Chalkbeat

Despite recent efforts to make change, top colleges are still home to mostly wealthy students

2026-02-10T20:12:00+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

It’s hardly news that America’s elite universities are largely populated by students from America’s wealthiest families.

Yet in recent years this has drawn increasing alarm. Research has documented just how large the admissions advantage is for well-off students. Bloomberg Philanthropies has pumped tens of millions of dollars into efforts to get talented lower-income students into better colleges. The College Board, which administers the SAT, vowed to help in this effort. For some, the 2023 Supreme Court ruling banning race-based affirmative action added more urgency to the task. In the wake of the ruling, a number of schools pledged to step up recruitment and end legacy admissions.

Have these efforts paid off? A look at university press releases might suggest so. A number of schools — including Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, and Princeton — have recently touted a record share of students who receive Pell grants, education stipends that go to students from low- and middle-income families.

Most press releases did not mention a salient fact, however: The Pell qualification rules have changed in recent years, skewing comparisons over time. A careful parsing of the data suggests that America’s top colleges are still filled largely by students from advantaged backgrounds. Individual universities have seen some progress, but the aggregate changes appear to have been modest.

“There are benefits to enrolling more rich kids — untold benefits — for these selective institutions,” says Paul Tough, an author who has chronicled efforts to improve college access. “And there are very few benefits to enrolling more low-income students, except that it’s the right thing to do.”

This matters because enrollment at top universities has been linked to higher graduation rates and higher incomes post college. Selective schools typically provide a better-funded education, while offering more generous financial aid. They also often open the door to institutions of power and influence.

It’s important to be clear about how incremental progress in increasing economic diversity has been. If schools can get positive attention for addressing this without making substantial changes, they may feel even less pressure to undertake further reforms.

Researchers have often counted students as lower-income based on whether they receive a federal Pell grant. But since eligibility expanded in 2024, Pell numbers across the country have spiked. “My suspicion is that much of the uptick in Pell representation at these selective colleges and universities is a measurement issue,” says Sarah Turner, a University of Virginia professor who studies higher education.

Some universities acknowledge the changing Pell definition but say that their economic diversity has genuinely increased. To figure out whether this is the case, I looked at data from the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks university enrollment, broken down by the income level of students’ neighborhoods.

Total enrollment at “highly selective” colleges has been going up in recent years, but the economic background of the student body has barely budged. The share of students from the two groups of lower-income neighborhoods has shifted from 13.2% in 2019 to 13.4% in 2025. In raw numbers, that’s an uptick of about 20,000 students, which is far less than the 95,000 student increase from the two highest-income neighborhoods.

Three-quarters of students at these selective schools come from those affluent areas. This is just 1 percentage point lower compared to six years earlier.

Another analysis, recently published by the College Board, looked at the year after affirmative action was banned. At very elite colleges, the share of first-year students from low- and middle-income neighborhoods rose by only a “minimal” amount, researchers found.

The clearinghouse income data only goes back to 2019. Would a longer time horizon change the picture? Not much. A recent analysis by James Murphy, a higher education analyst at the nonprofit Class Action, found that between 2013 and 2023, first-year Pell enrollment at highly selective private colleges increased from 16% to 18%. This uptick was a bit higher at Ivy League and elite liberal arts schools. Still, at selective public colleges, Pell shares fell by 2 points. (This was when the Pell definition was broadly consistent.)

The data I’ve described is imperfect. The clearinghouse measures students’ neighborhoods, rather than their individual economic circumstances. Those are highly correlated but are not the same. The clearinghouse also includes a variety of colleges, nearly 200, under the banner of “highly selective,” not just the very elite schools. Turner of the University of Virginia says more detailed data is needed to fully understand the trends here.

I asked the universities touting their record Pell numbers for any data beyond Pell showing that more low-income students were enrolled. None responded with that information.

The challenge of making substantial change is epitomized by the American Talent Initiative, an organization supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies (which is also a funder of Chalkbeat). In 2016, ATI set a goal of adding 50,000 low- and middle-income students to 350 or so colleges with high graduation rates. Many of those schools joined ATI as members, but even more did not participate in the initiative. Initial reports from the group showed that its members were making progress, but non-participating schools were actually enrolling fewer and fewer lower-income students.

Tania LaViolet, an ATI leader, says the original hope was to influence the broader ecosystem of top colleges by sharing best practices across institutions. “That hypothesis didn’t pan out as we had anticipated,” she says.

In 2024, ATI dropped its initial goal to focus just on colleges that opted to participate in the work. Its latest report, released last month, touts an increase in lower-income students among ATI members, though the authors acknowledge it’s challenging to compare trends over time because of the changing Pell definition. The organization no longer tracks data for non-members.

ATI officials note that even if the share of low-income students in selective schools hasn’t changed much, their raw numbers have increased, as overall enrollment has grown. “This increased number means thousands of lives changed for the better,” says LaViolet.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

How do we know which states have the best schools?

2025-11-25T15:51:12+00:00

Welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas. We’re trying something a little different today: A roundup of interesting tidbits, data points, and links rather than a single piece. My plan is to do this once a month. Feel free to let me know what you think by replying to this email.

Wonking out

How should we judge states’ educational performance?

Mark Weber, a researcher and teacher, has a differing take from many on the Southern surge, which I also wrote about last month. Recall that Louisiana and Mississippi’s test scores look particularly strong when controlling for their high poverty rates, according to a widely cited Urban Institute analysis.

Weber argues that this is the wrong way to evaluate states because lower income levels may be a result of state policies, particularly the historic quality of their schools. He points to his home state of New Jersey, which does well in raw scores but is less impressive in Urban’s adjusted comparisons. Such statistical adjustments are “wiping away one of the primary outcomes of good schooling that public education advocates want: higher incomes,” Weber writes.

To continue reading, click here.

Why Trump’s effort to dismantle the Education Department matters very little and also quite a lot

2025-11-20T12:01:46+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

The Trump administration’s latest actions to dismantle the Department of Education can be hard to make sense of.

On the one hand, this is a milestone moment in conservatives’ long-running campaign to gut the agency. On the other hand, the administration has promised that most of the underlying programs will be protected.

There is very little reason to think that moving various programs to other agencies will matter much for schools. Running the same programs, just out of a different department, is unlikely to affect the typical student.

Click here to read the rest of this story.

Have Democrats lost voters’ trust on education? Not according to most polls.

2025-11-18T16:04:16+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

Democrats are in disarray on education — according to a growing chorus of Democrats.

A variety of left-leaning journalists, politicians, and advocates have all recently claimed that voters have become disillusioned with the party’s approach to schools. Often, these commentators cite anger over pandemic-era closures and argue that Democrats need to embrace tougher academic standards or school choice.

“For decades, when pollsters asked voters which party they trusted more on education, Democrats maintained, on average, a 14-point advantage. More recently that gap closed, then flipped to favor Republicans,” wrote former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel last month.

Is this emerging conventional wisdom true, though? This assertion has typically relied on one or two surveys, rather than a comprehensive look at the data. So I compiled all publicly available polls I could find that asked voters which party they preferred on education.

The verdict was clear: In more than a dozen surveys conducted this year by eight different organizations, all but one showed Democrats with an edge on education. This ranged from 4 to 15 points. Among all 14 polls, the median advantage was 9 points. Although Democrats appear to have briefly lost this edge a few years ago, voters again now tend to trust Democrats on the issue of education, broadly defined.

The narrative that Republicans had wrested the issue of education from Democrats emerged in 2021, after Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin won a come-from-behind victory in the governor’s race after campaigning on parents’ rights.

Long-running data from the Winston Group, a political consulting firm, showed that in late 2021 and early 2022 Republicans really had eroded Democrats’ lead on education. The parties were even briefly tied for the first time since the early 2000s, when former President George W. Bush was championing No Child Left Behind. Polling commissioned in 2022 and 2023 by Democrats for Education Reform, a group that backs charter schools and vouchers, also showed Democrats falling behind on education.

Since then, though, Democrats appear to have regained their edge. In the run-up to the 2024 presidential election, the party held at least a 10-point lead, according to Winston Group. Other polls from last year also found that more voters preferred Democrats’ approach on education, even as the party lost the presidency.

Emanuel pointed me to polling from 2022. “Democrats have not gained ground as much as Trump has cost GOP gains they have made,” he says when asked about the more recent surveys.

This year in Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger easily won in her bid to replace Youngkin. Education was one of her stronger issues, according to a Washington Post survey.

Some argue that these election results disprove the idea that Democrats are losing on schools. “That’s not what panned out at all,” says Jennifer Berkshire, a progressive author who writes and teaches about education. She notes that the Republican governor candidate in New Jersey also tried to make schools an issue and lost badly.

The Winston poll shows Democrats’ advantage is currently below its peak between 2006 and 2009 but is comparable to many other periods, including the tail end of the Obama administration and part of the first Trump administration.

