Chalkbeat

Four Denver schools are safe from closure under a new district policy because they boosted their ratings

2026-08-31T23:54:25+00:00

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Denver Public Schools will not close any schools this year under a new policy that calls for shuttering persistently low-performing campuses.

Four schools that were at risk under the policy boosted their state ratings, saving them from a closure recommendation, according to preliminary data released Monday by the Colorado Department of Education. The ratings are largely based on state test scores.

The higher ratings are a boon for those schools. They may also be a positive sign for Superintendent Alex Marrero’s carrots-and-sticks strategy of providing extra support to a cohort of struggling schools but threatening closure if they don’t improve.

“Yes, the threat prompted a response,” Marrero said in an interview. “But I wouldn’t say the threat by itself is the reason.”

Rather, he attributed the progress to how the threat mobilized the community to get involved and the district to deploy “the who’s who” of leaders to help the school.

Only one of the four schools, Oakland Elementary, was part of last year’s extra-support cohort, called the Elevate Schools Network. Oakland improved its rating from orange, the third-highest of four ratings, to yellow, the second-highest, preliminary data shows.

The largest of the four schools, John F. Kennedy High, increased its rating from orange to green, which is the highest possible rating. Kennedy wasn’t part of the Elevate Schools Network, but its leaders participated in another district improvement strategy called the Data MINE that is part help desk, part accountability hearing.

Two independently run Denver charter schools were also facing a possible closure recommendation. Rocky Mountain Prep Noel boosted its rating from orange to yellow. Academy 360 earned a green rating for the second year in a row. Because Academy 360 has a history of low ratings, it could have been at risk for closure if its rating had dipped.

Marrero introduced the School Transformation Process last year as a way to beat what’s known as the state accountability clock, which ticks toward intervention. After five years of low ratings, the State Board of Education can order an intervention.

Marrero doesn’t want the state to step in. Instead, his policy calls for Denver Public Schools to take action after four years of low ratings, preempting any state orders.

Although the four schools are safe for now, three of them — John F. Kennedy High, Oakland Elementary, and Rocky Mountain Prep Noel — could be at risk for intervention next fall if their ratings were to backslide to orange or red, which is the lowest.

The preliminary ratings show another three schools could be at risk next fall, too: Ashley Elementary, Cheltenham Elementary, and Traylor Academy. All three earned preliminary orange ratings this year, marking their third year of low ratings.

Schools can appeal their preliminary ratings to the state by presenting additional academic data. The state will finalize the ratings later this fall.

But if those orange ratings stick, and if the three schools earn orange or red ratings next fall, they could be subject to closure under the School Transformation Process.

Under the policy, a school with one to three years of low ratings could be “renewed” or “reconfigured,” which means the principal could be fired, the teachers could have to reapply for their jobs, or the district could cut some grade levels from the school.

After four years of low ratings, a school could be “reimagined,” a euphemism for closure. The school could be permanently closed or replaced with another school.

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

Fewer Colorado schools are on the state’s watchlist for low performance, according to new ratings

2026-08-31T22:44:09+00:00

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Fewer schools are on Colorado’s watchlist for low performance this year, according to preliminary data released Monday by the Colorado Department of Education.

More than 50 schools exited what Colorado calls the accountability clock, so named because it ticks toward state intervention. They include Abraham Lincoln High in Denver, Highland Park Elementary in Pueblo, and the Aurora Central Campus.

Nearly two-thirds of Colorado’s more than 1,700 schools earned a green rating — the highest — this year, which is slightly fewer than last year. About 55% of the state’s 184 school districts and co-ops earned a high rating, which is the same as last year.

Colorado’s largest school district, Denver Public Schools, earned a green rating for the second year in a row. The second-largest district, Jeffco Public Schools, was also green. Twelve districts, including Boulder Valley and Littleton, earned top-tier blue ratings.

The ratings are largely based on state standardized test scores, and they matter because the State Board of Education can order schools and districts with five or more years of low ratings to undergo changes to improve student performance. Those changes could be as drastic as closing a school, although the State Board has only ever done that once.

Schools and districts can appeal their preliminary ratings by presenting additional academic data. After considering appeals, the state will finalize the ratings later this fall.

“It is encouraging to see that most Colorado schools are meeting or exceeding state expectations and that fewer schools are on the Accountability Clock,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said in a statement.

“At the same time, we know that too many students are still attending schools that are struggling to meet their needs,” she said. “Our job is to learn from what is working, strengthen instruction where it matters most and partner with local leaders to provide the support schools need so that every student has access to a high-quality education.”

Only one district and 30 schools earned the lowest rating this year, signified by the color red. That’s fewer than last year. The district, the tiny Deer Trail 26J located 60 miles east of Denver, had its preliminary rating downgraded due to low participation on state tests.

The 30 red schools include two in Denver Public Schools (Joe Shoemaker and Kaiser Elementary), one in Jeffco Public Schools (Swanson Elementary), and two in Adams 12 Five Star Schools (Leroy Elementary and Northglenn Middle).

Twelve districts are on the accountability clock this year, which is less than last year. The Fort Morgan, East Otero, and Las Animas districts were among those that exited.

The Adams 14 district in Commerce City has spent 13 years on the clock, the longest of any district. The State Board of Education ordered Adams 14 to reorganize in 2022 but later backed down in the face of community pressure. Adams 14 earned an orange rating this year, which is the second lowest on a five-color scale. But two of its schools, Alsup Elementary and Central Elementary, showed enough improvement to exit the clock.

The number of schools on the accountability clock based on their preliminary ratings fell from 176 to 148 this year. The number of schools that have been on the clock the longest, for six years or more, also decreased from 10 to four. Among the four that remain are two in Aurora Public Schools: Gateway High and North Middle.

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

Denver’s test scores are up, but not high enough to meet all of the superintendent’s strategic plan goals

2026-08-20T23:06:27+00:00

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Denver Public Schools’ standardized test scores have gone up under the watch of Superintendent Alex Marrero, but not enough to meet all of his goals.

In 2022, a year into his tenure as superintendent, Marrero released his first-ever strategic plan. Among the plan’s academic goals: to increase the number of students scoring at grade level on math and literacy tests by 10 percentage points by 2026.

None of Denver’s overall scores improved by 10 percentage points, data released this week shows. The district’s early literacy score came the closest. In 2022, 60% of kindergarten through third grade students scored at grade level or above in reading. In 2026, 69% did.

Marrero wanted to accelerate the growth of certain student groups even more. At the time, Denver had the largest test score gaps by race in the state.

That’s still true. Black and Latino students’ scores have gone up in the past four years — some by 10 percentage points or more — but big gaps remain between them and their white peers.

The comparison comes as Marrero’s future with the Denver district has been called into question, partly because of friction with the school board responsible for hiring and firing him and partly because he’s been a candidate for at least two jobs in other cities that he didn’t get.

As has been the case with past superintendents, some people want Marrero to stay, and some don’t. He said recently that he’s “unapologetically committed” to Denver and close to finalizing a new strategic plan that will take the district through 2030.

When last spring’s standardized test scores were released earlier this week, Marrero characterized Denver’s results as a mix of pain points and all-time highs.

“There’s still a whole lot of work we need to do,” he said in an interview. “For my lovely critics out there, this is me celebrating the work of our educators. And I will never hold back from continuing to be the cheerleader for Denver Public Schools.”

District-run schools met the early literacy goal

Denver has had the most success with early literacy. It’s where Marrero has focused several of his signature initiatives, including a Black Student Success Team launched in 2023, a Latine Student Success Team launched in 2024, and the Elevate Schools Network, launched last year to help a cohort of low-performing elementary schools boost their test scores.

“It’s not a cheat code but a smart way of investing your talent and energy and resources,” Marrero said of the focus on the district’s youngest students. “Our youngest scholars become, ultimately, our oldest scholars.”

In the past four years, Denver also adopted a new early literacy curriculum aligned to the science of reading, a large body of research on how children best learn to read. And the district invested in teacher training and a new intervention program for struggling readers.

A state law called the READ Act requires school districts to test the literacy skills of all kindergarten through third grade students each year. Denver has used different tests over the years, but the one that most district-run schools currently use is called DIBELS.

Just counting district-run schools, 71% of kindergarten through third grade students were reading at grade level or above this past spring, according to district data — a number that surpasses the goal in Marrero’s strategic plan.

That number doesn’t include scores from Denver’s independent charter schools or the schools in its semi-autonomous innovation zone, neither of which Marrero directly oversees.

In a press release, the district called out “significant milestone achievements in district-run schools.” Marrero said he’s also proud of the progress made by students of color. In 2022, 48% of Black and Latino students in kindergarten through third grade were reading at grade level or above. In 2026, those numbers jumped to 58% for Black students and 63% for Latino students.

Big test score gaps by race remain

A similar pattern emerged in elementary and middle school. Colorado students in grades 3 through 8 take literacy and math tests called the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS. Students in grades 9 and 10 take the PSAT, and 11th graders take the SAT.

Districtwide, 39% of students met or exceeded expectations on the CMAS literacy test in 2022. To meet Marrero’s strategic plan goal, 49% would have had to score that way in 2026. Only 42.5% of students did.

But among district-run schools, the district calculated that the number was 43.4%, which it said in a press release was an all-time high. CMAS math scores were also higher for district-run schools than for charter schools, the district said.

On the SAT, Black students’ reading and writing scores improved by 11 percentage points districtwide from 2022 to 2026. But districtwide SAT scores in both literacy and math grew by less than the 10-percentage-point target, as did the scores of Latino students.

Yawning test score gaps remain between students of color and white students in Denver. About 27% of Black students and 25% of Latino students met or exceeded expectations on the CMAS literacy test this past spring, compared with 76% of white students. That’s about a 50 percentage-point gap, which was once again the largest in Colorado.

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

A new national report tells a complicated story about Newark Public Schools students’ learning and growth

2026-05-22T20:40:00+00:00

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Newark’s public school students are improving faster than nearly every district in the nation, but are performing two grade levels behind the national average in math and reading, according to a new national education report released this month.

Researchers at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth found that Newark Public Schools students learned at an average rate of 1.23 grade levels per year in reading and math during the 2022 through 2025 school years, according to the fourth annual national Education Scorecard released last week. That means Newark students, on average, gained a little more than a grade level’s worth of skills every year post-pandemic.

Researchers analyzed state test scores from third to eighth grade for over 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing them to compare learning rates nationally and show where students’ academic recovery stands. Learning rates measure how much students improve year over year, regardless of where they started.

The researchers ranked Newark in the 93rd percentile nationally among school districts and found that Newark students outpaced the national and state average learning rate. Similar districts identified by researchers, including Trenton, Vineland, New Brunswick, Camden City, and Atlantic City, averaged about eighth-tenths of a grade level of learning each year.

But a closer look at the data shows that Newark Public Schools students performed 2.36 grade levels below the 2019 national average, according to the report. That gap highlights the disruption Newark families experienced during the pandemic and the slow recovery it’s taking to get students up to speed.

During Thursday’s school board meeting, Superintendent Roger León said the new study grounds the district “in knowing that we’re in a place where we can actually move from.”

“We are very, very confident in the work that we’re doing, and that we’re also cognizant that there’s a lot of work that needs to occur to continue to move the pendulum in the direction that we need,” León said Thursday.

In a press release issued late Thursday, board President Hasani Council said the report’s findings “reflect years of focused investment, strong leadership, dedicated teachers, and the resilience of Newark’s students and families.”

New Jersey received roughly $4.3 billion in federal pandemic relief for K-12 schools, about $3,200 per student. The national report found that the gains in many high-poverty districts were driven by that federal support.

Last spring, only 34% of Newark Public Schools’ students in grades 3-9 passed the state’s English Language Arts test, while 21.1% of students passed the math test. Although those numbers lag behind statewide averages, they are a slight improvement from levels seen right after the pandemic. Across New Jersey, 53% of students passed the statewide English Language Arts test in 2025.

Paula White, the executive director of JerseyCAN, a statewide education advocacy group, said that money “mattered greatly,” but even after that massive investment, middle and higher poverty districts are still behind pre-pandemic levels.

“Adhering to the status quo will only keep New Jersey in our troubling middle-of-the-pack position,” White said. She also called the statewide results on the national report card “a sluggish portrait of New Jersey’s education recovery” and urged the state to adopt science-of-reading reforms, invest in literacy coaches and high-impact tutoring, and tackle chronic absenteeism on an “accelerated timetable.”

The report also found that states that enacted literacy reforms, such as Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee, produced measurable reading gains while states that didn’t, including New Jersey, did not. Across the country, results are gloomier, and researchers warn that the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession, which predates pandemic school disruptions.

“The bottom line is that we must do more,” White added.

The full report is available at educationscorecard.org

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

Teach For America New Jersey urges Newark leaders to work together to help students read on grade level

2026-05-04T10:00:00+00:00

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Mark Comesañas recalled a former student, Jose, who arrived at adulthood without a critical skill needed to navigate life: At 19, he couldn’t read a Dr. Seuss book.

“The options he has at 19 are slim,” said Comesañas, the executive director of My Brother’s Keeper Newark, during a panel last Thursday at Teach For America New Jersey’s inaugural One Day Breakfast event, which convened Newark leaders to talk about low literacy rates and solutions.

That story resonated with the policymakers and education leaders in the room, who are confronting a crisis impacting not only Newark but the nation. Too many students are not reading at grade level, and they are reaching adulthood without ever learning to read well.

Test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, from 2024 show that most students in the United States are still performing below pre-pandemic levels in reading and math, while the gap between high-achieving students and low-performing students keeps widening.

Last spring, only 34% of Newark Public Schools’ students in grades 3-9 passed the state’s English Language Arts test, and although those numbers lag behind statewide averages, they are a slight improvement from levels seen right after the pandemic. Across New Jersey, 53% of students passed the statewide English Language Arts test in 2025.

Teach for America New Jersey organized last week’s event to spread a call to action to ensure every child can read on grade level. The event addressed the history of reading in New Jersey and local challenges such as the barriers in Black and Latino communities that prevent students from boosting their literacy skills. The organization is also hosting a similar event in Camden in May.

“We have to get local and we have to stop trying to scapegoat,” Tahina Perez, the executive director of Teach for America New Jersey, told Chalkbeat on a call last Wednesday.

Perez said she saw the literacy issue coming years before the pandemic, as far back as 2018. At that time, Perez and her team were tracking the number of Black and Latino students, particularly those in low-income communities, who were falling behind in reading. Last week’s event was meant to continue local collaboration to find ways to address the problem in Newark.

“When children are confident and independent readers, communities grow stronger, democracy works better, and opportunity expands,” Perez said at the event last week. “And when we get this wrong, the consequences last a lifetime.”

Tahina Perez, executive director of Teach for America New Jersey, speaks with My Brother’s Keeper executive director Mark Comesañas, JerseyCAN executive director Paula White, and New Jersey Institute for Social Justice president and CEO Ryan Haygood about literacy challenges on Thursday, April 30, 2026.

Newark’s literacy crisis did not happen overnight. Remote learning during the pandemic caused students to miss critical classroom time, and in the city, Newark Public Schools, along with state and local leaders, are working to help students get back on track.

Research shows that reading skills play a key role in a child’s likelihood of graduating high school, pursuing college, and ultimately a career. Experts say a student’s literacy levels in third grade predict what their skills will be in the eighth grade and beyond.

Newark’s low reading rates have also drawn attention in Trenton, where New Jersey’s Republican lawmakers have questioned why literacy rates are so low. Assemblyman Alex Sauickie has called for more transparency about how Newark Public Schools is using its money to help students refine their reading and recently questioned district leadership.

“This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a moral one,” said Sauickie in a statement. “Taxpayers deserve complete transparency on where this money is going and why it is producing such poor academic outcomes.“

Yet in New Jersey, the systems meant to catch up students struggling to read are inconsistent, Paula White, executive director of JerseyCAN, a literacy advocacy group, told Chalkbeat. The state’s recently passed literacy framework mandates universal literacy screeners across all of New Jersey’s more than 500 school districts, but doesn’t require a specific screener or high-quality instructional materials. Similarly, literacy coaching is unevenly distributed, White said.

“You’re going to have some school districts that are in fantastic shape,” White added. “And then you’ll have a third that are just, quite frankly, rudderless.”

Perez also pointed to the larger systemic problems impacting Newark’s reading rates that she says aren’t just a “school problem, or a parent problem, or a student problem.”

“If we believe that education is a fundamental right from the moment you step foot on the soil, then we need to be thinking about the systems and the structures at play that prevent this from being true,” Perez added.

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

‘Mamma Mia!’ performance becomes a symbol of hope for a Denver high school that could face closure

2026-03-19T21:11:35+00:00

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For senior Ivan Marquez, his school’s spring musical feels like a dream come true.

Marquez wanted to do theater when he came to John F. Kennedy High School as a freshman. But since there was no program, he joined the choir instead. Now, three years later, he has a lead part in “Mamma Mia!” and has been rehearsing after school and on Saturdays.

“Knowing what’s happening to the school, I feel like that’s just pushing us to work harder,” Marquez said, “so that the school can continue to be open for the future students.”

This week’s production of “Mamma Mia!” is happening at a difficult time for Kennedy High, located in southwest Denver. The school is one of four that could face closure under a new Denver Public Schools policy that calls for shuttering schools with persistently low state ratings.

But a closure wouldn’t happen until next spring. And the students at Kennedy said they aren’t giving up.

“‘Mamma Mia!’ is kind of giving the school a little hope, because you’re seeing everything start to get revived,” said Heaven Tafoya, a senior who’s on the student board of education.

Tori Southworth, right, and other students rehearse "Mamma Mia!" Southworth plays Donna, the mother of the bride-to-be.

The last time Kennedy put on a musical was nearly a decade ago. Back then, the school had 1,000 students, which was not enough to fill its 1,500-seat auditorium but more than the 675 it has today. Theater teacher Kristen Martin had to rope off the back half of the auditorium in order to push the audience toward the stage for a play the students did in the fall.

Martin, whom everyone calls KMart, was hired last year by Principal Victoria Wyatt to restart Kennedy’s theater program. She said she arrived to find that the school was storing its gym mats in the theater department’s prop shop, and her office was full of computers.

The first thing she did was recruit five students from the school’s overflowing art classes who’d expressed an interest in theater. Their job was to help her physically dig the program out.

“I found kids who wanted to be here, and I made sure they wanted to be here by putting them to work,” said Martin, who previously worked in the Aurora and Littleton school districts.

Alex Stanton illuminates the stage during a dress rehearsal for "Mamma Mia!"

But while five students was enough to put on a few showcases last spring and “The Odd Couple” in the fall, it wasn’t enough for a spring musical. Vocal music teacher Julia Wirth said she knew that to make a musical work, she’d have to pull in her choir students.

Junior Aspen MacDonnell remembers the pitch: Instead of a spring concert, Wirth told the choir they’d be part of the musical instead. And if they wanted a big part, they’d have to audition.

Not everyone was thrilled. Most of the students had never heard of “Mamma Mia!,” a jukebox musical featuring songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA about a bride-to-be who invites three men from her mother’s past to her wedding on a Greek island. ABBA was popular in the 1970s and “Mamma Mia!” premiered in 1999, before the students were born.

“Some people were feeling like they were forced,” MacDonnell said of the auditions, “but once we got into it, I feel like everybody loves it.”

Brihani Posas prepares for a dress rehearsal of "Mamma Mia!" Posas plays a tourist in the musical.

Sophomore Brihani Posas said being cast in “Mamma Mia!” made her feel like a missing crayon who’d finally found her box. Tori Southworth, also a sophomore, said she’s heartbroken to think that she might lose her new friendships if the school were to close.

“I think ‘Mamma Mia!’ has really shown that we can still fix this,” Southworth said.

Any closure decision will likely hinge on academic factors like the school’s PSAT scores and graduation rate, not on the strength of its performing arts or athletics programs. But those are often the things that make a school feel successful. Students and staff can tick off a list of Kennedy’s recent accomplishments, including that its girls basketball team won the city league championship this winter and its JROTC team is competing at nationals.

Students wait for their turn on stage during a dress rehearsal of "Mamma Mia!"

“In the broader school, it is a lot of tension and fear,” said social studies teacher Kade Orlandini, who helped build the sets for “Mamma Mia!” “I feel like the musical is trying to show we’re not dead yet, and hopefully we won’t be. There’s still a lot of great things happening at Kennedy.”

On a recent call with a reporter, Wyatt, the principal, held the phone up to the school’s loudspeaker. There on the morning announcements were the students who’d never before put on a musical, singing to the whole school to encourage them to buy tickets. The cast has also been making video clips, one of which has more than 70,000 likes on Instagram.

“Take a chance on meeeeee,” the students sang on the morning announcements, “and join us in the auditorium on Friday and Saturday at 6 p.m.”

“Our kids are pretty relentless,” Wyatt said.

Students rehearse a song in "Mamma Mia!"

In that auditorium earlier this week, students dressed as Greek tourists sat in the front row, sharing a box of McDonald’s fries before a dress rehearsal. A girl and two boys mimed choreography between bites. A kid on the technical crew frantically looked for AAA batteries. The sound of a backstage vocal warmup was muffled by thick stage curtains.

By 5:30 on the dot, the dinner break was over and everyone was in place. The lights went down, and a medley of ABBA songs came streaming through the speakers.

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

Rahm Emanuel has a plan to fix schools and the Democratic Party. Will it work?

2026-01-22T15:40:00+00:00

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Rahm Emanuel — who once said, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste” — sees two crises at the moment.

One is the well-documented learning decline plaguing American students. The other is the similarly declining favorability of the Democratic Party with voters. Emanuel has an answer to both: Democrats need to embrace reform-minded education policies to boost achievement, while pivoting away from what he sees as an overemphasis on race- and gender-related topics.

“We weren’t worried about what was going on in the classroom or the corridor,” Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and White House chief of staff, said in an interview. “We were worried about a bunch of ancillary issues.” He was fresh off of a high-profile trip down to Mississippi, where improvements in fourth-grade test scores have drawn national accolades.

Emanuel is openly considering a run for president. If he takes the plunge, education will be core to his campaign, he says.

Already, though, his media blitz has reshaped the conversation about schools. Most other prominent Democrats have consigned education to the veritable kids’ table of issues. Although some of Emanuel’s pronouncements are up for dispute, he’s stepped in to fill a large void within his party. “I’ll say this: He’s talking about schools. That’s a good thing,” said Joshua Cowen, an education professor at Michigan State University, who briefly ran for Congress as a Democrat.

Emanuel cut his teeth in a different political era when leading Democrats were eager to talk about overhauling public schools. As Barack Obama’s chief of staff, he helped design Race to the Top, which promoted charter schools and the use of test scores to judge teachers. Then as Chicago mayor he pushed for a longer school day and closed 50 schools amid declining enrollment.

Emanuel acknowledges the bitter disputes over these policies. Race to the Top helped spur a nationwide backlash to testing. School closures in Chicago unleashed widespread anger from teachers and parents in the city, imperiling Emanuel’s reelection, although he ultimately won a second term. “My life would have been a hell of a lot easier had I left those schools open, even though parents were fleeing,” he said, after rattling off statistics about improvement in the city school system.

Whatever the flaws of the prior reform era, Emanuel says, at least Democrats had a clear agenda. Now he dings his party for extended virtual schooling during the pandemic and for allowing Republicans to own education issues. “You know that the Republicans are for vouchers. You can’t tell me what the Democratic calling card is,” said Emanuel, who served as ambassador to Japan under Joe Biden.

Indeed, while Trump campaigned on a far-reaching education platform, including closing the Education Department and getting “wokeness” out of schools, Biden and later Kamala Harris didn’t emphasize the issue. The Biden administration also quietly dropped an early proposal to create a Race to the Top-style innovation fund for schools.

Emanuel is alarmed that relatively few leaders from either party have made recovering from historic test scores declines a major priority. “Nobody’s going to break a sweat trying to solve it,” he said.

Some of Emanuel’s other claims are questionable, though. One of his key talking points is that Democrats have lost their edge on education with voters. This isn’t backed up by most recent polling. Well, he counters, the Democratic advantage is smaller than it used to be.

One long-running survey shows Democrats with a 10 to 15 point edge on education, which is smaller than the high points of 2007 and 2008, but comparable to many other times in recent decades.

As for COVID school closures, it’s not at all clear this is dragging Democrats down. Most voters say that, looking back, these closures were “largely necessary,” according to one recent poll.

And although Emanuel refers to identity issues as distractions, they’re quite resonant with students who are transgender or conservative parents critical of policies to accommodate trans students. (For voters particularly concerned about this issue, Emanuel is blunt: “If I run for office, I’m not your guy.”)

Yet Emanuel’s strategy of using education to try to redefine the party brand has historical precedent. George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative” who would improve schools for disadvantaged children. Before him, Bill Clinton promised to be a “New Democrat” who would reform failing schools and stand up to “special interests,” including labor unions and gay rights advocates. Both men were elected in part thanks to their approach.

Today, even if Democrats still have an edge on education, they do have a problem with voters who see them, fairly or not, as too focused on social issues. To address this, Emanuel is trying to rerun the New Democrat playbook that worked in the ‘90s. “It’s a sense of deja vu,” said Patrick McGuinn, a Drew University political scientist who has studied how education plays out in national politics.

Asked about specific policies, Emanuel ticks through ways he’d like schools to improve. He wants more to adopt the Mississippi model — which includes phonics-based instruction and holding back struggling readers — and he wants high schools to require students to have a clear plan for when they graduate. He also suggests addressing low attendance rates by cutting funding to schools where too many students are absent.

The president doesn’t control schools like a mayor or a school board. They can leverage federal money to push schools to make changes, though doing this effectively is not easy. Emanuel has floated the idea of a new Race to the Top-style program.

If he does run for president, Emanuel will face skepticism and perhaps outright opposition from public school interests and teachers unions, which are major Democratic funders.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers whose local Chicago chapter frequently clashed with Emanuel, agrees Democrats need to lean in on education again. “There are pieces of Rahm’s agenda — such as boosting literacy and investing in Pre-K — that are foundational, but so are neighborhood public schools, which Rahm closed en masse as mayor of Chicago,” she said in a statement.

Cowen, the Michigan State professor, who is a leading critic of school vouchers, says that aside from Emanuel, though, national Democrats have largely failed to sketch out a clear vision on education. “Improving public schools is part of defending public schools and vice versa,” he said.

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

Denver’s Lincoln H.S. improves state rating amid immigration enforcement fears, other challenges

2026-01-21T20:05:44+00:00

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Abraham Lincoln High School needed to track down 13 graduates.

That’s how many it would take to boost the southwest Denver school’s rating to a middle-tier yellow grade after years at the bottom. If Lincoln could prove to the Colorado Department of Education that at least 13 more graduates were enrolled in college, career training, or the military, the school could earn enough rating points to take a step toward exiting the state’s watchlist for low performance — a feat it hadn’t accomplished in more than a decade.

“It has always been a struggle for our school to (be) a place where the community is proud of, in terms of academic achievement,” said Principal Néstor Bravo. “I want to work really hard on making Lincoln a positive point of reference for the southwest.”

Lincoln has been on Colorado’s watchlist for low performance longer than any school in Denver. Located in a largely Hispanic, working-class neighborhood, Lincoln has a vibrant history, display cases full of athletic trophies, and notable alumni including Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova and Denver school board President Xóchitl Gaytán.

But enrollment has fallen from 1,900 students a decade and a half ago to about 830 students today. Lincoln has struggled academically for at least as long. And recent immigration enforcement actions by the Trump administration have made matters worse.

In the four days after President Donald Trump was inaugurated last January, Lincoln lost 100 students, many of them new immigrants from Venezuela and other countries, Bravo said.

“They disappeared,” Bravo said. “We couldn’t find a trace of them. They just didn’t show up.”

And attendance is spotty for many of the students who remain. More than 6 in 10 Lincoln students were chronically absent last school year, meaning they missed 10% or more of their school days. Bravo said it doesn’t help that federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents regularly park their vehicles at the car wash across the street and at a strip mall where students walk to buy lunch, though he said he hasn’t seen them this month.

As far as he knows, none of his students or their family members have been arrested by ICE, Bravo said. But as a Venezuelan immigrant himself who came to Denver to get a graduate degree and was hired to teach Advanced Placement Spanish classes at Lincoln before becoming a principal, Bravo said he understands the fear.

“They are gambling with their future in a sense,” Bravo said. “If I stay in school, if I keep coming here, I might be captured or they’re going to take me, so what am I going to do?

“The most important thing is to give kids a reason to be here and feel safe,” he said.

How Abraham Lincoln H.S. improved academic growth

Even under those difficult circumstances, Lincoln made academic progress. While the percentage of students meeting the state’s bar on PSAT and SAT tests remained low, Lincoln’s academic growth — a measure of how much students improved year over year — was the highest it’s been since before the pandemic.

Bravo credits a series of changes he made when he became principal last school year. They include twice-weekly SAT prep classes using the online platform Khan Academy, which has an AI assistant that can chat with students in Spanish.

He also prioritized improving the way teachers deliver their lessons, both by cutting administrators without that skillset and training teachers in a method meant to get students collaborating and talking in class, which he said can be intimidating for English learners.

“As a second language learner myself, if I don’t have to talk, I won’t,” said Bravo, who said he spoke Spanish and Portuguese, but not as much English, when he took a teaching job at Lincoln more than 15 years ago.

“We have a high percentage of multilingual learners,” he said. “We have kids who need to practice English, who need to speak in their native language, so let’s get them to talk.”

Students and staff at Abraham Lincoln High School talk to each other about ways they can stay on track academically this semester at a celebration of the school's "yellow" state rating.

Bravo is trying to improve the culture at Lincoln, too. A competitive athlete, Bravo warms up with the soccer team and shoots arrows with JROTC students at the school’s indoor range. He added big screen TVs to the main hallway to broadcast the students’ achievements, such as the boys baseball team winning the city league championship last spring. Posters advertising Lincoln’s upcoming school play, “Shrek the Musical,” hang near the TVs.

Last Friday, the school celebrated its academic progress. Staff decorated the gymnasium with yellow streamers. Bravo gave a pep talk. Guitar students played a cover of Radiohead’s “Creep.” The robotics team, wearing matching sweatshirts, showed off a robot. And students who had earned all A’s and B’s in the first semester were called up to get awards.

“I used to not really focus on my grades at all,” a senior named Gabe said, taking the microphone and addressing his fellow students sitting in the bleachers. “I used to try to just get past high school, you know? But that limited my opportunities.

“I would say just try your hardest, even if you don’t know what you’re going to do after high school, just so you have opportunities,” Gabe said. “Just don’t close any doors.”

Moving from orange to yellow

The data shows that more Lincoln students are following that advice. When the Colorado Department of Education released its preliminary school ratings this fall, Lincoln had earned the second-lowest rating, signified by the color orange.

But Bravo suspected he could get Lincoln’s score up to yellow. High schools are rated based on their PSAT and SAT scores, graduation rates, and how many of their students go on to college, the military, or a career training program.

It was in that last category where Bravo knew Lincoln could move the needle. The state’s data seemed incomplete, he said. Lincoln staff and the advisers who work at the Denver Scholarship Foundation’s in-house college and career planning center at Lincoln knew anecdotally of more graduates who had continued their education.

So the staff began contacting former students one by one to collect the proof they’d need, like a college class schedule, to show state officials that the graduates had matriculated. In some cases, it became a game of social media telephone: They could see that one graduate was connected with another who had gone to a small community college in the mountains. Could that graduate get in touch with their friend and tell them to call the staff at Lincoln?

In the end, Lincoln staff found more than the 13 students they needed to bump up the school’s rating. And the state officially upgraded Lincoln’s rating to yellow in December.

Now Bravo is focused on keeping it there, even in this challenging time.

“I was very proud to see that last year, we were able to show that we can grow,” Bravo said. “It’s overwhelming for a public school with the limited resources we have, trying to address a societal friction, where people have strong opinions about what to do or what not to do with immigrants.

“But we don’t back down.”

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

Test scores are down, but experts don’t know exactly why

2026-01-08T22:30:00+00:00

Welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas, a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Next week we have an online event with Education Department official Lindsey Burke. You can sign up to join here.

It’s hardly breaking news that American students are behind academically from where they used to be.

But the specifics can get lost in a haze of headlines and data points. To start the new year, I wanted to level-set on where we stand on learning loss and recovery — to unpack what we know and don’t know. To speak to this, I reviewed multiple pieces of testing data.

In sum: Test scores have been trending down for over a decade. There are some signs of recovery in math, but not many in reading. Learning declines are not a distinctly U.S. phenomenon and are not even limited to schoolchildren. Researchers are only just beginning to wrap their heads around the causes of this.

Confident claims about what’s going on here are unwarranted, though policymakers can’t wait for perfect evidence to act.

“We should resist the notion of trying to put our finger on the one thing we can change that will solve this problem,” says University of Virginia researcher James Wyckoff, who recently released a paper on declining achievement. “I think it really results from many things in and out of school.”

Here are some key takeaways from my review of the data.

Learning declines have been substantial and pervasive.

Consider one example from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP: In 2013, 74% of American eighth graders scored at the basic or above level in math, the highest figure since the test started in 1990. In the most recent round that number fell to 61%, hitting levels last seen in 1996. Scores have fallen in other grades and subjects, too.

Despite a small handful of relative bright spots, these declines have been remarkably widespread. Eighth grade math scores fell in almost every single state during this period; no states saw increases. Although schools that were closed longer during the pandemic tended to experience bigger declines, even those that quickly reopened have been hit hard by learning loss.

This trend started before the pandemic.

Test scores, particularly in math, had generally been marching upwards for a few decades until about 2013. Then a period of stagnation and decline hit. The aftershocks of the Great Recession on families and school budgets may have been an initial cause. Yet even by 2019 there was still no sign of recovery. Then the bottom fell out further after the pandemic.

Two groups have been hit hardest: low performers and girls.

On a wide variety of tests, starting before the pandemic, the gap between the lowest- and highest-performing students has grown. That’s not because high performers have surged ahead but because low performers have fallen further behind.

More recently, since the pandemic, girls’ scores have tended to fall more sharply than boys’.

Some good news: Math scores are starting to trend up again.

Every state with consistent testing data shows that more students are reaching proficiency in math now compared to 2021. Math results have also ticked up on the NWEA exam and on the fourth grade (but not eighth grade) NAEP. Still, most data indicates that these scores have not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.

