asked “What’s a setting?” He also struggled to spell “castle.”

“Sound it out,” she said. “What do you hear?”

When the boy mumbled a non-response, she prompted him through it.

Teacher Megan Neitzel works with a few third graders in a small group on retelling the myth of King Midas.

Neitzel likes the new curriculum so far — the way phonics and vocabulary are taught and because her students are excited about reading. Some bring their full-color workbooks home to read passages to younger brothers and sisters, she said.

Vogel believes the new curriculum, along with state-mandated reading training, and recent district efforts to dig deeply into reading standards have made a difference.

“I just think teachers have a much better understanding now that … we’re focused on the science of reading,” she said.

Checking the to-do list

Some of Colorado’s biggest reading improvement efforts have been underway for just a few years, but evidence from inside and outside the state suggests they could eventually make a difference.

One promising case study comes out of Mississippi, where state officials launched a slew of reading initiatives starting a decade ago, including teacher training on the science of reading.

In 2013, the state was at the back of the pack for fourth grade reading achievement on a test called the National Assessment of Educational Progress. By 2019, Mississippi ranked first in the country for reading gains, with its fourth graders matching the national average for the first time.

Within Colorado, a literacy grant program begun in 2012 produced impressive literacy gains at many participating schools. The three-year awards were given to schools that agreed to overhaul reading instruction, using the same kinds of levers — strict curriculum rules and guidance for educators — that are now kicking in statewide.

But the gains often faded after the grants ran out, sometimes because of staff or principal turnover. Program leaders also said some teachers didn’t have the grounding in the science of reading that they needed to sustain the coaching and other help they received through the grant.

But things are different today.

The vast majority of Colorado’s K-3 teachers have completed state-mandated training on reading instruction. Several prominent teacher preparation programs have revamped their reading coursework. And prospective elementary teachers must now pass a separate exam on reading instruction to earn their state licenses.

The state has more on its reading to-do list, including additional reviews of teacher prep program reading coursework and the rollout of a new state-mandated training for elementary principals and teachers who work with struggling readers in fourth through 12th grade.

Spurgin, of Stand for Children, also believes the addition of tuition-free full-day kindergarten in 2019-20 and the launch of tuition-free preschool for Colorado 4-year-olds next fall will help boost students’ reading skills.

For now, she’s optimistic about changes unfolding in Colorado classrooms.

“We have talked to teachers who are already seeing improvements in their classrooms, which just feels really energizing,” she said.

Timeline: Colorado reading policy

Fall 2018 — The Colorado Department of Education begins reviewing teacher prep program coursework on reading instruction, ordering changes to programs that don’t pass muster.

May 2019 — Law passed updating Colorado’s 2013 reading law, the READ Act. In addition to mandating teacher training on reading instruction, the law requires scientifically based reading curriculum.

April 2020 — A new list of state-approved scientifically based reading curriculums is released. Several popular reading programs don’t make the cut, meaning schools won’t be allowed to use them.

June 2021 — Law passed requiring schools to publicly disclose what reading programs they use and how they spend state funding earmarked for struggling readers.

Fall 2021 - Winter 2022 — The Colorado Department of Education sends out letters warning that districts using state-rejected K-3 reading curriculum will have to switch. In response, districts submit plans for adopting new curriculum.

May 2022 — Law passed requiring elementary principals and teachers who work with struggling readers in fourth through 12th grade to take training on reading instruction.

August 2022 — Deadline for all kindergarten through third grade teachers to complete 45 hours of training on reading instruction. Around 21,000 of 23,000 K-3 teachers meet the deadline.

August 2024 — Deadline for elementary principals to complete 20 hours of training on reading instruction and for teachers who work with struggling readers in fourth through 12th grade to complete 45 hours of training.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis district records its lowest NAEP scores, showing COVID’s devastating impact

2022-10-24T04:02:00+00:00

Memphis-Shelby County Schools showed some of the country’s sharpest declines in math and reading scores on the test known as the “nation’s report card.”

Results from the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, illustrate the pandemic’s devastating effect on learning in Tennessee’s largest school district, where most students are Black and come from low-income families who were hit hardest by the pandemic, and where waves of COVID infections led to prolonged stretches of remote learning.

While district school buildings reopened in the spring of 2021, most students did not return to classrooms until last school year — only to be hit by new disruptions and safety protocols as the delta and omicron variants struck.

MSCS’ most notable declines were in math. The average score for fourth-graders decreased by 12 points from 2019 (on a 500-point scale); for eighth graders, scores dropped by 14 points, the greatest decline among the 26 big-city districts that participated in a special urban assessment program using the NAEP test.

Reading scores also took a hit, with fourth graders dropping 8 points on average and eighth graders falling 6 points from 2019.

This was the first NAEP test conducted since before the pandemic shut down classrooms in March 2020.

What is NAEP?

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced nape) is a test administered by an arm of the U.S. Department of Education. It’s given periodically to a representative subset of American students in math and reading in grades four and eight. Scores are broken down by state and for a select handful of cities, too.

The latest results are based on tests given between January and March 2022. The previous test was given in 2019, before the pandemic.

Unlike state exams or tests students might take for a regular class, NAEP is low stakes for individual students, teachers, and schools. In other words, results aren’t used to, say, evaluate teachers or grade students.

Scores from a separate NAEP exam that has been given to 9-year-olds for many decades were previously released in September.

MSCS interim Superintendent Toni Williams said the district’s students are resilient and will be able to bounce back.

“MSCS has used federal stimulus dollars to make key investments,” she said. “Because of such efforts, we are already seeing evidence that the pandemic downturn is reversing.”

Memphis’ results largely mirror the state and nation. Despite Tennessee’s big bet that tutoring and summer learning programs would help students rebound quicker from the pandemic, the state’s scores slid to their lowest level in math and reading since 2011. That was before the outsize gain on the 2013 exam earned Tennessee the title of the nation’s fastest improving state.

Nationally, students in fourth and eighth grade saw unprecedented declines in math and substantial dips in reading achievement between 2019 and 2022. The declines were broad-based — affecting students in virtually every state and every region of the country.

Other research has already shown that the pandemic derailed academic progress during that period. But the results from the closely watched NAEP provide the most detailed and authoritative accounting yet, with data coming from a representative set of students nationwide and allowing for comparisons across states and some cities.

This is the third time MSCS has participated in the voluntary assessment program for urban districts, called the Trial Urban District Assessment. The first time, in 2017, the district’s students ranked in the bottom third of the nation.

They remain there this year, with Memphis-Shelby County Schools posting its lowest NAEP results ever. MSCS was the only TUDA district in the nation to be among the top-five decliners on every test. In both subjects and grade levels covered by the assessment, MSCS scores consistently fell below national and large-city averages.

Here’s how the district’s average scores compared:

Fourth-grade math: MSCS’ average score was 216, far below the national average of 235 and the large-city average of 227.
Fourth-grade reading: MSCS’ average score was 197, while the national average was 216, and the large-city average was 209.
Eighth-grade math: MSCS’ average was 251, notably lower than the national average of 273 and the big-city average of 266.
Eighth-grade reading: MSCS’ average was 242. The national average was 259 and the large-city average was 255.

The district’s NAEP scores underscored how its most vulnerable student groups — such as students of color and children from low-income families — continue to lag behind their peers academically, especially after their communities were disproportionately affected by COVID.

In fourth-grade math, for example, the average score dropped by 12 points among MSCS’ Black students and 6 points among Hispanic students. The average score for white students, meanwhile, increased by 1 point.

In fourth grade reading, the average score for students eligible for the National School Lunch Program, a federal measure of poverty, plummeted by 8 points, while students who were not eligible saw a drop of only 3 points.

MSCS’ performance on the national assessment contrasts with the rosier picture painted by the district’s gains on state standardized tests, which tend to be more closely aligned with state academic standards and curriculum. On those tests, the district’s overall proficiency rate rose about 6 percentage points in a near return to pre-pandemic levels.

District officials trumpeted the results on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program as evidence that MSCS is “trending up.” But they also acknowledged they had a lot of work to do, with fewer than a quarter of MSCS students meeting grade level expectations in each subject.

In a briefing for reporters on Friday, MSCS administrators said they believe Tennessee’s largest school system is still trending up. While TCAP tests were administered in April and May, administrators said NAEP assessments occurred in January, at the height of omicron.

“This is a snapshot of how student wellbeing impacted academics during a time of heightened uncertainty,” said Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent of schools and academic support. “Our students, they epitomize grit and grind. … Our TCAP shows already show our students’ resilience and, with more time, they will continue trending up and learning recovery.”

As they did when TCAP results were released, administrators touted the district’s investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal COVID relief aid in a variety of academic strategies, such as increasing access to before- and after-school tutoring, adding teachers assistants to lower the student-to-adult ratio in K-2 classrooms, adding an academic intervention period to the school day to help students catch up, and holding data nights to keep parents better informed about their child’s academic progress.

MSCS officials also emphasized that standardized assessments are only one factor in how they measure student success and needs.

Board Chair Althea Greene said she’s proud of the MSCS’ growth on TCAP and on Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, known as TVAAS, where the district received the state’s highest ranking for academic growth.

“I don’t want the momentum for Memphis-Shelby County Schools to be drowned out by the NAEP story,” Greene said. “Our administrators and teachers are working hard. I want us to be proud of our district and our progress.”

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee students’ NAEP scores drop across the board

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Tennessee bet big that tutoring and summer programs would help students rebound quicker from the pandemic’s crushing blow to learning, but the results of the latest national tests don’t indicate an immediate payoff.

Mirroring unprecedented national declines in achievement, the state’s students slid back between 2019 and 2022 on math and reading exams in the fourth and eighth grades, according to data released Monday in what’s called the “nation’s report card.”

Based on results from the National Assessment of Education Progress, or NAEP, Tennessee’s slide was part of the nation’s largest math decline on record.

But perhaps more disappointing was the state’s performance in reading, with scores falling several points more than the national slide. Tennessee is prioritizing literacy and is overhauling how it teaches students to read, including a greater emphasis on phonics. And under a rigorous new third-grade retention law, it’s poised to hold back more students who don’t score as reading on grade level on state tests next spring.

The drops on this year’s national scores generally returned Tennessee to its lowest NAEP performance in math and reading since 2011, before outsize gains on the 2013 exam earned it the title as the nation’s fastest improving state.

Also, under a special assessment program in which NAEP administers tests in 26 big-city school systems, Memphis-Shelby County Schools was the only district to record among the top five declines on every test. No other Tennessee district participated in that voluntary assessment program.

Some regression in student performance had been expected in most every state after COVID-19 shuttered school buildings in the spring of 2020 and forced educators and students to toggle back and forth to other modes of learning for the next two-plus years.

But Tennessee acted early and aggressively to blunt the pandemic’s impact on learning — beginning with summer camps in every school district in 2021 — and had hoped to at least hold steady on this year’s state and national tests.

Last school year, Tennessee launched a three-year tutoring project to provide frequent, in-person, small-group help for students who were struggling in either math or reading. Federal relief funding covered much of the cost, with more than half of the state’s districts participating in the tutoring initiative.

Gov. Bill Lee also pushed to get students back into brick-and-mortar classrooms beginning with the 2020-21 school year. That drive turned out to be important, because states where schools more fully offered in-person instruction tended to see somewhat smaller declines in math and fourth-grade reading, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the national data.

“If there’s any state with a chance at doing decently on this exam, I think it’s Tennessee,” Mike Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, told Chalkbeat last week before the scores were released.

“But of course,” he added, “NAEP serves as a great audit to see whether that is the case or not.”

It was not.

No state improved in math

In fourth-grade math, where Tennessee has generally kept pace with national averages since 2013, the state was down 3 points on a 500-point scale from 2019. But that was still better than this year’s 5-point national decline and double-digit drops in New York, Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware.

Still, 10 states managed to hold steady in fourth-grade math, including neighboring Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana.

In eighth-grade math, Tennessee’s score dropped by 8 points, the same as the national average decline. Utah was the only state to show no significant change in that category.

Reading scores also took a hit

In fourth-grade reading, Tennessee fell 5 points from 2019, compared with the national drop of 3 points.

No state increased its fourth-grade reading score, while 30 states nationally and nine in the South saw a decline. Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Mississippi saw no significant change, which was a victory of sorts for those states bordering Tennessee.

In eighth-grade reading, Tennessee dropped 5 points, compared with a 3-point national decline. The slump marked a return to the lowest performance in that category since 2003 for Tennessee, one of 33 states nationally and 11 in the South that saw a decrease. Among border states, Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia saw no clear changes in their scores.

Racial disparities show up in results

The declines showed how acute the learning loss has been, particularly for students of color, whose communities were hit especially hard from the physical, social, economic, and political consequences of COVID.

In fourth-grade math, except for a slight uptick from Hispanics and English language learners and improvement from rural students, all student groups showed declines, particularly Black students, whose average score went down 12 points, compared with a 2-point drop for white students.

In eighth-grade math, students with disabilities were the only group to hold steady, and the average score dropped by 15 points for English language learners, 10 points for Black students, and 8 points for Hispanic students. The average drop for white students was 6 points.

In fourth-grade reading, the average score of Hispanic students and English language learners rose by 4 points, while Black students saw their score go down 11 points, compared with 5 points for white students.

And in eighth-grade reading, rural students held steady, but performance was down for all other student groups, particularly English language learners.

Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, was especially concerned about the performance of the state’s Black students, whose score decline doubled the national average.

“If we don’t address this with some level of urgency, then shame on us,” she told Chalkbeat on Friday, before the scores were released. “These are students who absolutely can be successful. They need additional supports, and we need to double down on what we’re providing them.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn visits Georgian Hills Achievement Elementary School in Memphis in June during its summer learning camp.

That, she said, means making sure that struggling Black students, particularly Black males, are participating in the state’s tutoring programs — and that the quality of the tutoring is high.

“We can’t just check the box and think that it will magically work,” she said. “It’s not just the intervention; it’s the quality of intervention.”

What is NAEP?

Not every Tennessee fourth-grader or eighth-grader took the national test when the federal government administered the exams in early 2022.

NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students in every state. The results, published as the nation’s report card, allow comparisons across states and are an important marker for showing how students are doing over time. The national test is also helpful because, unlike state tests that vary widely and change frequently, it’s essentially the same test every time and has been administered for decades to provide long-term data.

Normally, NAEP is given every two years, but federal officials postponed the 2021 exam because COVID was still rampant. Now, the results from 2019 to 2022 provide an especially helpful comparison of what students knew before the deadly respiratory virus hit — and what they knew two years into the pandemic.

“The results show the profound toll on student learning during the pandemic, as the size and scope of the declines are the largest ever in mathematics,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

NAEP counters Tennessee’s upbeat state test results

Tennessee’s grim performance on the national test comes just months after state officials reported that the most recent scores on state tests improved across all subjects and grades, largely returning to pre-COVID levels, except in math.

Petrilli, of the right-leaning Fordham Institute, said there are valid reasons for inconsistencies between state and national test results. For instance, state tests are more closely aligned to state academic standards and the curriculum taught in a state’s classrooms.

But NAEP also serves as an important external check on state testing and reporting systems, he said.

“Tennessee’s ed department was sounding awfully cheerful in June about state test results,” Petrilli said. “If that’s not what NAEP shows, the public should understand that it may not be as bad as it could have been — but it’s still bad.”

He hopes this year’s NAEP results serve as a gut check for educators, policymakers, and parents.

“It’s concerning when surveys show that most parents don’t think their kids are behind now, because that’s just not true,” Petrilli said. “The majority of American kids were already behind before the pandemic in terms of being ready for college and career, and now they’re further behind. So we do not need more happy talk. We need honest talk.

“We do not need more happy talk. We need honest talk.” —Mike Petrilli, President, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

“Parents should be advocating for their kids to get the extra help they need,” he said.

Schwinn said she stands by the results from state tests, which were taken by most of Tennessee’s nearly 1 million public school students this spring, as opposed to NAEP’s representative sampling of fewer than 10,000 students several months earlier — before the state’s high-dosage tutoring program began in earnest at scale.

“Frankly, I’d be pretty unhappy if we did not see a difference between January NAEP and our end-of-the-school-year state assessment,” she said.

A referendum on tutoring and summer camps?

Despite Tennessee’s disappointing NAEP results, state and federal officials remain bullish on strategies like tutoring and extended-learning programs.

Schwinn said it’s too early to see the impact of those interventions, as well as of the state’s reading overhaul.

“We picked research-based interventions,” she said, “and we’ve gotten these programs to a scale that is significantly bigger than any other state I know of. But we started the vast majority of those interventions at the same time this (NAEP) test was taken. So for me, this test will serve as a great baseline.”

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona also has encouraged states and schools to use federal COVID aid more effectively and expeditiously on strategies like high-dosage tutoring and after-school programs.

And research has shown that frequent in-school tutoring is one of the most effective ways to help students make academic progress.

Tennessee educators are on board, too. They’re thankful for any investments that help students succeed, according to the leader of the state’s largest teacher organization.

“You have to keep in mind that kids have struggled both academically and emotionally during this pandemic. Some didn’t have much social interaction for two years. Many have lost family members to COVID,” said Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association.

“NAEP is about a single test on a single day,” Coats said, “but we’re talking about the whole child. Anything we can do to support the whole child, we’re all for that.”

To view the full report, visit the nation’s report card here.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey students did better than country’s average on NAEP math, reading tests despite dismal drops

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

New Jersey students fell behind on math and reading tests known as the “nation’s report card” but continued to score higher than the national average despite dismal results laid bare after the pandemic.

Nationally, fourth and eighth grade students who took the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, last year saw the largest dips in math scores since 1990, when the exams were first given.

In New Jersey, eighth grade math scores dropped 11 points between 2019 and 2022, while fourth grade scores in the same subject dropped 7 points during the same time frame.

A representative sample of fourth and eighth graders across the state took the exams between January and March, during a school year that saw a continuation of COVID-related disruptions — temporary school closures due to positive cases and students who had to stay home because of quarantine rules — as well as staff and teacher shortages.

Historically, New Jersey students’ average performance in math and reading has been higher than national averages among fourth and eighth graders, according to state data provided by NAEP. But research has already shown that academic progress was derailed between 2019 and 2022.

The NAEP exams, administered periodically by the National Center for Education Statistics, came just weeks after an uptick in positive COVID-19 cases statewide caused by the omicron variant, which prompted some schools to switch to remote learning.

The results from the closely watched NAEP are important because the exams offer a critical snapshot of how students in the Garden State performed in math and reading after the start of the pandemic. The learning disruptions caused by the pandemic affected students in virtually every state and region of the country.

Despite the declines, 38% of fourth grade students in New Jersey scored at or above proficiency level in reading this year, a notable difference from the national average of 32% for fourth graders in the same subject. Similarly, 42% of eighth graders in the state scored at or above proficiency in reading compared to the national average of 29%.

A closer look at New Jersey test scores shows fourth grade reading scores dropped from 227 to 223 between 2019 and 2022. Eighth grade reading scores were flat between 2019 and 2022 staying at 270.

In math, 39% of New Jersey fourth graders scored at the proficient level, compared to 35% of their peers nationally. About one-third — 33% — of eighth graders in the state scored proficient in math compared to 26% of eighth graders nationally.

Fourth grade math scores in the Garden State also dropped from 246 to 239 between 2019 and 2022. Eighth graders saw a bigger dip as math scores declined from 292 to 281 between the same time frame.

Despite averaging higher overall scores compared to other states prior to the pandemic, New Jersey’s scores have shown consistent disparities between rich and poor students, and white and Black or Hispanic students. White students scored higher than Black and Hispanic students this year in math.

“Far too many students in vulnerable communities don’t have access to the education they deserve,” Patricia Morgan, the former executive director of education advocacy nonprofit JerseyCAN said in 2019. “Equity in education must be a primary goal for all of us.”

In 2019, prior to the pandemic, fourth and eighth grade low-income students across the state scored between 26 to 38 points lower than wealthy students in those grades in math and reading, NAEP data show. That year, fourth and eighth grade white students scored 24 to 38 points higher than Black students in math and reading, and 21 to 35 points higher than Hispanic students in those subjects.

Eighth grade Hispanic students in New Jersey scored higher in math this year than Black eighth graders, but lower than their white counterparts. In reading, the state’s eighth grade Hispanic students scored higher — at 254 this year — than their white counterparts at 249. But white fourth graders scored higher than both Black and Hispanic fourth grade students.

Districts look for solutions to learning loss

The national assessments along with state test scores are used to inform education policy and could greatly influence how remaining federal COVID relief money is spent at the state and local level.

With grim results nationwide, district officials across the state say they’re using federal relief money to fund tutoring programs, increase hiring of teachers, and other efforts to address learning loss. But a shallow pool of teacher applicants remains an issue this academic year, said Millville Superintendent Tony Trongone, who spoke at a state Assembly education committee meeting on Oct. 17 about the impact the pandemic and interrupted learning had on student performance academically and behaviorally.

“We have a tutoring program,” Trongone said. “Our issue is getting people to facilitate that program. Teachers are tired.”

Newark Public Schools Superintendent Roger León is also focusing on tutoring for its 38,000 students this year along with Saturday tutoring sessions, SAT prep classes, and after-school programs to help students’ recovery.

Paula White, the executive director for JerseyCAN, said allocating funds to correct services or resources for students is crucial to supporting student recovery.

But as some federal funds may not be distributed on a regular basis, education leaders must think smarter about spending their funds, White said. Districts could resort to contracting consultants or bringing other resources in-house to think creatively about their educational future, she added.

“So, how do we use the funds in ways that set us up for future success, knowing that this is a one time disbursement?” White said. “At this time, it might make sense to engage with providers on a contractual basis, to set systems up that will be sustainable in the long term.”

Parents can also play a role in supporting teachers in school districts during the recovery period by drawing on what worked during remote learning. White said it could be as simple as making sure their child has time to read a book and has a space to do school work. But ultimately, communication between parents and teachers is critical to improving home-school connections.

“Well, I know my child is supposed to be reading 20 minutes every day, so let me make sure they’ve got this blanket, a nice pillow,” White said. “A lot of parents don’t even know what it is that their school expects, because the school has not laid out that expectation.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark, covering the city’s K-12 schools with a focus on English language learners. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana’s NAEP scores show biggest decline in math as leaders weigh COVID’s fallout

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Indiana students’ math and reading scores on “the nation’s report card” declined from pre-pandemic results, with the state’s average math scores declining the most.

Scores released Monday from the most recent National Assessment Educational Progress — or NAEP — showed that 33% of fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders were proficient or better in reading, while 40% of fourth graders and 30% of eighth graders were proficient or better in math.

Those proficiency rates were lower than in 2019 except in fourth grade reading, where the rates are statistically about the same as in 2019.

Indiana’s average reading scores were around the national average this year, and math scores were higher than the national average scores.

However, nearly all demographic groups of Indiana students had an average score below NAEP’s proficiency benchmark, although the bar for achieving proficiency on NAEP tests is generally higher than it is for state exams.

Indiana’s results also reflect nationwide trends on NAEP following the pandemic’s disruptions to schools: unprecedented and not unexpected declines — affecting students in virtually every state and every region of the country.

While NAEP scores often attract attention and generate debate, this year’s results will be closely scrutinized by educators, public officials, and others trying to get a handle on how (and how much) COVID has disrupted student learning in different cities and states, as well as nationally.

The state has already launched multiple efforts aimed at academic recovery, such as Indiana Learns, a tutoring program funded through federal relief dollars that gives fourth and fifth grade students up to $1,000 for math and reading tutoring.

In August, the state announced its largest-ever targeted investment in literacy — $111 million — with many of the funds aimed at training teachers.

Charity Flores, the chief academic officer at the Indiana Department of Education, told the state board of education in July that this is year two of academic recovery from the pandemic that could take three to five years. The NAEP data supports that timeline, she said.

What is NAEP?

The main NAEP in reading and math is typically administered every two years. Students in the fourth and eighth grade last took the exam in 2019. Data comes from a representative set of students nationwide which allows for comparisons across states and some cities, although no cities in Indiana.

Unlike state exams or tests students might take for a regular class, these tests are low stakes for individual students, teachers, and schools. In other words, results aren’t used to, say, evaluate teachers or grade students.

In addition to the impact they could have on national and state responses to the pandemic, the new NAEP results could also revive polarizing disputes about the precise impact of policies such as shutdowns of in-person learning.

While Indiana schools largely attempted to return to some form of in-person learning in the fall of 2020, the 2020-21 school year was characterized by abrupt switches between in-person and online learning, hybrid schedules, being quarantined, and precautions such as masking and social distancing. There were fewer such disruptions in the 2021-22 school year.

How Indiana’s NAEP scores stack up

This year’s NAEP results were released for students in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the Department of Defense’s education agency.

In reading, Indiana had proficiency rates that were similar to 40 other states or jurisdictions, and just a few had proficiency percentages that were considered significantly higher than Indiana’s.

In math, Indiana’s scores were on par with roughly half the states or jurisdictions.

Among eighth graders, for instance, only Department of Defense schools and Massachusetts had significantly higher percentages of students who were proficient or better in math, while 23 states or jurisdictions had proficiency rates similar to Indiana’s.

Flores said the results from different states provide a way to look for strategies that were successful elsewhere and implement them in Indiana, she said.

For example, Flores said that following Mississippi’s success with instructional coaches in reading, Indiana announced up to $60 million for instructional coaches focused on literacy in elementary schools, as part of the state’s $111 million targeted investment in literacy.

Additionally, Indiana’s education department is working with the University of Indianapolis to provide instructional coaching in the STEM fields.

Different student groups struggle on NAEP

Indiana’s NAEP results can also be split into multiple subgroups of students by race, gender, economic status, geography, and more.

The vast majority of these subgroups had average scores that were below NAEP’s proficiency benchmarks.

No subgroups had significant improvement in their scores from 2019 across the reading and math exams. Among the subgroups whose scores declined significantly from 2019 to 2022, the group with the biggest score drop was eighth-grade English learners in reading followed by Black eighth graders in math, fourth-grade English learners in math, and Hispanic fourth graders in math.

English learners, students with disabilities, and Black students in both grades had some of the lowest average scores on all four tests in 2022, making those groups the furthest from being considered proficient in a subject.

Additionally, students who attend urban schools or are from low-income backgrounds had some of the lowest scores in fourth grade math and reading.

In three of the NAEP exams — fourth grade math, fourth grade reading, and eighth grade reading — boys did about the same in 2022 as they did in 2019, but girls’ average scores dropped.

Looking to the next NAEP results

While NAEP and other exams have shown that academic progress was derailed during the pandemic, the declines don’t mean that students didn’t learn anything or forgot things they already knew between 2019 and 2022. Rather, students did learn over that period, but progressed at slower rates than their peers had in prior years.

Some recent data has suggested that students nationwide have begun to recover lost ground.

Flores noted that the decline in student performance, especially in reading, is mirrored in results from Indiana’s state exams.

ILEARN results dropped sharply from 2019 to the next time students took the state test in 2021. Results then increased slightly from 2021 to this year, indicating that a rebound may be under way, but 2022 results were still below pre-pandemic scores.

Flores said she aims to see a similar pattern in about two years, when the next set of NAEP reading and math scores for fourth and eighth graders are due to be released.

“We’ll have a bit of time and utilize strategies to support academic recovery,” she said. “I hope that in two years, we’ll start to see the impact of those sustained efforts.”

Chalkbeat Indiana reporter Aleksandra Appleton and Chalkbeat national reporter Matt Barnum contributed to this story.

MJ Slaby is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores show record drop in math for New York City’s fourth graders, but not in reading

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Frequent disruptions during the past few school years have left parents and educators questioning how much New York City children have fallen behind academically during the pandemic.

New results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP — given to a random sampling of fourth and eighth graders — provide a complicated answer.

Math scores for the city’s fourth graders fell by a record 9 points compared with 2019, the last time the exam was administered, while the 4-point drop for eighth graders was not considered a significant change by researchers. Perhaps surprisingly, fourth and eighth grade reading scores stayed about the same.

Fourth grade math scores on the exam known as the “nation’s report card” mirrored trends across the United States, showing historic drops in the subject. But results from the five boroughs did not line up with the national dip in reading scores.

Still, New York City’s scores on math and reading remained below national and New York state averages.

Though the state’s trends were similar to national ones, New York still has “work to do to get students to where they need to be, not just academically but social emotionally as well,” said Emily DeSantis, a spokesperson for the state education department.

The pandemic exacerbated many of the inequities that already pervaded the school system. It left students, families, and teachers dealing with multiple crises, including the deaths of loved ones, illness and long stretches of isolation. And even as campuses reopened last year, learning continued to be interrupted for many children. More than 40% of students were chronically absent last year, missing at least 18 days of school.

The NAEP results provide the first authoritative insight on where students may need extra help and where districts should consider dedicating their resources, such as federal relief dollars that are set to run out in 2024.

“We have to be committed for the long haul to get students the support they need, to make sure schools have the resources and training they need to be able to provide that support, and not to just expect that in 2024, we’re done with this,” said Sarah Part, policy analyst for Advocates For Children New York, which supports the city’s highest need students.

“There will be rippled effects for the next decade, probably,” she said.

Just 18% of the city’s fourth graders were proficient in math, compared with 24% in 2019. Levels that low in New York City have not been seen for nearly 20 years, according to the results.

Compared to other urban districts, the city’s results were mixed. For example, eighth grade math and fourth grade reading scores were slightly higher than other urban districts, while eighth grade reading was on par with others.

NAEP scores, unlike state tests, haven’t changed over time, making it possible to compare scores over the years and compare students across different states. But one complicating factor for many districts is declining enrollment: if a different pool of students takes the tests, it could affect scores.

Racial disparities in NAEP scores

There were large disparities among white and Asian American students compared with their Black and Hispanic peers. In fourth grade math, for instance, just 11% of Black and Hispanic students scored proficiently, compared with 39% of white students and 48% of Asian American students. In eighth grade math, just 6% of Black students were proficient, compared with 12% of Hispanic students, 46% of white students and 58% of those who are Asian American.

New York City schools Chancellor David Banks highlighted these disparities and said the results show “far too many of our students are not achieving proficiency” in math and reading.

“I firmly believe that every student can achieve excellence and every school has the capacity to make that happen — we just need to support them getting there,” Banks said in a statement.

Students of color, especially those who are immigrants and come from low-income families, were more likely to lose loved ones, have parents who lost work, or be charged with extra responsibilities, such as caring for younger siblings, said Part, of Advocates for Children.

One federal report found that half of low-income families reported someone in their household losing work or getting a pay cut in 2020. In New York City, Black and Hispanic workers were more likely to be required to work in person, increasing their risk for becoming infected with COVID, according to the report.

“Even if the kid is very young and doesn’t totally understand the details of what’s going on, they sense that their parents are super stressed out and things are not good,” Part said. “All of that affects their ability to learn and focus and get the most out of instruction.”

To help students recover academically from the pandemic, city officials had dedicated more than $750 million toward academic recovery programs and extra services for students with disabilities to be used through 2024, including sending hundreds of millions of dollars directly to schools to create tutoring and enrichment programs. Schools struggled to spend that money last year.

Part’s organization has called on the city’s education department to use COVID dollars for more targeted academic interventions, such as more evidence-based reading interventions. City officials have plans to screen every child for reading challenges and have required schools to spend a portion of their relief dollars on literacy efforts.

What is NAEP?

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, pronounced nape) is a test administered by an arm of the U.S. Department of Education. It’s given periodically to a representative subset of American students in math and reading in grades four and eight. Scores are broken down by state and for a select handful of cities, too. The latest results are based on tests given between January and March 2022. The previous test was given in 2019, before the pandemic. Unlike state exams or tests students might take for a regular class, these tests are low stakes for individual students, teachers, and schools. In other words, results aren’t used to, say, evaluate teachers or grade students. Scores from a separate NAEP exam that has been given to 9-year-olds for many decades were previously released in September.

How should I interpret the results?

Results are based on a sample of students, so there is a margin of error — or uncertainty — in the scores. This is particularly important for reading the state and city scores, which have higher margins of error than the country as a whole. This margin of error also determines whether a score change is statistically “significant.” A score change is considered statistically significant when the increase or decrease exceeds the margin of error — that is, when researchers are confident that the change is different than zero.

- Matt Barnum

Hurdles in catching kids up

Though the city’s eighth graders didn’t see statistically significant changes in reading or math scores on NAEP, along with fourth grade reading scores, state tests point to more concerning declines.

Unlike NAEP, eighth grade math scores fell significantly, by 11 percentage points.

In line with the NAEP scores, however, reading scores grew slightly for eighth graders on their state tests.

(Education officials said it’s difficult to compare state test scores to 2019, since about 20% fewer city students took state exams last year due to enrollment declines, as well as children opting out of the tests.)

New York City has also administered its own school-based assessments for core subjects, but has refused to publicly release those results.

This year, schools are facing new challenges. Due to declining enrollment, city officials cut budgets at three-quarters of city schools. Many were forced to let go of teachers, increase class sizes, and cut back on enrichment. Despite pressure from City Council and advocates, Mayor Eric Adams declined to use billions of remaining COVID dollars to cover these cuts.

Many educators argue that those cuts have made it tough for schools to help students recover, both academically and socially. The department also has sent less money directly to schools this year for academic recovery and pared back its program for students with disabilities.

At one Bronx middle school whose students were part of the NAEP testing pool, the job of teaching has become especially tough, said art teacher Jake Jacobs.

Last school year, following multiple resignations, the school was short two science teachers. Educators licensed in other subjects, such as math, had to fill in, meaning they didn’t always have enough time to plan lessons for their other courses, said Jacobs.

“I just think it is really unfair to those kids,” said Jacobs, who was among the teachers filling in.

About 90% of their students come from low-income families. One in five has a disability, while another quarter are learning English as a new language. Educators charged with helping these children have felt stretched thin. Many students were below grade level even before the pandemic, and many didn’t show up during remote learning, Jacobs said.

Educators have been assessing students and meeting to determine how to best use those results. For Jacobs, the efforts feel like an uphill battle: They’re spending days preparing children for various assessments, but he wants more time helping children one-on-one and getting them more interested in school.

“On the ground, when you’re an actual teacher in the classroom, it’s really intrusive to take so many tests,” Jacobs said.

For Elisa Capers’ fifth-grade daughter, who enjoys reading but struggles with math, it was tough “getting back into the groove” after spending part of second grade and all of third grade in remote learning. Returning last year, she felt overwhelmed by worksheets and more challenging lessons.

“It was right back into it,” said Capers, an East Harlem mom who works as an educational consultant. “The kids developmentally and socially just weren’t there yet. I think that turned a lot of the kids off.”

Like most city students, her daughter did not score proficient on state reading or math exams.

Capers thinks her daughter is in a better place now, after a full year of in-person learning. There are some signs of progress. Her school-based assessments show that she’s reading on grade level, and she’s regularly thumbing through comics and graphic novels on her tablet. She’s one grade level behind in math, and Capers has signed her up for math tutoring with Kumon.

Still, Capers has emphasized to her daughter that her scores on state tests or other standardized exams doesn’t mean she’s failed.

“I tried to make light of it and told her this doesn’t define you, I know what you’re able to do,” Capers said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s NAEP scores fall, wiping out a decade of growth in math

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Chicago’s latest scores on a test known as the “nation’s report card” showed steep declines in math while holding fairly steady in reading.

The results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — or NAEP — test released today add to a growing body of evidence quantifying the academic damage from pandemic disruptions.

The declines return achievement levels to what they were about a decade ago — reversing years of progress for Chicago Public Schools. Across Illinois, scores exceeded the national average and mostly remained flat, but there was a marked decrease in eighth grade math.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona called the national scores “appalling and unacceptable.”

“These are definitely sobering test scores,” said Bogdana Chkoumbova, Chicago Public Schools’ chief education officer. She added, “It’s sad to see some of the progress that we had made in the past several years wiped off.”

In Chicago, the test also offered fresh evidence that the academic fallout has been greatest for Latino and Black students. White students generally saw scores dip more slightly, widening pre-pandemic disparities.

But there were also bright spots: Overall, the district, which had seen declines in reading scores leading up to the pandemic, saw dips in reading that are not considered statistically significant. Reading scores ticked up slightly for eighth grade Latino students. English language learners made significant gains and now outperform peers in other urban districts and nationally.

Chkoumbova said officials are also seeing signs this fall that some recovery strategies are paying off, including staffing tutors and academic interventionists, expanding after-school programs, and enlisting instructional coaches to help teachers.

Latest NAEP scores are first since 2019

The NAEP is considered one of the country’s most definitive measures of where students stand academically. Fourth- and eighth-graders across the country take the test administered by the federal government, which allows comparisons to be made across states and over time. Students in Chicago and elsewhere last took the test in 2019, on the eve of massive disruption from the COVID outbreak and a shift to remote learning. A representative sample sat for the latest test from January through March.

Scores for Illinois as a whole were flat between 2019 and 2022 for fourth graders in both reading and math — one of the few states across the country that held its ground in that grade. Eighth grade scores dipped, particularly in math, where the decrease was most pronounced nationally as well.

“We are proud that Illinois students scored above the national average in both reading and math for grades 4 and 8,” the Illinois State Board of Education said in a statement. “This is the nation’s gold standard report card, and this demonstrates that our investments in learning recovery serve as a national model because they are working. We have much work to do, but this is an important indication that our students are on the right track.”

Nationally, students in fourth and eighth grade saw unprecedented declines in math and significant dips in reading achievement between 2019 and 2022. The declines were broad-based — affecting students in virtually every state and region of the country. Other research has already shown that academic progress was derailed during that period. But the results from the closely watched NAEP exam provide the most detailed and authoritative accounting yet, with data coming from a representative set of students nationwide and allowing for comparisons across states and some cities.

Before the pandemic, Chicago’s average math scores had remained essentially unchanged since the mid-2010s, after a decade of steady improvement in both reading and math.

On the 2019 test, the city’s average reading scores had slipped, and the city lagged slightly behind other urban districts. The eighth grade drop mirrored a dip in eighth grade reading scores nationwide, which had remained largely flat for about a decade.

In both eighth grade reading and math, Chicago’s 2022 scores put it roughly in the middle of the pack among about two dozen large districts that administered the tests. Here, about a fifth of fourth graders scored “proficient” in math and reading, which represents a more than 10 percentage point drop in math. Another fifth of eighth graders scored “proficient” in reading and 16% did in math on the test, which sets a relatively high bar for proficiency.

Racial gaps in NAEP scores widen

The district has also grappled with significant racial and income disparities in how its students perform on the test.

Based on the latest scores, some of these disparities only widened during the pandemic. In both fourth and eighth grade math in particular, the disparities between scores for Black and white students widened to more than 40 points. The gaps between low-income students and their peers generally increased as well.

Students with disabilities also lost ground on the tests, though that decline was not as steep as it was for other student groups.

Chkoumbova said the district has used its “opportunity index,” which draws on student demographics and other data, to direct the most recovery resources to the schools with the highest needs, including those serving the most Black and low-income students. That’s an approach officials say they hope will help the district attack widening disparities.

Federal and Chicago education officials both said they found falling math scores and proficiency particularly troubling in the eighth grade — a gateway to more advanced math coursework in high school that prepares students for STEM careers. Chicago had one of the steepest declines in eighth grade math scores.

In part because of pre-COVID dips in reading scores, the district set out to redouble its early literacy efforts, with a focus on structured phonics instruction for young learners. Mary Beck, the district’s head of teaching and learning, credited these efforts with helping the district hold the ground in reading.

She said across the board, she expects the district to recoup lost ground on the NAEP much faster than it took to make those 2010 gains.

“Our ability to rebound and reach higher — we’re much better primed for that,” she said.

Impact of remote learning difficult to determine

It is challenging to tease out the academic impact of remote learning from the broader pandemic disruption, including the trauma students experienced as families grappled with illness, death, economic fallout, and a rise in gun violence. Still, new evidence is emerging that virtual learning contributed to declines in learning.

Chicago stuck with remote learning longer than some other urban districts, reopening for hybrid instruction in March of 2021 for elementary and middle school students, and in mid-April for high schoolers. On a call with reporters, Peggy Carr, commissioner of National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the test, said the scores paint a complicated picture of the role of virtual learning, and the agency would study the data more closely before drawing any conclusions.

A Chalkbeat analysis of the national data found mixed evidence. In fourth grade math, states where schools were fully open for longer tended to see smaller declines in scores. In eighth grade math and fourth grade reading, there was also a relationship, but it was very modest. In eighth grade reading, there was no correlation at all.

In comparing scores to 2019 and previous years, an important caveat is in order: Chicago’s enrollment has shrunk steadily over the past decade, and although its racial makeup has remained largely unchanged more recently, it now serves a smaller portion of low-income students.

Plummeting national results in reading and math from a slightly different, long-term NAEP trend test made headlines when they came out in September, showing that the pandemic and remote learning had erased two decades of student academic growth.

“As a country we face enormous challenges, and there are many areas of serious concern in this data,” said Carr, referring to the latest data.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP test results show big declines in math, wide gaps among Colorado students

2022-10-24T04:01:00+00:00

Colorado students posted the lowest scores in more than a decade on the test known as “the nation’s report card,” with the steepest declines in middle school math and with Hispanic students losing the most ground. And while Colorado students posted better reading scores than did students in 27 other states, that was largely because other states lost even more ground.

The learning loss from 2019 to 2022 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP, points to the devastating impact the pandemic has had on the education of children in almost every pocket of Colorado and the nation.

While research has already shown that academic progress reversed, NAEP results released Monday provide the most detailed and authoritative accounting yet, with data coming from a representative set of students nationwide and allowing for comparisons across states and some cities.

“The results are appalling and unacceptable,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said. “This is a moment of truth. How we respond will determine our standing in the world.”

This year’s results reaffirm what Colorado education leaders and teachers already knew thanks to statewide assessments: Students fell behind.

But parents, teachers, and students are working hard to rebound, said Joyce Zurkowski, Colorado Department of Education chief assessment officer.

“There are some indications that things are on the way back up,” she said. “But there’s work to do.”

What is NAEP?

Mandated by Congress, the national assessment tests math and reading skills in fourth and eighth grades roughly every two years among a random sampling of students — about 450,000 students in 10,000 schools in 2022. The administrators break down scores by state and for select cities that vary with each test.

Denver was one of 26 urban districts that NAEP sampled last winter. Outside of those cities, NAEP does not issue district scores.

Unlike state exams, the NAEP tests are low stakes for students, teachers, and schools. But the NAEP test offers a valuable look at the progress of the nation.

“We knew results would reflect historic disruptions to schools,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which organizes the test. “NAEP results should give us all pause. They also remind us how essential schools are for our children and families.”

Colorado dip in math skills

The Colorado Measure of Academic Success, or CMAS, standardized tests show students recovering ground from 2021 but still below pre-pandemic levels in most cases. Similar to NAEP, the state’s test scores show particularly concerning drops in middle school math scores and draw attention to the impacts on students who transitioned to more complex material in a highly disrupted environment.

NAEP shows fourth grade Colorado math scores declined steeply. Proficiency dropped by one-quarter, from about 44% of students in 2019 to 36% of students this year. Eighth grade math proficiency fell by about the same proportion, from 37% of students in 2019 to 28% this year.

Colorado reading skills did not decline as much. On the fourth-grade test, 38% of students tested proficient, down from 40% in 2019. In eighth grade, 34% of students tested proficient, compared with 38% in 2019.

In Denver, reading scores declined similarly. Fourth-grade proficiency scores fell from 32% to 29%, and eighth-grade scores fell from 29% to 28% — which may not be statistically significant — from 2019.

Denver fourth-grade math proficiency dipped from 35% of students in 2019 to 28% this year. Eighth grade proficiency also fell, from 29% in 2019 to 22% of students this year.

In both Colorado and Denver, Hispanic students experienced greater declines in most grades and subjects than did other student groups. The pandemic pummeled Colorado’s Hispanic families, who have suffered higher death rates and more job losses. An estimated two-thirds of Colorado children without internet access are Hispanic, and many of them had parents working essential jobs and who could not stay home with them.

Zurkowski said learning gaps among Hispanics remain an area of “significant concern.” The state has some of the largest gaps in the nation between Hispanic and white students.

Students faced many challenges during COVID

The pandemic imposed hardships and barriers to student learning: switches between remote and hybrid classes, quarantines and other disruptions, spotty internet access, and general instability. Students also experienced major stressors, like parents losing jobs and caregivers falling ill and dying.

Melissa Snyder, a Cherry Creek School District fourth grade teacher, said student absenteeism has soared since the start of the pandemic.

“There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle,” said Snyder, who teaches at Pine Ridge Elementary. “Everything with COVID is so much more complex.”

Lorelei Jackson, a Denver Language School eighth grade math teacher, said teachers had to choose which lessons to teach and students are missing skills they would normally have learned.

“We wanted to make sure that we were focusing on what was going to be the most impactful for students,” she said. And now, “we’re seeing those gaps.”

A Chalkbeat analysis found mixed evidence on the link between remote learning and changes in state test scores, with some correlation in math and fourth-grade reading but none in eighth-grade reading. More granular research has shown that students who experienced more virtual learning tended to fall further behind.

The Colorado education department didn’t require districts to report changes in learning mode, which sometimes varied weekly, but its staff did try to track who was in-person, remote, or hybrid using district websites and Facebook pages. Using state data, the COVID-19 School Data Hub estimates that Colorado students on average spent 28% of their time learning in person during the 2020-21 school year.

Many rural districts ran a near-normal school year while larger urban and suburban districts spent more time in remote learning. Even during in-person learning, frequent quarantines and absences due to illness created major disruptions.

Mary Hulac, a language arts teacher at Greeley’s Prairie Heights Middle School, said the disruption still resonates among students and saps them of motivation for school and even outside activities.

“They’re afraid of risk and maybe being wrong or being rejected,” she said.

How can Colorado rebound?

Last year, Colorado leaders mapped out how to spend $180 million of $1.5 billion in federal relief money for schools. The rest went directly to school districts. The state focused its funds on grants for instructional materials, tutors, after-school programs, and training, according to Scott Jones, Colorado Department of Education chief strategic recovery officer.

The money helps get students one-on-one help to address areas where they are falling behind, Jones said. He called for patience in letting those investments work for students.

“This is not going to be a swift return,” He said. “We’re definitely looking at how we look at the work over a length of time and supporting districts even as the extra funds are spent and expire in 2024.”

Denver Public Schools has invested some of its federal COVID funding in tutoring and expanding summer school. The district distributed some money to schools directly to use as they saw fit. Many used it to hire extra staff.

The district also set aside $12 million for services such as speech therapy or small-group reading for students with disabilities to make up for what they may have missed during remote learning. But at the end of last school year, much of that money remained unspent.

Denver is focused on acceleration, which means teaching students at their grade level with support, rather than on remedial lessons. Whether that will work is a subject of nationwide debate.

Nicholas Martinez, of the advocacy organization Transform Education Now, said Denver hasn’t approached the issue with enough urgency.

“These are not new problems,” Martinez said. “Your ZIP code defining your opportunity is not new. Looking at the data and having an honest conversation means we have to do better.”

Melanie Asmar, Matt Barnum, and Erica Meltzer contributed to this report.

These Denver school board members lived through school closures. Now they’ll be voting on them.

2022-10-19T23:26:38+00:00

Denver school board members soon will be faced with the often gut-wrenching — and politically unpopular — decision of whether to close schools. It’s a decision that a majority of the seven members have faced before as teachers, parents, and students.

But this time, they’re on the other side.

Denver’s enrollment is declining, and some schools have so few students, and so little per-pupil funding, that Superintendent Alex Marrero said the schools can no longer offer the robust programming students deserve. A committee has recommended Denver close elementary and middle schools with fewer than 215 students, as well as those with fewer than 275 students that expect to lose 8% to 10% more students in the next few years.

Marrero said he plans to make recommendations soon for which schools should be closed. The board is expected to vote on those recommendations next month.

But board members have expressed hesitation about closing schools. For some, that reluctance comes from their own experiences — which galvanized them to get more involved in district politics and eventually run for the board.

We spoke to four of the seven board members about their experiences and how that shaped how they think about school closure. Here’s what they said.

Carrie Olson

As a teacher at Kepner Middle School, now-school board member Carrie Olson took students on educational trips abroad. In this 2007 photo, she helps student Eloy Arguello make a scrapbook of his travels to London, Amsterdam, and Paris.

Olson was a teacher at Kepner Middle School in 2014 when the district announced it was closing the southwest Denver school due to low test scores.

“I didn’t feel seen or heard before the decision was made — or really, after,” she said.

Olson was a veteran educator, having started as a bilingual teacher in the district in 1985. She taught electives and literacy intervention at Kepner, working with a population where 60% of students were English language learners, 95% were Latino or Black, and nearly 100% qualified for subsidized school meals, an indicator of low family income.

In addition to teaching, Olson took students on educational trips to Washington, D.C., and Europe, life-changing experiences that became the subject of her doctoral dissertation.

Though Kepner students struggled with standardized tests, Olson said the school was more than its scores. She was shocked when district officials called a meeting to say they were “phasing out” Kepner — a euphemism for closure that meant the school would close one grade at a time — and phasing in other programs they hoped would do better.

Olson and some of her colleagues put together a proposal for a dual-language school that would celebrate students’ strengths and continue the educational trips. But the district rejected it. Instead, the school board chose a charter school and a new district-run school to take over.

“That whole competitive nature was so traumatizing to us,” Olson said. “We were all part of the community and so ingrained with the families and students.

“It felt like people downtown didn’t understand how this decision would fragment the community,” she said, referring to the decision makers at district headquarters.

The experience was one of several that pushed Olson to run for school board in 2017. She said she’s skeptical of school closures, and if the district is going to do it again, she wants the process to centralize the voices of students and families, and provide support to traumatized teachers beyond advice to do yoga and take bubble baths.

When she talks to her former colleagues about the closure, Olson said they often end up crying.

“The students felt like, ‘I’m not enough,’” Olson said. “Families would say, ‘We thought we had the best teachers in the city.’ I carry the students and the families and staff at Kepner in my heart always. I think about what was done to us and not with us.”

Michelle Quattlebaum

In this 2009 photo, Smiley Middle School sixth-grader Lanise Hopkins watches a speech in class by then-President Barack Obama. School board member Michelle Quattlebaum’s three children (not pictured) attended Smiley.

Quattlebaum’s family had a long history with Smiley Middle School by the time her youngest son was attending a decade ago. Her two older children had gone to Smiley, as had her husband.

In late 2012, the school board voted to phase out the northeast Denver school due to low test scores and lagging enrollment. But the enrollment was partly the district’s doing: Four years earlier, the board had co-located a charter school in the building, leaving Smiley with less space.

In 2013, the board made another controversial decision: To move the growing McAuliffe International School, which served a mostly white and affluent population, into the phasing-out Smiley, where most students were Black and Latino and from low-income families.

Quattlebaum fought against the Smiley closure, which she said families didn’t learn about until right before the vote. The process, she said, “didn’t feel good.” The one bright spot, she said, was when former school board member Happy Haynes came to talk to families.

“There were accusations thrown out, and her interaction was not to diminish or dismiss our very real feelings, but it was to actually listen to us,” Quattlebaum said. Had she not, Quattlebaum said, “the closure would have looked very different and felt even worse than it did.”

The district also helped the school throw a carnival, an event Smiley had held back when Quattlebaum’s husband was a student but which it couldn’t afford in recent years.

“It helped because tradition was being honored,” she said.

School closures didn’t galvanize Quattlebaum to run for a seat on the school board, which she won last year. But she said her first instinct is to oppose closures, even if she understands that may not always be realistic.

“If you have a school that normally provides services to 200 students and now only has 20 students, I’m that person saying, ‘Keep it open! Keep it open!’” she said. If that’s not possible, she said, “let’s try to come up with other alternatives to closing a school. What can that look like? I don’t know. But I understand the complexity of it.”

Quattlebaum’s own middle school, Gove, closed in 2005 and is now a parking lot.

“Every time I drive by there and somebody is in the car with me, I’m like, ‘That used to be my middle school!’” she said. “It impacts you.”

Auon’tai Anderson

In this 2014 photo, three students walk by a school bus outside Manual High School. School board Vice President Auon’tai Anderson (not pictured) attended Manual.

Anderson’s experience with school closure was not as a parent or teacher, but as a student whose school was still grappling with a past closure and the threat of a new one.

Anderson attended Manual High School from 2015 to 2017, about a decade after the northeast Denver school with a proud history and a list of high-profile alumni was closed in 2006. The district reopened Manual a year later with a new leader and a new vision, but frequent changes made the next several years rockier than district leaders had hoped.

Anderson was drawn to Manual, where nearly all students are Black or Latino, by its JROTC program. He also became a student leader, and it was through that position that he learned the district was co-locating another McAuliffe middle school at Manual.

He and other student leaders met with school board members, including Haynes. He remembers asking why Manual students weren’t consulted about the co-location.

“I stood up and I asked, ‘Where was the student voice in this decision?’” he said.

Haynes, he said, answered by saying something like, “If you want to be on the school board, you can run and win like the rest of us.” Anderson said that motivated him to run for the board in 2017, when he was still a teenager. He lost that race but ran again in 2019 and won.

Anderson said he saw the move to co-locate a middle school at Manual — and other previous proposals to chip away at Manual’s space or programming — as threats to the school’s future. Students also couldn’t escape Manual’s past. On sports teams, he said, Manual students were taunted by other players who’d say things like, “At least my school didn’t close.”

Because of his experience, Anderson said he opposes school closures. He said he’s struggling with the prospect of having to vote on the superintendent’s recommendations.

“If I choose to run for re-election or a different political office, I don’t want to have the stain of a school closure on my record because I know how traumatic it is for families,” he said. “I recognize that enrollment is declining, but I haven’t given up hope that there’s another solution out there.”

Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán

In this 2004 photo, Sydney Rees-Rice’s sixth grade class at Kunsmiller Middle School playfully reach for a decorative apple. Kunsmiller closed before school board President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán’s oldest son could attend.

Fifteen years ago, when Gaytán’s oldest son was in fifth grade, she and her husband got a letter from the district. It said that their neighborhood middle school, Kunsmiller, where they were planning to send their son the following year, was closing.

Kunsmiller, where 88% of students were Hispanic and 93% qualified for subsidized meals, had low test scores, and the district was planning to transform it into an arts magnet school.

The letter came with a list of other middle schools that the fifth-graders could attend, Gaytán said. But none were near their southwest Denver neighborhood.

“It was so abrupt that it felt that parents and families were left scrambling to figure out what’s next,” Gaytán said. “It became one of those traumatic events that leaves families with shock and sadness for something you have no control over.”

Gaytán and her husband were both working, and they rearranged their schedules so they could drive their son across the city to Morey Middle School, where he made new lifelong friends. But Gaytán said it also robbed him of connections closer to home.