Keep in mind: These surveys ask about education broadly, not just K-12 schools. When given the option, a good chunk of voters don’t endorse either party’s approach. For instance, a YouGov survey found Democrats up 39%-32% on education with another 29% saying they weren’t sure or that the parties were about the same.

The one public poll in which Democrats did not have an advantage came from Blue Rose Research, a Democratic-aligned firm. Ali Mortell, its head of research, says different survey methodologies can lead to different results.

Regardless, she wants to see Democratic politicians lean into the issue more. “Say they do have that trust advantage right now, [education] is still not something that they’re really talking about a lot,” Mortell says.

One of the top messages that resonates with voters focuses on addressing teachers’ concerns about stagnant pay and large class sizes, Blue Rose polling finds.

Democrats’ lead on education doesn’t appear to have grown much over the last year, according to surveys from Winston, YouGov, and Ipsos. That’s somewhat surprising since Trump’s approval has sunk generally and is low on education specifically.

Jorge Elorza, the CEO of Democrats for Education Reform, points to a survey it commissioned showing the two parties tied when it comes to making sure schools emphasize academic achievement. “Democrats should be focused on delivering results,” he says. “When we ask voters about that, it’s a toss up.” A separate DFER poll found the party with only a 1-point lead on who voters trust to ensure “students are prepared for success after high school.”

Democrats’ overall polling advantage on education does not necessarily speak to the substantive merits of their policies, however. One analysis found that Democratic-leaning states have seen bigger declines in student test scores in recent years. At a national level, Democrats have not offered a particularly clear message on K-12 education, unlike Trump.

“For the last six years there’s [been] no proactive agenda for Democrats on educational excellence,” says Emanuel.

The party’s approach to schools has clearly lost a segment of America’s political tastemakers including center-left nonprofit executives, political strategists, and even some Democratic politicians. Yet, despite insistent assertions otherwise, regular voters don’t seem to share this view, at least at the moment.

I relied on the following polls from this year, with Democrats’ lead in parentheses: Blue Rose Research (February, tied); Fox News (July +15); Ipsos (February +6, April +4, October +7); Napolitan News Service (August +9, October +6); Navigator (August +9); Strength in Numbers (May +11, October +15); YouGov (May +7); Winston (April +15, June +14, August/September +11). To find these surveys, I conducted my own search and asked a variety of large pollsters, as well as a number of advocates. Differences in results between polls can come from random error, as well as differences in sampling and question wording. Although the precise wording varied, each poll asked voters which party they preferred on education.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Proposed policy would require Denver Public Schools to report how much it spends on lawsuits

2025-06-23T21:29:41+00:00

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School board member Kimberlee Sia said she often gets asked questions about how many people are suing the district she represents, Denver Public Schools.

“I have constituents who call me who say, ‘I’m one of three lawsuits at my school. You should check into how many lawsuits are happening at the district,’” Sia said.

A proposed policy that Sia introduced this month would require DPS to disclose that information and more. The proposal says the district would have to provide the school board with a list of lawsuits DPS is involved in and a tally of how much it spends on external legal costs.

“It’s important for the board to ensure we are taking care of the school district, and if we’re having a lot of lawsuits that are happening and paying a lot of damages, that falls under our fiduciary responsibilities to know that,” Sia said.

The information that the policy seeks to disclose isn’t otherwise publicly available. Chalkbeat filed an open records request for it, but DPS did not provide it.

DPS said it had a list of the lawsuits that the district’s general counsel was responsible for coordinating, including whether DPS won each lawsuit and any monetary damages it incurred. But the district declined to release that information, citing a state law that allows records to be withheld if they contain trade secrets, privileged information, or confidential financial data.

Historically, DPS has handled some lawsuits on its own and used outside counsel for others, such as the two lawsuits filed by former deans who were shot at East High School in 2023.

DPS said it did not have any lists or spreadsheets that contained the other information Chalkbeat requested. That information included all regulatory or legal compliance violations reported in the district and broken down by school, a total of monetary damages incurred by the district, a total of monetary awards won by the district, and a total of the district’s external legal costs.

Sia’s proposal would require all of that information to be reported annually to the board “for each of the prior three years.” Chalkbeat had requested the information for the past three school years.

Policy: Board should hire own attorney for superintendent contract

Sia introduced the proposed legal counsel policy at a June 5 board meeting. The board is expected to resume debate on it this fall, after its summer break.

In addition to requiring more transparency about the district’s legal liabilities, the proposal lays out when and how the school board itself should hire outside lawyers and when it should — or shouldn’t — use the school district’s in-house attorneys.

The board already hires outside lawyers on occasion, and Sia said the policy is meant to “put current practice on paper.”

“What I’m attempting to do in this policy is to ensure that we actually have a process for how this happens, so 20 or 30 years from now when we are no longer here, this policy outlives us,” she said.

The proposed policy says the district’s general counsel should handle “most legal affairs.” But it says the general counsel should not represent the board when it comes to the superintendent’s contract or performance evaluation. Instead, the proposal says the board and the superintendent should each hire their own external lawyers.

That would be a change from what happens now. Currently, the district’s general counsel advises the board on the superintendent’s contract and evaluation.

Sia said the way it’s currently done is a potential conflict of interest, since the board is the boss of the superintendent and the superintendent is the boss of the general counsel.

“If you are the general counsel and you have to answer questions about your boss, it can be tough to do that,” Sia said in an interview.

The board also regularly gets advice from a DPS attorney who specializes in policy governance, the governance style the board uses to pass policies.

The proposed policy says the board should put out a request for proposals at least every three years to hire its own board counsel. Whoever is hired would report directly to the board president, who would give the board counsel their assignments, the proposal says.

Individual board members could also make requests of the board counsel, the proposal says, as long as at least three of the seven board members made the request in writing.

Aside from advising on the superintendent’s contract and evaluation, the board counsel could — upon request — help the board draft policy proposals, review those proposals, and attend board meetings to give legal advice, the proposal says. Some of those duties are currently performed by the general counsel and the attorney who specializes in policy governance.

At least one board member is pushing back

Board member Xóchil “Sochi” Gaytán said at the June 5 board meeting that she opposes the proposal for several reasons, including that it could displace DPS General Counsel Aaron Thompson and policy governance attorney Marcus Johnson, both of whom are Black, as well as another DPS attorney who sometimes advises the board and is Latina. Gaytán pointed out that DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero is also a person of color.

“It’s really interesting to me that DPS, one of the largest urban school districts in Colorado, whose superintendent is Afro Latino and bilingual in Spanish, now has a white board member wanting to introduce … a policy that departs from this tradition and the historical way of doing business,” Gaytán said, referencing Sia, who is white.

Gaytán also expressed concerns about how much the policy would cost and whether it would be “weaponized to cause delays or to block policy work.”

In response to Gaytán’s comments about cost, Sia asked district staff to add up how much the board had spent on external legal costs in the past.

A Chalkbeat review of publicly posted school board financial documents from the past four fiscal years revealed nearly $30,000 in payments to outside law firms: one payment of $28,000 in 2023, and a series of payments to another firm totaling about $1,960 in 2025.

That $30,000 is only inclusive of what the school board spent on external lawyers. It does not include what the district as a whole spent on external lawyers.

Sia’s proposal comes shortly after the board ordered an investigation into allegations of discriminatory behavior by board member John Youngquist. Superintendent Marrero has accused Youngquist of “belittling, dismissive, and condescending behavior toward district staff, especially employees of color,” among other allegations.

Board President Carrie Olson said the board has not yet hired anyone to conduct the investigation. But past boards have hired outside law firms to do similar investigations.

A 2021 investigation into former board member Auon’tai Anderson cost about $105,000, according to invoices. The most serious allegations against Anderson were unsubstantiated, and the board paid him a $3,500 settlement in 2023. Anderson said the $3,500 was reimbursement for when he hired a law firm to represent him during the investigation.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Marco de Alfabetización nuevo de NJ requiere que las escuelas implementen evaluaciones, intervenciones

2025-05-30T16:10:15+00:00

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El nuevo plan de alfabetización de Nueva Jersey, el primero de su tipo, tiene como objetivo impulsar las habilidades de lectura temprana entre los estudiantes jóvenes, pero los defensores temen que las escuelas no estén listas para implementarlo este otoño.

El esfuerzo estatal, lanzado bajo cuatro proyectos de ley firmados por el gobernador Phil Murphy en agosto de 2024, tiene como objetivo perfeccionar las prácticas fundamentales de alfabetización en las escuelas basándose en la investigación en lectura y aprendizaje.