There’s been inconsistent recovery at best in reading.

Reading and math results have followed curiously different trajectories. On the most recent NAEP, reading scores actually fell even further. On state exams, reading achievement has been all over the map. Pennsylvania, for instance, has had solid recovery in math, but reading scores have kept sliding downward.

The U.S. is hardly alone in its achievement woes.

Many other countries are grappling with falling test scores too. This has shown up on an exam of 15-year-olds known as the PISA, as well as on the TIMSS, a math and science test of fourth and eighth graders. Relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. trends look a bit worse on TIMSS, but a bit better on PISA.

The U.S. is unusual in its sharply growing gap between highest- and lowest-performing students.

Also: Test scores may be lower among adults and very young children

Some data indicates that children who are just entering school are doing so with lower levels of readiness in reading and math. Another study of adult skills showed drops across the age distribution between 2017 and 2023 in literacy and numeracy.

This adds a new wrinkle. “Factors outside of school might play a considerable role” in learning declines, writes Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute in a report from last year.

How concerned should we be? Pretty concerned!

When children know more, as measured on tests, they tend to lead more productive lives. Countries with higher test scores tend to see stronger economic growth. These scores are incomplete measures of students’ skills, but they do matter.

Test scores are not in entirely uncharted territory, though. A long-running test of 13-year-olds shows that math scores in 2023 were at the lowest point in recent decades but remain comparable to scores from the ‘80s and early ‘90s and higher than those in the ‘70s. Reading scores have dipped to levels last seen in the early 2000s.

So what explains all this? Researchers aren’t quite sure.

Two detailed analyses, by Wyckoff and Malkus, have tried to parse what is driving these trends. Neither concluded with definitive answers. “There is remarkably little understanding of the nature of either the sustained achievement gains prior to 2013 or the subsequent losses thereafter,” writes Wyckoff in his paper, titled “Puzzling Over Declining Academic Achievement.”

That said, it’s very likely that the pandemic and its associated disruptions to life in and out of school played a significant role. Another theory is that easing off school accountability pressure — which research found drove learning gains in the early 2000s — has contributed to recent score declines.

Perhaps the leading hypothesis is the proliferation of phones and screens, although Wyckoff notes that “direct causal evidence” on this question “is limited.” That’s beginning to change.

One recent study linked school phone restrictions to better test scores.

These learning challenges are not particular to American schools and may not even be largely caused by changes within schools. Yet they remain a challenge that schools and educators must confront.

I expect to be writing about potential ideas and solutions for these challenges throughout this year. Feel free to send yours to mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

2 Denver schools are safe from closure due to ratings bump, but 4 others remain at risk

2025-12-16T23:07:44+00:00

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Two Denver elementary schools are no longer at risk of closure for low test scores after a successful appeal bumped up the schools’ state ratings. But four others could still face that fate.

Cheltenham Elementary and Traylor Elementary are safe for now from what Denver Public Schools Superintendent Alex Marrero euphemistically refers to as “reimagining.” A new DPS policy calls for closing schools with persistently low state ratings.

The policy, called the School Transformation Process, went into effect this year. But the soonest any DPS schools could close would be in the spring of 2027.

The Colorado Department of Education rates schools on a color-coded scale. Green is the highest, followed by yellow, orange, and red. The ratings are largely based on standardized test scores.

Cheltenham and Traylor were initially given orange ratings this fall. About 12% of Cheltenham students and 18% of Traylor students in grades 3-5 met or exceeded expectations on state literacy tests last spring. In math, those percentages were 4% and 14%, respectively.

DPS asked the state to reconsider both schools’ ratings. The district submitted early literacy test scores to show that Cheltenham and Traylor students who were too young to take state standardized tests were making academic progress, DPS officials said. DPS did not provide that data Tuesday.

The state education department granted DPS’ request, and recently increased Cheltenham and Traylor’s ratings to yellow, making both schools safe from the district’s new closure policy. That’s because the policy only applies to schools that have earned orange or red ratings for four years or more.

But four other schools are still at risk of closure under the policy: John F. Kennedy High, Oakland Elementary, Rocky Mountain Prep Noel, and Academy 360. The first three schools received orange ratings this year. Academy 360 got a green rating but because it has a longer history of low ratings, it could be at risk if its rating slips again.

If those four schools receive orange or red ratings next year, the superintendent will recommend them for closure. The school board could vote to close the schools for good at the end of the 2026-27 school year. Or it could vote to replace them with other, pre-approved school models.

Any replacement schools would open in the fall of 2027.

Marrero introduced the new policy 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 ratings, the State Board of Education can order a school to undergo an intervention. The harshest intervention is closure, but the State Board has rarely used it.

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

The curious disconnect between the data and the vibes of higher education

2025-11-11T22:50:00+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. You can also RSVP for our first online event this Thursday, where we’ll unpack new data on learning loss.

American colleges are under siege.

The Trump administration has waged a legal and rhetorical battle against the country’s elite universities. Voters have grown increasingly skeptical of higher education. Some high school students are questioning the value of a college diploma. In turn, there’s been a veritable firehose of news stories about a generational pivot away from college due to some combination of ruinous costs, close-minded campus cultures, and appealing alternatives.

It is a disorienting experience, then, to examine the cold, hard data of higher education.

College tuition has become more affordable in recent years. The economic return on a bachelor’s degree has stopped growing but remains near historic highs. After a post-pandemic dip, four-year college enrollment has almost fully recovered to near-record levels. Students are increasingly flocking to flagship public universities like UCLA and the University of Michigan.

Whatever the problems of higher education, the narrative has raced far ahead of the reality.

Much of this mistaken story stems from a simple confusion: conflating enrollment in two-year and four-year colleges. While it’s true that fewer people are in community colleges, the number of students seeking bachelor’s degrees hasn’t changed much. “It’s been roughly flat for the last 10 years,” says Joshua Goodman, an education economist at Boston University. “That’s very much not the narrative.”

Let’s unpack the disconnect between the data and the vibes.

The costs vs. benefits of college

It is often treated as a well-established fact that the price of college is soaring. That is no longer the case. For the last couple of decades, net tuition has, if anything, trended down at private and in-state public universities, according to data compiled by the College Board. Since household earnings have gone up during this period, college tuition appears to have become somewhat more affordable in recent years, not less.

“When I talk to members of the public this has not penetrated at all,” says Dominique Baker, a higher education professor at the University of Delaware.

The reality has been underappreciated because colleges’ sticker prices have been rising at an almost linear rate. But list price has become increasingly disconnected from the real price thanks to growing financial aid.

What about the economic benefits of a four-year college education?

On average, those with a bachelor’s degree still earn far more than those without. The “college-wage premium,” as economists call it, stands at about 75%. This figure has stagnated since the early 2000s, but it remains at or near its highest point in a century.

You may have seen headlines about careers that don’t require a degree but that come with lucrative salaries. Such examples certainly exist, but they are exceptions to the average. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the non-degreed occupations with the most new positions all earn under $40,000 annually. Those include home health aides, order stockers, and fast-food workers.

This does not mean that every student who attends college will see a return. The wage premium is a simple correlation and refers to those with a degree, which about one-third of college enrollees do not obtain. The decision for any individual student about whether to go to college depends on their chances of completion, the careers they’re interested in, and the cost.

Still, rigorous studies have repeatedly found that, on average, students benefit economically from seeking a four-year degree.

“There’s not a case to be made that it’s a worse deal now than it was 10 or 15 years ago,” says Jeff Denning, a higher education researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “I’m not aware of any data that would suggest that.”

Four-year college enrollment has held steady, though two-year enrollment has fallen dramatically

For the last few decades, a little more than 40% of recent high school graduates have enrolled in a four-year college. These numbers have been fairly stable, even as high school graduation rates have risen.

Other data shows a dip in four-year enrollment in the wake of the pandemic, followed by a bounceback in recent years. The number of people pursuing bachelor’s degrees is now just 1% below pre-pandemic levels, according to a recent estimate.

While flagship state universities have generally seen enrollments rise, colleges with worse student outcomes, like the University of Phoenix, an online for-profit college, have seen drops, notes Preston Cooper in a report for the American Enterprise Institute.

The biggest decline in college enrollment has been at two-year schools, which are largely open-enrollment public institutions that most students attend part time. Until a recent upturn, attendance at these schools’ has been falling consistently since 2010.

Here’s where the conventional narrative about the college decline falls apart: Community colleges’ costs are very low and they have not been at the center of the cultural and political backlash to higher education. The prevailing narrative has focused on bachelor’s degrees, which community colleges typically don’t issue.

What explains the two-year college decline, then? A new study coauthored by Goodman of Boston University, shows that much of this is driven by economic trends. When job options are plentiful, community college is less appealing. Recently, as unemployment has ticked up, so has two-year enrollment. Another explanation is that more potential students have become wary of the value of two-year programs since the completion rates are quite low.

Reality may soon mirror perception

We may one day look back at this particular moment as a golden age of four-year colleges, even though it doesn’t feel like one.

There are signs that real tuition is going up as schools face new cost pressures. The perception of higher education has in fact declined markedly, which could eventually limit public funding and depress enrollment. (Or perhaps not: Enrollment has been rising over the last couple years at the height of the college collapse narrative.)

Another imminent challenge: At least for a while, each year’s high school graduating class is likely to be smaller than the last due to lower birth rates. Generative AI is an additional curveball, as some suspect it will devalue white-collar work and, in turn, a college education.

The irony is that the colleges likely to bear the brunt of these challenges are the country’s less-selective, less-known schools, not the elite institutions that have come to embody higher education in the public mind.

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

Illinois releases draft proposal of new school rating system

2025-11-05T22:30:00+00:00

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Illinois is planning to change how it labels schools and switch some of the data it uses to assign those designations.

A draft of the accountability redesign posted by the Illinois State Board of Education indicates there would still be five labels, but their names would change slightly. The proposed changes would eliminate the use of the 9th-grade On-Track metric, which measures the percentage of freshmen likely to graduate based on their attendance and grades.

The draft also suggests swapping out chronic absenteeism, which measures how many students are absent for 10% or more of the school year, and instead measuring how many students are present for 90% or more of the school year.

The new labels schools would get — in descending order of highest performing to lowest — would be Exemplary, Commendable, Approaching, Developing, and Comprehensive. That varies from the current groupings of Exemplary, Commendable, Comprehensive, Targeted, and Intensive.

Illinois proposed school accountability ratings.

If approved by state and federal officials, the new rating system would be rolled out next fall. It comes after officials this year changed the cut scores used on annual standardized tests to determine whether students are considered proficient. In accordance with federal law, all third through eighth and 11th grade students enrolled in public schools are tested each spring

States are required to have an accountability system under federal education law. This has been the case since at least 2002 when Congress mandated all students in third through eighth grade and 11th grade be tested in math and reading every year.

The labels in Illinois are determined using a complex calculation that gives weight to certain metrics, such as attendance, graduation rates, and math, reading, and science scores. The calculation also takes into account how well a school does serving specific groups of students, such as those with disabilities or those learning English.

“The current system has been mislabeling schools in much the same way our assessments once misidentified students,” State Superintendent Tony Sanders wrote in his weekly message on Oct. 28.

Currently, the top 10% of schools are automatically labeled Exemplary and then the next roughly 70% have been deemed Commendable. Sanders likened this to grading on a curve with no fixed criteria to earn a certain rating.

The proposed draft designations would change the underlying formula used in a way that would lead to a broader distribution of the labels across schools, according to ISBE.

Under Illinois' new draft proposal for school accountability ratings, more than just the top 10% of schools would be considered Exemplary.

State officials are holding three public meetings to gather feedback on the proposed accountability redesign starting Thursday.

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

Illinois juniors score lower on ACT than their peers a decade ago, but graduation rates hit record high

2025-10-30T14:00:00+00:00

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Illinois high school juniors last school year scored lower on the ACT college entrance exam than their peers did a decade ago — mirroring national downward trends in high school achievement.

The average ACT composite score unveiled Thursday for juniors who took the test in the spring was a 18.8 out of a possible 36. Chicago Public Schools reported a 17.1 average composite score, but composite scores for other districts were not released. A decade ago, Illinois juniors posted a 20.5 average composite score and CPS juniors then had an average composite score of 18.2.

Illinois tests juniors on a school day each spring using a college entrance exam, such as the ACT or SAT, to fulfill an accountability mandate outlined in federal law starting in 2002. From 2002 to 2016, Illinois used the ACT, then switched to the SAT, which it used from 2017 to 2024. This past school year, the state returned to using the ACT.

The average composite score on the SAT declined between 2017 and 2024, when it was 950. A comparison chart on ACT’s website says an SAT score of 950 equates to a 17 on the ACT.

There’s also been little progress in reducing the rates at which Illinois high school students are missing school. In Chicago, the rates of absenteeism actually went up last school year.

At the same time, Illinois’ four-year high school graduation rate has reached a record high 89%, with Chicago posting an 82.5% rate.

Last fall, State Superintendent Tony Sanders flagged the disconnect between steady standardized test declines at high school level and the rise in graduation rates as a concern. But this week, he said he’s not worried.

“Our data suggests that our students are faring really well,” Sanders said. “They’re graduating because they’re ready to graduate.”

State and Chicago officials both highlighted growing numbers of students taking Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, and dual credit courses — all of which can translate to college credit if students successfully pass those courses. However, pass rates for those courses are not included in the data.

CPS Chief of Teaching and Learning Nicole Milberg called rising graduation rates a “bright spot” for CPS and noted that the rate has more than doubled since 2001. She attributed that to the district making preparation for postsecondary education a major focus.

Chicago officials also said more than 56% of district graduates earned early college or career credentials and district data indicates more graduates are making it to and through college.

“We are seeing really strong data in terms of college persistence, which is showing us something about our students being prepared and ready for college,” Milberg said.

Still, Milberg said the latest ACT scores are concerning and something district officials are trying to better understand.

The last time Illinois high school juniors were required to take the ACT in 2016, they posted average scores between 20 and 21 out of a possible 36. For a decade prior, average scores hovered around 20 as well. Chicago’s average ACT scores climbed from 16.3 to 18.4 between 2002 and 2016. New data does not include average composite scores for districts and a spokesperson for the Illinois State Board of Education said they will no longer calculate or publish them because federal law does not require it. Data does include a breakdown of average scores by subject.

Rae Clementz, the state’s executive director of data, accountability & assessment, said not to compare the ACT scores of a decade ago to now because it’s “just a very different assessment.”

But officials with ACT said although some changes have been made to the test that rolled out in 2025, including fewer questions, the scores can still be compared over time. Generally, they said, an 18 in 2025 means what it did in 2015.

Scores on both college entrance exams have declined in other states where all students are taking the SAT or the ACT during the school day for accountability purposes under federal law.

Many researchers and observers point to the pandemic as a core reason for the decline. The high school juniors who took the ACT last spring were in middle school when the pandemic shuttered schools and sent learning online.

Some point to lingering challenges with attendance as a core factor for the declines.

Recent research on Illinois and Chicago students found a strong link between how often students miss school and their test scores. A report released earlier this month by the Illinois Workforce and Education Research Collaborative, or iWERC, found test scores decline each additional day a student misses school.

Earlier this year, Chalkbeat and WBEZ reported a quarter of all CPS high schoolers — nearly 25,000 students — missed at least 35 days of school during the 2023-24 school year. That’s twice the number of days the state deems troublesome enough to flag a student as chronically absent. Data shared by IWERC at that time showed the more days a high school student missed, the lower their SAT scores.

New data from the state for the 2024-25 school year indicates that chronic absenteeism — defined as missing 10% of school days or around 18 in a given year — increased in the high school grades in CPS and remained relatively flat across the state. The rates declined for elementary school students both at CPS and across the state, indicating improvement in attendance among younger children.

Sanders said many schools are working hard to address absenteeism, but it remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, in line with national trends. He said the state will soon be launching a “chronic absence task force” made up of teachers, school leaders, social workers, and advocates.

“This is still going to have to be a focus for Illinois schools,” he said.

Jessica Handy, executive director of the advocacy and policy organization Stand for Children, said high schools need to focus on improving attendance, but also should work on keeping students engaged once they do show up.

“Cell phones are another thing that has changed a lot,” Handy said. “The largest barrier to kids learning is that they’re distracted by those phones all day long.”

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker pushed for banning cell phones during instructional time earlier this year, but the proposed bill did not pass. A new study supported by the National Bureau of Economic research found cell phone bans in schools had a positive impact on student learning.

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

The ‘Southern surge’ offers lessons for student learning — but we don’t fully understand it yet

2025-10-28T13:53:27+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 Southern surge” — learning gains in a number of Southern states — has drawn a remarkable wave of attention in recent weeks.

A growing chorus of voices say these states offer a playbook to reverse a decade of nationwide learning declines. It’s “the biggest education story of the last few years,” wrote David Brooks in the New York Times. It’s even come up in the New Jersey governor’s race.

So I wanted to understand more about what’s been happening. Is the Southern surge real? And if so, what can other states learn from it?

Here’s what I found: While there has not exactly been a region-wide “Southern surge,” there have been some notable Southern success stories, especially in fourth grade. There appear to be lessons to learn from these states, particularly around a specific set of policies designed to help young children learn to read.

Yet some questions remain unanswered — and they’re important ones for people looking for a recipe for improving learning across the country.

We don’t know exactly what has driven these states’ gains, particularly in math. We don’t know why progress in eighth grade has been modest. And we don’t know why some other states with similar policies have not made large improvements. Research also raises concerns about the long-term effects of holding back low-performing students in early grades, which is often part of those states’ playbooks.

The data behind the ‘Southern surge’

Southern surge promoters have focused on National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, scores in four states: Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Mississippi’s ascent has been particularly meteoric and long-running. Since 1998, the share of fourth graders reading at a basic level on NAEP has increased from 47 to 65%. I looked into this for a story in 2023 expecting to see some clear red flags in the data, but I didn’t find any. During that same time, the national rate has barely budged, going from 58 to 59%.

Louisiana has also made progress in fourth grade math and reading and is now near the national average in both, after long lagging behind it. Gains in these two states are all the more striking because they have among the highest child poverty rates in the country, which correlate with lower scores.

Meanwhile, between 2022 and 2024, Tennessee made a relatively fast recovery from pandemic declines. Alabama students made a striking improvement in fourth grade math and have managed to hold steady in fourth grade reading since 2019, while scores dropped in most other places.

Eighth grade results have been less impressive for these Southern exemplars, though.

Alabama’s eighth grade reading scores have been falling and are among the lowest in the country. Mississippi’s eighth grade reading scores are about the same as they were in 1998. Louisiana’s are similar to those in 2002. These two states are closer to the national average than they used to be, though this mostly reflects declines elsewhere.

Holding steady while everyone else is falling is worth appreciating, and it may still take time for early-grade gains to show up in later years.

In another Times piece, David Brooks notes that Black fourth graders in Mississippi substantially outscore Black students in California in reading. However, these results are reversed in eighth grade, with California having an edge.

As a broader region, trends in the South in eighth grade look fairly similar to the rest of the nation. Most Southern states have lost ground on eighth grade NAEP math and reading in recent years.

Was the science of reading the secret to success?

One of the key explanations for the four Southern success stories has been their adoption of science-of-reading style policies focused on boosting early grade reading. These policies have included third grade retention, phonics-based curriculum, and statewide teacher training, among several others.

A 2023 study linked this suite of reading reforms to higher NAEP scores. This appears to be the best cause-and-effect evidence to support these policies,although this only includes NAEP scores through 2019.

Yet gains in Mississippi were even larger than the study would predict, suggesting there were other factors at play. The surge states have also experienced some improvements in math, which have not been well explained.

Another question is why more states have not seen such clear progress at a moment when many places have adopted new reading policies. Esther Quintero, a senior fellow at the Shanker Institute, notes that several states with reading policies that “on paper” are similar to Southern surge states have not seen clear gains.

In Ohio and Philadelphia, policymakers are currently puzzling over anemic reading scores despite recent adoption of some science-of-reading policies. One answer is that it may just take time. Another is that there are many factors that affect student learning.

Promoters of the Southern surge have actually offered a number of different explanations for the states’ success, even debating with each other about the precise cause. Some have emphasized a focus on test-based accountability.

In an interview, Louisiana State Superintendent Cade Brumley touted the state’s “back to basics” approach and efforts to make teaching a more sustainable profession, in addition to its focus on early reading.

“Patterns in NAEP data are the jumping off point,” said Marty West, a Harvard professor and vice chair of the board that oversees NAEP. “They can’t be the last word.”

A final complication involves the policy of holding back students who are reading far below grade level. A number of studies have found that retention does improve test scores.

Yet the long-run effects of holding back struggling readers remain up for significant debate. A recent Texas study found that retaining students in third grade reduced their chances of graduating high school and decreased their earnings as young adults. A paper from Louisiana found that retention led more students to drop out. (Some studies find no long run effect on high school completion, though.)

There is widespread agreement on one thing: We need more and better research on what, specifically, has gone right in certain states. At a moment when student learning is moving in the wrong direction in so many places, we should be on the hunt for solutions, and remember how complex it is to find them.

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

More Colorado schools and districts earn high state ratings, but progress is uneven

2025-09-03T23:23:17+00:00

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Two-thirds of Colorado’s 1,700 schools and 55% of its 180 school districts earned high ratings from the state this year, according to preliminary state data released Wednesday. That’s slightly higher than the percentage that earned those preliminary ratings last year.

Despite little change in the overall numbers, there were bright spots and alarm bells for individual districts and schools. Denver Public Schools, Colorado’s largest district, jumped from a middle-tier yellow rating to the second-highest green rating. The last time DPS was green was in 2019, before the pandemic.

In a made-for-Instagram moment, Superintendent Alex Marrero celebrated by getting slimed by middle schoolers at Bear Valley International School as district staff recorded the moment for social media. The slime, ordered from Amazon, was green.

“This recognition is not just about numbers,” Marrero said before sitting in a kiddie pool of slime. “It reflects the collective effort of our entire DPS community.”

The preliminary ratings released by the Colorado Department of Education reflect the slow stop-and-start progress Colorado students have made toward their pre-pandemic achievement levels. The ratings are largely based on state standardized test results, which have inched up in recent years but have not yet hit pre-pandemic levels in all grades and subjects.

Schools and districts can appeal their ratings if they can present additional data to warrant a change. After considering appeals, the state will finalize the ratings later this fall.

Schools and districts with low ratings land on a state watchlist known as the accountability clock, because it ticks toward intervention. After five years on the clock, the State Board of Education must order schools or districts to undergo changes meant to improve student performance. Those changes could include closing a school or requiring a struggling district to merge with a better-performing one. But the State Board has avoided taking such drastic measures.

There are now 14 districts on the state’s accountability clock, up from 11 last year. Among the districts that are newly on the clock this year is Westminster Public Schools, which serves about 8,000 students just north of Denver. Westminster was last on the clock in 2017.

Brian Kosena, the district’s chief learning officer, said Westminster faced several challenges last school year, including a staff shortage. The district started last school year with 37 unfilled instructional positions, including seven unfilled multilingual interventionist roles. About 40% of Westminster students are learning English as a second language, and the district has enrolled more than 700 new immigrant students in recent years, Kosena said.

“With staffing shortages, we were not always able to provide the level of individualized instruction that students ultimately deserve,” he said.

That strain showed up in Westminster’s test scores for multilingual learners, Kosena said, which caused the district’s rating to drop. But he said Westminster is off to a better start this year.

The district had just seven unfilled positions at the start of school, Kosena said. Its pool of substitute teachers is also bigger, which means classroom teachers don’t have to give up their planning time to cover for one another. And the district has a new policy meant to incentivize teachers to take less time off by paying them more for unused vacation days.

“We know that we’re better than any state label,” Kosena said. “That ‘priority improvement’ places an unfortunate label on the district right now. But we’re confident we’re going to be able to bounce back out of the ‘priority improvement’ and get to the ‘improvement.’”

Westminster district officials said staffing shortages last year made it hard to serve students adequately, including many recent arrivals who are English learners.

Montezuma-Cortez, a rural district with 2,400 students in southwestern Colorado, is also back on the clock after a reprieve of just one year. Two of Colorado’s 10 largest districts — Adams 12 in the Denver suburbs and District 49 near Colorado Springs — earned lower ratings this year than last year, dropping from green to yellow. They are not on the clock, however.

Adams 14, a long struggling 5,000-student district based in Commerce City, has spent the longest time on the clock: 12 years. In 2022, the state ordered the district to be reorganized but backed down in 2023 after community pushback.

Despite being on the watchlist for so long, Adams 14 made some modest gains. It earned more points toward the state rating calculation this year: 36.8% compared with 35.6% last year. One of its schools, Alsup Elementary, bumped up from the second lowest “priority improvement” rating to the next category, “improvement.” A few schools slipped in the ratings, most notably Rose Hill Elementary, which dropped from the second lowest rating to the lowest red “turnaround” rating. It’s the only red school in the district.

Statewide, 176 schools are now on the clock, down from 190 last year at this time. Denver’s Lake Middle School is among the schools that exited the clock for receiving back-to-back green ratings. But Denver’s Abraham Lincoln High School remains on the clock.

Denver’s superintendent unveiled a new policy this past spring that calls for the district to close or replace schools with four years of low ratings — before the State Board can step in. Known as the School Transformation Process, the policy went into effect last month.

Two Denver schools now have four years of low ratings: John F. Kennedy High School, which is run by the district, and Rocky Mountain Prep Noel, which is an independently run charter school. However, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Prep said the charter network, which is Denver’s second-largest, won’t be participating in the School Transformation Process.

Marrero had said the district would negotiate with Denver’s charter schools in the hopes they would agree to abide by the process. But essentially, it’s voluntary for those schools.

“We hold deep respect for Dr. Marrero and are firmly committed to accountability in all its forms,” the Rocky Mountain Prep spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to partner with DPS to share the academic outcomes being achieved at RMP Noel.”

John F. Kennedy High won’t be closed under the policy this year either. Instead, it could face what Marrero calls “reconfiguration,” which might include shrinking a school by removing some grade levels. The potential for school closure will start next year.

“We’re honoring the process, as painful as it is,” Marrero said.

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

Colorado’s PSAT and SAT 2025 scores: How did your school or district perform?

2025-08-21T19:02:24+00:00

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More Colorado 11th graders met or exceeded state expectations on the SAT this spring. But student proficiency on the ninth and 10th grade PSAT showed mixed results.

The testing data was released Thursday by the Colorado Department of Education. Instead of using a state-created standardized test, Colorado opts to gauge how well students are learning through the widely used SAT and PSAT.

“We see some overall mixed results,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, Colorado Department of Education chief assessment officer.

Colorado’s 2025 CMAS results: See how your school and district performed

While the results varied by grade level, challenges from previous years remained. The tests once again showed that students scored higher on reading and writing tests than on math. Large score gaps remain based on students’ race, family income, and other factors, such as whether students are learning English as a second language or have a disability.

Improvements on the SAT reading and writing tests were a highlight for the state, with 61.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations. That’s up from 57.6% last year, or a jump of 3.9 percentage points — the highest increase of any test.

The reading and writing increases on the SAT spanned almost every student group.

The percentage of students considered proficient went up to 60.6% for boys and 62.4% for girls. Among different ethnic and racial groups, only Asian American students scored below last year, a negligible tenth of a percentage point.

In math, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations on the SAT increased by 1.4 percentage points to about 32.5% of students.

On the PSAT ninth grade reading and writing test, scores were basically flat with 65% of students meeting or exceeding expectations. That’s up just 0.4 percentage points from last year.

Student proficiency on the PSAT ninth grade math test backslid by 2 percentage points, with 37.5% meeting or exceeding expectations. Every racial and ethnic student group scored lower than last year.

On the PSAT 10th grade test, fewer students met or exceeded expectations in reading and writing, down 2.5 percentage points to 63.5%. However, more students tested higher on math. The percentage who met or exceeded expectations was up 2.5 percentage points to 36.4%.

Black students were the only student group with gains on both the PSAT 10th grade reading and writing tests.

On all tests, white and Asian American students continue to score proficient at higher rates than their peers.

Senior reporter Ann Schimke contributed to this report.

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

Colorado’s 2025 CMAS results: See how your school and district performed

2025-08-21T19:01:52+00:00

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The good news is that Colorado elementary and middle school students are now performing at or above their pre-pandemic achievement levels in most grades and subjects — with math gains a particular bright spot.

The bad news is that some groups of students, most notably English learners, are still achieving far below grade level.

These are some of the findings state education officials shared Thursday as they released results from last spring’s state tests, called the Colorado Measures of Academic Progress or CMAS, taken by students in grades 3 through 8. The release includes district and school level results, along with results for special populations, including English learners, students with disabilities, and students eligible from free or reduced-price meals, an indicator of poverty.

In some grades, only a tiny fraction of Colorado’s English learners — about 80% of whom speak Spanish as their first language — met or exceeded expectations in math or literacy.

For example, on math and English language arts tests, less than 3% of sixth grade English learners were proficient. Spanish-speaking students who were tested in Spanish didn’t fare much better: Only 16.5% of third graders and 13.1% of fourth graders met or exceeded expectations on the Spanish language arts test.

In several grades, English learners who took state tests last spring not only have proficiency rates well below their pre-pandemic counterparts, but their rates have slipped even lower than their 2024 peers.

Susana Córdova, Colorado’s education commissioner, said during a media briefing Tuesday that English learners have had a slower post-COVID recovery for various reasons, including because many attended schools that returned to in-person learning more slowly.

She noted that many English learners have enrolled in Colorado schools relatively recently and “are furthest from having proficiency in English.”

During the 2023-24 school year, thousands of migrant students arrived from South America.

Córdova said education department officials have also heard anecdotally about attendance problems among English learners, and that attendance data set to come out in a few weeks could shed more light on that issue.

Colorado’s PSAT and SAT 2025 scores: How did your school or district perform?

Colorado also administers standardized science tests to students in grades 5, 8, and 11. Students did better on the science tests this year compared to their counterparts in 2024.

Eighth graders made the biggest improvements, with about 36% meeting or exceeding expectations compared with about 32% the year before. A new state science test based on revised science standards was unveiled in 2023.

“This really speaks to the really good work that Colorado educators are doing, wrapping their heads around these science standards, and really teaching with fidelity,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education.

Many school districts saw test score gains

Statewide, the aggregate scores for all students in grades 3 through 8 show that 44.8% of students met or exceeded expectations on the CMAS literacy tests and 35.9% did so on the math tests. Both of those percentages are higher than in 2024.

Many Colorado school districts also saw their test scores tick up. For instance, 99 of the state’s 178 districts had the same or higher percentages of students meeting expectations on CMAS literacy tests this year than last year, with 69 districts seeing a decrease. Some districts did not have enough data for the state to publicly report aggregate scores across grade levels.

In math, 107 districts had the same or higher percentages of students meeting expectations, while 57 districts had lower percentages. Again, some districts didn’t have enough data.

About 42% of students in Denver Public Schools met or exceeded expectations on the CMAS literacy tests this past spring. That’s an increase from last year and nearly as high as the 42.8% of students who met expectations in 2019, before the pandemic.

In math, about 33% of Denver students met or exceeded expectations on CMAS this year, bringing the district’s math scores to just above pre-pandemic levels.

Jeffco Public Schools also surpassed its pre-pandemic scores, with 52.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations in literacy this year and 42.8% doing so in math.

Aurora Public Schools, Adams 12 Five Star, Adams 14, Mapleton Public Schools, and the Brighton-based 27J district saw improvements in both literacy and math this year, but their scores remain below pre-pandemic levels.

Cherry Creek School District saw an improvement in math, bringing the district’s math scores nearly to what they were before the pandemic. But Cherry Creek’s literacy scores were essentially flat and still below pre-pandemic levels.

Some districts, including Harrison 2 in Colorado Springs, saw decreases in both subjects.

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

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

Illinois lowers state test proficiency cut scores in math, English language arts

2025-08-13T18:11:16+00:00

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The Illinois State Board of Education approved changes to the cut scores used to determine proficiency on state standardized tests Wednesday.

The scores needed to be considered proficient in math and English language arts on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness will decrease, while the cut scores will increase for the Illinois Science Assessment. High school juniors will need to score an 18 in English language arts, a 19 in math, a 19 in science on the ACT college entrance exam to be considered proficient. The ACT scores range from 1-36.

The new cut scores will be applied to assessments taken by students during the spring and reported publicly in October. Data shared in a presentation Tuesday indicates that more students will be labeled as proficient than were last year.

Comparisons to achievement in past years, including to pre-pandemic performance, now will be difficult due to the shifting benchmarks.

Under the new cut scores, 53% of students would be considered proficient in English language arts, up from 41% last year; 38% would be proficient in math, up from 28% last year; and 45% would be in science, down from last year.

Illinois State Superintendent Tony Sanders said the move is not a lowering of standards, but rather adjusting to better match the reality of students’ abilities.

Sanders said data showed that many students in Illinois who scored at the old cut score could have entered college without remediation and earned a C or higher in credit-bearing courses.

The measure passed unanimously and board of education members spoke briefly to praise Sanders and the agency’s staff for running a thoughtful process that engaged teachers and other school staff over the past 18 months.

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

Illinois proposes lowering scores students need to be deemed proficient on state tests

2025-08-12T20:15:00+00:00

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More students in Illinois would be considered proficient on the state’s annual math and reading tests under a proposal to change cut scores, which the Illinois State Board of Education is set to vote on Wednesday.

Cut scores are the scores that separate students into broad categories of achievement, now defined as below proficient, approaching proficiency, proficient, and above proficiency.

Under the proposed changes, 53% of students would be considered proficient in English language arts, 38% would be proficient in math, and 45% would be in science, according to a presentation shared by state education officials Tuesday. Last year, 41% of students were proficient in English language arts, 28% were proficient in math, and 53% were in science.

But the numbers cannot be compared year-over-year because the cut scores changed.

For example, third grade students currently must score 750 out of 850 on the math section of the Illinois Assessment of Readiness to be considered meeting proficiency standards. But under the proposed changes, they would only need to score 732 to be labeled proficient.

On the ACT, a college entrance exam all Illinois high schoolers must take, juniors would need to score an 18 in English language arts and a 19 in math and a 19 in science to be labeled as proficient. In the past, students needed to score a 540 on the SAT in both math and English languages arts.