“You’re living a momentary trauma, but it also leaves aftereffects that break up communities and neighborhoods,” she said, “which left me questioning what was happening in Denver Public Schools and why decisions were made the way they were.”

The experience, Gaytán said, caused her to become more involved in Denver Public Schools and eventually run for a seat on the school board, which she won last year.

Gaytán said she’s open to the idea of consolidating schools with low enrollment to ensure all schools can offer robust programming. She’s concerned that some Denver elementary schools don’t have enough students to offer bilingual programming or hire full-time nurses.

But she said she wants the district to approach school closures differently than it has in the past — in a thoughtful way that takes families’ needs for transportation and mental health support into account, and “that will bring schools and communities together, not break them apart.”

“My hope is that because we have a board of individuals that have experienced this already, that we’re helping the district follow through in a very different way than how it was done back then.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

How a Colorado district changed its reading curriculum to better reflect students

2022-10-18T17:33:34+00:00

Alongside tall tales about lumberjack Paul Bunyan and cowboy Pecos Bill, new reading lessons for Denver second graders will include the story of Doña Flor, a giant woman living in the American Southwest.

What students won’t get in those literacy lessons are books about Columbus, the first Thanksgiving, or Lewis and Clark.

That’s because Denver district officials have made a series of changes to the new reading curriculum rolling out in kindergarten through second grade at nearly 90 schools this year. In addition to stripping out units they felt perpetuated a whitewashed version of American history, they added several books in each grade intended to add a wider variety of voices.

The idea was to take a curriculum that had earned high marks for teaching kids to read and expanding their knowledge of the world and make it more culturally responsive. That is, to ensure it reflects the diverse histories and identities of students in Denver classrooms and the wider world.

Denver students will still learn about dropped history topics like Columbus through social studies coursework in various grades.

The decision to modify the new curriculum stems, in large part, from a recent student-driven effort to make lessons more inclusive of Black, Latino, and Indigenous history. The result of that effort — the “Know Justice Know Peace” resolution approved in 2020 — builds on previous efforts to revise curriculum that focused on Eurocentric perspectives.

Experts say culturally responsive education is good for all kinds of students, creating a more complete picture of the world and helping schools engage students.

“If our students see themselves valued and reflected and honored in that space, they’re more likely to learn,” said Casie Wise, who holds a doctorate in education and is senior program director at the National Indian Education Association.

Denver Public Schools is the largest school district in Colorado and one of the most diverse. Half of the district’s students are Hispanic and three-quarters are students of color.

The district’s efforts at greater inclusivity unfold at a time when many schools around the nation are being pressured to move in the opposite direction, with conservative parents or community members seeking to ban books that they say raise divisive topics, cover difficult subjects too early, or make white students feel anxious or ashamed. Schools in 138 districts removed or limited students’ access to books during the 2020-21 school year, according to the free speech advocacy group, PEN America.

Even in Denver, a progressive district where leaders frequently talk about equity and inclusion, there are signs recent events have had a chilling effect.

The district shared only eight of 30 book titles that district staff recommended be added to the new curriculum. District officials refused a Chalkbeat public records request for the full list, first saying they didn’t know if vendors would have all the titles, then citing deliberative privilege, an exemption invoked “if the material is so candid or personal that public disclosure is likely to stifle honest and frank discussion within the government.”

Leah Q. Peoples, who leads Transformative Research, a research firm that prioritizes educational equity, said the Denver district’s efforts to boost cultural responsiveness in its reading curriculum sound promising. She said between the demands put on educators and the political climate, such work can be hard to do.

It’s important for the district “to not let that first step be their last step,” she said.

Scorecard measures cultural responsiveness

Like many Colorado school districts, Denver is adopting new reading curriculum because of a 2019 state law that required schools to use scientifically-based reading programs in kindergarten through third grade. The old program used in most Denver schools didn’t meet that bar.

The district’s new state-approved reading program is called Core Knowledge Language Arts and is published by Amplify. It’s used in around two dozen Colorado districts and has generally earned high praise for thoroughly covering foundational skills and building students’ knowledge through a collection of science and social studies-themed literacy units. Experts say boosting students’ background knowledge improves reading comprehension. Core Knowledge also has a Spanish-language counterpart, Caminos, which is used in Denver schools that have dual language programs.

During the initial evaluation of Core Knowledge Language Arts and two other curriculum contenders, Denver officials used a tool developed by New York University, the Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecard for English language arts. (There’s also a version for STEAM — Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math.)

The checklist, which Peoples co-authored, asks reviewers to consider a host of factors related to the characters, plot, and presentation of books and materials. For example, are people of color main characters or just sidekicks? Are female characters shown in a variety of roles? Do texts highlight the strength of non-dominant populations? Do they provoke questions about the societal status quo?

All three curriculums came up short on cultural responsiveness, but Core Knowledge Language Arts earned the best reviews overall. The district adopted the program — at a cost of $8.4 million — but decided to modify the knowledge-building half of the curriculum. The program’s foundational skills portion remains the same. The new curriculum has rolled out in most of the district’s K-2 classrooms and is being piloted in some third-grade classrooms.

Some history topics cut

After the curriculum review, district officials decided to drop two history-themed units per grade, among them “Columbus and the Pilgrims” in kindergarten, “A New Nation” in first grade, and “Westward Expansion” in second grade. Denver officials didn’t want materials from the eliminated units to show up in Denver classrooms, so they asked Amplify to remove them from the curriculum kits the district ordered.

The district also tacked on 10 more books to the curriculum in each grade — five for classrooms with English instruction and five for classrooms with Spanish. The new titles, which are meant to add missing perspectives, lengthen some of the units the district is keeping.

Molly Veliz, a teacher who works with struggling readers at Marie L. Greenwood Early-8 school, agreed with the decision to jettison some units, saying, “I’m really glad because for the strengths of [Core Knowledge Language Arts] … the weaknesses are pretty glaring in that it’s very Eurocentric and [takes] a settler viewpoint,” she said.

Veliz said she’s also happy about the focus on evidence-based reading practices in the new curriculum.

“Hopefully we’re going to be teaching way more of our students how to read,” she said. “That’s really equity in action right there.”

Megan Bobroske, a second grade teacher at Denver’s Bradley International School, was part of a six-member team that helped recommend second-grade books to add to some units. As the team reviewed the “Fairytales and Tall Tales” unit, they realized all four tall tales featured men. There were no female protagonists. To remedy that, they recommended adding Doña Flor for English classrooms and a tale about a tiny Incan Princess for Spanish classrooms.

“There is no perfect curriculum out there,” she said. So the question is, “How do we make what we have represent and make our students feel they are a part of this?”

Training goes awry

Things did not go smoothly when the district first rolled out the new reading curriculum during an online teacher training in August.

One session featured a video on Lewis and Clark. That lesson — part of the Frontier Explorers unit — wasn’t going to be taught in Denver classrooms and was only meant to serve as an example. But teachers didn’t know that and many were upset.

The next morning, before the second half of the training began, Jennifer Begley, the district’s director of humanities, apologized to the group of 100 teachers.

“We thank you for speaking up and calling this to our attention,” she said. “We’re deeply sorry for the harm that the video has caused.”

Begley also explained the district’s changes, including why some units had been cut: “There were several domains that centered white Eurocentric views and beliefs, places where history was omitted, and places where representation of authors and characters was not sufficient.”

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Begley said the reaction to some Core Knowledge units was, “This can’t be what we put in front of our students.”

She described how one frontier lesson described Thomas Jefferson as a friend to the Native Americans who wanted explorers to use gifts to maintain friendly relations with them.

But that benign portrayal fails to note that Jefferson was also a key architect of policies to remove Native Americans from their land.

Hannah Maldonado Villar, a first grade teacher at Barnum Elementary School, said she discussed some of the district’s modifications to the reading curriculum with a student’s mother during parent-teacher conferences this month.

“She was saying how as a white woman she is appreciative that her daughter is not going to learn such a white-centered history,” as the woman did in her childhood, said Maldonado Villar.

Kristine Frech, a spokeswoman for Amplify, said school or district modifications to Core Knowledge Language Arts are common.

“The No. 1 thing is that the integrity of the program stay intact,” she said.

Asked about Denver’s concerns over the cultural responsiveness of the reading curriculum, Frech said, “We take into account that feedback as we look at the program over time.”

She said the company has taken several steps in recent years to make the curriculum more representative, including creating a skills unit promoting student research that adds more diversity.

For example, an art-themed kindergarten unit includes a book about sculptor Ruth Asawa and Guatemalan textile weavers. The second grade aviation unit includes a book about the Tuskegee Airmen and another on female pilots in World War II.

Amplify also contracted with the National Indian Education Association to review certain curriculum components focused on Native Americans. Frech said the group helped Amplify rewrite a first-grade book about a Navajo girl’s summer vacation, providing authentic Navajo names and pronunciations, details about the setting, and help retelling the traditional Spider Woman story. A Navajo illustrator created the Spider Woman picture and contributed other art to the book.

Many programs fall short

Experts in culturally responsive education say many materials, including in math and science, can be culturally problematic. Besides homogeneous book characters or authors, shortcomings include misleading accounts of historical events, the perpetuation of stereotypes, and narrow portrayals of a group’s experience.

Peoples, of Transformative Research, said one common trope in lessons about people of color is that their lives are dominated by struggle.

“Slavery happened, wars happened,” but there’s so much more to the experience of people of color than oppression, she said. Joyful everyday moments need to be portrayed, too — playing with a dog, running for class president, or making the team.

Peoples said culturally responsive education is about reflecting other kinds of diversity, too — gender, class, and disability status, for example. And it must be thoroughly incorporated into learning experiences, not treated as a voluntary add-on.

“You cannot sprinkle culturally responsive education in,” she said.

Wise, of the National Indian Education Association, said the problem with many lessons on Native Americans is that they stop in the late 1800s or early 1900s.

“It basically gives students the idea that Native Americans no longer exist because they were conquered,” she said. It’s “not teaching history through the lens of the present.”

Bobroske, the second-grade teacher, saw the same kind of thing while her team was picking books to add to the new curriculum. In the immigration unit, there were stories about families coming to America generations ago, but little about modern day immigrants.

“Immigration isn’t just something that happened at the turn of the century,” she said, noting that many Denver students are immigrants themselves.

Bobroske’s team recommended adding the English and Spanish version of a book called “Areli is a Dreamer,” by Areli Morales, a contemporary story about a young immigrant who qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA.

Part of the goal with the additional books is to get students connected to the content.

“If they’re invested, you’re gold,” Bobroske said.

What kind of knowledge?

Learning to read involves two basic elements: word recognition and language comprehension. The first skill helps students understand that jumbles of letters represent sounds and words. The second skill, comprehension, is based on several factors, including a child’s background knowledge about the world. Several reading curriculums are specifically designed to build that knowledge and create a foundation for future learning. These are a few reading curriculums that focus on knowledge-building.

Core Knowledge Language Arts grew out of E.D. Hirsch Jr.’s work to establish a shared body of knowledge he believed American students should have. The program, which Amplify owns a license to publish, features units on science, social studies, and literature.

EL Education focuses more on nature and science, with early elementary lessons on trees, birds, weather, and fossils. There are also modules on “Toys and Play” and “Tools and Work.”

Wit and Wisdom focuses on history, science, literature, and the arts. Modules cover topics such as Cinderella stories from around the world, the American West, and Civil Rights heroes.

Fishtank ELA also features history, science and literature, but sometimes with a different twist on conventional narratives. For example, third graders do a module called “Rediscovering Thanksgiving: Fact vs. Fiction.”

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

How student loan borrowers can take advantage of President Biden’s forgiveness plan

2022-10-15T01:19:22+00:00

Student loan borrowers across the country will have until December 2023 to apply for up to $20,000 in forgiveness from the federal government.

The Biden administration has rolled out “a short and simple” online application that borrowers can fill out on their phone or computer.

The one-time maneuver by President Joe Biden is meant to help address the student debt crisis that has ballooned to over $1.7 trillion. Biden plans to cancel $10,000 in debt for each borrower who makes less than $125,000 a year, or $250,000 for taxpayers who file jointly. He also wants to provide an additional $10,000 in relief for any borrower from a low-income background.

The student loan cancellation should help millions of borrowers, although it won’t address the larger issue of the rising cost of college and the continuing accumulation of new debt.

Here are points on how to go about claiming the loan cancellation and the big questions surrounding Biden’s plan.

Do I have to apply for student loan forgiveness?

Yes.

The Biden administration may issue automatic relief to some borrowers who have income data on record with the Education Department. Experts say, however, not to rely on that and for loan recipients to plan to apply for forgiveness.

What loans are eligible? And how will this work for borrowers?

Publicly held loans are eligible, including subsidized loans, unsubsidized loans, parent PLUS loans, and graduate PLUS loans held by the U.S. Education Department.

Michele Shepard, Institute for College Access and Success college affordability director, said borrowers, including parents who took out loans for their child’s education, should be prepared to fill out the application.

“The expectation is once borrowers do apply, they will receive either full relief — have their balance totally wiped out — or whatever amount they’re eligible for will be taken off their account,” Shepard said. The institute is a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for affordability, accountability, and equity in higher education.

If the government forgives a loan, the borrower’s payment schedule will be updated based on how much was forgiven, she said. Borrowers can also enroll in income-driven repayments — that is, recalculating payments based on the borrower’s income — which could also lower their monthly bill.

The federal program will forgive up to $20,000 of publicly funded loans, but will not offer forgiveness for private loans.

How can student loan borrowers apply for loan forgiveness?

The application process doesn’t ask for a borrower’s Federal Student Aid identification number or any other supporting information. Instead, borrowers will just need to fill out the short application that includes a borrower’s Social Security number.

Borrowers can fill out the form here.

After borrowers apply, the Education Department will reach out if it needs additional information.

The White House said that borrowers should beware of scams.

Karen McCarthy, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators vice president for public policy and federal relations, said borrowers should familiarize themselves with their borrower information, including how much they owe and what kind of loans they have.

The best way to do that is by checking their Federal Student Loan Identification account.

How borrowers can get notified about the application process

While Chalkbeat and other news publications will continue to provide information about the application process, the best way to stay up to date with developments is to sign up for the federal government’s newsletter about the topic.

Shepard said loan servicers should communicate with borrowers, but the newsletter will let them know updates as they become available.

Readers can sign up here.

Borrowers can also get text and email alerts by opting into those on their Federal Student Loan Identification account.

Just in case, borrowers should plan for delays

While the federal government plans to get applications approved by the turn of the new year, Shepard said it’s smart to prepare to have to continue repaying loans if there’s a lag.

“I do think people should protect themselves and be prepared to manage if they need to enter repayment for a little bit if their application doesn’t go through right away,” Shepard said.

Will this even happen, since there are lawsuits over student loan actions?

It’s hard to say until the legal challenges play out, but the Biden administration has so far continued with its plan.

The newest lawsuit from conservative advocacy group the Job Creators Network argues Biden violated federal procedures by failing to seek public input on the program.

Last month, six Republican-led states filed suit accusing the administration of overstepping its executive powers. And another lawsuit out of Wisconsin was recently dismissed.

How will this address the cost of college nationwide?

It won’t.

But the Biden administration has promised changes so student loan repayment is less of a burden.

The department is proposing to reduce monthly payments for low- and middle-income borrowers by cutting in half — from 10% to 5% of discretionary income — the amount that borrowers have to pay each month on their undergraduate loans.

The rule would also forgive loan balances after 10 years of payments — instead of 20 years — for borrowers with original loan balances of $12,000 or less. And it would cut interest as long as borrowers make payments on time.

So what’s the goal for tackling college costs?

State investment in college has decreased significantly in the last several decades. And there doesn’t seem much momentum to help change the sticker price of a college education.

But the debt conversation has spurred a larger conversation about how to help students manage the cost of college, McCarthy said.

McCarthy advises families to fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid to help understand the total cost of college to them. She also encourages offering families long-term financial planning for college.

She suggests schools and counselors engage students in in-depth discussions about college options, because the cost of a private college vs. a public institution, or a four-year college vs. a two-year education, varies wildly.

Newark schools’ crossing guard shortage prompts search for solutions

2022-10-14T15:50:02+00:00

As the school day ends, students at McKinley Elementary School in Newark’s North Ward rush for the exit. Some get into relatives’ cars and head home while other students start their journey home by crossing nearby 7th Avenue with the help of one crossing guard.

With cars zooming by on the busy street at around 2:30 p.m., older students hold hands with their younger siblings as they look both ways before crossing the street. The crossing guard on 7th Avenue holds up his hand, signaling drivers to stop, and lets children cross as he waves goodbye.

The scene may look routine, but it’s not necessarily universal. Over the last couple of years, local advocates have repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of students walking to and from school. “We really need some help here because somebody is going to be killed,” said Sharon Redding, an advocate with the Newark Community Street Team, a nonprofit that focuses on reducing violence in the community.

What often saves students from serious accidents or worse is the presence of crossing guards, who “don’t always get the respect that they really deserve because people just kind of brush them off,” said Newark Police Lieutenant Tremayne Phillips. “It’s easy to neglect them until it’s your kids that are crossing the street.”

Yet hiring people to do that sometimes life-saving work in the city is proving difficult. Schools across New Jersey — including Newark’s — are facing a crossing guard shortage. There are about 170 crossing guard positions in Newark, but only 97 of them were filled as of earlier this month, Phillips said. That’s left the police department rushing to fill 74 of them.

Crossing guards work for the Newark Police Department and are deployed to school zones and intersections near schools to help with students’ daily commutes. They work Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., and again from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. to coincide with those commutes.

Last year, 163 pedestrians in New Jersey were killed, according to state law enforcement data. A report released last summer from Smart Growth America, a nonprofit advocacy group, said the rise in people killed while walking is a worsening “epidemic.”

Among the area’s traditional public and charter high schools, Science Park is the only one that has crossing guards on duty for all the available shifts, Phillips said during a virtual public safety roundtable hosted by the Newark Community Street Team on Oct. 11.

For the city’s 30 crossing guard positions assigned to charter schools, only 13 are currently staffed, and for Newark Public Schools, only 83 positions are filled out of 140, Phillips added. Some of the city’s 66 public schools have multiple crossing guard positions for nearby intersections.

A pay hike is one solution New Jersey school officials have turned to. One New Jersey district recently offered up to $50 a day to new crossing guards. Phillips said Newark’s police department offers $15 an hour to crossing guards, although that hourly wage hasn’t changed recently.

But being a crossing guard is a part-time job with no benefits. Phillips said that some new hires leave the job after just a couple of weeks once they find better paying jobs with more hours, benefits, and retirement packages.

In addition, while police officers sometimes fill in temporarily as crossing guards when those positions are vacant, those same officers may get called away to respond to reports of criminal activity, leaving school zones without crossing guards with little or no advance notice.

At the beginning of the school year, the city had used just 72% of its budget allocation for school crossing guards, with 27 applicants still going through the hiring process, according to Sharonda Morris, Newark police’s deputy director of operations.

Solving the crossing guard shortage

Before being hired by the city’s police department, applicants must undergo a criminal background check, which for some people may cause an issue. Any applicant convicted of a crime in the first through fourth degree is automatically disqualified from becoming a crossing guard, according to the police department.

One state lawmaker is trying to get more crossing guard positions filled by working with community leaders. State Sen. Teresa Ruiz, whose district includes Newark, is working on draft legislation and gathering input from the Newark School District, Mayor Ras Baraka, and the Newark Community Street Team to tackle the shortage, although she did not provide specifics about what might be included.

“Around the state and especially here in Newark students rely on crossing guards to get to school safely,” said Ruiz in a statement. “I am working on legislation, alongside the Newark School District, the mayor, and the street team to address the city’s ongoing shortage and bolster the ranks of this critical workforce.”

As part of the Newark Community Street Team’s Safe Passage program, the group’s community outreach workers patrol the streets around several South Ward schools in an effort to keep students safe during their daily commutes. Some of these workers have tried to become crossing guards but cannot, since they were previously incarcerated; these workers also help mediate neighborhood conflicts.

During the Oct. 11 virtual roundtable, Solomon Williams, deputy director for the Newark Community Street Team, said his group is suggesting that Ruiz work to lift a ban to reduce the barrier for those convicted of a crime who want to work as crossing guards. They are also suggesting adding a benefits package and retirement incentive to any future legislation from Ruiz to retain crossing guards.

Advocates like Redding also called on the county’s sheriff’s department to provide support to county roads like Route 602, known as Lyons Avenue, which is used by a number of students in nearby schools like Weequahic High and Carver Elementary.

Other advocates have suggested hiring local college students or high school seniors who may have time before or after school hours and are able to work part time.

Ultimately, the Newark Police Department indicated that most applicants end up getting hired.

“We turn down few people,” Phillips said. “As long as you’re motivated, we’ll hire you.”

Correction: Oct. 25, 2022: A previous version of this story stated that last year, more than 600 pedestrians were killed in New Jersey. The story was updated to reflect the number of pedestrians killed, 163, rather than the total number of deaths due to motor vehicle accidents.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

How one Colorado Republican shaped what students will learn about the Holocaust

2022-10-12T12:30:00+00:00

A Republican State Board of Education member who believes socialism poses grave dangers at home and abroad has put his stamp on how Colorado students will learn about the Holocaust.

Over the last year and a half, Steve Durham has pushed for the state’s academic standards to connect the Holocaust and other genocides to socialism. Durham succeeded in omitting the word Nazi from an early version of the standards in favor of the party’s full name, the National Socialist German Workers Party.

Durham agreed to include the word Nazi after Jewish community members lobbied the State Board of Education — so long as the full name with the word socialist remained.

“People don’t know and have a right to know that this party was and is a socialist party,” Durham said at an August State Board meeting. “That is largely lost on the American people and on a number of history teachers as well. I oppose dumbing down the standards.”

Historians say Durham is wrong about the Holocaust and wrong about the roots of genocide. The idea that Nazis were socialists is “a lie,” according to David Ciarlo, a University of Colorado history professor who studies German politics. “It’s completely wrong.”

Still, Durham has exerted outsized influence over the standards related to genocide, which are meant to guide teaching across Colorado. A key section largely authored by Durham overrides recommendations from a committee of teachers and experts. The approved standards drop references to genocide in Rwanda, for example, while adding detailed references to the Communist Party of China.

The standards as written “absolutely suggest to teachers that they should be making a connection” between genocide and socialism, said John Gallup, a history teacher in Jeffco Public Schools who recently returned from Auschwitz as part of a fellowship on teaching genocide and reviewed the standards at Chalkbeat’s request.

Durham’s sway, despite his misleading historical claims about the Holocaust, raises questions about the State Board’s ability to accurately referee conflicts over teaching history as its members tackle a contentious update to the broader social studies standards — and at a moment when those fights are erupting nationwide. And in a state where teachers have limited access to Holocaust-specific curriculum or training programs, some see the attention being paid to socialism as a disturbing distraction.

“It feels very antisemitic, quite frankly,” said Democratic state Rep. Dafna Michaelson-Jenet, co-sponsor of legislation requiring Holocaust education statewide. She sees the latest standards as an effort to score political points rather than teach about the murder of Jews and other minority groups. “You’re erasing the violence that happened by making it something that it wasn’t.”

The Holocaust has become another contested curriculum issue, with books like the acclaimed “Maus” by Art Spiegelman banned by a Tennessee school board.

The Holocaust becomes contested territory

The meaning and memory of the Holocaust have become yet another battleground in the fight over what students should learn about history, race, and gender. A Texas school administrator told teachers to balance books on the Holocaust with “opposing views.” A Tennessee school board voted to remove the acclaimed graphic novel “Maus” from its curriculum due to its “unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide.”

The Holocaust also remains a potent symbol of evil to be used — or misused — in political arguments. Opponents of vaccine mandates have donned yellow star badges similar to those the Nazis forced Jews to wear. At a rally last year, Republican congresswoman and conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene linked the Nazis and today’s Democratic Party by describing both as “national socialist parties.”

But teaching the Holocaust wasn’t supposed to be divisive in Colorado.

A state law passed in 2020 with broad bipartisan support required that students learn about the Holocaust and other genocides before graduating high school. (Many schools already included the Holocaust in history and literature classes, but it was not a requirement.)

Following the legislation, a committee of experts and teachers prepared recommendations for what students should learn. When the Democrat-majority State Board received them in spring 2021, Republicans raised a host of objections, many driven by contemporary political concerns — a theme of the discussions that would take place over the next year.

Republicans objected to references to mass violence, for example, saying the standards should then also reference recent violent protests in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle following the murder of George Floyd.

Durham saw something else wrong with the recommendations. While they mentioned the Cambodian genocide, they were silent on the crimes of the Soviet Union and Communist China. He proposed adding these events and said the standards should name the governments — such as the National Socialist German Workers Party — that carried out genocides.

Board Chair Angelika Schroeder, a Democrat, was largely silent on the substance of these discussions and later declined an interview request. She and fellow Democrat Rebecca McClellan ultimately voted with the Republicans to adopt Durham’s proposal, with McClellan praising the inclusion of the oppression of the Uyghurs.

Durham also proposed that students discuss the question: Why are so many modern genocides associated with socialist and communist governments?

That question didn’t make it into the standards — his colleagues simply ignored it — but Durham said in an interview, “I hope that students make that connection.”

Critics say they agree that students should learn about genocides carried out by the Soviet Union and China, but they worry that Durham’s list distorts history by excluding many other examples. Durham isn’t interested in that argument.

He dismissed Michaelson-Jenet’s concerns as playing the “race card.” Informed that many scholars disagree that socialists are the only source of genocidal violence, Durham asked a reporter, “Do they miss Pol Pot?”

Steve Durham is a former history teacher and legislator who represents Colorado Springs on the State Board of Education.

Durham challenged the reporter to name any genocides committed by regimes that weren’t socialist, then rejected any examples as not truly conservative.

“There is some truth out there that students need to understand,” Durham said. “Weak government, limited government cannot engage in this kind of activity. Socialism by definition is big government. It doesn’t mean that they all commit genocide, but they are the ones capable of it.”

Experts say Durham’s ideas are incorrect

Historians and educators say Durham’s comments and the emphasis of the standards he crafted are misguided. They say it’s important for students to understand that governments of all stripes have committed genocide. It’s also important for students to understand that mass murder often starts with words that dehumanize and demonize.

“Genocide is carried out by leftist governments and governments on the right, and it is not just a crime carried out by authoritarian states or dictatorships. Democracies have carried out genocides,” said University of Northern Arizona professor Alexander Alvarez, a genocide scholar who serves on his state’s task force charged with improving Holocaust and genocide education in K-12 classrooms.

“If we think genocide is just carried out by communist governments, we don’t have to look at our own history, or we can think that we are immune to the forces that lead to genocide.”

Seeing the term socialism through a modern American lens is also a mistake, historians and educators said.

The Nazis rose to power as a racist right-wing party virulently opposed to socialism and communism, according to historians interviewed by Chalkbeat and resources provided by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The first concentration camp, Dachau, opened in 1933 to house political prisoners, many of them communists and social democrats.

In 1920s Germany, the term “national socialism” represented a kind of racist populism that put the interests of ethnic Germans above others. The term stood in contrast to “international socialism” and “international capitalism,” both of which were associated with Jews to falsely blame them for harming the German people. While an early Nazi party platform included some socialist ideas, leaders soon ignored them and those ideas became irrelevant to the party’s rise.

“What’s important is that they demonized their opponents,” Ciarlo said.

Through a letter-writing campaign and in private meetings with board members, Jewish groups raised concerns that the initial version of the standards adopted in 2021 without the term Nazi missed the mark. Most students have heard of Nazis before they encounter them in history class. If students then learned only about the National Socialist German Workers Party, would they understand the party’s defining ideology was belief in German racial superiority that justified killing or enslaving other peoples?

“It’s essential that when they hear the term Nazi they connect it to a genocidal society,” said Dan Leshem, a Holocaust educator and director of the Colorado Jewish Community Relations Council. “We need to be horrified and shaken and shook.”

Compromise keeps ‘a piece of indoctrination’

This year, the State Board had another shot at the standards covering the Holocaust and genocide. The entire social studies standards are up for review, and the standards committee recommended new language in June that included the Soviet Union and China along with Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur — without the emphasis on socialism so important to Durham.

Democratic board member Karla Esser said she heard the concerns of the Jewish community and shared them. She brought an amendment in August to describe the Holocaust as “carried out by the German Nazi Party and its collaborators.” Esser and McClellan also pushed back during a board meeting when Durham said the Nazis were socialists.

Esser’s amendment was adopted unanimously by the State Board. Alongside the addition of the term Nazi, it restored much of Durham’s socialism-focused language and replaced the simpler language the committee had recommended.

In an interview, Esser said the language was a compromise, one she felt confident could get at least four votes on the seven-member board. She knew Durham felt as strongly about having the word socialist in the standards as she did about using the word Nazi.

“That is his belief,” Esser said. “In my estimation, it’s a piece of indoctrination. I don’t think the standards should reflect our worldviews. They should reflect recorded history, with the understanding that there is always a point of view in history.”

But Esser gave Durham credit for listening, and said she doubted his interpretation would reach students. “Most teachers and most textbooks are not going to try to indoctrinate our students,” she said.

Michaelson-Jenet, the legislator, said the result ignores the intent of the bill requiring Holocaust education. The goal was to equip young people with basic knowledge about the Holocaust, something she saw many people lacked during her time leading the Holocaust Awareness Institute at the University of Denver, and teach them how intolerance can turn into genocide.

Yet State Board members also seemed to lack a basic understanding of how genocide happens, she said, and they didn’t consult experts who could have informed their decisions.

“If we want to actually get to the point where we’re teaching what hatred looks like, this is not the way to do it,” she said. “I don’t see anything about that goal.”

What does this mean for students and teachers?

The compromise language agreed on by the State Board is part of a broader update to Colorado’s social studies standards set to be finalized in November. In the next few weeks, the same State Board will consider new civics standards and whether to expand references to the contributions of communities of color and LGBTQ Americans, as required by a state law passed in 2019.

State standards represent what Colorado students are supposed to know and what Colorado schools are supposed to teach. But school districts also have broad discretion to make their own choices. Durham, a big believer in local control, is quick to say no teacher has to follow his lead.

Gallup, the history teacher in Jeffco Public Schools, said he’d be surprised to see school districts formally adopt Durham’s political framing. “I think teachers will look at this, and to be honest, they’ll use that language as they see fit and they’ll make that choice in their own classroom,” he said.

School districts have until July 2023 to incorporate the new genocide standards into an existing course required for graduation. The state is developing an online resource library to help.

Leshem said his focus now is ensuring teachers have the resources to teach the topic well. Recent surveys show a disturbing ignorance about the Holocaust among younger Americans, even in states that mandate genocide education. And every year, there are fewer survivors left who can share first-hand accounts. Colorado also lacks the museums, the teacher training programs, the funding, and the well-developed curriculum on the issue that other states have.

The goal of Holocaust education is ultimately genocide prevention. Ciarlo asks his students: “We all know that Nazism should never happen again because of the Holocaust. There’s a lesson there. What’s the lesson? What should not be repeated?”

History does not offer easy answers. Demonizing minority groups and political opponents proved an effective way to gain power. Millions of Germans found the Nazis’ extremism alluring, and millions more looked the other way as their neighbors were murdered. The Nazis were not defeated peacefully, and genocides continue to happen around the world.

The Holocaust needs to be placed in historical context, not twisted to fit our own, educators said. At the same time, students should be able to see commonalities among genocides and make connections to our own society. Doing so will make us better, Leshem said, especially in a time when immigrants are being demonized and there is pressure to look away from the uglier aspects of American history.

Students should also understand the Holocaust was not carried out by monsters, but by ordinary people who had within them a common capacity for cruelty, Leshem said. Many of us have that same capacity, but we don’t have to act on it.

Gallup said that’s a lesson he took home from Auschwitz, where guides made a point of presenting the camp guards as human beings who “got up in the morning and put their pants on one leg at a time.” So were the Germans who resisted in ways large and small. And that’s the lesson he plans to emphasize for his own Jeffco students.

“The kids just have to see that, that people made choices,” he said.

How Colorado’s Holocaust and genocide standards evolved

A 2020 Colorado law requires that students learn about the Holocaust before graduating high school. A standards committee of teachers and other experts made recommendations to the State Board of Ed, which adopted genocide standards in June 2021. Those standards were revisited and revised this year as part of a broader update of the social studies standards. Colorado schools have until July 2023 to incorporate these standards into a course required for graduation.

Here’s how the standards changed over time.

April 2021: Standards recommended by a committee of teachers and other experts mentioned five prominent 20th century genocides. These were not adopted.

Investigate causes and effects of significant events throughout world history. For example: the Renaissance; the Protestant Reformation; the Industrial Revolution; the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions; the World Wars; genocides such as Rwanda and Darfur; and the Arab Spring movement.

June 2021: Genocide standards adopted by the Colorado State Board of Education added the full name of the Nazi Party, more information about atrocities committed by communist governments, and labels to describe the type of genocide.

Students can: Evaluate continuity and change of historical events [including] 20th and 21st century genocides such as the Armenian Genocide (ethno-religious, national); the Holocaust conducted by the National Socialist German Workers Party and its collaborators (ethno-religious, political, racial, national, economic), Cambodian Genocide (political, economic); the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics murder of Ukrainian nationals (political, ethnic, national, economic), genocides conducted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) against its political opponents during the Totalization Period, Collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and Mao’s Famine (political, national), and the current genocide of the Uyghurs (ethno-religious, political)

June 2022: Standards recommended by the Colorado social studies standards committee incorporated much of the same content but without the labels, which many experts felt were overly restrictive and simplistic, and without full names of parties and nation-states. These were not adopted.

Students can: Examine and evaluate the historical context, consequences, and global responses to international atrocities throughout history. Including, but not limited to: 20th and 21st century genocides such a Armenia, the Holocaust, Ukraine (Holodomor), Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, and the modern genocide of the Uyghurs; and other acts of mass violence such as the political, economic, and social policies of Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and resulting Great Famine.

August 2022: Standards adopted by the Colorado State Board of Education added the reference to the German Nazi Party, restored the full names of parties and nation-states, and dropped the labels. These will be included in the full social studies standards update in November unless the State Board revisits them.

Students can: Evaluate continuity and change over the course of world history. For example: social and political movements related to nationality, ethnicity, and gender; revolutions; the World Wars; the Cold War; independence movements/decolonization and 20th century genocides such as the Armenian Genocide; the Holocaust perpetrated by the German Nazi Party and it’s collaborators (National Socialist German Workers’ Party), Cambodian Genocide; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics murder of Ukrainian nationals; genocides conducted by the Communist Party of China (CPC) against its political opponents during the Totalization Period, Collectivization, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and Mao’s Famine; and the current genocide of the Uyghurs.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

As mask battles fade, Michigan school boards face a new wave of culture war debates

2022-10-12T12:00:00+00:00

Two years ago, while COVID was raging through Michigan, so were the battles at local school board meetings. Across the state, volunteer board members who typically pored over budgets and contracts struggled to contend with a vocal public sharply divided over mask mandates and online learning.

Those particular battles have subsided, but the political passions they ignited haven’t. On the contrary, the groups that rallied community support around defending or fighting COVID health precautions are now gearing up to engage their local school boards on a broader range of contentious culture war issues, such as history curriculum, book bans and the rights of transgender students.

Just Monday, the Dearborn fire marshal shut down a school board meeting there after hundreds of protesters showed up to demonstrate against LGBTQ books. The meeting devolved into chaos and was adjourned before members got through the agenda that included approving contracts for classroom projectors, adult education services, high school security guards, and asbestos removal. The board had also expected to have approved 43 new hires, discussed cell phone policies, and voted on the superintendent’s annual goals. The board is scheduled to reconvene on Thursday at Fordson High School, which can accommodate a larger crowd.

With elections weeks away, some experts are worried that Michigan school boards could become paralyzed if they again become stages for a fractious national discourse driven by partisan or ideological politics.

Already, these contests are attracting a new, more activist wave of candidates pledging to govern school districts in the name of parents’ rights. They’ve found a champion in GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, a conservative TV commentator who has put cultural issues at the center of her education agenda. They’ve been met, in turn, by slates of activist candidates on the progressive side.

Meanwhile, some board members are walking away from their positions or choosing not to run for reelection, saying they’re frustrated by political disputes diverting them from the job they thought they signed up for: helping children learn.

That job has become significantly more urgent. After two years of disruptions due to the pandemic, school boards must contend with falling test scores, student mental-health issues, teacher burnout and the task of allocating billions of dollars of relief money from the federal government to deal with those problems. But protracted gridlock over social issues could make it harder for them to address the urgent challenges facing Michigan’s 1.4 million public schoolchildren.

Don Wotruba, executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards, warns that an “arms race” between progressives and conservatives in school board elections would mean “nothing gets done.”

“When we have agenda-focused individuals, it does disrupt the progress of the school board, because they spend an inordinate amount of time” on issues unrelated to student achievement, Wotruba said. “While they’re doing that, it’s not a productive, high-functioning school board.”

PAC endorses candidates advocating ‘parental choice’

Where some see the potential for gridlock, others see a mark of democratic vitality in Michigan.

“These organizations are spontaneous grass-roots organizations that self-organize and push for a change, and that’s the beauty of American democracy,” said Jeff Shaeper, who is running for school board in the Troy School District with the support of the conservative Get Kids Back to School PAC. The PAC’s mission has grown from fighting school mask and vaccine mandates to opposing what it calls “the erosion of traditional curriculum” and “wokeness.” It’s now helping dozens of candidates across Michigan run for school board on a platform of “parental choice.”

Schaeper, who questions the well-established efficacy of the COVID vaccine in reducing the severity of illness, said he would “break the groupthink” on the Troy school board while supporting civil discourse.

“I can disagree, but I can keep it cordial,” he said. “You know, I don’t call them scum-sucking bottom feeders, which I’ve been called. I keep calm.”

Matthew Wilk, who runs the Get Kids Back to School PAC, is a former Northville school board member and a veteran of the fiery debates over COVID that dominated board discussions in the first year of the pandemic. After he wrote in a social media post that COVID “only exists in falsified statistics,” the school board voted to remove him as president.

Wilk said his PAC is not donating money to candidates, but he has shown candidates how to file paperwork and helped them craft their messages.

Wilk says he wants his candidates to move away from political hot-button issues and push districts to improve student achievement.

“Now that we’ve seen the erosion of test scores, I’d like to see the discussion turn almost exclusively to that topic,” he said.

Yet platforms published by some of the candidates his PAC endorsed show that they are largely focused on ideological education battles over mask mandates and critical race theory, which is generally not even part of K-12 education. Dixon, whose campaign has focused on these issues, spoke at an event hosted by the PAC last month.

Wilk’s group alienated even some candidates who were pushing for reopening school buildings amid the pandemic. After Wilk endorsed four candidates for the Bloomfield Hills school board, three of them asked to have their names removed from the PAC’s website.

“I interpreted certain things (on the PAC website) as being part of one party,” said Paul Kolin, a Bloomfield Hills school board member who is running for reelection. Kolin, who pushed for in-person instruction in his district, was also removed as president of the board last year after he called the police about a list of anti-mask parents that was circulating among district families.

“School boards have become very political, but hopefully when we come out of (the pandemic), this is a nonpartisan position.”

Pandemic focused spotlight on school boards

Traditionally, school board candidates are drawn from PTOs and athletic booster clubs, said Michael Montgomery, a political scientist and education consultant who lectures at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. They usually bring positive and pragmatic agendas to their board service, he said.

“The growing importance of culture war issues to America’s right, however, has brought out large numbers of a different kind of parent activist across the entire country – people who are against this or that and will take every opportunity, every public comment period, every local election, to push their agenda,” Montgomery said.

Bree Moeggenberg, a local education activist in Isabella County, now runs the local branch of Moms for Liberty, a self-described parents’ rights group that started in Florida last year and since has spread quickly throughout the country.

Such groups grew in response to school board decisions during the pandemic — about online learning, mask requirements, vaccines and other health precautions — that suddenly became extremely disruptive for parents. At the same time, online classrooms gave many families an unusually intimate look at their children’s learning process.

As attention to board meetings increased, so did acrimony. In some cases, the divisiveness led to confrontations, threats, lawsuits, and even physical assaults. It also led to school board resignations in Grand Haven, Rice Lake, and elsewhere in Michigan and across the country.

Moeggenberg was a force behind an effort last year to recall Mount Pleasant school board members who had supported masks and vaccines as a precaution against the spread of COVID, and teaching children about the effects of systemic racism.

The recall effort was unsuccessful, but one of the targeted members later resigned. Twelve people now are vying for that seat. Because of the timing of the vacancy it will be filled by board appointment rather than general election.

Six other candidates are running in November for two full-term seats on the board.

The Michigan Secretary of State does not track numbers of candidates or vacancies in school board races, but both appear to have ticked up in some pockets across Michigan, particularly Republican leaning districts.

In Lowell Area Schools in Kent County, for example, eight candidates are running for three seats. Last election cycle, five people ran for four seats.

Ten candidates are running for three seats for full six-year terms on the Huron Valley Board of Education in Oakland County. Another two candidates are running to fill an unexpired vacancy. In 2020, a more typical school board election year, six candidates ran for five seats.

Meanwhile, frustrated board members in some districts are finishing out their terms but choosing not to run for reelection.

“I was disillusioned by how much time my school board service was spent not talking about student achievement,” said one board member from Oakland County who is stepping down when her term ends in December. She asked not to be identified because she was not authorized to speak with the media about her board service as required by the board’s policies.

“Every minute we’re spending responding to angry constituent emails about masks is a minute we’re not spending on students’ academic and emotional well-being,” she said.

State Rep. Darrin Camilleri, the ranking Democrat on the House Education Committee who is now running for state Senate, decries the political climate that focused vitriol on school board members. “Think about the example that our students are seeing from adults who are creating chaos at their local school district,” he said.

Conservatives say they’re focused on education

That characterization is unfair to parents who attended board meetings to express concerns — in a civil way — about district mask policies, said state Sen. Jim Runestad, a Republican on the Education Committee who is running for reelection. He said conservative parents have every right to raise concerns about schools’ instruction on social issues, and he applauded those who are running for office after feeling that their perspectives weren’t being taken into account.

“It’s a battle between the ‘educrats’ who say we need more social engineering and the parents who say, ‘No, let us do that, you need to focus on the basics of education to make sure that kids are learning the arithmetic and reading that they need to know,’” he said.

Moeggenberg and other members of her Moms for Liberty chapter have been knocking on doors and distributing yard signs to support conservatives in Isabella County school board races.

Candidates she’s talked to are motivated by the sense that schools are leaving parents out of important decisions about their children’s education and exposing students to controversial ideologies.

“So many people are passionate about what’s taking place,” Moeggenberg said. “It’s about making sure that before topics are discussed about sexuality, gender, and critical race theory, that we’re made aware. I would like to be alerted so I can discuss that with my child and help them walk through that.”

Culture war issues resonate with voters because they make for great campaign talking points, said Ronald Rapoport, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary. The real policy work of school board members is more complicated to communicate, so it’s harder to get voters interested in them, he said.

“One is the easy issue of, ‘I don’t want Drag Queen Story Hour,’” because it’s easy to imagine even if it isn’t actually occurring, said Rapoport. “If you want to solve the problems of school absenteeism and teachers leaving, that’s much harder.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC says all classrooms have air conditioning, but gaps remain

2022-10-06T21:45:00+00:00

Days before the school year started, New York City officials said they made good on a major promise: ensuring every public school classroom has air conditioning.

But as students and educators returned to their classrooms, some were still sweltering.

A Queens parent said her kindergarten son came home during the opening weeks of school flushed and sweaty. A Bronx student interrupted her teacher multiple times to complain about the heat. And a Brooklyn high school teacher fears his students will continue to cope by dragging their desks into the hallway to catch a whiff of cool air from other rooms with AC.

Five years ago, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio promised universal air conditioning by 2022. The city has made big strides, pouring more than $400 million into upgrading electrical systems and purchasing air conditioners for nearly 17,000 additional spaces — roughly 28% of classrooms citywide. It’s a significant accomplishment given aging infrastructure in many school buildings. And the upgrades bring some relief as climate change will likely spur longer and more frequent heat waves.

Yet dozens of educators, students, and parents told Chalkbeat there are still gaps in air conditioning coverage. In some cases, AC units were installed, but have fallen into disrepair and have not been fixed or replaced. In others, units have yet to be delivered, or school officials are waiting for upgrades to outdated electrical systems before switching them on. Some areas — including auditoriums and gyms — were never guaranteed air conditioning in the first place.

“I kind of laughed when they said everyone had an AC,” said Matthew Kennedy, a history teacher at Antonia Pantoja Preparatory Academy in the Bronx whose classroom does not have air conditioning. “It’s a premature pat on the back.”

In Kennedy’s classroom, students often complain about the heat the moment they walk in. On hot days, he forgoes direct instruction in favor of group work. “When you’re combating the heat the last thing the kids want is to hear you talk,” he said.

The situation is particularly challenging in the spring when he is working to prepare his students for Regents exams, which are typically required to graduate in New York. He often resorts to propping his windows open with textbooks so they don’t slam shut.

Kennedy said his room was slated for air conditioning, but the units that arrived were the wrong size, and new ones have yet to appear.

“The whole building has AC — it’s just like somehow we got lost in the shuffle,” he said.

Lost learning

Hot classrooms aren’t just uncomfortable — they can also adversely affect learning, researchers have found.

One New York City study showed that students who took Regents exams on 90-degree days were 11% more likely to fail an exam than on a 72-degree day. Heat can have detrimental effects beyond a single testing day: Students who took the PSAT in the fall performed worse if it was hot during the previous year and their school didn’t have AC, according to a national study.

“It’s not just one day, one test. It’s the accumulation of knowledge over the course of a year,” said Jonathan Smith, an economics professor at Georgia State University who co-authored the PSAT study. “Heat can certainly have an impact on people’s ability to learn.”

School years in New York City often include more than 30 days of temperatures of at least 80 degrees, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of federal data. Even temperatures below that threshold can have a negative effect on student learning.

Still, Smith said research on the relationship between heat and learning is limited, and not every study reaches the same conclusion. One study focused on Chicago Public Schools found that installing air conditioning, which cost $135 million, did not have a clear effect on test scores or grade retention. Smith noted that he’d like to see more research on whether air conditioning has other benefits, including reduced disciplinary infractions or improved attendance.

“It’s a worthy goal that’s probably a very hard decision for administrators to make because it’s so costly,” Smith said. “I think in the face of climate change, cities have to seriously consider ways to address the detrimental effects of heat and air conditioning is a clear solution.”

Broken AC on the rise

The latest figures show that New York City has made substantial progress installing air conditioning in recent years. Roughly 15% of classrooms lacked air conditioning according to data collected in 2020. This spring, that number fell to nearly 3%, and by fall, city officials claimed the project was “completed.”

Asked about specific classrooms that still lack AC units, city officials acknowledged some instances where AC is not yet available. A education department spokesperson also noted the city did not guarantee to add air conditioning where capital upgrades weren’t possible, in classrooms without windows, or in converted spaces that weren’t originally intended for instruction.

But even as air conditioning coverage has expanded, so has the share of units that are considered “non-functional.” Roughly 8% of classrooms have AC units that don’t work, according to data collected this year, up from about 6% in 2020. An education department spokesperson attributed the increase to the city’s installation of more air conditioning units overall.

The uptick in broken air conditioning units may pose challenges for individual school budgets because they are financially on the hook for maintaining and replacing AC units that don’t work once the warranty lapses, even if the city initially installed them at no cost to the school.

At P.S. 279 in Brooklyn, the now-defunct parent-teacher association helped pay for air conditioners years ago, but several of them have since stopped working, said Stacey McStine, an assistant principal.

Although the custodian was able to wrangle a freestanding unit for a prekindergarten classroom, other units “don’t turn on, don’t work, don’t cool the room at all, and they didn’t replace them” through the universal air conditioning program.

McStine worries the school won’t be able to get new units soon. “We’d really like a plan to replace units that are broken and don’t work anymore,” she said. “We don’t have money to fix it.”

Still, the school may soon get some relief. McStine said city officials recently promised to begin replacing the older units there.

‘I’ve seen some progress’

Maryam Choudhury, a senior at The Young Women’s Leadership School in the Bronx, said all of her classrooms have air conditioning units, but they don’t always work. Only one of the two units functions in the room where she has homeroom and AP environmental science, leaving it uncomfortably hot when temperatures rise.

“As a Muslim woman I like to dress modestly, so I don’t like taking off my sweater and showing my arms,” she said, noting that she also wears a hijab. “I am somebody who gets nauseous easily, so it was very hot and I couldn’t focus.”

Ramadan, which falls in the spring, is a particularly challenging time when temperatures rise because she refrains from eating or drinking during the day. “Some days I might not end up doing all the tasks I need to do within that class period,” she said, though Choudhury is typically able to make up the work.

Still, some educators said they’ve seen the benefits of new air conditioning. At Brooklyn’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School, officials have steadily added units starting on the top floors and working their way down, teacher Adam Schwartz said.

“I’ve seen some progress over the last three years,” he said. “When I see I’m in a room with air conditioning, I’m thinking about getting to know the kids in a comfortable space and finishing the year in comfort.”

But one of the three classrooms where Schwartz teaches does not have AC this year. He was told the units were ordered but have not arrived. (An education department spokesperson said the city is expediting work in the building.)

“The problem with the heat issue is that you’re so aware of your physical body — the discomfort, the tiredness, that it really pulls you back from losing yourself to intellectual pursuits,” he said.

Soaring costs

When the city first announced plans to outfit every school with air conditioning they indicated plans to spend nearly $29 million over five years to purchase and install the units with another $50 million in capital costs for electrical upgrades. The goal was to outfit 11,500 additional classrooms with air conditioning.

But the costs and scope of the project have ballooned. The city wound up adding AC to about 16,720 classrooms — at one point miscounting the number of rooms that needed it. The capital costs have grown to $380 million for electrical upgrades at 750 buildings, said Kevin Ortiz, a spokesperson for the School Construction Authority, or SCA.

Education department officials said they could not produce a full accounting of how much they spent purchasing and installing units. City records show the cost of purchasing and installing each unit is now $2,343, though officials said the number was lower in previous years without specifying an exact number. (Roughly 19,000 units have been purchased in total.) Including capital costs, the total outlay for air conditioning is likely well above $400 million — more than five times the education department’s initial estimate.

“Our Division of School Facilities is committed to creating safe and comfortable learning environments for our students,” education department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in a statement. “We are proud of the work that has been done in partnership with the SCA to place air conditioners in all applicable NYC classrooms that previously lacked units.”

Still, even if the units were added, that doesn’t always mean classrooms actually have cool air.

Queens mom Yuliya Baer can see units poking out of the windows of the classrooms at P.S. 175 The Lynn Gross Discovery School. But even on hot days this September, there was no audible whirring because the electrical work has not been completed.

Air conditioners at P.S. 175 have been installed but aren’t switched on.

“Every day the kids complain, every day the teachers say, ‘Send extra water bottles,’” Baer said, noting she sent her kindergarten son with water bottles full of ice during the first week of school. “Parents see that there’s air conditioning in the window, but students come out hot and red in the face.”

To Baer, the notion that the city’s universal air conditioning program has crossed the finish line rings false.

“I went to that same elementary school — it was unairconditioned almost 20 years ago and it’s still unairconditioned,” she said.

That could soon change. Ortiz, the SCA spokesperson, said the electrical work could be completed as soon as next week.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Video sheds new light on ‘Know Justice, Know Peace’ podcast dispute

2022-10-04T23:09:03+00:00

Three weeks before a group of current and former students sued Denver Public Schools over their racial justice podcast, they met with district officials in an eighth-floor conference room at Denver Public Schools headquarters.

Video from the Aug. 29 meeting reveals a central tension in the dispute. In the meeting, district officials talk about the podcast, which the students created in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, as something akin to a class or a club. They say the podcast will expand across the district and welcome new participants as previous ones graduate.

But the founders talk about the podcast, “Know Justice, Know Peace: The Take,” as a deeply personal project born from their individual attempts to grapple with a nationwide racial reckoning — and something they want to continue to do outside of school.

“You said that we would only be able to still participate in the podcast until we graduate,” senior Dahni Austin said to Deputy Superintendent Tony Smith in the meeting. “Why, if we created the podcast way before the district got involved with the podcast, wouldn’t we be able to continue?”

“I think you would be able to continue to participate in some form or fashion,” Smith said. “But it is the position of the district that it’s the intellectual property of the district to continue on.”

Whether the podcast and its name belong to Denver Public Schools is an issue that will be settled in court. Last month, Austin and three others filed a lawsuit claiming that Colorado’s largest school district unlawfully tried to trademark “Know Justice, Know Peace: The Take.”

Viva Moffat, a University of Denver law professor who specializes in intellectual property but is not involved in the lawsuit, said the legal issues in this case are not unique.

It’s common, she said, for two entities to argue over who holds a trademark. Legally, a trademark belongs to whomever used it first “in commerce” across state lines. That means the person or business used the mark in its branding, even if they weren’t making money on it. In this case, the podcast was posted for free on YouTube.

What is unique about this case, Moffat said, are the players.

“It’s extremely unusual for there to be a trademark dispute between a school district and students in the school,” she said. “That is extremely unprecedented — and that’s probably for lots of reasons. Students aren’t often coming up with trademarkable things and then using a trademark in commerce. And it’s also uncommon for a public school district to be aggressively asserting intellectual property rights against its own students.”

While Moffat said she doesn’t know of any trademark cases involving students and schools, she said there are established copyright cases. Generally, she said, original works like podcasts are owned by the people who create them or, if they are employees of a company, by the company.

But she said there’s an exception for teachers that generally applies to students as well.

“Just because you’re in a class and you write an essay, nobody would say that DPS owns the copyright and all the papers that all of DPS’s students wrote,” Moffat said.

Meeting video sheds light on what happened before lawsuit

The video of the late August meeting sheds more light on the events that led to the lawsuit. Four students – all young Black women at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College high school – started the podcast in July 2020 as a way to speak out about racial injustice. They had support from then-Principal Kimberly Grayson and teacher Kiara Roberts.

The students recorded the podcast at school and were paid for their work through a district apprenticeship program. Grayson left the school this past spring, and the students weren’t sure they would continue to get paid. For that reason and others, they decided they wanted to continue their podcast independently.

“We’re not obligated to stay in a space where there’s continuous missed connection,” senior Kaliah Yizar said at the meeting, “especially when this is our job, this is our passion.”

In June, Grayson filed paperwork to form a business called Know Justice, Know Peace: The Take LLC. The students said she did so to help fulfill their wish to record the podcast independent of Denver Public Schools. But when the district learned of the LLC, it filed state and federal trademark applications for the name in early August.