Los proyectos de ley crearon el New Jersey Literacy Framework (Marco de Alfabetización de Nueva Jersey) e instaron a los distritos escolares a implementar evaluaciones de alfabetización para estudiantes de kínder a tercer grado, crear planes de intervención en lectura e iniciar nuevas capacitaciones en enseñanza de la lectura para el personal de preescolar a sexto grado a partir del próximo año escolar. El conjunto de proyectos de ley también creó la Office of Learning Equity and Academic Recovery (Oficina de Equidad en el Aprendizaje y Recuperación Académica o LEAR, por sus siglás en inglés), dentro del Departamento de Educación del estado, que supervisará las nuevas iniciativas de alfabetización.

Pero defensores como JerseyCAN, que han estado haciendo sonar la alarma sobre los bajos puntajes de lectura, dicen que temen que los distritos escolares puedan no tener el ancho de banda para revisar, comparar y seleccionar evaluadores de alfabetización o implementar un nuevo desarrollo profesional el primer día del próximo año escolar.

“Tenemos que asegurarnos de que estos distritos escolares tengan lo que necesitan, porque son los implementadores. Están en primera línea”, dijo Paula White, directora ejecutiva de JerseyCAN.

La líder de la mayoría del Senado, M. Teresa Ruiz, quien representa al condado de Essex, presentó la legislación el año pasado después de que las tasas de alfabetización disminuyeran tras la pandemia de COVID-19 de 2020. En Nueva Jersey, solo el 44% de los estudiantes de tercer grado alcanzaron niveles de competencia en lengua y literatura inglesa en la evaluación estatal de la primavera de 2024, en comparación con el 50% antes de la pandemia. En Newark, la tasa de competencia en lengua y literatura inglesa de tercer grado se mantuvo como la más baja de todos los grados por tercer año consecutivo la primavera pasada, pero fue superior a la tasa del 19% de 2023.

Los expertos dicen que el tercer grado es un momento crítico para la lectura en el desarrollo de un niño, y el dominio de la lectura en ese grado puede predecir cuáles serán los niveles de lectura de un estudiante en octavo grado y más allá.

El nuevo Marco de Alfabetización “representa un cambio sistémico en la enseñanza de la lectoescritura”, y su impacto “tardará en medirse”, según Laura Fredrick, directora de comunicaciones del Departamento de Educación de Nueva Jersey, en un comunicado enviado por correo electrónico el viernes por la noche. El objetivo es que, con el tiempo, las iniciativas estatales generen “mejoras mensurables en los resultados equitativos de lectoescritura para todos los estudiantes”, añadió Fredrick.

“Si bien los puntajes de las pruebas estatales y los niveles de competencia de los estudiantes pueden servir como indicadores de éxito a largo plazo, el enfoque inmediato estará en usar los datos de evaluación para fundamentar las prácticas instructivas y garantizar que todos los estudiantes reciban una instrucción de alfabetización efectiva y basada en evidencia”, dijo Frederick.

¿Qué es el Marco de Alfabetización de Nueva Jersey?

El impulso para modernizar la enseñanza de la lectoescritura ha crecido de forma constante en los últimos años. Nueva Jersey se encuentra entre los últimos estados en promulgar dichas políticas, según la encuesta de 2023 del Instituto Shaker sobre la legislación estatal en materia de lectura en Estados Unidos. Nueva Jersey, Hawái, Nuevo Hampshire, Virginia Occidental y Nueva York fueron los únicos estados que no aprobaron legislación en materia de lectura entre 2019 y 2022, según la encuesta.

En el año escolar 2025-26, los distritos escolares públicos tradicionales y las redes de escuelas chárter (escuelas de gestión privada pero financiadas con fondos públicos) estarán obligados a realizar dos evaluaciones de lectoescritura anuales para todos los estudiantes de kínder a tercer grado, incluyendo a los estudiantes con discapacidades y a los estudiantes multilingües, al principio y a mediados del año escolar. Los distritos escolares también pueden considerar una tercera evaluación para los estudiantes durante el año escolar. Las escuelas deben notificar los resultados a los padres en un plazo de 30 días y elaborar planes de intervención lectora.

Los equipos de liderazgo del distrito escolar, que incluyen administradores, directores de currículo, instructores, especialistas en lectura y maestros, deben supervisar las evaluaciones y analizar datos para identificar las necesidades de lectura de un estudiante y crear intervenciones, según la guía estatal publicada a principios de este mes.

El cuestionario de alfabetización evaluará las habilidades de lectoescritura en cuanto a la denominación de letras, la conciencia fonémica, la fonética y la decodificación, la fluidez lectora oral y la comprensión. El marco estatal establece criterios para elegir un cuestionario universal de alfabetización, pero no proporciona una lista de los que los distritos escolares puedan elegir.

White, directora ejecutiva de JerseyCAN, dijo que le preocupa la capacidad de los educadores y los 590 distritos escolares del estado para aprender e implementar los nuevos mandatos después de las vacaciones de verano.

“Incluso si tienes 300 distritos que dicen, ‘lo entiendo, no necesito tu ayuda, puedo resolver esto, puedo encontrar un evaluador de alfabetización’, vas a tener otros 150 que estarán luchando, y luego vas a tener otros 100 que estarán completamente perdidos”, dijo White.

El marco del estado tiene seis objetivos para mejorar los resultados de alfabetización entre los estudiantes: analizar datos, coordinar recursos, investigar las mejores prácticas, brindar apoyo distrital, desarrollar recursos para apoyar a los maestros y el aprendizaje, y establecer un grupo de trabajo sobre alfabetización estudiantil, que proporcionó al estado recomendaciones sobre la implementación de las nuevas iniciativas en febrero.

A principios de este mes, el estado publicó el “Marco de Alfabetización de Nueva Jersey: Guía para Prácticas de Alfabetización Basadas en la Evidencia y Evaluadores Universales”, una guía de 81 páginas diseñada para apoyar a los distritos escolares en la implementación de las nuevas iniciativas y la instrucción en alfabetización en los grados K-3. El Departamento de Educación publicará una segunda guía en los próximos meses, centrada en la definición de materiales didácticos y en brindar orientación a los distritos para su selección, adopción e implementación.

El marco también exige desarrollo profesional para maestros de preescolar a sexto grado, incluidos educadores que apoyan a estudiantes con discapacidades y estudiantes multilingües, especialistas en medios bibliotecarios, especialistas en lectura y alfabetización temprana, y especialistas en habla y lenguaje.

La maestra Ana Enriquez-Kozlow lee un libro en voz alta en una clase de autismo preescolar en la escuela Branch Brook en Newark, Nueva Jersey, el martes 3 de septiembre de 2024.

Antes de la nueva iniciativa estatal de alfabetización, los líderes de Newark implementaron planes para impulsar las tasas de lectura a nivel local. El alcalde de Newark, Ras Baraka, anunció en 2023 un plan de acción de 10 puntos para promover la lectura entre los niños de la ciudad. También en 2023, las Escuelas Públicas de Newark adoptaron un enfoque estructurado para la enseñanza de la fonética llamado SIPPS (Instrucción Sistemática en Conciencia Fonológica, Fonética y Palabras Visuales), implementaron estrategias explícitas de escritura y brindaron a los docentes desarrollo profesional basado en la ciencia de la lectura.

Este mes, el Departamento de Educación del estado también anunció dos oportunidades de subvención por un total de $5,250,000 para apoyar a los distritos escolares en la implementación de los nuevos mandatos.

La primera es la Subvención FOCUS (Financiamiento para Evaluadores Universales Integrales Óptimos), destinada a apoyar evaluaciones de alfabetización de alta calidad, el desarrollo profesional y el apoyo estudiantil. Todos los distritos escolares de Nueva Jersey que ofrecen educación preescolar y primaria podrán optar a la financiación. La segunda es la Subvención BRIDGE (Desarrollo de una Instrucción Receptiva mediante la Evaluación Guiada por Datos), una subvención competitiva que apoya el uso de datos de evaluación para implementar la instrucción en alfabetización basada en la evidencia en las aulas de primaria y secundaria.

Los defensores dicen que las familias y los maestros son una parte crucial del plan

A pesar de sus preocupaciones, White, directora ejecutiva de JerseyCAN, elogió las nuevas iniciativas del estado, pero también enfatizó la necesidad de involucrar a los padres y brindarles a los educadores instrucciones claras.

En abril, JerseyCAN publicó un informe que detalla la crisis de alfabetización del estado y describe una serie de propuestas específicas para abordar el problema a nivel estatal. El informe también sirvió como un llamado a la acción para que la legislación estatal sobre alfabetización se traduzca en resultados en las aulas.

El informe proporcionó a los líderes estatales cuatro recomendaciones: brindar capacitación en alfabetización continua e integrada en el trabajo para los docentes; eliminar la estrategia de lectura de “tres señales”, una práctica de adivinar palabras a partir de señales visuales; exigir el desarrollo e implementación de planes de lectura personalizados para estudiantes con una deficiencia de lectura; y exigir que los distritos proporcionen a las familias planes de lectura en el hogar para apoyar a los estudiantes identificados con una deficiencia de lectura.