Illinois State Superintendent Tony Sanders said the current cut scores “do not reflect the reality of student progress.”

“We’ve told a whole generation of our students who were college ready that they were not, and we potentially identified the wrong students for additional support and missed students who could have benefited from acceleration,” Sanders said ahead of a committee meeting Tuesday.

Sanders said the state will not be providing proficiency data using the old cut scores in order for schools and families to make comparisons to previous years. For instance, local school district officials will not be able to compare the fourth grade reading scores of students in 2019 to those who took the exam in the spring of 2025.

Illinois is not the only state to change the cut scores of its standardized tests. States such as Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New York have made similar adjustments to their assessment systems, according to a report by The 74.

The overhaul comes as schools are still bouncing back from the achievement declines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, also known as the “nation’s report card” found most students across the country have yet to catch up with their pre-pandemic peers and the gap between high performing students and low-performing students has grown wider. The fourth and eighth graders who took the state standardized test in spring 2024 had their learning impacted by the pandemic in earlier grades.

Illinois elementary school students had been seeing progress in reading — even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency levels — but math scores still lag behind past years, according to the state’s 2024 report card. Illinois’ scores on the most recent NAEP were stagnant.

Still, Sanders said Illinois had some of the highest cut scores in the nation — even exceeding the proficiency score for NAEP. He also emphasized that proficiency is not the same as being on grade level.

“Being not proficient does not mean a student can’t read or can’t do math,” Sanders said.

Illinois educators helped adjust cut scores

Illinois launched its effort to redefine performance after the state switched the high school exam from the College Board’s SAT to the ACT last year.

In the past, there were different proficiency levels for the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, taken by third to eighth grade students, the Illinois Science Assessment, taken in fifth and eighth grade, and the high school college entrance exam, taken by students in 11th grade.

The proposed changes would create consistency in the language used to measure performance on the various tests.

Illinois educators played a role in changing the cut scores and crafting performance level descriptors, or a rubric, for each grade and subject explaining what knowledge or skills students should have based on their proficiency level.

Comfort Agboola, a middle school English language arts teacher in Chicago Public Schools who participated in the process to change the cut scores, said the way the state labels kids based on test scores and performance “can shape the way students see themselves.”

“These updated proficiency standards and performance levels don’t lower the bar,” she said. “They more accurately capture the full spectrum of skills students are developing. They acknowledge growth in ways that can motivate rather than discourage.”

Tyler Chance, an assistant principal at Carbondale Community High School, worked on crafting the English language arts performance level descriptors for high school students taking the ACT. The former English and governance high school teacher said he wanted to get involved in the process to get students ready for college and career opportunities.

Justin Harrison, a 15-year eighth grade science teacher at Vandalia Junior High, worked on the eighth grade science cut scores for the Illinois Science Assessment. The process to create the new cut scores includes using the performance level descriptors and requiring teachers to take the exam. Harrison said the descriptors were helpful to understand what teachers should be assessing their students on.

“I hope that educators can take the time to see what these tools can do,” Harrison said. He really hopes the state provides professional development to educators on the new performance level descriptors.

Dale Chu, a consultant and senior visiting fellow at education think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, is not a “big fan” of states like Illinois lowering cut scores. He feels it can have consequences for students in the future. For example, a student could have been at the top of their class in high school, but then has to take remedial courses when they got to college.

“To me, state tests and having cut scores that are rigorous that actually do show whether kids are proficient or not are a big part of being honest with parents,” Chu said.

Chu said states and the federal government have to provide a “credible check” on schools and local districts.

State education officials said the Illinois Learning Standards, which provide educators with information on what students should know in each grade across different subjects, remain the same.

Sanders said the next step in this process for the Illinois State Board of Education is to change the labels the state uses to define school quality by 2026.

Based on students’ test scores and other metrics, such as attendance, schools are labeled as Exemplary, Commendable, Targeted, Comprehensive, and Intensive. How a school is labeled can determine what resources and support they will receive from the state. The state has yet to release more details on these changes.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

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

Math a bright spot, literacy mostly flat on Colorado state tests, preliminary results show

2025-06-11T22:26:26+00:00

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A larger share of Colorado students met or exceeded state standards on math tests in fourth through eighth grade this year compared with 2024. Literacy growth was mostly flat at the elementary level, with bigger gains for middle schoolers.

These findings were among the preliminary CMAS results presented to the State Board of Education Wednesday.

“Math is a pretty exciting story for us to dig into,” Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education, told the board Tuesday.

“We see that across the board we are higher than we were pre-pandemic, and so we’re really at a new baseline,” she said.

The preliminary results paint a picture of slow but steady improvement over the last four years — enough to help Colorado students surpass their pre-pandemic performance on eight of 12 core tests in elementary and middle school. On the remaining four tests, the gap between 2019 and 2025 proficiency rates varies. It’s minimal for fifth grade literacy, a bit larger for eighth grade literacy and math, and largest for fourth grade literacy.

Fourth graders who took state tests this spring were preschoolers when the pandemic began.

The new data doesn’t reveal how different student groups — for example, English learners or students with disabilities — fared on state tests or the size of gaps between them. It also doesn’t include district or school level results. That data will come out in August.

The preliminary results show improvements in science, especially for eighth graders whose proficiency rates jumped to 36%, up four percentage points from 2024. Students take state science tests in three grades: fifth, eighth, and 11th. Participation is particularly low for 11th graders, with only half opting to take the test.

Participation on the PSAT and SAT, the other state tests given at the high school, is much higher — generally about 85%.

After a couple board members asked about the participation disparity between science and the other tests, Wirth-Hawkins said students tend to see the PSAT and SAT as more relevant because the exams help with college entrance. The science test, which is required by both the federal and state governments, feels less relevant, she said.

In general, preliminary 2025 PSAT and SAT results were a mixed bag. On the plus side, a larger share of 11th graders were proficient on the reading and writing section of the SAT — nearly 62%, compared to about 58% in 2024. That bump represents a rebound from last year, when scores dipped with the move to an all-digital test.

Besides switching to a computer-based format in 2024, the testing time was shortened and reading passages were shortened to one paragraph, with more passages and only one question per passage.The new test also was adaptive, which means that based on how students do on the first section, they get either an easier or harder second section.

Colorado 11th -graders also did a bit better on the math portion of the SAT this year, but they’re still lagging behind their proficiency rates from 2023 prior to the all-digital test. Statewide, only about one-third of students met or exceeded expectations in math, according to the preliminary data.

Ninth graders, who take the PSAT 9, did about the same on the reading and writing portion of the test compared with last year, and worse on the math portion. Only 38% scores proficient in math in 2025, a 12 percentage point difference compared with pre-pandemic scores.

The news is a bit better for 10th graders in math: Proficiency rates jumped by 2.5 percentage points. That’s still below what students achieved pre-pandemic, but the gap is narrowing. Meanwhile, the gap reopened for 10th graders on the reading and writing section of the PSAT 10. It had disappeared last year, but returned as proficiency rates dropped to 63.5% compared with 66% last year.

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

Kids are still behind in reading and math. Here’s how these schools bucked the trend.

2025-02-11T05:01:00+00:00

Math is the subject sixth grader Harmoni Knight finds hardest, but that’s changing.

In-class tutors and “data chats” at her middle school in Compton, California, have made a dramatic difference, the 11-year-old said. She proudly pulled up a performance tracker at a tutoring session last week, displaying a column of perfect 100% scores on all her weekly quizzes from January.

Since the pandemic first shuttered American classrooms, schools have poured federal and local relief money into interventions like the ones in Harmoni’s classroom, hoping to help students catch up academically following COVID-19 disruptions.

But a new analysis of state and national test scores shows the average student remains half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math. In reading, students are even further behind than they were in 2022, the analysis shows.

A student works on math problems in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.

Compton is an outlier, making some of the biggest two-year gains in both subjects among large districts. And there are other bright spots, along with evidence that interventions like tutoring and summer programs are working.

The Education Recovery Scorecard analysis by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth allows year-to-year comparisons across states and districts, providing the most comprehensive picture yet of how American students are performing since COVID-19 first disrupted learning.

The most recent data is based on tests taken by students in spring 2024. By then, the worst of the pandemic was long past, but schools were still dealing with a mental health crisis and high rates of absenteeism — not to mention students who’d had crucial learning disrupted.

“The losses are not just due to what happened during the 2020 to 2021 school year, but the aftershocks that have hit schools in the years since the pandemic,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard economist who worked on the scorecard.

Scores on key national test show disheartening trends for the lowest-performing students

In some cases, the analysis shows school districts are struggling when their students may have posted decent results on their state tests. That’s because each state adopts its own assessments, and those aren’t comparable to each other. Those differences can make it impossible to tell whether students are performing better because of their progress, or whether those shifts are because the tests themselves are changing, or the state has lowered its standards for proficiency.

The Scorecard accounts for differing state tests and provides one national standard.

Higher-income districts have made significantly more progress than lower-income districts, with the top 10% of high-income districts four times more likely to have recovered in both math and reading compared with the poorest 10%. And recovery within districts remains divided by race and class, especially in math scores. Test score gaps grew by both race and income.

“The pandemic has not only driven test scores down, but that decline masks a pernicious inequality that has grown during the pandemic,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard. “Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white district mates.”

Tutors in class, after school, and on Saturdays

Still, many of the districts that outperformed the country serve predominantly students from low-income backgrounds or students of color, and their interventions offer best practices for other districts.

In Compton, the district responded to the pandemic by hiring over 250 tutors that specialize in math, reading and students learning English. Certain classes are staffed with multiple tutors to assist teachers. And schools offer tutoring before, during and after school, plus “Saturday School” and summer programs for the district’s 17,000 students, said Superintendent Darin Brawley.

To identify younger students needing targeted support, the district now conducts dyslexia screenings in all elementary schools.

The low-income school district near downtown Los Angeles, with a student body that is 84% Latino and 14% Black, now has a graduation rate of 93%, compared with 58% when Brawley took the job in 2012.

A tutor helps student Harmoni Knight in a classroom at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6,, 2025.

Harmoni, the sixth grader, said that one-on-one tutoring has helped her grasp concepts and given her more confidence in math. She gets separate “data chats” with her math specialist that are part performance review, part pep talk.

“Looking at my data, it kind of disappoints me” when the numbers are low, said Harmoni. “But it makes me realize I can do better in the future, and also now.”

Brawley said he’s proud of the district’s latest test scores, but not content.

“Truth be told, I wasn’t happy,” he said. “Even though we gained, and we celebrate the gains, at the end of the day we all know that we can do better.”

As federal pandemic relief money for schools winds down, states and school districts will have limited resources and must prioritize interventions that worked. Districts that spent federal money on increased instructional time, either through tutoring or summer school, saw a return on that investment.

Reading levels have continued to decline, despite a movement in many states to emphasize phonics and the “science of reading.” So Reardon and Kane called for an evaluation of the mixed results for insights into the best ways to teach kids to read.

The researchers emphasized the need to extend state and local money to support pandemic recovery programs that showed strong academic results. Schools also must engage parents and tell them when their kids are behind, the researchers said.

And schools must continue to work with community groups to improve students’ attendance. The scorecard identified a relationship between high absenteeism and learning struggles.

Students interact in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.

Tutors also help with attendance

In the District of Columbia, an intensive tutoring program helped with both academics and attendance, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said. In the scorecard analysis, the District of Columbia ranked first among states for gains in both math and reading between 2022 and 2024, after its math recovery had fallen toward the bottom of the list.

Pandemic-relief money funded the tutoring, along with a system of identifying and targeting support at students in greatest need. The district also hired program managers who helped maximize time for tutoring within the school day, Ferebee said.

Students who received tutoring were more likely to be engaged with school, Ferebee said, both from increased confidence over the subject matter and because they had a relationship with another trusted adult.

Students expressed that “I’m more confident in math because I’m being validated by another adult,” Ferebee said. “That validation goes a long way, not only with attendance, but a student feeling like they are ready to learn and are capable, and as a result, they show up differently.”

Federal pandemic relief money has ended, but Ferebee said many of the investments the district made will have lasting impact, including the money spent on teacher training and curriculum development in literacy.

Christina Grant, who served as the District of Columbia’s state superintendent of education until 2024, said she’s hopeful to see the evidence emerging on what’s made a difference in student achievement.

“We cannot afford to not have hope. These are our students. They did not cause the pandemic,” Grant said. “The growing concern is ensuring that we can ... see ourselves to the other side.”

Annie Ma and Jocelyn Gecker cover education for The Associated Press.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

NAEP test results: Colorado’s scores are mostly stable, as gap between low and high performers widens

2025-01-29T22:57:52+00:00

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This story has been updated with comment from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

Colorado students continue to perform better than students in many other states and showed slight improvements on national math and reading tests, but they’re still scoring below pre-pandemic levels.

The national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP, was given to fourth and eighth graders in the spring of 2024, and results were released Wednesday. The test is administered about every two years.

Test administrators determined that none of Colorado’s average score results represented a significant change from average scores in 2022. But a slightly higher percentage of Colorado students performed at basic and proficient levels in 2024 compared with 2022.

Part of the explanation for that is another trend NAEP identified this year nationwide: Students who are high performing continue to improve, while students who are typically low performing have continued to struggle. Average scores mask those widening gaps.

Compared with 2019, before the pandemic, Colorado students are making progress toward recovery in math at fourth and eighth grade, but in reading only at the eighth grade level.

Reading scores are a concern nationwide

In fourth grade reading scores, Colorado students have fallen further behind, following a national trend. In 2024, 36% of fourth graders tested proficient in reading, down from 38% in 2022.

Despite that drop, the state’s average reading score for fourth graders, 221, is still significantly higher than the national average of 214, and places Colorado near the top of all states.

The state’s performance on eighth grade reading scores held steady, breaking with the national trend of large declines. In 2024, 35% of Colorado students tested were proficient, up from 34% in 2022. The state change was not identified as statistically significant.

Nationally, reading scores had been declining since before the pandemic, so officials cautioned against blaming only the pandemic-era disruptions.

Colorado’s own data from CMAS tests also showed a drop in 2024 in fourth grade reading performance. The rate of students meeting expectations on those state tests dropped by 1.8 percentage points from the previous year, the largest drop of any grade level.

Colorado’s math test results were more encouraging

Colorado’s results for fourth graders taking NAEP math tests showed a significant increase in the percentage of students reaching proficiency. In 2024, 42% of those students reached proficiency, up from 36% in 2022.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday said during a virtual panel that the data “shows that it’s really all hands on deck.”

Polis, who is also the president of the National Governors Association, spoke about his initiative to get both Republican and Democrat governors working together to think about education solutions. He said governors are in a good position to deliver on education as it’s the largest chunk out of state budgets.

“This moment I hope is a catalyst for innovation, doing things differently, expanding or replicating what works and having the moral fortitude to change what isn’t working,” he said. “From quality early childhood education, evidence-based tutoring, and after-school opportunities, innovative school models, everything should be on the table to make sure that every student, and that means every student no matter where they live or who they are, can succeed.”

Colorado has invested in math recovery since the pandemic, including making online programs and tutoring available for students statewide.

Colorado’s CMAS test results in math for 2024 were also more encouraging than literacy results. Students in elementary grades in 2024 posted higher rates of meeting and exceeding expectations than students did in 2019, before the pandemic.

On NAEP, where proficiency has a different definition, Colorado students are still not doing better than in 2019, however.

NAEP releases data for large urban districts, including Denver

Denver students had some reading scores that were better than scores in other cities for which the program compiled data, but in most categories, their improvement over 2022 wasn’t statistically significant.

Denver Public Schools students ranked near the top of the 25 cities in average scores for eighth grade reading. Denver’s average of 258 was up from 255 in 2022 and 257 in 2019. In 2024, 31% of eighth graders in Denver were proficient in reading, up from 28% in 2022.

The only improvement that was identified as significant in DPS was the increase in the proficiency rate for fourth grade math. In 2024, 36% of students tested proficient on that test, compared with 28% in 2022.

The NAEP standard for proficiency represents “competency over challenging subject matter, a standard that exceeds most states’ standards for proficient,” according to the federal agency that compiles the data.

In fourth grade reading, for instance, the administration states that students who test at the basic level, but below proficiency, may still have some reading ability to “provide some support for ideas related to the plot or characters.” Testing in the proficient category, above basic, might require a student to be able to “make complex inferences about the characters’ actions, motivations, or feelings, using relevant evidence within or across literary texts.”

Officials from the board who oversee the testing say it’s students who score below basic who may be struggling to read and warrant concern.

Among Colorado fourth graders, 35% tested below basic in reading in 2024, a higher percentage than anytime in the last two decades. In Denver, 42% tested below basic.

Among Colorado eighth graders, 26% tested below basic in reading, off from 27% in 2022. In Denver, this group accounted for 35%.

Nationally, the trends show that in many cases, the percentage of students in below-basic levels grew as students who typically perform at high levels did well, and groups of students who usually struggle are doing worse.

Hispanic students and those learning English as a new language struggle

In both Colorado and in Denver, Hispanic students and those identified as English learners continued to struggle and have the widest gaps compared with their counterparts.

In Denver, the gap grew on the eighth grade math test to a 56-point difference in average scores, compared with a 42-point difference in 2017. In 2024, only 9% of Hispanic students in Denver schools were proficient in eighth grade math.

English language learners in Denver had more significant decreases in scores from 2019 than English learners statewide, or across the country.

For instance, in eighth grade math, students identified as English learners had an average score of 225 in DPS, compared with a statewide average of 226, and national average of 237. But the DPS average score was down 20 points from 2019.

For students who aren’t identified as English language learners, Colorado had an average score of 283 on eighth grade math tests, and Denver’s average was 278.

Colorado officials have already noted the concern that English learners seem to be struggling to recover academically compared with other students.

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

NAEP results: Tennessee students buck grim national trends on nation’s report card

2025-01-29T05:09:00+00:00

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Tennessee students held their ground on a major national test in a year when average student test scores declined nationwide.

Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released Wednesday, show that average test scores in Tennessee increased slightly in fourth and eighth grade reading and math, compared with 2022, though the gains were not statistically significant.

Tennessee’s latest post-pandemic results stood in contrast to declines seen nationwide and in many other states. And Tennessee students scored three to four points higher than the national average in math and one to two points higher in reading.

“Tennessee students did well relative to other states, and we did better than some of our neighbors,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said.

“We didn’t move backwards, we moved a little bit forward, and we expect to do better next year,” added state Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, who chairs a key House education committee and also serves on the NAEP governing board.

Math scores outpace reading scores

Tennessee has launched numerous initiatives aimed at bolstering early literacy, but the latest NAEP showed the state’s most dramatic improvements came in math.

In fourth grade math, 42% of students scored proficient or advanced, an increase of 6 percentage points from 2022. The state was one of 29 jurisdictions that posted scores similar to 2019, before the pandemic. Only Alabama had average scores higher than 2019. Nationwide, average scores are down three points, and 22 states had declines.

In eighth grade math, Tennessee’s proficiency rate also grew, while the national average declined. Tennessee was one of just two jurisdictions with similar scores to 2019. Average scores dropped 9 points.

In fourth grade reading, Tennessee was one of 47 states with no statistical change from 2022. Nonetheless, its scores were up slightly, whereas the nationwide average dropped by two points from 2022 and by five points from 2019.

The small increases in eighth grade reading scores were not statistically different from 2022 or 2019, but again, the small increase stood in contrast to nationwide averages that dropped 5 points since 2019. Tennessee also saw more notable increases in scores among higher-performing students in the 75th percentile.

The relatively strong showing in math, according to state officials, could be tied to the full return to in-person learning, which studies show is especially important for math instruction; Tennessee’s 2021 adoption of new math standards; and the subsequent rollout of math curriculum to align with those standards.

They expect that trend to continue with passage of a 2024 state law spotlighting more analysis of and support for math instruction.

Tennessee was an early adopter of pandemic-era interventions

Tennessee has been held up as a model both for how it managed federal pandemic relief spending — quickly steering money into tutoring, summer learning camps, and afterschool programs aimed at students who had fallen furthest behind — and for its intense focus on early literacy. State test results from 2024 show students there making steady progress since 2021.

The challenge now will be to maintain progress and deploy state funds to replace federal pandemic relief aid that expired last year.

“We still have that obligation at the state level to continue to support districts in as many ways as possible,” said Reynolds, the state’s education chief. She cited free professional development resources provided to school systems by her department as one example.

“Local school officials also knew that the money was ending, so they’ve been building in their own sustainability practices to keep the work going,” she said.

White, the state lawmaker and NAEP official, said the state’s controversial 2021 third-grade reading intervention and retention law was a key part of the mix. It pushed children whose families might have opted for summer breaks into summer learning programs and motivated schools to increase support for struggling readers.

“If a child is not reading proficiently in third grade, we want to really understand why and not just pass them on,” he said.

State officials already are digging into the latest NAEP data on how various student groups performed — to study how they can offer better support.

Tennessee’s growing population of English language learners saw across-the-board improvement, while students with disabilities showed slight decreases.

The national results track with test score trends from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, which in 2024 showed that students continued to improve from post-pandemic lows.

The alignment of national and state data is important, said Amy Owen, the state’s senior education policy director, because “it shows that our students will be able to compete with students from across the country when they look at post-secondary and career opportunities.”

“We’re seeing steady increases, which is significant when you think about where our kids were during COVID,” added Reynolds. “Our fourth graders were kindergartners then, our eighth graders were fourth graders.”

Memphis district opts out of separate NAEP assessment

Since 2018, NAEP has also released results for Memphis Shelby County Schools, one of roughly two dozen large urban districts participating in national math and reading tests through the Trial Urban District Assessment program, which is designed to help those districts measure student performance against districts in other large cities.

But last year, leaders of the Memphis district chose not to participate in the program.

White, who represents part of Memphis, said the lack of participation represented a “leadership breakdown” as the district cycled through superintendents.

“That’s sad that we don’t have their scores,” he said. “We can’t continue that trend.”

What is NAEP?

Not every Tennessee fourth-grader or eighth-grader took the national test when the federal government administered the assessments in early 2024.

NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students in every state. In Tennessee, each of the four assessments was taken by about 1,700-1,800 students in 80-90 schools.

The results, published as the nation’s report card, allow comparisons across states and are an important marker for showing how students are doing over time.

The last three testing cycles happened in 2019, 2022, and most recently in 2024, providing an especially helpful comparison of what students knew before the pandemic and how much they have rebounded from COVID-related learning disruptions.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey NAEP scores show reading, math remain stagnant, but gaps widen

2025-01-29T05:08:00+00:00

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Average math and reading scores on the “nation’s report card” for New Jersey’s fourth and eighth graders have remained stable since 2022, but a closer examination shows the gap between the state’s lowest- and highest-performing students continues to widen, according to newly released data.

Although not yet bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels, the average scores for New Jersey remained above the national average in math and reading for fourth and eighth graders, results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also referred to as NAEP, showed.

The data, released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, are the latest evidence of how dire the effects of the pandemic and remote learning were for all students, especially those already falling behind their peers well before 2020.

“There’s a widening achievement gap in this country and it has worsened since the pandemic,” said Peggy Carr, the NCES commissioner, in a phone briefing with news outlets ahead of the release. “We all need to come together as partners to catch these students up and improve achievement.”

Nationally, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance levels, though in some states, such as Louisiana, students in the lowest- and highest-performing percentiles showed improvement, according to NCES.

Though New Jersey’s averages remained above national levels, the results also showed that a significant proportion of students scored below NAEP proficiency levels. For example, 62% of fourth graders scored below proficient in reading — a smaller proportion compared to the 70% of fourth graders who scored below proficiency nationally.

Trends from the New Jersey results mirror those seen in the state’s standardized test results from 2024, which the state education department released in December.

In the 2024 New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, average statewide scores improved incrementally over the prior year. Despite the minor upticks in average scores, that data also demonstrated persistent disparities between subgroups, such as Black students and white or Asian American students.

“It’s extremely frustrating to know that after all the investments, the number of programs over the years, this achievement gap is persistent and still remains significant,” state school board member Arcelio Aponte said at the time.

A representative sample of fourth and eighth graders across New Jersey took the national assessment between January and March of last year. The results for reading and math are reported on a scale of 0-500 and grouped by proficiency levels of basic, proficient, and advanced. The NCES is adamant that these levels of achievement do not align with states’ grade-level proficiency standards.

The NAEP scores are also grouped under lowest-performing students, who fall in the bottom 25th percentile of scores; middle-performing students in the average 50th percentile; and highest-performing students in the above-average 75th percentile.

Lowest-performing students did worse in reading than in 2022

New Jersey’s lowest-performing fourth graders scored two points lower than they did in 2022 in the reading exam, going from a score of 198 to 196. This was the lowest score this group has had in the last 20 years. In 2003, the lowest-performing fourth graders scored a 201 on the reading exam.

Meanwhile, the state’s highest-performing fourth graders scored a 252 in the 2024 reading exam, a point higher than 2022. Although an incremental increase for that group of students, the score represents a 56-point difference, the widest gap between highest- and lowest-performing fourth graders in reading in the last decade for New Jersey.

The gap was similar for eighth grade reading scores between these two groups, with a 55-point difference between lowest- and highest-performing students. That gap exceeded by 12 points the 43-point gap between these groups in 2013.

“NAEP has reported declines in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,” said Daniel McGrath, associate commissioner for NCES, in a press release.

A similar trend also followed in eighth grade math, but fourth grade math showed a minor improvement. The lowest performing students in fourth grade math scored an average of 217, one point higher than they did in 2022. Even so, the 48-point gap between the lowest- and highest-performing students in math also reached the widest it’s been in 10 years.

Some researchers in New Jersey are currently looking into the role of schools in positively and drastically improving scores for the state’s lowest-achieving students. The state’s Department of Education last year launched the “Promising Practices Project,” which will task researchers with investigating the best practices used in 52 schools statewide that have proven to help improve student achievement and learning.

Family and community impact can have a very significant impact on closing gaps between the state’s highest- and lowest-performing students, said Charles Payne, director of the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, in an interview with Chalkbeat this week.

“But we have the most systematic evidence on schools,” Payne said. “When they’re operating at the highest levels, schools have enough power to overcome most of the disadvantages that are associated with race and class.”

Schools on the “highest levels” that positively impact student achievement have several key characteristics, Payne added. Those characteristics include a collaborative environment for teachers, the use of data to support instruction, setting high expectations for staff and students, and emphasizing social and emotional learning, Payne said.

Data from NAEP showed that some states have improved significantly already, even reaching 2019 scores, including Alabama in fourth-grade math and Louisiana in fourth-grade reading.

“These results, as sobering as they are, show that once you unpack them, there is hope,” said Carr, the NCES commissioner.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia NAEP scores rise in fourth grade math but stay flat in other subjects

2025-01-29T05:07:00+00:00

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Philadelphia students’ fourth grade math scores are on the rise, according to newly released test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP.

However, city students’ scores in math and reading are still well below their peers’ scores in Pennsylvania, below the average for all large cities, and below national averages.

In the other subjects that NAEP tests — fourth grade reading and eighth grade math and reading — Philly students scored about the same as they did in 2022. Black and Hispanic students in Philly continue to score far below their white and Asian American peers, highlighting the persistent equity gaps that exist for these students.

According to a Chalkbeat analysis, Philly students’ NAEP scores — and scores nationwide — were rising in both math and reading from 2009 to 2013. But since then, students’ scores have dropped precipitously, especially in eighth grade math.

Superintendent Tony Watlington told Chalkbeat the new scores “absolutely validate” that “there is some real progress occurring in this school district.” He added he was not surprised to see fourth grade math performance improve because he’s seeing similar trends in the district’s internal and state test data for third and fourth grade. Watlington said it’s all “part of the strategy to concentrate resources in those early grades.”

Watlington says he is particularly proud of Philly students’ post-pandemic performance. He frequently cites a Stanford University “recovery scorecard” that showed Philly students demonstrated the fastest 2022-23 post-pandemic recovery in math for grades 3-8, and the second-fastest recovery for reading in grades 3-8, among large urban school districts. (The study is based on a weighted comparison of student performance on state tests.) The district has also invested millions in updated curriculum and resources which Watlington says will only compound Philly’s gains in the years to come.

“We’re seeing some immediate improvement” due to the new math curriculum, Watlington said, which he thinks will also be the case for English Language Arts as classrooms continue to adopt new resources for that subject. “I fully expect, in two years, when we give the NAEP assessment again, to begin to see some movement in fourth grade reading,” he said.

NAEP is administered to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, unlike the state PSSA test, which is given to all students. City students also show low proficiency rates on the PSSA compared to the rest of Pennsylvania. Because only some students take the exams, NAEP results come with some uncertainty in the form of a margin of error.

“One of the reasons why our city has underperformed the Commonwealth average is because our kids have significantly lower attendance in school,” Watlington said. At the same time he pointed to district data showing student attendance has been increasing in Philly recently and the number of students dropping out has been decreasing.

NAEP scores show Philly students gained in math

In fourth grade math, Philadelphia saw a seven-point increase in the average scores from 209 in 2022 to 216 in 2024, which is a higher rate of improvement than Pennsylvania overall. Average scores statewide held steady at 238 — the same as in 2022. NAEP results are reported as average scores on a 0-500 scale.

The percentage of Philadelphia students at or above NAEP proficiency also increased to 19% from 13% in 2022. Philly still falls well below the state however: In Pennsylvania, 41% of students scored at or above proficiency, about the same as in 2022.

In eighth grade math, Philly performed about on par with 2022, with 15% of Philly students at or above NAEP proficiency, compared to 13% in 2022. The average score in eighth grade math was 252 — the same as in 2022. Philly is still below Pennsylvania’s overall average score of 276, which rose from 274 in 2022.

In fourth-grade reading, Philadelphia students scored 195 on average — the same as in 2022. Pennsylvania students overall scored 216, a slight decrease from an average score of 219 in 2022 but not a change NAEP officials deemed statistically significant. In relation to their peers from all large cities, Philly students came up short. In 2024, 17% of students in Philly scored proficient or better, while 26% of their peers in large cities as a whole scored proficient or above. Nationwide, 30% of students scored proficient or better — down from 32% in 2022.

In eighth grade reading, Philly and Pennsylvania students maintained their scores from 2022. Philly students scored on average 242, the same as in 2022. Statewide, students scored on average 259, the same as two years ago. Philly students remain well below their statewide and national peers in the percent of students who scored proficient or better: In Philly, 18% of students scored proficient or better, compared with 31% of students in Pennsylvania, 26% in large cities, and 29% nationally.

Philadelphia, which has the highest poverty rate among all big cities, outperformed just a handful of urban districts. For instance, in fourth grade math, Philadelphia scored lower than 21 districts and higher than four districts — Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit and Baltimore City — among the 26 that are included in the Trial Urban District Assessment. In eighth grade math, it did a little better, performing lower than 17 districts, on a par with six, and higher than two, Cleveland and Detroit.

The last time the federal government released NAEP scores over two years ago, they were used as a barometer for how well students had recovered from the pandemic, a period marked by school closures. Philadelphia’s schools closed for in-person learning in March 2020 and did not reopen until the beginning of the 2021-22 school year.

Philadelphia’s 2022 NAEP scores were well below the national and Pennsylvania averages, but scores for city students did not decline as much as they did for students in some other big cities. Fourth grade math scores dropped, but the other scores — in fourth grade reading and eighth grade reading and math — were statistically unchanged.

Even so, Watlington saw hope in the 2022 results. “Given the many challenges that all school districts have experienced these past three years is encouraging news that we intend to build on going forward,” he said at the time.

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

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores: How did Indiana 4th and 8th graders do on ‘the nation’s report card’ in 2024?

2025-01-29T05:06:00+00:00

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Indiana students fared slightly better on “the nation’s report card” in 2024 compared to 2022 as the state continues to slowly recover from the effects of the pandemic.

But across the state and nation, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — or NAEP — remain below 2019 levels, raising alarm bells about students’ reading and math skills after the pandemic. Nationally, there is also a growing gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students on NAEP.

Scores released Wednesday show Indiana students’ performance in both math and reading ticked up by between 1 and 3 percentage points in 2024.

In reading, around 34% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders were proficient or better in reading in 2024, up from 33% and 31%, respectively, in 2022.

In math, around 43% of fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in 2024, compared with 40% and 30%, respectively, in 2022.

Indiana’s performance across both subjects is in line with most other states, which saw no statistically significant score improvements compared to 2022. Nationally, reading scores have continued to drop in a trend that began before the pandemic in 2019. In math, some states made notable improvements, but Indiana was not among them.

Still, Indiana’s average scores remain above national averages. And while national averages have declined in reading, Indiana students’ scores rose this year.

“Over the past three years, Indiana has taken an all-hands-on-deck approach to solving our literacy crisis, and today we see that without a doubt, this work is making a difference,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner in a statement Wednesday. “This new data is just one more piece of evidence that the time and resources invested in this effort are paying off for students. This should provide continued motivation for everyone to keep our foot on the gas pedal, whether that’s classroom teachers or parents reading to their child at home.”

Another difference between Indiana and national averages concerns the highest- and lowest-performing students. Indiana fourth graders in the bottom quartile of scores improved their performance over 2022. But nationally, fourth graders in the bottom quartile of reading scores declined the most from 2022.

However, the gap in eighth grade reading scores between Indiana’s lowest- and highest-performing students grew from 2022 to 2024.

Across demographic groups, one of the state’s most significant jumps in scores was for Black fourth grade students, whose reading scores rose from 194 in 2022 to 201 in 2024 — one point higher than their 2019 scores. Hispanic fourth grade students have also matched 2019 scores in reading for the demographic.

No other student group in Indiana matched its 2019 performance in either subject in 2024.

Nationwide, it was rare for any state to exceed its 2019 NAEP scores in either subject — just Alabama scored higher in fourth grade math, and only Louisiana scored higher in fourth grade reading.

“NAEP has reported declines in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,” said National Center for Education Statistics Associate Commissioner Daniel McGrath in a press release.

NAEP scores, learning affected by student absenteeism

NAEP scores don’t indicate the efficacy of any single policy or practice. But their release is likely to trigger debates about how states have responded to the academic effects of the pandemic.

Since 2022, Indiana has passed several laws aimed at aligning the state’s early literacy instruction with a set of practices known as the science of reading.

Schools and teacher training programs are now required to use material based on the science of reading. And beginning this year, students who don’t pass the the third grade reading test — the IREAD-3 — will be be required to repeat third grade, with only a few exceptions.