On Aug. 24, a district lawyer sent a cease-and-desist letter to Grayson asking that she dissolve the business and turn over the usernames and passwords for any email address or social media accounts associated with the “Know Justice, Know Peace: The Take” podcast.

The district asserted in the letter that it owned the name because the podcast was created on district property using district equipment and was supported by district employees.

But at the meeting, the students said they started the podcast over Zoom on their own computers, without any district equipment. Their lawsuit argues that they first used the name in commerce in July 2020 when they posted their first episode to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

“For DPS to say they own a creation that they were not even a part of in the beginning is crazy,” said Jenelle Nangah, who was a rising senior when the podcast started and graduated in 2021.

“‘Know Justice, Know Peace’ is our faces, who we are,” said Yizar, who was a rising sophomore in the beginning. “It’s really grimy to all of a sudden, once all of the remaining original members are seniors, once Jenelle is no longer a student of DPS, once Grayson is no longer a DPS employee, to come in and say, ‘We’ll take over now.’”

Smith, the deputy superintendent, said the district isn’t trying to hurt the podcast founders.

“Your voice is appreciated,” he told them, adding that “it’s always up to you whether or not you want to be part of how we proceed forward. The invitation is there.”

“I don’t know why you are giving us the invitation,” Nangah replied. “We should be able to give the district the invitation to take what we have created and expand it.”

District lawyer and students’ lawyer have different interpretations

Chalkbeat first requested a copy of the meeting video in early September. The district denied that request, citing a federal law that protects student privacy.

But after the students filed their lawsuit in mid-September and held a press conference, district officials allowed Chalkbeat to view a video of the meeting late last week and interview Denver Public Schools General Counsel Aaron Thompson.

Thompson said the district shared the video in part to refute a claim in the lawsuit that Smith attempted to “coerce and bully” the students into admitting that the district owns the trademark.

Thompson said Smith was soft-spoken and “comported himself very fairly.” The video shows him sitting in a relaxed posture, legs crossed, and speaking in an even tone.

Thompson said the video also shows that the podcast is district property because the students admitted they eventually used district equipment to make it and were paid for their work. Thompson said the district didn’t try to protect its property until Grayson created the LLC.

“It never was, in our view, about the girls or taking anything from the girls,” he said. “We’ve always owned it. It was only an action to stop Kim from erroneously asserting ownership.”

Thompson said it’s unfortunate that the students are caught in the middle, “but we have a responsibility to the other 90,000 students of DPS to protect the integrity of our educational programming and to expand viable educational programming for all students in the district.”

In a statement, the students’ attorney Jeffrey Kass said that the podcast founders felt that the recent meeting, which was called before they could hire a trademark lawyer, was an attempt to intimidate them and “say something without the advice of proper legal counsel.”

“DPS asked them many different ways at the meeting to agree that DPS owned the podcast and trademark,” Kass said. “Each time, the students denied.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver’s Montbello community gets its cherished school back

2022-10-03T12:00:00+00:00

It was mid-morning, and Montbello High School teacher Holly Wells was shouting.

“You want to catch the frisbee as you’re running,” she yelled over the rumble and beeps of construction equipment. Her gym class has been meeting outside because the school’s gymnasium, like much of the campus, is inaccessible due to a multi-year renovation.

But Wells doesn’t mind. She’s dealt with noise and inconveniences before. To her, the temporary sacrifices are worth the long-term reward: A reunified Montbello High School in far northeast Denver, a community of largely Black and Latino residents that hasn’t had a comprehensive high school in more than a decade.

The reunified Montbello opened its doors last month, 42 years after the school welcomed its first students in 1980 and nearly 12 years after Denver Public Schools decided to close it because of low test scores and graduation rates. The district replaced Montbello with three smaller schools it hoped would do better and divided the building between them.

That division splintered the heart of the community. After years of advocacy by alumni and others, the district agreed to reopen and renovate Montbello, setting aside $130 million in bond money to do it. The school’s graduates are thrilled, its new administration is enthusiastic, and students said they’re excited to show what they can do.

“It’s essential we unite as a community to try to break down the stereotypes around Montbello and push our excellence because that’s what we are,” said senior Isaiah Torres, who previously attended one of the three small schools.

But there has been tension in the reopening, too. Not all of the teachers from the small schools were rehired. Some community members who advocated the hardest to reopen Montbello have spoken out against decisions by the new administration. And longstanding community groups said they haven’t felt welcome at the reunified school.

“Montbello High School is and always will be sacred,” said MiDian Holmes, a 1998 graduate. “When you attempt to re-establish and you want that same sacrament, you can’t cut corners. I’m not necessarily talking about cost. I’m talking about voices. … If you don’t create a process that’s inviting to those voices, you’re about to perpetuate more pain.”

The school’s reopening was made possible by $130 million in bond money approved by Denver voters.

High school united community when it opened

Carmen Livingston Fisher was a freshman when Montbello High School opened in 1980. She remembers the excitement: It was the first high school built in the Montbello neighborhood, which had been established 15 years earlier in 1965 when the city annexed more than 2,500 acres of land with the goal of creating affordable housing for families.

A half-hour drive from the city’s urban core, Montbello felt removed from the rest of Denver, alumni said, which made the community tight-knit. But when it came to school, Montbello’s children were scattered. Livingston Fisher remembers attending a temporary elementary school in an apartment building before being bused to a middle school across town.

The new high school was an opportunity to unite and show the strength of a neighborhood that often felt disregarded, Livingston Fisher said. As an eighth grader, she was among the students the school district asked to help choose the colors and mascot. Livingston Fisher doesn’t remember all of the choices. But she recalls picking the Warriors.

“We loved Montbello,” Livingston Fisher said. “Warriors just fit.”

From the start, Montbello was a powerhouse.

“Our basketball teams, football teams, everything from tennis to gymnastics to debate, we won everything,” Livingston Fisher said. “We all just had such pride in our community school.

“A lot of people tried to count us out because it was mainly minorities that went to the school so people didn’t think it was going to be as great as it was. But we were.”

The feeling continued into the 1990s, when Thomasyna Sweed attended Montbello.

“We had to fight this reputation that we were less than or we were ‘ghetto’ because the majority of the population was African American,” Sweed said. “In my family and other families, education wasn’t first, it was mandatory. You had to fight to break up the stereotype.”

In the 2000s, a new nationwide push to boost academic achievement put a bigger emphasis on standardized test scores. States and districts began judging schools based on their test scores, and Denver began chasing federal grants to “turn around” low-performing schools.

By 2010, Montbello was on the district’s list of schools to reform. While the graduation rate was above the district average, low test scores persisted despite a series of improvement efforts. The school cycled through principals and struggled with violence. Some community leaders called for dramatic changes, even as others pleaded with the district not to close Montbello.

At a contentious November meeting that stretched until 1 a.m., the school board voted 4-3 to phase out Montbello and replace it with three smaller schools: DCIS Montbello, Noel Community Arts School, and Collegiate Prep Academy. The vote was part of a package of reforms that made far northeast Denver into the district’s biggest turnaround experiment.

For alumni, the decision was devastating.

“When that was stripped away, you took away this space that … incubated our connection and that pride we held onto,” said Holmes. “It was the epitome of betrayal.”

In 2010, the school board narrowly voted to phase Montbello out and shutter the school, replacing it with three smaller schools. The decision devastated alumni and the community.

Community calls for Montbello to reopen as one school

But that pride never went away — and neither did calls to reopen Montbello. The call grew louder in 2018 when the district held a series of community meetings in far northeast Denver. The purpose was to ask residents what they wanted in their schools. The answer was one Denver Public Schools wasn’t ready to deliver: Bring back a comprehensive high school.

Among the loudest proponents of reopening was a group of football coaches who worked for the Far Northeast Warriors, the regional team that was created after Montbello closed. The team draws players from several schools in the area, including the small schools that replaced Montbello, and the coaches were upset at the inequities they saw.

The small schools shared buildings but not bell schedules, making it hard for students to practice at the same time. The schools also had fewer course offerings, including college-level classes that help athletes boost their GPAs and get scholarships.

While graduation rates and test scores had improved since the closure, the progress was nowhere near what the district had promised. The community had paid a high price for little return, and now Montbello was one of the only neighborhoods in the city without what coach and parent Brandon Pryor called “a high-quality traditional option.”

“We deserve it,” Pryor told the school board. “Why don’t we? Why not?”

Instead of agreeing to reopen Montbello, the district came up with a compromise. In 2019, officials proposed rebuilding the aging campus to better serve the small schools that shared it, incorporating some of the benefits of a comprehensive high school.

But the community pushed back, and in 2020, the district relented.

“We’ve heard you,” then-Superintendent Susana Cordova said. She pledged to “work in collaboration with the community that has so clearly stated they want to reopen a comprehensive high school on the Montbello campus.”

In 2021, nearly 11 years after voting to close Montbello High School, the school board voted to reinstate it by closing the three schools that had replaced it.

The board also greenlit a massive construction project to build a new state-of-the-art school while preserving parts of the original campus that alumni described as the heart of Montbello, including the auditorium, two gymnasiums, and the pool.

And the district hired Neisa Lynch, the principal of Collegiate Prep Academy, to lead it.

The campus is still under construction, and is slated to be finished in 2024.

Community gets its wish: Montbello reopened Sept. 6

Montbello High School reopened its doors to 1,120 students on Sept. 6. On a recent weekday, Principal Lynch showed off the portion of the building that will be the school’s home for the next two years until the renovation is complete in 2024. The walls are freshly painted white and emblazoned with black-and-silver Warriors logos.

But the space feels transitional. Gone are Montbello’s infamous ramps, a signature feature of the school for the past 42 years. On the concrete floor where the ramps once stood are tables, chairs, and couches from the library, which was remodeled and reopened in 2018 after being shuttered for years. It’s now shuttered again, serving as the school’s makeshift cafeteria.

A rendering of the plaza being built outside Montbello High School.

Outside, construction crews demolish the empty parts of the building. It’s a precision job; instead of wrecking balls, the crews use excavators like giant claw machines to munch away sections of the building, leaving gaps where the blue sky and clouds shine through. The new design will be full of windows and natural light, which was lacking in the old building.

Inside, Lynch said she’s working to build the type of school that community members said they wanted. In what she described as thousands of hours of meetings, Lynch said students, parents, and alumni asked for more academic courses and electives, ranging from career and technical classes like welding to college-level English and high school French.

Students wanted more leadership opportunities, Lynch said, so Montbello will offer student council, a Black Student Alliance and a Latinos in Action club, a mentoring program that pairs seniors with freshman, and a principal’s advisory committee that meets with her twice a month.

The comprehensive school will also offer more arts opportunities, including a band and orchestra, theater program, and dance and visual arts classes. Montbello already has a standout drumline, but Lynch is working to restart the marching band and add a mariachi band.

“We heard a lot from alumni about how there was excellence all over Montbello High School academically and athletically, and that’s what we really want to bring back here,” Lynch said.

Sophomore Josué Picazo said he’s most excited about the band program. He played the trumpet in middle school but the small high school he attended last year, DCIS Montbello, didn’t have a band. Picazo said he’s still getting used to attending a big high school, but he’s glad Montbello reopened because he’d heard so much about it from his older sister, who is an alum.

“I wanted to experience Montbello High School for myself,” Picazo said.

Montbello plans to relaunch varsity athletics once the renovations are complete. Controversies around the athletics programs have created strife between school administrators and some community members.

Some in the community are disappointed

Once the renovation is complete, Lynch also plans to bring back the varsity athletic programs that packed Montbello’s trophy cases in the ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s.

But athletics have been a sore spot in the reopening.

Lynch and her team did not rehire Tony Lindsay Sr., a community fixture and storied coach who led the regional Far Northeast Warriors football team to a state championship in 2021. The outspoken Pryor, who spent years advocating to reopen Montbello alongside Lindsay and his son Gabe, who is also a football coach, called it “a slap in the face.”

The Lindsays and Pryor now hope to start their own football program at a different school they lobbied Denver Public Schools to start, the Robert F. Smith STEAM Academy, which opened in 2021 and is modeled after historically Black colleges and universities.

Pryor doesn’t think Lynch should be principal at Montbello, and he disagrees with the decisions she’s made — a turn of events that has soured him on the reopening he fought so hard for.

“Before our school was even an idea, we were fighting for them to open Montbello,” Pryor said. “We were the catalyst.” But, he added, “If they were going to reopen Montbello like this, they should have left it alone and kept it how it was.”

He’s not the only one who’s disappointed. Julia Torres was the librarian on the Montbello campus last year, and she won widespread acclaim for her efforts to build a book collection that reflected her students. She said she learned her position was being cut when another staff member showed her the job ads for a pair of paraprofessionals to replace her.

“I’m not happy about the reopening,” said Torres, who now teaches English at a nearby high school. “I think there’s a lot of fake promises being made.”

Donna Garnett, executive director of the Montbello Organizing Committee, a local nonprofit that runs a food pantry, mental health clinic, and community newspaper among other initiatives, said her organization helped host visioning meetings for the new Montbello High School.

It seemed like the district was listening, Garnett said, but “once the new principal was hired, it felt like that ended.” After an initial meeting with Lynch to talk about the history of the school and hopes for the future, Garnett said, “we have not seen her since.”

“It’s not feeling like we had hoped,” she said.

Lynch disagreed that Montbello is unwelcoming. She said the school partners with eight different community organizations, including a group that supports female students and another that tutors freshmen. Montbello is hosting a meeting of the district’s Black Family Advisory Council in October, and the students are turning the school’s hallways into a haunted house for neighborhood children to trick-or-treat just before Halloween.

At a recent back-to-school night, Lynch said the Regional Transportation District was on hand accepting job applications from parents on the spot. She also hopes to host community college courses in English and Spanish for adults who want to learn another language.

“What I tell everybody is, ‘Absolutely come anytime and see the school,’” Lynch said.

But for the past month, she said, her focus has been on the students — and on making “sure that kids feel at home … and get used to their new school.”

Principal Neisa Lynch says her focus is on the students, and making sure they acclimate to their new school.

Students form a bond

Students said that’s happening slowly but surely. On a recent morning, senior Jose Villa sat in the shade at a picnic table that was still wet with morning dew. For the past three years, he attended Noel Community Arts School and didn’t mix with the students who went to DCIS Montbello in the other part of the building. But that’s changing, he said.

As proof, he pointed to the teenager in jeans and a Colorado Rockies jersey who was riding the half pipes at the skate park next to the school. That kid went to DCIS Montbello last year, Villa said. We’re in school together now, he said, and that’s my skateboard he’s riding.

The new Montbello, Villa said, is “more company and more people I get to meet.”

That reunification — blending the three small schools into one, and blending old traditions with new — is at the heart of what Lynch said she’s trying to create at Montbello.

“What’s important, and that I don’t think people know, is we have over 100 years collectively of people serving Montbello that work in this building,” she said. “It’s me, as the principal, sure, but it’s the team that is building the school. And they truly are the heartbeat of this school.”

That includes Assistant Principal Kevin Wilson, who got a job at the old Montbello in 2010, just months before the district announced it was closing. He then worked at DCIS Montbello before transferring to Collegiate Prep Academy under Lynch. Now he’s back at Montbello, and he said he’s determined to help make the school the best in the city.

“Our babies out here deserve it,” Wilson said.

Torres, the senior, hopes to make the most of his time as a Warrior.

“I hope to leave a legacy,” he said, “for those here and those to come.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

How a bilingual preschool is trying to close Memphis’ literacy gap

2022-09-30T10:00:00+00:00

One late September morning at Su Casa Preschool, seven 4-year-olds sat cross-legged on their classroom’s reading rug, anxiously awaiting their turn to share what they had accomplished that morning.

When tossed a tennis ball signaling her turn during recall time, or “tiempo de recordar,” Citlali declared in English that she’d played with blocks. She passed the ball to Alli, who recounted in Spanish making lemonade in their classroom’s play kitchen.

As the other five students continued to reflect on their morning work time activities and worked on their English- and Spanish- speaking skills, their co-teachers, Amalia Perez and Priscilla Victor, took turns asking questions like “¿Qué más cocinaste?” (“What else did you cook?”) and “¿Qué construiste con bloques?” (“What did you build with the blocks?”)

It was a typical Monday morning at Su Casa Preschool, in Memphis’ Berclair-Highland Heights neighborhood. Here, teachers and leaders of the nonprofit aim to provide a quality early childhood education to predominantly Spanish-speaking immigrant children in northeast Memphis who are less likely to have access to such a program and are more likely to struggle academically.

Students play with toys in a Su Casa Preschool classroom on Sept. 28. Parents say the preschool has allowed their children to improve both their English and Spanish speaking skills.

“We’ve got to start here, in early childhood, to build that foundation,” said Cherise Clark, the director of Su Casa Preschool. “We want to get to a place where we’re shipping off a great batch of kids to Kingsbury Elementary or to Treadwell Elementary … We just want to see our community blossom.”

Since launching with one class in 2016, the Christian bilingual preschool has expanded to four classrooms serving children ages 1-5, who attend two days a week. But as Memphis’ Hispanic community continues to grow, the organization has had to turn more interested families away.

Memphis’ Hispanic population has grown by 25,000 over the last decade, according to the most recent U.S. Census data. In total, Hispanics now make up just over 7% of the city’s population, and about 16% of Memphis-Shelby County Schools students. And the number of MSCS students whose first language is not English has increased to about 8,800, or 12% of all MSCS students. Statewide, Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic group in schools.

As Memphis and Tennessee as a whole battle to improve dismal literacy rates, Su Casa’s bilingual early childhood programming is one example of the search for solutions — especially for Hispanic or Latino immigrants, who face greater barriers to academic success than their white, native English-speaking peers.

While Tennessee students overall improved across all subjects and grades in the latest standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, English language learners made the slimmest gains of any student demographic group. Just 15% of ELL students were considered on grade level in both math and English language arts last school year.

Despite those challenges, bilingual preschools like Su Casa and dual language programming are rare in Memphis. Su Casa is believed to be the first bilingual preschool to open in northeast Memphis, and remains one of very few within city limits.

While MSCS leaders have promised to continue efforts to improve early childhood programming and grow world language programming, Tennessee’s largest school district does not currently offer any bilingual pre-K classes, and only one school has a dual language program. The program, housed at Treadwell Elementary, serves 200 students.

Students play in Su Casa Preschool’s outdoor playground the morning of Sept. 28. As Memphis’ Hispanic population has grown over the last decade, so has the need for resources for Spanish-speaking immigrant families — including preschool.

Meeting a critical need

Su Casa started with volunteer work in a Memphis school, but the organization was never meant to house a preschool program.

It all started in 2005, when a group of volunteers from Second Presbyterian Church volunteered at Berclair Elementary as part of the Memphis “Adopt A School” program. As they built relationships with Berclair families — many of whom were recent immigrants to Memphis and spoke only Spanish — the volunteers noticed an unfilled need for adult English programs.

So they got to work.

“We’ve got to start here, in early childhood, to build that foundation.”

After growing its adult programming for several years, Su Casa Family Ministries officially became a nonprofit in 2008 with the overarching goal of being a place of safety and connection for Memphis’ Latino immigrant community.

But one piece was missing: What about their children?

Before joining Su Casa, Clark saw the need for more accessible, high-quality early childhood education throughout her 15-year career as a Spanish and English as a second language teacher in Memphis schools.

Recalling her work with kindergartners as an ESL teacher at a Memphis charter school, Clark said she was shocked by how far behind many students were — even from the very start of their time in school.

When she first joined Su Casa’s adult English class programming, Clark remembers many parents struggling to navigate Memphis’ complex education system and the U.S. education system as a whole.

Some of them came from countries where preschool is universal the way K-12 school is here. Some were daunted by the thought of calling around to different programs and schools to find an open spot for their child. Others simply could not afford any of the programs they did find.

Children choose solo activities during free play time in their classroom at Su Casa Preschool on Sept. 28.

Many of those parents had enrolled in the classes to figure out how to help their children in school. Yet despite their efforts to learn English, Clark said, many still struggled to enroll their children in preschool — let alone find a bilingual program where their children could improve both their English and Spanish speaking skills.

Even Clark, a former MSCS teacher who speaks English, struggled with questions when it came time to enroll her own children in preschool.

“How do I engage more with my children? How do I make sure that I’m being the best parent I can be? Those are universal questions that come back to a very universal desire — parents just want to help their kids do well,” Clark said.

“But for them, it was like ‘I don’t know how to navigate the system. I don’t know the language to do it. I can’t advocate for myself, let alone my child, so what do I do?’”

A bilingual program means parents can better communicate with their children’s preschool teachers. But beyond that, research over the last two decades has found many potential benefits to children learning a second language early, when their brains are more flexible.

A University of South Carolina study earlier this year found that Hispanic students who attended a bilingual preschool in Charlotte were better prepared for kindergarten, and went on to score higher in both reading and mathematics through second grade, as compared to their peers who did not participate in such a program.

Studies over the last two decades have found the advantages to early bilingualism in children stretches beyond academics. A 2003 study found that, by the age of 3, bilingual children show signs of heightened empathy and longer attention spans.

Those benefits are partly why it was important to Florinda Salcedo for her son, Angel, to attend a bilingual preschool. But more than that, she said, it was about preserving the heritage of her fiance, who emigrated from Mexico nearly a decade ago.

Though Salcedo speaks both English and Spanish, she struggled like Clark to find a bilingual early childhood program for Angel. She finally landed on Su Casa after a neighborhood friend recommended it.

A year after enrolling Angel, Salcedo says her 2-year-old son is engaging in more conversations and is learning more Spanish. She’s confident he will be better prepared for kindergarten than she was when she started at Kingsbury Elementary, with no preschool experience at all.

“This is the place for him,” Salcedo said.

Amalia Perez plays with a group of her 4-year-old students Sept. 28 at Su Casa Preschool. Perez wishes she and her siblings had been able to attend a bilingual preschool before starting kindergarten.

Perez, one of Su Casa’s pre-K teachers, said she can’t help but think back to what could’ve been if she and her siblings had access to a preschool program like Su Casa’s.

When she started kindergarten at Raleigh-Egypt Elementary School, she knew only a handful of words in English. Her siblings, who had immigrated to the U.S., started school with even less experience speaking English.

“If I came fresh (from another country) and I only spoke Spanish, I would imagine it would be hard for me. It’s a different environment, different language, the kids are different,” Perez said, as she watched one of her students, who recently emigrated from Colombia, draw. “I’m the youngest, so by the time I went to school, I already knew a few words from my siblings, but someone like him? And this is his first school setting?”

“We’re helping them get assimilated into this community, into this country,” she said.

Diversity helps children appreciate other cultures

Su Casa currently serves about 50 children who attend school two days a week — either Mondays and Wednesdays or Tuesdays and Thursdays. It aims to provide a Christian-centered, hands-on learning environment with small classes of about seven children.

The organization also keeps its tuition as low as possible at $2,300 a year — with scholarships available — so as not to add another barrier to low-income immigrant families. While tuition does not cover the program’s expenses by any stretch, Clark said Su Casa is able to fund the program with donations and grants.

Su Casa’s Highscope curriculum focuses on what children should be able to do at their age level in eight key areas: approaches to learning; social and emotional development; physical development and health; language, literacy, and communication; mathematics; creative arts; science and technology; and social studies.

“This is the place for him.”

But Su Casa also adds a ninth focus area: second language development. For the vast majority of Su Casa students, that second language is English. At least 75% of slots are reserved for families with one or both parents who emigrated from a Spanish-speaking country. But the nonprofit also serves some families in the neighborhood who simply wanted their children exposed to the Spanish language early.

That diversity is one of Su Casa Preschool’s greatest strengths, Clark said.

“We hope it makes some progress in the space of helping children on both ends learn to interact with other cultures, learn to see them as beautiful, and to see other people who are different and to interact with them and think that’s normal and good,” she said.

Over the last two years, Rachel Rodriguez has sent her two children — 4-year-old Luca and 2-year-old Lorenzo — to Su Casa. She, too, has appreciated the preschool’s commitment to diversity.

Margaret Ziegenhorn (second from right) and Maricel Casanova (right), co-teachers in Su Casa Preschool’s 2-year-old classroom, play and comfort the children the morning of Sept. 28.

Before having children, Rodriguez and her husband, who emigrated from Peru for medical school, agreed they would speak primarily Spanish at home to encourage bilingualism. She stands by the decision, but admits it put a lot of pressure on her as a mom to speak Spanish, her second language, at home.

Not only has Luca’s and Lorenzo’s Spanish improved since starting at Su Casa, but both of them are able to connect with both their parents’ heritages. When they visit Rodriguez’s family, they embrace their Japanese heritage, and at school, they are taught by a group of mostly Latina women.

“It makes them feel like our family is normal; there are other families that speak two languages, and they can really feel comfortable being themselves in this bilingual environment,” Rodriguez said.

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This story is the first installment of a Chalkbeat Tennessee deep dive into the role early childhood can play in improving literacy in Memphis and across the Volunteer State. This effort is supported by the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Samantha West is a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, where she covers K-12 education in Memphis. Connect with Samantha at swest@chalkbeat.org.

How did the pandemic affect your NYC school’s state test scores? Find out here.

2022-09-28T18:07:40+00:00

New York City officials released state test scores on Wednesday, offering the first glimpse of how the pandemic affected student learning.

Compared with 2019, the last time tests were administered normally, reading proficiency among students in grades 3-8 ticked up 1.6 percentage points to 49%. But math scores plunged 7.6 percentage points, with just shy of 38% of students passing the exam. (Here’s Chalkbeat’s detailed story on those scores.)

But those overall numbers mask important variations from school to school, which often vary in predictable ways. A relatively large swath of city schools admit students based on their prior academic performance, often leading to high test scores, while schools that serve larger shares of low-income students are more likely to post lower scores.

How did your school fare this year? Use our searchable database below to see your school’s math and reading scores.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan school districts are flush with cash, but wary of a downturn

2022-09-27T18:13:50+00:00

Grand Rapids Public Schools received $104 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding, an enormous one-time cash infusion equal to about half its annual budget.

The district used the money for tutoring, extra summer programs, and coaching for teachers. But now, facing an uncertain economy and the expiration date of the federal funds, the district is shifting its focus from spending to saving.

“Yes, we have a lot of money right now, but it is one-time money,” said Rhonda Kribs, chief financial officer of Grand Rapids Public Schools. “We’re on a cliff, so we need to be planning for what the district looks like in two years.”

That’s not quite what federal policymakers had in mind when they sent $6.2 billion in COVID relief funding to bolster Michigan’s education system. They wanted districts to spend the money on urgent needs like addressing the academic and emotional toll of the pandemic, which is why they set a fall 2024 deadline for the last of the spending.

Districts have already spent $1.6 billion of the federal aid to support students and shore up crumbling school infrastructure, and they’ve laid plans to spend billions more. Loose federal guidelines allow districts to use their aid to help build up savings, said Tom DeKeyser, superintendent of Whitmore Lake Public Schools. “But the needs of the students are so great.”

Yet Grand Rapids and many other districts are calculating that it’s just as critical to bolster their reserves while they can, and protect against future funding cuts that could destabilize children’s education again. They’re heeding warnings from school finance experts of a “perfect storm” of economic uncertainty fueled by inflation, enrollment declines, the threat of recession, and expiring federal aid.

“This year and probably the next school year look pretty healthy. But the medium term looks a lot scarier,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director of the Edunomics Lab, a nonpartisan think tank based at Georgetown University, adding: “How do we make investments that respond to the needs of today without putting districts in a hole in a few short years?”

How districts choose to allocate their resources during this unusual period of plenty could play a big role in determining how successfully they can support students through the profound challenges left by the pandemic, and whether they’re able to get through future fiscal crises without a new round of disruption.

For some administrators who witnessed painful cuts after the Great Recession, it’s a no-brainer to put away some money while school budgets are at a historic highwater mark.

“I’ve lived through two times when the state cut school funding,” Lou Steigerwald, superintendent of Norway Vulcan Area Schools in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, said in an email. “Schools with no or little (fund balance) had to borrow money and slash staff and other items in their budgets.”

Indeed, Michigan’s most financially troubled districts, which were battered by the Great Recession, have been able to wipe out deficits and bolster their fund balances during the pandemic, allowing them to exit state oversight.

In a time of enormous academic needs, though, the tilt toward savings has some people worried that students will be shortchanged. For parents of students who struggled with virtual learning and other pandemic-related disruptions, it can be hard to accept anything but an aggressive spending plan from school districts.

“I have a kid who’s struggling, so it’s frustrating,” said Heidi Gates, parent of two children at Brighton Area Schools, where the fund balance jumped from $8 million pre-pandemic to a projected $14.7 million this year. “I feel like schools are saying, ‘OK, we’re back to normal.’”

Others warn that this caution could feed a public perception that districts are sitting on federal dollars meant for students — a perception that could come back to haunt the school system in coming funding fights.

“The school rescue funds were designed to help students now,” said Thomas Morgan, a spokesman for the Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “For that to happen, the money needs to be spent, and not sit in the bank. I know administrators will say they’re saving money for a rainy day, but it’s raining now.”

About this project

$6 billion.

That’s how much Michigan schools are receiving from the federal government to help students and staff recover from the pandemic.

But it isn’t entirely clear how this unprecedented amount of federal cash is being spent and whether it is having an impact.

Chalkbeat Detroit, the Detroit Free Press, and Bridge Michigan have teamed up to find out where the money is going, who is benefiting, and whether the money is helping students get back on track academically, emotionally, and socially.

Please share your thoughts — and tips — with reporters Koby Levin at klevin@chalkbeat.org, Lily Altavena at laltavena@freepress.org, and Isabel Lohman at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Check out a few of the most recent stories from our series below:

Federal COVID relief aid to schools will dry up soon. Are districts ready?

Michigan school districts are flush with cash, but wary

COVID aid helps Michigan school districts plug deficits

How private schools are spending COVID relief cash

New MI ESSER tutoring programs have room to grow

Savings on the rise

School funding experts often use fund balances — sometimes called reserves or a “rainy day fund” — as a proxy for districts’ financial health. In broad terms, a district’s fund balance is what’s left over after a district has done all of its spending for the year.

A large fund balance functions as a cushion in the event of funding cuts or an unexpected problem with a school building. Districts with small fund balances typically face higher costs to borrow through the bond market. A negative fund balance — which means a district can’t cover its bills for the year — triggers state oversight, and can eventually lead to districts being shuttered or taken over by the state.

After one year of the pandemic, fund balances across Michigan school districts skyrocketed.

By summer 2021, when the most recent audited school finance data was released, the combined reserves of Michigan school districts had grown by 37%, from $2.4 billion pre-pandemic to $3.3 billion, according to the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a nonpartisan think tank.

Michigan school leaders are counseled to maintain fund balances equal to 15% to 20% of their expenditures. Last year, for the first time in at least a decade, more than half of districts had fund balance ratios of more than 20%. The number of districts above that threshold rose to 438 from 263, a two-thirds increase.

“Schools are as flush as they’ve ever been in history,” said Craig Thiel, research director for the CRC.

Graphics for Detroit. September 2022. Lauren Bryant / Chalkbeat

Superintendents pointed to numerous reasons that reserves increased. Virtual learning brought savings on school bus fuel and heating. At the same time, the state sharply increased per pupil funding and changed its funding policies to help districts with declining enrollment.

Others emphasized that reserves were boosted by transitory pandemic-related factors like school shutdowns and supply chain disruptions. In Grand Rapids, for example, Kribs said that supply chain issues forced the district to delay purchasing new security vehicles, inflating the district’s fund balance.

The most widely cited explanation, however, was the $6.2 billion in federal COVID aid that is being sent directly to school districts to help them deal with the effects of the pandemic.

In interviews and survey responses, 21 Michigan superintendents — echoing their counterparts nationwide — said it has been difficult to spend the extra funds. A tight labor market has slowed hiring, and many superintendents were reluctant in any case to expand their staffs using funds that will expire within a few years.

Some said the increased fund balances are only temporary while districts save for major expenses that are coming up soon, such as school renovations. Still, many argued that putting some money away now is just good policy given the risks they face in the next two years from inflation, declining enrollment, and the expiration of the federal relief dollars.

The state school budget reached record highs this year, but superintendents worry that a recession could reverse that trend. And even if the state budget remains strong, many districts will still see their revenues fall sharply, particularly those in high-poverty areas that received the most federal aid. For instance, the Lansing School District is in line to receive about $10 million extra under the latest state budget, but it received $142 million in federal aid.

“Fund balance allows for the consistency of programming in good times and bad,” said Robert Dwan, deputy executive director of Michigan School Business Officials, a trade association that provides financial training and support to district officials.

“Having a healthy fund balance which may help support the district in poor economic times helps fulfill the district’s responsibility to ensure today’s kindergartener graduates with as little disruption as possible throughout their educational journey,” Dwan added.

Flash in the pan or long-term plan?

It’s important to note that districts are not simply depositing their federal aid in the bank.

Under the laws governing that aid, that money is supposed to go exclusively to COVID-19 relief and can’t be channeled directly into reserves. But broad spending guidelines for the funds meant districts were able to apply the federal aid to some of their normal operating costs — things like laptop computers, building repairs, and some teacher salaries — and then direct some of the unspent operating funds into savings.

While available data don’t show how much districts spent on new programs, it’s clear that many schools upped their summer school offerings, expanded mental health services, and trained teachers and bought new curriculums to support students’ academic recovery.

With the federal funds expiring, district leaders said there’s a real danger that overspending now could make matters worse for students and teachers if their districts ended up in a budget hole in a few years.

Graphics for Detroit. September 2022. Lauren Bryant / Chalkbeat

“It’s a fine line, because this money was meant to accelerate learning that was disrupted due to COVID, but at the same time, if you’re able to build a fund balance, then I could see districts doing that,” said Nathan Kalasho, director of Keys Grace Academy, a charter school in suburban Detroit.

Still, some superintendents pushed back on the notion that districts’ long-term financial health changed significantly during the pandemic, arguing that district reserves will drop back to normal levels when federal COVID-19 relief expires in 2024.

“The growth of our fund balance is temporary and directly correlates with the one-time federal funding that must be spent by specific deadlines,” said C. Martin James, superintendent of Central Montcalm Public Schools, a rural district in central Michigan.

Indeed, some districts have already laid plans to spend down their reserves within a few years. Consider the Detroit Public Schools Community District, where the fund balance is projected to skyrocket from $101 million in 2021 to $788 million in 2024. Most of that additional money — $700 million — will then be used to fund a long overdue overhaul of the districts’ school buildings.

Graphics for Detroit. September 2022. Lauren Bryant / Chalkbeat

Whitmore Lake is in ‘spending mode’

In the suburbs north of Ann Arbor, Whitmore Lake Public Schools has been spending aggressively on a coaching program for teachers and additional classroom aides to help offset the academic impacts of the pandemic. While the district’s fund balance rose thanks to federal COVID-19 relief, the district is still operating in “spending mode,” said DeKeyser, the superintendent.

Behind that spending, said DeKeyser, is a bet that the district can find a way to shore up its finances later on when the federal money dries up.

Years ago, Whitmore Lake made a similar bet — and lost. During the Great Recession, when he was an assistant superintendent, DeKeyser watched Whitmore Lake spend down its federal relief funds in anticipation of additional support from the state or the federal government. But the additional help didn’t come.

“In 2009 we got to the end of our [stimulus] funds and it was like ‘Oh, what do we do now?’” he said.

This time, the answer for Whitmore Lake is retirements. DeKeyser says he’s anticipating staff turnover of about 50% over the next four years. By not filling some positions, he hopes to downsize the district’s budget enough to keep its finances stable after the federal aid expires.

But he knows there are no guarantees for his district and others statewide.

“If we maintain this spending, things could get catastrophic,” he said. “Any time you get a federal boost like this, you can look good in the short term. But it’s how you look four years out that defines how well you’re managing your funds.”

Koby Levin is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 schools and early childhood education. Contact Koby at klevin@chalkbeat.org.

As NYC school board meetings return in person, will parent voices dwindle?

2022-09-27T17:25:59+00:00

For many New York City parents, the move during the pandemic to virtual school board meetings meant they could attend without having to scramble for child care or figure out transportation.

Now, participating in these meetings could once again become difficult, and that could have important consequences in terms of whose voices get heard when the city makes policy decisions.

After extending New York’s COVID state of emergency several times, Gov. Kathy Hochul allowed it to expire earlier this month, putting an end to virtual public meetings governed by the Open Meetings Law. The city, however, extended its local state of emergency through Oct. 22, giving boards some more time to figure out next steps.

Meetings covered under the state’s Open Meetings Law can go hybrid, but it could get complicated.

A board can pass a resolution or change their bylaws allowing for individual members to attend virtually due to illness, disability, caregiving responsibilities, or any other “significant or unexpected factor or event.” But a quorum of board members must still be present in person.

Several public bodies governed by the state’s Open Meetings Law have passed resolutions to hold hybrid meetings, though many have not, and some parent advocates worry that will prevent many families from being able to show up. With unvaccinated parents still barred from schools, in-person-only meetings might mean they can no longer participate. Hybrid meetings, on the other hand, can require tech equipment and expertise that some of these volunteer bodies might not have. And for many school board members — most of whom are caretakers — who will get to dial in and who will have to show up?

“You could be cooking dinner for your kid and participating in a meeting at the same time,” said Kaliris Salas-Ramirez, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, of online meetings.

PEP, CECs, SLTs ...

The rule applies to the PEP, a largely mayoral appointed board that only approves (or rejects) contracts, and also provides one of the few spaces for families and advocates to publicly express their views on issues from school closures to disciplinary changes. The panel, which is required to livestream their meetings, has yet to vote on whether to allow hybrid member participation or whether they will take public comment via teleconference.(PEP meetings have lasted well past midnight both virtually and in person.)

The Open Meetings Law also affects charter school boards, school leadership teams (each schools’ joint educator-parent committee that makes instructional and other decisions), and the 36 parent-led Community Education Councils, which are largely advisory but also have the power to shape school zone boundaries.

These education councils, known as CECs, add “a layer of democracy,” and “to the extent that members use their platform, it’s an extra set of eyes that represent the views of parents,” one former member told Chalkbeat. They have also become the forum for heated debates over changing admissions policies in attempts to integrate one of the country’s most segregated school systems, with a recent election push from both sides of the aisle to get their preferred candidates on the councils.

So far, nine of the 36 parent councils have sent resolutions to the education department to approve hybrid meetings, according to school officials.

The open meetings rule does not apply to parent-teacher association meetings. Those bodies can choose to have in-person, virtual or hybrid meetings, according to regulations the PEP passed in November. (And while many board meetings are returning to in person, parent-teacher conferences at schools will be remote this year.)

Many online CEC meetings have not only been helpful for parents, Salas-Ramirez said, but educators also found it easier to attend meetings, allowing more collaboration between parents and teachers, said Salas-Ramirez, a former president of the education council in East Harlem’s District 4. Since their meetings moved online, anywhere from 60 to 250 people attended, she estimated.

“In person, I kid you not, it’s five people,” she said. “Before, half of the parents didn’t even know what a CEC does. They didn’t know what a PEP does.”

‘A big undertaking’

The Citywide Council on Special Education, the advisory group representing families who have children with disabilities, voted to hold hybrid meetings in the hope that it will allow their community continued access to its meetings, said member Paullette Healy.

“Our families experience a multitude of challenges of having children with disabilities and/or being disabled themselves,” she said. “Because we are citywide, we have an added challenge of traveling to all five boroughs ... That has always posed an immense challenge with acquiring enough members to make quorum, and we did not reach many of our community by doing it in this fashion.”

The council plans to hold its first hybrid meeting of the year on Sept. 29 at the education department’s Lower Manhattan headquarters, but Healy is concerned the group may run into some technical difficulties.

They had issues trying to broadcast from the 19th-century building before and without “proper technology,” the issues may continue. Healy worries that other parent councils might run into similar challenges given the lack of support from the education department in terms of providing the technology or equipment needed for hybrid meetings, she said.

“Many of us use our own personal equipment or are forced to use our minuscule budget to purchase,” Healy said. “We have discussed this with the DOE on many occasions to no avail.”

Many of schools still lack reliable Wi-Fi, and CECs — typically their administrative assistants — have to bring a slew of equipment, including laptops, microphones, hotspots, and headphones, to the school hosting the meeting and back to their district office.

“It’s a big undertaking,” Healy said.

Education department officials said they typically provide technical assistance to CECs for their town halls with the chancellor and are exploring future tech assistance based on need and resources.

In Bedford Stuyvesant’s District 16, Community Education Council President NeQuan McLean would like for his members to offer hybrid meetings — he even pushed Albany for the option — but for now, they don’t feel like they have the capacity to do so.

“This situation has caught us in a tight predicament,” McLean said.

His CEC is among several that lack an administrative assistant — “because the salaries are so low,” he said — which means all of the work to set up meetings and create various documents in the required timeframe fall on him and other parent volunteers.

Loss of flexibility

Holding in-person meetings is easier than offering hybrid ones, McLean said. You can simply hand out documents without also making a slideshow. You don’t have to monitor online comments, or choose which of the six members out of 11 have to show up in person. Also when meetings are online, they tend to run longer, which could be a problem for the in-person members who might need to travel home late at night.

Yet, McLean worries that being only in-person will hinder participation, and he’s still hoping to go hybrid at some point. His CEC, too, saw upwards of 100 people at remote meetings compared to about 25 for past in-person meetings.

But the cost to do it well is beyond their meager budget.

“The proper way to do it: you need a camera that shows the dais, you have microphones for people to speak into and then feed that in,” McLean said. “We need at least $25,000 to buy the proper equipment.”

For charter schools, which hold regular board meetings, the New York Charter Schools Association has spread the word to make sure schools were aware of the new requirements and ready to implement them, its executive director Yomika Bennett said.

The emergency pandemic meeting rules allowing more flexibility resulted in much greater engagement and participation for the public, Bennett echoed.

“We are disappointed by the loss of that flexibility in the law and the layers of new rules boards have to navigate,” she wrote in an email. “That said, we are grateful that the law preserves a video conferencing option. We will see what the ultimate impact of changes is and will seek any amendments to the law if needed.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

3-K is getting the bulk of NYC’s school stimulus funding. But Adams might curb its expansion.

2022-09-22T13:32:13+00:00

When New York City schools received more than $7 billion in federal stimulus money last year, city officials planned to spend more than a quarter of it on one of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature initiatives: expanding preschool for 3-year-olds.

His administration, however, never outlined how the city would pay for the program once those federal dollars ran out by the 2025-26 school year, only saying that he felt confident the economy would bounce back by then.

Now, as Mayor Eric Adams stares down a potential $10 billion budget shortfall when federal dollars dry up in three years, observers are concerned that the city may not have enough money to pay for the growing program.

City officials declined to say whether they wanted to make preschool universal for 3-year-olds as de Blasio had planned, instead saying that the education department was “committed to optimizing access to care, as based on family need and preference, for ages birth to five.”

And the mayor and his schools chief, David Banks, seem to have their own agenda that Adams campaigned on: making care for children under 3 more affordable for low-income families, the New York Times reported on Thursday.

That could leave many families who are banking on child care and early learning for their 3-year-olds without subsidized options, according to budget watchdogs and organizations that represent preschool providers.

“The concern is really, if you’re offering a service that’s gonna be expected to be recurring, you need to tie down funding for it,” said Ana Champeny, vice president for research at the Citizens Budget Commission, a nonpartisan budget watchdog nonprofit.

Officials did not say how they plan to pay for the popular program once federal relief dollars run out nor have they shared plans to scale back stimulus spending.

“Federal stimulus dollars will eventually sunset, and we look forward to working with our partners from all levels of government towards a sustainable path forward for investing in high-quality Early Childhood Education programs,” education department spokesperson Suzan Sumer said in a statement.

Need for affordable child care

De Blasio began opening free preschool programs for 3-year-olds in 2017, after successfully launching universal preschool for 4-year-olds. Using federal stimulus dollars, the city opened 3-K seats in every community school district last year.

Prekindergarten for 3-year-olds was the only grade where enrollment actually grew last year, more than doubling from the year before, as the city opened more seats.

Last year, the city offered more than 46,000 3-K seats, a figure that includes spots that are funded by federal dollars, and filled about 38,000 of them. The city was expected to open about 8,000 more this school year, according to the education department.

Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the education department, tweeted that there are neighborhoods where many seats go unfilled, while in others, there are not enough to meet demand. For example, this year, Southwest Brooklyn had 1,054 available 3K seats and 53 left unfilled. But in the Bronx’s High Bridge and Morrisania, just under half of the 2,400 open seats had been filled.

Rebecca Iwerks, who lives in East Harlem with her husband and three children, enrolled her 3-year-old daughter in a city-funded program near their home. Before this year, she and her husband, who both work, were paying for daycare that cost nearly as much as their rent.

Iwerks’ daughter has “been really happy,” waking up each morning asking if she’s going to school. She seems to have been talking more there, Iwerks said.

“Having a more affordable child care option for her is a huge game-changer for us,” Iwerks said.

Several studies have found that preschool is beneficial for children. A 2019 study out of South Carolina found that children who attended public preschool programs had higher test scores in grades 3-5, improving the academic environment for their peers, too. The students who attended the program were also less likely to be disciplined. Another study found that the siblings and children of students who attended preschool did better academically, had better employment outcomes, and were less likely to be involved with crime.

However, a national 2018 study challenged that narrative: It found that public preschool didn’t lead to higher test scores in fourth grade, but there were gains for children in districts with majority Black students.

3-K gets lion’s share of COVID relief money

When federal COVID dollars rolled in, city officials planned to use $2 billion of it on expanding 3-K through the 2024-25 school year. It was the single largest use of the district’s stimulus dollars over time, according to an analysis last year from the Independent Budget Office, or the IBO. De Blasio had planned to make the program universal by next school year.

The problem, budget watchdogs have warned, starts in July 2025, when federal aid will run out. By then, the city will face a $376 million shortfall for 3-K and has not pointed to a funding source to cover the whole program, according to a budget tracker by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. That’s part of the roughly $840 million budget shortfall that the education department will face in 2025 because of programs it has funded using federal stimulus funds.

While stimulus spending on pre-K is increasing each year, the city is spending less on academic recovery for K-12 schools, including for extra services for students with disabilities, as the federal money dries up. The city is also spending less of these funds overall on school budgets due to projected declining enrollment.

Of the roughly 5,000 districts tracked by Future Ed, an education thinktank out of Georgetown University, 225 districts and charters are spending stimulus dollars on preschool or early education — though none at the level of New York City, according to Phyllis Jordan, associate director of Future Ed.

School districts are allowed to use the federal relief on expanding preschool programs, said a spokesperson for the state education department, which signed off on the city’s planned use of COVID dollars. Signaling support for the city’s plan, the spokesperson said that expanding pre-K programs “addresses lost early childhood learning, socialization, and other foundational skills required for long-term success.”

The huge investment of federal dollars drew mixed feelings from Nora Moran, director of policy at United Neighborhood Houses, which represents preschool providers. The city has addressed something that “is a huge issue for working parents” and good for young children, Moran said, but her organization was concerned about using temporary dollars to prop it up.

They raised the issue with the de Blasio administration, only to be told that the economy would rebound, she said. If it doesn’t, community-based providers might have to cut back programs.

“I think it would be probably a catastrophe for a lot of providers and families if you’re seeing a loss of programs,” said Gregory Brender, policy director for the Day Care Council, which also represents preschool programs. “Families end up scrambling, you have workers losing their jobs.”

Expanding smartly

Even as policy analysts worry about the program’s future, they also want the city to focus on a program that actually works for families. Both Moran and Brender noted that most preschool classrooms run from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., which mirrors the school day but doesn’t cover families who work later. It doesn’t offer the sort of after-school programs that might be available for students in older grades. Moran noted that there are some federally funded preschool seats that go until 6 p.m., but those are in the minority and reserved for low-income families.

Iwerks, the East Harlem mother, still pays for aftercare for her daughter — albeit, at a fraction of the cost – that goes until 5:30 p.m. She feels lucky that the after-school program is located in the same church as her daughter’s 3-K.

“It’s a good question about how all this investment is happening and who’s able to benefit from it if you can’t get child care for a pre-K kid after 3 o’clock,” Iwerks said.

Brender, of the Day Care Council, said that any cuts to the program may invite intense budget fights down the road, and the city must make tough choices about what to do next.

“But we know that families are still desperate for early childhood options, and we do think it’s going to be popular enough where hopefully the city and state would work to continue it,” Brender said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

41% of NYC students were chronically absent last school year

2022-09-16T20:40:00+00:00

About 41% of New York City students were chronically absent, missing at least 18 days of last school year, according to city data released Friday.

The figures from the Mayor’s Management Report show that as the city required all students to return to class in person last school year for the first time since March 2020, hundreds of thousands of children still missed large stretches of instruction.

Last year’s chronic absenteeism rate was the highest the city has recorded in decades, according to figures from NYU’s Research Alliance, and also the highest rate during the pandemic.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, chronic absenteeism rates remained closer to 25%. But absenteeism skyrocketed in the coronavirus era, reaching 30% two years ago, when students were allowed to choose in person or virtual learning options. Last year, the share of students considered chronically absent spiked by 10 more points.

Officials said their chronic absenteeism goal for this school year is 30%.

Absences due to the coronavirus — for students with COVID or who were quarantining because they were close contacts — likely play a significant role, though there were other possible factors. Many students took jobs to help make up for their family’s financial hardships, perhaps missing school to attend work. Others may have cared for siblings or struggled with mental health issues that kept them away from school.

It’s also possible that factors such as masking and social distancing made it harder for students to build relationships with teachers, which are a factor in attendance.

Chronic absenteeism is typically seen as a key metric of school performance: missed school typically means missed learning. Absences can also hurt student achievement in the long run.

Matt Brownstein, an assistant principal at P.S. 330 in Queens, said last year was particularly destabilizing for many families, especially during winter’s omicron surge that sickened many students and staff. With few exceptions, city officials kept school buildings open during that wave.

“Families were scared so they didn’t send their kids every day,” he said. “In some instances, a parent was sick and just wanted to keep everyone close by and wanted to keep everyone out.”

Over the past year, more than 258,000 students and staff have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to city data. The figure may be an undercount, as not all cases were officially recorded.

The city’s figures may not accurately capture the number of missed in-person instructional days, as attendance policies changed in the middle of last school year to allow schools to provide some remote work to students and mark them as present.

The latest figures do not include demographic breakdowns, but a previous Daily News analysis focused on the 2020-2021 school year found that Black and Latino students as well as those in poverty or learning English saw higher jumps in chronic absenteeism than their white and Asian American peers.

The attendance data also suggests that educators may have lots of ground to make up, though city officials have refused to provide results from last year’s assessments given to students three times throughout the year. State officials have yet to release last year’s standardized test scores in math and reading for students in grades 3-8.

“It’s an enormous task that they have getting students back in the rhythm of being in school every day and being engaged back in the learning process,” said Dia Bryant, executive director of Education Trust New York, an advocacy group. “Without assessment data, we don’t have a picture.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan school board hears prayers and explicit passages as book wars flare

2022-09-16T18:27:05+00:00

Part prayer service, part sexually explicit read-aloud.

That’s what Michigan Board of Education meetings sound like lately as they’ve become a battlefield for the latest culture war issue: restricting student access to books with sexual content.

Parents have been bringing their concerns to the board during public comment sessions that sometimes last more than two hours. Their pleas are passionate, but they’re also misplaced.

The state Board of Education has no jurisdiction over local school libraries and no power to legislate. That hasn’t stopped parents and conservative activists from queuing up online and in person to have their say at the board’s monthly meetings in Lansing.

“Local superintendents and local school boards look up to the state board to see what their recommendations are, so if the state Board of Education can just affirm what we feel,” that would be helpful, said Bree Moeggenberg, a mother of three and chair of the Isabella County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a conservative nonprofit that has fought school mask mandates and lessons about LGBT rights and critical race theory.

Activists also have been taking their concerns to local school boards, where they’ve met some success, and to public libraries, seeking to defund them over objections to materials in their collections. Just this week, Dearborn Public Schools responded to parent complaints by removing seven library books that depict homosexuality, abuse, and rape.

Advocates for free expression worry that complaints about sexually explicit material might be just the start for conservatives who may ultimately try to restrict access to other kinds of content that they deem objectionable.

Book banning has a long history. In the 17th century, Puritans were burning copies of William Pynchon’s “The Meritorious Price of our Redemption.” Classics like “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Catcher in the Rye” often appear on banned-book lists because of racial slurs, foul language, violence, and references to drug use.

But banning activity has surged in recent months amid a growing conservative movement to control students’ exposure to lessons about racism, sexism, sexual orientation, and other sensitive topics in public schools. Data collected by PEN America, a group that advocates for free expression in literature, show that school districts across the country banned 1,145 books just between July 2021 and April 2022 — numbers not seen in decades.

In Michigan, growing numbers of parents and activists are showing up to state Board of Education meetings to advocate for stricter regulation of books. Some pray before their testimony. Others warn board members they will go to hell for not working to ban what they see as objectionable books from school libraries. Many dive right in, reading as quickly as they can from the most sexually explicit passages they’ve found in school library books before their three minutes run out and state board Executive Marilyn Schneider cuts them off.

“Dear Lord, I come to you this afternoon to ask you to protect these parents that speak today and are trying to protect their children against the devil that is hard at work,” one caller from Wayne County began on Tuesday. Twelve seconds later the caller, who identified herself only as Billie from Wayne County, read aloud an explicit passage about oral sex from “On the Bright Side, I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God,” which Publishers Weekly classifies as a children’s book.

Board members listened to her and more than 30 other speakers Tuesday but did not respond. They typically refrain from responding during public comment sessions.

Lately, most public comment sessions have been dominated by callers like Billie, but at Tuesday’s meeting, several people offered an alternative perspective. They said many of the books being challenged help readers see themselves in stories so they feel less alone in the world.

“They contain important messages,” Kat Draeger of Fenton, a fifth-year student at Michigan State University, testified on Tuesday. “They help people look at the world through a different lens.”

Reading about bullying, sexuality, and suicide, for example, can help students cope with circumstances they may find themselves in, she said.

She mentioned “Speak” by Laurie Halse Anderson and “Gender Queer” by Maia Kobabe — both among the books conservative activists are targeting because of their depictions of sexual assault and gender dysphoria.

“Young people need to learn social skills to understand the world around them and how they fit into it,” Draeger said. “Developing good citizens and healthy people is the job of both Michigan educators and this board. Taking away the ability of young people to better understand the world and themselves should not be this board’s right or responsibility.”

Parents like Moeggenberg say it’s up to parents, not schools, to decide what books are appropriate for their children.