“Por lo tanto, poder decir, está bien, sí, su hijo tiene una deficiencia de lectura, pero vamos a hacer algo al respecto, y esto es lo que estamos haciendo, eso es importante”, agregó White.

La necesidad de involucrar a los padres en distritos escolares como Newark, donde las tasas de alfabetización juvenil son bajas y muchas familias podrían no hablar inglés en casa, es crucial, añadió White. En las Escuelas Públicas de Newark, el distrito escolar público más grande de Nueva Jersey, solo el 31% de los estudiantes de tercer a noveno grado aprobaron su examen estatal de Lengua y Literatura Inglesas en la primavera de 2024.

White también destacó la importancia de la formación en lectoescritura para docentes, integrada en el trabajo, considerada la referencia del desarrollo profesional, afirmó. JerseyCAN recomienda una asignación multimillonaria del presupuesto estatal para financiar al menos a 10 formadores de lectoescritura en todo el estado y proporcionar asignaciones anuales para financiar más a medida que se implementa el marco. La legislatura estatal está en proceso de aprobar el presupuesto final, que debe ser firmado por el gobernador antes del 30 de junio.

Es importante tener un “entendimiento común” sobre los nuevos requisitos entre todos los distritos escolares, dijo White, y agregó que los entrenadores de alfabetización a nivel estatal podrían ayudar a difundir una comunicación clara entre los “líderes del distrito, los coordinadores del currículo” quienes “realmente pueden recurrir a ellos para apoyar a sus educadores”.

Traducido por Diego Maya.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por The Latino Spirit, en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por Chalkbeat Newark y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

Jessie Gómez es una reportera por Chalkbeat Newark y cubre las escuelas públicas de Newark. Puede ponerse en contacto con ella: jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Denver school board warms to plan for struggling schools, but some balk at prospect of closures

2025-05-23T02:33:47+00:00

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The idea for a new school improvement policy came to Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero after the school board voted against closing a struggling charter school.

Marrero was perplexed. The deal with charters is that the independent public schools are granted more autonomy in exchange for stricter accountability. This school, which Marrero declined to name, had fallen short of the goals it agreed to meet.

So why was it still open? Marrero called some of his mentors for advice.

“One said, ‘Yeah Alex, this is insane. How could you move a system when there is no bar? If it was your school, you would have closed it, right?’” Marrero said. “My answer was no.”

That’s because there has been no active Denver Public Schools policy to close low-performing schools for several years. The last such policy was abandoned in 2018. Marrero’s new policy, which he unveiled at a school board meeting last week, is meant to change that. It sets the same achievement bar for district-run and charter schools — and lays out a series of escalating interventions if they don’t meet it. The most drastic is closure.

Marrero’s School Transformation Process is an administrative policy that he put in place last week without school board approval. But the board will have to vote on any school closures starting in 2026. In interviews this week, not all school board members said they’d support closing a school for low standardized test scores. And although board members expressed optimism about Marrero’s new policy, several said they didn’t understand all the details.

“I don’t know that we’re okay with that,” board member Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán said of closing schools for low test scores. Last week’s board meeting, she said, “was the first time we were hearing and seeing that. We were all processing.”

Denver charter school leaders are still making up their minds. Marrero has asked them to agree to the policy, which would mean giving up their right, enshrined in state law, to appeal a closure.

“As public charter schools we believe in accountability across all (school) governance types,” said Taamiti Bankole, the chief external affairs officer for KIPP Colorado Schools and interim chair of the Collaborative Council, a group of charter leaders who advise DPS.

While agreeing to the new policy is optional for Denver’s more than 50 charter schools now, Marrero said it will be “non-negotiable” when each charter’s contract comes up for renewal.

The new plan offers both help and consequences

Like many school districts, Denver Public Schools has a long history with school improvement. Over the years, the pendulum has swung from swift closures of struggling schools that left families reeling to yearslong efforts to give schools extra funding and support.

Marrero’s policy is a middle ground. It’s also a way to beat what’s known as the accountability clock, which ticks toward state intervention. After five years of low state ratings, based mostly on standardized test scores, the State Board of Education can order an intervention, although it’s only ever closed one school under that system.

Marrero’s policy requires the district to take action before the state steps in. After one to three years of low ratings, a Denver school will be “renewed” or “reconfigured” by firing the principal, making teachers reapply for their jobs, or changing academic programs, among other options.

After four years of low ratings, a school will be “reimagined” — a euphemism for closing the school or replacing it with another district-run or charter school.

To keep schools from getting there, the district is launching the Elevate Schools Network, a group of eight elementary schools at risk for such interventions. Unlike in the past, the district won’t send those principals to out-of-state training or hire an external company to turn the school around. Instead, the district’s own central office staff will do the work.

The eight schools in the inaugural cohort will be Barnum Elementary, Cheltenham Elementary, Hallett Academy, John H. Amesse Elementary, McGlone Academy, Oakland Elementary, Place Bridge Academy, and Traylor Elementary.

“Under previous versions, it was just about high-stakes accountability,” said Joe Amundsen, the district’s executive director of school transformation, who will help lead the Elevate Schools Network. “This is saying the district has to be in it with our schools when they’re on the clock. It really puts the onus of responsibility on the district to improve our schools.”

In interviews, school board members expressed the most support for that part of the plan.

“I feel like this isn’t coming from a crime and punishment lens,” said school board President Carrie Olson. “It’s, ‘How can we help you?’”

Marrero said he’s confident that no school in the network will reach Year 4 on the state accountability clock. If one does, he said, “I’ll be the first one to say, ‘We failed this community.’”

Idea of school closures generates mixed reactions

The prospect of school closures is likely to generate the most scrutiny and controversy. And board members’ politics could come into play.

Board Vice President Marlene De La Rosa said she’d be open to closing a school for low test scores. She sent her own two children to schools outside of her neighborhood because the nearby schools were labeled as failing.

“I don’t want to keep letting students be in a school that isn’t meeting their needs,” she said.

Board member John Youngquist said he’s most interested in helping schools get off the state accountability clock, which he believes can be done.

But if schools don’t improve, he said, “You have to take some sort of action.”

Youngquist and De La Rosa were elected in 2023, along with board member Kimberlee Sia. All three of their campaigns were boosted by outside groups supportive of education reform and the closure of low-performing schools. All three are halfway through a four-year term and will likely vote on school closures or replacements under Marrero’s policy.

The other four board members may never take a vote under the new policy because their terms are up in November. They were elected in 2021 with the backing of the Denver teachers union. Three of them are eligible for reelection, but Olson can’t run again due to term limits.

Olson, Gaytán, and board member Scott Esserman have been the most vocal about opposing school closures due to low test scores. Olson was a teacher at Kepner Middle School in 2014 when DPS announced it was shuttering the school for that exact reason. The subsequent disruption inspired her to run for the board in 2017.

Olson said this week that she’s now open to school closures based on declining enrollment, like the ones the board approved this school year. But she said she hasn’t changed her mind about closing schools based on declining test scores.

“It just tears apart the fabric of a community so much that I would want us to think about so many other ways we can support that community and not close schools,” Olson said.

She said Marrero’s plan represents “a longer runway” and is more helpful than what happened at Kepner: “Now schools are going to receive years of support.”

Union opposes making teachers reapply for jobs

Gaytán’s path to the school board was also influenced by a performance-based school closure, not as a teacher but as a neighborhood parent.

“The negative connotation of a school closure impacted not only me, my husband, my children, but entire neighborhoods in southwest Denver,” Gaytán said in 2021 as a candidate. “To put families and teachers through something like that and retraumatize our community is a no vote.”

Gaytán said she’d still vote no on school closures today. But she doesn’t think it will come to that anytime soon — at least not for district-run schools in the Elevate Schools Network.

“I appreciate the fact that there will be an in-house team that would dedicate time to these schools that need this extra support,” Gaytán said.

It may be different for charter schools, which won’t be part of the network. Gaytán was one of two board members who voted in 2023 in favor of closing Academy 360, a small charter school with low test scores. A majority of the board voted to keep it open.

Academy 360 could be one of the first to face closure under Marrero’s policy. It’s one of two Denver schools on Year 3 of the clock. The other, Rocky Mountain Prep Noel, is also a charter.

Esserman helped write the board’s policy on closing schools for low enrollment and fought against using standardized test scores to decide which underenrolled schools to close. The board landed on a compromise that says test scores can’t be the sole factor.

At a board meeting a year ago, Esserman said that when the district closes a school for low test scores, “you’ve now labeled all those students as coming from a failing school and you set them up to continue to not be successful.”

Esserman said this week that his position on standardized testing hasn’t changed. But like Gaytán, he thinks the new policy is different.

“I think it’s really difficult to look at this plan and see it as a punitive measure,” he said.

Rob Gould, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said that when Marrero gave him “the briefest of briefings” on the policy, the superintendent focused on the Elevate Schools Network, not on the possibility for school closure.