Now Indiana lawmakers may turn their attention to math. A bill under consideration in the 2025 legislative session would change teacher preparation programs in regards to math instruction, as well as require math proficiency screeners and interventions for younger students.

The state has also invested state and federal funds in tutoring and summer school programs, and will likely seek help from lawmakers writing the state budget to keep those initiatives funded after the expiration of federal aid.

Other initiatives from lawmakers include addressing student absenteeism, which has declined nationally since 2022 but remains higher than in 2019. In a media call Tuesday, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics Peggy Carr pointed to absenteeism as a factor in students’ scores.

“If students aren’t in school, they can’t learn,” Carr said.

This story has been updated with a comment from Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores show disheartening trends for the lowest-performing students

2025-01-29T05:01:00+00:00

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Most American students are still performing below their pre-pandemic counterparts in reading and math, while the yawning gap between high-achieving and low-performing students got even wider, data from “the nation’s report card” shows.

Results released Wednesday from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, paint a sobering picture of academic haves and have-nots. Scores are increasing for many students who already do well, while struggling students stagnated or fell even further behind their peers. That’s making a trend that began about a decade ago even more pronounced.

In some cases that divide was historic: Lower-performing fourth and eighth graders posted the worst reading scores in over 30 years. In eighth grade math, the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students was the widest in the test’s history.

“The news is not good,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told reporters on Tuesday. “Student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, reading scores continue to decline, and our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels.”

Scores saw a dramatic decline in 2022 after students endured two disrupted pandemic school years marked by closures, quarantines, and remote learning. But in 2024, reading scores declined even more for both fourth and eighth graders.

“This is a major concern — a concern that can’t be blamed solely on the pandemic,” Carr said. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”

Fourth grade math was the lone bright spot, with average student scores ticking up two points on the 500-point scale. But much of that increase was driven by improvement among top performers.

Eighth grade math scores held steady, with gains among higher-performing students canceling out declines among lower-performers.

All of the children who took the NAEP last year had at least some of their education affected by the pandemic. The fourth graders were in kindergarten when schools closed in March 2020, while eighth graders were in fourth grade.

The results are sure to fuel ongoing debate about whether schools are doing enough to help struggling students, especially those who are the farthest behind, the role that school closures played in exacerbating learning gaps, and whether schools effectively spent the nearly $190 billion they received in federal COVID relief dollars.

The new NAEP scores have landed as conservatives push to expand private school choice, public schools grapple with budget cuts, culture war skirmishes persist, and chronic absenteeism remains at historically high levels. Students who performed the worst on the NAEP test were more likely to be frequently absent from school, Carr noted.

“We have a larger-than-in-recent-memory share of American students who are failing to demonstrate even partial mastery of the types of skills educators have defined as important,” said Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the vice chair of the NAEP Governing Board, which decides the test’s content and approves questions. “That doesn’t bode well for their futures or for our collective futures.”

The new data come from tests taken in early 2024 by nearly half a million students across thousands of U.S. schools.

Worrying decline in NAEP reading scores continues

On average, fourth and eighth grade students scored two points lower in reading than their counterparts in 2022 and five points lower than students in 2019. Only in Louisiana, where the state superintendent has put a major focus on reading, did fourth grade reading scores rise above 2019 levels.

The share of fourth graders who scored at the very bottom of the NAEP scale was at its highest point in 20 years. The share of eighth graders scoring at the lowest level was the highest ever. And in both grades, students who did not reach the NAEP Basic level — relatively low performers at the 25th percentile and under — had lower scores than in 1992, when the first NAEP test was given.

When a fourth grader can’t meet the NAEP Basic level, it doesn’t mean they cannot read. But it likely means they would struggle with easier skills, such as sequencing events in a story or stating an opinion using supporting evidence from a text. Eighth graders who fall below NAEP Basic would have trouble identifying basic literary elements, such as character motivation and the main idea.

NAEP results show how many students score below, at, or above two thresholds: NAEP Basic and NAEP Proficient. Proficient is considered a high bar, above what most states set as grade level expectations. Reaching the NAEP Basic threshold indicates students have achieved partial mastery of fundamental skills and knowledge for that grade level.

The rise in students who don’t meet that mark is of particular concern.

The dips in reading come as dozens of states overhaul their reading instruction with materials that better align with the science of reading. And while federal education officials are usually reticent to explain what caused a particular increase or decrease in scores, Carr cautioned that the near-universal dips in reading should not be taken as evidence that reading reforms have not worked.

She pointed to the example of Louisiana, where fourth graders are scoring better in reading than they did in 2019, bucking the national trend. That state has focused heavily on the science of reading “but they didn’t start yesterday,” Carr said.

“They were able to pull this off, and not only improve to pre-pandemic levels, but exceed them, and bring their lower-performers along,” she said. “I would not say that hope is lost.”

Still, Lesley Muldoon, the executive director of the NAEP Governing Board, said the growing share of children who cannot read at the NAEP Basic level, which generally corresponds with state proficiency standards, is concerning.

If a fourth grader can’t meet that in reading, “we’re saying that they’re unlikely to determine the meaning of a familiar word using context from the text,” Muldoon said. “That is a crucial skill that students really need for entering middle school.”

NAEP math scores show recovery — but also stagnation

In fourth grade math, average scores increased two points from 2022 but were still three points lower than pre-pandemic levels. Only in Alabama did fourth graders have higher scores than their 2019 counterparts. The average score was lifted by high-performing students who saw greater gains, while lower-performing students did about the same as in 2022.

Fifteen states and 14 urban districts saw improvements compared with 2022. District of Columbia Public Schools posted 10-point gains, well above the national average. D.C. schools also showed improvements for both low- and high-performing students, as did schools in Atlanta, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County, and Guilford County, North Carolina.

Eighth grade math was a different story. There was no change in average scores because while high performers did better than their counterparts in 2022, low performers did worse.

Middle school math has been a problem area in the pandemic’s wake. Some students struggled to learn key concepts virtually, such as how to divide fractions or graph a line. That lack of knowledge followed them. Others may have had content repeated often because their classmates were absent a lot, which put them behind in their lessons.

West, the NAEP Governing Board member, said it appeared the pandemic accelerated the decline among low-performing eighth graders in math, but it was even more striking that “the bottom continued to fall out” from 2022 to 2024.

“The main takeaway is that: What we’ve done as a nation, including the federal recovery dollars, has been insufficient,” he said.

Students who struggle in middle school often end up locked out of more advanced math in high school that can open doors to higher-paid careers in STEM fields.

Mark Miller, who teaches eighth grade math in Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain School District, said declining student motivation and “stick-to-it-ness” might be contributing. In recent years, struggling students in his classroom have needed a bigger nudge to dig in on difficult problems than when he started teaching nearly two decades ago.

“The coach in me has had to reach into my coaching motivational speeches in my classroom just as much as I have had to on the court or on the field,” said Miller, who is also a former NAEP Governing Board member. Many students think: “If I want to know something, I can look it up in two seconds, why do I need to persevere through learning how to solve systems of equations or learning how to solve a word problem?”

One thing his school is trying: Keeping kids who did not meet certain math standards in the same classes as their peers while providing extra support, instead of moving them to remedial math. The hope is that teachers can fill in gaps with mini lessons along the way, and that struggling students will feel more confident in their math abilities if they’re learning alongside their peers.

NAEP score gaps have consequences for ‘equitable society’

While the pandemic surely has had a lasting impact on students, the gap between high- and low-performers appears to have started growing about a decade ago. Similar gaps have appeared on international tests and are more stark for American students than for those in other countries that also experienced pandemic disruptions.

Theories abound: The federal government eased up on school accountability measures, and school leaders took their eyes off the lowest performers. The Great Recession, with its economic traumas followed by deep spending cuts, left a lasting scar on American education. Phones are sapping our attention span and cognitive abilities.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, highlighted the trend in an analysis posted last week in advance of the NAEP release. He noted that the growing divide between high and low performers even shows up on a recent skills test for adults who haven’t been in school in years, complicating the idea that something school-related is the main driver.

The trends defy easy explanations and likely have multiple causes, he said.

Tests such as NAEP can’t answer the why. But Malkus hopes that researchers with access to student-level data can start digging in more. Are low-performing students concentrated at certain schools? Do they share certain characteristics? Or are they enrolled in schools with both high and low test scores?

He also hopes that superintendents and principals seek out this data about their own schools and find ways to support low-performing students even when average test scores look good.

“What this means for the story for an equitable society is enormous,” he said.

Yet there doesn’t seem to be enough urgency to get to the bottom of the problem, said Dan Goldhaber, who directs the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research.

While his research and others found that federal pandemic aid helped academic recovery, Goldhaber said it’s reasonable to ask if it could have done more. In the rush to get money out the door, a real opportunity was missed to collect data that would have shown which interventions really move the needle for struggling students, he said.

“I think we will look back in 25 years, and we will see all these kids have these outcomes in life that were predicted by this major decline,” he said. “The message is everywhere, but I don’t see much appetite to address it.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

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

Adams 14 successful in challenging some ratings, but not the overall low district rating

2024-12-12T00:55:41+00:00

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The Adams 14 school district will not have an improved performance rating this year, despite many district complaints about the state’s system.

On Wednesday, the Colorado State Board of Education voted to approve the final decisions on appeals from schools and districts that didn’t agree with their annual performance rating, first released in September.

The state this year received requests to reconsider 15 district ratings and 79 school ratings, compared to 10 district and 81 school ratings appeals last year. Of those requests, the state approved 85 ratings changes, including 22 requests for Denver schools. Among the appeals denied was Adams 14’s request to change its district rating.

Adams 14, the district with the longest number of low state ratings, is on year 11 of low ratings. The district’s rating for 2024 of priority improvement is the second-lowest rating for districts and is identified by orange. It’s the same rating the district received in 2023.

The state is required to step in and order intervention when a school, or district, has five years of low ratings.

Once under state-ordered plans, a school or district must have at least a rating of improvement, identified by yellow, one rung above priority improvement, for at least two years in a row, for the state intervention to stop.

Despite many improvement plans and state orders for Adams 14, the district has not managed to earn an improvement rating a single time in more than a decade.

Here’s how a task force suggests changing the way schools and districts are rated in Colorado

In the last few months, district leaders have asked the state to reconsider the district’s rating, and the state’s way of evaluating any school’s performance based on environmental factors and the impact pollution has on children. The district also wanted the state to reconsider using SAT and PSAT data in the ratings this year, given large performance gaps, and an acknowledgement that drops in high school scores were at least in part due to changes to the test format.

And in the official Request to Reconsider application the state looked at, the district wanted the state to exclude its alternative high school’s data from its district rating.

State officials explained that statute and predetermined rules dictate the conditions needed to change a district’s rating. In a case where an alternative school earns the highest rating possible – of performance – and when removing that data raises a district’s rating enough to move up a level, the state allows that exclusion. For Adams 14, neither of those conditions were met.

In a letter drafted by state lawyers to respond to Adams 14, officials denied that some of the racial and environmental challenges faced by the community factored into the district’s rating.

“The department recognizes and does not discount the challenges facing the Commerce City community – the impacts of pollution, poverty, food insecurity, and violence in a community with a very high percentage of multilingual learners and high rates of absenteeism. The department very much wants to continue to be a partner in addressing these issues for the benefit of the students of Adams 14,” the letter states. “At the same time, the accountability system is not currently designed to adjust final ratings based on such challenges.”

For its schools, however, Adams 14 was successful in appealing seven ratings.

Among those, the district’s two middle schools will now have a label of insufficient data for a rating, based on low test participation. The other five successful appeals were for elementary schools where the district submitted additional local test data.

With all the ratings finalized, Adams 14 this year had two schools with improved ratings and two others with lower ratings, compared to last year.

Alsup Elementary, despite its successful appeal from turnaround to priority improvement, will move forward, now on year three, on the state’s timeline toward intervention.

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

Denver students from low-income families have not recovered academically from pandemic, report says

2024-12-06T21:26:13+00:00

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Denver Public Schools students are experiencing an “inequitable recovery” from academic dips during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from the Keystone Policy Center.

Denver students from middle- and higher-income families have more than caught up on reading and writing. In fact, their state test scores were higher in the spring of 2024 than they were in the spring of 2019, before the pandemic. In 2024, 70% of these students in grades three through eight met state expectations in reading and writing. That’s up from 2019, when 69% did.

But the test scores of Denver students from low-income families still lag behind. Their scores were lower in 2024 than in 2019. In 2024, just 23% of students from low-income families in grades three through eight met expectations in reading and writing. In 2019, 27% did.

“The key takeaway is that students from low-income households in DPS have struggled to recover academically when compared to their more affluent peers,” the report says.

The report uses eligibility for free or reduced price lunch as a proxy for family income level. Nearly two-thirds of Denver students qualified for subsidized school meals last year.

In a statement, Denver Public Schools said it recognizes that “students from low-income families face unique challenges, and we are actively providing targeted academic supports to schools, the majority of which serve high populations of FRL students.”

The district said it also offers academic support to students during before- and after-school, Saturday school, and summer school programs. Its six community hubs help students and families with basic needs as well as provide social, emotional, physical, and academic support, it said.

“DPS is committed to addressing the inequities in recovery and accelerating the trajectory of our historically underserved students,” the district said in a statement.

Similar test score trends exist for students of color and English learners in DPS, the report notes. Denver has historically had some of the largest test score gaps in the state.

Denver students from low-income families also saw bigger score drops between 2019 and 2024 than students from low-income families in neighboring Jeffco Public Schools and Aurora Public Schools, the report says. In addition, the DPS score drop of 4 percentage points for students from low-income families was steeper than the statewide average score drop of 2 percentage points.

In its statement, DPS noted that the overall number of its students meeting expectations on state math and literacy tests increased in 2024, though it still hasn’t reached pre-pandemic levels.

But report author Van Schoales, senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center, said referencing overall state test scores, without disaggregating the scores by family income or other demographics, is “totally irresponsible” and “misleading.”

“It doesn’t tell you what the schools or districts are doing in order to support kids,” Schoales said.

The report concludes that Denver should bring back its former school rating system or create a new framework that would shine more light on the learning of students from low-income families.

Denver discarded its color-coded rating system in 2020 after years of complaints about it being too complicated. The district now uses the state’s school rating system, which is simpler.

While both systems award points based on how certain groups of students score on state tests, including students from low-income families, Denver’s old system set a higher bar for those students. It also penalized schools that had big gaps between the scores of students from low-income families and those from more affluent families.

Schoales said the state’s simpler rating system isn’t fine-tuned enough to distinguish between schools that are doing a good job serving students from low-income families and those that are not.

“If you don’t know what good is, it’s impossible to know how to get there,” he said.

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

Here’s how a task force suggests changing the way schools and districts are rated in Colorado

2024-11-14T00:58:21+00:00

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Colorado should start considering the career and college prep that students take, stop counting at-risk students more than once, and expand testing in other languages for annual school and district ratings.

Those are among the 30 recommendations made by the 1241 task force, a group created by lawmakers in 2023 to examine the state’s accountability system.

The recommendations were presented to the State Board of Education on Wednesday. Some of the recommendations will require a board vote to implement, while others would require legislative action.

State Board members Wednesday asked some questions about the recommendations, but were asked by the Education Commissioner, Susana Cordova, to hold most of their thoughts for a discussion at their December meeting. Most board members said the recommendations seemed like good changes, although at times, they wondered if some would require a lot more research to implement.

For example, one recommendation is that the state should work to expand testing options in other languages. State Board members questioned if testing students in their native language makes sense when they aren’t being taught in that language or if their year’s learning is better assessed in English, the language of their instruction.

The state’s school accountability system, in use since 2009, mostly uses standardized test scores to rate schools and districts. High schools are also rated on their graduation rates and on how many students move on to postsecondary options.

Schools can earn one of four ratings, while districts can earn one of five. State law dictates that schools or districts that earn one of the bottom two ratings for five years in a row must be placed on a plan for improvement under state orders. The state is also limited in what improvements it can order, but can escalate to closing a school, turning it into a charter school, or ordering a district to reorganize.

Last year, Adams 14, which has had the lowest ratings for more than 10 years, was ordered to reorganize. That could have meant dissolving or merging parts of the district with neighboring districts, but after strong pushback from the community, the state backed off its orders.

The majority of schools and districts first identified for support based on low ratings do manage to improve before needing state intervention.

An audit completed in December 2022 found that the state’s system is reasonable, but also that schools serving more students of color and students in poverty on average do worse on state tests.

Some questions critics of the system hoped to answer, such as whether the system itself is helping or harming student learning or is biased against more disadvantaged students, were not addressed.

School district leaders pushed legislators to create the 1241 task force to consider broader changes to the system.

The task force of 26 school and district leaders, parents, advocates, and other educators have met for more than a year to consider the recommendations.

The report, however, states that the group “strongly believes the accountability system alone cannot advance academic opportunities or prevent academic inequities.”

Still, some of the recommendations are designed to limit inequities around schools that serve more disadvantaged students or schools with such small numbers of students that their ratings can be volatile from year to year.

Report explains findings, recommendations, areas to study

In addition to recommendations, the group’s report also points to several areas of the system that require more study for possible changes.

For instance, the group suggests that the state’s review panel (a group that goes into schools and districts to make recommendations when the State Board must order an improvement plan) should perhaps be asked to evaluate factors beyond academics. That would include looking at a school or district’s budget, governance, and facilities and then recommending how the district might focus on improving those areas, including being able to recommend a change in leadership.

Here are some of the task force’s recommendations:

Students who fall into subgroups such as students with disabilities, English learners, or those who qualify for free and reduced price lunch should be combined into one “super subgroup,” so schools are only evaluated for them once.
The state should consider lowering the number of students needed in a group for the state to report data, as opposed to suppressing it for privacy purposes. Currently that number is 16. The recommendation doesn’t state a better lower number but asks the state to study what would be appropriate.
Students with disabilities should continue to be counted in that group for two years after no longer needing services, aligning with how students learning English are followed after services are no longer provided.
The state should revisit the weights it gives to each piece considered in these ratings every five years, with help of experts, to try to move away from having strong correlations to student demographics.
Individual student results should be made available to families as soon as possible, even before a public release of data. The state should also try to speed up the time it takes educators to get results.
The rating labels schools and districts earn should be changed to be easier for the public to understand, but that should be done after research and gathering public feedback.
Schools should have more state support when they reach two years of low ratings, or being “on the clock,” to provide more early interventions before they are subject to state mandates in year five.
The state should “design budgetary expectations” for school turnaround and plan to sustain bold plans for improvement once funding is exhausted.
Schools and districts that have low test participation and can’t be rated getting only “Insufficient data: Low Participation” labels, should create a corrective action plan submitted to the state.
The legislature should require schools and districts under state-ordered improvement plans to meet with, learn from, and share their progress with each other.
The State Board of Education should delegate authority to allow state officials to approve small changes to state ordered improvement plans allowing flexibility when conditions change.

Read the full report and all of the recommendations:

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

Closing struggling schools helped student achievement in Denver, study finds

2024-09-28T00:31:41+00:00

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The architects of Denver Public Schools’ former reform efforts are lauding a new study that validates a strategy that largely has been abandoned both in Denver and nationwide: closing low-performing schools and opening new ones that might serve students better.

The analysis from University of Colorado Denver researchers finds that most students who left closed Denver schools and attended new ones saw their test scores go up, with greater gains for English learners and students with disabilities.

Student achievement also went up districtwide, which study authors attribute to years-long efforts to give school leaders more autonomy, hold them accountable for results, and make it easier for families to choose among a range of schools.

“Too many school reforms in this country last for a year, and then the next year everybody changes their position based on what happened the year before,” U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, Denver’s superintendent during the start of the reform era, said during a panel discussion Friday. “Denver, unlike many other places, had a commitment to a complicated and nuanced approach. I hope that people will have the chance to rediscover the work because of this research.”

Researchers who reviewed the study at Chalkbeat’s request said it was generally well-designed and makes a strong case that Denver’s approach contributed to improvements in student test scores. However, they cautioned that its boldest claim — that students experienced as much as three school years worth of additional learning — may be overstated.

The study adds to an extensive body of research on school closures, some of which has found mixed or negative effects. After years of bipartisan support from policymakers and others, test-based school accountability has mostly fallen out of favor in large urban districts.

In addition to the political backlash this approach frequently sparked, improvements stemming from it proved hard to sustain over time. But different approaches to school improvement have been slow to emerge as schools grapple with the pandemic’s effects on student outcomes.

Now, many urban districts — including Denver — are facing the prospect of school closures due at least in part to a different factor: declining enrollment. As it prepares to pick which schools will close next year, the Denver school board initially rejected the idea of considering academic performance but now says it can be a factor, just not the sole one.

Superintendent Alex Marrero tried to prevent the release of the student data used in the new study, contending that the researchers would ignore the downsides of reform policies and focus too narrowly on test scores. A spokesperson for the district did not respond to a request for comment on the study findings.

Denver schools study examines test data, graduation rates

Denver was once seen as a national exemplar of the so-called portfolio model, which encouraged school choice with an easy-to-navigate enrollment system.

The district also encouraged new schools to open, including charter schools, which are publicly funded but independently run, and innovation schools, which are district-run schools where principals have additional freedom and flexibility.

Simultaneously, the district closed schools with persistently low test scores.

Some of the Denver schools that opened during this time period continue to be sought-after and highly regarded schools. But others have closed due to low performance and low enrollment.

“It is really this idea that if you embrace the idea that choice is not a threat but an opportunity, if you don’t assume you have all the answers, and you hold schools accountable for results, you will see system-wide improvement,” said Parker Baxter, the study’s lead author and head of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at CU Denver’s School of Public Affairs. “And that is apparently exactly what happened in Denver.”

The new study isn’t the first to find that Denver made significant improvements during the reform era. In 2022, Baxter released a study that found that from 2007-2008 to 2018-2019, Denver students made an additional year or more worth of academic progress. Graduation rates also increased at a higher rate than they would have without the reforms, the study found.

But critics said that study, which used districtwide test data, didn’t account for the 20,000 new students Denver added during that time.

The new study draws on test scores and other data from 40,000 individual students from Denver and 11 surrounding districts from the 2008-09 school year to the 2014-15 school year. The Denver students were matched demographically and academically with similar students in neighboring districts that did not embrace the portfolio model. The more time students attended Denver Public Schools, the greater the increase in their test scores compared with similar students, the study found.

The study also tracked individual Denver students over time, including those who attended schools that closed, those who attended new schools that opened during the study period, and those who attended schools targeted for district-led turnaround.

Most students who left a school that closed due to low performance for a new school that opened during this period saw their scores increase in math. Students who attended a new school saw test scores increase in math and English. One exception was Native American students, who generally saw their scores go down.

Students who attended schools in turnaround — an often demoralizing process that involved replacing the principal and many of the teachers — generally did worse.

“At least for the students in our sample, the most minimally disruptive interventions had negative effects for students,” Baxter said. “Arguably the most disruptive intervention had the most positive effects. It’s important to understand why.”

As the district prepares to close schools again, closing those with lower test scores could be a way to turn the disruption into academic gains, Baxter said.

Denver’s high school graduation rates increased dramatically during the time period of the study, but the same held true in many Colorado school districts. Overall, Denver students in the study were a little more likely to graduate high school but not more likely to go to college than their peers in neighboring districts.

Hispanic and English learner students in Denver were more likely to go to college than their suburban peers, while Denver’s Black students were less likely to enroll.

‘Strong evidence’ reforms were effective, but which reforms?

Douglas Harris, an economics professor at Tulane University who has studied school reforms extensively, said the latest study is “more convincing” than the first study that education reform policies influenced Denver student trajectories.

The new Denver study produced similar results to Harris’ own research in New Orleans, though students there saw more modest test score growth and greater effects on high school graduation and college-going rates, he said.

Rob Shand, an assistant professor of education policy and leadership at American University who wrote a critique of Baxter’s earlier work, said the new study addressed several concerns but may attribute too much of the improvements to reform policies.

Shand said the way the study authors added up yearly test score gains to arrive at large cumulative effects “might tend to overinflate the numbers.” Nonetheless, the study provides “strong evidence that the Denver reforms increased test scores quite considerably,” Harris said.

Baxter defended the approach and said it may even have underestimated the effects.

Baxter said nearly every policy in place in Denver at the time was related to education reform and the portfolio model, including paying teachers more to work in high-poverty schools, giving schools more money to serve students from low-income families, developing a customized school rating system, working closely with charter schools, and making it easy for families to choose among schools. That makes it reasonable to credit test score gains to the portfolio model more broadly, he said.

Shand said there’s value in studying comprehensive reforms, but it’s hard to know how to respond because it’s not clear which policies made the most difference. It’s a stretch, he said, to treat every policy as part of the portfolio model, and no community could copy everything Denver did.

Still, in a time when education politics is increasingly polarized between defenders of traditional public schools and supporters of universal private school choice, Shand said the study results should give pause to both extremes.

“It really calls for a more balanced or measured approach,” he said.

At Friday’s panel discussion on the report, Bennet and former Denver Superintendent Tom Boasberg made a rare joint appearance to reflect both on the findings and on a political landscape that has changed a great deal.

Opponents of their reforms took control of the school board in 2019 and have been less friendly to charter schools and giving principals autonomy. DPS hasn’t closed a traditional school for low performance since 2016. The school board scrapped Denver’s school rating system in 2020 and hasn’t come up with a replacement.

Bennet and Boasberg said the election of Donald Trump in 2016 polarized every area of politics and contributed to the erosion of a bipartisan consensus on education.

Boasberg, who now leads an American school in Singapore, said the study represents an opportunity to turn the focus from politics and rhetoric to policy and practice. He acknowledged, though, that the nature of the reforms also contributed to some of the backlash.

“These were very, very far reaching changes, and they changed the status quo in very deep and very profound ways,” Boasberg said. “And I think in any democracy, when you make very profound changes that change the status quo, there are people who are going to be unhappy and resist.”

Correction: This article has been updated to remove an incorrect reference to past demographic change in Denver Public Schools. From 2008-09 to 2018-19, the percentage of students in poverty remained largely the same and the percentage of white students increased only slightly.

Colorado bureau chief Melanie Asmar contributed reporting.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

16 NYC schools, including 12 run by DOE, named National Blue Ribbon Schools

2024-09-24T18:59:38+00:00

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Of the 16 New York City schools that made this year’s National Blue Ribbon Schools list, a dozen are run by the Education Department, including one that made headlines for protesting Chancellor David Banks’ signature literacy initiative.

The Brooklyn School of Inquiry, a K-8 gifted and talented program known as BSI, was the first and only school so far to win an exemption from the city’s mandate for all elementary schools to use one of three city-approved reading curriculums. The 480-seat Bensonhurst school, which draws students from across the city, was recognized for its “progressive education approach, innovative teaching practices, and diverse student body,” according to the Blue Ribbon website.

The local winners, which spanned all five boroughs, were among 356 schools across the country to win the honor, according to the U.S. Department of Education. It’s an achievement that recognizes a school’s excellence in academic performance or significant progress toward closing achievement gaps.

All New York City schools were recognized for strong academic performance. The award brings no financial boost to winning schools, though it does offer bragging rights.

The list included a mix of New York City elementary, middle, and high schools. Manhattan had the highest number of schools on the list, with eight.

In Queens, Louis Pasteur Middle School was highlighted in part for its students’ “local and regional awards and championships in robotics, math, science, track, basketball, volleyball, soccer, and the arts,” according to the Blue Ribbon website.

Meanwhile, Fordham High School for the Arts in the Bronx was recognized for “its ability to seamlessly integrate a high-quality arts education with rigorous core academic instruction that prepares students to excel in college and career,” the Blue Ribbon website said.

P.S. 35 The Clove Valley School, the sole Staten Island school on the list, serves about 400 elementary students. The award highlighted the school’s “personalized approach to education,” through which each student is “encouraged to take ownership of their learning, making informed decisions and actively engaging in the learning process.”

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said the National Blue Ribbon Schools serve as “models for effective teaching and intentional collaboration in their schools and communities.”

“As we celebrate their achievements, let us look to these schools for inspiration as we champion education as the foundation of a brighter future for every child,” he said in a statement.

New York Education Commissioner Betty Rosa praised the state’s recipients as “shining examples for all educational institutions throughout New York State.”

See the full list of local winners for each borough below:

Brooklyn

Brooklyn School of Inquiry
A. Fantis School of Saints Constantine and Helen Cathedral

The Bronx

Fordham High School for the Arts
Icahn Charter School 4
Icahn Charter School 6

Manhattan

M.S. 255 the Salk School of Science
The NYC Lab Middle School for Collaborative Studies
P.S. 124 the Yung Wing School
P.S. 150
P.S. 166 The Richard Rodgers School of Arts and Technology
P.S. 184 Shuang Wen
P.S. 77 Lower Lab School
Saint Ignatius Loyola School.

Queens

P.S. 130
Louis Pasteur Middle School

Staten Island

P.S. 35 The Clove Valley School

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Denver sets ambitious goals for Latino students, including 80% reading at grade level by 3rd grade

2024-09-20T02:28:14+00:00

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Denver Public Schools is setting ambitious goals for Latino students, families, and employees in response to a report from earlier this year that highlighted “serious barriers” to their success.

The La Raza Report was commissioned by the district and based on historical research, as well as dozens of focus group interviews and thousands of survey responses. Released in March, it found unequal resources between schools, a dearth of Latino teachers, and a “perpetual undervaluing” of Latino culture, among other issues.

The 266-page report included 35 recommendations ranging from those focused on systemic issues to others focused on individual schools.

The district’s new Latine Student Success Team worked with an advisory council to narrow those recommendations down to five goals, which were presented to the school board Thursday. The school board did not need to vote on the goals.

Perhaps the most prominent goal is for 80% of Latino students in DPS to read at grade level by the end of third grade by 2027. Last school year, 54% of Hispanic students in kindergarten through third grade were reading at grade level or above, according to early literacy test data released Thursday in the district’s annual report.

The other four goals DPS aims to achieve by the 2026-27 school year are:

to significantly increase the number of Latino students enrolled in rigorous classes and career and technical education programs. According to the annual report, 38% of Hispanic students who attended district-run schools last year were enrolled in rigorous classes, such as Advanced Placement and college-level courses.
to ensure DPS staff demographics match student demographics. Whereas 52% of the district’s 88,000 students last year were Hispanic, only 32% of DPS school leaders, teachers, and paraprofessionals were Hispanic, according to the annual report.
to increase the percentage of Latino students and staff who say on district surveys that they feel a sense of belonging and safety, which the district hopes will increase student attendance and staff retention. The attendance rate for Hispanic students was 86% last year, slightly below the district average of 88%. The retention rate for Hispanic staff was 88%, higher than the district average of 87%.
to increase the number of Latino families holding leadership positions on district and school committees that drive decision-making.

Board members praised the ambitiousness of the goals. They also encouraged the district’s Latine Student Success Team to work in tandem with its Black Student Success Team, whose work was sparked by a similarly critical report on outcomes for Black students and staff in DPS.

“As a parent, when my kids started school and I looked at what were the predictors that would happen to my twins, it wasn’t the best,” board member Marlene De La Rosa said. “I will continue to be committed to supporting the work of this, because I do want to see our Latino students reach their potential and do everything we believe they can do.”

Now that the Latine Student Success Team has identified its goals, it will begin crafting a three-year implementation plan. The five-person La Raza Advisory Council, which includes local leaders with longtime ties to DPS as well as former New York City Department of Education chancellor Richard Carranza, will meet quarterly to review and adjust that plan.

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

‘A new era.’ Denver’s Manual High School exits state watchlist

2024-09-13T20:35:03+00:00

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A boost in academic progress, improved graduation rates, and more students going to college or career training has put Denver’s Manual High School on track to exit a state watchlist for low performance.

Manual had been on Colorado’s so-called accountability clock, which ticks toward state intervention, for more than a decade. Principal Chris DeRemer has been at Manual just as long, first as a teacher and now as an administrator. He said Manual’s move off the watchlist is a testament to the power of strong teachers and the importance of school culture and student attendance.

Manual’s approach offers potential lessons for other Colorado schools that have struggled with student outcomes.

“The theory of action was that our teachers are so good and our staff is so good that if we get our kids here and they feel like they can take risks, they’ll grow,” DeRemer said.

Manual is one of Denver’s oldest high schools. It has a long list of prominent alumni, including former Denver mayors Michael Hancock and Wellington Webb.

It also has a long history of academic struggle that led Denver Public Schools to experiment with interventions to boost student achievement. Many of them, including closing Manual in 2006 and reinventing and reopening it a year later, were painful for the community and disheartening for students, almost all of whom are Black and Latino.

DeRemer is Manual’s ninth principal since it reopened in 2007.

Walking the second-floor hallway at Manual this week, DeRemer called out to Abria, a senior at the school who he said exemplifies the school’s philosophy.

“Once you get to know the staff here, it’ll feel more like a family, and you’ll have people who have your back,” Abria said, before ducking into a classroom to talk to a college counselor.

Manual High's thunderbolt logo is prominently displayed throughout the school.

Improved academic rating brings ‘new era’ to Manual

Manual has been on the accountability clock since 2013, when it earned the lowest state rating of “turnaround,” signified by the color red. The state ratings are based on several factors, including a high school’s graduation rate, how its students score on standardized tests, and how much progress they make on those tests year over year.

Schools face state intervention after five years of low ratings. Because of various pauses to the accountability clock, Manual didn’t get that intervention until 2020.

Instead of imposing one of the harsher sanctions allowable by law, such as closing a school, the State Board of Education treated Manual the same way it has most schools on the clock. It ordered Manual to follow an innovation plan that gives the school more flexibility in hiring, budget, and curriculum in the hopes that those changes will lead to higher student achievement.

Manual had already had its own innovation plan for years that was approved by the Denver school board. But being on the clock meant more scrutiny from state officials and public hearings before the state board.

To get off the clock, schools must earn one of the top two state ratings for two years in a row. Last year, Manual got halfway there when it earned a yellow “improvement” rating. This year, preliminary ratings released earlier this week showed Manual has been rated yellow again for 2024.

“This academic rating rings in a new era for Manual,” DeRemer wrote in a letter home to Manual families this week. “It also shows that Manual’s students are capable of accomplishing as much or more than any of their peers in the city of Denver and in the state of Colorado.”