“Some of these books might benefit some students,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Who am I to say what works for somebody else? I would be a hypocrite if I said you had to do what I want and not what works for you.”

Moeggenberg said she would be satisfied if schools were required to notify parents before their children try to access books with sexually explicit content.

Other activists want to keep objectionable books out of schools entirely, though they still bristle at the word “ban.”

“No one is asking for books to be banned,” Jayme McElvany of Monroe told board members at Tuesday’s meeting. “That’s simply a way for you to ignore the fact that you are pushing sexually explicit material on children,” she said before reading book excerpts about anal sex, rape, and incest.

Lisa Querijero, a parent in Ann Arbor, says she trusts a school’s trained librarians to decide what books are appropriate for students.

“I’m here to counter and call out the small vocal minority that are attempting to compromise the integrity of our public schools and our democracy,” Querijero testified in Lansing on Tuesday. “Singling out and censoring books and curriculum is detrimental to creating critical thinkers. It is detrimental to teacher morale and the morale of the state of our public schools in general.”

Tracie Mauriello covers state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit and Bridge Michigan. Reach her at tmauriello@chalkbeat.org.

NYC shelves $202 million plan to create a universal curriculum

2022-09-16T12:00:00+00:00

On his way out of office, former Mayor Bill de Blasio announced an ambitious $202 million plan to create a universal K-12 reading and math curriculum by fall 2023, promising lessons and materials that reflected the diversity of the city’s students.

But after months of uncertainty, Mayor Eric Adams is not creating a math and reading curriculum from scratch, Chalkbeat has learned.

An education department spokesperson said the previous administration’s vision was not feasible because individual schools — and their student populations — vary considerably. De Blasio left few concrete plans for the new administration, the spokesperson added.

The de Blasio administration previously said the newly created curriculum would be mandatory, a major change for school leaders who currently have wide latitude to select materials. The education department will continue to recommend reading and math curriculums, but is not mandating a specific choice, a spokesperson said.

Abandoning plans to roll out a universal math and reading curriculum originally set to launch next fall frustrated several advocates who argue those materials are still needed.

“It’s highly disappointing,” said Natasha Capers, director of the Coalition for Educational Justice, an advocacy group that pushed for a universal, culturally responsive curriculum. “The chancellor continues to say that literacy and reading are highly important,” Capers added, “but they have not done the work needed to make sure that every school and every teacher has a proper curriculum.”

Still, the department is moving forward with a project called “Mosaic” — the name of the curriculum de Blasio proposed — albeit with a more limited scope, Carolyne Quintana, the education department’s deputy chancellor of teaching and learning, said at a Chalkbeat event this summer.

The focus will be on a slew of “hidden voices” social studies curriculums, an umbrella that she said includes Black studies and materials focused on LGBTQ people and the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. (Those curriculums are in various stages of rolling out to schools.)

“There’s been a decision that Mosaic is this collection of different hidden voices pieces that will be part of our social studies — and those are K-12,” Quintana said, adding that the department is working on building a team focused on culturally responsive education, and training would be available for educators.

“In just eight months, we began the rollout of both a comprehensive Black studies and AAPI curricula, with plans for many more engaging resources in the works,” education department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein wrote in a statement. “We are committed to training and supporting our educators in culturally responsive practices.”

One person who was part of a group initially charged with helping to develop the universal math materials said the group never created a formal curriculum. Instead, they were asked to put together a document with ideas and lesson plans that showcase how math classes can be culturally responsive. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said the group was not told that plans for a universal math curriculum were shelved, and emphasized that the shift to focus on social studies is a major downgrade in scope.

“We were told we’re definitely going to create a curriculum, then we were told this group isn’t going to create the curriculum, we’re just going to create the guidance,” the person said. “It doesn’t seem like the team’s work ended in the way that we wanted to.” (Education department officials said they may expand their curriculum design efforts to other subjects in the future.)

Certain parts of Mosaic have already moved forward, including shipments of 4.3 million books sent to schools to help diversify their libraries, department officials said. Some educators said those books were welcomed, but were not consistently deployed and did not come with lesson plans or guidance on how to connect them to existing curriculums.

City officials also did not say how much funding would be devoted to support the more limited Mosaic plans, but indicated the initial $202 million budget, supported by federal relief funds, would be reduced.

Some educators — and the city’s teachers union — have argued that a universal curriculum would help give teachers access to quality materials without having to search for them. It could also allow for better-coordinated teacher training, as more teachers would be using a common set of materials, experts said.

Evan Stone, the co-founder and CEO of Educators for Excellence, a teacher advocacy group, said teachers are still regularly scrounging on the internet for materials, according to surveys of their membership. The organization launched a petition that has garnered roughly 1,000 signatures calling for more details about the universal curriculum.

“Right now, New York is allowing every decision to be made at the school level. As a result of that, there’s lots of change for students and teachers when they go building to building and there’s no overarching framework to make sure it’s high quality,” he said. “We want to see them move to fewer, better curriculum options that are culturally relevant.”

Schools Chancellor David Banks has taken some steps to move schools toward more consistent teaching methods, including instituting a requirement that elementary schools use a phonics program. But Stone and others said much more sweeping change is needed — and that there are ways of making sure schools are using better materials even if the city doesn’t create them from scratch.

Tom Liam Lynch, who runs the InsideSchools online guide, said the city should take a more active role in devising a “curriculum framework” that all schools can draw on. If schools are still given leeway to pick curriculums, he said the city should at least be transparent about what choices schools are making, what they cost, and how they are impacting student achievement.

“You can’t say that the school system is failing and at the very same time that teachers know best and schools know best and should have the power to choose,” he said. “We still need citywide curricular accountability.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado has big gaps in who finishes college. Can a post-pandemic push turn the tide?

2022-09-15T12:00:00+00:00

Leer en español.

Reginaldo Haro-Flores knew finishing college would be an uphill battle.

As the first in his family to go to a four-year university, he faced a struggle to pay tuition, buy textbooks and supplies, and balance a job while still helping to support his parents, who questioned the value of a college education.

Haro-Flores enrolled at the University of Northern Colorado in 2016, among a growing number of Latino Coloradans in the past decade heading to college. But like many in this wave, Haro-Flores never finished, contributing to the persistent gap in college completion.

Even as a more diverse group of students have enrolled in college, Colorado’s ethnic and racial gaps among bachelor’s and graduate degree holders barely budged from 2010 to 2020, Census data shows.

The gaps are even wider among those earning any type of postsecondary credential. As of 2020, almost 60% of white residents held some kind of college credential, including industry certificates. But only 38% of Black residents and 25% of Latino residents did.

Reginaldo Haro-Flores, 24, is back at the University of Northern Colorado after several tries at finishing his degree.

While other states also have gaps, the Centennial State has some of the largest in the nation between Black and Latino residents and their white counterparts.

The fissure will likely widen when the full impact of the pandemic becomes clear as students dropped out or chose not to attend college altogether. A healthy job market also has made residents question whether a degree was worth carrying long-term college debt.

Haro-Flores never expected his journey to mirror these state trends. In 2018, struggling to pay tuition, he dropped out of college. His parents’ immigration status meant his financial aid options were limited. He re-enrolled at UNC in 2019, but the pandemic forced him to quit again. He disliked online classes and wanted to work full time to help his parents, who had been laid off from seasonal jobs in warehouses and nurseries.

For some time, Colorado has wanted to shift away from importing a large number of educated workers to producing them. Part of its strategy includes earmarking $49 million in federal pandemic relief money to identify students who left school without finishing and help them complete their degree.

The need is pressing, as the demand for more workers with college training and Colorado’s sharply rising cost of living have complicated employers’ efforts to recruit and retain employees.

Former State Sen. Mike Johnston said the state has relied too long on bringing in talent from elsewhere.

“We’ve ridden that strategy as long as we can,” Johnston said. He is president and CEO of Gary Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to helping increase school readiness, youth success, and economic mobility.

“We’re going to have to now prepare our own young people with the skills they need to enter the jobs we have, that will give them the income they need to pay for the housing we have,” he said.

Reginaldo Haro-Flores raises his hand during a sports management class this month at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.

The old challenges collide with the new

Chalkbeat Colorado examined college-going trends as a part of Chasing Progress, a Colorado News Collaborative project on social, economic, and health equity among Black and Latino Coloradans.

Colorado’s low college-going rates have deep roots and complicated causes. Only half of all high school graduates enroll in college at all. Black and Latino high school graduates, who often attend under-resourced schools and have less support, go at much lower rates. When they get to college, many never finish. And the state has underfunded higher education for years, which means schools have less money to support students to graduation.

Census data released this year shows that in 2020, 48% of white residents held a bachelor’s degree or higher. That’s 21 percentage points higher than the portion of Black adults and 31 percentage points higher than Latinos.

State data shows those disparities grow when comparing other types of college training, such as industry certificates and associate degrees.

Colorado is aiming to get some of the 700,000 residents who have some college but no degree back on campus.

The pandemic still poses challenges. Nationally, college enrollment has dipped by nearly 1 million students since COVID hit.

The state will need to persuade more residents that college matters, even though entry-level jobs now offer wages that are higher than ever.

More people question the value of college and the risk of high debt for it, said Iris Palmer, New America’s deputy director of community colleges. The research institute advocates for equitable access to education.

“That’s starting to erode how people think of higher education,” she said.

The state aims to equip 66% of residents with a college certificate or higher by 2025, but the compounding issues make the goal seem more elusive than ever.

Without access to higher-paying jobs, the majority of Black, Hispanic, and Native American Colorado residents are getting left behind, said Courtney Brown, Lumina Foundation vice president of impact and planning. The foundation pushes for more equitable access to higher education and has helped states set goals. (Lumina is a funder of Chalkbeat. See our funders here and read our ethics policy here.)

Reginaldo Haro-Flores, right, shakes the hand of freshman Alexis Vallejos-Diaz, whom he is mentoring at the University of Northern Colorado campus.

How to get students to finish what they started

Colorado leaders are taking steps to create more opportunity.

The state has encouraged high schools to add college-level classes to help students earn certificates. It created a scholarship in 2014 to offer tuition assistance and other support for students needing it.

In the past two years, the state named a statewide equity officer to focus on narrowing persistent gaps and convened lawmakers and community leaders to come up with a plan to tap into pandemic relief money to connect college students to jobs.

While those programs show success, the state still falls short, said Colorado Department of Higher Education Executive Director Angie Paccione.

That’s why the state has added more programs. They show promise, Palmer said. For example, 30 college campuses have adopted Finish What You Started, a program modeled after a successful Pueblo Community College initiative. The state aims to serve about 9,000 students by 2026.

The program provides financial aid for students to return to college and coaching to figure out individual college plans, as well as ways to stick to them and find a job after college. Coaches also help students find help on and off campus that could put food on the table or care for children.

While money is a huge incentive, helping students believe they can finish college is vital, said Richie Ince, director of the Pueblo model called Return to Earn. He and his employees check in on each student every other week to offer advice, encouragement, or connections to resources.

“I think we’re really successful because of that personal touch and just kind of looking out for them, really from the time they come back to the time they finish,” Ince said.

The Finish What You Started program brought Haro-Flores, now 24, back to school. He heard about it from one of his former high school advisers. The aid and counseling he’s received has felt almost too good to be true, he said.

He wouldn’t have gone back to school for a third time without the program and its funding, he said. UNC’s Finish What You Started coordinators told him they’d provide assistance for whatever he needed. That has happened, Haro-Flores said. Now he feels confident he can finish his sports exercise degree.

“This is the moment,” he said.

He hopes to graduate by 2024 and work in sports or management.

The aid that Haro-Flores has received through the Finish What You Started program at UNC has motivated him to finish his sports exercise degree.

Can Colorado sustain this effort?

Advocates say Colorado, too, must finish what it’s started in promoting college completion. The state, which studies show seriously underfunds higher education compared with other states, must continue to put in more money to stay on track.

Paccione, the state’s higher education executive director, likes to tell lawmakers, “invest in students now or pay them later.”

“If you don’t invest in the students now, these are the very students who will end up on our public safety social safety net,” she said. Studies bear that out.

Studies also show that college is worth a student’s investment. Michael Itzkowitz, who works for the left-leaning think-tank Third Way, said data in recent years allows schools to highlight how well their programs get students jobs and pay off. About 86% of all public college programs produce a return on what students spend on their education within five years, he said.

And there are also social benefits. Alfred Tatum, Metropolitan State University of Denver academic affairs vice president, said college helps students connect to health care, become more civically engaged, and contribute more to the state’s tax base. Instead of the general goal of educating the greater population, state leaders should consider instead how college graduates improve communities, he said.

But relaying those benefits to students can be difficult when some are worried about cost.

Over the past two decades, the burden of paying for college in Colorado has shifted more heavily to students and families. Tuition revenue funds 74% of undergraduate college budgets and 38% of two-year college budgets. That’s higher on average than in most states.

Janine Davidson, MSU Denver president, and John Marshall, Colorado Mesa University president, said that lawmakers must adequately fund schools so they can lower costs for students and improve support for students who need more help to finish college.

Without a consistent revenue stream, college administrators and staffers worry that Colorado’s efforts will weaken once the one-time federal money dries up.

They hope that success stories, like that of Darryl Sharpton, will drive home the importance of continuing funding.

Sharpton, 46, has tried several times in three states to finish college. At last, he thinks he can stick with it. At the Community College of Aurora, he’s found more support than he’s ever received before.

He’s studying to get a degree in computer science. College has provided him with a different outlook — about his own potential and his value.

“I want a career, not just a job,” Sharpton said, who previously worked delivering pharmaceuticals.

“There are so many people that want you to succeed,” he said. “My school is really taking care of me right now.”

Tina Griego, a Colorado News Collaborative journalist, contributed to this report.

A Philadelphia high school first: Black men teaching all freshman core subjects

2022-09-15T11:00:00+00:00

Ninth graders at Philadelphia’s Martin Luther King High School are beginning their high school careers with a set of teachers who look like them. That’s something Principal Keisha Wilkins thinks will give the students a boost as they prepare for the future.

In fact, Martin Luther King, where last year the student body was 92% Black and 62% male, has become the first high school in the district to have a class that has Black male teachers for the four core subjects — math, English, science, and history — according to the district.

The four teachers’ journeys to careers in education speak to the challenges the profession faces in recruiting and retaining Black men, who make up only 2% of all teachers nationwide. In the Philadelphia school district, roughly 24% of teachers are Black, and of those, just 4% are men, while just over half the district’s students are Black.

Wilkins helped recruit the four teachers — Eric Butler, Michael Flemming, Denzil Flemming, and Marsalis Chism — because she believes their presence will empower the student body.

“We have students that have gone their entire school career [from kindergarten through 8th grade] and never had a Black male teacher,” Wilkins said. “It’s definitely a space where students are going to see a reflection of themselves.”

Martin Luther King High School has become the first high school in the school district to have a class with Black male teachers for its four core subjects.

Black male teachers become ‘part of the content’

Wilkins got help with the recruiting from Stephen Flemming, a school-based teacher lead at MLK. And he, in turn, had a special advantage with one of the teachers he recruited: Stephen and Michael Flemming are brothers. (They’re not related to Denzil Flemming.)

In addition, all four teachers have known each other from church and the community for some 15 to 20 years. Michael Flemming, who had been teaching at Philadelphia’s Kenderton Elementary School, said as he decided to make the switch to MLK this year in part because of the opportunity to link up with colleagues “I’ve known pretty much my whole life.”

Stephen Flemming said that kind of close-knit support is particularly important for Butler and Chism, the two newer teachers.

“I think having people they’ve known contributes to retention,” he said, adding that, “We’re like-minded in terms of our approach. We are all about seeing, especially, Black and brown children succeed. It’s cool.”

Butler, who teaches environmental science, decided to become a teacher after volunteering with kids, and “it’s been one of the best decisions,” he said. “I feel like I’m really making an impact, even when I don’t see it that day.”

Butler, who is in his fourth year of teaching, came to MLK this year from Thomas Edison High School, a mostly Latino school in Philadelphia. While that was a positive experience, he said, “it’s just a little different” at King and he feels more at home at his new school.

“I understand my kids a little more,” he said. “They’re like me. I get them. I don’t feel like I need to code-switch when I’m talking.”

Michael Flemming, an African American history teacher at MLK, said he didn’t understand how much he would stand out until he got into a classroom full of Black students.

“Once you get up in front of a group of 30 students that look like you, you’re almost like a unicorn,” he said. “The kids look at you differently. ‘Are you from the neighborhood?’ ‘Are you real?’ These are the questions I’ve gotten.”

His students also react positively to seeing a Black male at the front of the classroom. “When they see I have a master’s degree, they’re like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’” Butler said. “When they see themselves in that position, someone who looks like them, someone that represents them, that’s more motivation for them to go on and fight against the stigma that’s against them now.”

What Butler and Michael Flemming have experienced makes sense to Stephen Flemming, who said the “collective struggles and successes” of Black males help them bring different perspectives to the classrooms.

And for the MLK 9th graders, “This may be their first encounter with Black males as teachers, and to have a whole wing of them, I think, is going to be a positive experience for them,” Flemming said.

Having Black male teachers for students to connect with might be especially important for first-year students. That’s because they are going from being the oldest in their school buildings to the youngest, from having just a few teachers to many, and from merely attending classes to realizing they need the credits to graduate, Flemming said.

Not all MLK students have father figures present in their lives, so “you become vicariously their father figure,” Michael Flemming said. “The kids want to know more about you, almost more than the content sometimes. You become part of the content.”

That mindset extends beyond the school building and school hours: Michael Flemming says it’s important to him to do things like show up to watch his student’s ball games and talk strategy with them.

“Developing relationships is a big component of classroom management,” said Michael Flemming. “It’s just constant encouragement. We’re the seed planters.”

Teachers at Philadelphia’s Martin Luther King High School (from left) Marsalis Chism, Stephen Flemming, Eric Butler, Michael Flemming, and Denzil Flemming, hold an impromptu meeting before classes begin.

Teaching not always their first career choice

But the nationwide statistics indicate that despite the appeal of such relationships, many Black men don’t see teaching as a great fit. In fact, the four Black male teachers in core subjects at MLK all started on different career paths before giving education a try.

Butler, for example, previously worked as a physical therapist after college in part because it seemed like a lucrative career, before deciding he was “bored out of his mind.”

MLK English teacher Marsalis Chism also resisted the idea of being an educator. Though he went to college and knew he wanted to do something to help people, “I was fighting the calling of being a teacher,” he said, because the idea of dealing with different personalities and behavior issues in schools was daunting.

But as with Butler’s volunteering experience, a summer job Chism took working with kids changed his outlook, because he saw how he could deal with those issues. “I love talking to students on the side so I can counsel them,” he said. “Classroom management is actually one of my strengths.”

From MLK Algebra 1 teacher Denzil Flemming’s perspective, “If you can understand the kids, that’s half the job.”

Still, their special roles as Black male educators at the school don’t mean they lose sight of the work’s challenges. There are unhelpful stereotypes, for example, that Black male educators should be disciplinarians, Michael Flemming said.

Denzil Flemming, a former engineer and an immigrant from Trinidad whose background makes him stand out among the four core subject teachers, said he feels as though the students “are not really prepared in math” and stresses that the subject is crucial to everyday life.

“I try to let them know there’s math everywhere,” he said. “If you’re traveling on a plane, you don’t want the guy who’s flying the plane to be at the bottom of the class. People who drive Teslas expect good engineers to build the cars.”

Growing the pipeline for Black men who heed the call

Wilkins said she assembled the team of four core subject teachers through word of mouth, and was intentional about attracting Black men to the school.

“Who better to teach African-American history than an African-American man?” Wilkins said. “A lot of times we forget history begins before slavery,” she said, and teaching young “kings and queens” that their heritage goes back a long way gives them a path to development.

“If you know somebody who can grow somebody, we want them here,” Wilkins said.

Michael Flemming said he wished more undergraduate programs led more people into teaching, and teaching in urban school systems in particular: “I don’t know if high school counselors even push a lot of 12th graders into education.”

At least one organization is trying to change that. Wilkins singled out the Center for Black Educator Development, which aims to get more Black students interested in teaching through the Black Teacher Pipeline Project. The project’s first fellowships were awarded in February to four Black men.

The center’s founder, Philadelphia educator Sharif El-Mekki, aims to bring 21,000 Black students into the teaching pipeline over the next 12 years in 10 communities across the country, including the Philadelphia-Camden area.

While teaching may not have been the four MLK teachers’ first choice, they all said they now view it as a calling.

“You’ve really got to want to do it,” Butler said. “If you’re trying to make an impact, you’ll figure out the younger generation is the most effective way to do that.”

‘Stop the shooting’: Inside the effort to protect students from neighborhood gun violence

2022-09-13T11:00:00+00:00

Cars streaked past Bashir Muhammad Ptah Akinyele last month as he stood at the corner of a busy intersection across from a high school, baking under the midday sun.

Then he stepped off the curb and faced the oncoming traffic.

Desperation drove Akinyele to join the street protest, as it had many times before. A veteran teacher in Newark, New Jersey, Akinyele can name well over 40 former students who have been killed by guns. “One day you have a kid in your class,” he said, “and the next day he’s gone.”

Akinyele realized long ago that the only way to protect his students is to stop the shootings where they occur — not in his school, but in the neighborhoods around it. So he started attending rallies like the one in August, calling for an end to the shootings and the conditions that cause them.

“I have to do something outside of the classroom,” Akinyele recalled thinking. “I was losing too many students to the violence in the city.”

Over the course of his career, Newark teacher Bashir Muhammad Akinyele has lost over 40 students to gun violence.

At the start of this new school year, classrooms across the country were dotted with empty desks, a silent testament to summer gun violence. From June through the end of August, more than 600 fatal shootings were reported nationwide involving children under age 18 as either victims or suspects, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which relies on public records and news reports.

Almost all the shootings occurred away from schools, in homes and neighborhoods. And yet community violence is rarely seen as an education issue. Instead, voters and policymakers tend to focus disproportionately on school shootings, endorsing measures to “harden” schools with armed guards and metal detectors and turning school security into a $3 billion industry.

But out of the spotlight and with far less money, communities across the country are finding innovative ways to combat neighborhood violence.

From Oakland to Chicago and Philadelphia, city agencies and local nonprofits are partnering with the police to both prevent and respond to shootings. Often called community violence intervention, much of this work centers around young people, helping them process trauma and settle conflicts peacefully. Congress and the Biden administration recently expanded funding for such efforts, which are backed by a growing body of evidence.

With the new school year underway, this violence reduction work in communities — where shootings are far more common than in schools — will arguably do as much to protect students as ramped up school security, according to advocates and experts.

Akinyele understood this when he stood in the intersection last month disrupting traffic. He was joined by a crew of community members — parents, recent high school graduates, former gang members — who are paid to prevent violence in the neighborhoods where Akinyele’s students live, play, and go to school.

“Stop the shooting,” Akinyele said over a loudspeaker, the non-violence workers echoing his words. “Stop the killing.”

Most shootings happen outside schools, but learning still suffers

The nation’s epidemic of gun violence is especially lethal for young people.

After shootings surged at the start of the pandemic, 2020 became the first year in which gun violence was the leading cause of death for children and teens. Young Black men run the greatest risk of being fatally shot.

Even with the sharp rise in school shootings, the vast majority of gunfire erupts off campus. According to federal data from 1992 to 2019, less than 3% of youth homicides occurred on school grounds.

But while most shootings happen in communities, they reverberate inside schools. Exposure to violence is closely associated with trauma symptoms, including anxiety, disrupted sleep, and difficulty concentrating, and it can lead to lower grades and more absences.

“It literally gets under their skin and makes children more biologically stressed,” said Daniel Semenza, who directs research on interpersonal violence at Rutgers University’s New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center.

One study found that students performed worse on reading tests after a murder occurred in their neighborhood, even if they didn’t witness it.

“No way somebody is going to be able to pull off the same level of cognitive performance,” Semenza added, “if they have that running through their minds.”

Starr Whiteside, a Newark 12th-grader, is constantly on alert for gunfire in her neighborhood.

Starr Whiteside has seen how the constant threat of gunfire can warp your world, shaping where you go, what you feel, and how you act.

“Young people my age, it makes us feel like we always got to be on guard,” said Whiteside, a 12th grader in Newark. “Even going to the corner store, we have to watch our back.”

She’s also watched violence in the community seep into schools. Last year, her school went into lockdown after a student brought a loaded gun into the building, apparently because he had been jumped outside of school.

“It’s like there’s no escape,” she said.

How Newark’s grassroots groups keep students safe

Newark has emerged as a national model of community violence intervention, thanks partly to pressure by advocates like Akinyele and the support of the city’s mayor, Ras Baraka.

A tight-knit network of local groups leads the anti-violence work, in partnership with the city. They help protect young people in two main ways: by addressing the underlying causes of violent behavior, and shielding students from violent acts.

A member of the Newark Community Street Team, Malachi Muhammad keeps watch over students outside of school.

The Newark Community Street Team does the latter through its Safe Passage program, which hires community members to patrol the routes students take to and from school. Trained in de-escalation, the staffers help defuse tensions between students while watching for external threats.

Last November, a Safe Passage worker was speaking with two students outside a Newark high school when a gunman exited a car and fired nearly a dozen rounds their way. The worker, Malachi Muhammad, a graduate of the high school, rushed the students to safety.

“I’m responsible for them,” he said last year.

The incident illustrates why such groups are essential to student safety: Violence in the community often follows students to school, and school conflicts often spill out into the community. In fact, the impetus for the Safe Passage program came partly from a Newark health department analysis that found neighborhood conflicts frequently originate in schools, said Aqeela Sherrills, who co-founded the Street Team.

“Schools are an extension of the community,” he said. “They’re not these siloed institutions.”

The small number of young people who commit violence usually have been victims themselves, so healing their wounds can help stop the cycle of harm.

To that end, the Street Team offers counseling and life-skills training to young people at risk of violence, while The HUBB Arts & Trauma Center, another Newark nonprofit, provides art therapy and mentoring. Newark’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery sends social workers into some high schools, and the city is paying for 40 students who have been affected by violence to attend college.

The efforts reflect the public health approach that is central to community violence intervention, with education, counseling, and support services used to treat rather than punish perpetrators.

“If you look at it as a sickness,” Baraka said, “then these people are obviously infected and we have to give them treatment.”

The HUBB specializes in such treatment, helping young people address the trauma that is both a symptom and source of violence. One of those young people is Tah’gee.

This spring, the 16-year-old left his Newark charter school after a disciplinary issue, was arrested, and spent a brief time in jail. Not long after, his cousin was gunned down.

The police referred Tah’gee to the HUBB, where Denisah Williamson took up his case. Williamson is what experts call a “credible messenger,” a mentor to troubled youth who has experienced many of the same challenges they have.

As a teenager growing up in Newark, she was sexually assaulted and expelled from school. Later she was arrested and stabbed.

Despite the violence she endured and the discrimination she faced as a Black woman growing up in a low-income community, she pressed on, eventually earning a master’s degree in social work.

“I had a bad childhood, but it didn’t define me,” said Williamson, who directs programs, data, and community relations at the HUBB and mentors students. “There’s no judgment here.”

Williamson convinced Tah’gee to start showing up at the HUBB’s community center, where young people study photography and video production, create podcasts, and record songs in a state-of-the-art studio. They also participate in a youth-led forum called My Thoughts Out Loud, freely discussing relationships, drugs, and whatever else is on their minds.

Tah’gee credits the HUBB for guiding him towards a new path in life.

During a workshop this summer meant to build trust between Newark residents and police and address collective trauma, Tah’gee shared a harrowing story. He said that he was walking with a friend when a crew of 10 or so young men approached and put a gun to his head, then attacked him after he fled.

“Yes, it should never have happened and it’s not normal,” he said, talking about the “crazy stuff” he’s experienced. “But to me it was normal.”

Over time, Williamson watched Tah’gee evolve. He learned to manage his emotions and check his impulses. He signed up for the violence prevention office’s summer work program and applied to Newark Street Academy, a city program that helps out-of-school youth earn GEDs.

Today, Tah’gee credits the HUBB with putting him on a new path.

“It messed up my life,” he said, “in a good way.”

The anti-violence movement gains momentum

Groups like the HUBB curb violence person by person, but evidence of their impact is more than anecdotal.

A number of studies have found that local anti-violence groups play a significant role in reducing shootings and improving public safety.

The Becoming a Man program, which offers weekly group counseling to young men in more than 140 schools nationwide, has been found to decrease arrests and increase graduation rates. Groups like Cure Violence and Advance Peace, which intervene in conflicts and support high-risk individuals, have been associated with fewer shootings. And Safe Passage programs have been shown to reduce crime along students’ routes to school.

The evidence base for such interventions “is now extremely strong,” said Patrick Sharkey, a sociology and public affairs professor at Princeton University, who found that local nonprofits contributed to the historic decline in violent crime that began in the 1990s.

“These organizations have tremendous capacity to create safe communities,” he said. “We just haven’t given them the commitment and the resources that we devote to institutions like law enforcement.”

That is beginning to change.

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which President Biden signed into law this June, includes $250 million for community violence intervention. Biden has also urged local governments to use some of their federal stimulus money for violence prevention, and over $2 billion has already been earmarked for anti-violence groups, substance-abuse treatment, and mental health services, according to the White House.

The White House also convened 16 counties and cities, including Newark, to share their experiences with community violence intervention. Backed with philanthropic funding, the collaborative is also providing technical assistance to more than 50 grassroots anti-violence groups.

“We’re spreading this model to cities across the country,” said Sherrills, the former Newark Community Street Team leader whose new organization is training other groups through the White House initiative.

Newark is using stimulus funds and other sources to invest $19 million in violence intervention programs. The city’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery also ran a work program this summer that paid students — many of whom had been arrested or struggled in school — to intern at city agencies and nonprofits and take classes on conflict resolution, financial literacy, and other life skills.

“We’re teaching them how to integrate and be a part of something,” said Lakeesha Eure, the office’s director. “We’re teaching them how to belong to the city.”

Lakeesha Eure is the director for the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery in Newark.

Now that school is back in session, the city’s small army of anti-violence workers will continue doing what they can to keep students safe. They will keep a watchful eye as children walk to school, step in before teenage taunts escalate into shots fired, and help young people like Tah’gee envision a future — graduation, college, a good job — that does not involve violence.

Akinyele, the Newark teacher and peace activist, knows there will be setbacks.

Last month, he learned that another former student, 20-year-old Yasir Manley, had been fatally shot. Yet when Newark held its annual 24 Hours of Peace festival the weekend before school started, Akinyele still showed up.

He stood on stage facing a crowd of parents and teens, police officers and outreach workers. Knowing he needs their help to protect his students, he began his call-and-response.

“Stop the shooting,” he said, and the crowd repeated it back to him. “Stop the shooting.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis embarks on another middle school overhaul. Will this one work?

2022-09-09T16:07:40+00:00

Indianapolis Public Schools has never gotten middle school quite right.

In the early 2000s, the district combined grades 7-12 in an attempt to limit dropouts between middle and high school. But chronically low test scores prompted officials to get rid of that model beginning in 2017, pushing many middle schoolers into K-8 elementary schools instead.

Now, under a third consecutive superintendent, the district is weighing a new plan for middle grades: break up the K-8 structure and create standalone middle schools to better serve students amid declining enrollment.

The proposal from the district’s Rebuilding Stronger initiative — meant to shave costs as IPS loses students to charter schools — has divided the IPS community, even though IPS has not yet revealed the plan’s details.

The district will unveil the full plan Sep. 13, and officials are warning people not to leap to conclusions about what’s coming before then. District officials say the move would help offer higher quality education to all students, not just those in choice schools. Opponents of the proposal, however, argue the break up will hurt students academically right as students are recovering from losses during the COVID pandemic.

How many students would be affected and where they might move is unclear. It’s also uncertain when any changes will go into effect.

But not all K-8 schools will be affected. Innovation schools, most of which are run by charter operators that have special agreements with the district, will not be forced to break up elementary and middle grades unless they agree to do so.

Both the Path School and Matchbook Learning, two charters that took over underperforming schools, told Chalkbeat Indiana they will not break up their K-8 school structure, for instance.

The challenge is one of economies of scale. Traditional neighborhood K-8 schools are under enrolled but also spread thin, stuck with the fixed cost of running buildings that have fewer students than they used to. K-8 schools with fewer than 500 students, for instance, spend $1,500 more per pupil than schools with more than 500 students.

For James A. Garfield School 31 Principal Adrienne Kuchik, the fixed cost of her K-8 building means she is unable to offer certain classes.

“All middle school students deserve robust opportunities that meet their academic needs,” she said at an IPS board meeting last month. “As a K-8, I cannot offer algebra to the three students I have in eighth grade who are ready for that. I cannot offer a foreign language to my students, because I do not have the budget.”

But the idea that the district could split up K-8 schools into K-5 and 6-8 schools has angered parents at the district’s high-performing K-8 choice schools, such as Center for Inquiry schools, or those with special programs like Montessori. Parents fear their child’s grades will be eliminated or moved from existing choice schools.

Linus Schwantes-An, whose son is a third grader at the Sidener Academy for High-Ability Students for grades 2-8, said he’s unsure where Sidener will fit into the district’s K-8 shakeup. “We’re very concerned that they’re just going to close the school and we’ll be kind of back to square one,” he said.

Education research makes a strong case against standalone middle schools. One 2012 Harvard University study examining Florida schools, for example, found that students who transferred to a new middle school in sixth and seventh grades suffered a drop in academic achievement on state tests compared to students who stayed in K-8 schools.

That gap in test scores continued to widen over time, researchers found.

“When students transition from one school to another, for whatever reason there does seem to be an increase in potential for misbehaving and decline in academic achievement,” said Clara Muschkin, an associate research professor of public policy at Duke University who co-authored another 2006 study that found that sixth graders in a middle school had more behavioral infractions than those in an elementary school. “And that transitional effect seems to be particularly strong for children transitioning to middle school.”

But district officials argue grade reconfiguration alone is not the sole answer to the district’s middle school problems, but one part of an endeavor to bring academic and extracurricular rigor to all students.

“I think just saying we’re going to go back to a middle school model is not going to get us where we need to go,” said IPS board member Diane Arnold, who was on the board when the district last changed the middle school structure five years ago. “I think a complete redevelopment of the whole middle school experience is what will make this different.”

A history of struggle

In 2015, Indianapolis middle schoolers were struggling.

Three of every four failed the ISTEP, the statewide test at the time. And the district lost hundreds of students each year as they moved into middle school.

At the same time, middle schoolers were — and to some extent, still are — scattered throughout the district in a medley of grade configurations, including 6-12, 7-12, 7-8, and K-8.

The district’s response in 2017 was to separate roughly 2,030 students from six high school buildings.

Some students were moved into five elementary schools, which were expanded to include K-8. John Marshall became a 7-8 middle school, and later so did Northwest and Arlington. The district also created two new middle schools — Butler University Laboratory School 44 and Longfellow Medical/STEM Middle School.

Across the district, however, middle school proficiency levels in English and math on the state test have remained low — in 2022, just 12.6% of sixth graders and 12.8% of seventh graders were proficient in both subjects. Eighth grade proficiency was even lower at 9.9%.

But nowadays, officials are focused on other problems. Not only has enrollment in the district’s traditional public schools declined, but higher-performing choice schools with more programs and resources are also mostly white.

Today, middle schoolers have varying levels of access to diverse academic courses and extracurricular activities.

Eleven of the 12 middle schools offering Algebra I are choice schools, and only two of those serve a population of students of color above the district-wide median, according to a district presentation about the Rebuilding Stronger initiative in May.

Achievement is uneven, too.

At Rousseau McClellan Montessori School 91, a choice school, proficiency in math and English on the latest state ILEARN test ranged from 28.9% in 8th grade to 41.9% in 7th grade — well above the district’s middle school averages.

But at James Whitcomb Riley School 43, a neighborhood school just three miles away, middle schoolers are well below the district average: none of its seventh or eighth graders were proficient in both English and math in 2022. Just 2.3% of its sixth graders were proficient.

Those types of disparities and low scores are what district officials say they’re determined to address through the upcoming overhaul.

“What Rebuilding Stronger is trying to do is less about which grade configuration is absolutely right and is the silver bullet for solving all our problems, because that we do not believe grade configuration will do,” said IPS Chief Academics Officer Warren Morgan. “But what we’re trying to do is figure out what is the best configuration that will allow us to have an equitable and excellent experience across all types.”

Research bolstering arguments in support of the K-8 model and against standalone middle schools is dated, Morgan added.

And three of the five K-6 schools that added seventh and eighth grades in the last reconfiguration of middle schools had declining performance after the fact, noted Chief Portfolio Officer Jamie VanDeWalle. Those three schools — Washington Irving School 14, Wendell Phillips School 63, and Stephen Foster School 67 — became “restart” schools taken over by charter operators due to low achievement.

Grade configuration is the question getting a lot of heat from families right now, VanDeWalle said, but it’s hard to discuss it before the plan is formally released.

“Not that it’s all going to be crystal clear and everybody’s going to love it then,” she said. “But we do think maybe it will make a little bit more sense.”

Community pushback

Many parents of students in high-performing K-8 choice schools don’t want them broken up. They worry that their schools’ poor facility condition score would be used as an excuse to put them on the chopping block for potential closure or consolidation.

“We can all get behind making education more equitable and offering the choice or innovation schools to more students in more areas of town,” said Lindsay Conner, whose son is in third grade at Rousseau McClellan Montessori School 91. “But it seems like they’re wanting to replicate these successful K-8 school models by chopping them up and kicking them to the curb.”

Harshman Magnet Middle School, a choice school, is one of the district’s few schools that includes just grades 7-8.

Students, too, have voiced concern about being separated from beloved classmates.

“I really don’t want it to happen, because it’s not fair that you have to be with a certain grade level,” said Calvin Young, a sixth grader at School 91. “Like, let’s say there’s an 8th grader who’s friends with a kindergartner — not anymore.”

More broadly, taking away certain grades would also remove many older students who younger students may look up to, Calvin said.

Teachers have their own reasons to be wary of breaking up certain schools’ grade structure.

At William Penn School 49, the students Rosiland Jackson had her first year of teaching are now eighth graders. The K-8 setup allows teachers like her to remain connected with their previous students.

“It’s also great to talk to the middle school teachers to make sure that what we’re doing in third grade is going to put them on the right tract and trajectory to be successful in middle school,” said Jackson, an executive board member of the Indianapolis Education Association.

The real problem plaguing traditional K-8 schools, Jackson argued, is the growing number of charter schools. Some of those schools are part of IPS through its innovation network, while others operate separately.

“They have too many charters and innovations that’s sitting in our district that’s sucking the kids from there, and sucking the programs and the money out,” she said. “So you would be able to have an Algebra teacher, a middle-school algebra teacher, if the funding was in the building for that.”

Charter school proponents, however, argue that they are providing better quality options for parents, particularly for students of color who experience a large opportunity gap within traditional IPS schools.

District-affiliated charter schools have indeed grown as students have departed traditional district-run IPS schools.

In 2010-11, IPS had 33,408 students entirely within the district, according to district data. Now, the district has just 18,844 students in traditional district-run schools while the remaining 12,757 are in innovation schools, most of which are charters.

But some parents of children in neighborhood schools support the idea of separating the middle grades.

Natasha Hicks said she already plans to pull her two younger children out of James Whitcomb Riley School 43 and send them to a charter school once they get to fifth grade.

“I’ll put them somewhere else because starting at sixth grade, seventh and eighth, those are middle school ages, so they tend to have more drama,” Hicks said. “So if they’re looking to cut it off at fifth grade, I totally understand that.”

Brittany Maul, an IPS parent, is used to the standalone middle school structure in Pike Township, where her children previously attended schools.

“I think the age groups should stay together,” she said. “The smaller kids should stay together, and the older kids should stay together.”

What is the best solution?

Research suggests that all things being equal, a K-8 grade configuration is most conducive to students’ academic success as measured by progress on state tests, said Martin West, a professor of education at Harvard University who co-authored the 2012 study of Florida students.

But there isn’t one optimal grade configuration for every school system in the country, West cautioned.

“There are other considerations that districts can and should incorporate into their decisions about grade configuration,” West said. “Sometimes standalone middle schools create opportunities for more school-level diversity than do K-8 schools, which tend to serve a smaller catchment area.”

If IPS does break up its K-8 structure, then the district should focus on mitigating the harms of the transition from elementary to middle school, said Muschkin, the Duke professor.

“If children are having turbulent transitions because they’re feeling alone and isolated and not having guidance from significant adults, then that would be something to really work on,” she said.

In the end, the district’s plan may end up exacerbating the major problem it is striving to address: declining enrollment, driven by decisions made by parents like Hicks. At her high-poverty neighborhood middle school, proficiency in both English and math on the state ILEARN test falls well below the district-wide average.

Other parents with children in choice schools, fearful of the impending changes within the district, are already lining up options outside of IPS.

Schwantes-An said he and his wife chose to be a part of IPS when they sent their son to Sidener Academy. As a Korean-American immigrant, he values the school system because it was the first place he learned English and a place where he felt safe.

But with unknown changes ahead, Schwantes-An now reflects on the advice that coworkers gave him when he arrived in Indianapolis.

“Maybe, at the end of the day, I should have listened to my colleagues and sent him to private schools or something,” he said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

A Chicago school confronts a wave of grief after losing 2 students to gun violence

2022-09-07T17:31:14+00:00

Word reverberated through Simeon Career Academy — in hushed conversations in living rooms and kitchen tables, through frantic announcements at drumline practice, over text messages among friends:

Jamari Williams, a 15-year-old sophomore at Simeon, had been shot and killed after school just blocks away at a nearby shopping center — a typical hangout for students.

A few hours later about six miles away, Kentrell McNeal, another 15-year-old Simeon freshman, was shot outside a Hyde Park McDonald’s before dying at a nearby hospital early the next morning.

Staff and students buoyed one another to get through the tumultuous days and weeks that followed the back-to-back shootings on Sept. 21. A balloon release and vigil gave the community a chance to grieve. Chicago Public Schools dispatched extra counselors and social workers and worked with outside groups to provide mental health support.

But much of that attention soon faded.

Students, staff, and alumni interviewed by Chalkbeat indicated things at the tight-knit Chatham high school seemed to return to normal by the holidays.

For some, the shock of losing classmates waned, replaced with numbness at yet another student shot and killed. For others, the heartache has lingered, even as the first anniversary of the shootings approaches.

Grief also spread beyond Simeon’s borders — to other schools where Jamari and Kentrell had friends and families and to other campuses where students have been lost or injured in Chicago’s pervasive gun violence.

Last year, more than 50 school-aged children were shot and killed and hundreds more were wounded, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Since January, 38 people 17 and younger have been shot and killed this year.

And, just three days into this new school year, four Schurz High School students sitting at an ice cream shop patio across from the campus were injured — two critically — in a drive-by shooting. In the week after the shooting, CPS and the Chicago Police Department offered additional safety support before and after school and the district’s crisis teams and counselors provided healing circles and one-on-one therapy.

But the district must do more than flood a campus with resources in such moments of tragedy, say students, staff, and community members at Simeon. A one-time crisis response is just not enough. Instead, they say, schools need proactive, sustained mental health support to help all students — at all times.

Students walk through the halls of Chicago schools carrying “so much trauma,” said Jamari’s cousin Catlyn Savado, who attends Julian High School. “It’s just really, really, really bad.”

Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez has repeatedly acknowledged the problem and vowed to address it.

“We see it every week,” Martinez said during a press conference in October two weeks after a shooting outside Phillips Career Academy that left a 14-year-old student and a security guard injured.

“We can’t ignore it,” Martinez said. “We have to join together. We need to provide these services to students that really need it.”

In 2019, Janice Jackson, the district’s former CEO, spoke before Congress, asking for more funding to address childhood trauma.

Children exposed to trauma are at higher risk of lower grades, poor attendance, behavior problems, and dropping out, Jackson said during the hearing. Trauma can also trigger mental health issues and substance abuse, she added.

Now, a flood of federal dollars has given Chicago Public Schools an opportunity to spend money to address the mental health impacts not only from COVID, but also from the city’s other pandemic:

The trauma of gun violence.

Simeon Career Academy, 8147 S. Vincennes Ave., is located in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood on the far South Side.

Simeon searches for healing after shootings

Jamari and Kentrell used sports as a refuge, the Sun-Times reported.

Kentrell loved basketball, while Jamari dreamed of giving his family a better life through football, a pastor told Block Club Chicago.

But even before their deaths, both teens had also been deeply impacted by gun violence. Shortly before his death, Jamari lost his father to gun violence. Kentrell was a member of GoodKids MadCity, a youth organization that fights to end violence.

Following their deaths last fall, Chicago Public Schools dispatched crisis teams to Simeon. Some counselors followed Jamari’s and Kentrell’s class schedules, offering support to their peers.

The school also partnered with organizations such as Bright Star and New Root Learning Institute for additional support that included group therapy sessions and healing circles. Dozens of students who witnessed Jamari’s shooting received additional support, principal Dr. Trista Harper told LSC members in October.

Harper, who described the incident as one of the “worst days” of her career during that meeting, declined multiple requests for interviews to discuss the school’s response.

“There were so many kids that needed help,” student Jamal Anderson recalled a few months later.

In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it takes the health and well-being of its students seriously.

“The District staffs schools with the resources needed to foster a welcoming learning environment,” the district statement read. “Simeon Career Academy has a Behavioral Health team and two full-time social workers, along with two mental health partners for additional support.”

As part of the 2023 budget, the district plans to implement a curriculum “rooted in trauma-informed practices and a restorative approach to student discipline.” It is also working to expand the idea of school-level “care teams” across all schools.

These teams establish a core group of building staff as a frontline response for struggling students. Along with trained crisis counselors and social workers, they help deal with crises including the loss of classmates from gun violence. Simeon has all of these positions now.

But Simeon student London Carter, 17, said the school needed outside counselors more readily available sooner. Some students don’t feel comfortable speaking openly about their trauma with school counselors and would prefer outside professionals for those types of services, she said.

“We need more people to talk to about this,” London said.

Part of the problem, many in the Simeon community said, is that the need is so much greater at a time when students are already dealing with waves of stress and loss spurred by the coronavirus pandemic.

New Root Learning Institute, formerly known as Umoja Student Development, was already working with the school on restorative programs and student engagement prior to the shootings.

Kristin Moore, New Root director of impact, was at the school to help with the district’s crisis response, and noted the back-to-back shootings hit students hard.

“It affected students in a way that I don’t think the adults were really ready to deal with,” Moore said, noting the situation was not unique to Simeon.

“They’re not just dealing with this in school,” Moore said. “This is happening in their neighborhoods. A lot of times these things that happen in schools are related to things happening in their neighborhoods.”

“They’ve experienced a lot of trauma, a lot of death, and it’s almost as if they just sweep it under the rug,” Moore said. “And then one small event happens and it’s almost an explosion.”

Trauma of one incident can ripple through multiple schools

“Here we go again.”

That’s what Chris Thrower recalls thinking when he heard about Jamari’s death.

The former Simeon Local School Council student representative, who graduated in June, said the loss brought back personal memories from when one of his friends was shot and killed his junior year.

“Why do we got to keep going through this?” Thrower said.

Catlyn Savado learned through a text message that her cousin Jamari had been shot and killed.

The 15-year-old sophomore remembered how hard it was to process.

Even as Simeon students and staff received crisis support in the immediate aftermath of Jamari and Kentrell’s deaths, Catlyn had no access to it. She recalled some of her school’s administrators asking if she was OK, but ultimately she didn’t receive any mental health services.

A shooting may hit hard at one school, Catlyn said, but people rarely acknowledge how far the pain caused by gun violence can spread: “Yes, this shooting happened at Simeon, but we have kids at Morgan Park, we have kids at Julian, we have kids at Fenger who are all affected by this.”

Beyond simply responding to the aftermath of a shooting, Catlyn said, the district and the city need to invest in children and young people now.

“We are living now,” Catlyn said. “Invest in the fact that we’re breathing.”

CPS leaders are planning to leverage the district’s $2.8 billion stimulus haul to do just that. In spring 2021, district leaders unveiled a $30 million healing plan for students. It will expand care teams to all 500-plus CPS campuses over the next three years. The money will also pay for 50 to 60 schools to partner with organizations that specialize in mental health and widespread trauma training for educators.

It’s not clear what will happen when stimulus money runs out.

Simeon Career Academy students, parents, alumni gathered on Sept. 25, 2021 for a balloon release and vigil. A year later after the back-to-back shootings, trauma at the school lingers.

Parents, teachers, alumni pick up where the district falls short

In the immediate days after the shooting, parent Keshia Spraggins was among hundreds of parents who kept their children home.

She remembers hugging her son tight and having hard talks with him about the rise of gun violence and the pain left in its wake.

Spraggins wanted to make sure her son, a junior at the time, was OK — physically and mentally. The message she wanted to impart to her son: You do not have to try to be strong. You do not have to try to carry the weight of all of the violence.

“That’s tough as an adult to deal with,” Spraggins said. ”But as a 15- and 16-year-old, they’re still trying to navigate through life. That’s a lot.”

For many years, she tried to shield her son from the gun violence, but when he returned to school last fall they had to confront the topic head-on.

On the first day of football practice, about a month before the shootings, Spraggins’ son and his teammates were rushed off the field after hearing gunshots. Afterwards, parents would park near the field during practice to keep watch, she said.

In a town hall last fall with Simeon parents, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown promised increased police presence during dismissal to assuage the fears of the school community.

Inside the school, the deaths of Kentrell and Jamari weighed heavily on wary teachers already navigating a tumultuous few years.

Four years ago, then-principal Dr. Sheldon House was ousted from Simeon after the Tribune’s Betrayed series on sexual assault investigation. An internal investigation revealed systemic issues in how the school handled volunteer background checks. The initial investigation found school leadership failed to effectively safeguard students.

Since June 2018, Simeon has had two different principals following House’s removal.

The fall shootings were yet another shock. Between September and May 2022, at least seven teachers resigned from Simeon, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat.

The district’s response was rote — a standard typically given after a student is shot and killed — and just not enough, especially in a year when students were also dealing with the effects of the pandemic, according to teachers who spoke with Chalkbeat on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the school’s administration.

Simeon alum Kenyatta Starks knows the anguish of losing students to gun violence. She remembers losing six students during her time as principal of Harper High School in Englewood a decade ago.

When a shooting happens, district and school leadership need to also provide support to teachers and staff who are on the frontline with their students, Starks said.

“I think that is the biggest gap,” Starks said. “If we don’t equip them with the social emotional support and training to support students, we are going to continue being this hamster on a wheel.”

Teachers have to replay these conversations several times a day, said John Michael Johnson, organizer of Project Simeon, which helped organize last fall’s balloon release outside of the school.

“We need to train the trainer,” Johnson said. “It needs to be institutionalized and part of professional development. It needs to be ongoing. Because if it’s not, it may not manifest itself for weeks or months.”

Project Simeon, founded as a way to forge ties between students, administrators, alumni, and the faith community, has been working with other alumni groups to foster a supportive community around the school. But over time, Johnson says they’ve had to shift some of their focus to help raise money to support families with burial costs.

The scars of a shooting heal over time but that trauma stays with a community, Johnson said.

“It’s going to take more than prayers to help solve issues around gun violence,” he said.

Johnson thought back to the balloon release in late September. It was a moment of healing and coming together.

As he watched hundreds of blue, gold, and white balloons drift above the school’s majestic building, Johnson said he thought about Jamari and Kentrell — and all the others lost to gun violence.

He thought, too, about the work left to be done.

“You may exhale,” Johnson said, “but you’re still holding your breath.”

Mauricio Peña is a reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering K-12 schools. Contact Mauricio at mpena@chalkbeat.org.

‘Kahlief loved hard’: A Philadelphia student’s killing resonates as the new school year begins

2022-08-26T11:00:00+00:00

When Philadelphia teacher Jane Fitzgerald learned about the death of her student Kahlief Myrick eighteen months ago, she performed a ritual that has grown far too familiar.

Fitzgerald took out a pen and added his name to a list of South Philadelphia High School students killed by gun violence or stabbed to death. At the age of 16, Kahlief joined about 50 other names on the list covering Fitzgerald’s two decades at the school, an expanding memorial to the crisis in the city.

“I actually wrote all their names down one day, because I was like, oh my God, I think I’ll forget,” said Fitzgerald, a special education compliance monitor and history teacher. “But I haven’t.”

With classes set to start Aug. 29, many school communities are carrying the excruciating burden of losing students who have fallen victim to gun violence in the city and haven’t made it to the new school year, graduation ceremonies, and other milestones.

Kahlief, a junior at South Philadelphia High (also known as Southern) at the time of his death, was set to graduate this past spring. Those who knew him well say Kahlief’s kind disposition, gregarious personality, and infectious laugh gave his 5-foot-4-inch frame a larger than life presence.

“He was engaging and loved to be around people, even when he got to high school,” Brittany Brunson, his mother, said. “His death doesn’t make sense.”

Kahlief died a few hours before the start of the school day, several miles from Southern’s campus at Broad and Snyder.

Kahlief Myrick, who was 16 when he was shot and killed in Philadelphia, was known for his empathy, outgoing personality, and interest in art.

Concerns about Philadelphia’s gun violence long predate the pandemic. But since early 2020, children’s social isolation and their families’ economic struggles have merged with illegal gun sales to further destabilize public safety. Last year, there were a record number of homicides in Philadelphia. And what has emerged from the hundreds of shootings this year is a grim and heartbreaking statistic: Gun violence is currently the leading cause of death for children over the age of 15 in Philadelphia.

Like gun violence, the safety of children in school frequently generates headlines and divisive political debates. But Kahlief’s death underscores that whatever protocols, technology, and de-escalation tactics schools turn to, educators and parents are often powerless to shield children when they are going about their normal routines in their communities before and after school hours.

The violence leaves school communities reeling from shock and pain, over and over again. Each time a student like Kahlief dies, students and teachers are asked to recover with tools that don’t necessarily feel like enough. And COVID’s disruption of normal school routines has even warped the way in which people experience the shock and pain of losing students like Kahlief.

Fitzgerald was working virtually on the day another teacher told her about Kahlief’s death. “I was sitting at my computer and I just started crying like a baby. My husband came in and he’s like, what happened?” she recalled. “I told him another one of my students was killed.”

Those who knew Kahlief say he got good grades, never got into trouble at school, and had already started to turn his dream of being an entrepreneur into reality.

“Kahlief wasn’t into the street stuff,” Fitzgerald said. “When you picture him, you always picture him laughing and the people around him laughing. If another student was unhappy, or just going through something, he would communicate with them. That’s what we lost in Kahlief.”