The union opposes closing schools for low test scores, Gould said. It also opposes making teachers at struggling schools reapply for their jobs, which the policy says could happen.

“Time and time over the years, just seeing how making everybody reapply or changing the whole [school] model — is this really making the change you want?” Gould asked. “Or is it that under the guise of disruption, you’re resetting the clock?”

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

See how many new teachers your NYC school is getting to reduce class sizes

2025-05-21T19:28:15+00:00

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New York City released a detailed list Tuesday of which public schools are getting money to hire additional teachers to help reduce class sizes next year — and how many they can hire.

In order to give school communities a better sense of what the new hiring push will look like on their campuses, Chalkbeat created a searchable table showing how many new teachers were assigned to each of the 741 schools awarded new teacher funding.

The number of new teachers assigned to schools ranged from a high of 31 at M.S. 158, Marie Curie middle school, in Bayside Queens, to just one additional teacher at more than 60 schools, including the East Village Community School in Manhattan and the Brooklyn Brownstone school.

If a school’s name does not appear in the table, that means that the school either did not apply for the class size reduction funding, or its plan was not approved.

The detailed list comes more than a month after city officials first announced plans to hire some 3,700 new teachers by next fall to help the city comply with the state’s 2022 class size law.

Under the law, 60% of classrooms citywide must meet the caps — which limit classes to between 20 and 25 students depending on the grade level — by next September. As of earlier this school year, roughly 46% of classes were at or below the caps.

To meet next year’s deadline, city officials gave schools the option to apply for additional funding for next year to help lower class sizes. Some 800 schools applied, and about 750 of those plans were approved by a review committee of officials from the Education Department and the teachers and principals unions.

The lion’s share of the new resources will go toward hiring roughly 3,700 additional teachers. Officials said they also allocated some funds to hire new administrators to oversee those extra teachers and to help schools make small space adjustments.

The new teacher hires will come on top of the 4,000-5,000 teachers that the city has to hire in a normal year to replace educators who leave — creating a massive new hiring opportunity and challenge for schools.

That elevated hiring will likely continue for years as new class size deadlines get phased in.

“Accounting for new hires due to class size compliance and our standard annual new hires, [New York City Public Schools] needs to hire over 20,000 teachers between now and September 2028,” officials wrote in a draft class size reduction plan released Tuesday.

Officials recently shared that they expect the new reduction plans to cost more than $400 million. Mayor Eric Adams committed $150 million of that in his executive budget earlier this month, and roughly $241 million will come from increased state aid, city Education Department officials said. City officials are still searching for funding to cover the remaining gap.

The new teacher funding went disproportionately to schools with a lower student poverty rate — likely a reflection of the fact that those schools are more likely to have more classrooms over the caps and therefore need more teachers to lower class sizes.

“We did see more applications for more teachers from schools in our comparatively better-off communities,” Emma Vadehra, the Education Department’s deputy chancellor for operations and finance, told the City Council at a budget hearing on Wednesday. The new teachers “are tending to go more to Queens, south Brooklyn, Staten Island, where schools are farther from compliance, than to some of those higher-need communities.”

Schools in the lowest 25% of student poverty rates citywide are getting 42% of the new teachers, while schools in the highest quartile for student poverty are getting 15% of the new teachers, a Chalkbeat analysis found. (Schools in the lowest student poverty quartile enroll about double the number of students as those in the highest-poverty quartile, so per capita, the difference in new teacher funding is less extreme).

About 58% of schools in the lowest-poverty quartile got some amount of new teacher funding, compared to 34% of schools in the highest-poverty quartile.

Schools in Queens are getting 1,289 of the new teachers, more than the Bronx and Manhattan combined, a Chalkbeat analysis found.

The number of teachers a school is funded for isn’t a guarantee that they’ll hire that many teachers.

Officials said the hiring spree is underway, with fairs happening across many districts. Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said the Education Department is working with district superintendents to develop plans to market their neighborhoods and schools to prospective teachers. The city is also offering monetary bonuses for teachers who commit early in areas of the city that have historically been harder to staff, she said.

To see how many new teachers your school was assigned, you can search the school’s name in the table below.

Data analysis and table by Thomas Wilburn.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

A new Denver school improvement strategy could end in closures for struggling schools

2025-05-16T17:21:40+00:00

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Denver Public Schools would close or replace schools with persistently low test scores under a plan unveiled Thursday to boost academic performance and avoid state intervention.

“No disrespect to our State Board of Education, but what can they offer that we can’t do here locally?” Superintendent Alex Marrero said while explaining the plan at Thursday’s school board meeting. “I believe it’s our duty to serve our own in the land of local control.”

The plan builds on incremental changes Marrero has made in his nearly four years as superintendent, and it represents a sharp departure from the way previous superintendents approached school improvement. Instead of giving principals autonomy and flexibility to employ the strategies they deemed best for their schools, Marrero’s strategy groups low-performing schools together for centralized support and coaching from district experts.

“When we have given school leaders so much autonomy, that’s been great when those school leaders know how to leverage that autonomy,” said Joe Amundsen, the district’s executive director of school transformation.

“This is about the district’s way of doing instruction, doing school,” Amundsen said.

In another way, Marrero’s plan is a return to the strict accountability DPS had in place for low-performing schools a decade ago. Back then, the school board had a policy known as the School Performance Compact that called for closing schools with low test scores. The board only used it to close one school and replace two others before abandoning it due to pushback.

Marrero calls his plan the School Transformation Process. He pitched it Thursday as a way to beat what’s known as the state accountability clock, which ticks toward state intervention the longer a school struggles. After five years of low state ratings, based mostly on standardized tests, the State Board of Education can order an intervention.

The harshest possible state intervention is school closure. The State Board has rarely deployed it, but DPS could. Starting in 2026, the plan calls for “reimagining” schools with four years of low state ratings, which Marrero said means closing or replacing those schools.

A closure would mean the school shutters permanently. A replacement could mean the school stays open but is run by a different principal with different teachers, programming, and curriculum, and potentially a different school name.

Marrero’s plan is an administrative policy, so the Denver school board does not need to vote to approve it. But board members seemed receptive at Thursday’s meeting. Some peppered Marrero with questions about the details, while others emphasized the importance of making sure parents and educators understand the plan.

“I know that it’s better that we work with our schools than having the state come in,” said board President Carrie Olson, a former DPS teacher who worked at a school that was closed for low performance 10 years ago. “But I just can’t underscore enough the impact on a community when we replace or close a school.”

Both district-run and charter schools could face intervention

Twenty-five Denver schools are “on the clock,” meaning they’ve earned one of the two lowest state ratings — signified by the colors orange and red — at least once. One school, Abraham Lincoln High, has seven years of low ratings and is already undergoing state intervention.

But because it’s in the midst of a state-directed improvement plan, Lincoln High would be exempt from closure under Marrero’s plan, he said. So would Lake Middle School, which has four years of low ratings and could face state intervention soon. The Denver schools most at risk of closure would be those on the precipice of five years of low ratings in 2026.

Currently, four Denver schools are on that trajectory, according to a district presentation: John F. Kennedy High School, Rocky Mountain Prep Noel middle school, Highline Academy Northeast elementary school, and Academy 360 elementary school.

The latter three are charter schools, which are authorized by the district but run independently. Marrero said he hopes the School Transformation Process will apply to charter schools too, so that all of Denver’s approximately 200 schools are held to the same quality standard.

“This allows us to say very firmly that we have a bar, and it’s the same bar,” Marrero said.

But agreeing to the plan would require Denver’s more than 50 charter schools to give up a key right. By state law, if a district tries to revoke a charter school’s authorization or close it, the charter school can appeal to the State Board of Education. Marrero said he’s asking Denver charter schools to forgo that appeal, but it’s “not an altogether all-in agreement yet.”

The plan will go into effect in August. In the fall, the state will release its latest school ratings based on standardized tests students took last month. But no schools will be eligible for replacement or closure in the 2025-26 school year. Instead, they might face what Marrero called “reconfiguration,” which could include shrinking a school by removing some grade levels.

The potential for closure or replacement will start in 2026-27, Marrero said. The district will solicit applications each December for replacements for any schools with four years of low ratings. The school board will vote on those applications by June 30 of the following year. The board would also have to vote on any permanent school closures, a district spokesperson said.

The board recently voted to close or partially close 10 schools next month due to declining enrollment, a controversial decision that upset many families. But Marrero said that while this process may encounter the same pushback, the purpose is different.

“We’ve been through the grueling process of school closure,” Marrero said. “But this is not because of enrollment. This is our duty to make sure we have an expectation … of quality in our schools.”

The district will also launch a new effort this fall meant to keep schools from closure. The Elevate Schools Network will be a cohort of eight elementary and K-8 schools that are on the clock or at risk of getting there. The goal is to provide the schools with staff training, coaching, and on-the-ground support to help them avoid the clock or get off it within two years.