Manual High has a "rap lab" inside its library, thanks to a grant from the University of Colorado.

Using college-level courses helped instructional rigor

Since it reopened in 2007, Manual has undergone numerous leadership changes and a steady stream of shifts in its philosophy and academic approach. But DeRemer said its recent success is not the result of a new out-of-the box idea.

“We really dedicated ourselves to the quality of daily instruction,” he said. “It’s not that fancy.”

DeRemer added, “I think there’s a misconception that school turnaround can happen quickly. We’ve just built this every year and gotten a little better every year.”

Manual has for years offered students the opportunity to take college-level classes and earn college credit before they graduate. Manual also has a hands-on career education program called the Med School at Manual in which students can earn industry certifications that would allow them to work as an EMT or pharmacy technician, for example, right out of high school.

Those college-level opportunities, DeRemer said, “upped the rigor of our classes.”

That’s especially true in math. While Manual students’ raw scores on the PSAT and SAT tests they took last spring were still below the state and district average, Manual students made above-average progress year over year, as measured by the state’s median growth percentile.

Students who are behind need a median growth percentile above 50 to make progress toward catching up. Manual’s median growth percentile in math this past spring was 59. The percentile for students in the college-level math courses was a whopping 84, DeRemer said.

How did that happen?

“Because our math teacher is so phenomenal,” he said.

Manual High Principal Chris DeRemer talks to a student in the hallway, which has been decorated with the names of the neighborhoods where students come from.

Manual’s new school motto for students: ‘Expect Excellence’

Manual’s increased graduation rate — 91% of students graduating within six years of starting high school — and its high matriculation rate — 70% of graduates going onto college or a career training program — also helped propel its rating from red to yellow.

The rating doesn’t take daily attendance into account, but DeRemer said making sure students are in class has been key to Manual’s success. The school’s attendance rate rose from 77% in 2022-23 to 84% last year with the help of contests, gift card giveaways, and other tactics.

The school has more than 20 clubs, including a Black Student Alliance, a Dungeons and Dragons group, and a chess club run by an alumnus. But there are eligibility requirements for sports and other extracurricular activities, DeRemer said. If students don’t have an attendance rate of 85% or better, they can’t play on the team.

Manual has also worked to make the school more safe and welcoming. It has an abundance of mental health staff for a population of 350 students, including a full-time school nurse, a full-time school psychologist, two social workers, and a restorative practices dean, DeRemer said. It also has two part-time art therapists and a counselor who specializes in substance abuse.

Denver Broncos player Patrick Surtain II donated a new STEAM lab for science, engineering, technology, art, and math. Manual also has a “rap lab” with recording equipment and lessons about lyricism, made possible by a grant from the University of Colorado.

Manual also has fresh paint. The school is blanketed in Manual’s red and blue thunderbolt logo, and DeRemer recently added the names of neighborhoods where students come from — Whittier, Clayton, Cole, Five Points, and others — to the hallways and library. Every student gets a T-shirt with the Manual logo and a bracelet that says “Expect Excellence.”

“You have excellence in you that we expect to see every day,” DeRemer said of the meaning. “You come from Cole and you’re bilingual? That’s excellent. Show that off in the classroom.”

While DeRemer is celebrating the recent news, he acknowledges Manual still has work to do.

“We know it’s fragile,” DeRemer said. “Getting off the clock is a necessary step, but that doesn’t mean all our kids are winning. Until all our kids are winning, we have a lot of work to do.”

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

Colorado will temporarily lower SAT math score needed for graduation, while investigating a long-term plan

2024-09-11T21:48:33+00:00

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Colorado students for the next two years will be able to meet state graduation requirements with a lower score on the SAT math test.

The State Board of Education voted in favor of the temporary change on Wednesday. Staff from the Colorado Department of Education and many board members said the change isn’t a lowering of standards, but rather a response to changes to the SAT that seem to have been more significant than expected.

“I want to make sure we’re not negatively impacting Colorado students given we had some unusual results — not just in Colorado, but across the country,” said board President Rebecca McClellan.

In past years, students needed a 500 on the math portion to be able to use the math SAT test to meet graduation requirements. Wednesday’s vote will change the score to 480 for students graduating in 2024-25 and 2025-26.

The percentage of 11th graders who scored 500 on the math test dropped from 45% in 2023 to 39% in 2024. With the new score of 480, about 45.5% of the students who took the test in spring 2024 will be able to use the score to meet their graduation requirements in spring 2025, making the percentage comparable to past years.

The concern was that some students may have planned to use their scores from their SAT to meet graduation requirements, and may have unexpectedly gotten lower scores than expected based on taking the PSAT in their ninth and 10th grades. Those students, now as seniors, may have a smaller time frame to find an alternative way to meet state graduation requirements before May.

There were several changes to the SAT test last spring, including a new fully digital format and question and language changes. Joyce Zurkowski, the state department’s chief assessment officer, told the board there is some investigation into whether the questions on this year’s SAT were ultimately more advanced.

In Colorado, all 11th graders take the SAT, and students who meet a certain score can use that score to meet Colorado’s graduation requirement to show competency in math and English. Districts can offer students about a dozen ways to meet that requirement, such as taking advanced courses, concurrent enrollment classes, or industry certificates. While state officials don’t track how many students use each method, they believe the SAT is one of the more popular options.

Using the raw SAT scores, the state of Colorado also calculates how many students met state expectations in math and English language arts. The percentage of Colorado students meeting state expectations on the SAT math test dropped by 4.1 percentage points compared to last year. Similar drops were not seen in the English language arts portion of the test and so the state’s changes to the graduation cut scores are only for the math test.

Colorado PSAT and SAT 2024 scores: How did your school or district perform?

At the same time, the state will be working with higher education partners to identify what scores on this reformatted SAT actually correlate to postsecondary readiness to recommend the best passing score for the graduation requirement to use long-term.

State Board member Steve Durham said he was already inclined to think that changing the score was appropriate based on last month’s board discussion, but since then he got additional information about the other states that use the SAT for all 11th graders, including Connecticut, Indiana, Michigan, and West Virginia. He said he saw that they too reported similar significant decreases in the number of students meeting math expectations.

“Data now confirms the most likely reason for the difference in the outcome is due to a change in the test rather than a change in student performance,” Durham said. “Re-norming it for this purpose, at least for graduation, for a short period of time, is an appropriate thing to do.”

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

Colorado’s annual performance ratings show more schools, districts earning better marks

2024-09-10T16:58:44+00:00

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More Colorado schools and districts are earning higher marks on the state’s annual performance ratings, according to preliminary data published Tuesday.

The ratings, largely based on scores from standardized state tests administered every spring, improved but are not yet better than before the pandemic. The trend is similar to state test score data released by the Colorado Department of Education last month, which showed student achievement slowly recovering from declines after the pandemic disruptions of 2020.

Overall, the list of districts on the state’s accountability clock — the watchlist where districts land for low performance — has been cut in half from 22 to 11. Aurora Public Schools, one of the largest districts that had earned a low rating last year, has quickly bounced back and is off the list based on an improved rating for 2024.

And at the school level, 83% of schools earned the two top ratings of performance or improvement in 2024, compared to 78% in 2023.

The state uses the ratings to identify schools and districts with persistently low academic performance and provide them with more funding and scrutiny. By law, the State Board of Education must order schools and districts that have had more than five years of low ratings to undergo changes in an effort to improve student performance. Those changes could include closing a school or requiring a struggling district to merge with a better-performing one.

But in recent years, the State Board has backed off ordering more serious interventions. Instead, it has largely rubber-stamped schools’ and districts’ own improvement plans as long as they meet the parameters of the state’s accountability law.

Likelihood of improving is high, but some schools struggle

Among notable improvements, Denver’s Manual High School earned significantly higher points compared to last year and will be able to exit the state’s low-performance watchlist.

But a handful of chronically low-performing schools and districts continue to struggle. That includes Denver’s Lincoln High School, which entered the low-performance list at the same time as Manual.

Colorado’s accountability system places districts and schools on the accountability clock when they earn one of the lowest two performance ratings. If a district or school remains on that list for five years in a row, the state must step in and order an improvement plan. The state also provides more funding for schools on the clock, although officials on Tuesday said the need always exceeds the funding available.

Many of the schools and districts that end up on the clock are those with high numbers of Hispanic students, students from low-income families, or students with disabilities. But an audit in late 2022 found that overall the state’s system was still reasonable.

Still, new members on the State Board have sided with community members who criticize the state’s system as punitive and inequitable.

Although Colorado statute has not changed the state’s accountability system, State Board members more recently have taken a different approach of asking state officials to collaborate with districts and monitoring those schools and districts.

In 2022, the state had escalated and exhausted its options for Adams 14 by ordering reorganization for the district, which has been on the clock for more than 10 years. But, after community pushback, last fall the state backed down.

This year, ratings show student performance in Adams 14 has once again decreased, and the district this year earned the fewest points of all districts in the state. At the school level, each of the district’s schools earned fewer points on the state’s report card, compared to last year, and now three elementary schools — Alsup, Central, and Rose Hill — earned the lowest rating possible.

Behind Adams 14, which is now officially on “year 11″ of the clock, only one other school in the state has had as many low ratings: Risley International Academy of Innovation, a middle school in Pueblo 60. This year, Risley also continued to earn one of the lowest ratings in the state, although the school earned 40% of possible points on the report card, more points than the 38% it earned last year.

Among the large school districts in the state, most districts had stable numbers of schools on the clock, with some of their schools improving and others earning lower ratings and taking their place on the list. Jeffco Public Schools, however, has eight, or twice as many schools as last year, on the clock.

State officials say about 60% of schools that enter the clock will exit right away with additional support and focus.

In Aurora, Aurora Central Campus, formerly Aurora Central High School, continues to face low state ratings. Last year, the school had insufficient data to earn a score. This year, the school earned 49.2% of possible points — enough to earn a higher rating and start to exit the clock — but low test participation means the school will continue to earn a low rating for a 10th year.

Schools and districts now get a chance to appeal their ratings if they can present additional data to warrant a change. After considering appeals, the state will finalize the ratings later this fall.

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

How are students doing since COVID? Good luck finding out from your state’s school report card.

2024-09-05T09:02:00+00:00

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Test data from many sources suggest students are still behind where they were before the pandemic. But it would be pretty hard to figure that out from most states’ school report cards.

A new study from the Center on Reinventing Public Education — CRPE — graded these state report cards on how easy it was to find information about student achievement from before COVID to the present day, as well as on their general usability.

With a few notable exceptions, the center handed out pretty poor marks.

Just seven states — including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee — scored an A for how easy they make it to compare academic performance over time, and 21 received a D or an F. New York, New Jersey, and Colorado received a C, and New York was among the worst states for usability. Illinois and Indiana, in contrast, received high marks for overall usability but don’t make it easy enough to see change over time.

Even as much of the data paints a dire picture, survey data shows parents aren’t too worried about academic recovery. The lack of easily accessible information could be contributing to that complacency, said Morgan Polikoff, the study’s lead author and an education professor at the University of Southern California.

“We would all like to have moved past this and think things are back to where they were, but it’s just not true,” he said. “Achievement is still down from pre-COVID. Chronic absenteeism is still sky high.”

Polikoff added that states and others “need to give parents an accurate accounting of how their individual student is doing but also how schools are doing in general.”

For the center’s report, researchers set out to find information in each state about student achievement in English language arts, math, science, and social studies, as well as student growth — or the progress students made year over year — in English and math. They also searched for information about chronic absenteeism or regular attendance, high school graduation rates, and English learner proficiency.

They accessed state-issued school report cards via Google search, then tried to figure out if students were doing better or worse on these metrics than their pre-COVID counterparts.

The study found that many state websites make it difficult to see whether student performance is improving or getting worse, and by how much. This was true even for states that do a relatively good job presenting the most recent data.

Conversely, some states that make longitudinal data available also had websites that were tricky to navigate, especially for users who wanted to see how subgroups, such as Black or Hispanic students or students with disabilities, were doing over time.

This information was “findable with some ingenuity” on Tennessee’s website, CRPE’s report said. In Delaware, subgroup data and longitudinal data were each easy to find separately “but we could not find the intersection on the main webpage.” Michigan’s website was “tricky to navigate and sometimes slow to load.”

Researchers contrasted those states with Hawaii, which “has a beautiful, easy-to-operate data visualization tool that produces exceptionally clear graphs.” Pennsylvania and Oklahoma were also singled out for praise on usability, as well as for how easy they made it to see change over time.

Polikoff said he got the idea for the analysis, which is part of CRPE’s annual State of the Student report, as he was looking for information about student performance with a different project in mind.

“I have a Ph.D., and I’ve been doing this for 15 years,” he said. “If it’s this hard for me, what’s it like for a parent or an advocate?”

Polikoff acknowledged that many parents won’t have the time or the inclination to seek out detailed information about the performance of students other than their own. But the persistence and prominence of school information in real estate listings, the popularity of school ratings sites such as GreatSchools, and parent participation in public school choice programs all suggest there is demand for information about how well schools serve students, he said.

The report authors recommend that states use more uniform systems for presenting student data and use other states that already do a good job as models. The federal government could also provide templates rather than leaving each state to figure it out on their own.

“There is no reason to have 51 completely different models of report cards, and many of the most unusable report cards were from smaller or more rural states that might not have the internal capacity to create more appealing interfaces,” the authors wrote.

They also urged states to do more user testing of their websites and to be more transparent about the state of academic recovery, even when it’s not good.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado might ease SAT graduation requirement after big drops in high school math scores

2024-08-30T01:28:03+00:00

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Colorado next month may lower the passing score on high school math tests many students use to meet graduation requirements, the latest potential fallout from test scores that fell dramatically this year.

Without such a change, it’s possible graduation rates could drop for the Class of 2025, Colorado Department of Education officials told the State Board of Education on Thursday.

To graduate from high school in Colorado, students must show proficiency in English and math. Using SAT scores is the most common way that districts offer students to meet that requirement, since the test is already administered to students in their junior year; ninth and 10th graders take the PSAT. But officials couldn’t say how many students were relying on the test result to meet the graduation requirements this year.

The proposed change the State Board is considering would lower the minimum passing score on the math portion of the SAT from 500 to 480. Without that change, officials say the percentage of students who can use their SAT score to meet graduation requirements will drop from 45% in 2023 to 39% with these results. That means about 3,400 students might be looking for a last-minute alternative to meet graduation requirements before May.

If the board agrees to lower the passing score to 480, it would mean 45.5% of students who took the test could use the score to meet their graduation requirements, roughly the same as last year.

State Board members started Thursday’s discussion hesitant about the idea of lowering the bar for graduation, but ultimately their comments leaned in favor of the change. Education department staff are continuing to gather more data about the impact, and will ask the State Board to vote on the proposal next month.

Joyce Zurkowski, the Colorado Department of Education’s chief assessment officer, has been sharing concerns about the SAT scores with the State Board for months as preliminary results were previewed by state school officials. Final school and district level results were just released Thursday.

Compared to 2023, the percentage of students who met or exceeded expectations on math tests dropped for students in grades 9-11. (Colorado doesn’t test 12th grade students.) Scores fell across all student subgroups.

Colorado PSAT and SAT 2024 scores: How did your school or district perform?

Among 11th graders, the percentage meeting expectations dropped to 31.1% this year from 35.2% in 2023, and it’s down from 39% in 2019. In the reading and writing portion of the tests, some student subgroups’ scores improved; officials are not considering changing the required passing score — 470 — for that portion of the test.

Zurkowski has said that while it is possible some of the drops in math scores reflect drops in learning and student abilities, it’s likely that some of the decline is due to changes to the SAT, which went fully digital for the first time last year. It’s not possible to distinguish how much of the change in scores is due to each factor, she said.

Students who were in 11th grade last spring and took the SAT for the first time digitally might have been expecting that their performance on the PSAT the previous year would be predictive of their scores on the SAT in 11th.

“They were, I’m going to suggest, surprised when that prediction did not work out the way they were expecting it to work,” Zurkowski said. “I would encourage you to keep that in mind”

Lisa Escarcega, a State Board member, said the 3,400 students who could be forced to find an alternative way to meet graduation requirements if the board doesn’t lower the cut score is a “significant” number.

“It’s much larger than I thought,” Escarcega said.

Instead of reaching certain SAT scores, students can meet graduation requirements to show mastery in math or English by earning passing scores on certain concurrent enrollment classes, doing capstone projects, or earning specific industry certificates. There are also a number of other tests students can take.

Not all districts offer all options however, and state officials worry that some students’ options now could be limited.

The state may also consider taking more time to work with the Colorado Commission on Higher Education and institutions of higher education to come up with a new cut score that represents the same level of proficiency as previous cut scores. But officials said that may take years.

Only around a dozen other states use the SAT for all students as an annual test the way Colorado does. But education department staff will share data next month on how Colorado’s score drops compare to those other states.

Colorado officials also spent the summer evaluating whether the lower high school SAT scores would be valid for use in this year’s school and district ratings. The state ultimately determined they will be used. The preliminary ratings will be out next month.

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

Resultados de las pruebas PSAT y SAT 2024: ¿Cómo le fue a tu escuela o distrito?

2024-08-29T17:54:21+00:00

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Colorado publicó el jueves los resultados a nivel escuela y distrito de la Prueba Preliminar de Aptitudes Escolásticas y la Prueba de Aptitudes Escolásticas (PSAT/SAT, por sus siglas en inglés) que estudiantes de 9.º, 10.º y 11.º grado tomaron esta primavera.

Los nuevos datos proporcionan una perspectiva más específica que los resultados de las pruebas estatales publicados la semana pasada.

A nivel estado, los resultados de matemáticas en la PSAT de los estudiantes de 9.º y 10.º grado y en la SAT delos estudiantes de 11.º grado bajaron entre el año pasado y este año. Por ejemplo, el porcentaje de estudiantes de 9.º grado que alcanzó o superó los estándares estatales de preparación universitaria en matemáticas disminuyó del 47 por ciento en 2023 al 40 por ciento esta primavera.

El desempeño en matemáticas este año sigue estando muy por debajo de los niveles prepandémicos. Representantes del estado advirtieron que algunas de las disminuciones quizás se deban al nuevo formato de las pruebas. La SAT se realizó totalmente en línea por primera vez esta primavera, y la composición de las preguntas de matemáticas también cambió.

Los resultados a nivel estatal en lectura y escritura fueron un poco más diversos, pero por lo general están avanzando positivamente. El porcentaje de estudiantes de 9.º y 10.º grado que alcanzaron el estándar estatal aumentó alrededor de 1.5 puntos porcentuales, mientras que los resultados de los estudiantes de 11.º grado disminuyeron la misma cantidad.

Resultados de la prueba CMAS de Colorado 2024: ve cómo le fue a tu escuela o distrito

Los resultados de 10.º grado en lectura y escritura ahora ya superaron los niveles prepandémicos: el 66 por ciento de los estudiantes de 10.º grado alcanzaron o superaron el estándar estatal de preparación universitaria esta primavera, en comparación con el 64.5 por ciento en 2023 y el 64 por ciento en 2019, el último examen antes que COVID-19 causara la clausura de los edificios escolares.

Sin embargo, sigue habiendo grandes brechas en los resultados de las pruebas de los estudiantes con base en el grupo racial, los ingresos de la familia y otros factores, como si un estudiante está aprendiendo inglés o tiene una discapacidad.

Alrededor del estado, los estudiantes de 11.º grado que reúnen requisitos para recibir comidas escolares gratis o aprecio reducido, un indicador de ingresos bajos en la familia, obtuvieron un resultado combinado promedio de 878 en la SAT. Mientras tanto, los estudiantes que no reúnen requisitos para recibir comidas subsidiadas obtuvieron un resultado promedio de 1041.

El resultado combinado más alto que un estudiante puede obtener en la SAT es 1600.

Entre los distritos escolares con más de 1,000 estudiantes que tienen una gran proporción de estudiantes de color, los resultados de la PSAT y SAT en los distritos de Mapleton, Sheridan, Pueblo City 60, Weld Re-8 y Westminster se mantuvieron por debajo de los niveles prepandémicos.

El desempeño en el distrito más grande del estado, las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, también se mantuvo por debajo delos niveles prepandémicos. Pero a diferencia de la mayoría de los distritos en esta categoría, los resultados de Denver se mantuvieron igual o tienen una tendencia a la alza en comparación con el año pasado—con la excepción de matemáticas en 9º grado, en la cual se observó una reducción.

En otros distritos grandes que atienden a muchos estudiantes de color, algunos resultados de la PSAT y SAT ahora son más altos que antes de la pandemia. En las Escuelas Públicas de Aurora, por ejemplo, el desempeño en lectura y escritura de la PSAT tanto entre estudiantes de 9.º como de 10.º grado superó los niveles prepandémicos.

En el Distrito Escolar 2 de Harrison enColorado Springs, los resultados en matemáticas de 11.º grado fueron más altos esta primavera que los resultados en 2019, igual que los resultados de lectura y escritura para 9.º, 10.º y 11.º grado.

Nuestra gráfica interactiva te permite encontrar los resultados de la PSAT y SAT de tu escuela y distrito, y compararlas con los promedios a nivel estatal tanto en matemáticas como en lectura y escritura. La gráfica muestra el porcentaje de estudiantes que tomaron la prueba y alcanzaron o superaron el estándar estatal de preparación universitaria en cada materia.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

Melanie Asmar es la corresponsal jefa de Chalkbeat Colorado. Comunícate con Melanie por correo electrónico a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado PSAT and SAT 2024 scores: How did your school or district perform?

2024-08-29T17:01:15+00:00

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Colorado released school- and district-level results Thursday from PSAT and SAT tests taken by ninth, 10th, and 11th grade students this past spring.

The new data provides a more granular view than the statewide test scores released last week.

Statewide, math results dropped on the ninth and 10th grade PSAT and the 11th grade SAT from last year to this year. For instance, the percentage of 9th graders at or above the state’s college readiness benchmark in math fell to 40% this past spring from 47% in 2023.

This year’s math performance remains far below pre-pandemic levels. State officials cautioned that some of the decrease might be attributed to a new testing format. The SAT was fully online for the first time this spring, and the makeup of the math questions also changed.

Statewide reading and writing results were more mixed, but generally moving in a positive direction. The percentage of 9th and 10th graders meeting the state benchmark rose about 1½ percentage points, while 11th grade results decreased by the same amount.

Colorado’s CMAS test results for 2024: See how your school or district performed

Tenth grade reading and writing results have now surpassed pre-pandemic levels: 66% of 10th graders met or exceeded the state’s college readiness benchmark this past spring, compared with 64.5% in 2023 and 64.9% in 2019, the last exam before COVID-19 shuttered school buildings.

However, big test score gaps remain between students based on race, family income, and other factors, such as whether students are learning English or have a disability.

Statewide, 11th graders who qualify for free or reduced-price school meals, an indicator of low family income, earned an average combined score of 878 on the SAT, while students who do not qualify for subsidized meals earned an average score of 1041.

The highest combined score a student can earn on the SAT is 1600.

Among school districts with more than 1,000 students that serve a large proportion of students of color, the PSAT and SAT results in the Mapleton, Sheridan, Pueblo City 60, Weld Re-8, and Westminster districts remained below pre-pandemic levels.

Performance in the state’s largest district, Denver Public Schools, also remained below pre-pandemic levels. But unlike most districts in this category, Denver’s results were either flat or trending upwards from last year — with the exception of 9th grade math, which saw a drop.

In other large districts that serve many students of color, some PSAT and SAT results are now higher than they were before the pandemic. In Aurora Public Schools, for example, the reading and writing PSAT performance of both 9th and 10th graders surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

In Harrison School District 2 in Colorado Springs, 11th grade math results were higher this past spring than they were in 2019, as were ninth, 10th, and 11th grade reading and writing results.

Our searchable table below allows you to look up the PSAT and SAT performance for your school and district, and compare it to the statewide averages in both math and reading and writing. The table shows the percentage of tested students who met or exceeded the state’s college readiness benchmark in each subject.

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

State test scores are out for NYC families, but broader city data yet to be released

2024-08-20T20:19:52+00:00

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New York City families: You can now view your student’s test scores from state exams last year, but you’ll have to wait for the broader city data.

The assessment scores were sent to schools just weeks before the start of the new year. The preliminary data can be helpful to schools and districts as they prepare for the start of the academic year, informing instructional decisions and learning plans for individual students.

Each spring, schools administer the standardized exams in reading and math to third through eighth graders. Fifth and eighth graders also take science exams. The test scores offer one look at how students are faring.

Statewide, 46% of traditional public and charter school 3-8 grade students scored proficient or above in English last year, meaning they demonstrated a performance level of 3 (proficient) or 4 (exceeds proficiency). Meanwhile 52% did so in math, according to the preliminary data. For science exams, 35% of fifth and eighth grade students scored proficient or above.

State officials have yet to release overall data for the city, and state figures still need to be verified and are subject to change. The public release of finalized data is anticipated by November, officials added.

“Our goal is to provide teachers, administrators, and parents with as much information as possible about their students’ performance and make it available as quickly as possible to improve classroom instruction,” the state’s Education Department said in a news release.

The 2024 state exams were only the second batch to follow the implementation of the state’s Next Generation Learning Standards, which were established after revisions from the controversial Common Core. They also saw schools across the city and state more widely make use of computer-based testing, with all of the city’s fifth and eighth graders swapping out paper exams for the digital model. That change came as part of the state’s multiyear phase-in of computer-based testing.

Families can view their students’ test scores in their NYC Schools Accounts. (To set up their accounts, families need their child’s student identification number as well as an account creation code from their child’s school.)

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org

Colorado 2024 CMAS test results show continued recovery and math gains

2024-08-20T15:40:05+00:00

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While younger Colorado students have now surpassed pre-pandemic scores on the state’s standardized math tests, the math scores of students in most other grades still lag behind, according to results from spring 2024 tests released Tuesday.

In literacy, most of the state’s students are still not scoring as high as they did before the pandemic shuttered school buildings, though they are catching up.

But as in previous years, some student groups continue to struggle more than others, including students who are still learning English as a new language.

The data released Tuesday were average test scores encompassing all students statewide. School and district level scores won’t be released until next week.

“We are encouraged by the continued improvement of our students since the pandemic disrupted learning,” said Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova. “We continue, however, to see troubling and persistent achievement gaps across student groups. It is not enough to see growth for some Colorado students — we need to ensure that every child is getting the support they need to be successful.”

In Colorado, students in third through eighth grades take the math and English language arts CMAS, or the Colorado Measures of Academic Success test. In high school, students in ninth through 11th grade take a PSAT/SAT test to evaluate English and math. Students also take a science CMAS test in fifth, eighth, and 11th grade.

Among the bright spots are the CMAS scores for math. Students in elementary grades now have higher rates of meeting and exceeding expectations than students did in 2019, before the pandemic. These students were in preschool, kindergarten, and first grade as schools shut down in 2020 for the pandemic.

Among the middle school grades, rates of students who met or exceeded expectations aren’t yet higher than in 2019, but the rates have continued to improve each year at sixth and seventh grade, but not at eighth grade.

For high school students taking the new digital PSAT/SAT, the percentage of students meeting expectations on math tests fell significantly including up to a 7 percentage point drop for ninth grade students where just 39.5% met expectations this year, down from 46.5% just last year.

Part of the reason may be a new digital format for the SAT. The state had to do further analysis to ensure that the tests were still similar enough to previous years so that growth scores could be calculated. Ultimately, the state cautions that this year’s low math SAT scores are likely due at least in part to the new test format, but said it was still fair to calculate growth scores and use the test results in annual school quality ratings later this year.

Colorado has invested in math learning in the last couple of years using COVID relief funding. Among other work, the state offered a free math computer program for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and extended it in 2024-25, saying that 65% of schools were using the program.

When it comes to language arts tests, 42% of third graders met or exceeded state expectations, up from 39.9% last year, higher than the 41.3% who did in 2019. But the rate of fourth grade students meeting expectations on the CMAS language arts test dropped by 1.8 percentage points, the largest drop by grade level compared to last year.

Sixth, seventh and eighth graders all had slightly higher rates of students meeting expectations on language arts tests compared to 2023, and for sixth graders the improvement also now brings the rate to better than it was in 2019. In 2024, 44% of sixth graders met expectations on language arts tests, compared to 43.6% in 2019.

Gaps widen as some students struggle to recover

Similar to previous years, the largest test score gap was between fifth grade students who are learning English as a new language and those who are not.

This year, only 6.3% of multilingual fifth grade students met or exceeded expectations on the language arts test, compared to 52.6% of students who are not English learners — a gap of 46.3 percentage points. That’s a larger gap than the 45.7 percentage point gap in 2023, and in 2019, when 9.5% of multilingual students met or exceeded standards on the same test compared to 53.9% of students who aren’t English learners.

Last year, state officials were concerned about the lack of progress multilingual students and said they need support. But officials with the Colorado Department of Education also said the legislature would need to step in to pass a law to offer more academic support, and no such legislation passed.

In the most recent session, lawmakers did approve changes to the school funding formula that would give districts more money for the English learners they enroll starting this fall. For the 2023-24 school year, they approved special onetime funding for school districts that were receiving an influx of new students from out of the country, because many of students were arriving after the state’s official count day, which is used to calculate how much money schools get.

And although many of those students were English learners, schools said they needed the funds for basics in some cases like new desks in overcrowded classrooms or dedicated staff.

State officials also said in the spring that many of the new immigrant students would be exempt from taking these state tests under broader rules. Students who are identified as new to the country and have no or limited proficiency in English were already exempt from taking standardized English reading and writing tests for at least their first year of school. But this year, the state also exempted some of them from taking the math or science tests.

Colorado allows some third and fourth graders to take the language arts test in Spanish, but migrant students were only eligible to do so if they did not have a record of interrupted schooling.

This spring 17.2% of third graders who took the Spanish language arts test met or exceeded expectations, down from 18.7% who did last year and down from 27.5% in 2019.

Cynthia Trinidad-Sheahan, an advocate and advisor with the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education, said that administrators and many of the educators working with multilingual students continue to be underprepared to support the students and help them make gains.

“Districts and the state are still not doing enough,” she said.

Looking at Colorado’s growth calculations, which compare student test scores to peers with similar test history, almost all students of color had growth scores below 50. Generally, state officials say that students who are behind need a growth score of more than 50 to make progress.

Students with disabilities, migrant students, and Black students taking English language arts tests had some of the lowest growth scores this year of 46 or lower. White students had an average growth score of 52 on math and on language arts.

In many areas, the state now sees growth scores returning to what they were before the pandemic began, but now the key is to maintain or continue improving growth “to rebound fully,” according to the state press release.

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

IREAD scores rise slightly before tougher reading retention law for 3rd graders kicks in

2024-08-14T16:04:03+00:00

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Student proficiency on the state’s elementary reading test rose slightly in 2024, the last year before schools must hold back third graders under Indiana’s revised retention law if they don’t pass the test or meet a few exemptions.

This year, 82.5% of third graders passed the IREAD-3 compared with just under 82% of third graders in 2023. It’s the largest single-year increase since IREAD started in 2013, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

The department said the scores prove that Indiana’s push for literacy instruction backed by the science of reading, a large body of research on how kids learn to read that emphasizes explicit phonics instruction, is getting results. But this year’s scores still do not match the pre-pandemic proficiency rate — in 2019, 87.3% of third graders passed the test.

“The pandemic only helped to highlight the critical need for literacy support,” Lynn Schemel, the department’s chief academic officer, said Wednesday at the State Board of Education Meeting. “Since the pandemic, our scores have continued to increase.”

Under the science of reading mandate, school districts and charter schools have adopted new curriculums. Schools also had the option of joining the Indiana Literacy Cadre to receive professional development aligned with the new state standards. And preparation programs for Indiana teacher candidates have started emphasizing science of reading concepts.

This year, IREAD scores at schools that opted into the literacy cadre rose by 2.5 percentage points on average, compared with an increase of 0.2 percentage points on average at schools that did not join the cadre, according to the department.

“What we’re looking at right here is an outstanding thing,” Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said. “It’s unbelievably exciting because [the literacy cadre] moved the needle significantly more.”

The mandate for schools to use instruction that relied on the science of reading was signed into law last year by Gov. Eric Holcomb. In 2022, Holcomb set a goal that 95% of third graders would achieve proficiency on the state’s elementary reading exam by 2027.

Next year, if third graders don’t pass and don’t qualify for a “good cause exemption,” such as having a disability or being an English learner, they will not be able to move on to the next grade under the retention law enacted this year.

Before the law, state data showed that thousands of third graders who were not reading proficiently and did not meet exemption criteria were “socially promoted” to fourth grade. Last year, nearly three-quarters of the students who didn’t pass the IREAD-3 came from low-income households.

In 2022, the state let schools administer the test to second graders to identify students in need of additional literacy instruction. The department said early intervention for second graders not reading proficiently in 2023 has been critical in the gains seen this year.

“What an opportunity we have to turn that corner even more and get a higher percentage of students who are at-risk, passing,” Jenner said.

Black students’ IREAD scores show notable increase

Although student improvement on the IREAD has been sluggish at best in the last several years, some groups are registering notable gains compared to the state’s overall performance.

This year, 68.6% of Black students passed the IREAD. That’s an increase of 3.2 percentage points from last year and a 6.6 percentage-point increase since 2021. Students with disabilities and students receiving free or reduced-price meals also improved, with gains of 2.2 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points, respectively.

White and Asian students had proficiency rates of 88.3% and 86.3%, both marginal increases from last year’s exam.

Not every student group’s scores increased from last year, however. Scores for Hispanic students and English learners decreased by 0.3 and 0.4 percentage points, respectively. In 2024, 68.6% of Hispanic students passed the exam, while 63.6% of English learners passed.

“That’s an area that we’ve called out multiple times, but we have to continue to focus on our English language learners and our Hispanic students,” Jenner said. “Just so the board knows, at the Department of Education, we’re going to take a deeper dive into that as well.”

Haley Miller is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Haley at hmiller@chalkbeat.org.

2024 ILEARN scores: Indiana students show slight improvement in reading, slight drop in math

2024-07-17T17:31:18+00:00

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The 2024 ILEARN scores released Wednesday showed slight changes from last year’s scores.

Statewide test scores for all Indiana students in grades 3 to 8 show less than a half of a percentage point change in students proficient or better in English language arts, math, and the subjects combined.