A kid from South Philly with dreams

Roughly two years before Kahlief’s death, Grammy-award winning rapper Wyclef Jean joined VH1’s Save The Music Foundation to present Southern with a music technology grant in the school’s auditorium.

A guest host representing VH1 walked into the auditorium and started to get the students, who would get to see Jean perform, hyped up for the school’s grant. For some reason, the host singled Kahlief out of the crowd and brought the then-freshman onto the stage to perform for his classmates.

Kahlief proceeded to surprise and delight everyone with his rapping ability.

“He was clean, perfect, vibrant, and an absolute entertainer,” Fitzgerald said. “I filmed it with my phone, because it just captured him at his best. Just so engaged in the world and in life.”

Kahlief’s mother wasn’t surprised at all that he was picked out of the sea of students that way and wowed the crowd. Kahlief had a big personality and sense of humor that would draw people to him.

“He loved music and wanted to be a rapper. I mean, you may want to say he was a free spirit,” Brunson said. “Kahlief just wanted to learn about life, but he wanted to learn it through art.”

Brittany Brunson looks through photos on her phone of her son, Kahlief Myrick. Brunson bought Kahlief equipment to help him create designs for a clothing line.

He later became known by friends by his rap name Fat Lief, or Lief.

Kahlief wasn’t solely interested in seizing the spotlight spontaneously. In 2018, he had a vision of using his business sense and artistic eye to open his own clothing line. To support his idea, Brunson bought Kahlief a pressing machine and a printer to create designs at home.

Just one year later — working with his brother Kaheir and a cousin — Kahlief was selling the apparel to friends and reinvesting his revenue to purchase more supplies.

He then stepped up his work by beginning to operate out of a professional print shop, where he was allowed to print his own designs on apparel.

Kahlief named the clothing line Immortal Never Die “because he wanted it to always be around,” Brunson said.

Outside of his own pursuits, Kahlief was also a leader in his family. The oldest of four children, his younger brother Kaheir was Kahlief’s best friend. He also had two sisters, Kamorah and Khodi.

He loved his siblings and took on the role of big brother through his actions, not just his age. When his mother and stepfather weren’t home, Kahlief fed his siblings and made sure they completed their homework before bed.

His grandmother Crystal Boyce, who along with his grandfather Norman Boyce helped raise Kahlief and his siblings when they were young, recalled that Kahlief was “so particular” about being an important part of his family as he grew older.

For his entire life, Kahlief was, as his mother described him, “chunky.” While other children might be paralyzed by self-consciousness about being heavyset, Kahlief — who was also shorter than his three siblings — had a different mindset.

Joe Gaines, the clinical coordinator for the STEP program at Southern that provides counseling services and support for students with behavioral or mental health needs, recalled that while Kahlief was not in the program, “I worked closely with a few of his close friends. Kahlief was always in the room and was drawn to help other students.”

“Kahlief loved hard,” said Antonio Anderson, a school climate manager at Southern. “His big thing was he needed to feel how he made others feel. And that was a big disappointment for him, when he didn’t get the love back that he always gave out.”

He also didn’t let his physical stature deter him from playing basketball and other physical activities.

“Even with him being heavier, he didn’t let that stop him,” Brunson said. “He didn’t let that get in the way of what he wanted to do.”

‘You really got to be safe out there’

Although Kahlief generally had a positive and outgoing attitude, a series of tragic and troubling events began to weigh on him.

In 2017, when Kahlief was in the seventh grade, one of his favorite uncles, Kamal Myrick, was gunned down about a block from Kahlief’s house. Brunson said his uncle’s death didn’t just traumatize Kahlief, but started to change how Kahlief viewed his environment.

In 2020, Kahlief’s stepfather Kahlif died of cancer. That same year, one of his friends was murdered.

Then there was a chance encounter on a train, one that highlighted the difficulties he had previously faced at school.

Brunson recalled her son telling her that one day, as he was riding the Broad Street line, Kahlief was approached on the train by two of his classmates from middle school. They confronted Kahlief and reminded him about the days when they used to bully him.

Normally, Kahlief did not back down in such situations. But this time, Kahlief stepped away and headed to the train’s exit when he reached his stop.

When Kahlief turned around to see where the two boys were, one of them pulled up his shirt to show Kahlief he had a gun. That image shook Kahlief.

Texts between Kahlief Myrick and his friend Deagejah Comer; Kahlief’s text is on the bottom.

Around the time of that meeting on the Broad Street line, Kahlief’s mother also noticed a change in his demeanor. He became more guarded and less jovial.

“He became a product of his environment by what he was experiencing,” Brunson said. “I believe he started channeling the possibility of death at 16 years old. I believe losing the number of people who were close to him hardened him and made him a bit cold.”

Two months before he was killed, Kahlief sent a text to one of his closest friends, Deagejah Comer, whom he had known since kindergarten. The text to Comer read:

“I don’t feel comfortable nw nm.”

The two abbreviations stood for “nowhere” and “no more.”

“I told him you really got to be safe out there, because if something happens to you I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Comer said.

“When you picture him, you always picture him laughing and the people around him laughing. If another student was unhappy, or just going through something, he would communicate with them. That’s what we lost in Kahlief.”

To her, what Kahlief experienced demonstrates that a focus on “beef or street beef” and coming out on top in those confrontations can lead some young people in the Black community to live ruthlessly through guns, while others live in fear.

But despite the hardships he faced, Kahlief did not abandon his desire to learn about the world.

In the last few months of his life, Kahlief became curious about religion. Though his family members are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Kahlief had considered converting to Islam after talking to a friend.

“I let him engage, but the one thing I wanted him to do was to read and learn and not just devote himself to something without knowing what he was getting himself into,” Brunson said. “He never got the chance to do that.”

An early riser’s trip to the store ends in tragedy

When possible, Kahlief liked to nap during daylight hours, meaning that sometimes he woke up before dawn.

At 4 a.m. on Feb. 18, 2021, Kahlief walked into a 7-Eleven on 70th Street in Southwest Philadelphia. He and a cousin were in the neighborhood visiting a relative, according to his grandparents, Norman and Crystal Boyce.

While in the convenience store, Kahlief had a short encounter with a much older man, according to Kahlief’s cousin.

“What are you looking at?” the man reportedly asked Kahlief, who retorted by asking the man the same question.

Shortly afterwards, the man left the 7-Eleven, but waited outside for Kahlief to exit. When Kahlief left the store, the man shot him, a police report about the incident stated.

Kahlief lay on the ground in a pool of blood in freezing weather. Police arrived at the scene before an ambulance, and drove him in the back of a car to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in West Philadelphia.

Kahlief was pronounced dead an hour later — at the same hospital where his uncle Kamal Myrick died roughly five years earlier.

A warrant was issued for a man’s arrest in connection with Kahlief’s death, but he is not yet in custody, according to the most recent available information from law enforcement.

As of the week of Aug. 10, there have been 1,422 shootings in Philadelphia this year, a 3% increase from roughly the same time period in 2021. One hundred thirty-two children have been shot in the city in 2022, and 21 children, mostly Black or Latino, have been killed by gunfire.

Statistics from the Philadelphia Police Department also show that from 2019 to 2022, Black male teens in Philadelphia comprised the majority of deaths and suspects in shootings.

School district and city leaders’ proposed solutions to gun violence’s effects on young people cover different issues.

In November 2020, Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson sponsored a hearing on providing conflict resolution to all district students. In April 2021, two months after Kahlief’s death, Richardson’s office reconvened the hearing, and the district committed to providing conflict resolution programming in every school beginning last year.

“By offering conflict resolution training to all students, we will be taking a preventive approach to violence reduction,” Richardson said.

Meanwhile, last June, City Councilman Kenyatta Johnson joined other officials at John Bartram High School to pitch funding for security cameras in neighborhoods around schools where students have been most affected by gun violence. Christopher Braxton, a senior at Bartram, was shot and killed in January near the campus shortly after the end of the school day.

Those cameras will be installed as part of the district’s school safety plan for the 2022-23 school year. Kevin Bethel, the district’s top school safety officer, said the plan also includes an increased police presence around schools during arrival and dismissal times, and a “safe paths” program for areas around eight high schools.

Johnson said he’s concerned about any homicide that happens in his district, but that “it hits home” when a young person like Kahlief loses his life.

“My resolve is even stronger to strategize and figure out ways on how we keep our young people safe. I believe that starts with listening to our young people and making sure they have a seat at the table,” Johnson told Chalkbeat.

During a rally outside City Hall earlier this year, students from nine high schools presented findings from a gun violence survey of 1,300 students. That survey, part of a report commissioned by the Philadelphia City Council, revealed that 95% of students said they couldn’t name a neighborhood organization where they could go to talk about the impact of gun violence.

Students who provided feedback for the report said that the epidemic of gun violence is also a racial justice crisis, because shootings disproportionately impact Black communities that have high rates of poverty and unemployment.

The report also indicated that just like law enforcement and the court system, students’ perception of school suffers when they report heightened fear of criminal activity and violence.

“Youth who are exposed to neighborhood crime, poverty, racism, and educational disadvantage report reduced trust in institutions,” the report stated, citing research. “This distrust extends to schools and is a factor in school disengagement.”

Healing a grieving school family

When students like Kahlief die, the district has a process and resources available to help students and educators at each school. But they tell just part of the story of how school communities respond and come together.

School officials mobilize extra mental health professionals to a specific school, like Southern, that’s acutely affected by gun violence, and makes free outpatient counseling sessions available to staff. Typically, the district will send counselors to a particular school to help students talk through what they are feeling.

The district also has an around-the-clock helpline for grieving children that is answered by a clinician.

Schools like Southern have situations that need intensive interventions, because there are layers of trauma that should be addressed, said Abby Gray, the district’s deputy chief of the Office of School Climate and Culture.

“We’re adding new staff, we’re adding new programming, we’re adding new external partnerships,” Gray said. “We’re trying to keep up with the need. There’s a lot of need there.”

Jayme Banks, deputy chief of prevention, intervention, and trauma services for the district, said that while there’s more the district can do to support schools suffering from gun violence, leaders do try to be flexible and make sure help doesn’t stop unnecessarily at certain barriers.

“We have even opened up school buildings on the weekend for some events as well when more community response was needed,” Banks said.

“Kahlief loved hard. His big thing was he needed to feel how he made others feel. And that was a big disappointment for him, when he didn’t get the love back that he always gave out.”

When students die, administrators at their respective schools get “white papers’’ that make the news official. But Latoyia Bailey, who was the assistant principal at Southern for the 9th and 10th grades while Kahlief attended the school, indicated that this bureaucratic process wasn’t truly necessary.

“Because we have people working at the school who know him very well, because they grew up with his family, we knew about his death before the white papers even came,” said Bailey, who is now the principal of the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush High School in Northeast Philadelphia. “I remember trying to get myself together, not knowing what the day was going to be like.”

What happened next at the school took Joe Gaines, the school’s clinical coordinator for counseling services, by surprise.

The same day that students at Southern — who were learning virtually at the time — received word of Kahlief’s death, Gaines noticed a ripple effect of grief.

“It was the first time where I saw students sort of actively reach out to myself and to counselors and administrators and say: We need to talk about this as a student body, we need a space where we can talk about this,” he said.

This outpouring from the students prompted Southern’s leadership to strategize. Staff changed the day’s schedule and blocked off time for a virtual town hall. Typically, many students skip school-wide events. But the event to mark Kahlief’s death and allow students the space to express their feelings was different, Gaines recalled. The majority of students showed up in some form, and there was a lot of grief.

“It was really heart wrenching,” he said. “Not only have we just lost a student who had so much promise, but then you also really felt for these kids who just didn’t quite understand how this happened and seems to sort of keep happening and what’s going to happen next.”

And while usually, not many students take advantage of the counselors who visit schools who have lost a student in similar circumstances, that wasn’t the case at Kahlief’s death, Gaines said.

After the virtual town hall for students was over, staff at Southern also came together virtually later the same day to heal and discuss the situation.

One outcome of these events was the staff’s realization that students wanted an immediate recognition of Kahlief’s life. After learning about Kahlief’s death on a Friday, they held a memorial service the following Monday, and students submitted pictures of Kahlief for it. It allowed another chance for students to “pour out publicly how they felt,” Bailey said.

In addition, the actions and events overseen by staff and students at Southern laid the groundwork for how the school could respond to such tragedies in the future, even if it’s a response nobody wants to contemplate.

“I just wanted to make sure that even long after I left that was something that was put in place because of the hurt and the harm that Kahlief’s death had on the school community,” Bailey said.

But even those heartfelt and potentially long-lasting responses, of course, don’t protect everyone from intense feelings of loss and anger.

When a popular student like Kahlief dies, some of the fallout is relatively easy to see, like students who lose the ability to focus on their studies. But Fitzgerald, Kahlief’s one-time teacher, said that in the wake of such incidents, unexpected behavior and undiagnosed mental health conditions can be harder for adults to identify and get a handle on.

“If you lose a student in a school, of course, everybody knows it affects his friends,” Fitzgerald said. “But there are other kids that could just have an existential crisis. It could trigger their own feelings. So it can affect a lot of kids in a different way that you wouldn’t even be able to track back to.”

Deagejah Comer outside of Philadelphia’s Delaplaine McDaniel Middle School, which she attended with her friend, Kahlief Myrick.

After Kahlief died, Deagejah Comer, his close friend who warned him to be safe, ended up going to a therapist. But she ultimately didn’t see the point of explaining to the therapist why she was feeling what she felt.

In the wake of Kahlief’s death, when she went to school, Comer — who was once on the honor roll — couldn’t pay attention in class. She spent half a school year crying in a counselor’s office. Comer did graduate from Constitution High School this spring, but she said she is still depressed.

When she thinks about what needs to happen to prevent tragedies like Kahlief’s death, her mind turns to Philadelphia and its leaders.

“I feel like the city needs to take control,” Comer said. “They need to call some reinforcements or something, because it’s getting crazy and it’s only going to get worse.”

Comer can’t say how many people she’s gone to school with have died. If she starts to count them on her hands, she runs out of fingers.

Bureau Chief Johann Calhoun covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. He oversees Chalkbeat Philadelphia’s education coverage. Contact Johann at jcalhoun@chalkbeat.org.

New York schools see a big disconnect between spending and test scores. Why?

2022-08-26T11:00:00+00:00

This is the second in a two-part project on school funding. Read the first piece — focusing on national data on whether students in poverty receive adequate funding for their education — here.

New York state leads the country in spending on public schools, and it’s not particularly close. In 2020, the state spent over $25,000 per public school student, $4,000 more than its closest competition, Connecticut.

For many of the state’s elected officials, this first-in-the-nation status is a point of pride worth maintaining. The latest state budget, boasted Gov. Kathy Hochul, “includes historic investments that will make a difference in people’s lives now and for years to come, including a record investment in our public schools.”

But New York doesn’t lead the way in educational performance. On national math and reading tests, its students only score in the middle of the pack.

On their own, the middling scores don’t prove that New York’s high spending is ill-advised or failing to help students. The state might be doing far worse without it. Or the resources might be helping students in ways that aren’t captured on tests.

But as more and more research has shown that more money typically leads to better schools, New York’s outlier status amounts to a discomfiting puzzle — one that state leaders, education officials, and experts who study this issue can’t fully explain. Figuring out how money can best be used to help students is crucial right now, as officials in New York and across the U.S. have large sums of COVID relief money to spend and large gaps in student learning to close.

“We spend a lot of money in this state,” said Amy Ellen Schwartz, a professor at Syracuse University who has studied New York schools. “The question we should be asking is, are we spending it in the best way to get the most for our kids?”

An Empire State gap between spending and test scores

A recent study asked a crucial but difficult-to-answer question: How much would every school district in the country need to spend to get students to average proficiency in reading and math?

Then it compared that number to what districts actually spend. In many places, particularly high-poverty areas, schools aren’t spending nearly enough, claimed the research, which was released by the Shanker Institute, a think tank affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers.

Few New York districts had this problem, though.

Nearly every district in the state was spending enough to get adequate scores, according to the Shanker Institute study. In fact, most were spending far more.

Based on these spending levels, the researchers predict that most New York districts would perform well above average on national fourth and eighth grade math and reading exams, while New York City would be above average for a large city.

In fact, students in the state as a whole performed at roughly the national average on federal exams taken in 2019. Students in New York City, the best-funded large district in the country, also scored at about the average for a large American city and below the overall national average.

The Shanker Institute study is an estimate taking into account a variety of important factors — including student poverty, the share of students with disabilities, and cost of living. But it doesn’t look at what happens when a school loses or gains money. That’s probably a better way of showing whether dollars improve schools, and recent national research taking this approach has generally shown that, yes, money does make a difference.

At least three studies looking at funding changes in certain New York districts have found that, too. “This money doesn’t seem to be wasted,” said Lucy Sorensen, a University at Albany researcher and author of two of the papers.

Still, Sorensen says she’s not sure why New York’s national scores aren’t higher. “I can’t answer the underlying puzzle,” she said.

Money could be buying improvements beyond test scores

New York officials say the Shanker Institute research puts too much emphasis on test scores, missing out on other ways the state’s spending benefits students.

“The authors do not recognize that multiple measures are needed to measure the effectiveness of educational programs and successfully prepare students for college, careers, and civic engagement,” said JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the state’s education department.

O’Hare, who declined to make someone available for an interview, did not provide any data to indicate that New York performs better using other metrics.

In fact, New York doesn’t excel on one obvious measure: high school graduation. The state’s graduation rate was actually slightly below the national average in 2019. These sorts of comparisons are tricky, though, because different states have different graduation standards. New York, unlike many others, has required students to pass a battery of exams to earn a diploma.

New York’s spending could be also buying other benefits: more extracurricular activities, school-based health services, new buildings, or a variety of non-academic classes.

Bruce Baker, a professor at the University of Miami and lead author of the Shanker Institute report, acknowledged the limits of focusing on test scores. Schools spending more, he said, often “offer lots of different types of programs — more sports and arts,” he said. “That’s not picked up in the outcomes.”

It’s also possible data quirks in spending or student achievement might be skewing comparisons, Baker said. For instance, New York City students seem to perform relatively better on state exams than national tests.

Or perhaps there are unique factors in the state that make it harder to account for schools’ costs or student needs.

“The one-size-fits-all approach in this study doesn’t necessarily apply to New York State and in particular to New York City,” said Democratic state Sen. John Liu, who oversees the Senate’s committee on New York City education. He pointed to potentially higher transportation costs in the city.

Still, he said, “We should pay attention to the findings of this study and see what can be done to further improve educational outcomes.”

Segregation, spending choices could hurt New York test scores

Other potential explanations for New York’s less-than-stellar test scores are more concerning.

One possibility is that something about New York’s school system is pushing down scores. For instance, New York State schools are among the most racially segregated in the nation, which could be hurting students of color.

Some advocates also point to the state’s limited oversight of school curriculum. “Our policy landscape doesn’t really have strong policies that say math instruction must be [this], or reading instruction should look like [this],” said Dia Bryant, executive director at The Education Trust-New York, a group that focuses on the education of disadvantaged students.

Another explanation is simply that the state’s schools aren’t spending money as effectively as they could be.

Some research suggests that students in poverty are most likely to benefit from additional funding. But unlike many states, New York’s high-poverty districts don’t get meaningfully more money than their affluent counterparts. In fact, until recently, those better-off schools tended to get more funding.

The state’s particularly high-spending, affluent districts may feel less pressure to allocate money in a way that improves test scores. “The districts that tend to be most inefficient are small, wealthy, affluent suburbs,” said Baker. “Because they can.”

New York may also be investing in areas without a clear payoff in student learning. It’s one of the few states that requires all of its teachers to obtain master’s degrees, and districts typically boost pay once they do. But research has found only a tenuous link between master’s degrees and effectiveness in the classroom.

New York also spends larger sums than most other states on teacher benefits, including retirement. Teachers value these benefits, but some research suggests that money for base salaries may be more effective for recruiting teachers.

The list of potential explanations could go on.

“I don’t think we’ve done nearly enough work … digging into the particulars around differences in how dollars are spent and trying to tie that to outcomes,” said Josh McGee, an education researcher at the University of Arkansas.

That’s a problem in New York and elsewhere. Even researchers who have found that money matters for student learning agree that how it is spent matters, too. But there is little research-based guidance for educators about how to best spend additional funding, like the unprecedented sum of federal aid schools are now using to help students recover from the pandemic.

Meanwhile, New York advocates and officials are approaching the Shanker Institute study, as well as the broader questions about money and outcomes, gingerly.

“The report does point to things that we should be looking out for in both funding as well as the operation for school systems,” said Liu, even as he questioned some of its conclusions.

Jasmine Gripper, executive director of Alliance For Quality Education, an education advocacy organization that has pushed for more school funding in New York, said this research shouldn’t dissuade policymakers from investing in high-poverty schools, particularly since the state’s highest spending districts are affluent ones.

“Are we spending the most on the students in the highest poverty areas? We are not. Are we spending most on the students with the greatest needs? We are not,” she said.

At the moment, New York lawmakers are continuing to pump money into its schools, recently agreeing to fully fund a formula that sends more money to high-needs schools.

They’re also pushing New York City to use its increased state funding to reduce class sizes — an investment with some much-debated research behind it — through a bill that hasn’t yet been signed by Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has opposed it.

“It’s not about just giving New York school districts a blank check — it’s also about making sure they adhere to basic standards that have been set forth,” Liu said of the bill. “The most basic of this standard is a sound, basic education, which includes class sizes and teacher quality.”

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

Staffing, attendance, behavior: 7 big issues facing schools this year

2022-08-18T19:24:19+00:00

After surviving two school years “completely veiled in the pandemic,” teacher Kathryn Vaughn says this year is off to a different start.

Her stress levels are down. COVID protocols are relaxed. Teachers are feeling hopeful.

“It feels a little lighter this year,” said Vaughn, who teaches elementary school art in Tennessee. “It really feels like we’re just kind of back to business as usual.”

Many students and educators are returning to classrooms this fall with a sense of cautious optimism. But there are still many open questions after last year’s staffing shortages, student absences, and mental health and behavioral challenges interfered with academic recovery efforts.

Here are seven big issues facing schools:

How will schools handle staffing challenges?

Some schools are stepping up efforts to boost student attendance this year.

First, some reassuring news: Despite what you might have heard, there isn’t evidence of an unprecedented teacher shortage nor an exodus of teachers fleeing the profession.

Yet some schools are struggling to staff up — partly for reasons that predate the pandemic. High-poverty schools have long had trouble recruiting and retaining teachers, and the supply of new educators has dwindled over the past decade as fewer people enroll in teacher-prep programs.

But the pandemic also has created new complications. Many districts used federal relief funds to add more positions, including tutors and extra substitutes, creating huge demand for a limited pool of workers. Schools also must compete with other employers for lower-wage workers, such as bus drivers and custodians, spurring some districts to hike their pay and offer bonuses.

Those hiring pressures are bearing down on Paterson Public Schools, a high-needs district in New Jersey. Some 130 teaching positions remain unfilled, or nearly 6% of the total teaching force, about three weeks before students return, said Luis Rojas, Jr., the district official who oversees human resources. While some vacancies are expected, Rojas said the number has surged as teachers take advantage of the tight labor market.

“They understand the demand,” he said, “and folks are jumping around from school district to school district trying to move up the salary ladder and get as much money as they can.”

The causes of the staffing crunch are ultimately less important than the effect on students. Schools that can’t find enough teachers might have to raise class sizes, hire less qualified candidates, assign teachers to subjects in which they have limited training, or rely on long-term substitutes — all of which can get in the way of learning.

“I would tell you that one is too many,” Rojas said, “when you have a vacancy.”

Will student attendance improve?

Chronic absenteeism rates rose last year, as quarantines and COVID infections kept students home for long stretches.

This year, the CDC is no longer recommending that students quarantine after an exposure. Many think that will help stabilize attendance, though it’s possible other factors could persist, such as lingering student disengagement.

In Los Angeles, about half of all students were chronically absent last year. Even without quarantines, 30% of students were chronically absent, up from 19% before the pandemic.

“That is just not acceptable,” Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said last week as he announced a new campaign to boost attendance by visiting student homes.

In Detroit, 77% of students were chronically absent last year, up from 62% the year before the pandemic began. There, the spike was especially concerning because the district has long worked to raise attendance. Now, officials are stepping up efforts to get kids to school.

Lisa Blackwell, a district attendance agent, is part of that. This summer, she’s been knocking on doors to talk up her elementary school’s new before- and after-school care options, and explaining to parents the COVID precautions her school is taking. She’s also planning incentives to reward students, like bringing an ice cream truck to school.

“I want to focus more so on getting the kids excited to go to school,” Blackwell said. “Maybe that will push parents a little bit more to say: ‘Well, my kid is very excited to be at school, so I as a parent, I’m held accountable to make sure they get there.’”

Can schools meet students’ mental health needs?

Inside classrooms across the country last year, the crisis in young people’s mental health was all too evident. After many months of social isolation and learning by laptop, some students were prone to outbursts, meltdowns, and squabbles.

“These kids are very anxious,” said Aaron Grossman, a fifth grade teacher in Reno, Nevada. “The uptick in behavior is very real.”

The distinct but overlapping challenges of worsening student behavior and mental health were fueled by the pandemic — and the stress, financial hardships, and trauma it caused. Federal survey data from this spring confirmed the twin crises: 70% of public school leaders reported an increase in students seeking mental health services during the pandemic, and 56% said disruptive student misconduct had become more common.

Efforts to address both issues have achieved mixed results. Some schools responded to student misbehavior by leaning into restorative practices, which aim for healing over punishment, but others issued more suspensions than usual. Many schools used federal aid to hire more counselors, social workers, and school psychologists, but not always as many were needed. In an April survey, just over half of school leaders said their schools could provide mental health services to all students who require them.

Nance Roy, the chief clinical officer of The Jed Foundation, which focuses on youth mental health and suicide prevention, says schools should encourage students to reach out for help and connect them with service providers.

“It’s developing a culture of care and compassion in schools,” she said, “where there’s no wrong door to walk through for support.”

What will public school enrollment look like?

U.S. public school enrollment held steady last fall, according to federal data released this week. That came after student head counts dropped 2.8% in the fall of 2020, following years of national enrollment growth.

Last year saw a spike in preschool and kindergarten enrollment, both of which dropped sharply when many districts turned to virtual schooling. The return of full-time in-person learning, declining COVID safety concerns, and additional family outreach likely helped boost those grades. But enrollment continues to fall among students in other elementary and middle school grades, a trend that could spell trouble for some districts as the extra funding from federal COVID relief packages dries up.

The issue weighs especially heavily on school leaders in big cities where the share of small schools has ballooned. Now, some are considering school closures, which can create schools that are less expensive to run and have a wider range of programs, but will mean more disruption for students who’ve faced a lot of it in recent years.

“There are really awful tradeoffs,” Shanthi Gonzales, a former school board member in Oakland, California, told Chalkbeat this summer.

Can schools get extra academic help to students who need it most?

Many schools are offering tutoring and other kinds of academic interventions, but it doesn’t always reach the students who need the most help.

The road to academic recovery is coming into focus as data rolls in. So far, elementary school students seem to be recovering more quickly than middle schoolers, but students of all ages are still significantly behind where they would normally be on reading and math tests.

Katrina Abe, a math teacher in Houston, has seen that. Last year, her eighth graders needed extra help with seventh grade topics like interpreting graphs and understanding rates of change. Those concepts are harder to grasp virtually and without working in groups, which happened if students learned online or missed a lot of class the prior year.

This year’s class is noticeably behind last year’s, she said, likely because half of them had three different math teachers in seventh grade. To help, Abe is planning small-group instruction every day and more turn-and-talk time so students can problem solve together. She’s also going to review some fifth and sixth grade standards.

“We’re going to just take that slow, depending on their level,” she said.

Many schools are offering tutoring and other kinds of academic support, but data on which recovery efforts are working is limited. More than half of public schools said they provided high-dosage tutoring in a recent federal survey — a highly effective strategy — but schools often have trouble staffing and scheduling that support. Some districts have turned to virtual tutoring, but it often doesn’t reach students who need help the most.

Meanwhile, educators are keeping their eyes on the larger crop of teens who are behind in credits needed to graduate.

Will schools ramp up COVID relief spending?

Schools have an unprecedented pot of federal money to spend, but many are still struggling to put it to use. There’s a few reasons for that. In some states, money got stuck in red tape and arrived late. Elsewhere, schools are having a hard time finding staff to fill new positions, or hiring contractors to make building repairs.

Some districts that have been slow to spend say they’re planning to ramp up spending over time. Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, had spent only 10% of its federal COVID aid as of late June, mostly to avoid staff cuts and buy PPE. But the district says it has budgeted all the money, including to tutor more students.

Still, this aid doesn’t always feel like new money. New York City recently gave schools the OK to use $100 million in federal aid that was previously set aside for academic recovery to pay teachers, after announcing $215 million in school budget cuts.

This money also has been difficult to track: School district spending plans vary widely in quality and there’s often limited data at the state and federal levels.

But some trends are apparent. When FutureEd, a Georgetown University think tank, looked at spending plans for some 5,000 school districts in June, it found a quarter of federal funds were budgeted for staff, and another quarter were earmarked for academic recovery. Just under a quarter was set aside for facilities and operations, mostly to upgrade heating, ventilation and cooling systems.

How will the culture wars shape what students learn?

America’s latest culture wars are being waged inside schools.

Seventeen states now ban lessons on racism or sexism, six states restrict teaching about sexuality and gender identity, and 18 states don’t allow transgender students to play on sports teams that match their gender.

Peyton, a 12th grader who is part of a support group for Black queer youth in Alabama, said the laws send a clear message to LGBTQ students.

“It’s just enforcing that you’re not normal and society does not want you here,” they said.

In addition to making some students feel less safe, the laws are limiting what they learn.

Some teachers have curtailed class discussions about the oppression of Black people and Native Americans, and some schools are restricting students’ access to books by or about people of color and LGBTQ Americans.

The Biden administration has proposed new rules to protect LGBTQ students, but conservative states are expected to challenge those rules in court. Meanwhile, school districts that run afoul of the new state laws already are facing consequences, and more attacks are likely: Florida’s new law allows parents to file complaints or even sue if they believe their children are taught banned topics.

But for every lesson that is challenged, many more will never be taught as schools seek to avoid sanctions and controversy. In a new survey, 1 in 4 teachers nationally — and nearly 1 in 3 teachers in states with curriculum restrictions — said higher-ups told them to steer clear of contentious topics in the classroom.

As Andrew Kirk, a high school teacher in Texas, told Chalkbeat: “This chilling effect is already happening.”

Jessica Blake contributed reporting.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

As fewer kids enroll, big cities face a small schools crisis

2022-08-01T12:00:00+00:00

On a recent morning inside Chalmers School of Excellence on Chicago’s West Side, five preschool and kindergarten students finished up drawings. Four staffers, including a teacher and a tutor, chatted with them about colors and shapes.

The summer program offers the kind of one-on-one support parents love. But behind the scenes, Principal Romian Crockett worries the school is becoming precariously small.

Chalmers lost almost a third of its enrollment during the pandemic, shrinking to 215 students. In Chicago, COVID-19 worsened declines that preceded the virus: Predominantly Black neighborhoods like Chalmers’ North Lawndale, long plagued by disinvestment, have seen an exodus of families over the past decade.

The number of small schools like Chalmers is growing in many American cities as public school enrollment declines. More than 1 in 5 New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over 1 in 4. In Chicago it has grown to nearly 1 in 3, and in Boston it’s approaching 1 in 2, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

Most of these schools were not originally designed to be small, and educators worry the coming years will bring tighter budgets even as schools are still recovering from the pandemic’s disruption.

“When you lose kids, you lose resources,” said Crockett, the Chalmers principal. “That impacts your ability to serve kids with very high needs.”

A state law prohibits Chicago from closing or consolidating schools until 2025. And across the U.S., COVID-19 relief money is helping subsidize these shrinking schools. But when the money runs out in a few years, officials will face a difficult choice: Keep the schools open despite the financial strain, or close them, upsetting communities looking for stability for their children.

“My worry is that we will shut down when we have all worked so hard,” said Yvonne Wooden, who serves on Chalmers’ school council. Her children went to the pre-K through eighth-grade school, and two grandchildren attend now. “That would really hurt our neighborhood.”

The pandemic accelerated enrollment declines in many districts as families switched to homeschooling, charter schools and other options. Still other students moved away or vanished from school rolls for unknown reasons.

Many districts like Chicago give schools money for each student. That means small schools sometimes struggle to pay for fixed costs — the principal, a counselor and building upkeep.

To address that, many allocate extra money to small schools, diverting dollars from larger schools. In Chicago, the district spends an average of $19,000 annually per student at small high schools, while students at larger ones get $10,000, according to the Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

“I love small schools, but small schools are very expensive,” Chicago schools chief Pedro Martinez told the school board recently. “We can get some really creative, innovative models, but we need the funding.”

At the same time, these schools are often stretched thin. Very small schools offer fewer clubs, sports and arts programs. Some elementary schools are forced to group students from different grades in the same classroom, although Martinez has vowed that won’t happen next year.

Manley Career Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side illustrates the paradox. It now serves 65 students, and the cost per student has shot up to $40,000, even though schools like Manley offer few elective courses, sports and extracurricular activities.

“We’re spending $40,000 per pupil just to offer the bare minimum,” said Hal Woods of the advocacy group Kids First Chicago, which has studied declining enrollment in the district. “It’s not really a $40,000-per-pupil student experience.”

Small schools are popular with families, teachers and community members because of their tight-knit, supportive feel. Some argue districts should pour more dollars into these schools, many of them in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods hard hit by the pandemic. Schools can serve as community hubs and points of local pride even as they lose students — as is the case in North Lawndale.

Race also looms large. Nationally, schools with more students of color are more likely to be closed, and those in affected communities often feel unfairly targeted.

Students attend a class at Chalmers Elementary School. Chicago and New York City are among the places that have spent COVID relief money to keep schools open, prioritizing stability for students and families.

The prospect of closing schools is particularly fraught in Chicago, where 50 schools were shuttered in 2013, most in predominantly Black neighborhoods. The move frayed trust between residents and the district and, according to University of Chicago research, markedly disrupted learning for low-income students.

In Boston, where the district had been losing students well before the pandemic, families are skeptical of closures.

Among the schools most at risk is P.A. Shaw Elementary School in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Revived from a previous closure in 2014, the school had just over 150 students last year, down from 250 in 2018. After making plans to eliminate two classrooms earlier this year — seen by some as a harbinger of closure — the district faced blowback from parents and teachers.

Parents rallying behind the school included Brenda Ramsey, whose 7-year-old daughter, Emersyn Wise, is entering second grade. When Ramsey became homeless and went to stay with family during the pandemic, teachers from Shaw drove half an hour to deliver schoolwork. Later, the school’s staff helped Ramsey find permanent housing.

Ramsey, 32, still remembers the joy she felt when she and her two daughters first visited Shaw.

“The principal looked like them — she was a young Black woman who was excited to see them,” she said.“They were really big on family engagement, family involvement, and that’s just something you don’t see that often.”

Now, with the school’s fate in question, Ramsey is debating whether to keep Emersyn there.

Ramsey’s dilemma illustrates what the district calls its “cycle of declining enrollment”: Schools’ enrollment falls, leading to financial instability – which prompts even more families to leave. The problem is often worse at schools with more students of color.

And when schools face closure, it’s “devastating” for families, said Suleika Soto, acting director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance, which advocates for underrepresented students.

“It means you have to uproot,” she said. “And then if parents don’t like it, then they’ll remove their children from the public school system, which again adds to the toxic cycle.”

Nevertheless, some urban school districts that are losing students, including Denver, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, Missouri are considering school closures. Earlier this year, the Oakland, California, school board voted to close several small schools despite furious protests.

“School budgets have been cut as a way to keep more schools open,” said former Oakland board member Shanthi Gonzales, who resigned in May soon after voting to support school closures. “There are really awful tradeoffs.”

Elsewhere, leaders — buoyed by federal COVID-19 relief funds — have continued to invest in these schools.

Two young students work with Davetra Richardson in a classroom at Chalmers Elementary School.

Chicago will use about $140 million of the $2.8 billion in COVID-19 relief it got to help prop up small schools this school year, officials said. Martinez, who took over as schools chief last fall, has sidestepped talk of closures, saying he wants to study how the district can make its campuses more attractive to families — and push for more money from the state.

In Los Angeles and New York City, officials say they’re focused on luring students back into the system, not school closures.

But federal relief money will run out soon: districts must budget that money by September 2024. When it does, districts may be hard pressed to keep all of their small schools afloat.

“It’s a huge problem,” said Bruce Fuller, an education researcher at University of California, Berkeley. “It’s going to be increasingly difficult for superintendents to justify keeping these places open as the number of these schools continues to rise.”

Chalkbeat journalists Kaitlyn Radde in Washington, D.C. and Thomas Wilburn in Chicago and Associated Press journalist Sharon Lurye in New Orleans contributed to this report. Barnum reported from New York and Binkley from Boston.

‘A place of joy’: Inside a safe haven for Black queer teens in Alabama

2022-07-25T11:00:00+00:00

As the youth group members trickle onto the video call, Joshua Baker tries to keep things light.

“Thank you for momentarily gracing us with your beauty,” he tells DaQuon, who turns off their camera as soon as they join. After Aadhya announces that she got a new car, Baker exclaims, “Come on, wheels!”

But when Peyton says they’re feeling exhausted, Baker can’t help but acknowledge: In many parts of America, it is not an easy time to be young, Black, and queer.

“Within the context of everything that’s going on in the world,” Baker says on this sweltering July afternoon, “everything just feels kind of heavy.”

Baker oversees the Youth Ambassadors, part of a nonprofit that serves and is led by Black queer people in Alabama. At 25, he is not much older than the teens in his group, yet he calls them his babies. Nurturing comes naturally to Baker, who cared for his ailing mother while in high school and then earned a master’s degree in social work. And nurturing, he believes, is what these young people need now.

In statehouses across the country, conservative lawmakers have proposed hundreds of bills this year targeting LGBTQ people and transgender teens in particular. This spring, Baker and the young people in his program watched with fear and fury as Alabama’s legislature passed one of the most restrictive measures, making it a felony for doctors to provide gender-affirming medication to anyone under 19.

Advocates temporarily halted that law through a court challenge, but others went into effect. When the new school year begins next month, transgender students will be forbidden from using bathrooms that don’t match the sex they were assigned at birth. Counselors will have to notify parents if a child expresses uncertainty about their gender identity. And teachers will be barred from discussing gender or sexuality with students until they reach sixth grade.

This afternoon, as the Black queer youth group gathers for its twice-monthly Zoom meeting, Baker knows he can’t singlehandedly reverse the new rules. But he can provide these young people a refuge where they feel safe enough to remove their armor and stretch out into their full selves, together.

It’s “a place of warmth, a place of joy, a place of comfort,” he reflects later, one “that says we are so much more than our trauma. We are so much more than our grief.”

Joshua Baker and the Youth Ambassadors attended a Black LGBTQ Pride event in Selma, Alabama this June.

Facing the fire

For all his talk of joy, Baker decides to start the day’s meeting by discussing pain.

He knows that telling students simply to “choose joy” could ring hollow when some have faced bullying at school and disapproval at home, and now they are watching lawmakers limit their autonomy and protections. So first: Acknowledge the hurt.

To that end, Baker plays a video of one of his favorite poets, Alysia Harris, performing a piece called “Controlled Burn.” In it, the narrator compares her pain to being set on fire. Towards the end she prays, “May this pain make me patient.”

“The goal of that is not to minimize the pain we’ve been through, it’s not to minimize the trauma,” Baker says. “But it’s to see what can grow from it.”

Baker grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, where his mother was a Baptist minister and he sang in his church’s youth choir. He knew early on he was gay, and he sensed he should keep it secret. At church homosexuality was a sin, and at school it was a slur. In high school, watching the few openly queer students endure abuse, he learned that safety can require secrecy.

“High school was an attempt to perform straightness for survival,” he recalled.

In college, he lost his mother, who had struggled with diabetes and kidney disease. He had long worried that publicly disclosing his sexuality would bring shame on her. But two years after her death, when he was 22, he decided to share his full self with the world.

The decision opened new doors. He began conducting doctoral research on Black queer experiences and, this January, was hired to run the youth program.

The program is one component of The Knights & Orchids Society, or TKO. The nonprofit was founded a decade ago by Quentin Bell, a Selma native who is transgender, and his wife Jennine to serve other Black trans and queer people in Alabama. Today the group provides free services ranging from gender-affirming medical care to food and housing assistance, in line with its leaders’ mantra: “We are the help we need.”

At times the Youth Ambassador meetings call to mind a college seminar; at other times, a lively get-together. But now, as Baker speaks to the young people on his computer screen, it feels more like group therapy. You are more than your circumstances, he tells them. You are more than your pain.

“We, in and of ourselves, deserve better,” he says, “even if that’s not what we’re receiving.”

At that, one of the young people chimes in. “Amen, y’all.”

Under attack

If Baker could end it there, he would. These young people deserve peace and happiness, period.

But he knows their peace is always precarious. Racism, homophobia, transphobia loom over their lives, requiring constant vigilance.

“There is not a day that some part of that oppression does not pop up,” Baker says to the group. “I have to be careful with how I dress, how high my voice is or how deep my voice is, how I present myself, how I engage.”

This resonates with Peyton, who will soon begin 12th grade.

“Us being Black and queer, it just adds a whole other level of oppression,” they say during the meeting. “Like people don’t think we should exist. People hate us. They don’t want us here, you know?”

Peyton is a Youth Ambassador for The Knights and Orchids Society.

Peyton, who uses they and she pronouns, has seen this prejudice up close. In their Montgomery middle school, students could be cruel and casually homophobic. When queer people made the news, the circumstances were often tragic. In Peyton’s eighth grade year, Nigel Shelby became national news: A gay teen from Huntsville who was bullied in school, he died by suicide.

“Gay people dying, trans people dying or getting hate crimed,” Peyton recalled. “That’s tough to see.”

Peyton also had been bullied. “I would cry a lot in school,” they said. “A lot.” So when COVID arrived midway through their ninth grade year, forcing school to go virtual, Peyton didn’t mind. Despite the reprieve from school, Peyton was still struggling with their mental health when, last summer, their friends Zuriel and DaQuon mentioned a group called TKO.

Zuriel, who came out as transgender in high school and graduated in 2021, received services from the group and DaQuon followed their work through social media. They saw that TKO was hosting an event at Selma’s historic Black LGBTQ Pride festival that June. So on the day of the event, the three friends in Montgomery piled into DaQuon’s Ford Escape.

“We drove an hour to Selma,” DaQuon recalled, “and our lives changed.”

It was DaQuon and Peyton’s first time meeting the TKO staff, but it felt like a family reunion.

They soon joined the Youth Ambassadors program, where they helped host community events throughout the fall and winter and met regularly with their Black queer peers.

“It makes me feel like I’m on top of the world,” Peyton said.

While organizations like TKO are working to create safe places for gender diversity, the state’s Republican lawmakers passed a bill that blocks trans teens from receiving gender-affirming care.

But just as TKO was creating a safe haven for gender diversity, politicians were trying to outlaw medical care that can be lifesaving for some trans teens.

In February, Republican state lawmakers introduced a bill that would send doctors and nurses to prison for up to 10 years if they prescribed hormones or puberty-blocking medication to transgender young people. The lawmakers called the treatments risky and experimental, but major medical associations support access to such care and say the treatments are safe, backed by evidence, and associated with lower rates of suicidality and depression for the young people who receive them.

TKO’s leaders spoke out against the proposal at legislative hearings and brought the Youth Ambassadors to meetings with lawmakers. But anti-LGBTQ laws continued to gain traction nationally and, in April, Alabama’s legislature passed the ban on gender-affirming care, along with other bills aimed at LGBTQ youth. Gov. Kay Ivey signed it into law, explaining: “I believe very strongly that if the Good Lord made you a boy, you are a boy, and if he made you a girl, you are a girl.”

“Our existence just bothers them,” Peyton says to the group. “So it’s just like, we’ve got to keep fighting for us.”

Joyful resistance

Zuriel speaks during a Zoom meeting of the Youth Ambassadors in July.

What does it mean to fight back?

Sometimes it is marching in the streets, fists raised in defiance, Baker says to the group. “But activism is expansive,” he adds. It also can be storytelling, friendship, or checking in on your community.

“Everybody on this call is an activist in their own right,” he says.

After Alabama’s anti-trans restrictions became law, many in the LGBTQ community were devastated. But, for trans people of color in particular, giving up is a luxury that most can’t afford. As TC Caldwell, TKO’s community engagement director, put it: “Our work doesn’t stop or start with a bill.”

Instead, in its own way, the group continued to fight back.

The month after the bill passed, TKO held a gathering in Montgomery’s Shakespeare Park. It was not a strategy session or protest, but a celebration of community. Laughing children raced across the grass, teenagers played cards, and DaQuon, draped in a rainbow flag, blew bubbles.

“Black joy is so revolutionary,” Caldwell said. “The audacity to celebrate when people are telling you there’s nothing to celebrate.”

In June, TKO staffers traveled to Pride events across the state, offering free HIV testing and information about their services. At Selma’s event, the Youth Ambassadors hosted an open mic night where DaQuon performed an Erykah Badu song and Zuriel read a piece about her transition.

Zuriel also has continued to create videos celebrating trans beauty and pride, which she posts to her nearly 14,000 followers on TikTok.

“Today for example, I got up, did my makeup, and I started making videos,” she says when Baker asks the group what their activism looks like. “Little things like that actually matter.”

Zuriel and DaQuon also joined the TKO staff as paid peer navigators, helping other Black queer teens get the services they need. Taking care of your people is another way to fight oppression, DaQuon tells the group. So is living authentically.

“Being unapologetic about who I am,” they say, “that’s activism as well.”

As one TKO’s peer navigators, DaQuon helps connect other Black queer youth with support services.

As the meeting winds down, Baker gives a few updates. He is arranging for some Black queer elders and artists to speak with the group. He’s also looking into funding for a “healing extravaganza,” a festival of sorts that DaQuon proposed. Peyton suggested incorporating water, a symbol of cleansing and rebirth.

The event resembles the future that Baker envisions, “where queer youth can have soft lives, where they can have tender lives.”

Before the group members say their goodbyes and log off this July afternoon, they recite an affirmation. Baker came up with it in college, and now his babies have made it their own.

“I have a voice,” each young person says. “It is powerful. I am powerful.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum in Tennessee and nationwide

2022-05-05T12:00:00+00:00

Newark school board candidates talk mental health, learning loss ahead of April 19 election

2022-04-15T13:33:00+00:00

Newark voters will head to the polls April 19 to pick three school board members and decide on the district’s proposed local tax levy for next school year.

Seven candidates are running for the open seats on the nine-member board. Incumbents A’Dorian Murray-Thomas and Daniel Gonzalez are running for reelection with newcomer Crystal D. Williams on a slate supported by political powerhouses, including Mayor Ras Baraka and state Sen. M. Teresa Ruiz, the Senate majority leader. The other candidates are Maggie Freeman, Allison K. James-Frison, Thomas Luna, and Phillip Wilson.

The district’s $1.2 billion spending plan for the 2022-23 school year is largely backed by $1 billion in state aid, an increase of $120 million from this academic year. The spending plan also includes $138.3 million from the local tax levy, the amount raised through Newark property taxes to fund schools. Next year’s tax levy, if approved by voters, would remain the same as the current school year’s levy.

If voters reject the proposed tax levy, the budget is sent to the city council to vote on reductions.

The vote comes as the district receives a historic infusion of federal money. Board members will be making high-stakes decisions about policies to address severe learning loss in the district and a mental health crisis among young people seen throughout the state.

School board members develop district policy and participate with district officials in monthly committee meetings on programs and instruction, personnel and policy, and finance, among other topics. The board also picks the superintendent and holds this official accountable.

Voter turnout at the annual Newark school board race has been low for years, hovering around 3-4% of registered voters. The Essex County Board of Elections posted an updated list of voting sites, which will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday. A sample ballot is also available on the county board website.

Chalkbeat asked each candidate the same seven questions about why voters should consider them for office, the challenges the district faces today, and more. Readers can find the candidates’ answers using the interactive feature below. Responses have been edited lightly for clarity.

‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

2022-04-12T18:42:49+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free newsletter to keep up with how public education is changing: ckbe.at/national

It happened in one class, then another.

An English teacher said they couldn’t talk about queer activists during a class discussion because they hadn’t sent home the required opt-out form.

A history teacher skipped over PowerPoint slides about the fight for gay rights during a lesson on the civil rights movement.

Another English teacher hinted that Oscar Wilde was, “you know,” instead of saying he was gay while teaching “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Queer symbolism throughout the text went unmentioned.

To 17-year-old Aneshka, who asked that their last name be withheld, these were all indications that a new law requiring teachers to notify parents about lessons on gender and sexuality had had an effect at their eastern Tennessee high school. The omissions and “hint, hint, nudge, nudge” approach frustrated Aneshka, who identifies as queer and uses they and she pronouns.

“It felt kind of like turning something that’s a fact of history, and life, and my life, into something secret or taboo,” Aneshka said. “It was very much like this odd sense of: So, am I not allowed to mention myself?”

Also read: Rising tide of censorship and scrutiny has schools scrambling to avoid backlash

While a Florida law that prohibits lessons in kindergarten through third grade about sexual orientation and gender identity has drawn national attention in recent weeks, several other states have imposed similar restrictions.

On Friday, Alabama’s governor signed a law like Florida’s that bans instruction about those same topics for students in kindergarten to fifth grade. Montana, Tennessee, and Arkansas all passed laws last year that require schools to give families advance notice of lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation and allow parents to opt their children out.

Ohio, Louisiana, and South Carolina are considering restrictions like Florida’s. And lawmakers in Oklahoma and Tennessee have introduced proposals that would go further, restricting teaching on LGBTQ issues in a history or English class, for example, though neither bill has advanced.

Already these curriculum laws are affecting the choices some educators are making in their classrooms, leaving them and their students unsure about how to talk about LGBTQ content. The result is that sometimes it gets avoided altogether.

Follow @Chalkbeat on Twitter and read all our national education news on Facebook.

Coupled with other efforts, like those seeking to remove books from school libraries that include themes of sexuality and gender, it’s a climate that’s left many students and educators feeling a sense of whiplash.

“They honestly are so overwhelmed,” said Nashville teacher Cassie Norton of her students.

Norton co-sponsors her high school’s GSA club, where students gather to talk about gender and sexuality. Watching a slew of laws pass in quick succession — including a law that restricts teaching about race and racism and another law that restricts transgender students’ access to certain school bathrooms — left the students in the club feeling frustrated and isolated.

“By making it harder to have conversations in the general classroom environment, it’s making those issues worse,” Norton said.

Proponents of these measures have said it should be up to parents to decide when and how to teach their children about LGBTQ topics. And lawmakers who support these teaching restrictions have argued that elementary school students are too young to learn about sexual orientation and gender identity in class.

“We don’t need to be teaching young children about sex,” said Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, when she signed the state’s new law. “We need to focus on what matters — core instruction like reading and math.”

Many students, school staff, and LGBTQ rights advocates have vocally opposed these curriculum restrictions, saying they could lead to incomplete and inaccurate lessons, make some students afraid to talk about themselves or their families in class, and exacerbate mental health disparities that already exist for LGBTQ youth.

While Montana’s legislation was being debated, for example, several high school students and recent graduates said they worried the restrictions would make it harder to access factual information at school about topics like healthy relationships and consent. “There is already a gap in the curriculum around comprehensive sex ed and this bill makes that gap a gaping hole,” said Clara Bentler, a University of Montana student who graduated from high school in Billings, in testimony to Montana lawmakers.

These issues are not new — there have been decades-long arguments about what children should learn about gender and sexuality in school — but observers say this moment is notable because of the number of proposals and the speed at which they’re spreading. Federal education officials have said they’re watching for potential federal civil rights violations.

Some educators in states with these laws now find they’re being extra careful when LGBTQ issues come up at school. One contemporary issues teacher in Tennessee said she added a disclaimer to her syllabus to let students and parents know the class would touch on topics like gender and sexuality.

When Norton taught students about the civil rights movement in U.S. history class this year, she let them pick which parallel movement they wanted to research on their own, and made it an option to learn about LGBTQ protests during the Stonewall uprising — so it didn’t require a form. And when Norton taught about President Reagan and the AIDS epidemic, she sent students home with the entire text of the state history standard to show the lesson was required.

These laws have had other ripple effects.

At Aneshka’s high school, for example, GSA club members had plans to host an “ally week” to teach their classmates about how they could support their LGBTQ peers. They found a short PBS video that provided tips and compiled a list of resources. Then they asked their principal if they could share those tools during the school’s advisory period.

But the principal told the students it wouldn’t be possible because there wasn’t enough time to provide parents with the legally required 30 days’ notice. So, instead Aneshka and other GSA members held smaller, optional events after school and during lunch.

“It’s definitely a lot more impactful than I thought, but in a much quieter way,” Aneshka said of Tennessee’s law. She’d expected some “visible fuss and some bureaucratic mess,” with extra permission slips. But the reality has been “just like silence.”

State education officials in Montana, Arkansas, and Tennessee have left it to local school districts to carry out their state’s laws about lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation. None issued guidance to schools, and none track how often parents are notified about these lessons or how often they opt out.

Both the Arkansas and Tennessee laws say teachers can mention the sexual orientation or gender identity of a historical or public figure without an opt-out form if it provides “necessary context” during a lesson. Teachers can also answer students’ questions on those matters if they’re tied to a class discussion.

In Florida, the new law requires that lessons about sexual orientation and gender identity for students above third grade must be “age appropriate” or “developmentally appropriate” and in line with state standards. But who decides that is up for debate, and the state has until June 2023 to provide guidance.

That’s left teachers trying to figure out the limits of these laws on their own, creating a climate in which some teachers worry that if they say the wrong thing, they could lose their job.

Anita Hatcher Powderly, who teaches sixth-grade English in Jackson County, Florida, and is part of a federal lawsuit challenging the Florida law, has already seen some evidence of that.

Shortly after Florida’s law passed, her schools’ sixth graders lined up to board school buses for a field trip. At first, there were going to be separate buses for boys and girls. But one transgender student, who wasn’t out to all their teachers and classmates, looked baffled about where to sit. Two of her colleagues “looked at me like: ‘What do we say?’” Hatcher Powderly said.

Before anyone could step in, it was announced there was only one bus, so it would be mixed-gender. But the scenario left Hatcher Powderly concerned.

“If we say the wrong thing now, is it going to be retroactive against us?” she said. “How do we comfort this child, how do we provide inclusivity, how do we provide equity?”

When elementary schoolers turn to Nashville counselor Alyssa McGuire on issues related to gender or sexuality, she still does her best to help. Now though, the fear it could cost her her job hangs over her like “a constant cloud.”