“This is us being in schools and doing the work with our schools, not just telling them what to do and saying, ‘Good luck,’” said Amundsen, who is helping to lead the network.

This story has been updated to clarify that Joe Amundsen leads the Elevate Schools Network work, not the School Transformation Process. It has also been updated to reflect that the State Board of Education has rarely closed schools for low performance. A previous version of the story said the State Board had never closed a school for low performance.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey’s Literacy Framework requires schools to implement screenings, interventions this fall

2025-05-16T09:45:00+00:00

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Leer en español.

New Jersey’s new, first-of-its-kind literacy plan aims to boost early reading skills among young learners, but advocates worry schools won’t be ready to roll it out this fall.

The statewide effort, launched under four bills signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in August 2024, aims to refine foundational literacy practices in schools based on research in reading and learning.

The bills created the New Jersey Literacy Framework and called on school districts to implement literacy screenings for students in K-3, create reading intervention plans, and start new training on reading instruction for pre-K-6 staff starting this upcoming school year. The set of bills also established the Office of Learning Equity and Academic Recovery, or LEAR, in the state’s Education Department, which will oversee the new literacy initiatives.

But advocates like JerseyCAN, who have been sounding the alarm about low reading scores, say they fear school districts may not have the bandwidth to review, compare, and select literacy screeners or implement new professional development on day one next school year.

“We have to make sure that these [school districts] have what they need, because they are implementers. They’re on the front lines,” said Paula White, executive director of JerseyCAN.

Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Ruiz, who represents Essex County, introduced the legislation last year after literacy rates dwindled following the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. In New Jersey, only 44% of third graders reached proficiency levels in English language arts in the spring 2024 statewide assessment, compared with 50% before the pandemic hit. In Newark, the third grade English language arts proficiency rate remained the lowest of any grade for a third year in a row last spring, but higher than the 2023 rate of 19%.

Third grade is a critical time for reading in a child’s development, experts say, and reading proficiency at that grade level can predict what a student’s reading levels will be in eighth grade and beyond.

The new Literacy Framework “represents a systemic shift in literacy instruction,” and its impact will “take time to measure,” according to Laura Fredrick, communications director at the New Jersey Department of Education, in an emailed statement Friday evening. The goal is that, over time, state efforts will lead to “measurable improvements in equitable literacy outcomes for all students,” Fredrick added.

“While state test scores and student proficiency levels may serve as long-term indicators of success, the immediate focus will be on using screening data to inform instructional practices and ensure all students receive effective, evidence-based literacy instruction,” Frederick said.

What is the New Jersey Literacy Framework?

The momentum to revamp literacy instruction has grown steadily in the past few years. New Jersey is among the last states to enact such policies, according to the Shaker Institute’s 2023 survey of state reading legislation in the U.S. New Jersey, Hawaii, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and New York were the only states that did not pass reading legislation between 2019 and 2022, according to the survey.

In the 2025-26 school year, traditional public school districts and charter school networks, which are privately run but publicly funded schools, will be mandated to conduct two literacy screenings annually for all K-3 students, including students with disabilities and multilingual learners, at the beginning and the middle of the school year. School districts can also consider a third screening for students during the school year. Schools must notify parents of the results within 30 days and create reading intervention plans.

School district leadership teams, which include administrators, directors of curriculum, instructional coaches, reading specialists, and teachers, should oversee screenings and analyze data to identify a student’s reading need and create interventions, according to state guidance released earlier this month.

The literacy screener will measure literacy skills on letter naming, phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, oral reading fluency, and comprehension. The state’s framework sets criteria in choosing a universal literacy screener but does not provide a list of screeners for school districts to choose from.

White, the executive director of JerseyCAN, said she worries about the ability of educators and the state’s 590 school districts to learn and implement the new mandates after summer break.

“Even if you have 300 districts that say, ‘got it, I don’t need your help, I can figure this out, I can find a literacy screener,’ you’re going to have another 150 that are going to be scrambling, and then you’re going to have another 100 that are completely lost,” White said.

The state’s framework has six goals to improve literacy outcomes among students: analyze data, coordinate resources, research best practices, provide district support, develop resources to support teachers and learning, and establish a working group on student literacy, which provided the state with recommendations on implementing the new initiatives in February.

Earlier this month, the state released the “New Jersey Literacy Framework: A Guide to Evidence-Based Literacy Practices & Universal Screeners,” an 81-page guide designed to support school districts in implementing the new initiatives and literacy instruction in grades K-3. The Education Department will release a second guide in the coming months, focusing on defining instructional materials and providing guidance to districts on selecting, adopting, and implementing the materials.

The framework also calls for professional development for pre-K-6 teachers, including educators who support students with disabilities and multilingual learners, library media specialists, reading and early literacy specialists, and speech-language specialists.

Teacher Ana Enriquez-Kozlow reads a book out loud in a pre-K autism class at Branch Brook School in Newark, New Jersey, on Tuesday, September 3, 2024.

Before the state’s new literacy initiative, Newark leaders enacted plans to boost reading rates locally. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka announced a 10-point action plan in 2023 to promote reading among city children. Also in 2023, Newark Public Schools adopted a structured approach to teaching phonics called SIPPS, or Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words, implemented explicit writing strategies, and provided teachers with professional development rooted in the science of reading.

This month, the state Education Department also announced two grant opportunities totaling $5,250,000 to support school districts in implementing the new mandates.

The first is the FOCUS Grant, or Funding for Optimal Comprehensive Universal Screeners, to support high-quality literacy screening assessments and professional development and student support. All New Jersey school districts serving grades K-3 will be eligible for funding. The second is the BRIDGE Grant, or Building Responsive Instruction through Data-Guided Evaluation, a competitive grant supporting the use of screening data to implement evidence-based literacy instruction in K-3 classrooms.

Advocates say families, teachers are a crucial part of the plan

Despite her concerns, White, the executive director of JerseyCAN, praised the state’s new initiatives, but also emphasized the need to engage parents and provide educators with clear instructions.

In April, JerseyCAN released a report that details the state’s literacy crisis and outlines a series of specific proposals to address the issue statewide. The report also served as a call to action to turn the state’s literacy legislation into classroom results.

The report provided state leaders with four recommendations: provide ongoing, job-embedded literacy coaching for teachers; eliminate the “three-cueing” reading strategy, a practice of word-guessing from visual cues; require the development and implementation of customized reading plans for students with a reading deficiency; and require districts to provide families with read-at-home plans to support students identified with a reading deficiency.

“So being able to say, okay, yes, your child has a reading deficiency, but we’re gonna do something about it, and here’s what we’re doing, that’s important,” White added.

The need to engage parents in school districts like Newark, where youth literacy rates are low and many families may not speak English at home, is crucial, White added. In Newark Public Schools, the largest public school district in New Jersey, only 31% of students in grades 3-9 passed their state English language arts test in spring 2024.

White also highlighted the importance of job-embedded literacy coaching for teachers, which is considered “the gold standard” of professional development, she said. JerseyCAN recommends a multimillion-dollar state budget allocation to fund at least 10 literacy coaches statewide and provide annual allocations to fund more as the framework is implemented. The state legislature is in the process of approving the final budget, which must be signed by the governor by June 30.

It’s important to have a “common understanding” about the new requirements among all school districts, White said, adding that, statewide literacy coaches could help disseminate clear communication among “district leaders, curriculum coordinators” who “can actually turn to them to support their educators.”

A translation for this story was provided by The Latino Spirit, in association with the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University and is financially supported by the NJ Civic Information Consortium. The story was republished under a special content sharing agreement through the NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

How Biden wants to make active shooter drills less traumatic and more effective for students

2024-10-28T19:57:19+00:00

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Soon after Robert Murtfeld’s child started attending kindergarten, the school had an unannounced lockdown drill.

His child was only five years old and, as Murtfeld remembers, didn’t really understand that it was just a drill, not an actual school shooting. Murtfeld himself was also shocked.

“I joined another parent who, like me, was also raised abroad, and we had an issue with this system at work here,” said Murtfield, who grew up in Germany. “We noticed that many American parents didn’t have that issue necessarily or didn’t think about it.”

So Murtfeld decided to advocate for reforming how schools conduct these exercises. His efforts led to changes at his school, which started letting parents know in advance when the drills would happen and giving them the opportunity to opt their child out of them. His work also affected New York state legislation that now requires schools to notify parents about lockdown drills beforehand, and to conduct them in “a trauma-informed, developmentally and age-appropriate manner.”

Murtfeld has company. As drills and simulations have become increasingly common in American schools and universities, organizations representing school psychologists, law enforcement, and others have lobbied to improve them and reduce their negative effects on students.

Now the federal government’s paying attention too. Last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order creating a multi-agency effort to develop guidelines and share resources on making active shooter drills safer and more effective.

The initiative resulted from the work of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which the Biden administration created in 2023 and is supervised by Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.