Scores went up slightly for the subjects combined and for English, but down slightly for math.

In 2024, 30.8% of students in third through eighth across the state were proficient or better in both the English and math sections of the state assessment. That’s 0.2 percentage points more than 30.6% in 2023.

By subject, 41% of students were proficient or better in English language arts, and 40.7% were proficient or better in math. That’s a small increase — less than half a percentage point — in English from 40.7% in 2023 and a small decrease in math from 40.9% last year.

Despite the slight change from 2023, scores are up since 2021, which the state considers to be the baseline year for the test due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2024 scores are up 0.5 and 3.8 percentage points in English and math respectively compared to 2021. For the combined proficiency, this year’s rate is up 2.2 percentage points from 28.6% in 2021.

2023 ILEARN scores show Indiana students improving in math, but stagnating in reading

However, results remain below pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, the first year of the ILEARN assessment, around 37% of students scored proficient or better in both English and math and roughly 48% of students scored proficient in at least one of the sections.

“We have work to do,” Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said, referring to improving the ILEARN assessment so teachers and families can help struggling students earlier. “We know that. We’re going to continue to roll up our sleeves as educators.”

She noted that in the 2024-25 school year, the Indiana Department of Education is piloting a checkpoint-based ILEARN — an alternative to a single high-stakes exam at the end of the year — to make the data more actionable. More than 70% of schools opted into the pilot program to have ILEARN be three checkpoints throughout the year and a shortened summative assessment at the end of the year, per the Indiana Department of Education.

This approach aims to have more data about student learning available throughout the school year for students, families, and teachers to use instead of waiting for the data at the end of the year, per IDOE. The change will be fully rolled out in the 2025-26 school year.

This year’s results also come amid an ongoing shift in how Indiana teaches reading.

Per a 2023 law, schools must adopt a literacy curriculum aligned to the science of reading by the 2024-25 school year. Many have already adopted these standards, as well as hired literacy coaches whose job is to train existing staff in reading science principles. But more changes are to come, including a requirement that teachers who hold an elementary license earn a new literacy endorsement.

At Indianapolis Public Schools, proficiency rates dropped from 2023 with English proficiency down 1.5 percentage points and math down 1.8 percentage points. Overall, 13.5% of students were proficient in both subjects, a drop from 14.8% in 2023.

Meanwhile, Brownsburg schools in neighboring Hendricks County had the highest percentage of students who tested proficient again this year at 62.6%.

See how students at your school did on the ILEARN test using the table below:

Black students show greatest ELA gains; other student groups’ test scores change very slightly

By demographics, certain groups saw slight score increases, often within or just over a percentage point.

At the State Board of Education meeting on Wednesday, board member Scott Bess commended the modest improvements but said the board can’t be satisfied with one- and two-point increases.

“Kudos to everyone who’s working hard to get those increases,” Bess said. “But it’s not enough. We’ve got to really have a sense of urgency.”

Black students’ proficiency in English language arts and math combined went up from 10.9% in 2023 to 11.7%. Those students also gained in English language arts by 1.2 percentage points, the largest increase by student race.

Both Hispanic students’ and Asian students’ scores changed marginally, the former decreasing by 0.1 and the latter increasing by 0.2 percentage points. English language learners’ proficiency increased by 0.3 percentage points.

2023 IPS ILEARN scores improve some, but remain below independent charters

The overall proficiency of students who qualify for free or reduced lunch improved from 17.6% to 18.1%.

Looking at grade level, seventh graders had the highest year-to-year increase in English language arts with 2.3 percentage points. Fourth graders also had a bump at 1.5 percentage points. Since 2021, English proficiency has increased for grades four to seven.

Although most grades showed less proficiency from 2023 to 2024 in math, math proficiency has increased across all grades since 2021. Seventh graders saw an increase by 1 percentage point from 2023 to 2024.

SAT scores continue to decline

The Indiana Department of Education also released SAT results Wednesday. The number of high school juniors at the benchmark for reading/writing and math was about 24%, a decrease of 4.4 percentage points compared to last year, continuing a two-year downward trend.

IDOE Chief Academic Officer Lynn Schemel said scores also decreased nationally, which she attributed to the challenges of hybrid learning faced by this cohort during the pandemic and the SAT’s switch to an adaptive assessment, meaning questions become more or less difficult depending on how the student is performing.

She added that chronic absenteeism also leads students to dramatically underperform on the exam, based on data from the last two years.

“In the year prior, as a grade 11 student, those students who were chronically absent underperformed their peers by 24.7 and 23.6 percentage points, demonstrating a need to focus on student apathy as we consider our high school redesign efforts,” Schemel said.

Aleksandra Appleton and MJ Slaby contributed to this article.

Haley Miller is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Haley at hmiller@chalkbeat.org.

“I cannot disentangle those changes in terms of what caused those changes,” said Joyce Zurkowski, the Colorado Department of Education’s chief assessment officer. “Some of that is indeed due to changes in student performance, but some of that is due to a change in test.”

The SAT is going digital. Here’s what to know.

In the lower grades, which take the state’s CMAS test, the results don’t show students struggling as much. Among third through sixth grade students, the percent meeting or exceeding math standards is now at or above the 2019 pre-pandemic rates.

But eighth grade CMAS math scores are still behind. In 2019, 36.9% of eighth graders met or exceeded math standards. In 2024, preliminary data shows just 32.9% did, a slight increase compared to 32.7% in 2023.

Apart from the changes to the PSAT/SAT, officials are also looking at how an increase in the number of students new to the country this year could also have affected the average scores.

This spring, the state exempted more students than usual from taking the tests, but new immigrant students who did not have interrupted schooling were still expected to take math and science tests, with accommodations. Their scores will not count for school ratings but could be affecting the state’s overall test averages.

State officials are auditing the data to finalize it and are studying if it can be used in growth calculations and for other purposes in annual school ratings. An update about the findings might come later this month.

State officials said that other states are also finding significant score decreases with the new PSAT/SAT, but not all states use the test for all students or for accountability purposes.

In the meantime, as students are receiving their own scores, state officials want students and families to know the changes to the test itself could be playing a role.

“So, 11th grade students: if your senior sibling is giving you a hard time because they scored better than you on math, tell them to go take the new assessment and then you can have the conversation,” Zurkowski said.

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

Este año 20 escuelas de Newark salen del estatus de bajo rendimiento

2024-03-25T20:08:56+00:00

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Más de la mitad de las escuelas públicas de Newark ya no están designadas como de bajo rendimiento o que necesitan apoyo luego de una revisión estatal de las escuelas de alta pobreza.

Este año, 20 escuelas de Newark salieron de las designaciones estatales para escuelas que necesitaban apoyo debido al bajo rendimiento de los estudiantes, entre otros criterios. Entre ellas se encontraban la escuela secundaria Weequahic y la escuela primaria Rafael Hernández. Ambas salieron de una de las designaciones más bajas otorgadas a escuelas que necesitan apoyo recurrente, según el superintendente Roger León, quien anunció las designaciones de escuelas durante una reunión de la junta el mes pasado.

Las escuelas se unieron a una lista de más de otras 30 escuelas que no recibieron una designación este año.

Aunque ha sido una mejora con respecto a los últimos años, el distrito se mantiene por debajo de la tasa de graduación y los puntajes de competencia promedio del estado en las pruebas estandarizadas. Siete escuelas de Newark siguen necesitando apoyo estatal para mejorar el rendimiento estudiantil el próximo año escolar. La meta del distrito es que el número de escuelas apoyadas por el estado oscile desde “un número pequeño hasta cero”, dijo León durante la reunión.

Según la Ley Every Student Succeeds, conocida por su acrónimo ESSA, Nueva Jersey debe garantizar que todos los estudiantes tengan acceso a una educación equitativa y de alta calidad. Las pautas federales establecen requisitos mínimos para medir e informar el desempeño escolar y requieren que los estados identifiquen las escuelas con el desempeño más bajo.

Las escuelas que necesitan asistencia reciben fondos federales destinados a ayudar a mejorar el desarrollo de los estudiantes de menor rendimiento. También se puede identificar que las escuelas de alta pobreza necesitan apoyo adicional a través del programa Título I. Todas las escuelas de Newark califican para el Título I.

Nueva Jersey considera una variedad de factores al identificar las escuelas que necesitan apoyo, incluido el rendimiento académico, el crecimiento académico de las escuelas primarias y secundarias, las tasas de graduación de la escuela secundaria, el dominio del idioma inglés y el ausentismo crónico. Luego, el estado designa una puntuación.

El año pasado, el estado analizó datos de los años escolares 2018-19 y 2021-22 e identificó 25 escuelas públicas de Newark que necesitaban apoyo. El estado exigió que el distrito redactara un plan de acción e involucrara a la comunidad para ayudar a identificar y abordar los desafíos escolares.

Este año, siete escuelas ingresaron a una nueva posición estatal o permanecieron bajo la misma designación, un cambio significativo con respecto a la revisión estatal del año pasado. Durante la revisión de este año, el estado analizó los datos del año escolar 2022-23, un momento en el que los puntajes de las pruebas estatales de las Escuelas Públicas de Newark aumentaron 2 puntos porcentuales tanto en matemáticas como en artes del lenguaje inglés, lo que apunta a la lenta recuperación académica de los estudiantes después de la pandemia.

La pandemia tuvo un efecto devastador en el rendimiento de los estudiantes y la salud mental, particularmente entre los estudiantes más vulnerables de Newark, incluidos los estudiantes de inglés y los estudiantes con discapacidades. Los puntajes de artes del lenguaje inglés de los estudiantes de tercer grado se mantuvieron en 19% la primavera pasada, lo que generó preocupación entre los defensores que consideran ese grado un año crítico para el éxito a largo plazo.

Dos escuelas, las escuelas primarias Grover Cleveland y Thirteenth Avenue, tuvieron un desempeño igual o inferior al 5% más bajo de las escuelas de Título I, lo que significa que ingresarán al “estatus integral” para el próximo año. El año pasado, la escuela Thirteenth Avenue salió de ese estado. Las escuelas secundarias ingresan al estado integral cuando tienen una tasa de graduación del 67% o menos.

El próximo año, Barringer High School saldrá del “estado integral II”, una designación para escuelas que requieren apoyo intensivo nuevamente y no cumplieron con los criterios estatales para salir de la categoría. La escuela secundaria entró en “estado de objetivo adicional”, lo que significa que un grupo de estudiantes en esa escuela tiene “consistentemente un rendimiento inferior”.

Barringer ofrece un programa de educación especial para estudiantes con discapacidades de conducta, y aproximadamente el 48% de los estudiantes de Barringer son estudiantes de inglés, según los datos estatales de inscripción de otoño de 2022-23. Natasha Pared, directora de Barringer, era directora de la escuela primaria Rafael Hernández, que abandonó la designación estatal este año.

“Así que tenemos confianza en que ella podrá hacer lo mismo aquí en Barringer”, afirmó León durante la reunión de la junta escolar de febrero.

Las escuelas primarias de Chancellor Avenue y Sussex Avenue continuarán con el “estado de objetivo adicional”, mientras que la escuela primaria Quitman Street y la escuela secundaria Malcolm X Shabazz continuarán con el estado de “integral II”.

Quitman ofrece un programa bilingüe y de educación especial para estudiantes con autismo desde kindergarten hasta octavo grado.

Shabazz también ofrece un programa de educación especial para estudiantes con discapacidades de conducta. En los últimos años, la escuela ha visto una disminución en la inscripción, dificultades en el desempeño de los estudiantes y desafíos de seguridad. En 2022, Shabazz informó una tasa de graduación del 64.2%, en comparación con la tasa estatal del 90%, según los datos del informe de desempeño escolar. Este otoño lanzará un nuevo programa bilingüe para estudiantes de noveno y décimo grado.

En total, 36 escuelas no fueron identificadas para ningún estatus y 20 escuelas salieron del estatus integral, según la revisión estatal de este año. Las escuelas que salieron de una designación estatal este año deben redactar un plan de sostenibilidad, que detalla cómo las escuelas continuarán apoyando el rendimiento académico de los estudiantes.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por El Latino Newspaper, 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.

This translation was provided by El Latino Newspaper, 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 originally written in English by Chalkbeat Newark and is republished under a special content sharing agreement through the NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service.

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

Colorado will allow some of this year’s new migrant students to skip state tests

2024-03-22T22:39:54+00:00

Some students who are new to the U.S. and enrolled in Colorado schools after the official October count will not have to take any standardized tests this spring.

That’s according to new guidance issued recently by the Colorado Department of Education.

The department changed the guidance as school districts are seeing unprecedented numbers of new students who are new to the country. Teachers have described various challenges they’ve faced trying to educate migrant students, and the students are unlikely to do well on standardized state tests given in English. As of February, the Denver, Aurora, Cherry Creek, Greeley, Adams 12, Jeffco, and Mapleton districts told Chalkbeat they had enrolled more than 5,600 newcomer students after October count.

Denver Public School leaders told their school board this week that in their case, the majority of students new to the country will fall into that category to be exempt from testing.

Colorado students who are identified as new to the country and have no or limited proficiency in English already are exempt from taking standardized English reading and writing tests for at least their first year of school. Before the new guidance, they were expected to take standardized math and science tests with accommodations.

This spring, if students are new to the country, have no or little English fluency, enrolled after October count, and had limited or interrupted schooling before arriving, they can also skip the math and science tests.

Limited or interrupted schooling includes not attending school for six consecutive school calendar months prior to Colorado enrollment or having two or more years of missed schooling compared to similarly aged students in the U.S. Students who had limited school options in their home country because of war, civil unrest, or needing to travel a long distance to an available school could also qualify for that designation.

Students who have not had interrupted schooling will still be expected to take math and science tests with accommodations. Their participation will count toward overall participation rates, but their scores will not be factored into school ratings for state or federal accountability systems.

Colorado tests students in third through 11th grades. CMAS English and math tests are given to students in third through eighth grade. Science tests are only given to students in fifth, eighth, and 11th grades. In high school, students take the PSAT in ninth and tenth grades, and the SAT in 11th grade.

Families can always opt students out of tests.

In Colorado, this year’s spring testing window begins April 8, after most districts come back from spring break.

Reporter Ann Schimke contributed to this report.

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

20 Newark schools exit state comprehensive, targeted status this year

2024-03-14T16:52:05+00:00

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More than half of Newark’s public schools are no longer designated as underperforming or in need of support following a state review of high-poverty schools.

This year, 20 Newark schools moved out of state designations for schools in need of support due to low student performance, among other criteria. Among those were Weequahic High School and Rafael Hernandez Elementary School. Both exited one of the lowest designations given to schools in need of recurring support, according to Superintendent Roger León, who announced the school designations during a board meeting last month.

The schools joined a list of more than 30 other schools that did not receive a designation this year.

Although an improvement over past years, the district remains under the state’s average graduation rate and proficiency scores on standardized tests. Seven Newark schools continue to need state support to raise student achievement next school year.

The district’s goal is to have the number of state-supported schools range from “small to zero,” said León during the meeting.

Under the Every Student Succeeds Act, known by its acronym ESSA, New Jersey must ensure that all students have access to a high quality and equitable education. The federal guidelines set minimum requirements around measuring and reporting school performance and require states to identify the lowest performing schools.

Schools in need of assistance receive federal funds meant to help raise the performance of the lowest-achieving students. High-poverty schools also can be identified as needing additional support through the Title I program. All Newark schools qualify for Title I.

New Jersey considers a variety of factors when identifying schools in need of support, including academic achievement, academic growth for elementary and middle schools, high school graduation rates, English language proficiency, and chronic absenteeism. The state then designates a score.

Last year, the state analyzed data from the 2018-19 and 2021-22 school years and identified 25 Newark public schools in need of support. The state required the district to write an action plan and engage the community to help identify and tackle school challenges.

This year, seven schools entered a new state status or remained under the same designation, a significant shift from last year’s state review. During this year’s review, the state analyzed 2022-23 school year data – a time when Newark Public Schools’ state test scores went up 2 percentage points in both math and English language arts, pointing to students’ slow academic recovery post-pandemic.

The pandemic had a devastating effect on student performance and mental health, particularly among Newark’s most vulnerable students, including English language learners and students with disabilities. Third graders’ English language arts scores remained at 19% last spring, prompting concern among advocates who consider that grade a critical year for long-term success.

Two schools – Grover Cleveland and Thirteenth Avenue elementary schools – performed at or below the bottom 5% of Title I schools, which means they will enter “comprehensive status” for the coming year. Last year, Thirteenth Avenue exited that status. High schools enter comprehensive status when they have a graduation rate of 67% or lower.

In the coming year, Barringer High School will move out of “comprehensive II status,” a designation for schools that require intensive support again and didn’t meet the state’s criteria to exit the category. The high school entered “additional targeted status” meaning that a student group at that school is “consistently underperforming.”

Barringer offers a special education program for students with behavior disabilities, and roughly 48% of Barringer students are English learners, according to 2022-23 state fall enrollment data. Natasha Pared, Barringer’s principal, used to lead Rafael Hernandez Elementary school, which moved out of a state designation this year.

“So we have confidence she’ll be able to do the same thing here at Barringer,” said León during the February school board meeting.

Chancellor Avenue and Sussex Avenue elementary schools will continue with “additional targeted status,” while Quitman Street Elementary School and Malcolm X Shabazz High School will continue with “comprehensive II” status.

Quitman offers a bilingual and special education program for students with autism in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Shabazz also offers a special education program for students with behavior disabilities. In recent years, the school has seen declining enrollment, struggles in student performance, and safety challenges. In 2022, Shabazz reported a 64.2% graduation rate, compared to the statewide rate of 90%, according to school performance report data. This fall, it will launch a new bilingual program for ninth and 10th grade students.

In total, 36 schools were not identified for any status and 20 schools exited comprehensive status, according to the state’s review this year. The schools that exited a state designation this year must write a sustainability plan, which details how schools will continue to support student academic achievement.

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

Denver’s Lincoln High School gets more time to improve, as State Board praises efforts

2024-03-14T01:07:09+00:00

When Colorado officials ordered Denver’s Lincoln High School to work on a turnaround plan to improve the achievement of its students, no one knew schools would be interrupted by the pandemic just a month later.

But the school pushed forward with its improvement plan, despite the switch to remote learning and a more recent influx of new students. And although the school’s test scores and state rating remained low this year, State Board of Education members praised Lincoln’s progress Wednesday and agreed to give its leaders more time to boost its rating.

So far, school leaders have completed a leadership program with the University of Virginia, created a new ninth grade academy, and rolled out new career-focused pathways for students. A program called PTECH allows students to stay in high school for a fifth or sixth year to earn an associate’s degree in business. Lincoln’s first participants are graduating this spring.

Those changes were made possible partly by Lincoln’s status as an “innovation school,” a model allowed for state-ordered improvement plans that gives the school autonomy from some district and state rules and provisions of the teachers union contract.

Lincoln was one of just two Denver schools with state-ordered improvement plans. The other, Manual High School, received an improved rating this year. If it sustains that rating for one more year, it can be freed from its state orders.

Lincoln, on the other hand, has not improved and had to have its plan reviewed this year. The state board unanimously approved a district plan on Wednesday that will keep Lincoln as an innovation school while the state monitors its progress.

If the school doesn’t manage to earn a higher state rating by 2026, then it will have to return to the state for another hearing.

When a school receives several years of low ratings, the state is obligated to order an improvement plan, which can include requiring external management, turning the school into a charter or even closing it. Recently, State Board members have stayed away from those drastic options. One alternative has been to grant innovation status.

With Lincoln, State Board members said they were encouraged that school and district leaders’ assessment of the school and its ability to improve mirrored the feedback from the community, the Colorado Department of Education staff, and an external state review panel.

“I’m constantly reminded of, we leave a school alone, great things happen,” said State Board member Angelika Schroeder. “What you’re offering is something really special.”

Under the district’s plan, Lincoln will continue to expand its offerings for workforce development while students are in high school.

The school will also focus more in the coming years on attendance. Currently, the average attendance rate at Lincoln is 83%, up from 81% last year.

Principal Antonio Esquibel said attendance rates are low among new immigrant students who are facing other challenges that make it difficult to attend school, such as housing instability.

School leaders also talked about the challenges they’ve faced most recently in supporting a rise in students who are new to the country. Lincoln High School houses one of Denver’s newcomer centers, which help students who are new to the country adjust to life in an American high school.

Esquibel said the school enrolled another six new students Wednesday.

He said the school has added staff, and is now doing an orientation every Monday for new students and their families. The orientation introduces them to Lincoln and the U.S. school system, and to living in southwest Denver.

As part of the improvement plan, the school will also expand its efforts to help all teachers accommodate their lessons for English learners through sheltered instruction, where teachers can adjust lessons to incorporate help for English learners throughout the day.

About half of Lincoln’s roughly 1,000 students are identified as English learners, but about 75% identify Spanish as their first language. With so many arriving students who are new to the country, those percentages are rising.

“Every teacher has to be a teacher of English learners at Lincoln,” Esquibel said.

The school also uses a model it calls TNLI that offers students Spanish instruction and then slowly moves toward more English instruction, allowing students to remain bilingual, Esquibel said.

“We know if given the right supports and resources, our students flourish,” he said.

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

Tennessee reading law’s retention policies should start as early as kindergarten, state board says

2024-03-04T23:54:55+00:00

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Tennessee’s top education policy board is urging Gov. Bill Lee and state lawmakers to refocus efforts to identify and help struggling readers on students in lower grades — as early as kindergarten — rather than waiting until third or fourth grade to intervene.

In a rare action, the state Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution Monday asking elected officials to revisit the state’s 2021 literacy law, which targeted third and fourth graders and strengthened retention rules for students who score poorly on state tests.

Over the past three years, the board has been working through the details and challenges of implementing the controversial law, which passed during a special legislative session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions.

The law created popular summer learning camps and tutoring programs. It also included less popular provisions increasing the likelihood that third and fourth graders could be held back a grade eventually if they don’t perform well enough in English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Third grade, when Tennessee begins to give its students TCAP tests, is a critical year for reading proficiency, because literacy is considered key to all later learning.

The board’s request for the state to reconsider the law’s retention provision is based in part on new tools that Tennessee teachers are using to identify reading problems before the third grade.

“Retaining students in grades K-3 rather than grades 3-4 will ensure that students who are in the most need of additional reading support will have access to foundational literacy skills instruction at a critical point in their foundational literacy development should they be retained,” the resolution reads.

While years of research shows the overall costs and benefits of retaining students are unclear, the general consensus among researchers and educators is that the earlier a struggling student is retained, the better the outcomes for that student.

“Third grade is too late,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told the board last month when members asked whether Tennessee’s reading law is targeting the right age group.

Additionally, Tennessee students in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade now take three tests annually to screen them for potential reading challenges. Data from those tests wasn’t available when the 2021 law passed, but it could be used now to trigger key supports, interventions, and retention decisions earlier in a student’s academic career, the resolution says.

Ryan Holt, who represents Nashville on the board and wrote the resolution, said the law had a good intent but needs a “course correction.”

Executive Director Sara Morrison agreed. “It pushes us in the right direction as a state to look at those earlier grades and use data responsibly to make decisions earlier than third grade, but allows for that backstop to remain in third grade where we have that consistent TCAP measure,” she said.

Thousands of third graders were at risk of being held back last year because of their TCAP scores, but ultimately only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% were retained — not significantly more than in an average school year — thanks to intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of.

The law also requires this year’s fourth graders to be held back if they don’t score as proficient, or show “adequate growth,” on their TCAPs.

Officials are projecting that the fourth grade retention number will be significantly higher than the third-grade rate, because the law allows for fewer exemptions for those students.

Just weeks ago, the state board approved a complex formula for what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders — but not before several members questioned whether the law is targeting the right age group.

“I just want to encourage us to keep moving in the direction of working with teachers who would say the earlier, the better. Let’s not wait,” said Larry Jensen, a board member from West Tennessee.

Board Chairman Robert Eby, from Oak Ridge, said the body’s decision Monday to send a message to elected officials falls in line with its duty to develop and maintain a master plan for K-12 public education.

“We don’t pass many resolutions,” Eby said. “I think it shows the importance we’re putting on this issue.”

Asked about the board’s resolution, a spokeswoman for the governor reiterated the law’s intent, supports, and impacts.

“Beginning in kindergarten, students have access to high-dosage tutoring and summer school programs that reinforce proven phonics-based instruction,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, Lee’s press secretary. “Parents and teachers can track their students’ progress through regular reading screening tests, so they can determine the right path forward based on the unique needs of each student.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmakers are increasingly ready to ditch the Achievement School District. What’s next?

2024-02-23T11:00:00+00:00

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After a decade of painful takeovers of neighborhood schools, contentious handoffs to charter networks, and mostly abysmal student performance, Tennessee’s Achievement School District appears to be on its way out.

Several of the GOP-controlled legislature’s top Republicans are acknowledging that the state’s most ambitious and aggressive school turnaround model has failed — and should be replaced eventually with a more effective approach.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to push for legislation designed to end the so-called ASD, created under a 2010 state law aimed, in part, at transforming low-performing schools.

“I expect we will move in a different direction,” Sen. Bo Watson, the powerful chairman of his chamber’s finance committee, recently told reporters.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson

The Hixson Republican called the charter-centric school turnaround model an “innovative” idea that fell flat, at least in Tennessee. It would be foolish, Watson added, to keep spending money on an initiative that isn’t working and already has cost the state more than $1 billion — a sentiment echoed by Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

But if the legislature decides to shutter the ASD and Gov. Bill Lee signs off, important questions remain about how Tennessee will support thousands of students in its lowest-performing schools.

How quickly will the shutdown occur?
What will happen to ASD school communities? Currently, the district serves 4,600 students in 12 schools in Memphis and one in Nashville.
Will the state honor remaining contracts with charter operators, the last of which end in 2026?
What statewide improvement strategy will replace the ASD for schools in the state’s bottom 5%? Ninety-five schools currently fall in that category and many have undergone a variety of interventions, with limited success.
And will the U.S. Department of Education approve the change as part of Tennessee’s plan for complying with the 2015 U.S. law known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA?

In order to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal education funding to support Tennessee students and schools, the state is required to have a rigorous improvement plan for schools that are struggling the most. Since Tennessee’s ESSA plan was approved in 2017, the ASD has served that purpose.

The turnaround district “serves as our most intensive intervention for priority schools,” declares the 401-page plan, the state’s guiding document for K-12 accountability policies. It also commits Tennessee to making school turnaround a priority.

“Students can’t wait,” the plan says. “Schools that have been historically underperforming and are not showing adequate growth must have state intervention.”

Brian Blackley, a spokesperson for the state education department, said scrapping the ASD would require two things: a change in state law and an amendment to Tennessee’s ESSA plan.

If the legislature changes the law, ESSA revisions are doable, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education.

“Tennessee has the ability to make changes to the design and structure of its local educational agencies, including the Achievement School District, without first seeking approval from the U.S. Department of Education,” the spokesperson told Chalkbeat.

That said, because the ASD is central to Tennessee’s federal accountability plan, the state would have to submit an amendment to the federal government, and “the department will work with the state as needed,” the spokesperson said.

The process likely would take months, since a period of public engagement on potential changes is required.

ASD brought high hopes, hard lessons

While the ASD’s demise has been looming, its birth was filled with hope when Tennessee passed the First to the Top Act, a sweeping education reform package that was the cornerstone of its winning federal Race to the Top grant application.

Taking cues from the successful turnaround of schools in New Orleans and using tens of millions of federal dollars to pay for the rollout, Tennessee’s new law created a state-run district with the power to take over struggling schools and recruit charter management organizations to run them, giving those operators autonomy to design and implement plans for curriculum, instruction, and school leadership. KIPP and Green Dot Public Schools were among national networks that signed on, and the model inspired several local charter groups to form and join the work.

Unlike incremental academic gains associated with school improvement, school turnaround calls for dramatic gains in a short period of time. Founding ASD leaders set an extraordinarily ambitious goal: to move those schools from the bottom 5% to the top 25% of performers within five years.

But the large academic gains never came.

Removing schools from local governance didn’t improve student outcomes. In fact, most ASD schools performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention, according to researchers.

High teacher turnover was a constant challenge, and it became increasingly hard to recruit high-quality charter networks to do school turnaround work.

Community backlash was also significant, especially in Memphis, which became the hub of the ASD’s work and has a long history of charged racial dynamics. ASD critics viewed the takeover of neighborhood schools — and introduction of charter operators who often came from out of state — as another example of racism and reckless social engineering.

The level of poverty in Memphis was another major challenge.

“I think that the depth of the generational poverty and what our kids bring into school every day makes it even harder than we initially expected,” founding superintendent Chris Barbic told Chalkbeat in a 2015 interview. “We underestimated that.”

Chris Barbic, a former charter school leader in Texas, was the founding superintendent of Tennessee's Achievement School District.

The ASD has been shrinking for awhile

The state-run district had a peak of 33 schools after taking control of its last four campuses in Memphis in 2016.

While there’s been no official decision on its future from lawmakers or new recommendations from Lee’s administration, the ASD has been unwinding on its own, especially since 2022, as schools began to complete 10 years under the model.

Originally, the state promised to return ASD schools to their home districts in better shape than when they left. But that policy changed over time, and now there are multiple ways to exit, and even remain a charter school, depending on academic performance.

Some non-charter ASD schools began returning to Memphis-Shelby County Schools, while three charter schools pivoted to the oversight of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission, another state-run entity, after showing enough improvement to exit on their own. The Memphis district also regained control of a charter school and placed the campus in its own turnaround program known as the Innovation Zone, an initiative created in part to keep the ASD from taking over more schools.

As for remaining ASD campuses, the charter contracts for operators of seven schools are scheduled to expire this summer; two schools after the 2024-25 school year; and four schools at the conclusion of the 2025-26 school year.

But the pandemic complicated an already complex exit process by disrupting state testing. ASD leadership also turned over frequently and downsized staff in the summer of 2022. The chaotic unwinding has put thousands of students, families, and school staff in limbo.

Of the contracts expiring this year, for instance, only two charter schools are set to continue operating in Memphis. Journey Coleman will stay with Journey Community Schools through a new agreement with the Memphis district, while Cornerstone Lester Prep will continue to be run by Capstone Education Group through the state-run charter school commission.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools plans to close MLK College Prep High School, currently run by Frayser Community Schools, and those students are still deciding where they’ll attend school in the fall.

Fairley High School, which lost its bid to remain with Green Dot Public Schools, is expected to return to MSCS oversight. Green Dot has other schools still in the ASD, and the network’s executive director in Tennessee, Jocquell Rodgers, expects their charter contracts will be honored.

“Has it been emotional? Absolutely,” Rodgers said of the lengthy unraveling.

School turnaround work is a difficult and time-intensive process that requires constant engagement with families and the community, Rodgers said. Ideally, there should be collaboration with the local district, she added.

“It is extremely important to bring something to people that they really want, but at the same time, really help them understand what they need,” Rodgers said.

If not the ASD, then what?

Tennessee has doggedly stuck with the ASD, even as its performance has been mostly lackluster.

But January’s abrupt departure of Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s first statewide turnaround superintendent who was hired last August after a three-year search, cast doubts about the future of the state’s school improvement work, especially regarding its most intense intervention tool.

And GOP leaders such as Sexton, the speaker of the House, fueled speculation by hinting that a mechanism for closing the ASD could be part of upcoming legislation for creating a new statewide school voucher program.

There’s little consensus, however, on a replacement strategy for supporting struggling school communities — a requirement under federal ESSA law.

RELATED: School turnaround lessons from Memphis zero in on the need for collaboration at all levels

Rep. Antonio Parkinson and Sen. Raumesh Akbari, both Memphis Democrats, have proposed legislation to prevent the state-run district from taking over more low-performing schools. Instead, the ASD would become a resource hub for school improvement work across Tennessee.

Rep. Antonio Parkinson has been one of the ASD's most vocal critics.

But the measure, which has cleared two key House committees, may not meet ESSA’s standard for a comprehensive school turnaround strategy. Akbari said this week that she’s working on changes before introducing their proposal in Senate committees.

Sen. Ferrell Haile, a Republican from Gallatin, has pointed to Tennessee’s small school turnaround pilot project, approved by the legislature in 2021, as one possibility. Two private vendors, Georgia-based Cognia and Ed Direction of Salt Lake City, Utah, are working with two schools in Memphis, two in Nashville, and one in Chattanooga, as part of the five-year initiative.

But it’s uncertain whether that program can scale statewide. And while four of the schools have shown promise, Hamilton County lawmakers say it hasn’t gone well in Chattanooga. They are shepherding a bill to pull Orchard Knob Middle School before the pilot ends in 2025.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who has the authority to take over more schools and place them in the ASD under current law, has not commented publicly about the district’s future, or a potential new strategy.

If the legislature lets the state-run district run its course through the 2025-26 school year, when charter contracts expire for its last four schools, her department would have more time to develop a plan. The agency would then work with the U.S. Education Department to revise Tennessee’s ESSA plan accordingly.

One important step, according to federal ESSA guidance, is to give the public opportunity to comment on the proposed revision. And educators who are doing turnaround work hope state leaders will take their observations to heart.

Bob Nardo was an early ASD staff member who left to operate Libertas School of Memphis, one of the state-run district’s few success stories.

Just because the ASD didn’t work, he said, doesn’t mean the state should walk away from trying to address persistent challenges that led to its creation. Nardo believes one question should be central to discussions when developing a new plan.

“Are the most vulnerable and at-risk children in our society getting the best opportunity to transform their lives?”

Nardo worries the state could shift to piecemeal interventions, such as grant programs aimed at small-scale improvements, that wouldn’t be as effective as a comprehensive, schoolwide turnaround strategy.

“We have to confront the paradox here that this is both a critically needed and indispensable type of work,” Nardo said, “with the sobering reality that most efforts have not been successful” in Tennessee and across the country.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Whether to test private school students is key difference in dueling voucher proposals in Tennessee

2024-02-21T23:41:17+00:00

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Gov. Bill Lee and Senate leaders unveiled dueling proposals Wednesday to bring universal school vouchers to Tennessee. House leaders are expected to release a third version later this week.

Testing accountability stands out as a key difference in multiple amendments filed as part of a Republican campaign to eventually give all Tennessee families the option to use public money to pay for private schools for their children. The Senate plan also calls for open enrollment across public school systems.