Recently, a few female third graders at McGuire’s school told their classmates they were interested in being in a relationship with another girl. The girls got teased by their classmates and wanted McGuire to help them understand what was happening. They had lots of questions.

“They were like: a lesbian’s not bad, right?’” McGuire recalled. “‘Am I allowed to say that? Can I be a lesbian?’”

McGuire talked to them about how people can label themselves in different ways. She would rather risk a parent complaining and give her students the words to describe how they feel, she said, than make the girls feel dismissed.

“There are times when I think about the law, and think about the policy, and I decide I don’t care what the law says, I’m just going to help my student because that’s the priority,” McGuire said. “But it’s just sad that that’s even a thing I have to think about.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Reading list: CRT and book bans in Tennessee schools

2022-03-31T20:10:11+00:00

Across the country, new laws targeting critical race theory and debated books are influencing the small but pivotal decisions educators make every day: how to answer a student’s question, what texts to read as a class, and how to prepare for a lesson.

Eight states, including Tennessee, now have widely varying laws restricting how schools teach about racism and sexism. And recently, several state legislatures have passed or proposed curriculum opt-out laws and measures that would make it easier to ban books.

This comes during schools’ efforts to provide social and emotional support for all students. A renewed urgency to help students navigate their mental health has been amplified by absenteeism, behavioral issues, and quieter signs of distress as many students grapple with the lingering pandemic and social unrest.

Chalkbeat Tennessee wants to hear directly from students and educators about how these contentious conversations have affected school culture and classroom dialogue. How do students and teachers of color show up as their full selves at school? What are the actual implications of the bill in Tennessee classrooms? How can schools discuss race and other difficult issues in a way that’s safe, empathetic, and empowering?

During a March 31 discussion hosted by Chalkbeat Tennessee and Education Trust, students, experts, and educators will talk about their ideas on how CRT debates and proposed book bans are impacting them and their peers.

Read on for Chalkbeat’s reading list for event attendees and anyone who wants to better understand how these issues are playing out in Tennessee schools and beyond.

We hope you find these compiled stories helpful. Do you have any remaining questions? Or story ideas for us? Reach out at tn.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to bolster school library book bans advances in Tennessee legislature

Tennessee lawmakers gather in the Tennessee State Senate chamber.

Days after Gov. Bill Lee signed a law requiring school libraries to screen their materials for “age appropriateness,” Tennessee lawmakers advanced a harsher bill that could slap school librarians with criminal penalties over books some might label obscene.

The bill under consideration also would require districts or charter schools to pull books from library shelves if a parent or guardian complains the content is obscene or harmful to minors. A local school board or charter school governing body would have 30 days to decide whether to permanently remove the material based on local community standards. And the state could withhold funds from schools that don’t comply.

With book challenges and bans on the rise in Tennessee and across the nation, supporters say the legislation is necessary to create processes for addressing complaints from parents. But critics worry school leaders will feel pressure to pull titles from shelves to avoid controversy. They’re also concerned how local officials would define obscenity.

CRT Map: Efforts to restrict teaching racism and bias have multiplied across the U.S.

Chalkbeat is tracking efforts to restrict — and expand — education on racism, bias, the contributions of specific racial or ethnic groups to U.S. history, or related topics. This is a screenshot of one of the maps on Feb. 1, 2022. If we have no information available on a state, its icon is gray.

Officials nationwide have raced to enact new laws and introduce new policies meant to shape how students discuss the nation’s past — and its present. Many of these efforts have attempted to ban critical race theory, an academic framework that examines how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.

In some states, lawmakers have tried to restrict antiracism training or the teaching of what they call “divisive concepts.” But on the opposite end, other states are adding ethnic studies courses or incorporating more about people of color into their learning standards.

Chalkbeat’s map depicts the depth and breadth of these ongoing efforts to both restrict and expand how a core aspect of American life is taught in our classrooms. So far, at least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism. With 2022 state legislative sessions underway, new legislation is in the pipeline.

Not getting into it: How critical race theory laws are cutting short classroom conversations

Students head to class at a Memphis middle school.

Across the country, new laws targeting critical race theory are influencing the small but pivotal decisions educators make every day: how to answer a student’s question, what articles to read as a class, how to prepare for a lesson.

Plenty of teachers say they haven’t changed their approach, and there is little evidence that these laws have led to wholesale curriculum overhauls. But in several states with new legislation, teachers say the ambiguity of the laws, plus new scrutiny from parents and administrators, together are chipping away at discussions of racism and inequality.

As states place new limits on class discussions of race, research suggests such talks benefit students

A page from the book “The Story of Ruby Bridges”.

A handful of recent studies have found that students are more engaged in school after taking classes that frankly discuss racism and bigotry — just as some educators fear such discussions could be threatened by a wave of broad state laws governing classroom conversations.

The laws purport to limit discussion of critical race theory, a concept taught at the university level, but take aim at any curriculum that covers racism, diversity, and inclusion.

Each of these studies on discussions of race focuses on a relatively small program. Still, the findings are increasingly relevant because there appears to have been a meaningful uptick in efforts to acknowledge race and racism in schools.

Tennessee nails down rules for disciplining teachers, withholding money from schools that teach banned concepts about racism

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn talks with a student at Dodson Branch Elementary School in Cookeville, Tenn., on May 12, 2021.

Tennessee has bolstered the financial penalties against large school districts that violate the state’s new law regulating discussions on race and gender in the classroom.

The state also lengthened the amount of time allowed for filing a complaint against a teacher who has allegedly crossed the line, while it stuck with plans to accept complaints only from students, parents, or staff in the impacted district or charter school.

Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn signed off in November 2021 on emergency rules regulating the teaching of prohibited topics. The state enacted the law this spring amid national fury from conservatives about critical race theory.

‘Something I really needed’: States are revamping reading instruction. Illinois is just catching up.

2022-02-24T12:00:00+00:00

It’s the second straight day of torrential rains in Chicago, and the gym of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center is leaking. Moses, one of eight students in a literacy program for teens, pays it no mind.

He’s focused on his teacher, Ronica Hicks, who is reviewing prefixes and suffixes.

“Let’s use a basketball analogy,” says Hicks, equal parts playful and stern. “A pre-fix is like the pre-game.”

The lights flicker. The water drips. But, even on this dreary October evening, Hicks — who, like her students, is Black — is undeterred. In one of the most troubled neighborhoods in Chicago, she’s on a mission to help this group of 16-, 17-, and 18-year-olds read beyond a first or second grade level.

The pilot literacy program, which is run by a tutoring and training organization called Redwood Literacy, has become a potential lifeline to the teens who’ve been flagged by case managers, probation officers, and judges for slipping through the cracks of public education. Somehow they each made it to high school without fundamental reading skills — skills strongly correlated with future employment, earning potential, even better health.

In Illinois, where curriculum is largely a matter of local control, there’s no centralized tracking of how districts teach children to read or recommended curriculum list. But there’s growing recognition, at least among some teachers, parents, and advocates, that some schools across the state — and even some campuses in large districts like Chicago — are clinging to debunked methods.

Hundreds of miles from where the teens sit in Lawndale, momentum is building for sweeping changes that could bring Illinois more in line with the 38 states that have begun widespread campaigns to tackle stubbornly low reading proficiency rates. A new Right to Read bill is being weighed by the state’s General Assembly, and could bring changes advocates say are long overdue.

At least one national research report has shown that students who don’t read proficiently at the end of the third grade are four times more likely to drop out of school or fail to graduate. Even before COVID upended in-person learning, only one out of three Illinois third graders met grade level standards for reading on a state test. Black students tended to fare worse — only one in five reading on grade level. For Latino students, it was one in four.

Sitting in the back of the literacy class one night, Kait Feriante, the founder and CEO of Redwood, wonders aloud how things got to this point for her students.

Students of Redwood Literacy use the Wilson Reading System, practicing sounds and high-frequency words, reading sentences aloud, and using a letter board to manipulate letters.

“How might their journeys have been different if they had been given the instruction they needed in second and third grade,” she asks, “and not just the last years of high school?”

Hicks, a literacy intervention specialist, follows a strict protocol laid out by a curriculum called Wilson Reading System. Twice weekly, the teens meet in the Lawndale center gym for 90 minutes to practice sounds and high-frequency words, read aloud sentences, and write and manipulate letters on a magnetic letter board.

Mills. Shams. Lashes.

They smile when they get something right, race against each other to read sentences before an alarm buzzes, and engage in some good-natured teasing when asked to draw stick figures to check comprehension after silent reading.

The group also struggle mightily against distractions — emergency phone calls and text messages from friends and family in crisis; nights with too little sleep; and troubles waiting just outside the gym door. Because some participants have had recent involvement in the criminal justice system as juveniles, been homeless, or experienced the death of a parent, Chalkbeat agreed to use pseudonyms for this story.

Hicks has a mantra: In her classroom, there is no shame, only grace. If her students make it to the program’s graduation ceremony in the spring, they will have reached a lofty goal. For attendance of 80% or better, they’ll each earn $1,000.

Moses shows up every week.

“I always wanted to get a (special education plan) because I knew — I knew I couldn’t read as good as other people. I couldn’t spell as good as other people. I never got it. I never got that help,” he said, until a younger sibling’s case manager flagged him to be screened for Redwood’s literacy intervention pilot.

“This is something I really needed, and people have seen that I needed it. It used to hurt my feelings,” that he didn’t get more help, he said. “I was mad.”

Some schools are not following the science

Small but promising, the Lawndale program is an experiment now in its second year.

Even when Chicago high schools were mostly closed to students during 2020-21 due to the pandemic, the Redwood classes met in person and instructors worked mightily to counteract years that students described as full of failure and a feeling of invisibility. For nine students in the first group, attendance was 93% across more than 60 meetings, and the teens averaged 1.91 grade levels of growth on a benchmark assessment.

Particularly frustrating for Feriante is that there’s now a large body of research — known as the science of reading — that describes how the brain learns reading in detail. A key tenet is that explicit, systematic phonics is a must. In other words, teachers must directly and methodically teach children the connection between letter combinations and sounds.

“Structured literacy instruction helps all students and it is life-changing for some — we know what we need to do,” Feriante said. “This isn’t magic, it’s science.”

In Chicago and many other large Illinois districts, some schools still go against best practices by using an approach called “balanced literacy,” though exactly how many is hard to say since, like the state, Chicago Public Schools doesn’t centrally track reading curricula, either. “Balanced literacy” is an approach that mixes some phonics into whole-language instruction, a now-debunked philosophy based on the idea that reading is a natural process and doesn’t require direct instruction on decoding words.

All but about a dozen states now have passed laws focusing on early literacy instruction, and 18 states have used federal COVID relief monies to expand programs. These efforts run the gamut – from statewide curriculum recommendation lists of vetted materials, to widespread teacher retraining efforts, to third grade literacy screenings outside of required assessments, to a wholesale rethinking of how colleges and universities teach future educators.

In Illinois, where curriculum traditionally is the domain of individual districts, the conversation is just getting started.

In Plano, just west of Aurora, for example, a small group of teachers at a local elementary school began researching structured literacy during the pandemic and recently lobbied their principal to adopt a new approach. One of them, Pam Reilly, is a former Illinois Teacher of the Year and reading coach who said it has been a sea change at her school.

“I’ve been teaching for 25 years and to think back on all of the classes that I had been with. Did I do something wrong?” Reilly asks. “But I think when we know better we do better. We’re learning, and I think we have to move forward from here.”

Until it debuted a new curriculum called Skyline last summer, the state’s largest school district, Chicago Public Schools, left reading curricula mostly to the provenance of schools and even individual teachers, though the district described its overall approach in a statement as “grounded in the science of reading and the critical combination of decoding skill and language comprehension.” (CPS declined to make its literacy director available for an interview.)

School-level curriculum selection is still largely the case in Chicago, since Skyline is optional, and according to a Chalkbeat public records request, only 33 high schools, one middle school, and 121 elementary schools — about 30% of district-run schools — have adopted the English Language Arts portion, which has elements of structured literacy instruction for children.

Potentially compounding the problem: Nearly half the state’s teacher preparation programs receive failing marks in how adequately they prepare educators in scientifically based reading instruction methods.

A 2020 report from the National Council on Teacher Quality awarded a D or F to 43% of Illinois’ higher education programs that prepare future teachers — a higher percentage than nationally. The council gave 38% of the teaching programs an A or B, 18% a C, and it did not receive enough information to rate 10. (Some higher education leaders have criticized the report, calling it an unreliable gauge.)

“A lot of teacher programs and (teacher training) residencies are guilty about not paying attention to the science,” said Kate Walsh, the president of the council. “We are captive of higher ed in many respects.”

Causing further delays, COVID-19 and the pandemic’s ripple effects through school districts have effectively pushed out the conversation.

“Generally speaking, the early literacy issue is not a prominent conversation among superintendents,” said Kaine Osburn, the superintendent of Avoca School District 37. “Right now, with COVID, only COVID is prominent.”

About three years ago, school board members, teachers, and administrators in Osburn’s district began taking a hard look at how children there learn to read. Ultimately, the district adopted two sets of curriculum materials, launched teacher training for every educator, and began literacy screenings for every student in kindergarten through third grade.

Avoca school board members became so persuaded by the effort that they sponsored a resolution late last year putting the issue on the advocacy slate of the Illinois Association of School Boards. The resolution calls for the Illinois State Board of Education to require pre-service teachers in early learning to complete a course in their teacher prep programs solely dedicated to scientifically proven methods of reading instruction.

Those efforts dovetail with others bubbling up. A fledgling statewide Early Literacy Coalition has helped draft the Right to Read bill sponsored this session by Kimberly Lightford, a state senator long frustrated that Illinois policymakers have yet to tackle the issue head-on.

The Right to Read bill, which would better regulate how reading is taught to the state’s students, is currently being reviewed by the Illinois General Assembly.

The Right to Read bill takes a three-pronged approach: It would push the state school board to create a list of evidence-based reading programs and develop a menu of support, training, and grants for districts who want to adopt them; require an evidence-based reading assessment for teachers seeking relevant licensure in the early grades; and kick off a process of creating a statewide online training module for current preschool and elementary teachers, including those who work with students with disabilities.

“Some states have been heavy-handed about what they’ve mandated,” said Jessica Handy, policy director for the advocacy group Stand for Children Illinois, which backs the bill. But Illinois doesn’t have a deep bench of specialists trained in scientifically backed instruction, yet, so the goal, she explained, is to “empower people from the ground up.”

Both the House and Senate versions of the bill easily passed committees and have headed to the respective floors for debate this session.

But the bill has come up against some pushback, including from the state superintendent and state school board, which currently oppose the effort. Jackie Matthews, a spokeswoman for the state board, said that officials there have been regularly meeting about the legislation but have “significant” concerns that the effort leaves out English Learners.

“Research has demonstrated that effective literacy models must be comprehensive, culturally responsive, and inclusive of foundational skills,” she wrote in an email, “but not limited by them.”

She said the board is already working with counterparts in higher education to develop a training module or microcredential around evidence-based literacy instruction for existing educators.

Lightford, the bill sponsor, said the state needs a more comprehensive approach. She recalls how, working in the Secretary of State’s office in the 1990s, she encountered adults who couldn’t read the questions on the driver’s license tests. After one older trucker repeatedly failed and admitted the problem, Lightford helped introduce an oral exam option.

The experience stuck with her.

“This is something we should have had on the books a long time ago,” Lightford said.

Poor reading skills are an issue for many children, she said, and the data show the problem has an economic ripple effect.

“Poor literacy can hurt a student’s success,” Lightford said, “but it transfers into their adulthood and causes them all kinds of issues with gainful employment.”

‘Bigger words get me sometimes’

The Lawndale reading lessons take place in a brick legal center next door to the apartments where, in 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. moved in for a time to call attention to Chicago’s fiercely drawn lines of segregation. The original tenement where King lived has been torn down and newer apartments constructed in its place.

Fifty-six years later, the teens in the program next door still confront lines and borders and the legacy of segregation.

The Redwood program budgets the cost of Lyfts to ferry the students to and from classes, since getting to the legal center requires crossing a major gangland boundary, a reality that can threaten participation. The students describe education trajectories full of under-resourced schools, crowded classrooms, and tepid acceptance by adults of their paths in life.

“We have to be very honest and say that we as a society have become callous to our young people failing,” said Kareem Weaver, the founder of the Oakland, Calif.-based group Fulcrum who has become a national advocate for the science of reading. “People look at the violence, and the despair and the seeming dysfunction that’s out there, and if you do a root cause analysis, at the end of it, what do you think is the reading level of the kids out there?”

“That’s not just a question for young people,” Weaver added. “It’s a question for adults: Have we given up on our children?”

Moses, who is 18, struggled to read from early on but his problems were overshadowed by violence on his block and stints sleeping in a car or doubling up with other families. During his lifetime, waves of education policy swept through the system with lofty names like Race to the Top and Renaissance 2010 — but they did little to help him move ahead.

During his elementary years, he attended two different schools, was socially promoted twice to catch up with other students his age, and held back once. He says his mother’s requests for a special education program, or IEP, around that time were ignored.

There was more attention on behavior than learning, he said, and he felt nervous about asking for help.

“I was able to get through it, but it was hard,” Moses said. “I had to start asking for help and sometimes I had to do it myself and get it wrong and fail.”

His classmates also landed in the literacy program through a similar combination of poverty, personal tragedy, and systemic neglect.

Jade, who did not want her real name used, said that after her mother died during her elementary years, teachers gave her extra emotional support but kept passing her to the next grade.

After a run-in with the legal system, a caseworker referred her to the program.

“It’s the only thing I need – I need to read and count my numbers,” she said. “I don’t need the other seven or eight classes I take at school. I go in, and I tell them, I’m not in the mood. I’m not going to argue with you. I’m going to just sit down, and look, and watch you talk.”

She likes the Redwood program better than her Little Village high school, where she’s failing two classes.

Hicks, the Redwood teacher, “is helping us understand the words we need — and she explains it way better,” she said. The method of breaking down words and sounds makes more sense. “Bigger words get me sometimes, and sometimes I don’t understand them.”

Redwood has kept students engaged even while Chicago Public Schools has been closed and struggling with attendance. Eight students regularly attend the program.

Another participant, who’s 17, said that when he’s reading, he sometimes trips up on certain words — they come out differently when he says them aloud than how he pictures them in his brain. He can’t recall ever having been tested for dyslexia or another reading disorder.

He also was recommended to the program by a case manager after getting in trouble with the law, but thinks it’s a good use of his time. It keeps him busy, he said, and when it comes to reading, “things are clicking a little more than they used to.”

He’s been struggling with attendance at the small alternative high school he attends nearby, due to issues outside of school that he doesn’t want to explain in detail.

In October, the program had eight students attending regularly. By February, all eight are still there, showing up even when their schools are shuttered for five days after winter break due to a standoff between the teachers union and district leadership. The program’s classes have moved from the gym, which was hard to keep warm in the winter, to a cozy meeting room with colorful murals.

The teens are adding new words quickly now.

Slate. Frustrate. Cashmere.

Hicks defines cashmere for the group, but she doesn’t have to define frustrate. Someone has pilfered some of the reading group’s supplies and stolen some of the magnetic boards used for manipulating letters and sounds.

“Fun fact,” Feriante tells the group during a quick snack break, “that’s now 60% of the words in the English language that you can read and spell.”

Two students have become or are about to become fathers. High school graduation hovers in the not-so-distant future, a question mark for some of the seniors and far from a certainty.

But the guarantee of small group instruction, transportation help, small weekly stipends, a larger end-of-the-year sum – and heaping amounts of Hicks’ grace — keep the reading program going strong.

Redwood Literacy is going strong thanks to strong student support: small group instruction, stipends, help with transportation, and the success of educators such as Hicks.

Heather Saunders, a case manager at Lawndale Christian Legal Center, which provides legal services and case management for young people ages 24 and under, said it was critical to the program’s launch that the teens be incentivized to attend, so they prioritized the sessions.

“Education gets disrupted because of jail time, safety issues, suspensions — most of our young people are way behind,” Saunders said. “There are reasons that are school-involved but also reasons that are not-school involved.”

She looks forward to the program’s spring graduation ceremony. Last spring after the pilot’s first year, students brought their families and there was clapping, balloons, pride, tears.

“Our young people never get called out for their greatness.” She pauses. “A lot of their needs have gone unmet for so long.”

On this February evening, break time is nearly over, the students have stocked up on Takis tortilla chips and Capri Suns that Redwood organizers supplied. Some are updating the adults in the room about efforts to get high school credit for the program.

Hicks, who has more words to review, calls the class back to order.

“Let’s move on, beautiful people.”

Cassie Walker Burke is the Chalkbeat Chicago bureau chief. She covers early learning and K-12. Contact Cassie at cburke@chalkbeat.org.

CRT Map: Efforts to restrict teaching racism and bias have multiplied across the U.S.

2022-02-02T00:20:54+00:00

The map you see here depicts the depth and breadth of these ongoing efforts to both restrict and expand how a core aspect of American life is taught in our classrooms. So far, at least 36 states have adopted or introduced laws or policies that restrict teaching about race and racism. With 2022 state legislative sessions underway, new legislation is in the pipeline.

Our map also documents actions taken by state boards of education and executive branches of state governments. In states that haven’t taken such concrete steps, we have spotlighted comments from public officials and other developments to give readers a sense of how the debate is playing out.

The impact of these discussions on classrooms is being felt. This map provides a snapshot of this turning point in American history and education. We’ve also created a timeline of key events and documents that trace the critical race theory backlash from its beginnings during the administration of President Donald Trump.

Chalkbeat is committed to continued coverage of these actions. If you have information about bills, policies, or anything else relevant from your state or hometown, please email us at tips@chalkbeat.org.

Reporting by Cathryn Stout and graphics by Thomas Wilburn.

Download the data

‘You can’t keep my kids safe’: How violence shook a Newark high school, despite pleas for help

2022-01-11T15:39:00+00:00

The calls for help started the first week of classes at Malcolm X Shabazz High School.

Week one: The police were called about a fight at the Newark school, police records from this September show. Week two: an assault in progress. Week three: “criminal mischief.” Week four: an alleged sexual assault.

In October, a melee in the cafeteria sent the school into lockdown, according to students and videos. In a separate incident, two students punched and kicked a young woman as she cowered in a hallway, another video shows. In November, a gunman fired at students just after dismissal. Around the same time, a fight outside the school ended with a group of students stomping on a young man, a different video shows.

The vast majority of Shabazz students aren’t involved in the violence or disorder; they just want a safe, stable place to learn. But the chaos still has disrupted their classes, tarnished their school’s reputation, and exacted a psychic toll.

“I didn’t really feel safe,” said Alana Syphus, a ninth grader who transferred out of Shabazz this fall.

Across the country, educators reported a surge in behavior challenges this fall and unprecedented mental health needs as students readjusted to school while still coping with pandemic stress and uncertainty. Nearly 60% of parents in a recent poll called increased bullying and violence in school a major issue, and nearly 80% said they’re concerned about how schools are handling discipline issues.

But while the pandemic fueled such problems, it didn’t create them. During the 2019-20 school year at Shabazz High School, students were attacked in classrooms and the main office, according to interviews and incident reports. They were stabbed with pencils and hit by chairs. Both students and staffers had to seek medical treatment after altercations.

In private messages and at public meetings, parents and employees pleaded with officials to address the chaos at Shabazz. Yet it persisted.

“Innocent kids were getting harmed — inside the building, outside the building,” said Sharma Eagan, whose daughter is a Shabazz senior. “A lot of things were happening.”

The safety challenges are only one component of the crisis at Shabazz. In addition to violence, the school has struggled with instability, low academic achievement, and declining enrollment for many years and under multiple district leaders, according to a review of school data, incident reports, and police records, as well as interviews with more than 40 current and former officials, school employees, parents, and students.

Allowed to fester, the problems have intensified. Today, Shabazz’s enrollment has dwindled to 277 students — a third of what it was a decade ago. Its graduation rate fell to 62% last year, almost 20 percentage points below the district rate, and just 1 in 3 graduates headed to college in fall 2020.

During the 2019-20 school year, Shabazz’s suspension and serious-incident rates were many times higher than the district average, even exceeding rates at similar high schools.

This November, nearly 60% of Shabazz students were chronically absent — more than any other Newark high school.

District policies and a lack of urgent attention have entrenched the school’s troubles. Most notably, Newark’s two-tiered high school system steers the top-performing students into selective schools and young people with the greatest academic and social-emotional needs to comprehensive high schools such as Shabazz. Shabazz enrolls far more students with disabilities and behavior disorders and mid-year arrivals than any selective school serves.

The district superintendent, Roger León, promised to revitalize the city’s troubled high schools. Yet by opening even more selective schools, he may have deepened the hole that schools like Shabazz are struggling to climb out of. And while he was directly warned about the turmoil at Shabazz, even receiving videos of the violence, it continued under his watch.

A district spokesperson said all reported incidents at Shabazz were investigated and addressed, and the new principal who started this school year has taken steps to improve learning and safety at the school.

Across the country, no school has escaped COVID’s grip. Yet schools that struggled prior to the pandemic, often because they serve the neediest students with limited resources, were especially vulnerable to its disruptions.

In Newark, the failure to forcefully intervene at Shabazz and similarly troubled schools meant they were on shaky ground when the pandemic erupted. Because state and district officials allowed Shabazz to sink so low over so many years, it faces a far steeper path to recovery. And now, as the latest surge forces students back to remote learning, any fragile progress has been put on hold.

The pandemic might be the most dire emergency to beset the school — but it’s far from the first.

Brit Harley, who helped a nonprofit run an enrichment program in Shabazz for several years, said that long before COVID, successive superintendents allowed Shabazz to spiral out of control.

“I was always appalled at what seemed like the lack of oversight and care from the district,” she said recently. “Why was there not an SOS? How can this continue?”

In 1914, South Side High School opened in Newark’s South Ward. In 1972, the school was renamed in honor of Malcolm X Shabazz.

The making of Shabazz

Before it became Shabazz, the sprawling South Ward campus was home to South Side High School.

South Side opened in 1914 when Newark was a growing, majority-white industrial city. Within a few decades, the population transformed as waves of Black southerners moved North and racist housing policies drew white families to the suburbs but confined Black families to the inner city.

Between 1920 and 1970, Newark’s population shifted from 96% to 44% white, and from 4% to 54% Black. In 1972, South Side students led a push to rename the school in honor of the slain civil rights leader Malcolm X Shabazz.

South Side and Shabazz produced many accomplished alumni, including former Newark Mayor Sharpe James, former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, and Grammy Award-winning singer Cissy Houston. The campus also has long boasted an acclaimed marching band and powerhouse football and basketball teams.

Shabazz boasts an acclaimed marching band.

Yet as deindustrialization, white flight, and government disinvestment wreaked havoc on Newark over many decades, Shabazz suffered too. Violence and poverty in the community seeped onto the campus. “It’s getting more and more difficult,” a Shabazz teacher told a reporter in 1993 as the school grappled with gangs and absenteeism.

The state seized control of Newark’s schools two years later, but little changed at Shabazz. In the 2000s, it spent seven consecutive years on the state’s struggling schools list due to poor performance.

In 2010, state observers found students roaming the halls during class and pulling fire alarms. The “adults in the building have lost control,” the observers wrote, calling it “a school in crisis.” Faulting the state-operated district for providing inadequate support, the reviewers recommended shutting down Shabazz and replacing it with small academies.

The state did not close Shabazz. “It would be like tearing down City Hall,” a former district official told Chalkbeat, citing its devoted alumni network. Instead, in 2011, Shabazz got its fourth new principal in as many years: a 27-year-old named Gemar Mills.

“The school was in disarray,” said Mills, who was promoted from vice principal. “Students were running the building however they wanted to.”

Mills and his team made aggressive changes. They cracked down on gang activity and fights. They replaced graffiti with murals. They held weekly pep rallies and posted online videos promoting “the new Shabazz,” symbolized by its feisty bulldog mascot.

“When we first got there, Shabazz was one of the worst schools in the country,” said Altarik White, an alum who joined Mills’ administrative team. “Through our efforts, we were able to bring back that bulldog bite.”

But when Mills left after just four years at the helm to help lead a national nonprofit, Shabazz began to backslide. The school had relied on a charismatic leader to overcome structural challenges that never went away.

The deep-rooted obstacles include pervasive poverty and crime surrounding Shabazz. In 2019, the poverty rate in the school’s ZIP code was five times the statewide average. Last year through Dec. 5, the local police precinct encountered more than 40% of the city’s shooting victims.

In addition, Shabazz and its feeder schools compete for students and funding with Newark’s many charter schools, which are concentrated in the South Ward. But arguably the greatest hindrance is the district’s own enrollment system, which ushers high-achieving students to selective high schools and the neediest students to Shabazz and the other comprehensive high schools.

This school year, about 31% of Shabazz students have disabilities — nearly twice the districtwide rate. Some parents of students with disabilities say district employees steered their children to the school. (The district spokesperson did not respond to that claim.)

“They said we had to go to Shabazz because he has special needs,” said Theresa Pringle, whose son enrolled at the school in 2018. “They guide you where they want to put you.”

In 2018, the most recent year when such data was available, Shabazz enrolled more students with emotional difficulties that affect learning and behavior than did any other district high school. And compared with selective high schools, a disproportionate share of students transfer to Shabazz during the school year, often because they were forced out of other schools due to discipline problems.

“Instead of having an alternative school, it’s been determined that Shabazz will be the school where all the behavior disorder kids will go,” said Donald Massey, a former Shabazz security guard and football coach.

A Shabazz 9th grader, whose name Chalkbeat is withholding, said the concentration of students with behavior challenges can impede on everyone’s learning.

“It creates a whole distraction for the school,” she said, “because now they bang on the doors, they run in the hallways.”

A 2011 study of Chicago schools found that schools serving more students with academic challenges were more likely to struggle with safety and order. In fact, students’ prior academic achievement had a bigger impact on school safety than crime and poverty in the surrounding area, the researchers found.

“We’re making some of these issues more challenging in the way we sort students” into schools, said David Johnson, a senior research analyst at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who co-authored the report.

By sending so many students with academic and behavior challenges to Shabazz, the district created a combustible situation. By 2019, the situation had come to a head.

Chaos before the storm

Newark officials received repeated warnings that Shabazz was in trouble.

Theresa Pringle, whose son attended Shabazz, raised concerns about violence at the school during an August 2019 school board meeting.

In August 2019, Pringle stood up at a school board meeting to call attention to the chaos. The previous school year, Shabazz had reported 62 serious incidents, the majority involving violence. Its rate of incidents was six times the district average. East Side High School, with four times as many students as Shabazz, reported only 38 offenses.

“These incidents are taking place on school grounds during the school day and escalating into the community,” she said, “putting my son’s safety in imminent danger.”

As predicted, the violence resumed as soon as the 2019-20 school year started. On Sept. 12, a brawl broke out between periods, records show. The next morning, three students attacked a young man at a nearby bus stop. The student was rushed to a hospital.

In the following weeks, students fought or were attacked in stairwells, hallways, and locker rooms, according to incident reports and videos. One student flung a laptop at a classmate’s face, sending him to the hospital. On at least two occasions, security guards had to seek medical care, the reports show.

“It was constant fights breaking out,” said Naheim Dixson, who was a senior that school year.

Video screenshots show some of the violent incidents that Shabazz students recorded during the 2019-20 school year.

Students recorded the mayhem. In one video, the principal, wearing a black suit, rushes into a crowd of dozens to break up a fight. In another, a young woman pummels a student on the floor of the main office. In yet another, four young men assault a fifth student in a stairwell. “The incident could be described as extremely violent and predatory in nature,” the incident report reads.

León was aware of the violence. An alarmed Shabazz employee had been texting the Newark superintendent videos of the brutality, which León referenced at a staff meeting, according to an attendee.

On Feb. 5, 2020, the employee sent León a video of a young man entering a classroom, punching a seated student in the face, and chasing him into the hallway.

“I know in the past I’ve sent you multiple videos of the mayhem that’s going on in Shabazz,” the staffer wrote to León, according to a screenshot of the message shared with Chalkbeat. The employee wrote that León previously referred him to an assistant superintendent, whom the employee contacted, yet the violence continued.

“Mr. Leon if something isn’t done soon,” he wrote, “Shabazz will inevitably end up on the 5 o’clock news.”

The warning was eerily prescient. The next day, footage of several Shabazz basketball players attacking their coach appeared on the evening news. The story soon was picked up by the Washington Post, CNN, and Fox News. Newark’s mayor issued a statement and the assistant superintendent met with Shabazz families, but parents and staffers said they didn’t hear from León.

“When the big stuff goes down, he ain’t there,” said Eagan, the Shabazz parent.

León did not respond to questions about the specific steps he took to address the violence at Shabazz.

“Any and all reported incidents regarding Malcolm X Shabazz High School have been investigated, and appropriate action has been taken in response,” district spokesperson Nancy Deering said in a statement.

The disorder weighed on students. Erica Mends, who was in 12th grade that year, recalled students wandering the halls during class and teachers locking classroom doors to prevent intrusions.

“Every single day we go to school, we don’t know what to expect,” she said. “What is going to happen in the hallway? Who is going to say what to who?”

The chaos compounded other issues. Former students remember sitting in half-empty classrooms while their peers skipped school, and long-term substitutes replacing teachers who quit mid-year.

“It was a miserable, unhappy place to work,” said a teacher who left after the 2019-20 school year.

The violent videos were widely viewed, overshadowing students’ many accomplishments.

“Shabazz is filled with smart kids,” said Dixson, who graduated in 2020 and plans to join the military. But they were “outshined because everyone shined a light on the bad things.”

Pringle felt she had to remain vigilant while her son was at Shabazz. She documented 38 visits to the school to raise concerns about safety and other issues.

“Safety has to be addressed,” she said in an interview. “Parents should feel confident that when their children go to school, they won’t get a dreaded call that something has happened to your child.”

The violence at Shabazz continued through March 13, 2020, when a “male student decided to start hitting [a] female student” in the cafeteria, according to the incident report. That evening, the district announced it was shutting down school buildings due to the fast-spreading coronavirus.

The following year and a half of remote learning offered students a reprieve from the violence at Shabazz, even as the pandemic created new hardships.

In spring 2021, more than a year after dozens of documented fights and assaults at Shabazz, León replaced Principal Naseed Gifted, whom he had installed at the school three years earlier.

Superintendent Roger León spoke at a back-to-school event at Shabazz in 2018. In the background is Naseed Gifted, whom León appointed as principal.

That June, the Shabazz employee who had sent León videos of the violence followed up with the superintendent in an email, which Chalkbeat obtained. (The employee, who no longer works for the district, requested anonymity to avoid retaliation.)

In the June 24, 2021 email, he said he had warned León, another official, and school board members about the “mayhem” at Shabazz, but “my concerns [fell] on deaf ears.” Now, he said, he worried what would happen when Shabazz students, who already “had major social and emotional issues prior to the pandemic,” came back to a school with new administrators and staffers.

“Mr. Leon, I’m praying the district has a plan for the students who will be returning to a school that doesn’t remotely reflect the school they left,” he wrote. “I’m praying for these kids.”

A steep climb ahead

Schools nationwide reported a wave of fights and disruptions when in-person learning resumed this fall. The strain was heightened at Shabazz, where students returned to a new principal and a campus known for violence.

“At the beginning of the school year, it was a fight like every day,” said 10th grader Amiyah McClinton.

A current Shabazz employee, who asked to remain anonymous, described witnessing many of the same problems that plagued the school before the pandemic: terrible attendance, frequent fights, and students wandering the halls during class. Remote learning had also exacerbated academic and mental health challenges.

“You come in and want to teach content,” she said, “but you can’t without first putting out a zillion fires.”

Shanaya Thomas, whose two children attend Shabazz, was already worried about the violence when she learned that a man fired a gun outside the school on Nov. 30, narrowly missing two students. The next day, Thomas emailed Superintendent León to ask that he allow her son and daughter to learn from home.

“You can’t keep my kids safe, so why would I send them to school?” she said in an interview. Last month, she notified the district that she’d be homeschooling her children.

Shabazz students say fights were frequent at the beginning of the school year, but things have since calmed down.

Yet despite those persistent challenges, the school has made some progress. Students say they’ve been impressed with the new principal, Atiba Buckman, who previously led a district elementary school. Buckman meets regularly with the newly established student government, rewards students for good grades and attendance, and recently brought some calm to the school, they said.

“There used to be fights every day; now it’s like every other day,” said Imani, a ninth-grader who declined to give her last name. “It’s not perfect, but they’re doing their best.”

Even when the school has seemed in disarray, it still offered opportunities. Members of Shabazz’s Biogeochemistry Team compiled data that was included in a published study; in 2017, one of the student-researchers won a full ride to Harvard. Parents and students praise the school’s cosmetology and engineering programs, its partnerships with local universities, and its vaunted athletic teams and marching band, which recently performed at an event featuring former President Barack Obama.

“A lot of people were telling me, ‘You put him in there, he’s going to fail,’” said Yvonne Davis, whose son, Tariq, is a sophomore who’s in the marching band and on the honor roll. “Tariq proved them wrong; he’s doing really good.”

Yet the school remains in distress. Its enrollment is at an all-time low and its graduation rate, which trails far behind the district average, is lower than it was a decade ago. Only 31% of Shabazz graduates in 2020 entered college that fall. This November, 6 in 10 Shabazz students were chronically absent, an alarming trend that suggests students are falling further behind instead of making up ground lost during the pandemic.

The dire situation at Shabazz and other struggling high schools bears little resemblance to the vision laid out by León, a former selective school principal who became superintendent in 2018. Early in his tenure, he promised to make high school improvement a centerpiece of his agenda.

“We are changing the entire landscape of not only this school system, but of every single high school,” he proclaimed in 2019.

His marquee reform was reinvesting in vocational programs at the comprehensive high schools and recruiting businesses and universities to support their career training.

But he has been less clear about his plan to improve academics at those schools, which continue to lag far behind the selective high schools in every key measure. For example, when New Jersey last gave its annual exams in 2019, 63% of students at the selective Science Park High School were proficient in math, compared with just 3% of students at Shabazz.

At the same time, León has made changes that could hamstring the comprehensive schools. He eliminated a small school for struggling students, and sent them back to the traditional high schools. He opened several new selective high schools, and instituted a new entrance exam that the selective schools can use to admit top-performing students. Meanwhile, Shabazz and the other comprehensive schools must admit all who apply.

“If they don’t get accepted by any other school on their high school application, they get funneled to Shabazz,” said the current Shabazz employee. “Honestly, I think the district is setting up the school to fail.”

Deering, the district spokesperson, said León plans to eventually restore alternative education programs, which previous superintendents phased out. She added that all comprehensive high schools offer honors and Advanced Placement classes. (Only 9% of Shabazz students took AP classes last year, according to district data.)

“Many South Side and Shabazz graduates have gone on to successful careers, major leadership roles, and a rich history with a committed, dedicated, and supportive alumni association,” she said in a statement. “The new leadership at the school has instituted steps to address academics, culture, climate, and students’ social and emotional learning needs.”

Deering declined to provide details about the improvements. Principal Buckman and Newark school board President Dawn Haynes did not respond to multiple emails.

The district’s response to the acute challenges at Shabazz and similar schools remains a work in progress.

At the December school board meeting, members pressed León about concerningly high rates of absenteeism, serious incidents, and suspensions. León cited an ongoing review of the district’s discipline policies and a plan to train students to provide peer-to-peer counseling.

“A lot of really important work needs to happen,” León told the board, “to actually see these numbers on a downward spiral.”

While successive officials promise change, generations of young people encounter similar problems at Shabazz.

Malachi Muhammad graduated from Shabazz in 2016. Today, he’s part of a group that monitors students as they travel to and from school.

Malachi Muhammad, who graduated in 2016, remembers fights at the school and certain classes that offered little more than “babysitting.” It was known “for being a school that you get dumped into,” he said.

Today, Muhammad is a member of the Newark Community Street Team, whose staffers watch over students outside several designated schools, including Shabazz. Each day, the 24-year-old greets Shabazz students as they arrive and leave. He was talking to the two students the day the gunman exited a white car at dismissal and shot at them; Muhammad helped them escape.

Last month, he stood in the shadow of one of the school’s towering brick walls. It once featured a mural of Malcolm X Shabazz holding a page that read, “By any dreams necessary.” The mural was removed during repairs and never replaced.

Muhammad thought about the brilliance contained within those walls. Like young people everywhere, the students at Shabazz are capable of such greatness, he knew, if given the chance.

“A lot of these minds are revolutionary and they want something different,” he said. “But no one’s enabling it.”

After Quad-State Tornado, Tennessee teachers comfort students and each other

2021-12-15T21:39:01+00:00

As Dresden children returned to class on Wednesday morning, five days after tornadoes crashed through several states, scenes of devastation filled the drive to school: Mangled homes, debris-blocked roads, twisted trees.

In the wake of the Dec. 10 tornadoes, school buildings in the town about 130 miles north of Memphis stand largely undamaged, but educators and students are suffering. There has been widespread displacement of families, which forced schools to close on Monday and Tuesday.

So multiplication, sight words, and typical lesson plans were low on Wednesday’s agenda at the Tennessee schools most affected by the storm. Instead, the objective was to help students feel safe, secure, and loved, said local teachers as a school year already burdened by a pandemic adds another daunting disruption: rebuilding after the storm.

And with the number of tornadoes increasing east of the Mississippi River, according to weather experts, it’s a disruption that some educators are facing more frequently.

“This has been a very difficult year,” said Debbie Moran, a special education teacher at Dresden Elementary School in the Weakley County Schools district.

“I think everybody thought this year was going to be normal after last year, and it wasn’t as normal as we thought it was going to be,” she added Tuesday afternoon while helping a fellow teacher sort through items spared and damaged by the storm.

The tornadoes or tornado — meteorologists are still investigating — that ripped through the West Tennessee town was a “historic long-track tornado,” according to the National Weather Service. The cell spanned about 200 miles with wind speeds over 130 miles per hour. If weather experts confirm that it was a single funnel, it will be one of the longest tornadoes on record.

The Quad-State Tornado, as the weather community has named it, affected thousands of students in Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri, and half-dozen or more districts announced closures in its aftermath.

Although school was out in the Weakley County towns of Dresden and Sharon, Monday and Tuesday were not days off for Britne Mansfield, a first grade teacher at Dresden Elementary. She spent those days reaching out to her students and connecting their families with relief efforts.

“I sent messages to my class asking what are your needs,” said Mansfield. “I want to know who’s alright, whose homes are damaged? Where are you staying? Do you need this? Do you need a shower? And any messages I got back, I just tried to direct them to where they needed to go.”

And through their parents, her students sent messages back.

“Remi told me to tell you that she loves you. Caleb said he was worried about you,” she said on Tuesday afternoon while recalling some of the texts.

Mansfield cherished the words because she also needed support. As she prepared to return to school, she accepted the possibility that she may cry in front of her students.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing for them, necessarily, to see me cry because crying is a natural emotion for something like this, and I want them to know that if they need to cry it’s alright. It’s okay to get it out,” she said. “We’ve never had anything like this affect our town, and it’s a lot. It’s a lot to take in.”

As she stood in her parents’ front yard with Moran and a crew of roofers Tuesday afternoon, she recalled the terror she felt late Friday night when she huddled in her parents’ basement with seven other relatives.

“Can I be frank? I thought we were going to die. I literally thought … ,” Mansfield said, unable to finish the sentence as tears overcame her, and Moran leaned in for a hug.

As of Tuesday evening, Dresden had not recorded a single fatality, quite miraculous given the destruction, said Mayor Jeff Washburn, who is also Mansfield’s father. As of Tuesday evening, the national death toll for the Quad-State Tornado had reached 88, with more than 100 people still missing, according to reports.

Yet even with no local fatalities, the aftermath has been difficult.

“It is a traumatic experience, particularly for children, and even adults, alike, even sometimes for 67-year-old mayors of a city,” he added.

His faith and the goodwill of neighbors have sustained him as people have donated equipment, food, and Christmas gifts for local children.

A few blocks away from where the mayor was working Tuesday afternoon, Kinetha and Kevin West had a smoker running in front of their gun shop and pulled off pieces of steaming hot chicken to serve to families without power.

Kinetha and Kevin West served meals to hungry families in front of their gun shop. Kevin West, who is also an industrial engineer at Tyson Foods, got his company to donate the smoker, a cooking team, and food. By Tuesday evening, they had cooked 600 pieces of chicken, 50 pounds of pot roast, 20 pounds of hot dogs, 10 packs of chicken wings, eight logs of Italian sausage, and four packs of ribs.

Kevin West, who is also an industrial engineer at Tyson Foods, got his company to donate the smoker, a cooking team, and food. By Tuesday evening, they had cooked 600 pieces of chicken, 50 pounds of pot roast, 20 pounds of hot dogs, 10 packs of chicken wings, eight logs of Italian sausage, and four packs of ribs.

The biggest needs right now for the families they’re serving are toiletries, temporary housing, and donations to the Rotary Club fund, the Wests said.

Freddie Brasfield, who sat outside beside the couple, added that more tarps and dumpsters are also needed. Brasfield owns a moving company, and he’s been working from dusk to curfew helping families haul away rubble.

Despite efforts by residents and work crews, by Tuesday afternoon, much debris still remained — haunting remnants of the devastating storm. There may be other unsettling reminders Mansfield said as she imagined the days ahead.

“Thunder is going to be a scary thing for kids for a long time,” she said. “And we’ve got thunderstorms coming in again on Friday.”

Memphis students challenge the politics of mourning as cultures clash

2021-12-07T21:42:56+00:00

As the sun set across Memphis Monday night, dozens of grieving students gathered at Hamilton High School for a vigil to mourn the life of 15-year-old shooting victim Phillexus Buchanan, but their grief turned to frustration as police officers ordered them off the campus.

Instead of honoring their classmate with a balloon release on the grounds of her high school, the students, banned from campus after hours, left the large empty parking lot and huddled across the street on a small sidewalk.

The moment, coming in the aftermath of a tragedy, illustrates how the politics of mourning can be complicated for Black children as their grief traditions clash with a litany of rules and regulations.

Donning a “rest in peace” T-shirt violates the dress code in schools with uniforms, a common requirement in Shelby County Schools, a majority Black district. Creating a TikTok tribute with classmates at lunch runs afoul of the district’s cell phone policy that warns that administrators may confiscate phones if they are visible during the school day. Planning a vigil means navigating the city’s park permit application or the district’s procedures.

“As part of district protocol, we require all requested use of facilities or school property to be submitted through our facilities portal which is reviewed by facilities, security, and school leadership,” said school spokesperson Jerica Phillips Monday night. “Unfortunately, we did not receive ample notification for this request to be reviewed.”

Gathering more than 100 shares on social media, posts about the vigil began circulating midday Sunday, two days after Buchanan was killed.

The Hamilton student, known as Lexus, was killed on Friday night after a high school basketball game when the car that she and other students were riding in was ambushed at a gas station, according to police reports. Also killed in the shooting was 16-year-old Breunna Woods, a cheerleader at Wooddale High School.

Family members have announced a vigil and purple balloon release for Woods on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. on Riverfront Drive near Bass Pro Shop.

A young mother and her infant were also wounded in the shooting, with the mother publicly sharing on social media that the “strong” baby boy is recovering from surgery. “Mommy [is] sorry Jr. I tried taking every bullet for you,” she wrote in a post that has been shared more than 2,000 times.

Lexus and Breunna’s deaths are the 28th and 29th youth homicides in Memphis this year, according to the Memphis Police Department. To their loved ones, they were much more than numbers. Lexus loved fashion and selfies and was a devoted friend, her family said. She went out on Friday to support Breunna, who was cheering at the game.

Breunna was a rising hairstylist who aspired to be a brand ambassador.

“Breunna was a gentle individual that performed exceptionally well within the classroom and on the court. Everyday, she embraced us with her smile and fashion,” Wooddale school administrators said in a statement posted on the school’s Facebook page.

Hamilton did not post a statement about Lexus on Monday, an oversight that some students at the vigil took as a slight.

“Hamilton is not doing their job,” said 15-year-old Morgan Dandridge, who attended both middle school and high school with Lexus. “They didn’t even have a moment of silence for her.”

Morgan said the school provided grief counselors, and the counselors coached the students through relaxation techniques. “They say, take a deep breath, take a deep breath. I get tired of taking deep breaths,” she said. “I’m weary.”

Hamilton High proceeded with classes as usual Monday, added Morgan.

The school’s approach is in stark contrast to the path Rhodes College took in October following the shooting death of one of its students. Campus leaders invited classmates to share public tributes to victim Andrew Rainer in the school newspaper, and the administration canceled classes to give students time to mourn. Rhodes is a $51,000-a-year liberal arts college with a majority white student body. Hamilton is a majority Black historic high school in a ZIP code where the median household income is less than Rhodes’ tuition.

Wanting to do something on campus to remember Lexus, determined Hamilton students created and circulated a memorial poster for classmates to sign, a gesture that received mixed reactions from staff but that the principal ultimately allowed, Morgan said. Many students also promoted the vigil on Monday and came carrying balloons in Lexus’ favorite color, pink. No one at the vigil identified themselves to Chalkbeat as Hamilton High School staff.

Parents and older relatives on hand calmed and reassured frustrated students as they were forced off of their school parking lot.

“I feel that it really made the kids feel as though the school was not concerned with the death of one of their fellow classmates,” said mom Melanie Harris, whose 15-year-old daughter had attended school with Lexus since middle school.

Just before 6 p.m. as the crowd size peaked, spilling over from the sidewalk to the street, mourners gathered around Lexus’ aunt Tanya Dockins to hear her tearful plea to “stop killing these babies who ain’t had a chance to find their way in life.”

The flashing blue lights of multiple police cars both protected attendants from drivers on the busy street and served as a reminder of how Black students are banned, policed, and surveilled, even while mourning.

Students who had stood strong all night broke down.

Classmates who were still composed comforted those around them.

And a Memphis police officer got on his loudspeaker and admonished the crowd for standing in the street, ordering them back on the overcrowded sidewalk.

Some booed the police while releasing their pink balloons to float freely in the air, and in the background, the flashing blue lights of police cars both protected attendants from drivers on the busy street and served as a reminder of how Black students are banned, policed, and surveilled, even while mourning.

Congress set aside $800 million to help homeless students. Months later, many schools are still waiting for aid.

2021-12-03T12:00:00+00:00

When Rebeka Beach’s phone rings, it’s often a cry for help.

One evening last week, the call came from a Cincinnati mother of five school-aged kids. Unable to find an apartment that would take her subsidized rental voucher, she had bounced between motels and shelters since May. But on this night, the shelters were full, and the family didn’t have money for a hotel. They’d been sleeping in her truck and needed help.

Beach quickly dispatched a colleague, who checked the family into a hotel for a few nights.

“It was something we never did before the pandemic,” said Beach, who oversees the school district’s team that supports Cincinnati students experiencing homelessness, who numbered 2,300 the year the pandemic began, federal data show. “We didn’t used to have this level of desperation.”

To address that growing need, Beach is using new federal funding to hire a full-time staffer who will help students and their families find housing. Beach has also been using that money to bring mobile clinics to hotels, where homeless families are staying. Clinic staff make sure students struggling to see get free glasses, and they’ve started screening students for depression, too.

“If basic needs aren’t being met,” Beach said, “our kids are not in a position to learn.”

Congress set aside $800 million in COVID relief money back in March for exactly this kind of help. The first $200 million reached states within six weeks, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona urged state officials to deploy that aid quickly to meet the needs of homeless students. Many states, including Ohio, passed money along to schools over the summer.

But in several states, most schools are still waiting to see the first dollar of these funds due to red tape and a lack of urgency from state lawmakers or officials, according to a Chalkbeat investigation.

Those states include New York, Florida, and Missouri, which serve some of the nation’s largest numbers of homeless students, as well as Kentucky, West Virginia, Mississippi, Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota. Together, they enroll one of every four homeless students in the country.

And while school staff in these states are working hard to help homeless students in the meantime, some say they could have done more if the funds came sooner.

“If basic needs aren’t being met, our kids are not in a position to learn.”

“We just kept waiting and waiting,” said Debra Albo-Steiger, who spent nine years as the point person for students experiencing homelessness in Miami-Dade schools until she left the district in August. She left behind a long list of ideas for how the money could be spent. “There was some type of bureaucracy — I don’t know what it was — that interfered with it coming out faster.”

Delays and bureaucracy kept aid from schools this fall

U.S. schools are getting nearly $130 billion from the latest COVID relief package. They can spend some of that to help homeless students. But the money earmarked just for them matters for a few reasons.

For one, federal officials cleared schools to use this money in ways they can’t spend other funds. Schools are allowed to buy grocery store gift cards or cover a few nights in a motel for families in need, for instance.

The money is also designed to meet the particular needs of homeless students at an especially dire time. Eviction moratoriums have ended, and in some places, more teens are living on their own after their parents died of COVID or other illnesses. Situations in which families are living together “doubled up” have been especially tense — something as small as a sneezing child can lead a family to be displaced over health concerns, as one school staffer in Kentucky saw recently.

At the same time, school staff say it’s becoming harder to help families find housing as rents rise. And for schools that lost touch with homeless students during the pandemic, reconnecting with them requires staff and time.

But seven months after Cardona urged states to get this money out the door, at least $29 million is caught in bureaucratic limbo, according to a review of all 50 state plans and interviews with education officials.

In New York, education officials said they wouldn’t distribute funds until federal officials approved an overall spending plan — a step federal officials say was not necessary. State officials said they didn’t want to burden districts with changes if federal officials requested them. The state hasn’t awarded any money yet.
Florida officials won’t give out the first round of money until the state distributes the second round, likely in December — though federal education officials say states should not hold back the first round of aid like this. Jared Ochs, a spokesperson for Florida’s education department, said the state is “working diligently” to get this money to schools.
In Kentucky, the funds were delayed because of the state’s grant selection and budgeting process, Toni Konz Tatman, a spokesperson for the state education department, wrote in an email. State officials expect the money will reach schools by the end of December.
In Missouri, schools can’t access the money until state lawmakers accept the funds. The state legislature isn’t expected to meet until January.
In Mississippi, the state school board has to sign off on the funds. The board will likely review the issue when it meets in mid-December, education officials said.
In Nebraska, state officials said they weren’t able to get funds out sooner in part because their point person for serving homeless students retired in July. Officials planned to give districts money by late November but could not confirm they had done so.
Wyoming lawmakers had to work out legal concerns before the legislature and governor could sign off. There, the funds for homeless students “are moving through the approval processes,” said Linda Finnerty, a state education department spokesperson.
South Dakota education officials didn’t provide an explanation for why the funds hadn’t gone out yet. The state plans to give schools money “within the next few weeks,” spokesperson Mary Stadick Smith wrote in an email.