“As Vice President Harris traveled to meet young leaders around the country, she asked them who had gone through these drills, and every hand in the room was raised, showing that it is a big concern for students,” said Rob Wilcox, the office’s deputy director.

One of the key facets of Biden’s executive order is for the federal government to provide information on “how to prevent or limit trauma or psychological distress associated with active-shooter drills.”

A few groups already have some ideas to share. Organizations like the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP) and the National Association of School Responding Officers (NASRO) have worked together to collect evidence and create guidelines on the best practices. Their cooperation could bear fruit through invigorated federal interest.

Kelly Vaillancourt Strobach, NASP’s director of policy and advocacy, said that the two groups are already reaching out to the agencies responsible for fulfilling the executive order.

“We are very much hoping that whatever the federal government puts out is very much aligned with the guidance that we have been continuing to refine over the last ten years,” said Strobach. “We also certainly hope it is rooted in evidence. Even though there’s still a lack of empirical research on this topic, there is some research that can be referenced.”

How opinions about school lockdown drills changed

Lockdown drills are meant to prepare students for various situations in which a threat is inside the school building — such as active shooter situations.

The likelihood of a student experiencing an active shooter situation remains statistically very low. The opposite is true of lockdown drills: 95.5% of American schools conducted them in the 2021-2022 school year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

But as drills became more common, reports about their nightmarish depictions of violence in schools emerged as well. Such instances featured the use of gunshot noises, students posing with fake blood as victims, and adults playing the role of assailants.

These dramatic — and potentially traumatic — devices represent an inability to understand the differences between drills, which are supposed to build trust and lower students’ anxiety among students, and simulations, which are high-stress scenarios aimed at preparing law enforcement for situations like those involving active shooters, said Mo Canady, NASRO’s executive director.

Agencies and districts “began to do full-scale situational training in a school environment with students,” said Canady. “As that played out, we began to take a hard look at that and ask ourselves if we were doing the right things, especially with adolescents in the building.”

Despite stories from students and educators, there is not a great deal of evidence about the impacts of procedures like lockdown drills and simulations on the mental health of students. And what research there is does not differentiate between the various drills that can be used or isolate the factors that could contribute to increase anxiety among students, according to Jaclyn Schildkraut, executive director of the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the State University of New York’s Rockefeller Institute of Government.

There are several studies showing the positive outcomes of performing lockdown drills and discussion-based exercises, like “making students feel more prepared, lowering their anxiety, helping them have lower fear of harm, or be less likely to perceive that a school shooting could happen at their school,” Schildkraut said.

One of these studies found that nearly 87% of junior high and high school students reported feeling more prepared to respond to a violent incident after discussion-based training.

Other research indicates that whatever benefit they may provide to schools to prepare for violent incidents, many students feel lockdown drills themselves are harmful.

The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab, partnering with the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, analyzed social media conversations related to American schools before and after drills. The latter group is affiliated with Everytown for Gun Safety, which supports an assault weapons ban and other measures to prevent gun violence.

They saw “a 42% increase in anxiety and stress (as evidenced by an increase in such words as afraid, struggling, and nervous) and a 39% increase in depression (evidenced by words such as therapy, cope, irritability, suicidal) following drills,” according to their report, which they originally published in 2020.

Before Biden issued his executive order, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study about how active shooter drills affect student health and well-being. The study is not done but it could help fulfill the executive order.

Curbing student trauma caused by active shooter drills

Guidance from NASP, NASRO, Sandy Hook Promise, and other organizations gives hints about what may be included in the guidelines Biden’s executive order is seeking.

Those three groups recommend that the drills should be part of a larger strategy for preventing multiple threats.

“It’s important to practice emergency procedures so that in the event of an emergency, it reduces chaos,” said Strobach of the school psychologists group. “But, to do a fire drill, you don’t necessarily start a fire. So, there are ways for schools to prepare for any type of crisis without actually simulating it.”

Specialists interviewed by Chalkbeat agreed that full-scale simulations should not be part of students' routines and that approaches should consider different methods of preparing them for emergency situations.

For example, the guidelines from NASP and NASRO suggest schools use strategies like “discussion-based exercises,” such as workshops and orientations, so students can talk about the drills before experiencing them.

The guidance does not recommend excluding “action-based” exercises but does make some recommendations about them.

One is to conduct walk-throughs, where kids can go through the instructions step-by-step and ask questions as the exercise happens. After kids are prepared for this, the more common lockdown drills would be the next step.

Biden also stressed that he wants to see resources about communicating with students, families, and others “both about the drills and when the drills are happening,” said Wilcox of the White House’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention.

The president also wants to ensure the executive order focuses on civil rights laws and special populations, such as students with disabilities, Wilcox noted. Reports have highlighted situations in which drills have failed to consider the needs of children with physical disabilities, for example.

Researchers also point out that drills can have a stronger effect on the emotional health of children that have gone through previous traumas.

But ultimately, what the White House executive order produces will not be mandatory, so it will depend on local leaders to decide to follow the guidelines and use the resources.

“We hope that the information will help leaders from all levels to prevent and eliminate extra trauma and harm on our students,” Wilcox said.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Robert Murtfeld‘s name.

Wellington Soares is Chalkbeat’s national education reporting intern based in New York City. Contact Wellington at wsoares@chalkbeat.org.

Rebuilding after Helene and Milton: Educators share experiences from previous disasters

2024-10-16T17:39:31+00:00

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When devastating floods ripped through Jamestown, Colorado, in 2013, the rural mountain town’s school was physically unscathed. But students lost their homes. The town’s “patriarch” was killed. And the school building was converted to aid in disaster recovery.

It was only on the last day of the school year that kids were able to return to the school and celebrate graduation.

“It was a huge impact to be out of your home. I think just trying to care for the students, understanding that the biggest thing we could do for them was to support them emotionally and the families,” said Scott Boesel, the principal at the time. “Education was almost secondary for the first few months after the flood.”

As similar isolated but tight-knight rural communities in the southeast recover from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, educators and families are working together to address the physical and emotional consequences of the natural disasters. From flooding in Kentucky to fires in California to hurricanes in Puerto Rico, disasters everywhere have tested schools in recent years. Some facets of these crises are urgent but relatively short-term concerns. Others persist for years. But they are interconnected.

Helene and Milton have reportedly caused hundreds of deaths and devastating damage to property and livelihoods that’s still being tallied — one estimate has put the cost of recovering from Helene at $34 billion. Many schools and districts are still struggling with returning to class. Around 30 North Carolina school districts were impacted by the storms, according to the North Carolina Association of School Boards.

Most of the schools affected in North Carolina have “opened back up” but others have indicated that they are closed indefinitely, said Leanne Winner, the association’s executive director, late last week.

Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina in late September. More than 30 school districts in the state had to shut down classes due to the storm, according to the North Carolina Association of School Boards. (Mario Tama via Getty Images)

Specialists and educators interviewed by Chalkbeat about school communities that have been affected by such disasters highlighted the importance of prioritizing students’ mental health. Losing a house or a friend, or even less-catastrophic disruptions stemming from a natural disaster, are traumatic experiences for students.

Studies show that, during the first three months after a disaster, symptoms of post-traumatic stress can be seen in up to 72% of students in affected areas, according to research by Betty Lai, a professor of counseling psychology at Boston College.

That’s why it’s essential to monitor students and identify those under the most stress so that they can receive appropriate care.

“We have seen through research that many kids are resilient, meaning they seem to bounce back after a disaster,” Lai said. “But the bad news is that some children will experience high levels of distress, which we should be concerned about because we know that those distress symptoms can go on for many years.”

That issue is directly connected to academic recovery. A 2022 study published by the federal Government Accountability Office about the impact of natural disasters on schools found that “academic recovery generally could not take place until students and staff had begun their emotional recovery.”

The GAO’s study also found that the forced move to “improvised facilities” due to physical damage to normal school infrastructure also “disrupted the learning process.”

But trying to minimize effects on learning and test scores isn’t the only reason to focus on getting school buildings up and running again. In Jamestown, the district made an effort to resume classes as soon as possible, even if the school building could not be used. That’s because reestablishing kids’ routines is an essential aspect of making them feel safe.

“The key for the kids is trying to keep something similar in their lives,” Boesel said. “Having the ability to keep kids together, even though they were in a different location than they were used to, I think was huge for the kids in their recovery and huge for the families, so they could stay together as a unit.”

Losing a classroom can resemble losing a home

Schools in western North Carolina don’t have to look too far to find other schools that have grappled with expected and unexpected consequences from storms.

When Hurricane Florence hit the eastern portion of North Carolina in 2018, it severely damaged White Oak High School in Onslow County, forcing it to close entirely for more than five weeks.

During the 39 days while the school was entirely closed, students and teachers met in alternative locations — such libraries, churches, and other common areas — to keep kids engaged.