Lee’s seven-page plan does not require participating students to take annual tests to measure whether his Education Freedom Scholarship Act leads to better academic outcomes. The governor has said that parental choice provides ultimate accountability.

The Senate’s 17-page proposal requires recipients in grades three-11 to take some type of norm-referenced tests approved by the state Board of Education, which could include state tests that public school students take under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Assessments must include a third-grade test in English language arts and an eighth-grade test in math; the grades are considered benchmark years for learning those skills. Eleventh-grade recipients would also have to take the ACT, SAT, or a similar exam to assess their readiness for continuing their education after high school.

“The testing component is critical,” Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg told Chalkbeat. “We have a responsibility to share with Tennesseans how this is working.”

The developments show divisions at the state Capitol, despite a GOP supermajority, about key details of the biggest education proposal of Lee’s tenure, even before legislative debate begins in public. Lundberg’s committee is scheduled to take up the issue next week.

The governor wants to start with up to 20,000 students statewide this fall and eventually open up the program so any K-12 student can use a $7,075 annual voucher, regardless of family income. His earlier Education Savings Account law, which squeaked through the legislature with a historic and controversial House vote in 2019, targeted students from low-income families in low-performing schools in Memphis and Nashville but remains underenrolled, even with the addition of Hamilton County last fall.

Cost is expected to be a major hurdle for Lee’s voucher expansion plan in a state that prides itself on being fiscally conservative.

Tennessee government has a nearly $378 million budget shortfall through the first six months of its current fiscal year, according to a revenue report released last week.

Even so, Lee’s proposed $52.6 billion spending plan for the next fiscal year includes $144 million annually for vouchers and $200 million to grow state parks and natural areas, all while slashing corporate business property taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the weekend, Republican Rep. Bryan Richey, of Maryville, told a local town hall that, although he supports statewide vouchers, he expects to vote against this year’s proposal over budget concerns and the lack of accountability provisions.

The Daily Times reported that Richey compared the upcoming legislative process to baking a cake as he urged his constituents to engage early with lawmakers while the proposals are in committees.

“Once the ingredients are in the batter and it’s all mixed up, we’re not going to be able to go in there and pull the egg back out or get the oil out,” he said.

Lee’s proposal did not look markedly different from draft legislation that was inadvertently filed in the Senate in late January due to a miscommunication, then pulled a short time later. Vouchers would be funded through a separate scholarship account, not the funding structure currently in place for public schools.

RELATED: Tennessee’s universal school voucher bill draft drops. Here are 5 things that stand out.

But the Senate version aligns funding with the state’s new public school formula known as Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA. And it would allow students to enroll in any school system, even if they’re not zoned for it.

“We want open enrollment so you can transfer anywhere,” Lundberg said. “It’s not just for private schools. The funding follows the student.”

House leaders have been huddling for weeks with key stakeholders to get their feedback for an omnibus-style amendment that’s expected to come out on Thursday.

“I look forward to reading the House proposal, but there are obviously already major discrepancies,” said JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, who has been in some of those meetings.

“I really don’t see how these versions can be reconciled this year,” added Bowman, a voucher critic. “If they’re hell-bent on doing this, they need to at least take the time to get it right.”

But a statement from the governor’s office said the various proposals show “an encouraging amount of engagement in this process.”

“The governor has repeatedly emphasized that the Education Freedom Scholarship Act is a framework, built upon the foundation that parents should have choices when it comes to their child’s education, regardless of income or ZIP code,” the statement said.

The bills are sponsored by Senate and House majority leaders Jack Johnson of Franklin and William Lamberth of Portland. You can track the legislation through the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee issues its first letter grades for schools, after revamping formula

2023-12-21T18:31:43+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with Memphis-Shelby County Schools and statewide education policy.

The typical Tennessee school received a high C under a new formula the state used to assign its first-ever letter grades to schools, according to data released Thursday.

The long-delayed letter grades from the Tennessee Department of Education satisfy the requirements of a 2016 school accountability law, which has been embraced by Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds as a simple, familiar way for families to assess local schools.

But just before the first grades were issued, Reynolds led a revamp of the grading formula to emphasize academic achievement, or proficiency, over academic growth. The earlier formula, which was never used to publicly assign grades, was more focused on growth.

The late change angered many educators across the state. Schools serving lower-income families in rural and urban communities have been particularly concerned about the prospect of earning lower marks under the new formula.

Schools that receive D’s or F’s do not receive any additional support from the state, but they are expected to face more scrutiny.

Among Tennessee’s 1,690 schools that received letter grades, 3 out of every 4 received a C or better. A Chalkbeat analysis showed that the median grade-eligible Tennessee school earned a 3.2 out of a possible 5 points, or toward the higher end of the C range.

For now, there is no way to directly compare this year’s letter grades with what they would have been under the old formula. The education department has not yet published the state testing data it used to calculate its letter grades.

An analysis from Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, showed that sticking to the original formula “would have been more favorable,” said Bill White, the district’s director of planning and accountability. He said the district’s analysis also showed that low letter grades matched up to schools with higher proportions of low-income students.

“Many of our students face significant challenges outside of the classroom …,” said MSCS interim Superintendent Toni Williams. “So we need a more comprehensive assessment system that recognizes student growth, family engagement, and the unique context of each school and its students.”

The education department stood by its new formula when announcing the letter grades Thursday. Reynolds called it a “clear rating system” that gives families “a snapshot of how their child’s school is performing.”

Student academic growth is still a component of the new formula, but it is measured differently now. In the new calculation, Tennessee removed the option for schools to increase their grade by meeting individualized academic benchmarks, rather than the statewide targets.

Only 5% of Tennessee’s graded schools received F’s. Half of these schools are located in Memphis, a Chalkbeat analysis found. Most are within Memphis-Shelby County Schools, and six are charter schools operated under agreements with the state-run Achievement School District or the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

MSCS accounted for the largest share of F’s among districts with at least 50 schools, but the most common grade for district schools was a C, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

Metro Nashville Public Schools received mostly B’s, C’s, and D’s.

School letter grades are published on Tennessee’s State Report Card website. The dashboard offers additional information about how each school scored across the three or four categories that contribute to the overall grades.

Some schools were not graded because they lacked sufficient test data or served only adults.

You can search for grades by school in the table below.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

A-F grades come out this week for Tennessee schools. Here’s what to know.

2023-12-18T11:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Tennessee’s free daily newsletter to keep up with statewide education policy and Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

This week, for the first time under a 2016 law, Tennessee will give each of its public schools an A-F letter grade.

The goal, says Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, is to help families, educators, communities, and policymakers understand how their local schools are doing.

And what better way, she says, than by using a letter-grade system that families are familiar with from their student’s report cards.

But the policy has been controversial since lawmakers began debating its merits nearly a decade ago, and local school leaders worry the grades will actually create confusion for parents and harm school communities.

They say a single grade is more simplistic than simple, and can’t fully capture the quality of learning and support that’s happening in a school, especially for communities where students face extra challenges before even walking into the classroom.

Local concerns escalated when the state education department recently revamped its grading formula in a way that will make it harder for certain schools to get an A or a B.

Here’s what you should know about the upcoming school letter grades, which the state is scheduled to release on Thursday.

What exactly will the grades measure?

As required by state law, the grades must take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP. High schools will also be judged on their students’ college and career readiness, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

How will the grades be calculated?

The formula weights student proficiency the heaviest, according to the department’s recent presentation to the State Board of Education. Next comes growth, or how much a school’s students improved from one year to the next. A separate factor seeks to assess how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve.

The formula factors in test scores for English language arts, math, and science for elementary schools, and for all four core subject areas for middle and high schools. But some subjects count more than others.

The state has not publicly released the thresholds for what constitutes an A, B, and so on, based on its tallies of all the data.

Will the grades matter?

Yes, and not just in terms of public perception of a school’s quality. Under Tennessee’s new funding formula for K-12 education, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools are rated D or F, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could be forced to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school.

School ratings also can affect the price of real estate in a school’s neighborhood, as well as teacher and student morale. Studies have shown that ratings such as those given by third-party websites frequently are biased and can steer families toward schools serving more affluent, white, and Asian students.

Why is Tennessee grading its schools?

Legislators who voted for the law said A-F school grades would provide a common-sense aid to parents trying to navigate an increasingly complex school choice system.

Big supporters included ExcelinEd, an advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, plus other groups that favor giving taxpayer-funded vouchers to families to send their children to private schools. (Gov. Bill Lee recently proposed a statewide expansion of Tennessee’s voucher program, which operates in three counties and has fewer than 2,000 enrollees. The state is not grading private schools that receive vouchers.)

School letter-grading policies were also promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC. Its members are mostly conservative state lawmakers, and its funding comes from foundations, trade groups, and some corporations, according to research from the Center for Media and Democracy.

The law passed in 2016. Why are schools just now receiving their first grades?

The initial grades were to come out in 2018 but got delayed repeatedly, mostly because technical glitches and the pandemic disrupted state testing.

This year, soon after assuming her new job as Tennessee’s education chief, Reynolds prioritized the rollout of A-F grades and launched a process to revise the grading formula, which will use results from tests that already have been administered. The goal of the overhaul, she said, was to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that makes sense to Tennesseans.

How did the formula change, and what effects will the revisions have on the final grades?

Previously, Tennessee’s grading formula skewed toward growth, which refers to the progress or improvement that schools made toward helping their students meet certain academic standards over the course of a year.

The new formula puts greater emphasis on achievement, or proficiency. Achievement is basically a snapshot of how much students in a school know, and whether enough of them are meeting grade-level standards on their state tests.

The changes will likely mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than previously expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

More broadly, the shift marks a change of course for Tennessee, which was an early adopter of using growth data to evaluate how its students, teachers, and schools are doing. Educators have mostly embraced this model as ultimately the best way to gauge the quality of learning in their classrooms and schools.

Do other states issue A-F letter grades for schools?

As of late 2021, 11 states had such grading measures in their accountability systems, according to the most recent data from the Education Commission of the States.

But several states, including Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, and Utah, have since rolled back those policies. And in Texas recently, a judge blocked the state education agency from issuing grades after several districts sued. The districts charged that the agency had unfairly recalibrated its formula and waited too long to communicate those changes.

Where will Tennessee’s grades be published?

As of last week, state officials had not shared exactly how they plan to release this week’s grades. Chalkbeat continues to track and report on the topic.

Eventually, the department plans to publish all grades, along with school-level TCAP scores from the 2022-23 school year, on the State Report Card. The online tool should be ready to go live with the latest data in January, according to several spokespeople for the department.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Newark Public Schools has plans to tackle difficulties in student reading, writing

2023-11-20T11:23:00+00:00

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Newark Public School officials have created a plan aimed at boosting student achievement after spring state test scores showed difficulties in writing and English language arts.

The director of the district’s English language arts department, Jazleen Othman, spelled out three problems with the district’s instruction at a recent Board committee meeting: ineffective reading instruction during the pandemic, simplifying the curriculum, and inadequate writing instruction.

Othman told the board that her department hopes to combat these problems through several tactics, such as introducing new approaches to teaching phonics, implementing explicit writing strategies, and supporting teachers’ knowledge of an evidence-based reading approach known as the science of reading.

The targeted plan comes just weeks after the results of this spring’s state test scores showed Newark students continue to need academic support to recover from the pandemic. For the second year in a row, most Newark students performed worse than pre-pandemic levels in reading. In grades 3 to 9, an average of 29% of Newark students passed the English language arts portion of the exam, compared to 36% in 2019 before the pandemic.

Some grades fared worse – only 19% of the district’s third-graders passed ELA, the lowest of any grade in Newark for a second year in a row. Seventh and eighth graders had the highest English language arts scores, each at about 37%, which increased this year by about 4 and 5 percentage points respectively.

Public school leaders are attributing reading issues in early grades to the switch to remote learning during the pandemic, which they say has hindered students’ reading progress and caused disfluent readers.

District officials also said they designed a new ELA curriculum for grades K-8 currently used in classrooms this year. Newark Public Schools has released limited details about the new curriculum to Chalkbeat Newark through a public records request.

District to focus on new reading and writing strategies

The district’s work to improve student’s skills began over the summer when roughly 10,000 public school students with low attendance, grades, and state test scores were required to attend summer school to target problem areas in math and reading, like sounding out words, handwriting, and reading comprehension, among others.

Students are struggling with alphabetic knowledge, the basic ability to recognize letters and their sounds, Deering said.

But Othman laid out even more specifics last month to the school board.

The district’s Office of English Language Arts is adopting a structured approach to teaching phonics by implementing SIPPS, also known as Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words. Through this research-based approach, students are guided through the reading development process, and new and struggling readers learn through explicit routines focused on word sounds and spelling, and high-frequency words, or words that appear most often in writing.

The district is also implementing Wilson Fundations, a curriculum rooted in the science of reading that builds the foundations for reading, spelling, and handwriting. That work is supplemented through the Geodes Classroom Libraries, a collection of books that help new and developing readers, and builds on skills from the Wilson Fundations curriculum.

Deering said this isn’t the first time the district has used elements of the science of reading. It has adopted components of the approach since 1998 that focus on students learning the basics of reading and writing by decoding words and sounding out letters.

During the presentation to board members, Othman said that as soon as children learn to decode words, they should be provided with grade-level reading and writing opportunities and discuss grade-level work to promote critical thinking.

After finding problems with their writing instruction, the district recruited The Writing Revolution, an organization that helps school districts implement its explicit writing strategy known as the Hochman Method. According to the organization, the approach is not a separate writing curriculum, but rather a set of strategies embedded in student learning.

Preparing teachers in the foundations of reading instruction

Othman and her office found that the district’s ELA curriculum is simplified, she told the board, resulting in limited learning on grade-level content and critical thinking. Teachers, vice principals, department chairs, and teacher coaches will need to learn how to unpack the new curriculums.

The district will train teachers and school leaders through professional development to support the new shifts in learning approaches, Deering said, and officials will adjust the approaches as they monitor students’ academic progress.

Since August 2022, over 1,800 Newark public school educators enrolled in The Writing Revolution’s online training to learn and work with the new method. The group has worked with district schools and leaders to visit classrooms and provide ongoing support, according to the organization. Over the summer, the strategy was embedded in the first two units of the English Language Arts curriculum.

The district said officials will monitor the effectiveness of the new curriculums and approaches mainly through students’ academic progress in reading, but also using state test scores and periodic assessments such as the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) MAP growth assessment.

Officials will adapt their approach based on student achievement and growth.

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

Gaps in Michigan student achievement remain wider than pre-pandemic norm, report finds

2023-11-16T23:00:57+00:00

The gaps between Michigan’s lowest and highest performing K-8 students are wider than would have been expected before the pandemic, and some students are falling further behind, according to an analysis of benchmark testing results released this week.

However, the students and districts that saw the most learning loss also have shown the strongest academic recovery, the research findings suggest.

“Overall, the results show us that progress is being made, but that progress is gradual — especially compared to how large the impact of the pandemic was,” said Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, the research group that did the analysis. “It’s going to be a long-term, multiyear effort.”

The analysis covers assessments given to Michigan students each fall and spring since 2020, and captures how student growth compared with national trends before the pandemic.

Since spring of 2021, student achievement in the state improved slightly in math and very little in reading, the report found.

In fall 2020, Michigan students were in the 42nd percentile of national norms in math, meaning 58% of students nationwide performed better. Michigan students fell to the 39th percentile in math by spring 2021. In spring 2023, they returned to the 42nd percentile.

It is likely that students are still behind where they were in math prior to the pandemic, since the first benchmark assessments were administered well after in-person learning went on pause in March 2020.

In reading, students in the state fell from the 51st percentile in fall 2020 to the 45th percentile in spring 2021. Results in reading have not moved substantially since then.

“The differences in recovery align with findings from other states across the country — at least what we see in math,” said Kilbride. “But reading results in other states have been varied. Michigan falls somewhere in the middle.”

Districts that were the most affected by the pandemic — many of which are in urban areas serving more diverse populations of students from low-income families — made the strongest recovery, according to the report. The accelerated learning rates out of those districts drove overall growth at the state level.

Overall, Michigan students are making the growth in a school year that would have been expected before COVID, the assessment results in the report show, but some students are still falling behind, because they are not learning at a fast enough pace to catch up.

The same trend is being seen nationally, researchers say.

“We are making only very slow progress,” said Dan Goldhaber, a professor at the University of Washington and director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

“You really need the pace of learning to be considerably faster” to make up for lost learning, he added, “and we’re not seeing that.”

Goldhaber said the state of recovery nationally is “concerning” because tests are highly predictive of how kids will fare later on in life.

Benchmark assessments offer researchers and policy makers a couple of advantages over yearly M-STEP standardized test results, because they more clearly measure student growth during a school year, from fall to spring. Some of the assessments show how kids are achieving at a level beyond their grade.

In many cases, the assessments can be better than letter grades or report cards at helping parents understand how their children are performing, said Goldhaber.

“Grades are actually higher than they were before the pandemic, and they don’t seem to comport with what we know about test scores,” he said. “The meaning of an ‘A’ in terms of knowledge as assessed by the test is different from what we knew before the pandemic. I am worried that parents can be getting false signals about how their students are doing from grades, and maybe they should be paying some attention to the tests.”

The assessment results do have their limitations. The analysis includes assessments from about 773,000 of the 947,000 K-8 students in the state, at 769 of 852 school districts.

Legislation that passed in 2020 requiring Michigan districts to give the benchmark assessments gave them several options of approved test providers. Because of this, researchers did not include students who moved districts in their analysis.

Additionally, many students missed testing dates.

“Some of the reasons students did not take tests are the same reasons that they may have been impacted even more by the pandemic,” said Kilbride. “That could mean our results are showing a rosier picture than what truly happened.”

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

See how your Philadelphia school did on the latest state tests in English and math

2023-11-08T21:51:41+00:00

Philadelphia students’ state test scores are slowly recovering back to pre-pandemic levels, but most students still aren’t proficient in English language arts, math, and science, while longstanding performance gaps between student groups persist, according to new state test scores.

And the city’s students are still scoring far below their peers in the rest of the state on the tests, which were administered last spring. The scores, released on Wednesday, essentially confirm preliminary data shared with the Philadelphia Board of Education in early September showing that Philadelphia students made small gains from last year, but that most are still not proficient. The scores also indicate that Philadelphia has far to go to meet the school board’s own long-term academic targets.

Scores released Wednesday for the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, data for grades 3-8 show major disparities between white and Asian students and their Black and Hispanic peers in Philadelphia district and charter schools. Those gaps are most pronounced in math: Only 9.3% of Black students scored proficient and above on the math tests, while 44% of their white counterparts scored proficient or above. Some 11% of Hispanic students scored proficient or better in math while nearly 53% of Asian students scored the same.

Just 15% of economically disadvantaged students — who make up more than two-thirds of all city students — scored proficient or better in math.

Overall for the 2022-23 school year, 34.2% of Philadelphia students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or better in English, 20.4% of students in those grades scored proficient or above in math, and 41% of students in grades 4 and 8 scored proficient or better in science.

In 2021-22, the proficiency rates were 34.7% in English, 16.2% in math, and 37.1% in science — though the district’s science scores from that year do not include charter school students.

Philadelphia’s scores do show that students are gradually catching up to where they were before the COVID pandemic.

In 2019, 21.6% of students in Philadelphia scored proficient or better in math, while in English, 35.7% of students were proficient or better.

In late 2020, as part of a multi-year “goals and guardrails” plan, the district and school board set a goal that by 2026, 52% of students in traditional district schools, in grades 3-8 would achieve proficiency on the state math exam, and 65% of students would achieve proficiency on the state English exam.

Statewide, students scoring proficient or above in English increased slightly from 54.1% in 2021-22 to 54.5% in 2022-23. Over the same period, proficiency scores in math increased from 35.7% to 38.3%, and science scores increased from 54.4% to 58.9%. (Students did not take the state tests in 2020, while state officials say 2021 scores are not truly comparable to pre-COVID results.)

“This year’s assessment results underscore what we have said before — that with each passing year, participation and achievement will continue to improve,” Secretary of Education Khalid Mumin said in a statement Wednesday. “Pennsylvania’s results are well on their way to returning to pre-pandemic rates and we look forward to helping our students exceed those levels in the years ahead.”

But just as a much higher share of white and Asian students were proficient on state exams than Black and Hispanic students, there is a similar disparity when it comes to the lowest scores.

In English, 13.9% of white students in grades 3-8 scored below basic, compared to 29.4% of Black students, 33.4% of Hispanic students, and 9.6% of Asians, 14.1% of those who identify as multi-ethnic, and 27.7% of economically disadvantaged students.

In math, such differences are also stark. Overall, 57% of students in grades 3-8 scored below basic. That included 32.6% of white students, 69% of Black students, 66% of Hispanics, 22% of Asians, 45.4% of multi-ethnic students, and 45.4% of those who are economically disadvantaged.

District officials and board members said they were heartened by the increases from last year — however small — but said there’s more work the district can do.

Tonya Wolford, the district’s chief of evaluation, research, and accountability, told board members in September it is important to keep in mind that students “likely are not going from below basic to proficient in one year.” She said Philadelphia students will need more time, resources, and support to make the jump.

To emphasize the importance of students achieving proficiency in reading by third grade, the district also set a goal for 62% of third graders to score proficient on the state exam by 2026. Yet in 2022-23, only 31.2% of third graders scored proficient or above on the PSSA.

On Keystone exams — another state standardized assessment for high school students in literature, biology, and algebra — Philadelphia students also lag behind peers statewide. Just 25.1% of city students are proficient or better in algebra, compared to 34.2% of students statewide.

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

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Estos estudiantes tuvieron más retrasos académicos durante COVID. ¿Cómo están respondiendo las escuelas en Colorado?

2023-11-08T19:00:00+00:00

Read in English.

Los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés quizás hayan enfrentado mayores obstáculos durante la pandemia y necesitan apoyo adicional, según dicen expertos y defensores en el campo de la educación.

Los resultados de las pruebas estatales en 2023 muestran que los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés se encuentran más rezagados en comparación con otros grupos de estudiantes que sus pares en 2019, y están teniendo más dificultades para retomar el camino. Tuvieron la reducción más grande en sus habilidades en las principales pruebas estatales de artes del idioma inglés y matemáticas y también mostraron menor crecimiento que sus pares en 2019.

Los resultados de las pruebas no son la única señal de alarma. El 40 por ciento de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés faltaron tanto a la escuela el año pasado que se los identificó como ausentes crónicos, comparado con solo un tercio de otros estudiantes de Colorado.

Se han establecido dos métodos notables para ayudar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés con su desempeño académico a raíz de COVID.

Un puñado de distritos escolares observaron a sus estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés avanzar más del promedio, o demostrar un mayor crecimiento que el resto de los estudiantes. Líderes en esos distritos dijeron que priorizaron la enseñanza conjunta en lugar de sacar a los estudiantes de clases generales para recibir enseñanza específica sobre el desarrollo del idioma inglés. Por lo menos un distrito usó fondos federales por COVID para proporcionarles servicios de tutoría a esos estudiantes.

Pero algunos otros distritos dicen que no han asignado recursos ni estrategias específicas para ayudar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés. De hecho, sin importar datos recientes y lo que los analistas del estado digan sobre el tema, niegan que la pandemia haya afectado desproporcionadamente a estos estudiantes. Dicen que la composición demográfica de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés ha cambiado y ahora incluye a más estudiantes recién llegados al país.

“Hay distritos que no parecen estar muy preocupados con los estudiantes bilingües emergentes”, dijo Cynthia Trinidad-Sheahan, presidenta de la Asociación de Educación Bilingüe de Colorado.

Representantes del estado en el campo de la educación dicen que no pueden darles más dinero a los distritos para ayudarlos con los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés a menos que los legisladores autoricen más gastos o nuevos programas. “Eso lo deberá contestar la Asamblea General”, dijo Floyd Cobb, comisionado de la Asociación de Educación de Colorado, al preguntarle cómo la agencia espera cerrar la brecha entre los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y estudiantes[AC1] que hablan inglés como primer idioma.

La mayoría de los datos sobre calificaciones de pruebas muestran una tendencia negativa

Cuando las escuelas implementaron la enseñanza virtual al principio de la pandemia, algunas escuelas enfrentaron dificultades para ofrecer apoyo con el desarrollo del idioma inglés. Los estudiantes no tenían un entorno para practicar su nuevo idioma, y en sus hogares muchas familias no podían apoyarlos con el aprendizaje virtual. Y cuando las escuelas regresaron a la enseñanza presencial, algunas familias de estudiantes que estaban aprendiendo inglés titubearon más que otras familias para enviar nuevamente a sus hijos de inmediato al salón de clases.

Las desigualdades en las calificaciones de las pruebas entre los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y quienes hablan inglés como primer idioma no son nuevas. Una razón es que la gran mayoría de los estudiantes del inglés están tomando pruebas en inglés antes de entender totalmente el idioma. Una cantidad limitada de estudiantes puede tomar pruebas de artes del idioma en español, pero esos resultados también reflejan calificaciones mucho más bajas que los estudiantes en 2019, mientras que los que hablan inglés como primer idioma en los mismos niveles de grado casi ya se recuperaron.

Las calificaciones de este año en la prueba ACCESS, la cual evalúa la habilidad de los estudiantes para dominar el idioma inglés, muestran que una porción más pequeña de estudiantes lo dominan en 2023 comparado con 2019. Y hace cuatro años, el 9.4 por ciento de estudiantes de primer grado obtuvieron una calificación de nivel 1, el nivel más bajo. Pero en 2023, casi un cuarto de los estudiantes de primer grado obtuvieron el nivel más bajo.

Cuando el estado publicó las calificaciones de CMAS en agosto, los representantes estatales dijeron que la mayoría de los grupos de estudiantes históricamente desventajados había regresado a los niveles de crecimiento prepandemia, excepto los estudiantes multilingües en la materia de artes del idioma inglés. Dijeron que sin acelerar su aprendizaje, esos estudiantes “continuarán retrasándose aún más”.

“Creo que tenemos una cantidad creíble de evidencia para poder decir que nuestros estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés se vieron afectados por COVID—y afectados desproporcionadamente”, dijo Joyce Zurkowski, directora ejecutiva de evaluaciones en el Departamento de Educación de Colorado.

Algunos distritos minimizan las tendencias negativas de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés

A pesar de lo que los datos significan para personas como Zurkwoski, los líderes de algunos distritos piensan que los datos de los estudiantes que estaban aprendiendo inglés en 2019 no son comparables con los datos de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en 2023 debido a recientes llegadas de inmigrantes de Afganistán, Ucrania y América del Sur, quienes han cambiado la composición demográfica de esos grupos.

Representantes del estado dicen que aunque eso ha afectado a muchos distritos, las cantidades de recién llegados no son suficientes como para explicar todas las reducciones en los datos de logros.

En Cherry Creek, líderes del distrito dicen que están monitoreando cuántos estudiantes están logrando dominar el inglés. En Colorado, para que un estudiante deje de ser identificado como estudiante del inglés, los maestros usan datos de las calificaciones de ACCESS y pruebas estatales. Pero también pueden usar sus propias observaciones y datos internos para probar que un estudiante ya no necesita ciertas clases y servicios en inglés.

Holly Porter, directora de apoyos para el idioma en Cherry Creek, dijo que usualmente alrededor del 85 por ciento de los estudiantes se consideran como competentes en el idioma inglés a tres años de haber ingresado al distrito, y el 95 por ciento alcanza esa designación en cinco años.

Aunque las cantidades más recientes todavía no están disponibles, Porter dijo que la tendencia se ha mantenido constante.

Porter también dijo que los estudiantes que dejan de recibir servicios para el inglés siguen desempeñándose bien en la escuela y muestran un crecimiento por arriba del promedio en pruebas estatales, lo cual confirma los avances.

“Encontramos que muchos estudiantes estaban rezagados, no solo los estudiantes multilingües”, dijo.

En el distrito escolar de Harrison en Colorado Springs, Rachel Laufer, asistente del superintendente de enseñanza y aprendizaje, dijo que los desafíos que surgen con estudiantes recién llegados es que “las escuelas están trabajando para apoyar no solo las necesidades del lenguaje y académicas de las familias, sino también los otros obstáculos que existen para las familias que acaban de llegar al país”. Las familias necesitan ayuda con el transporte, la vivienda y otras cosas para que los estudiantes puedan ir a la escuela a aprender, dijo.

Aunque no les preocupan los datos, los líderes del distrito de Harrison dijeron que han realizado algunos cambios en cómo ayudan a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y a los recién llegados en particular.

En los últimos años, el distrito ha intentado aumentar el personal para asegurar que haya por lo menos un maestro certificado para trabajar con estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en cada escuela, en lugar de tener que dividir su tiempo en diferentes escuelas. El distrito también está probando lentamente la enseñanza conjunta.

Laufer dijo que Harrison priorizó que los estudiantes del inglés y con discapacidades regresaran al aprendizaje presencial. Pero cuando el distrito usó el aprendizaje híbrido y los padres pudieron decidir si enviar o no a sus hijos a la escuela, fue más probable que los estudiantes que estaban aprendiendo inglés se quedaran en casa.

“Fue una mayor preocupación para ellos”, Laufer dijo. “Creo que podrías conectar eso con algunos de los datos”.

Aumentando el entusiasmo entre los maestros para ayudar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés

Hay algunos distritos en Colorado donde algunos de los datos entre los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés son más positivos.

En Pueblo 60, por ejemplo, la calificación del crecimiento este año en la prueba de CMAS en artes del idioma de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés ahora es más alta que para los estudiantes que hablan inglés como primer idioma. En el distrito escolar 3J del Condado de Weld, la calificación del crecimiento en matemáticas mejoró entre 2019 y 2023.

La mejora no es uniforme en los distritos. En 3J, por ejemplo, a pesar de mejoras significativas en el crecimiento de las pruebas de matemáticas de CMS, el crecimiento en la prueba de ACCESS disminuyó.

Mientras tanto, los estudiantes de Adams 14 mostraron un crecimiento significativo en las pruebas ACCESS para ver si dominan el inglés—el crecimiento más alto entre distritos grandes—pero no mostraron mejoras en otras pruebas estatales.

En Pueblo, los líderes del distrito dijeron que ya estaban trabajando para renovar la educación de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés antes de la pandemia.

La high school abrió un centro para estudiantes recién llegados hace siete años. En los últimos cinco años, el distrito ha trabajado en su filosofía de enseñanza y en que la enseñanza concuerde con los estándares de contenido.

Tanto Pueblo como 3J también han trabajado para reducir la cantidad de tiempo que a los estudiantes los sacan del salón de clases para recibir enseñanza sobre el idioma inglés, una estrategia que también se está usando en otros distritos como Harrison y Boulder donde los datos son menos positivos.

En escuelas primarias de Pueblo 60, la enseñanza donde se saca a los estudiantes del salón general ya no ocurre durante matemáticas ni lectura. En la escuela media, los maestros van a las clases de los estudiantes en lugar de sacarlos.

Ese fue un cambio que los maestros mismos sugirieron.

“Realmente estaban en sintonía con lo que sus estudiantes necesitaban así que aceptamos su sugerencia y dijimos: ‘bueno, intentemos eso y veamos si marca una diferencia’”, dijo Lisa Casarez, la especialista en adquisición del idioma inglés del distrito escolar de Pueblo. Ahora, en las escuelas de educación media, piensa que eso ha sucedido.

Los datos del estado muestran que los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en las escuelas medias de Pueblo 60 obtuvieron calificaciones más altas de crecimiento en las pruebas de CMAS sobre las artes del idioma que los estudiantes en escuelas primarias y sus pares que ya dominan el inglés en escuelas de educación media.

Tanto en 3J como en Pueblo, líderes dijeron que han observado más entusiasmo entre todos los maestros para aprender cómo ayudar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

El departamento de educación del estado ahora obliga que todos los maestros reciban capacitación en Educación Cultural y Lingüísticamente Diversa cuando renuevan sus licencias. Eso significa que aprender cómo ayudar a esos estudiantes ya no es responsabilidad de unos pocos educadores con licencias especiales.

“Hemos observado mucho interés entre los maestros de educación general para apoyar a los estudiantes multilingües”, dijo Jenny Wakeman, asistente del superintendente en 3J. “Eso es algo que han hecho naturalmente”.

También ayudaron fondos adicionales. Wakeman dijo que su distrito usó algunos fondos federales por la pandemia para proporcionar intervenciones adicionales, incluida más tutoría, específicamente para estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

Mientras tanto, dijo que los maestros ahora están haciendo sus propios estudios de libros para aprender aún más sobre cómo ayudar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés. Ese es el tipo de actitud que Zurkowski con el departamento de educación de Colorado dice que se necesita para ayudar a esos estudiantes a ponerse a la par.

“Sabemos que esas brechas eran grandes antes de la pandemia, [y] son grandes después de la pandemia”, Zurkowski dijo. “Justifican esfuerzos intensivos de intervención”.

Yesenia Robles es una reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado, cubriendo distritos escolares de kindergarten a 12º grado y la educación multilingüe. Comunícate con Yesenia por correo electrónico a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Test scores say COVID was especially rough on English learners. Not all school districts agree.

2023-11-08T19:00:00+00:00

Leer en español.

English learners might have been hit especially hard during the pandemic and need extra targeted support, experts and advocates say. But some school district leaders aren’t yet concerned about the data.

Results from 2023 state tests show English learners are further behind their peers from 2019 compared with other student groups, and they’re struggling more to get back on track.

On the main state tests in English language arts and math, the biggest falloff in proficiency between 2019 and this year is for English learners. They also showed less growth. Of those taking the SAT and PSAT for example, only students with disabilities showed less growth.

Helping English learners recover from the pandemic has been a complex problem nationwide. And test scores aren’t the only warning sign about how English learners in Colorado schools are faring: While nearly a third of Colorado students were chronically absent last year, for example, 40% of English learners missed enough school to get that label. In Colorado, English learners make up 12% of all K-12 students. Some districts have much higher concentrations than others.

There have been two notable approaches to English learners in COVID’s wake when it comes to academics.

A handful of school districts where English learners made up more ground than the average, or had better growth than non-English learners, said they prioritized co-teaching instead of pulling students out of mainstream classes to receive specific instruction on English language development. At least one district used federal COVID aid to give those students tutoring. And some district leaders also said they’ve noticed more teachers are now interested in learning strategies that specifically help English learners.