Barbara Duffield, who heads SchoolHouse Connection, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of homeless youth, said she understood that it can take time for education officials to thoughtfully plan to spend a new source of federal funds. But she worries some states haven’t prioritized getting this money into schools’ hands.

“Like with all of the relief funds, both the homeless dollars and the others, there is the tension between: Use it strategically to transform systems, and ‘reimagine’ schools… and at the same time there is the now, now, now,” Duffield said. “The thing that’s frustrating is when there’s pointless bureaucracy that gets in the way, or when it just doesn’t rise to the level of priority. Those are the two things that I feel are inexcusable.”

Federal education officials say they’ve been sending a clear message to states for months. “The Department urges states to use these resources quickly and appropriately,” an education department spokesperson said in an email.

A volunteer helps a kindergartner work on letter sounds at a learning center for California students experiencing homelessness in November 2020.

In some cases, state choices held up this aid

States’ decisions about who should qualify for the extra dollars also affected how quickly the funds reached students.

Back in April, Cardona urged states to send most of the first chunk of money to school districts that already get federal grants to support homeless students. Federal officials reasoned that these districts were in the best position to spend the funds well and quickly, since they typically served lots of homeless students and knew the relevant rules.

Ohio took that approach, allowing districts like Columbus City schools to run more summer programs for homeless students, including one that taught science and math lessons at an urban farm within walking distance of a local shelter.

Colorado did something similar, getting many districts their money by June. “We were ready to act,” state officials there said in an email. In suburban Denver, that meant Adams 12 Five Star Schools could pay to staff their program that supports homeless families over the summer, when it would normally be closed.

“Families appreciated that we weren’t going away because their challenges and struggles weren’t going away just because it was summer,” said Leigh Her-Moua, the district’s point person for supporting students experiencing homelessness.

Other states asked districts to compete for these funds. That didn’t always result in extensive delays, and some states said a competitive process allowed them to accurately distribute the new money to districts with changing needs.

“As a rural state, Vermont’s population of students and families experiencing homelessness is often highly mobile,” that state’s education officials wrote in their plan. “The movements of a handful of families can represent a meaningful change to the need for resources available to schools.” Vermont distributed the first round of aid in September.

In some states though, a competition has dragged out the process.

In West Virginia, state education officials chose to run a competition after deciding the 11 districts that already get money to help homeless students had enough to work with.

The education department couldn’t accept applications until state lawmakers signed off on the funds in late October. The state now expects to give some winning districts their money in early December, and stands behind its choice.

“This decision did not hamper any LEA from meeting the immediate educational needs of students experiencing homelessness,” state officials said in an email, referring to local education agencies, which typically are school districts.

Other states have echoed that point, noting schools had other federal funds that could be used to help homeless students and that the new funding could be used to cover previous expenses when it arrives.

“To our knowledge, no school superintendent has reached out to the department to express concerns with our timeline, or indicated that their district is in dire need of these funds immediately,” Ochs, the Florida spokesperson, said in an email. “To suggest that districts are left paralyzed to act, or that they do not have funding to serve students, is false.”

But schools can be hesitant to spend money that’s not theirs yet. School staff who did have quick access to these funds said that made it easier to run programs continuously, hire staff, and pay outside organizations for help.

In one state where schools haven’t gotten this aid, a school staffer has had to hold off on buying a vehicle to take homeless children to school.

“If there is anything else we need to do on our end, please let me know; otherwise, we will remain patiently waiting,” the staffer wrote to state officials.

“We were very jealous of the people who are already spending their money and serving families. We can’t really gear up yet.”

What the wait means for students and schools

In Broward County, Florida, which enrolled some 5,100 homeless students the year the pandemic began, school staff are brainstorming how they might put the new funding to work when it arrives.

One is driving students to school if they have been staying in a hotel for a few nights and the district can’t quickly re-route a bus. They’re also looking at setting up a voucher system at local grocery stores for families in need of food.

“If we had the funds in the summer, we would have moved toward some of the things that we’re speaking about right now,” said Carole Mitchell, who oversees the district’s program that helps students experiencing homelessness. “We are a bit behind the eight ball.”

Laura Tucker, who supports the 4,800 students experiencing homelessness in Florida’s Hillsborough County’s schools, understands the state needed some time to come up with a plan. But it was apparent other states got this money out much more quickly when she attended a recent national conference for school staff who support homeless youth.

“We were very jealous of the people who are already spending their money and serving families,” said Tucker, who would like to use the money to train additional staff and add “manpower” to find homeless students. “We can’t really gear up yet.”

In Kentucky’s largest school district, Jefferson County, newly trained staff have helped spot students in need, but coordinator Giselle Danger-Mercaderes worries her team hasn’t reached everyone.

The year the pandemic began, her district served more than 4,900 homeless students, but that number dropped to just under 4,000 last school year. If she’d had these funds sooner, she said, she could have paid additional staff to “find our homeless students faster.”

“I know that the kids are out there,” Danger-Mercaderes said. “The longer we stay disconnected, the longer they disengage from education.”

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Memphis parents rehearse COVID protocols and pray as students go back to school

2021-08-10T01:34:52+00:00

Karla Mayes Miller packed a note in her children’s lunchbox to remind them that they are loved.

She prayed for them as they turned down the street leading to the school.

And before they left the car, she reminded them to “make good choices.”

Like in years past, Miller’s children woke up excited about the first day of classes for Shelby County Schools, but Miller admitted that Monday’s reopening amid the pandemic brought more nerves than usual for her.

“We’ve been talking about this day for weeks with the kids — about what to expect and the protocols I want them to adhere to throughout the day to remain safe,” she said. “This was my first grader’s first time attending school in person, and she told me she was excited. … She was mainly ready to meet her new teacher and make new friends. My oldest was the same.”

Mixed emotions swirled in Memphis area households, as parents, caregivers, and their children welcomed the first day of classes at most local schools. The latest phase in the ongoing pandemic finds parents grappling with the more contagious delta variant of COVID, which is hospitalizing an increasing number of children while other emerging variants loom in the background.

School officials hope for the district’s first full year of in-person classes since the 2018-19 school year. Memphis public schools buildings were closed the longest in the state, not opening for in-person classes until March. Even then, about two-thirds of Shelby County Schools students opted to learn from home. On Monday, many of those virtual learners returned to the classroom with their nervous parents watching.

Parenting in a pandemic is the sobering reality of rehearsing safety protocols while trying to protect the magic of first days and new class friendships, even if those classmates have different approaches to pandemic safety.

“We have practiced what to do when someone gets too close,” said Deidra Hawkins, mother of a Memphis area first grader.

“We, as parents, have to do our part at home — talk to our children, go over the rules, role-play, and make sure we are all on the same page to ensure safety for everyone,” she added.

Hawkins said her daughter’s school has been “extremely accessible and accommodating” throughout the summer, communicating the latest news, including the countywide masks in schools mandate that the Shelby County Health Department issued on Friday.

While she encourages mask-wearing to reduce the spread of the virus, she hopes that parents who disagree with the mandate come together to work with administrators, teachers, and students.

“We are on the same team for their education and safety,” she said. “It’s not a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with the decision but working as one team.”

Like Miller’s children, Hawkins’ daughter was relatively unfazed by the safety measures. Other matters were top of mind.

“She wants to eat in the cafeteria and play on the playground,” said Hawkins. “My little one was ready for her big girl experience.”

The first grader was also ready for another “big girl” experience, joining her cousins around the family piano for the annual first-day-of-school group photo. After that tradition, the adventures of first grade awaited.

Before her daughter got out of the car, Hawkins said she gave her one last pep talk: “Stay prayerful, do your best, listen to your teacher, and always show love to everyone.”

In Pew’s latest Religious Landscape Study, more than 78% of Tennessee adults surveyed said that they believe in God, and in a region that’s deeply religious, many parents are praying for protection this school year amid a swirl of uncertainty.

“We prayed this morning before leaving the house. We prayed for the students, teachers, administrators, and all staff in the schools. We prayed for a fun and safe school year for everyone,” said Lydia Crivens whose daughter started middle school on Monday.

Prayers also flowed from the Royston household as neighboring DeSoto County Schools in Mississippi, where there is not a mask mandate, started class on Thursday.

Rodney Royston said that the family celebrated his daughter’s first day of second grade last week with dinner and a reminder of expectations.

“We discussed how her day went, and reinforced expected behaviors pertaining to pandemic protocols such as keeping her mask on, washing and sanitizing her hands throughout the day, and keeping her hands to herself,” he said. “She’s the type of kid where you give her instructions and restrictions, and she finds a way to navigate through them without complaint.”

He added that although this school year feels much different to him, and his mind has wandered through countless of “what-if scenarios,” his daughter is simply ready for a normal school year.

“I’d imagine that older students returning back to school during a pandemic may have a tougher time adjusting to the new norms of school,” he said. “Luckily for Blake, this is no new norm for her. It’s just the norm.”

Chicago fell behind on plans for students with disabilities during COVID-19. New data show the depth of the problem.

2021-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Before the coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools last year, David Rushing was an energetic 15-year-old who liked to play basketball and baseball. He was an avid swimmer and a member of the Jesse White Tumblers — performing high-energy stunts like backflips and somersaults, sometimes in front of large audiences.

Then COVID-19 swept across the country and forced Chicago schools to close, leaving David, who has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, unable to participate in sports and without the proper support to help him focus in online classes.

At the beginning of his freshman year at Dunbar Vocational Career Academy last fall, David’s Individualized Education Program, a legally binding document known as an IEP that outlines what special education services and interventions a student should receive, was set to expire on Nov. 5, 2020. He was to be re-evaluated for a new plan the month before. But that didn’t happen.

Within a matter of months, David’s life spiraled out of control.

Yvonne Bailey, David’s biological grandmother who adopted him at a young age, noticed David behaving differently.

David “got involved with the wrong people in the neighborhood,” Bailey said. “He was running away from home and staying out all night.”

David’s case is not isolated. The pandemic year has uprooted support for students with disabilities in Chicago and nationwide, creating a backlog of old IEPs that could lead to widening academic gaps for students in need of special education services. Students with disabilities make up 14.6% of Chicago’s enrollment, almost 50,000 students. Nearly half of those students are Latino, and about 40 percent are Black.

New data obtained by Chalkbeat shows that during the 2019-20 school year — which saw an 11-day teacher strike and COVID-19 school closures — more than 10,050 re-evaluations, initial evaluations, and annual reviews were incomplete, a more than threefold increase over the previous school year. More than 3,500 students, like David, were waiting for a re-evaluation that is required by federal law.

The data shows improvements during the 2020-21 school year, but 1,768 students were waiting to be re-evaluated and 230 were waiting for an initial evaluation to get an IEP.

Hidden from public view

Delays in IEP re-evaluations were a pre-pandemic problem that landed Chicago Public Schools under state review. In 2018, the state board of education appointed a monitor to ensure that Chicago was not denying or delaying special education services to students. In June of this year, the state board of education approved another year of state oversight.

Even though the coronavirus pandemic made it difficult to conduct IEPs in person, schools were still responsible for updating the plans and had to provide remote evaluations. Yet despite issuing waivers for such activities as standardized testing, the U.S. Department of Education never waived any part of federal law meant to protect students with disabilities.

Correspondence between Chicago, the state board of education, and special education advocates in the city shows that as far back as September, officials had evidence that the pandemic had disrupted students’ services.

In a September letter obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request, the district’s Office of Diverse Learner Supports and Services acknowledged that some evaluations were left “indeterminate.” The district promised in the letter that all evaluations would be completed during the 2020-21 school year.

Some parents and advocates say that did not happen, and data released by the district show some students were still left waiting during the 2020-21 school year. But the full scope of the problem is not clear because Chicago Public Schools continues to withhold key data points that indicate compliance with federal special education law, including the race of children whose families seek evaluations and how many referrals were initially requested by parents or educators.

Chalkbeat sent Freedom of Information Act requests to both the state board of education and Chicago Public Schools in March asking for data on how many students were waiting for initial evaluations to create an IEP and how many students needed to be re-evaluated to update their current IEPs during the 2018-2021 school years.

The state board referred Chalkbeat back to Chicago Public Schools officials, saying that the state only has limited access to the district’s database that tracks the status of students’ IEPs. Chicago Public Schools extended the information request deadline several times. In April, Chalkbeat went to the state’s Attorney General Public Access Bureau for assistance, but the district still refused to provide the data. In late July, the district partially released data weeks after Chalkbeat filed a lawsuit against the school district in the Cook County Circuit Court. (Chalkbeat is represented by Loevy & Loevy, a civil rights firm.)

The data Chicago released in late July offers a first public look at end-of-year numbers for the 2018-19, 2019-20, 2020-21 school years and shows how many re-evaluations, initial evaluations, and annual reviews were completed and how many were left incomplete. Across the three categories, students in need of annual reviews were most likely to face delays, with about 8.7% of eligible students waiting in 2019-20 compared to 1.7% the year prior.

Network	2021 Incomplete	2020 Incomplete	2019 Incomplete
Other	66.08%	62.41%	N/A
AUSL	18.53%	40.63%	8.16%
Options	17.61%	45.89%	20.48%
Network 15	17.54%	14.44%	1.80%
Network 3	14.02%	24.76%	1.06%
Chicago Average	13.13%	25.14%	7.75%
Network 16	12.44%	15.97%	6.79%
Network 13	12.43%	36.47%	0.82%
Network 6	12.14%	24.39%	2.65%
Network 11	10.88%	31.53%	2.02%
Network 10	10.84%	32.46%	1.10%
Network 12	10.70%	26.49%	3.67%
Network 17	9.75%	18.36%	0.87%
Charter	8.48%	17.80%	5.40%
Network 4	8.37%	29.57%	0.23%
ISP	8.28%	21.37%	1.03%
Network 9	8.23%	28.40%	0.90%
Contract	8.22%	13.33%	1.49%
Network 1	7.37%	27.18%	0.79%
Network 8	5.70%	18.04%	0.25%
Network 7	4.58%	23.05%	0.69%
Network 14	3.58%	12.05%	0.51%
Network 2	3.57%	28.07%	1.91%
Network 5	3.23%	21.19%	1.53%

Rates of incomplete education plan re-evaluations in Chicago schools

NOTE: “Other” includes students who are enrolled in a separate day school, have been evaluated but have not yet enrolled, or attend a private school but receive services from CPS, such as therapeutic day schools.

Annie Fu, Chalkbeat

According to the data provided by the district, broken down by network, the 2019-20 school year saw the highest numbers of students waiting for a re-evaluation. The number of students waiting depended on where they attended school in the city and what type of school it was. Students who attended schools in Networks 11 and 13 — the former spans Englewood and parts of the Southwest Side and the latter cuts across neighborhoods on the city’s far south and far east sides — were unlikely to be re-evaluated during the school year.

Also, the district’s turnaround school operator, the Academy for Urban School Leadership, or AUSL, which was tasked with managing some of the lowest-performing schools in Chicago until the district decided to phase out the program earlier this year, had a higher rate of non-compliance during the 2019-20 year, with 40.9% of re-evaluations left incomplete. Charters as a whole tended to perform better than city averages during 2019-20, with 17.8% of re-evaluations incomplete compared with a citywide average of 25%. The following year, however, charters did not comply as well as most of the district-run networks, reporting some of the highest numbers of incomplete annual reviews and initial IEP evaluations and reporting middle-of-the-pack numbers for re-evaluations.

Chicago Public Schools denied a Chalkbeat request to interview a representative from the district’s special education department. However, district spokesman James Gherardi said there were complications re-evaluating students with disabilities due to the pandemic and a year of related school closures.

“The COVID-19 pandemic added a layer of difficulty to the evaluation process that our school leaders and staff are still working through to ensure each student that needs an evaluation receives one,” said Gherardi.

Families search for options

Dunbar High School freshman David Rushing (center) was one of over 3,500 students affected by Chicago Public School’s failure to re-evaluate IEPs for its students in a timely manner.

That still leaves family members such as Yvonne Bailey, David Rushing’s mother, desperate to find help for struggling students.

Bailey went to Equip for Equality, a nonprofit legal service organization, to get help with getting David’s evaluation. With Equip for Equality’s help, David was re-evaluated in the spring and a new IEP was written in April.

Unlike Bailey, many Chicago parents are not able to access legal services. Instead, some have decided to leave the school district to ensure that their child receives special education services.

For some families, the issue wasn’t the timeline. It was poor execution.

Courtney Aviles moved to Cincinnati after spending a year trying to get her 5-year-old son re-evaluated for an IEP. When her son was in preschool, a teacher raised concerns about his fine motor skills, especially his ability to write.

Before schools shut down in March 2020, Aviles’ son had an annual IEP meeting to assess current goals, at James B. McPherson Elementary School, on the city’s north side. Aviles, a former teacher in Florida, was taken aback to see that her son’s teachers and case manager, who previously worked with him, were not there to speak about his needs in the classroom. Legally, schools are required to have teachers and case managers present at IEP meetings.

“As a former teacher myself, I feel that it greatly impacted our ability to conduct the IEP meeting,” said Aviles. “Having his teachers there to share their experience with and to advocate for my son would have made the meeting more productive.”

During the annual meeting, Aviles and the IEP team agreed that her son would be evaluated for occupational therapy to help him write. However, schools across the state were shuttered in response to the coronavirus pandemic and Aviles’ son did not receive special education services for the remainder of the year.

At the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, Aviles transferred her son to Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies. Prior to the start of the school year, Aviles emailed the school’s case manager to inquire about the occupational therapy evaluation discussed at her son’s last IEP meeting in August.

Aviles did not hear back from the case manager until October.

The case manager emailed Aviles to say that her son’s previous school had not finalized the assessment plan needed to get him evaluated for occupational therapy. Aviles signed a consent form to be connected with the school’s occupational therapist for an evaluation.

However, Aviles’ son, who was supposed to be evaluated by Jan. 22, 2021, never received an assessment. In February, Aviles and her son’s IEP team again gathered to update his program. The team concluded that Aviles’ son would need a full re-evaluation — but that didn’t happen.

By March, the family moved to Ohio. Aviles called it a “spur of the moment” decision after visiting friends for her son’s birthday. Aviles and her husband felt that they could make a good life for their children in Cincinnati. She said that while she loved Chicago, struggling to get special education services for her son was a major factor in her decision to move to another state.

Aviles wished she would have pushed harder for her son’s services, but felt she had to maintain a good relationship with the school’s staff. “It could be a really delicate balance,” she said.

A national problem emerges

Rachel Shapiro, an attorney at Equip for Equality, believes that schools in Chicago used the pandemic to cover their shortfall in evaluating IEPs.

The stakes for students who do not receive a re-evaluation are high, according to Rachel Shapiro, an attorney at Equip for Equality.

“We explain it to parents that your child’s development could progress or there could be regression,” said Shapiro. “We have no way of knowing that without having some kind of standardized data.”

When the district delayed special education services for David Rushing and Aviles’ son, both boys saw a regression in their skills and changes in behavior. David started to run away from home and Aviles’ son struggled to learn how to write.

While working with parents, Shapiro claims that schools in Chicago were using the pandemic as a cover to only review IEPs and not perform evaluations.

“Part of the evaluation is that it has to be thorough and contain multiple different assessments because we don’t want to diagnose students based on one assessment,” she said.

A student’s IEP team — which includes teachers, case managers, and therapists — are supposed to meet every year to review a student’s progress, address any concerns, and update that student’s goals. The state requires re-evaluations every three years. Parents must be proactive in ensuring that their child gets what they need, said Shapiro.

Correspondence between Chicago, the state board of education, and special education advocates in the city shows that as far back as September, officials had evidence that the pandemic had disrupted students’ services.

Shapiro suggests parents document requests in writing and ask for standardized assessments, progress data, and requests for IEP meetings. If things don’t go well, Shapiro says, parents can request a mediator from the state board of education or file a complaint with the board.

According to Lindsay Kubatzky, policy manager at the National Center for Learning Disabilities, an advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C., school districts across the country have a backlog of evaluations due to the pandemic. Also, some school districts were concerned about the validity of doing evaluations remotely.

Kubatzky recommends that school districts communicate with parents about what to expect from the evaluation process this year.

“We see that the strongest indicator of whether a school district is doing a good job at evaluating or re-evaluating is whether parents have the information that they need and have a good understanding of what the process will look like,” said Kubatzky.

Kubatzky also urged school districts to use emergency federal funding to increase staff for evaluating students.

“So one thing that they could do is hire additional paraprofessionals to work with students to do some of the evaluations or contract with outside evaluators to help with the workload,” said Kubatzky. “There’s resources outside of the school building that could be beneficial for students and families.”

Chicago Public Schools said that it will spend $17 million to hire 78 nurses, 44 social workers, and 51 special education case managers for next school year.

What’s next for students

Since leaving Chicago, Aviles has turned to private occupational therapy for her son and has seen a lot of growth in his writing skills. In the fall, the 5-year-old will be attending kindergarten at a smaller school district in Cincinnati.

“At CPS, he couldn’t even hold a pencil. He can write his name, he’s writing letters and he’s recognizing letters,” said Aviles. “It’s a huge amount of growth in a super short period of time and it’s really unfortunate that it took a move to do that.”

Yvonne Bailey’s son, David, has been doing much better since he received an updated IEP. At the end of the school year, Bailey signed him up to attend in-person school two days a week. This summer, David was enrolled in the school’s football camp.

David will be returning to Dunbar for his sophomore year. Bailey feels that in-person learning will be better for him, especially when more students are at school.

“David does well around people. He likes hanging out with the kids like any kid at this age,” said Bailey. “So I think it’ll be better.”

Samantha Smylie began this project at Chicago Headline Club’s FOIAFest 2021 Boot Camp under the mentorship of journalist Angela Caputo, an investigative reporter at APM Reports.

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How schools can meet the needs of formerly incarcerated students

2021-07-30T14:00:00+00:00

I have stared into the eyes of a 14-year-old child who committed murder, and it’s an experience that still shakes me, especially since his victim was a little girl even younger than he was.

He looked traumatized, revealing little emotion. And even though he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, when I spoke to him, I didn’t hear the voice of a killer. I heard the mumbles of a confused boy who was the product of a toxic environment.

R. L. Thompson

Every year around this time, I think about this young man and many of the young offenders that I have encountered in the field of youth rehabilitation. Among them, the phrase “back to school” means something totally different than new backpacks and school clothes. For youth reentering society after leaving juvenile detention facilities, how they’re greeted and treated when they return to school can mean the difference between regression and rehabilitation.

Each year, about 2.1 million children and teens are arrested in the U.S. Although many are quickly released, there are about 43,500 incarcerated minors in the country at any given moment, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Through my mentoring organization, the Choose Life Project, and my job with the re-entry program ECOP Memphis, I work to lower the youth and adult recidivism rates, often preparing incarcerated or recently incarcerated teens for their unique journey back to school.

To help these students, policymakers and educators must speak less and listen more. Because when I talk to young Memphians, they often tell me that they have no voice and that no one truly listens to them. This is one of the reasons why social media matters so much in youth culture — it’s where teens can broadcast their concerns.

On social media, it’s clear that children and teenagers are just as troubled as the adults around them by the rising homicide rates in Memphis — and cities across the country — and the violence in their communities.

The young people I have worked with have shared that they want their classes to cover more than academics; they want them to cover the issues that are relevant to their generation, such as gun violence, mental health, and criminal justice reform. They also want to do more than attend community outreach programs; they want to help design and run them. Importantly, they also want compassion from adults as they navigate high-crime neighborhoods where drugs are prevalent.

At some point, all children will explore risky behavior or make ill-informed decisions. And social media encourages some of these poor choices because it promotes instant gratification and discourages impulse control. To riff on a line by the rapper Drake (who grew up spending summers in Memphis), “Twitter fingers” turn to “trigger fingers” when online arguments escalate into school fights and sometimes even neighborhood shootouts.

In my work, I teach teens to combat impulsive behavior with de-escalation techniques, but we need such training as a regular part of curriculums so that students practice them weekly or even daily. Most incarcerated or formerly incarcerated individuals I work with have never taken an anger management class until a judge forced it upon them. What if we provided all students with these coping strategies proactively in a weekly course instead of retroactively in a court-ordered program? We could move the needle on youth crime and help formerly incarcerated youth, and distressed teens calm hot tempers with cool heads.

More after-school programs for high school students could also reduce youth crime and help formerly incarcerated students transitioning back into school. Youth crime spikes on school days between 2 and 6 p.m. because many students with working parents are unsupervised during this period. After-school sports and the arts provide outlets for some, but children not involved in athletics and the arts also need safe-havens. They need access to job training, college classes, tutoring, accessible community service, and event planning programs where they can design the kind of outreach that is most likely to appeal to their peers.

Providing more money for adults to work with teens after school will disrupt the crime prime time by creating more job opportunities for adults and more mentorship programs for teens.

I have worked with many young people over the past ten years, and so often, I hear them say things like “I didn’t know” or “No one ever told me that” or “No one ever asked me.” Our teens are hungry to learn, engage, and share, and while I have great admiration for teachers, we can’t rely on overworked educators alone to be our students’ sounding boards.

Many parents are equally overburdened and in need of community support of their own. For example, the 14-year-old boy I worked with who killed the little girl was being raised by a parent struggling with severe mental health issues.

All too often, I’ve seen that family dysfunction is a precursor to delinquency, which is why incarcerated and formerly incarcerated children and teens need more life skills classes and mentors to coach them through the obstacle course of adolescence.

And as they enter back to school in August and throughout the year, formerly incarcerated youth need educators and support staff willing to listen and willing to see them not for their crimes but for their courage to atone and begin again.

R.L. Thompson is a father of two and a community organizer who started the Choose Life Project to help lower the incarceration rate and support formerly incarcerated individuals as they navigate life after lockup.

This singing principal of viral video fame wants students to know they are loved. A call from Oprah would be nice, too.

2021-07-22T11:30:00+00:00

Every day during morning announcements, Marcus Gause, principal of T. Wingate Andrews High School in High Point, N.C., reminds his students that they are loved. On graduation day last month, he reiterated that message.

The graduates heard it, and they weren’t the only ones.

Gause’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” — a ballad made famous by the likes of Dolly Parton and Whitney Houston — sent chills, cheers, and tears through the crowd. A video of his pitch-perfect performance went viral, with millions of views on social media, and praise from hip-hop artists, including Diddy.

Gause had serenaded students at talent shows and senior banquets, but only now is he getting worldwide recognition. Lately, he’s been asked to sing at professional sporting events and pageants. And he dreams of performing one day alongside his musical idols, such as Fantasia or John Legend, or getting a call from Oprah.

“My kids would be so impressed,” said Gause, who spoke recently with Chalkbeat about leading a high school through COVID, teaching his students to believe in themselves, and why he thinks his graduation performance resonated so widely.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What has this past year looked like for you? How have you supported your students and staff during these unprecedented times?

I believe there is a sixth sense to educating that comes to light from our interactions with students. Not being in their presence took away our ability to impact them as we did previously. For example, we would know when a student was having a difficult morning by their body language or facial expression when they first entered the building. The pandemic made that extremely challenging to do. To get through it, we had several “Fun Fridays” where we logged on to our learning management system and went live on our social media platforms to have dance parties and competitions, virtual awards ceremonies, games, exercise, and wellness check-ins. We facilitated food drop-offs and pickups for students and families experiencing food insecurities. My staff and I also conducted porch conferences where we went to the home and held social distanced meetings for students who were not logging on to their classes regularly.

Why did you decide to sing to your students — and how did you choose that particular song? What do you hope the lyrics conveyed to graduates?

Four years ago, I heard so many negative things about Andrews High School. I met with the entire school and was very transparent about what I had heard and challenged them to believe that we were better than that. The word “believe” became our motto and helped us to transform the school culture. My personal belief was that love is the answer to all situations, so every day, I would end announcements with: “Guys, if no one has told you that they love you today, it is indeed my privilege and my pleasure to be the first to let you know that someone loves you in Red Raider Country and that somebody is me!”

During my first year as principal, a student asked me what they needed to do to become valedictorian, and I explained to her that she was ranked No. 10 and would need to keep working hard. She believed she could, and so she did. She became our Class of 2021 valedictorian. When it came down to choosing the song for graduation, I wanted it to encompass our beliefs, the love we have for one another, and after having lost so much due to the pandemic, a song that would express how I wanted their future to go. When I couldn’t decide on the song, I allowed the valedictorian to choose because she was the evidence and an example of what happens if you simply believe!

Why do you think the video resonated with so many people?

I think the pandemic took a lot from people, but I think it also allowed us time to reprioritize things of importance. One of those was love — both giving it and receiving it. I think that it was so well received because it was expressing authentic love that keeps us all going!

You have quite a voice. Did you ever consider becoming a professional vocalist?

I have thought about it but never really pursued it. I actually tried out for “Sunday Best” in Chicago years ago but only made it to the second round. Now, it looks like I might still have a chance to live out that dream.

Tell us about your own experience with school and how it affects your work today.

I have attention deficit disorder and was not diagnosed until college, which I barely had the grades for. While I wanted to perform well, I lacked focus. Personally, my parents were divorcing during my middle and high school years, so that was hard. In school, I was always doing things I had no business doing, but I had one teacher that loved me enough not to take any junk. She was tough, but it was obvious that she cared about me. Her name is Mrs. Jeanette Mintz, and I try to be that type of love I needed and received from her during that time. My goal before instruction is to make sure that every student and staff member feels loved and appreciated every day!

What’s the best advice you ever received — and how have you put it into action?

My father once told me that sometimes you have to take the step even when you don’t see the staircase. That means there are times in life where it doesn’t make sense, but you have to have the faith to give it a try. Sometimes the obstacles in education seem insurmountable, but if I sit back and do nothing, I know what the outcome will be. However, if I take the proverbial step of faith and try something, the possibilities are limitless. I try to love without limits, and I set out every day to achieve what may seem impossible!

What’s one thing you’ve read that has made you a better educator?

I think that becoming a better educator involves becoming a better you! I recently read a book titled “Do It Again” by Cammie J. Cummings. The book reminded me that I was made for this and not to get defeated but rather to embrace the challenge of dreaming again — this time bigger and better than before! While I love what I do, it’s not void of challenging days and situations. On my worst days, I only have to simply believe again! A changed mind changes outcomes and destinations.

Any summer plans that you’re willing to share?

This summer has already been extremely eventful. I have been honored to perform at a national dance competition, High Point Rockers baseball game, and the Miss North Carolina pageant! I will be doing a PBS interview in August and hope to be finalizing some out-of-state performances in the next few weeks. I would love to sing with some of my favorites, like Fantasia, John Legend, Chris Stapleton, and Kirk Franklin. This summer would be even more amazing if I got a call from Tyler Perry, Kelly Clarkson, Oprah! My kids would be so impressed!

I love four-wheeling, so my family and I plan to do a lot of that this summer.

He’s 11. By his mom’s count, he’s had more than 30 interactions with armed officers at school.

2021-07-12T12:00:00+00:00

Kal-El was in second grade the first time a teacher threatened to call the police on him.

His class was playing outside at recess. The teacher said it was time to go inside, and Kal-El refused. When the teacher made the threat about the police, Kal-El took off running toward the playground fence in an attempt to climb it, said his mother, Jennifer Uebelher.

“This started Kal’s terror of the police,” Uebelher wrote in notes she kept about his school days.

The teacher didn’t end up calling the police that day. But by the end of second grade, school staff had called police on Kal-El three times, according to his mother. By the end of fifth grade in May, the 11-year-old whose parents named him after Superman, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and struggles with his behavior, had at least 32 interactions with police or armed security guards at school in Denver and neighboring Jefferson County. Chalkbeat was able to confirm some of the interactions using police and school district records.

“I’ve had nightmares about my mom being shot, me being shot,” Kal-El said recently while sitting in his backyard. “I had nightmares that the police came to the house and kept banging on the doors, and they came in and we had to hide. I’ve had that more than once in a night.

“I’m scared to death because I’m like, ‘What are they going to do to me?’”

In a year in which high-profile incidents of police brutality sparked protests across the nation, schools have been grappling with how police should interact with students. Last summer, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, the Denver school board took a step toward reducing those interactions when it voted to remove the 18 city police officers who were stationed at some middle and high schools.

Jennifer Uebelher kept a detailed spreadsheet of her son’s school days, including his interactions with police and other armed officers.

But the board’s actions won’t stop all police interactions. Schools can also call 911 or a separate pool of armed school district security guards — and they do so thousands of times a year.

For students like Kal-El, the interactions can be traumatizing. As a young Black boy, he is painfully aware of the prevalence of police brutality and bias against the Black community. Chalkbeat is not using Kal-El’s last name in this story to protect his privacy.

“Whenever he gets in trouble, he’s like, ‘Well, just let the police come and shoot me. That’s what they do,’” Uebelher said. “That’s a horrifying thing to hear from an 11-year-old. After 3½ years, with 32 police interactions, I can understand why he feels that way.”

More than 10,000 calls

When the school board voted to remove city police, known as school resource officers, from schools, members also directed the district to “redefine school safety” with an emphasis on supporting students’ mental health. In addition, the board required the district to publicly track how many times city police and armed district patrol officers are called to schools and why.

“One reason we generally want data is for public accountability, but also to put everyone on notice that we’re tracking the behavior,” said school board Vice President Jennifer Bacon, who as one of two Black members of the board was a driving force behind the resolution.

Data posted by Denver Public Schools this spring gave the public a first glimpse of the numbers. It showed that armed district patrol officers were called to schools 5,560 times in the 2019-20 school year, which was interrupted in March 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Denver Police Department data obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request showed 4,785 calls from schools to police in that same school year. That includes calls answered by the 18 school resource officers, as well as calls answered by other police.

Added together with the district patrol officer calls, that means armed personnel responded to schools more than 10,300 times in 2019-20. The district had roughly 92,000 students that year.

A significant portion of the calls to both police and armed district patrol officers were for routine matters, such as alarms going off or a teacher locked out of a building.

More than a quarter of the calls to police were for potential crimes, such as assault, drug possession, and criminal mischief, though it’s unclear if all of those involved students.

Some calls were in response to student behavior. District patrol officers were called 303 times for a “child in crisis,” meaning a child who is behaving unsafely toward themselves or others, or whose behavior warrants immediate intervention, and 35 times for a “disobedient child.”

Denver police are also sometimes called to those situations, though it’s harder to know how often because the police department doesn’t code calls as “child in crisis.” The department did not respond to a request for an interview about those types of calls.

Bacon, a former teacher, recognizes that students’ behavior can be difficult. Situations where one child is disrupting the learning of 30 others are all too real, she said. However, she said educators need less traumatic ways of managing that behavior than calling the police.

“When you’re calling for a body — and one that has a gun — you’re doing that to shut down the behavior,” Bacon said. “The problem is there’s a potential for a traumatizing event.”

Also concerning, she said, are racial disparities in which students are interacting with police. Data shows Black students in Denver Public Schools are disproportionately referred to law enforcement for alleged crimes and code violations, and disproportionately ticketed or arrested.

While a racial breakdown is not available for Denver students who are referred to law enforcement for behavior or mental health issues, data and school district policies from across the country suggest racial disparities persist with those calls, too.

In New York City, a report by an advocacy organization found Black students and students with disabilities were overrepresented among more than 12,000 “child in crisis” police calls it analyzed. In Chicago, the school system revised its conduct policy to limit when administrators can call police, advising them to first take a student’s disability or past trauma into account.

Scared, not angry

A bright child, Kal-El went to preschool and kindergarten at a small private school for gifted students. But in first grade, he was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Uebelher said both she and the school staff decided that Kal-El’s needs were beyond the school’s ability to handle and it would be better if he transferred elsewhere.

Uebelher enrolled Kal-El in a public school in Lakewood in suburban Jefferson County where the family lived. She hoped the public school system could provide Kal-El with more services. But from the beginning, his experience was colored by run-ins with the police.

Kal-El says he’s not angry at the police. He’s scared.

In second and third grade, he had 19 interactions with police or armed security officers for behavior that involved kicking, punching, throwing things, and running out of school, according to his mother’s records. Once, his mother showed up and found him handcuffed in the back of a police car. Another time, she walked into a classroom that Kal-El had torn apart to find him corralled on top of a bookshelf in a corner. She said she had to push past officers to get to him.

At first, Kal-El’s doctors attributed his aggressive behavior to an adverse side effect of an increased dosage of his ADHD medication, his mother said. But once the police interactions started, “that just kicked it up a thousand times,” she said.

Jeffco Public Schools spokesperson Cameron Bell said the district can’t comment on specific students or verify how many times schools called the police. Chalkbeat did not independently analyze Jefferson County schools’ calls to police or armed security guards. But Bell provided a general list of reasons why a school might call the police, including “out-of-control behavior that is beyond the ability of the school to manage and that puts others or self at risk for injury.”

Kal-El knows his behavior can be challenging. He can get angry, frustrated, and out of control, he said. He has broken school property and run out of school buildings. In addition to ADHD, he’s been diagnosed with a mood dysregulation disorder and anxiety, his mother said.

But Kal-El also knows what helps him calm down: Talking to his mom on the phone. Spending time alone in a separate room. Getting some energy out by throwing a ball or running around. Outside of school, Kal-El and his mom said he has benefitted from a type of therapy known as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR.

But calling the police? Kal-El said that just makes any situation worse.

“I’m not angry at the police. I’m more scared of the police,” Kal-El said. “I’m more angry at the school because most of the times, yes, I am out of control and I recognize that. Sometimes they’re just like, ‘Well, we’re going to call the police,’ and it makes me more mad.”

‘I screamed’

One of Kal-El’s most traumatic experiences with police happened in 2019, when he was in fourth grade. His mother had transferred him from Jeffco Public Schools to Denver Public Schools, where she had attended as a child. Kal-El was in a special program for students with emotional disabilities, just as he’d been for most of his time in Jeffco.

On his second day of school at Denver’s Cowell Elementary, another student in the program called Kal-El a racial slur. Because of the way he reacted, the school called his mother to pick him up early, according to his mother’s notes. The next day, it happened again. It continued happening the next week until one day, Kal-El ran out of the school.

Uebelher was on her way home from the school after a meeting about his special education plan when she got a call to turn around and come back. Kal-El was on the front steps of the school, banging on the doors, clearly agitated. It was around lunchtime, and Uebelher had a Tupperware container of green grapes in her car. Knowing that hunger sometimes triggered Kal-El’s agitation and eating calmed him down, she set the grapes on the steps for him.

In addition to calling Uebelher, the school also called for the assistance of armed officers.

A report obtained by Chalkbeat through an open records request shows that someone at Cowell called the Denver Public Schools Department of Safety at 12:13 p.m. to report a “disobedient child” identified as Kal-El. The report says he was “not listening to staff or parents.”

“No one is currently in danger,” it says next to a timestamp of 12:14 p.m.

A separate Denver Police Department record obtained by Chalkbeat shows that police were also called to Cowell — for a “disturbance”— at 12:20 p.m. It’s not clear if the same person called both agencies, but the district report says the person who called for help from armed district patrol officers also referenced calling Denver police.

Uebelher estimates that a half dozen or more officers showed up. At first, she said they were just “milling about,” trying to talk to Kal-El and make sure he didn’t run into the street.

But when Kal-El made a sudden move toward the grapes she’d left on the steps, Uebelher said she saw the officers reach for their hips where their weapons were holstered.

“I screamed, ‘Kal-El, stop or they’re going to shoot you!’” Uebelher recalls. “I never thought I’d be yelling that to my fourth-grade son on the steps of an American elementary school.”

One of Kal-El’s interactions with police occurred after he ran out of his elementary school, upset that another student had called him a racial slur.

The officers didn’t draw their weapons, and no one was injured. But Kal-El broke down. The incident ended with Uebelher requesting an ambulance to take Kal-El to the hospital, which released him with instructions to stay home from school, according to his mother’s notes. Kal-El transferred to another Denver school with even more intensive services the following week.

The department of safety report corroborates Uebelher’s account. It says that Kal-El was transported to the hospital at 12:51 p.m. Though Denver police did respond, they did not write a report of the incident, said Denver Police Department spokesperson Jay Casillas. And because there is no report, any body camera footage was purged after 30 days, Casillas said.

‘Hands are tied’

The principal of Cowell Elementary declined an interview with Chalkbeat because she said she wasn’t principal of the school in 2019 when the incident occurred. Denver Public Schools officials declined to comment on Kal-El’s specific case, citing student privacy. But they said that in situations such as these, schools have discretion about whether to call the police.

“People call law enforcement when they feel the situation has gone beyond their reach at the school level and it creates this imminent risk,” said Amber Elias, the district’s lead operational superintendent, who helps supervise principals. But, she added, “it’s one thing to have a subjective definition of ‘imminent risk’ and then in the moment, it can feel very personal.”

Elias said it’s the district’s responsibility to ensure school staff understand where the line is. To that end, the district is planning to unveil a new website this fall to help educators navigate crises. Still under construction, it features a red button that says, “Is this an emergency? Before you call 911…” A drop-down menu will give instructions for what to do in different situations, such as if a student is found with marijuana, gets into a serious fight, or is suicidal.

Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said educators don’t want to call the police. Instead, he said, teachers want the proper support systems — such as full-time school psychologists, social workers, and counselors, which not all Denver schools have — to ensure students don’t get so upset that their behavior becomes risky.

“Educators don’t want to cause any additional trauma for the student,” Gould said.

A lack of educator experience and training also likely plays a role in these situations, especially for teachers who work in programs for students with emotional disabilities. A special education teacher, Gould previously worked in such a program. Though he lasted nearly a decade, Gould said, “it’s hard to get a veteran educator to do that job because it is so intense.”

Amie Baca-Oehlert, president of the Colorado Education Association, echoed Gould.

“What we hear the most, and what we at the CEA have been lifting up and advocating for multiple years now, is our teachers don’t have a lot of resources to turn to when we have these types of situations,” she said. “Teachers’ hands are tied in that they do not have a lot of options.”

When it comes to students in crisis, “oftentimes what somebody needs is not a law enforcement response,” Baca-Oehlert said. “They actually need a mental health response.”

New measures

Last summer’s resolution directed the district to reallocate the money it previously spent on school resource officers to mental health staff. But the amount — $626,000 — isn’t enough to hire more psychologists and social workers for each of Denver’s more than 200 schools.

Instead, about $400,000 will be spent on four new central office staff members who could be deployed to schools, according to a plan presented to the school board. The new staff would help with a variety of things, including reducing racial disparities in discipline, preventing suspensions, and responding to reports of sexual assault or students who are suicidal.

About $75,000 is slated to go toward engaging parents and students in helping to revise the district’s discipline matrix, which dictates when schools must call the police and when they have discretion. That work is set to happen next school year, Elias said.

Another $175,000 is set to be spent on a new partnership with the Mental Health Center of Denver that would have mental health providers respond alongside armed district patrol officers. The patrol officers work around the clock, and the co-responder model would only be deployed on nights and weekends when school psychologists and counselors are not available.

The partnership would be different from a highly praised, high-profile city program that replaces police officers altogether with mental health providers and paramedics who respond to crisis calls. Bacon, the school board vice president who pushed for the resolution, said she wonders what it would look like to bring that program — called the Support Team Assisted Response, or STAR, program — into Denver Public Schools.

“We need a whole different type of people for this,” Bacon said. “We need a de-escalation squad that doesn’t have a badge and a gun.”

The district isn’t getting such a squad, but it does plan to increase the number of armed district patrol officers from 20 to 25 next year, said Melissa Craven, the district’s interim deputy chief of support services. That expansion will be funded by a separate pot of money.

In addition, the district is working with the city to grant those officers expanded authority to write tickets to students for low-level municipal code violations, Craven said. The details are still being worked out, but a district presentation gives a few examples of the types of violations, including marijuana possession, trespassing, and vandalism. Patrol officers still wouldn’t be able to make arrests or initiate 72-hour hospitalizations for students in mental health crises.

The move may increase the likelihood that a student will interact with an armed district officer at the same time their likelihood of interacting with a police officer is decreasing. But Craven said that’s not a bad thing. District patrol officers have students’ best interest at heart, she said, in addition to training in nonviolent crisis intervention and trauma-informed practices.

“Our officers, whether campus security officers or patrol officers, come to this work with a different lens,” Craven said. “They are truly here to support our students.”

That gives Bacon pause. She said the district needs to ensure it’s not de facto replacing one law enforcement presence with another. “If it wasn’t clear to folks our intention with this resolution, then we need to go back and be sure those intentions are actually met,” she said.

When Chalkbeat told Bacon about what happened to Kal-El on the steps of his elementary school, she said she began to shake.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” she said. “Grapes. I’ll never forget that for the rest of my life.”

Lasting fear — and hope for the future

Kal-El doesn’t want what happened to him to happen to any other students.

Kal-El and his mother hope the district’s efforts are sincere. Uebelher said she has seen her son go from an eager student who was learning Spanish and built a digestive system out of marbles to a pre-teen who can’t do division and struggles with writing by hand. When he went to public school, he was a grade ahead academically, and now he’s a year and a half behind, she said.

But more than academic consequences, it’s the fear she sees in her child that worries her. Although Uebelher said many of the officers who interacted with Kal-El at school were kind and compassionate, their mere presence was terrifying for him.

She remembers once finding Kal-El cowering under a table while an officer stood with his hands on his belt. Uebelher crawled under the table and looked up. The officer was so tall that she said from Kal-El’s vantage point, it looked like his bald head touched the ceiling.

The officer asked her why Kal-El was so afraid of the police.

Uebelher said she remembers thinking, “Have you seen yourself?”

“You’ve got a gun, you’ve got mace, you’ve got a taser,” Uebelher said. “It was more the psychological part of it that was so bad for Kal-El.

“We try to teach our kids that bad guys get the police called on them. As a child, it’s like, ‘Well, they’re here for me. I must be a bad guy.’ … He internalized that.”

Kal-El hopes no other student ever has to.

“I don’t want this to happen to anybody else,” he said.

For Hispanic boys in Memphis, the pressure to work full-time comes with a cost: lower graduation rates

2021-07-07T02:57:25+00:00

When José Ayala was a student at Kingsbury High School in Memphis, many of his male friends would miss class to work, seeing a day’s pay as more valuable than a day of school.

Eventually, some of them dropped out and took jobs, primarily in construction and roofing, he said. Quickly, they were making enough money to support their families — and much more than Ayala, who volunteered for a nonprofit organization during high school and graduated in 2018.

“A lot of times we get access to larger amounts of money than usual high schoolers,” Ayala said of Hispanic boys.

The lure of full-time jobs is one reason Hispanic boys in Memphis leave high school early and have historically had one of the lowest graduation rates in Shelby County Schools. Other factors include communication barriers for English language learners and the lack of Hispanic role models among teachers and school staff.

In 2020, only 59.6% of Hispanic senior boys in Shelby County Schools graduated from high school on time, according to a district report. That was almost 6 percentage points lower than the year before, and lower than any demographic group separated by race and gender. The number was 66.5% in 2018 and 65.3% in 2019.

Hispanic girls fared better with a graduation rate of 76.3% in 2020. The rate was 75.8% in 2018 and 78.4% in 2019, all three years hovering near the district wide, three-year average of 78.7%, and the numbers reveal a statistically significant gap in graduation rates between Hispanic boys and Hispanic girls.

The graduation rates for 2021 are not yet available.

In 2020, only English language learners, which include many Hispanic students, graduated at a lower rate in Memphis than Hispanic males: 54.6%.

Those numbers reflect nationwide trends, but the achievement gap is wider in Shelby County.

While significant progress has been made to close the gap over the last few decades, a 2016 study by the National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families found that “Latino males have the highest rates of high school dropout, coupled with the lowest rates of college enrollment and college completion.”

Ayala said many of his college friends have paused their education, given the difficulty of juggling a job and academics during a pandemic.

That anecdotal evidence of the pressure to work is backed up by nationwide data.

According to an April 2021 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 56.2% of Hispanic high school graduates nationwide enroll in college. That’s compared to 83.2% of Asian American graduates, 62.9% of white graduates, and 56.6% of Black graduates.

Additionally, more Hispanic college students work through college than students in other demographic groups. More than half of Hispanic college students work — 53.7% — while a third of Asian students, 43.4% of Black students, and 49% of white students work.

Ayala stressed that dropping out of high school doesn’t mean his peers are wasting their time.

“It’s not just like, ‘Oh, they dropped out and they don’t have a future,’” he said. “A lot of them are well-off and stable, and have the basic needs and a few other resources that they were able to achieve through their work.”

More “diverse, high quality educators” needed

Hispanic youth account for about 7% of the student body in Tennessee’s largest school district, according to the district’s Equity Director Michael Lowe.

Lowe described the dip in educational outcomes during the pandemic as an “anomaly.” He pointed to some resources the school system offers to help students complete their studies, including an academy for recent immigrants located at Wooddale High School.

He highlighted a mentoring program that pairs bilingual adults with students who speak English as a second language, but said it’s been hard to help some of the mentors transition to certified teachers, particularly educators who were licensed in other countries. In May, Shelby County Schools held a “Secure the Chalk” session, where district leaders shared pathways to certification for bilingual mentors interested in teaching positions.

According to state data, in 2019 only 1.4% of teachers and 0.5% of administrators in Shelby County Schools identified as Hispanic.

Shelby County School Board Commissioner Sheleah Harris echoed Lowe’s statements about the importance of more Hispanic teachers, but also argued for more intensive outreach to Hispanic boys, when resources exist specifically for Black boys, she said pointing to the district’s African American Male Academy, an outreach program and collaboration with University of Memphis.

“If one demographic of students is falling behind in an area, we should implement the same energy and momentum of addressing concerns,” she said.

She added, “Our focus now and moving forward is true equity and access for every child in our district. I plan to have a narrow focus on this area until I see significant, consistent improvement for our Latinx males.”

Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Education, said the department is working to increase teacher diversity, but challenges remain.

“There are not enough teachers in Tennessee, period,” he said. “With more than 1,000 vacancies, we need educators of all backgrounds, Black and brown included, to ensure every child has diverse, high-quality educators.”

And in Nashville, where Hispanic children make up just under 30% of the student body, district spokesman Sean Braisted noted similar struggles, and lamented the failure of a General Assembly bill that would have allowed undocumented students to receive in-state tuition at state universities.

“Ensuring that undocumented students, or children of undocumented parents, have equal access to a college education would be greatly beneficial to improving graduation rates and postsecondary enrollment,” he said in a email.

“He’s never really experienced a job that wasn’t physical”

Now 21, Ayala faced many of the same obstacles his friends did during high school, both economically and culturally. He said his dad and uncles wanted him to come work with them in the construction and roofing industries, but he stayed in school, seeing that path as a better long-term investment.

“I did experience pressure,” he shared.

Because he stayed in school longer, he was exposed to resources and opportunities that allowed him to go to college and see different career options. But he said some of those resources were presented to him and his classmates too late. Students learned about technical colleges and professional certifications late in their high school journeys, long after some of his friends had dropped out.

“I got to see adults in other careers,” said Ayala, who was born and raised in Memphis by parents from Mexico. “If [my peers] would have had more information at that time, I’m sure they would have made different decisions.”

He was in a music group at Kingsbury, but the biggest reason he stayed in school was Streets Ministries, a faith-based educational nonprofit. He started there as a student, then began volunteering. Now as a rising senior at Christian Brothers University, he works at Streets Ministries full-time, building relationships with students at the schools he grew up attending.

José Ayala (right) poses with Estela Ramírez and her daughter, Mareli, who won an award from Streets Ministries this spring.

When Ayala entered college and started working at Streets Ministries, he said he still encountered skepticism from the men in his family.

He said his dad didn’t get the touchy-feely, faith-based nonprofit work he was doing, nor did he understand his son’s decision to study psychology.

“He’s never really experienced a job that wasn’t physical,” he said. “So him hearing that his son is working in a place where you build relationships with kids, he just didn’t understand it until I had to sit him down and explain.”

That changed in May, after Ayala earned a promotion and saved up enough money to buy a truck: a black 2015 Ford F150.

“It was a lightbulb for him to say, ‘OK, this other type [of work] is also fruitful for my child,” Ayala said. “This work is going to provide some type of security for him.”

Three Chicago teens, one pandemic year: How COVID-19 widened education gaps for boys of color

2021-07-01T09:00:00+00:00

As the promise of spring hung over Chicago, three teenage boys tussled with insomnia, sifting through the fallout of a pandemic year’s interlocking crises.

In Little Village on the West Side, senior Leonel Gonzalez often couldn’t sleep, beset by stubborn what ifs. What if next fall, one of the panic attacks that dogged him during the COVID era creeps up on him on a college campus? What if he didn’t pick the right school? What if he didn’t graduate and go to college at all?

Several miles away one morning before dawn, Derrick Magee and his stepsister, Anna, griped about virtual high school, which Derrick had tuned out weeks ago. Anna pleaded with him not to give up on a trying junior year at Austin College & Career Academy — and with it, on his entire high school career.

And farther north in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, Nathaniel Martinez would stare at the ceiling and make plans. The sophomore had joined a new push to remove cops from city schools, at a time Chicago was reeling from the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. But school had receded in Nathaniel’s mind, leaving his grade report card in shambles.

In Chicago and across the country, there is growing evidence that this year has hit Black and Latino boys — young men like Derrick, Nathaniel and Leonel — harder than other students. Amid rising gun violence, a national reckoning over race, bitter school reopening battles and a deadly virus that took the heaviest toll on Black and Latino communities, the year has tested not only these teens, but also the school systems that have historically failed many of them.

Last fall, the nonprofit education news outlet Chalkbeat set out to take a deep dive into how Black and Latino boys were navigating an unprecedented school year. In Chicago, the pandemic’s disruption collided with an uptick in gun violence, a citywide battle over reopening schools, and the national reckoning over race. Against that backdrop, Chalkbeat reporter Mila Koumpilova decided to focus on this group of students because they have historically faced some of the largest academic disparities.

Koumpilova followed a trio of students throughout the school year. She spent time with them while they attended virtual classes, volunteered, hung out with peers, and took part in virtual student advocacy. To understand their experiences better, Koumpilova spoke with family members, teachers, mentors, and principals.

Data on the 2020-2021 school year is more limited since many school districts did not administer standardized tests, but Koumpilova used public records requests to obtain attendance and grading data by race and gender. That data showed marked differences in academic performance by male Black and Latino students compared to female students — a pattern also evident in newly released national data. She also conducted numerous interviews with educators, advocates, and experts about the pandemic’s impact on male students of color and the apparent widening of academic gaps it triggered. Part Two of the series looks more closely at the data. Part Three of the series examines emerging efforts to close the gaps.

Chalkbeat is partnering with USA TODAY to publish the story.