Even after the school partially reopened, students and teachers had to adapt to the loss of the science building, which remained under construction for almost a year, according to Christopher Barnes, the school’s principal at the time.

He recalled one teacher, for example, who had worked at the school for 30 years and lost all of her teaching materials.

“Teachers who lost their rooms in the school experienced the kind of trauma that I would expect when someone lost their home. And I did not anticipate that at the time,” said Barnes, who is now the Onslow County district’s chief academic officer. “Once I realized that was important to them and that it was more of an emotional toll, I understood that I could not be dismissive but had to sit and talk through those things with them.”

The recovery efforts did bring the White Oak community closer together and helped people support each other more. It also drove students' and teachers' focus to the academic curriculum. But in general, the challenges imposed by the loss of physical space also affect students’ learning: Students get less instruction time and attendance rates of both students and teachers can decline.

The federal accountability office’s report from 2022 quoted county education officials who stressed that students from already vulnerable populations, such as English language learners and students with disabilities, were hurt the most by instruction time lost to disasters.

It also noted that in districts with large shares of students from low-income backgrounds, there were adverse academic effects, whereas wealthier districts didn’t see “extended declines” in academic performance.

Data about the academic impacts of Hurricane Florence and Hurricane Matthew on North Carolina schools produced mixed results: Elementary schools’ test scores declined in the three years after the storms, but that pattern didn’t carry over into middle and high schools, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Recovery also depends significantly on the state and federal financial resources provided to schools. The GAO study showed that, in many cases, schools' insurance policies and federal grants were insufficient.

Counselor differentiates mental health support after disasters

The 2013 flood in Colorado also impacted Centaurus High School in Lafayette, where Sarina Gonzales worked as a counselor.

Gonzales works on the Boulder Valley School District’s Trauma Response Team, and provided emotional support for students after that flood as well as the Marshall Fire in 2021, which destroyed over 1,000 homes in Boulder County. When events like these happen, the team mobilizes quickly.

“I go in assuming that students, for a multitude of different reasons, don’t feel safe. And so I try to restore a sense of safety to the students,” she said.

Jamestown in Colorado's Boulder County was one of the most severely affected by floods in 2013. Students from different parts of the local school district had their lives affected by the storm. (Helen H. Richardson / Denver Post via Getty Images)

In the aftermath of the Marshall Fire, the number of students identified as homeless in Boulder Valley district rose dramatically. In that case, Gonzales was also responsible for working with students from other schools in the county.

After that immediate response, it is essential to monitor students and identify those under the most stress so that they can receive appropriate care. According to Betty Lai’s research, the number of students exhibiting post-traumatic stress symptoms stemming from natural disasters tends to decrease over time, but around 10% of kids will still present them more than two years after an extreme event.

“Children who watched the water level rise or had to evacuate quickly, couldn’t return to their homes, or had a caregiver lose their job, for example, are more likely to experience distress after a disaster,” Lai said.

The shared catastrophe of natural disasters might erase some normal distinctions between members of school communities. But Gonzales said she had to adapt the assistance provided according to students’ different ages and needs.

“In my experience, elementary and middle school students wanted to talk individually and just tell their story to an adult,” she recalled. “They wanted to talk about getting their pets out, their story of how they got out of their house and rushed away from the fire, and things like that.”

Meanwhile, she said, high school students “didn’t want to talk to a stranger. They preferred to process that with people they knew better. But the high schoolers needed a space to go to, even if they didn’t want to talk.”

Wellington Soares is Chalkbeat’s national education reporting intern based in New York City. Contact Wellington at wsoares@chalkbeat.org

Student OMNY cards are changing NYC transit. Here’s how.

2024-10-04T17:00:06+00:00

This year’s switch to OMNY cards for New York City students set off a wave of excitement for hundreds of thousands of kids whose public transit options suddenly multiplied.

Under the new system, kids get up to four free trips a day on cards that can be used 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Extending the travel window and including weekends, holidays, and summers is a major change from the previous system, where students received MetroCards with only three swipes during limited hours only on school days.

“It is about flexibility. That’s the difference,” said MTA Chair Janno Lieber at a July press conference.

Now, several months into the rollout of the new OMNY cards, the impact of the program is coming into focus. It’s led to a major uptick in student ridership compared to last year alongside some implementation hiccups, transportation officials said in a City Council hearing earlier this week.

Officials are already planning the next phase for the 2025-26 school year: an OMNY app for students to use with phone tap. That could help, especially since some students have concerns about the flimsy paper material the student OMMY cards are made of.

To help preserve the OMNY cards, some schools have laminated them so they’ll last longer. But an MTA spokesperson said laminating “isn’t recommended” and suggested a plastic protective sleeve instead.

Students are supposed to ask their school for a replacement if their card is lost, stolen, or damaged, officials said.

Here are some key numbers that shed light on what the OMNY card change means for kids and schools, which wrinkles are still getting ironed out, and where things may go from here.

2.5 million

The number of public transit trips that New York City students have taken during the first month of school, said John Benson, deputy senior executive director in the city’s Office of Pupil Transportation, at a City Council hearing.

That represents a 36% increase over the same period last year, suggesting kids are taking advantage of the expanded access or perhaps swiping more when they do ride trains or buses, or a combination of both.

$50.5 million

The sum that the city Education Department is paying the MTA for the student OMNY cards, which covers an estimated 500,000-600,000 students, Benson said.

That’s a significant bargain, Benson contended. If every student used all four swipes every day, at $2.90 a swipe, that would place the value of the cards in “the billions.”

0.5 miles

The distance students must live from their schools to qualify for OMNY cards.

Some legislators are pushing to include kids who live within 0.5 miles of their schools.

Such a change would make an additional 500,000 students eligible, essentially doubling the size of the program, and would come with a price tag, Benson said.

Kids ineligible for regular OMNY cards can still qualify for two-trip MetroCards if they participate in extracurricular activities that require them to travel on evenings or weekends, Benson said.

Less than a week

The length of time it should take schools to receive OMNY card refills via courier delivery if they’re short, Benson said.

Some schools have reported shortages, an issue Benson attributed to faulty data or unexpected enrollment increases. If schools need extras sooner, they can pick them up from the Office of Pupil Transportation headquarters in Queens, he added.

$35-$1,500

The price range for which students were selling their OMNY cards online in an emerging black market, according to a recent report in the New York Post.

Benson acknowledged the phenomenon in the council hearing. MTA officials told the Post the cards would be deactivated, but didn’t provide details about how the MTA would find out they were sold.

10-day letters

Some schools with OMNY card shortages have given students letters to show MTA or NYPD officials explaining the situation and asking for a temporary reprieve on the fare, Benson said. The MTA approved those letters in 2021, but the use of the letters this year “has not been authorized by our office,” Benson said.

Next year

When officials expect to start phasing in the OMNY app so students can use their student perks with a phone tap, Benson said.

Physical OMNY cards will still be available for those who prefer them, he added.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

RSVP to hear from candidates for Indianapolis Public Schools board

2024-08-28T19:27:23+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Indiana’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Indianapolis Public Schools, Marion County’s township districts, and statewide education news.

Sept. 6: This article has been updated to reflect that Terrencio Davis was removed from the ballot.

Eight candidates are vying for four open seats on the Indianapolis Public Schools Board of School Commissioners, and only one of them is an incumbent.

This election season comes as IPS continues the rollout of Rebuilding Stronger, its restructuring plan. The district also faces enrollment pressures due to an increasingly competitive school choice landscape, and challenges in improving student academic performance following the pandemic.

Voters have the opportunity to get to know the candidates and their views at a school board candidates forum hosted by Chalkbeat Indiana and WFYI. The forum will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 8. at the Indianapolis Public Library, Central Library.

RSVP to save your seat.

Journalists from the two media organizations will moderate the panel discussion and take audience questions for the candidates submitted both before and during the event. The event is the same day that early voting starts.

School board members are elected but nonpartisan officials. The board doesn’t run the day-to-day district operations, but it does oversee and approve the district’s overall direction, policies, and superintendent.

On the Nov. 5 ballot are:

At-Large ( the entire school district)

Kenneth Allen (incumbent)
Deandra (Dee) Thompson
Carrie Harris

District 4 (areas south and west of downtown)

Allissa Impink

District 2 (Massachusetts Avenue passageway northeast of downtown)

Gayle Cosby
Hasaan Rashid

District 1 (east side and near southeast )

Alan Schoff
Ashley Thomas

Voter guide: Meet the candidates for IPS school board

All of the candidates have confirmed they’re participating in the forum. Terrencio Davis, was previously a candidate in district 2, but his eligibility was challenged, based on residency. The Marion County Elections Board upheld the challenge that Davis lived outside the district boundary at an August 29 meeting. The board removed Davis from the ballot.

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Voter registration is open until Monday, Oct. 7. To register to vote or to check your status, go here.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. She also covers access to higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Contact WFYI education editor Eric Weddle at eweddle@wfyi.org.