It has severed precarious ties to school, derailed college plans and pried gaping academic disparities even wider.

But in this moment of upheaval, educators and advocates also see a chance to rethink how schools serve boys of color. With billions in federal stimulus funds on the way, the crisis is fueling a patchwork of efforts to bring diversity to the teaching cadre, support college-bound teens and more, though a bolder, wholesale overhaul is yet to emerge.

The stakes are high. Even before pandemic disruption set in, boys of color were most likely to drop out, skip college, and end up unemployed.

“This is a critical moment of opportunity to help young men of color,” said Adrian Huerta, a faculty member in the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California, who studies the educational experiences of boys and young men of color. “It’s a national issue, and it will take a national investment.”

Against this backdrop, Leonel tried to become the first in his family to go to college despite sometimes debilitating anxiety. Nathaniel tried to strike a balance between the demands of school, the draw of advocacy, and the escape of video games. Derrick tried to stay in school.

By spring, they faced decisive moments, in the making since the school year’s early weeks.

Leonel Gonzalez outside of Solorio Academy High School. He wants to become the first in his family to go to college. During the school year, he grappled with pandemic-induced anxiety attacks and self-doubt about whether he would get into college.

FALL: Chicago struggles to recreate the school day online

On a sunny Wednesday in October, Leonel, 17, sat in a classroom at Solorio Academy High School, eerily hushed on his first day back since the previous March. In a hoodie and ripped jeans, his hair tied in a ponytail, he had returned to take the SAT, the college entrance test, with other seniors.

But Leonel could not focus.

The hand sanitizer bottles, the masking signage, the one-way traffic stickers — it all unsettled him. He started every time the proctor coughed, exchanging alarmed glances with several girlfriends. They were marooned at socially distanced desks, but having his friends nearby after months of isolation gave him comfort.

He read a passage about astronauts in the English section, but its meaning crumbled.

Even before its COVID-19 makeover, Solorio — a highly rated district school in the Gage Park neighborhood on the Southwest Side, where Leonel lived before his parents split up — hadn’t always felt inviting. In his freshman year, Leonel was bullied in a locker room, and, worried his family would hear about the incident, came out as gay to his parents in a Mother’s Day card. Even as a junior, he walked to school some days, paused in front of the building — and headed back to his house.

Now, at home full-time, his attendance was near-perfect and his grades were up.

But not everything was going so smoothly.

Leonel was in a program called OneGoal, the Cadillac of college application support groups, giving him daily access to a seasoned mentor. But the pandemic had confined their interaction to Google Meet, putting two screens between Leonel and his adviser, Chris Vienna.

Sometimes Vienna felt he was not getting through to Leonel. One minute, the teen rushed to apply to a $32,000-a-year college in Iowa that sent him a marketing email. The next, he seemed paralyzed, making little headway for weeks.

Leonel’s GPA was lackluster, but Vienna pointed to his extracurriculars, such as his service on a string of Solorio committees, where Leonel was usually the only male student: “This is where you look like a badass.”

Leonel, who wants to be a social studies teacher looking out for kids who don’t fit in, yearned to head out of town for college. But he knew his family wanted him to stick around.

That morning at Solorio, Leonel reassured himself the colleges he eyed had made SAT scores optional amid the pandemic. Still, a decent score could boost his spotty high school record.

He tried rereading the astronaut passage. The words jumbled. Finally, he filled out the bubbles next to a string of remaining questions. One random C after another.

Before the pandemic, male Black and Latino students such as Derrick, Nathaniel, and Leonel were key, if complicated, players in Chicago’s storyline of academic resurgence.

District leaders feted them for driving some of the steady growth in test scores and graduation rates that helped erase a one-time label of the nation’s worst school district. A 2017 Stanford University study showed students here grew in reading and math faster than 96% of districts, outpacing wealthier suburban locales. Leaders have credited efforts to cultivate stronger principals, an unflinching look at data, and an ecosystem of nonprofits dedicated to supporting boys of color.

But the five-year graduation rate for Black male students, at roughly 71%, remains almost 15 percentage points behind that for Black females. Latino boys, who have gained on other student groups faster in recent years, still lag almost 10 percentage points behind Latinas. Such gender gaps are the norm nationally as well, the product of a complex tangle of factors, from pressure on young men to contribute financially to disparate school discipline to a shortage of male role models.

On the cusp of the pandemic, Chicago leaders decried signs of backsliding for Black students, such as a dip in SAT scores.

Then came the COVID-19 outbreak — with its disproportionate death toll and economic devastation in America’s Black and brown communities, including the neighborhoods the three Chicago boys call home. By November, the virus had killed more than 3,000 Chicagoans. Black residents, who make up less than 30% of the city’s population, accounted for 40% of COVID deaths.

In Austin, on Chicago’s West Side, Derrick, 18, stared at his school-issued laptop. It was late October. Another school day afternoon cooped up in his bedroom. Another blur of impassive rectangles representing classmates who had turned off their cameras in Google Meet, no one but the teachers saying anything for hours. Another gauntlet of virtual classes and educational videos.

It was the same thing over and over again — Derrick’s mantra. A waste of time when he could be doing something to chip in for the family budget. Except today, Derrick would try something different: He would set up an Instagram account for his new business — using stencils to personalize sneakers, at $80 a pop.

Derrick Magee has remained engaged with Chicago’s VOYCE program over the past year, but had struggles with virtual learning.

Staff at Derrick’s high school, Austin College & Career Academy, where almost all students are Black and poor in one of the neighborhoods hit hard by both the coronavirus and a rise in gun violence, were on social media as well. They tweeted at students with upbeat hashtags: #MondayMotivation or #WellnessWednesday. “Email your teachers to create action plans for getting on track,” they implored. “You and your education matter.”

But Derrick did not follow his school on Twitter. His connection to Austin Academy was shaky even before the pandemic abruptly shuttered the building last spring. At that point, he had decided to sit out the remainder of the year. He thought all his teachers would pass him amid a pandemic. He thought he could return to a reopened school building in September.

He was wrong.

Over the summer, district officials had made a plan to return to in-person learning. But amid teachers union pushback, an uptick in COVID cases, and skepticism from Black and Latino families, they scrapped it. Instead, they set out to rebuild online the brick-and-mortar school day, with its seven classes and scrupulous attendance-taking.

In the fall, short on credits and motivation, Derrick returned to a virtual school that seemed designed to torment guys with ADHD like him. He tried playing monotonous instrumental beats on his laptop as a soundtrack to his classes to settle his mind. But staring at a screen for hours only made him want to pace his apartment. Being isolated just hardened a long-held conviction: Whatever Derrick’s school might tweet, his education didn’t matter to anyone.

Mikala Barrett, an organizer with the student leadership group VOYCE, told Derrick that showing vulnerability was a sign of strength. But Derrick never thought to ask his teachers for help. Not even after his grandma died that fall. Nah, they would not be swayed.

It was the same thing over and over.

He should probably just chuck school until summer and make up his classes then. He pictured himself as a self-reliant entrepreneur, his shoe business taking off.

Anna Robinson holds up her Nike sneaker customized with skeletal art by her stepbrother, Derrick Magee. Derrick started a side business stenciling sneakers during the pandemic to help his family financially.

Nathaniel, the Belmont Cragin sophomore, imagined himself as a student leader, triumphing over a shortage of confidence. On Election Day, the 16-year-old waited in front of a laptop in a church basement in Albany Park, his legs jiggling to the muzak pouring out of the speaker. He sipped nervously from his Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup while the system autodialed registered voters. At any time, someone might pick up, and Nathaniel would have seconds to nudge him to the polls.

Like Derrick, Nathaniel was involved with VOYCE, and the group had gathered teens for a get-out-the-vote push in Albany Park, on the city’s Northwest Side, where Nathaniel and his mom used to live. In the group, he had found a sense of belonging as he sorted through the complexities of his adolescent identity: Black and Latino, shy gamer and aspiring activist.

This year, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, VOYCE pushed the school district to remove police officers from its campuses. To Nathaniel, the issue felt personal — and complicated.

Nathaniel Martinez bikes to school through the Northwest Side of Chicago.

In 2020, when 774 people were killed in Chicago amid a major violence surge, shootings doubled in Albany Park, pitting its alderman — an advocate for defunding the police — against residents who wanted more neighborhood cops. Nathaniel embraced the goal of replacing school cops with counselors, but after his school’s governing council voted to remove the officers, he also worried about gang tensions seeping in.

Nathaniel went to the neighborhood Roosevelt High School, but his heart wasn’t in it that fall. There was the impulse to get involved through advocacy. Then, there was the pull of video games, which took up more and more of his time. With his school’s new gaming club, Nathaniel played “Among Us,” a game turned wildly popular among teens seeking virtual camaraderie during the pandemic.

In the church basement on Election Day, the muzak cut off, and Nathaniel straightened, stumbling over the voter’s name on his screen.

“I’m calling to remind you to vote — or, um, I guess, see if you already voted,” he said, and cringed.

WINTER: More Fs, fewer students logging on, and a brewing battle with the Chicago Teachers Union

In December, amid a spike in coronavirus cases that had caused infection rates in the city’s majority Latino neighborhoods to soar, Leonel’s assistant principal emailed him. A teacher had flagged her after Leonel said he needed a day off. On a hour-long Google Meet, the assistant principal talked up positive thinking and mindful breathing. Touched by the unexpected offer to help, Leonel opened up about the pressures of that winter.

At first, he had believed the presidential election’s uncertain outcome explained his relentless panic attacks. The stakes had felt high for a gay kid from an immigrant family. But Joe Biden had been declared the winner, and still the panic attacks kept coming.

After one episode, Leonel’s mom gently broached an issue that had hung over them: “I don’t think you are ready to live on your own.”

Leonel Gonzalez has worked with a OneGoal mentor through the pandemic to prepare him for the next step after high school.

Leonel, who was scrambling to meet college application deadlines, didn’t push back. His mom was probably right. But part of him clung to the idea of striking out on his own.

That afternoon on Google Meet, he told the assistant principal about allowing himself to cry recently — a release from his upbringing’s expectation that, as a man, he remain stoic. They made a plan: He would get a physical, and then the school would refer him to a therapist.

In the coming weeks, Leonel waited for the school to check in with him, wishing staff would follow up. But he knew that many teens — at Solorio and across the country — were struggling with mental health. His challenges, by comparison, felt insignificant — even as they threatened to derail him.

Early data has made it clear that the pandemic’s academic fallout has been wildly uneven, setting back further students, including Black and Latino youth, who were already vulnerable. Much less is known about the effect on gender disparities.

Girls have faced their own set of hurdles, including handling child care and remote learning for younger siblings. But some educators believe the disruption has hit boys harder, causing them to disengage at higher rates. And some solid evidence is trickling in.

Data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows that while college and university enrollment dipped across the board last fall, the drop was seven times larger among men. That decline was especially steep at community colleges, which serve more diverse, first-generation students like Leonel.

In a new data analysis of fall 2020 test scores by the NWEA, Black and Latino boys made significantly less of their typical growth than Black girls and Latinas, who themselves showed less growth than white and Asian peers.

“We know many of these kids were already behind before the pandemic,” said Megan Kuhfeld, a NWEA senior research scientist. “This is compounding already existing inequities.”

And in Chicago, attendance and grading data for the first half of this past school year showed disproportionate impact by both race and gender as well.

The reasons for that uneven fallout are not entirely clear, but advocates and experts say a slew of factors likely are at play. There’s the added pressure young men feel to pitch in to family budgets, and the research suggesting girls are better at staying on task independently, a key skill during remote learning.

Educators such as Vienna, Leonel’s OneGoal mentor, say computer school took away opportunities to peek over students’ shoulders and offer suggestions, or bond informally in hallways. That’s significant because, as research has shown, boys are less likely to reach out to educators for guidance, notes Huerta, the University of Southern California professor. Home and community culture, with a premium placed on male self-sufficiency, play a part. But school norms have fed into this dynamic as well.

“In the classroom, boys are conditioned to sit down, shut up and not be a disruption,” Huerta noted. “Do we really expect them to reach out and ask for help 10 years later?”

At Austin Academy, Derrick’s math teacher, Steven McIlrath, didn’t wait for students to ask for help. On some days that winter, the school’s virtual attendance dipped below 40%. A quarter of McIlrath’s students went missing, and he called some homes as many as 10 times.

McIlrath repeatedly called Derrick’s mom and emailed the teen: Why wasn’t he logging on?

On a cool, blustery February evening, Derrick sat at a long table in an office off the sales floor of an Austin bicycle shop, where Mikala Barrett’s VOYCE group had started meeting in person. In an “Outlaw Cycles” jacket with faux leather peeling under his arms, he slumped in his chair, peering at his cell phone. His shoe stencil business idea had fizzled out months ago.

Later, the half dozen students spoke about a friend who was shot and killed last year, one of two teens lost to gun violence for whom they recently held a candlelight vigil. Barrett paused and looked around the room.

“So, how’s school?” she asked. “For the two of you who are still going?”

Derrick stopped logging on to virtual school last semester, and failed his classes. But he clung to a precarious connection to his school. He never turned off the Google Classroom notifications on his phone, and it pinged each time teachers posted assignments. And he continued to respond to emails from McIlrath, just to say hello.

Derrick Magee with his stepsister Anna Robinson. Anna encouraged Derrick to stick with his classes, but he has had difficulties staying engaged with school.

Anna, 16, Derrick’s stepsister, a sophomore at Englewood STEM High, urged him not to give up. Yes, virtual learning was rough. An A and B student, Anna also struggled with motivation. But did he want to send her and his other younger siblings the message that it’s cool to drop out?

“It’s like when your basketball team is down by so much,” Derrick countered. “There’s no point in watching any more.”

To Derrick, returning to Austin Academy’s classrooms seemed the only way out of his stalemate. But district and teachers’ union officials were caught up in one of the most acrimonious standoffs over reopening elementary schools nationally. There was no plan or target date to reopen high schools — and little discussion of improving teens’ virtual experience.

In the meantime, Derrick put in applications at a couple of big box stores, but had not heard back. He fell back on his mantra: It was the same thing over and over.

At the bike shop meeting, he looked up from his phone.

“School’s going great,” he offered.

Barrett held his gaze until he looked away.

Unlike Derrick, Nathaniel continued to log on to classes daily, but he was increasingly struggling to stay engaged.

One afternoon, Nathaniel unmuted his laptop mic during a virtual drama class and called out to his partner on a project due in a couple of days. Nathaniel sat cross-legged on the floor, wedged between his bed and a dresser, a cup of ramen cooling on the windowsill. His view was a brick wall an arm’s length away, his room immersed in gloom even on a sunny day.

Nathaniel Martinez maintained his attendence throughout the pandemic, but was often distracted by both his student activism and gaming.

“Hey, real quick,” Nathaniel asked. “Which character did you pick for the costume design?”

But like him, his fellow student had his camera off — and had apparently wandered away from the screen.

His classes these days were nothing like the lively virtual meetings with his VOYCE group. Nathaniel had even gotten to MC a virtual town hall, where students said they wanted the city to invest its school cop dollars into counselors, librarians, and restorative justice coordinators.

After many meetings to prepare for the event, Nathaniel came off as confident and laidback.

But the more he got the hang of student activism, the harder it seemed to keep his mind on school work. He failed two classes during the first semester, and should have signed up for evening credit recovery courses. But that was when VOYCE students met to chart next steps in the district’s “Whole School Safety” initiative.

Next up was a Civil War documentary for history class. But 10 minutes in, Nathaniel’s attention had drifted. He donned headphones in front of a larger screen on his wall and started a video game, which whisked him from the 19th-century battlefield to a stark futuristic landscape.

Nathaniel Martinez plays the video game Titanfall while a documentary on the Civil War plays on his school laptop during history class.

SPRING: Chicago high schools reopen. But where are the students?

In April, Chicago reopened its high schools, but Leonel opted out of in-person learning. The decision weighed on him: Returning might help him catch up after he and his entire family got sick with COVID, sidelining his studies. But he was too worried about having a panic attack in the building.

By spring, several colleges had accepted Leonel. One admissions counselor, at Arrupe College in Chicago, gave him a call to share the news, sealing the deal. Leonel was drawn to the supportive, small-school feel at the affordable community college within the private Loyola University. Already, Leonel was reaching out to staff there almost every week, forging a bond.

Settling on a college shifted his perspective. After working so hard to achieve this goal, would he really let anxiety keep him away from college classrooms in the fall? Besides, he spent time with his friends for the first time in months and was astounded by the change in his sense of well-being.

“When I am with my friends,” he told his mom, “I forget I have anxiety.”

Leonel decided to go back in person after all. At first, school officials said the deadline had passed. But a couple of weeks later, he got the green light and returned to finish his senior year on campus.

In Chicago, nonprofits that focus on boys and young men of color kicked into gear that spring, questioning how the city can reimagine the way it serves these students. More robust mental health support is top of mind here and nationally.

VOYCE, the group Nathaniel and Derrick work with, has partnered with Lurie Children’s Hospital on a new project called Ujima, in which teen boys of color will weigh in on addressing the mental health needs in their communities.

The school district along with the nonprofit Thrive Chicago and My Brother’s Keeper, one of President Obama’s signature initiatives, are launching a pilot project in the fall to steer more Black and Latino boys to careers in teaching, presenting education as a form of activism, said Sonya Anderson, Thrive’s president.

Maurice Swinney, the Chicago district’s inaugural chief equity officer and now interim education chief, hosted a focus group with Black male students who spoke about the pressure they feel to contribute to family budgets amid the crisis. Swinney says the district is working to cultivate after-school job and internship opportunities that complement students’ long-term goals.

OneGoal adviser Chris Vienna stands for a portrait outside Solorio Academy High School. OneGoal mentors have worked through the pandemic to prepare students like Leonel for the next step after high school.

Vienna, the Solorio adviser, says internet school starkly exposed a chronic failure to teach students skills needed to succeed in college, including advocating for themselves, managing their time, and working independently. Next fall and beyond, he says, schools like Solorio should double down on cultivating these skills.

“Many within education want to go back to business as usual,” Vienna said. “I sincerely hope we don’t.”

That spring, Derrick gave school another try. His mom and school officials teamed up to encourage him, promising teachers would help him get caught up. But his comeback didn’t stick.

He had missed the email inviting him to opt into in-person learning. Once Derrick felt that opportunity would change everything. Now it seemed the moment to seize it had vanished.

In early June, Derrick got an unexpected call from a new mentor his school assigned him: She urged him to enroll in summer school and told him he would go to an alternative high school in the fall. He wants to start taking classes to get licensed to sell life insurance — another crack at his entrepreneurial dream he knows will require a high school degree.

Nathaniel Martinez is still readjusting to the routine of in-person learning, and the school is working to help students catch up after a year away from the classroom.

Across the district, about a third of high schoolers, including Nathaniel, returned to in-person classes. On a crisp Friday morning in late April, his mother, Miriam, dropped him off at Roosevelt, more than a year since he had last been on campus. By then, almost 5,500 people had died of COVID in Chicago.

At first, Nathaniel couldn’t recognize anyone, and no one seemed to want to talk. Still, both mother and son had high hopes for his return.

A month earlier, a furious Miriam had stormed into Nathaniel’s bedroom, holding his first semester grade report. He teared up — the first time he had cried in front of her.

“I don’t want to disappoint you,” he told her, and she softened.

That first day back, Nathaniel’s photo was on the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, with a story in which he and other students argued that Toledo’s killing in a Little Village alley strengthened the case for removing cops from campus. That afternoon, the district announced that it would pull officers from its high schools for the remainder of the school year.

Nathaniel had come into his own as an advocate.

Nathaniel Martinez was among a third of Chicago high schoolers who returned to in-person classes this spring.

But school was another story. Returning to the building two days a week was not a cure-all. He was still trying to relearn the routines of in-person school. Some mornings on his in-person days, he just stayed at home to log on remotely. Roosevelt was working on a plan to help Nathaniel and other students who had remained engaged in learning to get caught up over the summer and into fall.

In early May, Nathaniel again lay awake in the early dawn hours, all his screens dark, sleep still elusive. The coming months loomed: a grueling slog and a thrilling ride rolled into one, make-or-break.

“Nate, you are all over the place,” he admonished himself. “You gotta get back on track.”

After enrollment dips, America’s schools hope for fall rebound

2021-06-16T05:00:00+00:00

This story is a collaboration with The Associated Press.

Ashley Pearce’s daughter was set to start kindergarten last year in Maryland’s Montgomery County school system. But when it became clear that the year would begin online, Pearce found a nearby Catholic school offering in-person instruction and made the switch.

Now Pearce is grappling with a big question: Should her child return to the local public school? She’s hesitant to uproot her daughter after she’s made friends, and Pearce worries that the district might go fully virtual again if there’s an uptick in coronavirus cases.

“It’s going to be fine if we stay where we are, and that stability for my family is probably the way we’re going to go,” Pearce said.

As many parents across the U.S. weigh the same concerns, school districts that lost enrollment during the pandemic are looking anxiously to the fall to see how many families stick with the education choices they made over the last year. In hopes of attracting students, many districts have launched new efforts to connect with families with young children, including blanketing communities with yard signs and enlisting bus drivers to call parents.

There are early signs that enrollment may not fully rebound, and the stakes are high. If enrollment does not recover, public schools that lose students eventually could see funding cuts, though pandemic relief money is boosting budgets for now.

Sustained drops in enrollment could also shift the demographics of America’s public schools. A first-of-its-kind analysis by Chalkbeat and The Associated Press found that enrollment declines varied by student race and ethnicity. Enrollment in preschool to 12th grade dropped by 2.6% across 41 states last fall, and the decline was steepest among white students, whose enrollment fell more than 4%.

White families’ decisions seemed especially swayed by whether their child’s public school offered in-person learning. States where more students were learning fully virtually tended to see larger declines among white students, the Chalkbeat/AP analysis found.

Meanwhile, the nation’s Hispanic student population saw the biggest shift from pre-pandemic trends, with enrollment dipping 1.5% last fall — a significant change, given that Hispanic students had been the country’s fastest-growing student group. That could be tied to some of the disruptions Hispanic families experienced during the pandemic, including higher rates of job losses and higher rates of death and hospitalization from COVID-19.

The data underscores the complicated task ahead for schools trying to reconnect with families who left public schools for different reasons and ended up at a wide range of alternatives.

“Districts might have this kind of ‘different strokes for different folks’ policy,” said Richard Welsh, an associate professor at New York University who’s studied student mobility. “‘We’re open for business and we’re committed to in-person learning’ could be more targeted to white families.”

On the flip side, Welsh said, “when you have districts that are giving tours about their safety protocols, those might be targeted more to their Black and Latinx families” whose communities were hit harder by the pandemic.

One such effort is underway in San Antonio, where the mostly Latino school district saw enrollment drop just over 5%. Officials there project that enrollment will rise this fall but not to pre-pandemic levels.

To build trust with families worried about in-person learning, district officials have been hosting town halls where families can ask experts questions about COVID-19 vaccines. The district will also continue to offer a fully virtual schooling option.

School officials are working to connect with every family who left or did not enroll their child in preschool or kindergarten, whether by phone or with a home visit, Superintendent Pedro Martinez said. The district has even tasked bus drivers with calling families between routes to encourage them to register their children.

And while Martinez is focused on the early grades, where enrollment dipped the most, he has his eye on older students too. Nearly every student in the district is from a low-income family, and many got jobs to help their families weather the pandemic. He’s concerned that so many teens continued learning remotely all spring so they could continue to work, though he understands the financial pressure.

“It’s so easy for a 16- or 17-year-old to prioritize work over school,” he said.

Certain pandemic schooling options, like putting young children in child care instead of kindergarten, will likely fall by the wayside. But some families may stick with private schools, especially if, like Pearce, they see them as a way to avoid uncertainty.

It remains unclear exactly how many students those schools absorbed. In some states that track it, like Delaware and New Hampshire, private school enrollment grew 5% or more this year, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat and the AP. But in several others, including New York, Louisiana, Indiana and Colorado, private school enrollment fell by 3% or more, indicating families didn’t switch en masse.

Notably, it wasn’t just the wealthy who left public schools. There were significant enrollment declines among students from low-income families and more affluent ones in the 35 states that provided data.

Other families might continue to home-school their children — a practice that shot up in the few states that tracked it. In New York and Virginia, for example, home schooling grew by more than 50% this year, though it remained a relatively rare choice.

Regardless, districts are now ramping up their recruitment efforts, hoping to build on the small upticks they saw over the last few months as in-person learning became more widely available.

In Spokane, Washington, enrollment fell by nearly 7% last fall, with the steepest declines among Asian, Black and white students. District officials have been reaching out to families via text messages and mailers and through community groups.

They’ve been emphasizing the district’s plan to shrink class sizes this fall, which they see as a selling point for families who want more individual attention for their children and for those with lingering fears about the coronavirus. The district assures families that it will offer both full-time in-person instruction and a virtual option.

“We want to create as much predictability, and try to mitigate a sense of unknown and fear, to the greatest extent possible,” Superintendent Adam Swinyard said, “and just let our families know that we’re ready and eager to be back.”

Researchers who track student demographics are also watching closely to see who returns. By the fall, it will be clearer if the enrollment shifts carry longer-term implications.

Some districts already expect the pandemic to have a lasting effect.

In Denver, officials estimate that enrollment will drop by 6% in the coming years — a rate nearly double what was predicted before the pandemic. Declining birth rates and rising housing prices that drive families away are big factors, but officials believe the pandemic exacerbated those losses, especially in the youngest grades. Kindergarten applications are down considerably for the upcoming school year.

The district’s planning director, Sara Walsh, said the total decline could be “pretty significant.” But she hasn’t given up on a turnaround: “I am hoping that maybe all of a sudden tons of kids show up.”

Melanie Asmar and Samuel Park of Chalkbeat contributed to this report.

‘Una gran familia’: How WhatsApp helped a small Brooklyn school remain a big family in the face of isolation and grief

2021-06-11T10:00:00+00:00

The messages pinged at all hours, pleas from parents frantically trying to keep up with remote learning as the coronavirus pandemic took hold of New York City.

A password for Zoom lessons. The third grade class schedule. Trouble logging into an email account.

Each one was urgent. Some were dire.

Unpaid utility bills. No food in the house. Reaching a breaking point with a child.

The texts flooded “PS 89 PTC 2019-2020,” a group chat started by the Parent Teacher Collaborative on WhatsApp. It became a lifeline last spring for the families of P.S. 89 in Cypress Hills, a small Brooklyn neighborhood bordering Queens that has been among the city’s hardest hit communities. One out of every 10 people in the school’s 11207 ZIP code was infected with the coronavirus. More than 300 died.

As COVID upended school, the thread on the messaging app was a virtual gathering place to share reminders of login times and tips for navigating Google Classroom. As families lost jobs, the chat was a bridge to help signing up for food benefits or receiving care packages full of hard-to-get essentials like sanitizing wipes and toilet paper. And as nerves frayed and losses mounted, the message group served as a direct line to a listening ear.

It was often an all-hands effort, with parents, teachers, and school leaders jumping in with answers whenever they had them. But sorting through the deluge of need often fell to a team of moms on the P.S. 89 parent organization. While staring down the crisis themselves, they responded to message, after message, after message — helping make sure families were fed, received remote learning tech support, and had someone to turn to even while isolated at home.

Help was a WhatsApp message away

Many parents did not yet have devices, internet, or even email accounts before schools abruptly pivoted online. But almost everyone had a cell phone with WhatsApp loaded. The app was popular among the many immigrants who make up the core of families served at P.S. 89, an English and Spanish dual language school serving grades 3-K through 8. With 150 parents and school staffers on the thread, it became the virtual town square for a tight-knit school that has long prided itself on its strong relationships with families.

“It became a place where, also, parents vented about whether there were problems, how they were feeling” Ceucynth Cordero Ochoa said. “It was a place where they had someone to talk to.”

Cordero started the chat thread not long before the pandemic hit. She has been the devoted president of the school’s parent organization for the last two years. Her three children have all attended P.S. 89, ever since her eldest, now in seventh grade, started kindergarten.

Cordero thought a WhatsApp group would be a more effective way to get the attention of parents, since flyers in backpacks often get missed. It’s also accessible to families even if their phones get cut off, since parents can still use WhatsApp by connecting to free WiFi signals at places like McDonald’s. She texted reminders about crazy hat day, or the next family night, when the school would open its doors for a communal meal, or a lesson on how to make sense of their children’s math homework.

The elevated subway tracks for the J and Z trains cut through Cypress Hills along the main thoroughfare of Jamaica Avenue.

Bringing parents in has always been core to P.S. 89’s mission: Families who were dissatisfied with nearby options helped found the school in 1997. They created a “community school,” the only one in the city’s public school system where a parent co-director serves alongside the principal. The school partners with the nonprofit Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation to help families solve problems that go beyond academics, but can still affect how much kids learn. The model preceded the education department’s own community school program, offering on-site wraparound services and referrals for mental health counseling and other social services.

The school’s community focus along with its Spanish program drew Cordero to P.S. 89 not long after she and her family arrived from Puerto Rico, where they lived for a few years after leaving their home country of the Dominican Republic.

On March 16, 2020, with seven coronavirus deaths tallied in New York City, the nation’s largest school system shuttered all its buildings. Then-chancellor Richard Carranza had assured New Yorkers all week that schools would only close as a last resort. “We’re at the last resort,” he said on a Sunday afternoon, announcing the shutdown would be effective the next day.

Cordero doesn’t remember exactly how she found out schools would be closing — whether she heard it on the news or received an email from the school. But from that moment on, the WhatsApp thread ignited.

“The chat became the center of everything. It really did,” she said. “That chat was the heart.”

Parents sent photos of birthdays celebrated in lockdown. They shared videos of students playing the recorder for a virtual talent show. They posted pictures of stacks of books the education department sent to families who were still waiting for devices to arrive, materials that teachers hoped would keep kids learning. The parent coordinator wrote a congratulatory message that, despite everything, attendance had managed to stay strong at 98%.

It was also a place to get connected with much-needed help.

“Hellooo if someone needs food/the church next to the school is giving some away/today,” one parent wrote in Spanish.

“I went they’re giving bananas coffee apples carrots lemons cereal Gatorade,” another answered.

Small businesses line Jamaica Avenue in Cypress Hills under the shadow of the elevated subway tracks. Many families from the area’s P.S. 89 facing food insecurity got help from the school’s WhatsApp chat.

And there were questions — so many questions — about navigating remote learning.

“For those who have received learning devices, did UPS or FEDex deliver it?” one parent asked, worried about the iPad getting swiped if it got delivered while no one was home. “If any of you had problems with the internet connection on the [education department] iPads, let me know, I had that problem and I was able to solve it,” another wrote, letting parents know they needed to download a software update to be able to get online.

Cordero typed out all the responses she could, while also trying to problem solve the same issues in her own home. Her family had one laptop. It went to her son, the eldest, who took up the living room as his new classroom. The younger children logged into lessons from a cell phone and a tablet, sitting side by side at the kitchen table. Cordero hunted for headphones for the two, who struggled to hear their teachers over each other’s classes.

All the while, the chat group pinged with parents in need. In the scramble of those first few days and weeks, the most pressing issues revolved around the logistics of online school and tech support for a community that had been largely analog before the pandemic struck. As soon as she figured out how to log into Google classroom or download a new update on the education department-issued iPads herself, Cordero would jump on conference calls with other parents who texted the group chat for help figuring out the same problems.

As they settled in — Cordero tracked down headphones, and an iPad finally arrived from the education department — it was clear this would be a long haul. She had to buy a new cell phone after her battery gave out from using it so much. She left her job managing hotel reservations online so she could attend to her children and her PTC duties.

With the school’s dedicated tech support specialist overwhelmed, Cordero stepped in to help. Families didn’t understand program instructions that would pop on screen in English, or know how to open a downloaded document, or find a password buried in an email somewhere.

Not long after schools closed, a family reached out on the chat needing tech help. Cordero soon appeared on a video chat with them, helping navigate a maze of drop down menus, apps, and links. Some time went by, and her phone pinged with a new text from that same family. No one in the house had been working, the mom wrote to Cordero, and unpaid bills had stacked up. They worried their lights would be turned off, and with it, a steady connection to online school.

From remote learning to hunger: ‘We would solve the problem.’

This problem would become more common. While the pandemic raged, the unemployment rate in Cypress Hills rose from 5% in February 2020 to 25% that June, one analysis found.

When they learned about these cases, the PTC did what they could. They tapped their modest fundraising account. Instead of trips to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to see cherry blossoms, as the parents had arranged in years past, the PTC paid for pantry staples like rice, and helped put together care packages full of disinfecting wipes and over-the-counter pain relievers.

The most pressing cases, the ones that couldn’t be solved with a bundle of groceries, got funneled through WhatsApp messages to Cordero and other PTC moms, who handed them off to the school’s administration and to Cypress Hills. That’s when the community schools model would kick in, with a network of school and Cypress Hill staff connecting families to food benefits, unemployment checks, or a phone call with a social worker or counselor.

“It’s like a chain. They would talk to me, I would talk to the school, with Cypress,” Cordero said. “And that’s how we’d go down the path until we would solve the problem.”

“Somos una gran familia.” We are a big family, she said.

Often, the person who Cordero passed families to was Amalfi Richard, the school’s parent coordinator. As the pandemic raged, and families hunkered down, too fearful to leave their homes, Richard masked up and headed to a fruit and vegetable stand near the school and the local pharmacy. She did the shopping for the care packages that families received — paying out of her pocket, until the PTC set up an online fundraising account — and dropping off items at front doors.

Amalfi Richard, P.S. 89’s parent coordinator, would shop for care packages for the school’s families during the height of the pandemic.

Richard remembers picking up laundry detergent and cleaning supplies for a single mom who had come down with COVID and shared a bathroom with five other family members. Richard was also an active member of the chat group, posting photos of a caravan of cars visiting graduating eighth graders or information about where parents could pick up free masks.

“I need to have direct communication, so WhatsApp helped me a lot,” Richard said. “It worked really well for the emergencies, especially when the schools were closed, because now that the school was closed, what number do you call?”

No matter how much the school and PTC moms managed to help, it seemed like the chat group kept pinging with more work to be done. At one point, the PTC divvied up responding to the messages by grade. They would post screenshots of class schedules and translate into both Spanish and English. The PTC moms handed out their personal numbers, and soon the chat messages turned into phone calls.

Caring for parents’ mental health

The calls that stick most with Carmen McKay, the PTC secretary, were the ones from parents who felt crushed by the isolation and stress of lockdown. Parents, often mothers, suddenly found themselves playing the role of full-time teacher, cook, and caregiver — while sickness and deaths mounted around them.

“I had this mother who called me and said, ‘Listen I’m going to go crazy and I don’t know what I’m going to do with my child,’” McKay remembered. “You would talk to the child and she would say, ‘My mom is so angry. Everything bothers her, and I don’t know what to do.’”

She spent hours listening to parents at their worst moments, telling them to take deep breaths, and sometimes even serving as a mediator.

PTC Secretary Carmen McKay spent hours listening to parents and trying to help them manage their stress.

“Just thinking about it, going to that space, it’s really overwhelming,” McKay remembered. Even still, she’s glad parents “trusted us enough to pick up the phone.”

“It’s good to see that little conversation you have with the parent helps them calm down,” McKay said. “Because we know that’s not us. It’s all that stress.”

All that time she was listening to other parents, she didn’t share much about her own challenges. McKay, who worked part-time watching two children, was living with her daughter in her employer’s home, to avoid exposure to the virus traveling to and from the job. Her husband remained in their Canarsie apartment. While both were able to continue working, they spent two months apart. McKay found her own ways to cope.

“I did a lot of yoga. I did a lot of reading. I do a lot of praying, especially when it comes to listening to parents who were very frustrated with their children because that was hard,” she said.

As school returns in-person, the chat continues

This school year has been tumultuous, and the WhatsApp chat is still going strong. In the fall, after two delayed starts pushed building reopenings back by nearly a month, it was the place where families could be reminded of which days each cohort would be in school. New York City schools had a complicated return, with most children learning exclusively from home while social distancing meant that in-person children followed sometimes confusing hybrid schedules, learning in school on some days, and remotely on others. Under half of the school’s 460 students returned to the building this year. When positive coronavirus cases forced the building to close — which happened so often that the school shuttered about every two weeks, according to the principal — the notice would be posted in WhatsApp.

As relaxed social distancing rules have allowed the school’s in-person elementary school children to return five days a week, and an increasing vaccination rate has driven COVID rates to the lowest levels yet in the city, the chat group has become less about triage and more of a place to learn about parent workshops on everything from healthy food to managing stress.

Richard, the parent coordinator, uses WhatsApp these days to remind parents of their regular cooking classes. Before the pandemic, parents would make meals together in the school kitchen. Now, Richard posts the recipes in the chat, and parents come to school to pick up a bag of fresh ingredients. They all cook together on Fridays over a video call. Afterwards, parents post pictures of the dishes they’ve made.

“It’s not just about the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic,” Richard said. “It’s wellness and taking care of your feelings. It’s also like highlighting the family, the feeling of unity.”

The nearby Highland Park has a community garden for local schools. P.S. 89 also has its own small garden on campus, and now holds weekly gardening meetups for parents.

After finding so much community in message threads, P.S. 89 is also trying to lure parents and students back to campus with a weekly meetup for parents to garden together. About half of the students have returned for in-person learning.

It’s clear that schools like P.S. 89 have been changed forever by the coronavirus. One of its lasting impacts, said Principal Irene Leon, will be all the new ways they found to communicate with parents. That includes a new school-wide email address that parents could send questions to, and the WhatsApp group.

“We have a real pulse on where everyone is,” Leon said. “A lot of what we learned this past year we are going to continue moving forward.”

Alex Zimmerman and Amy Zimmer contributed reporting.

Chalkbeat produced this Pandemic 360 series in partnership with Univision 41.

Pandemic 360: A comprehensive look at COVID’s impact on school communities

2021-06-11T10:00:00+00:00

Anxiety. Depression. Cabin fever. Isolation.

These words appeared over and over when we asked our readers in New York City and Newark earlier this year to tell us how the pandemic impacted their school communities.

We heard from 275 parents, students, and teachers — and the responses were jarring. Relatives had died of COVID, and jobs were lost. Teachers felt drained. Some children were adrift in school and at home.

“It has been devastating physically and emotionally,” said one Brooklyn parent who is also a teacher, echoing dozens of others impacted by school building closures and remote learning.

“Several of my family members have lost their jobs and had to move into homeless shelters...many of my friends have had an increase in depression, anxiety, and this growing fear of being isolated,” said a 10th grade student in Newark, speaking to the pandemic’s financial toll and the emotional strain felt by so many.

These sobering responses have helped to guide the work found in our end-of-year series “Pandemic 360: A comprehensive look at COVID’s impact on school communities” that Chalkbeat is undertaking in New York and Newark in partnership with Univision 41.

Through reported pieces and First Person accounts, we will explore how COVID-19 impacted the lives of students, parents, and teachers inside and outside of classrooms at one school in each city.

Starting today, we will introduce you to Brooklyn’s P.S. 89, a dual language school (English-Spanish) with about 470 students from 3-K through eighth grade. Nearly all of the school’s students are Latino, and most are from low-income families. Started by a group of parents and the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, which provides social service help as well as an afterschool program, the school’s mission has involved helping families beyond the school walls. Loss of life and economic instability has been widespread in Cypress Hills, one of New York City’s neighborhoods hardest hit by COVID-19 in terms of health and socioeconomic disparities, according to city data. When schools closed down last year, staff and parents jumped into action to support each other. As the threat of the pandemic recedes, the community is continuing to support each other — and look to the year ahead.

(Left to right) Arthur King and Melvin Watson help drill the Roseville Community Charter School sign back in its place after it fell forward in late-April. Many of the school’s families have been directly affected by the pandemic.

Later this month, we will meet the community at Newark’s Roseville Community Charter School. Like people throughout Newark, many families at Roseville have been directly affected by the pandemic. About half of the school’s approximately 400 students are Black, half are Hispanic, and roughly 20% are English language learners, populations disproportionately affected by coronavirus. We were with teachers and students when the school reopened in April after more than a year and have revisited them several times since.

Our stories will reflect on this extraordinary period of time, the loss that has been left in its wake, and the challenges families have faced. But as we approach the end of this school year, we will also look ahead at what recovery means, both in terms of learning loss and academics and for the community at large. How will students adapt after being home so long? And what will next school year look like?

We need to continue to listen to our readers to answer these questions and tell true stories. Have a story idea to share? A question we should be asking? Drop us a note at community@chalkbeat.org.

Teaching while ‘in the closet’ was excruciating. Coming out changed everything.

2021-06-08T14:58:06+00:00

Stage lights illuminated us. I began waving my baton to cue the piano and then, my students began singing “For Good” from the Broadway musical “Wicked.” As the song states, my students changed me “for good.”

Everyone watching saw in me a conductor leading students through a choir concert. My students likely saw a leader who always encouraged them to live as their authentic selves. But at that moment, all I could think about was the truth I withheld from them about my own identity.

Jeff Mayo

When I started teaching, I worked in a small private school and made the conscious choice to lie as I signed my contract. I agreed to “not live a lifestyle contrary to the teachings,” of the school’s faith tradition. That meant actively hiding that I am gay. During the two years I was there, I limited access to who knew about the closet. I had a rough time there — sometimes hearing harsh words about my sexual identity from colleagues, administrators, and students — but I made some incredible connections, too, among the children I taught.

In 2018, I took a job at a public charter school within Indianapolis Public Schools’ Innovation Network and began as the K-8 music teacher. I meticulously read through the contract at the school, Matchbook Learning in Haughville, and breathed a small sigh of relief when I realized that signing didn’t mean lying about who I am. That was me peeking out of the teaching closet.

As I came to know my new colleagues, I stopped trying to act straight. I stopped changing my speaking voice, being quite so aware of my clothing, and monitoring how I moved my hands. I just decided to be myself.

But then, during a music lesson inside my own classroom, some students began taunting their classmates with offensive words, including an extremely derogatory term for gay people. The impact of this word reached further than students had intended; It made me question whether I was truly safe to live as my authentic self.

Around the same time, I had decided to come out formally to my administration, as I asked for guidance about representing myself without creating any unintentional discomfort. At one point, our school’s now-CEO connected me to an Indianapolis school leader who identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

During my conversation with this school leader, I felt fully seen for the first time in my life. My professional and personal selves were no longer divided, and this educator gave me tips on how to come out naturally to students. Weeks later, I debriefed with my administrators, who gave me express permission to come out to students.

Soon after, I had that opportunity. I’d finally heard “You’re so gay”... “That’s so gay,” and, again, that hateful word for gay people hurled across my classroom one too many times. I pulled aside the two students who were using these words as insults and asked if they knew the meaning of what they were saying.

I compared it to how I, as a white man, will never utter the n-word — even if Black Americans sometimes reappropriate the word among themselves. Even then, it’s not a word we use during the school day. Through that approach, I was able to express to students that the other f-word was a hurtful term for a gay man.

Their response: “Well, nobody in our class is gay!”

And for the first time in my career, I told them: “I am. I am gay. That word is not acceptable.”

I dreaded what could happen next.

But what they said surprised me.“Well, you need to tell everyone that you are gay! They need to know it’s not okay to say these words!” I told them that while I didn’t plan to announce it, they were free to tell their classmates. Without hesitation, they proceeded to tell everyone. Gradually, all my students learned my truth. There were giggles and questions, but soon they were correcting each other when a peer used a homophobic slur.

The wave of acceptance from my administration, my colleagues, and my students was overwhelming. When I stopped hiding my identity, school became more joyful. I began dancing, singing, and laughing in the hallways more frequently than before.

Growing up, I never knew a gay adult, and anytime I encountered a gay person, those around me never had anything positive to say. Over time, students who were discovering their own identity within the LGBTQ+ community confided in me and now allow me to walk alongside them. Humbly, I have realized I am the representation I never had.

I am the representation that too few LGBTQ+ students have. Just 27% of LGBTQ+ youth “feel like they can be themselves in school,” according to a Human Rights Campaign youth survey. To change that reality and in honor of Pride Month, here are some of my favorite resources for fostering LGBTQ+-inclusive school communities:

And here’s a list of service providers, hotlines, and text supports for LGBTQ+ youth who may be struggling.

While I am extremely grateful to have found myself in such an accepting school community, I know that is not the case for all educators, school staff, and students. Which is why my mission within education is to ensure every child knows that they matter, are valued, are important, and that who they are will always be enough.

Jeff Mayo (he/him/his) is currently an instructional coach and director of eLearning, serving the Haughville, Indianapolis community, with Matchbook Learning at Wendell Phillips School 63.

In high school, I was homeless. To help more students like me get to college, look beyond education policy.

2021-06-07T14:00:00+00:00

I turned off my camera, having just recorded my incredulous reaction to the news; my mom and I sat in silence. Neither of us knew what to say or if there was anything worth saying. A few minutes earlier I had discovered that I was admitted into Columbia University. We were in shock. Not because the result was entirely unexpected but because neither of us had prepared ourselves for what came next.

For most of high school, my living situation was complicated. When I wasn’t living in Tijuana, Mexico, and commuting across the border every day to attend school in San Diego, California, I was staying at another family’s house. I had moved a total of 11 times between San Diego and Tijuana since starting high school in 2016 and had been categorized as homeless for a large portion of the past four years.

Dale Mcenany

From an educator’s perspective, it was a miracle that I was going to college at all. From my perspective, I didn’t have much of a choice.

Eventually, my mom got up from the floor and hugged me.

“I’m so proud of you,” she said.

I muttered a quiet thank you and excused myself to go to the bathroom. I wanted to be alone.

I felt a mix of emotions in the minutes and months that followed my admission — disbelief, excitement, anxiety — but one prevailing sentiment that lingered could only be described as survivor’s guilt. This was the most confusing reaction to me, and I wasn’t able to articulate why I felt this way until I took a class at Barnard College about education policy.

In America, there is an overreliance on education to fix systemic problems. Policymakers, educators, and community members view our education system as a tool to fix structural issues, such as poverty, food insecurity, and inequality of all kinds. In some instances — teaching students the importance of civic engagement, for example — education is an ideal avenue to generate solutions. But with other issues, expecting education to be a magical cure for all societal ills ends up harming the country’s most vulnerable people.

I learned that education policy is often seen as a substitute for social welfare policy — a reality that can be traced back to President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Those policies, meant to reduce poverty, put a lot of their focus on education through programs like Title I, which gave schools with lots of students from low-income families more money. Later, during the Reagan years, the pervasive conservative dogma that “personal responsibility” was the key to social mobility would truly shift public discourse away from providing direct help to those who needed it.

As for my survivor’s guilt, I (and many people in my community) had internalized the message of education being the key to economic prosperity. The vast majority of my high school classmates were not attending university. It is only in retrospect that I recognize this guilt was created by design.

There is no universal definition of homeless youth across U.S. school districts. In some states and municipalities, homeless youth includes situations where families are doubled up in housing while others don’t have a classification for homeless students at all. These various definitions of homelessness make it difficult to create and scale education policies to help homeless students; however, even if states agreed on what constitutes homelessness, the solution will always lie beyond the confines of education policy.

No amount of education reform can teach someone into a home or a stable financial situation. In order to help students who were in my position — who are poor, even homeless — we need to be comfortable with the reality that there are limits to the benefits of education.

Policymakers need to start looking at ways to stimulate economic mobility from sources beyond education policy. Education activists need to reconcile that seemingly separate ongoing crises, such as drastic wealth inequality and lack of affordable housing, are in fact directly related to education policy. By advocating for progressive policy initiatives like the “Homes for All Act,” which proposes a massive federal investment in new public housing, they will be helping students in my situation.

The path to economic equality and equal educational outcomes must include solutions that fall outside the purview of “education policy.” When it does, America’s most vulnerable students — including those who, like me, grew up in poverty — will have the same opportunities for success that I have been afforded.

Dale Mcenany is a rising sophomore at Columbia University studying sociology and education. He wrote this piece as part of his Educational Foundations course at Barnard College.

Before becoming a teacher, I was a YA author. My books normalized whiteness.

2021-06-04T14:00:00+00:00

I grew up talking about race and class and equity at my dinner table with my activist parents. During my two decades in the classroom, I taught a culturally sustaining curriculum, helping a diverse group of adolescents develop a positive identity through reading and writing. But in my first career, I normalized whiteness for a generation of young people.

I am a retired middle school English teacher. White. Jewish. I leave a legacy of beautiful students whom I’ve been honored to teach. But throughout the 1980s and 1990s, I pumped out commercial young adult and middle-grade fiction. I started out editing teen romances and went on to write my own series fiction, produced under deadlines so tight I sometimes smacked out a whole novel in under two weeks. The books were big business, marketed to deliver a frothy, irresistible confection to the largest audience.

Eve Becker

What audience? When I was a young editor, just starting out, I remember discussing the lack of diversity in these books with a boss. Where were the Black kids? “They don’t read,” my boss told me. “There’s no market for that.” Sit with that for a moment.

Eventually, my boss did put a Black model on the cover of one of our signature romance lines and hired ... a white writer to write the Black protagonist. (Left out entirely — as it usually was at the time — was any discussion of kids who were brown, Asian, or anything besides Black or white.) It fell to me to edit the book. I proceeded to remove certain tropes so astonishingly racist that I just sat at my desk shaking my head.

And what about my own books?

I was a red diaper baby, whose grandparents came to this country looking for a refuge from hate and whose parents were willing to fight for their ideals. But I also spent the first 40 years of my life — until I became an educator — in a world that was mostly white, with whiteness as the default. My publishing colleagues and editors, for example, were white. Every single one of them.

So what did that look like, between the covers of my books? I never felt comfortable owning those hastily written reads that had once been my bread and butter. That part of my life is long over, and my identity as an educator is strong. Let those sleeping dogs yellow and fade. But a social media post from a long-ago colleague and a letter from a middle-aged fan who’d tracked me down, got me thinking about those books again. I took a box of them down from the closet, where they’d been sitting, untouched, for decades: more than 30 teen and middle-grade novels I had written under nine different pseudonyms.

I began with one that a reviewer had singled out for its “diverse supporting cast and authentic dialogue.” Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared.

But it was. Sure, I had some “diverse” secondary characters. Like the occasional “pretty black girl” (not capitalized in the late 20th century), the “dark-skinned dreamboat” with the obvious Latinx name, the “Korean” roommate — 100% American, with immigrant parents. Please kill me. Most of my books’ characters and all the protagonists were white. By default. There wasn’t a single time that I described any of my white characters by race. Gender norms? Don’t start me.

And can we talk about how I erased my own identity from these books? Not a single protagonist was Jewish. They had last names like Miller and Powell. And they came from the suburbs, from a land of tan and white station wagons, football games, and proms, none of which were personally familiar to this native New Yorker. The Miller and Powell kids had two-parent families, sat down to dinner together, were able-bodied, and aggressively heteronormative.

And this is what anyone of any race or group in this country over the age of 25 or so grew up with: Default whiteness in books, movies, and TV shows. Christian hegemony. Genderization. Every other identity erased.

“When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read,” writes Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, in her article “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” “or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.”

I put the box of books back in the closet. Young readers finally have choices that paint a richer, more authentic picture of who we are and who we want to be. We white, lifelong progressives of a certain age like to think we weren’t part of the problem. I have a written record that I was.

But a more pressing concern than a box of out-of-print books was what I’d passed down to my students. After surveying my old novels, I did an inventory of my curriculum for the past 20 years. Whew. A good syllabus for my mix of students. Beautiful books by authors of so many backgrounds. There was also my classroom lending library, full of Bishop’s windows and mirrors — book choices where any member of my class could find a reflection of themselves or an opening into someone else’s world. A few of the many books that my middle school students had loved in recent years included the fantasy novels “Akata Witch” by Nnedi Okorafor and “Children of Blood and Bone” by Tomi Adeyemi; and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut novel, “Purple Hibiscus,” all three tying into a related unit in social studies on West Africa; Elizabeth Acevedo’s novel in verse, “The Poet X”; Jason Reynolds’ “Ghost,” and the graphic memoirs “American Born Chinese” by Gene Luen Yang and John Lewis’ “March.”

My students had also read classics — “To Kill a Mockingbird,” for example, which I taught for a number of years in the early 2010s. With its “white savior” hero and its Black characters that need saving, many teachers have now removed it from the syllabus.

In the years before educators began discussing the book’s issues at conferences and in online forums, I asked my students to delve into the ways that author Harper Lee was a product of her time; I invited them to examine the book’s communities — and author — with a reflective eye. A social map of the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama, was one assignment. “To Kill a Mockingbird” was on my syllabus because it is magnificent in language and unusual in structure, with complex young characters and a message about stepping into each other’s shoes. And isn’t it worth considering why “To Kill a Mockingbird” was radical in its time, became a perennial, but now shows its racial fault lines? I taught “To Kill a Mockingbird” with Richard Wright’s stunning autobiography, “Black Boy,” about growing up Black at the turn of the last century in the deep South. The disparate lenses of the two books offered rich and frank discussions about race, perspective, history, and the power of words and literature.

During my final years in the classroom, just before the murder of George Floyd and an intensified discussion on race and social issues in the classroom, I might have said, let’s read the classics with intention, as beautifully crafted pieces of literature and primary sources of white supremacy. Flowers and thorns. Along with a freshly blooming canon. Let’s ask who is on the pages and who is not.

But my box of teen romances made me confront how deeply entrenched the subliminal messages were — in so many classic texts and older mass-market fiction alike — with their unconscious erasure, their twisted history, their systemic racism. How many generations will it take to banish those messages? Can we vanquish them while still reading them, watching them, metabolizing them? My own books made me consider, for a moment, the notion of a curriculum without any of the old canon at all. Can students learn to be thoughtful, critical readers without “Mockingbird”? Are there other books that warrant our students’ attention? Yes and yes.

With this in mind, some teachers poll their students on curricular book choices. Some of us design pairings to augment the traditional canon and recenter the discussion. Some of us create a syllabus of titles that haven’t traditionally been taught in school. My tried-and-true recipe is a mix of diverse full-class texts to model how we read and discuss literature; small groups, where students read books of choice together; and a vigorous independent reading program, which affords the freedom to read for individual appetite and encouragement to read widely and across divides. Equally important are opportunities to write about literature with a speculative lens — to write scenes from other characters’ points of view, rewrite from another time or place, refashion endings, and push, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie extolls us, against a single story.

Eve Becker taught middle school English and Humanities in New York City for 20 years. As founder of Leaf and Pen, she leads writing retreats and workshops for educators. Prior to becoming a teacher, she was a writer and editor. In 2012, she was awarded the acclaimed Pushcart Prize for her essay “Final Concert.” She is currently a doctoral student in English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

This essay was adapted from a piece published on the author’s blog.