But in other districts, leaders say they haven’t devoted specific resources or strategies to help English learners. In fact, regardless of recent data and what state analysts say about it, they deny that the pandemic had an outsized impact on these students. They point to the changing makeup of English learners, among other factors.

“There are districts that don’t seem to be very concerned with emerging bilingual students,” said Cynthia Trinidad-Sheahan, president of the Colorado Association for Bilingual Education,

Whether these students get extra resources and support could depend on Colorado politics. After the Colorado Department of Education published the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) scores in August, Associate Commissioner Floyd Cobb answered a question about how the agency would help close the gap between English learners and their peers by saying: “That’ll need to be answered by the General Assembly.”

Most test score data shows negative trend

When schools instituted remote learning at the start of the pandemic, some schools struggled to keep offering English language development. Students didn’t have an environment in which to practice their new language, and at home many of their families struggled to support them in accessing remote learning. And when schools resumed in-person instruction, some families of English learners were more reluctant than others to immediately send their children back to classrooms.

Test score disparities between English learners and native English speakers aren’t new. One reason is that the vast majority of English learners are testing in English before they have a full grasp of the language.

A limited number of students can take the test in Spanish for a couple of years. But results show those students did much worse than their 2019 counterparts, while native English speakers in the same grade levels have nearly recovered.

This year’s scores on the ACCESS test, which measures students’ English fluency, show that a smaller share of students are proficient in 2023 than in 2019. And four years ago, 9.4% of first graders scored at a level 1, the lowest level. But in 2023, 23.3% of first graders scored at the lowest level.

In some cases, the decline in the share of English learners achieving proficiency is just a handful of percentage points. But that doesn’t necessarily capture the pandemic’s impact.

For example, out of every 100 English learners in the fourth grade who took the CMAS language arts test for reading and writing, roughly eight met expectations, down from about 12 out of 100 in 2019. For every 100 students who aren’t English learners, about 49 met expectations this year, where 54 out of 100 met expectations in 2019.

Both groups’ proficiency rates dropped by around four to five percentage points. But four fewer English learners achieving proficiency means their share of who met expectations has dropped by roughly a third — far more proportionally than the decline for non-English learners.

Separately, CMAS growth scores, in which students’ performance is compared to peers who performed similarly in the past, also show English learners aren’t making the same growth as other student groups now, or as English learners did in the past. Students who are behind need a growth score above 50, on a scale of 0-100, to catch up.

When the state released CMAS scores in August, state officials said that groups of historically disadvantaged students were back to growth levels from before the pandemic, except for multilingual learners on English language arts. They said that without accelerating their learning, those students “will continue to fall further behind.”

“I believe we have a credible amount of evidence to be able to say that our English learners were impacted by COVID — and impacted disproportionately,” said Joyce Zurkowski, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education.

Some districts downplay negative trends for English learners

Despite what the data tells people like Zurkwoski, some district leaders think that the data for English learners in 2019 isn’t comparable to data for English learners in 2023 because of the recent waves of immigrants from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and South America, changing the demographics and make up of those groups.

State officials say that while that has impacted many districts, the numbers of new arrivals aren’t enough to completely account for all of the drops in achievement data.

District leaders have had access to state test data for months but have focused on different data points.

In Cherry Creek, district leaders say they’re monitoring how many students are becoming proficient in English. In Colorado, to move a student out of the English learner designation, teachers use ACCESS scores and state test score data. But they can also use their own observations and internal data to make the case that a student no longer requires specific English classes and services.

Holly Porter, director of language supports for Cherry Creek, said that typically about 85% of students are deemed English proficient within three years of entering the district, and 95% reach that status within five years.

Although the most recent numbers aren’t available yet, Porter said that trend has remained consistent.

When she looks at CMAS scores and other state data, Porter points out that participation dropped, including among English learners. One reason is that in 2018, the federal government asked states to allow some newcomer students to not take state language arts tests for the first year they’re enrolled.

These students tended to show very high growth because they were starting from a point of knowing no English. Porter said excluding these students made data for English learners look worse.

But that change was already in effect before the pandemic struck.

Still, for Porter, when comparing the pre-pandemic environment to what followed, she says “it’s just not the same kids, not the same data, not the same experiences. For me there’s too many variables there to say this is a definite issue until I can look at it for a couple years out of COVID.”

From 2019 to 2023, the growth score of Cherry Creek’s English learners fell from 48 to 45. Growth scores for non-English learners went up from 46 to 50 over the same time span.

Porter said, however, that growth scores for students who have reached English proficiency have held steady at 53. Students remain monitored as former English learners for two years after they stop receiving language services. Seeing that these students do well on state tests, and that the percentage of students exiting services is still high, Porter said, is additional reassurance that students are getting the English instruction they need to do well in school after they stop getting services.

Porter said the district isn’t necessarily doing anything to target the recovery of English learners, though 350 newcomer students are getting tutoring through a grant.

“We found that a lot of students were behind, not just multilingual learners,” she said.

In the Harrison school district, leaders also are slightly skeptical about comparing this year’s data with pre-pandemic scores. English learners in Harrison showed above average growth on ACCESS tests in 2019, with a score of 61, but that dropped rapidly to 51 in 2023. On CMAS language arts and math tests, student growth scores showed that English learners made less progress than other students.

While Cherry Creek attributes lower scores to excluding data from newcomer students, leaders in Harrison say a large influx of newcomers has contributed to lower scores. Both say the population of students has changed from from 2019 to 2023.

District leaders say that’s because starting in January 2021, they saw a dramatic increase in the number of refugees from Afghanistan, Guatemala, and Honduras who aren’t native English speakers.

Rachel Laufer, assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, said the challenges that come with more newcomers is that “schools are working to support not only the language and academic needs of families, but also the other barriers that exist for families that are new to the county.” That includes helping with transportation, housing, and other resources.

While they aren’t worried about the data, Harrison district leaders said they have made some changes to how they help English learners and newcomers in particular.

In the last few years, the district has tried to increase staffing to ensure there is at least one licensed teacher working with English learners at each school, instead of having to have them split their time across sites. The district is also slowly trying more co-teaching.

Laufer said Harrison prioritized bringing back groups like English learners and students with disabilities to in-person classes. But when the district used hybrid learning and parents could decide whether to send their children to school, English learners were more likely to stay home.

“It was a bigger concern for them,” Laufer said. “I think you could connect that to some of the data.”

Getting teachers enthusiastic about helping English learners

There are a few Colorado districts where some of the data was more positive for English learners.

In Pueblo 60, for example, the growth score this year for English learners on the CMAS language arts test is now higher than it is for non-English learners. In Weld County 3J, their growth score in math improved from 2019 to 2023.

The improvement isn’t uniform within districts. In 3J, for example, despite the significant growth improvements on CMAS math tests, growth scores for ACCESS tests dropped from 56 in 2019 to 41.5 in 2023.

Adams 14 students, meanwhile, showed significant growth on ACCESS tests for English fluency — the highest among large districts — but they didn’t show improvement on other state tests.

In Pueblo, district leaders said that they were working on revamping education for English learners even before the pandemic.

The high school opened a center for newcomer students seven years ago. For the last five years, the district has worked on its philosophy of teaching and on aligning instruction to content standards.

Both Pueblo and 3J have also worked to reduce the extent to which students are pulled out of classes to receive English language instruction, a strategy also happening in other districts like Harrison and Boulder where the data is less positive.

In Pueblo 60 elementary schools, pull-out instruction no longer occurs during math or reading classes. In middle school, teachers are going into students’ classes instead of pulling them out.

That was a change suggested by teachers themselves.

“They really were in tune with what their students needed and so we took a cue from them and said ‘well lets go ahead and try that and see if that made a difference,’” said Lisa Casarez, Pueblo’s English language acquisition specialist. Now, for the middle schools, she thinks it has.

State data show English learners in Pueblo 60 middle schools had higher growth scores on language arts CMAS tests than elementary students or non-English learner middle school peers.

In both 3J and Pueblo, leaders said they’ve seen more enthusiasm from all teachers to learn how to help their English learners.

3J leaders traced that shift to a few years ago when the district rolled out state-mandated rules requiring many teachers to receive training in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education when they renewed their licenses.

That meant that learning how to help these students didn’t just fall to the dedicated staff member licensed to work with English learners.

“We’ve seen a lot of interest from general education teachers to support multilingual learners,” said Jenny Wakeman, assistant superintendent for 3J. “That’s something they’ve done naturally.”

Additional funding also helped. Wakeman said her district used some federal pandemic aid — known as Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief, or ESSER — to provide additional interventions specifically for English learners, including before- and after-school tutoring.

In the meantime, she said teachers started a book club to learn even more about how to help students who are learning English. That’s the kind of attitude that Zurkowski of the Colorado education department says is necessary to help those students catch up.

“We know that those gaps were large pre-pandemic, they are large post-pandemic,” Zurkowski said. “They warrant intensive intervention efforts.”

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

MLK College Prep students will have 6 choices for next year while new school is built

2023-11-03T21:27:45+00:00

Students at MLK College Preparatory High School in Frayser will get to choose from among six schools to attend beginning next school year, as Memphis-Shelby County Schools begins construction of a new high school on the same site.

MLK College Prep is closing as it returns to MSCS control after 10 years in the Achievement School District, a failed state effort to turn around struggling schools, mostly under charter operators. The school board rejected the school’s bid to return to the district as a charter school.

The new school on the site, which is expected to open in 2027, will replace MLK College Prep and nearby Trezevant High School. Trezevant, which is in the district-run iZone turnaround program, is one of the six schools that displaced MLK students can choose to attend next year, district officials said at a town hall meeting Thursday.

The others are Craigmont High, Medical District High, Raleigh-Egypt High, Middle College High and Manassas High.

Patrice Thomas, chief of strategic operations and planning adviser for MSCS, explained that MLK College Prep students will be assigned to Trezevant High by default. Transportation will be provided to Trezevant, but it will also be provided to two other schools that draw the most MLK College Prep students.

“Trezevant is the closest school to MLK, but that might not be the option for all our students,” Thomas said.

“We want to get a list of the top two schools that most of the students are interested in attending, and we’ll provide the transportation,” she said.

Two of the six schools — Middle College High and Medical District High — have minimum requirements for enrollment and may be off limits to some MLK College Prep students.

District communications chief Cathryn Stout said the district doesn’t have a lot of flexibility around the requirements because those schools are connected to college campuses, and many of the requirements were tied to students’ behavior.

“They want to make sure that students who are coming to use their college campuses, their college resources, have a certain behavior level,” Stout said.

A new high school in Frayser has been on the drawing board for some time, and for years, the district has been seeking funding for a school to replace Trezevant, whose deferred maintenance bills are among the highest of the public schools.

This year, MSCS received $9.9 million from the Shelby County Commission to help build the state-of-the-art school, which is expected to cost around $90 million.

Construction is expected to begin next April and end by February 2027, according to a schedule submitted by TWF Builders, the contractors for the project.

Reaction to the announcement of the high school choices for next year was mixed at Thursday’s town hall.

While most parents and attendees welcomed the idea of a new high school, some said they were frustrated, because they thought the students were going to remain in the school at least for the next school year.

Others worried about their children adjusting to a new school, and that “territorialism” at Trezevant might lead to their children being bullied.

“It is frustrating to parents, and I don’t think it’s fair to them that they’ve heard so many different stories,” said Tasha Williams, who came out to support the parent group Memphis Lift.

“We have to roll with the punches,” Williams said, “but the parents had gotten comfortable, because they thought they had time to plan, and they found out that they didn’t.”

Bobby White, CEO of Frayser Community Schools, the charter network that managed MLK College Prep, told parents that the new high school would offer a new beginning for the neighborhood.

“I know that this is challenging. I know that this is life changing,” he said. “But this is a one-time opportunity for 38127. The discomfort of the moment shouldn’t get in the way of the excitement for the future.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s first A-F letter grades for schools will stress proficiency

2023-11-03T00:01:41+00:00

After months of asking Tennesseans how the state should judge its public schools when giving them their first A-F letter grades, Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds mostly ignored the feedback.

In her first major initiative since taking the helm of the state education department in July, Reynolds chose a school grading system that elevates the importance of proficiency — whether students are meeting certain academic standards on state tests — over the progress that schools make toward meeting those standards over the course of a year.

Her plan, unveiled on Thursday, will mark a sharp change of course for Tennessee, considered a pioneer in emphasizing growth measurements to assess its students, teachers, and schools.

It’s also significantly different from what Tennesseans have asked state officials for since Reynolds announced in August that an overhaul in the state’s grading system was coming. The overwhelming feedback at 10 town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments was for keeping the calculation focused on growth, as it has been the last five years.

Reynolds’ plan is similar to the model backed by ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and where Reynolds previously served as policy director.

It will still include improvement as a factor, as required by a 2016 Tennessee law, but achievement will get more weight than under the original formula — and there won’t be a way for schools to meet the achievement criteria by meeting certain improvement goals, according to a presentation to the state Board of Education.

“This version is recalibrating that balance point and is going to say more about where the kids are in those schools right now,” said David Laird, assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in the education department. “It is less of a referendum on maybe what the school’s impact has been, but it’s more clearly articulating their challenges right now.”

The department also announced that the grades will be released in mid-December, a month later than previously planned. State officials say they need more time to verify data going into the grades.

This is the first time the state will issue its letter grades since the 2016 law requiring them took effect. Previous attempts were called off because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

There are several other changes to the calculation.

The formula will factor in test scores for science and social studies, although not as much as for math and English language arts, which were the focus of the original model.

Gone is data related to chronic absenteeism. A new factor will be how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve. For high schools, college and career readiness will be included, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

The debate about growth vs. proficiency was the biggest concern for school leaders who have been waiting and planning for grades for five years.

Focusing on proficiency likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

Beyond the stigma of getting a D or an F, officials representing those schools eventually may face hearings before the state Board of Education or audits of their spending and academic programming.

Several board members worried that teachers could flee schools graded D or F, exacerbating the challenges faced by schools in high-poverty areas, where students face extra challenges before they even walk into a classroom.

“It’s a struggle for me to think about saying everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when some folks have a closet full of boots, and some have none,” said Darrell Cobbins, who represents Memphis on the board.

Many education advocates worried the state could return to an era when schools with many affluent students coasted to the top ratings, while doing little to show they were helping students improve. Meanwhile, schools in high-poverty areas will have little chance to earn an A or B, they told Chalkbeat.

“Measuring only absolute proficiency for 50% of a school’s grade will most certainly disadvantage our highest poverty schools,” said Erin O’Hara Block, a school board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, who served on the working group giving input to the state.

“I’m not sure what this system is supposed to motivate for schools, nor how it will truly inform parents on differences in what various schools can offer to their children,” she said.

Reynolds said the letter grades are a tool to provide families and school communities with information they can use to make decisions, not necessarily to incentivize schools to improve.

“We want to tell the truth about whether or not our kids are actually achieving,” she said.

But Gini Pupo-Walker, director of the Education Trust in Tennessee, is hopeful the grades will somehow be tied to extra resources to help struggling schools.

“We look forward to learning more about how the state plans to support schools that receive D’s and F’s,” she said, “and ensure schools are paying attention to the success of all students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools graduation rates hit record high, data show

2023-10-31T19:01:51+00:00

A greater share of Chicago Public Schools students graduated last school year than in 2022, reaching a new record, officials announced Tuesday.

The graduation rate of 84% — representing students who graduated in four years — was 1.1 percentage points higher than the graduation rate for the Class of 2022, when 82.9% of high school students graduated on time. The dropout rate for the Class of 2023 was slightly higher at 9.4% than it was for the Class of 2022, which saw 8.9% of students drop out between freshman year and graduation.

Chicago Public Schools’ five-year graduation rate for the Class of 2022 — which includes students who take extra time to finish their diploma either at a traditional or alternative school — was 85.6%, 1.6 percentage points higher than for the class of 2021 when it was 84%.

District officials announced the numbers with fanfare at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson and joined virtually by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Martinez said the rising graduation rate was a sign that the district is continuing to recover from the pandemic, reminding the audience that the students in the Class of 2023 were freshmen as the pandemic started in 2020, followed by two school years of remote and hybrid learning.

“When you think about their last year, their senior year, was probably their most normal year, I want you to take these results and put them in that context,” Martinez said.

Cardona described the graduation rates as “promising signs for the future of education in Chicago.” He highlighted the district’s use of federal COVID relief dollars, which CPS has put toward several purposes, including covering teacher salaries and hiring more instructional staff.

The announcement came one day after Illinois state education officials released statewide data, including graduation rates that had also increased across Illinois. (The state and Chicago Public Schools calculate graduation rates differently, so Chalkbeat is unable to provide direct comparisons.)

Chicago’s graduation rate has steadily increased over time, hitting a record high in 2022 even as students have faced academic challenges connected to the pandemic. Tuesday’s announcement comes on the heels of another report that found a rising share of CPS students are enrolling in college.

Racial disparities among graduates still remain, though they are narrowing. Graduation rates increased for Black, Hispanic and Asian American students, while dropping slightly for white students — by .4 percentage points — compared to the Class of 2022. Rates also dropped for multiracial students by 5.7 percentage points.

Nearly 75% of Black boys graduated in four years, up from roughly 65% five years ago, according to district data.

Despite higher graduation rates, SAT scores dipped for the Class of 2023, to an average composite score of 914. The average score for the Class of 2022 was 927, according to district data. Separately, the district also saw slightly fewer ninth graders — 88.7% — who were on track to graduate by 2026. That’s compared to 88.8% of the class that’s one year older than them.

As the pandemic set in, the district relaxed some grading policies, as did other school systems across the nation — raising questions about how such policies may have contributed to CPS’s rising graduation rates. Martinez argued that an increase in students completing college-level credits was a sign students were held to a high standard. Just under half of the Class of 2023 earned early college credits, a 5% increase from 2022, according to the district.

One of those students is Zaid Orduño, who said at Tuesday’s press conference that he took college-level courses at Daley College during his time at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, through the district’s Early College Program. His classes at Daley included English, math, sociology, and psychology, and he ultimately earned an associate’s degree alongside his high school diploma.

Taking those classes, he said, inspired him to pass up his original plan of joining his family’s construction business and instead pursue a civil engineering degree at Illinois Tech, he said.

A wall at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts is dedicated to remembering a hunger strike held in 2015 to demand for the reopening of Dyett, which was closed at the time.

Dyett, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side, saw its graduation rate tick up by more than 3 percentage points, to 86%. Johnson noted how far the school had come since he and other community members participated in a highly publicized hunger strike in 2015 to demand that Dyett, then shuttered, reopen. He also recognized fellow hunger striker Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who now represents the neighborhood nearby in City Council and serves as the chair of the Committee on Education and Child Development.

“A hunger striker can turn into a mayor and an alderman, and more importantly, a hunger strike can lead to the success that we are experiencing with our students right here at Dyett High School,” Johnson said.

He also used the moment to once again advocate for expanding the Sustainable Community Schools Initiative that Dyett and 19 other schools are a part of. The program partners schools with a nonprofit that provides wraparound services for students and families.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois student test scores closer to pre-pandemic proficiency levels, but absenteeism remains high

2023-10-30T14:00:00+00:00

Illinois public school students made strides in recovering from pandemic disruption, with gains in English language arts and math test scores, a jump in high school graduation rates in the past decade, and an increase in students taking advanced courses, according to data from the state’s latest report card.

The report card issued by the Illinois State Board of Education shows that more students were considered proficient on standardized tests in the 2022-23 school year compared to the previous year, but scores have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

In a press conference on Wednesday, State Superintendent Tony Sanders said educators and families should be proud of the progress made on the 2023 report card.

“I’m so happy to see a second year of strong recovery post-pandemic,” said Sanders. “We’re moving fast toward recovery, although we still have quite a distance to travel.”

The annual report card provides families and educators with a glimpse at how their district and school are doing in comparison to the state’s 850-plus districts. Among the metrics collected by the State Board of Education are test scores, enrollment data, chronic absenteeism, teacher retention rates, graduation rates, the number of students taking advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement or dual credit, and participation in career and technical education programs.

The latest report card offers some good news for Illinois districts that are still working to help students recover from pandemic-related disruptions. To address learning gaps, they have focused on hiring more staff, creating after-school programs, and hosting summer learning opportunities. Some of those efforts were funded with the $7 billion in federal COVID relief funding the state received.

However, the state’s public schools will have to figure out how to continue these programs as federal relief funding will expire at the end of September 2024. Chicago Public Schools officials recently projected a $391 million budget deficit next school year.

Here are some of the highlights from the 2023 report card.

Test scores are trending up, but haven’t returned to 2019 levels

Illinois standardized test scores show that reading recovery continues to improve while math scores have yet to make similar progress. While all student groups across race and ethnicity made significant gains, the report card found that Black students made the most progress. The state board noted that Black students were hit the hardest in the pandemic and often remained in remote learning longer than other students when school buildings began to reopen in the school year 2020-2021.

On the 2023 Illinois Assessment of Readiness, known as the IAR, a yearly standardized test used as one of the measures in the report card, 35.4% of students between third grade and eighth grade were proficient in reading, a 5.2 percent point increase compared to 2022. In math, 27% of students in those same grades were proficient, a 1.6 percentage point increase. However, the 2023 scores still fell short of pre-pandemic levels; in 2019, 37.8% were proficient in English language arts and 31.8% in math.

Last month, Chicago Public Schools reported about 26% of students were considered proficient in English Language Arts on the 2023 IAR test, compared with 27.3% in 2019. For math, 17.5% of students passed, compared with 23.6% in 2019.

Students were unable to take the spring assessment in 2020 when the pandemic upended learning and forced school buildings to close. In 2021, participation was low as some schools had the option of offering the exam in the spring or in the fall, but participation rates returned to normal in 2022.

For 11th graders who took the SAT, a standardized exam used by colleges as part of admission criteria, 31.6% of students were considered proficient in reading and 26.7% were considered proficient in math. That’s fewer than the 36.2% of 11th graders in 2019 who scored proficient in reading and the 34.4% who scored proficient in math.

State sees increase in enrollment for English learners

The state’s overall enrollment continues to decline steadily. Over 1.8 million students were enrolled in Illinois public schools in 2022-23, a loss of more than 11,500 students compared to the previous school year. In a media call on Wednesday, Sanders said the declines track with a drop in birth rates across the nation and in Illinois.

Public schools saw an increase of Latino and Asian American students enrolling last school year. However, white and Black student enrollment has decreased.

Across student groups, English language learners had the largest bump in enrollment over the last five years, according to the report card. Sanders said the state board cannot say for sure how many students are migrants from Central America or refugee students from Ukraine or Afghanistan.

Students continue to be chronically absent at high rate

About 28% of students were chronically absent from school last year. That’s a slight decrease — about a 1.5 percentage point — from the 2021-22 school year when about 29.8% of students were chronically absent.

Students are considered chronically absent when they miss about 18 days, or 10% of school, with or without a valid excuse. Student mental health days also count towards chronic absenteeism.

When students miss a significant amount of school it can impact their academic performance.

The report card shows high rates of absenteeism among Black, Native American, and Latino students. But Black, Latino, Asian American, and white students also saw improvement in school attendance compared in 2021-22. During last school year, chronic absenteeism rates were high among students from low-income families, students experiencing homelessness, and students with Individualized Education Programs.

The Illinois data is similar to what schools are seeing across the country. Attendance Works — a nonprofit organization that looks into attendance rates across the country — has seen early data from 11 states that found about 27.9% of students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year — a 2.2% decrease in chronic absenteeism rates compared with the 2021-22 school year.

Illinois students graduation rates improve

High school seniors who graduated in the spring of 2023 entered high school in 2019. Their freshman year was disrupted in March when COVID-19 shuttered schools. Now state data shows that those students graduated at the highest rate in 13 years, excluding 2019-20 when graduation rates were inflated due to a reduction in graduation requirements in the spring of 2020.

Last school year, 87.6% of students graduated from high school, a 1.4% increase from 2019 and a 3.8% increase from 2011. Black and Latino students saw significant gains when it comes to graduation rates compared to 2019 — 80.1% of Black students, or a 3.6% increase, and 88.5% of Latino students, a 6.3% gain, graduated from high school in the spring of 2023.

During the press conference on Wednesday, Sanders was asked what factor led to higher student achievement for Black students when compared to previous years. Sanders attributed much of it to the evidence-based funding formula.

“The investment that local school districts have been making to better support our students of color is, I think, why you’re seeing some of these significant increases not only in student proficiency, but also in graduation rates and other key indicators,” said Sanders.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

How Michigan teacher evaluations would change under proposed reforms

2023-10-30T10:30:00+00:00

Proposed legislation in Michigan that would eliminate student test scores as a factor in teacher evaluations would represent a victory for teachers if it passes, and a turnabout in an education reform effort that began nearly a decade ago.

Current state law requires that student scores on standardized tests count for 40% of a teacher’s performance rating. Under two proposed bills that passed the Senate last week, that requirement would go away, and the districts would be able to use their own criteria for evaluating teachers, such as classroom observations, samples of student work, rubrics, and lesson plans.

The bills would also de-emphasize evaluations as a factor in districts’ decisions to fire or demote teachers or deny them tenure. But they would require districts to take action against teachers who don’t improve after repeated interventions.

The House Education Committee is expected to take up the bills on Tuesday.

Here’s some background on the current law, and highlights of the new proposals:

Michigan law followed a push for more accountability

Michigan’s law on test scores and evaluations grew out of a push for greater accountability in education that began in the 2000s. Some advocacy groups theorized that more rigorous reviews would generate detailed feedback that could be used to improve teachers’ performance.

In 2009, under the Obama administration, the federal government offered money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to states that made policy changes, including revamping teacher evaluations to include test scores.

In response, Michigan passed a law in 2015 requiring that teacher evaluations be 25% based on student growth, as measured by changes in test scores from one year to the next. The requirement went up to 40% at the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Skepticism of test-based evaluations has grown

Teachers have long argued that growth in test scores is an unfair way to measure their job performance, because it compares the performance of two different cohorts of students.

And in recent years, many education experts and policy analysts have become more vocal in questioning the changes that were made in the 2010s.

By 2019, nine states had stopped requiring that test scores be considered in teacher evaluations. Many other states have considered making the same change.

Proponents of returning to the old evaluation method say there is no evidence to suggest the current system benefits students, and that tying ratings to test scores contributes to burnout amid persistent teacher shortages.

Critics are concerned that de-emphasizing student test scores could lower standards for teachers while students are still struggling to recover from pandemic learning loss and need high-quality instruction.

How the proposals would change teacher evaluations

The bills proposed in Michigan would be a return to the system that was used before 2015. Districts would have more power to set their own standards to decide how and when teachers are evaluated.

But the proposals would still require districts to set up a common rating system, and they prescribe some consequences for teachers who don’t measure up.

School districts would have to start using teacher and administrator rating systems by July 1, 2024, that include four possible ratings: “highly effective,” “effective,” “minimally effective,” and “ineffective.” After that, districts would have to add “developing” and “needing support” ratings as well.

Teachers rated “needing support” would get individualized development plans from their districts to improve their performance within 180 days.

Districts would not be allowed to fire, deny tenure to, or withhold full certification from teachers rated “ineffective.” But they would be required to terminate teachers or administrators who are rated “needing support” three years in a row. Those who receive that rating could request reviews of their evaluations.

Staff who conduct evaluations would have to take “rater reliability training” from their districts.

A Senate analysis of the proposals said local districts might face some new costs to update teacher and school administrator evaluations and to incorporate collective bargaining agreements as part of that process.

On the other hand, it says, schools could save money by not having to calculate testing data, and by evaluating consistently effective teachers less often.

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

Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

2023-10-27T19:24:21+00:00

An hour before dismissal on a recent Friday afternoon, eight Brighton Park Elementary School students huddled in a classroom with Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English language learners.

They were there for a voluntary, biweekly support group run by Moorhouse and Stephanie Carrillo, a school counselor, for students grappling with the upheaval of immigration and the adjustment to a new country, new city, and new school.

She asked the children — a mix of sixth through eighth graders who had recently arrived in Chicago as part of an influx of migrant families — to share the best and worst part of their week.

One boy said the best thing was that his family had moved to a new house. Another child looked up, her hair slightly covering her face. She shrugged her shoulders and struggled to come up with a worst moment.

That’s OK, Moorhouse said in Spanish, she doesn’t have to have a low point.

The girl then added, “No mejor,” meaning there was no high point either. After a moment of silence, the whole group burst into laughter.

These students, who arrived in Chicago between last year and this year, are among the more than 20,000 newly arrived migrants in Chicago since last August, with many fleeing from Central, South American and African countries experiencing political and economic turmoil, according to city officials.

Chicago Public Schools does not track immigration status and has not shared how many migrant students have enrolled in schools. But the district has pointed to clues of an increase, including 7,800 more English learners enrolled this school year, compared to an annual average increase of 3,000 such students.

As of mid-September, 2,250 migrant children were housed in the city’s shelters, according to records from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications that were obtained by Chalkbeat.

Educators have raised concerns that many Chicago schools don’t have the resources, such as staff, to provide new migrants with the right language instruction, recently pleading with the state to send more help.

But there are also questions about whether newcomers have the social-emotional support they need at school. These students have potentially endured dangerous journeys to the United States, on top of the stress of leaving their homes behind for shelters or other temporary living arrangements in a foreign place.

That latter concern led Moorhouse to launch the support group at Brighton Park last year after she met a migrant student who was showing signs of trauma. The student, whom Moorhouse met in January, didn’t want to be in school and sometimes, the student’s body would shake uncontrollably, she said.

At one of the sessions Moorhouse held, the student shared a personal story about his journey to the United States. Afterward, Moorhouse recalled, the student said: “My chest isn’t hurting. I can breathe.” Moorhouse felt it was a sign of healing.

In some ways, Brighton Park is well-positioned to host this support group. As a community school, it partners with a nonprofit organization to provide wraparound services for its students. Carrillo, the school counselor who helps Moorhouse with the support group, works with the school on behalf of its partner nonprofit, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Brighton Park Elementary’s community schools funding also helped to pay for the training on the model that the support group is based on, according to Cecilia Mendoza, the school’s assistant principal.

The model is known as STRONG, or Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, which focuses on teaching children how to understand and cope with their stress before they’re invited to share more personal details about their journey to the United States, if they choose.

It’s unclear how many schools have specific support groups for migrant students like the one at Brighton Park. About $35 million of the district’s budget this year was allocated for social-emotional curriculum, behavioral health supports for students, and additional social workers and counselors, according to a district spokesperson.

This year, Moorhouse and Carrillo are starting with the basics.

On that recent Friday afternoon, in the classroom where Moorhouse gathered with eight of her students, bright orange and blue strips of paper on the dry erase board described concepts of melting and freezing in English and Spanish: “Que le pasa al chocolate que se deja al sol?” (What happens to chocolate left in the sun?).

A plastic cupboard sat against the wall, filled with shoes, socks, and clothing donations Moorhouse had collected through her Amazon Wishlist. Sheets of paper taped to the wall have words of affirmation in both languages: “Tus emociones son validas.” (Your feelings are valid.)

A classroom for English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School has brightly colored phrases translated in English and Spanish on the dry erase board.

After their icebreaker, Moorhouse passed around crayons and a worksheet with the outline of a human body. She explained that stress can cause physical pain and asked her students to color in the part of their bodies that hurt when they are stressed.

“Entonces para mi, cuando yo estoy estresado, mi estómago me duele,” she told the students, explaining that her stomach hurts when she’s stressed.

One girl, wearing a pair of sneakers donated through the Amazon wishlist, used a green crayon to fill in the top of the head. She colored the shoulders with a green-yellow.

When Moorhouse asked students to share, one boy said stress gives him a headache, and then he feels like throwing up. A low “hmm” spread through the group, as if others recognized the boy’s feeling.

At 2:35 p.m., about halfway through the session, the students received a new worksheet. This one had a large triangle on it, and each point represented something different: pensamientos, sentimientos, y acciones. Thoughts, emotions, and actions. Moorhouse wanted the students to reflect on how a thought may lead to a feeling, which ultimately leads to an action.

After a couple minutes jotting down their thoughts, the students shared their responses. One boy smiled as he described an example: When he’s talking to other students and they suddenly begin speaking in English, he feels as if he’s been removed from the conversation.

“How does that make you feel?” Moorhouse asked him in Spanish.

“Bad,” he replied.

“What’s your action?” Moorhouse responded.

“I walk away,” he said.

That day, Mendoza, the assistant principal, was peeking in.

“I don’t think students or people in general sometimes realize the effect that has on others who only speak one language,” Mendoza said later. “So that really stuck with me, and I thought about how we could have that conversation, perhaps, with the students … because they might not be aware that they’re doing that.”

Moorhouse then presented a challenge for the students: How can they change their thinking about a situation, in order to elicit better action? One boy gave the example of taking a hard math test that he doesn’t know the answers to, so instead, he asks to go to the bathroom.

He was stumped when Moorhouse asked him to think of a better action. She opened the floor to the group, but no one came up with an answer good enough for Moorhouse. When she pressed them to think harder, they hit on a solution: He could ask the teacher for help — for understanding the exam, or perhaps even asking to take it another day.

With about 15 minutes left, Moorhouse and Carillo passed around stress balls shaped like bee hives. They asked the students to squeeze hard and pretend that they were squeezing out the juice.

A couple of kids laughed as they squeezed their fists and then released pressure.

Around 2:55 p.m. Moorhouse handed out a blank calendar worksheet. For the following week, students would be expected to log how they’ve practiced relaxation strategies, such as grabbing an ice pack from the nurse or using a stress ball, when feeling stressed. One student shared that drawing helps.

It was time for dismissal. The students didn’t run out the door. They stayed back to chat with each other. A few grabbed extra bags of Skinny Pop.

As the weeks go on, Moorhouse and Carrillo will meet individually with each student to assess whether they want to talk more about their personal experiences of coming to the U.S. and what would be appropriate to share with the other students.

In those conversations, students may show signs of needing more individual counseling provided by the school, such as bursting into tears while recounting a story, Carrillo said.

Some students take a while to open up, so it’s unclear how much they’ll participate going forward, Moorhouse said. One of those quieter students is the child who had shared that there was no highlight or lowlight of her week. During the hourlong session, this student gradually opened up a little more.

And when most of the other children left at the end of the day, that student stayed behind. She wanted to talk some more one-on-one with Moorhouse.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee rushes to revamp its A-F letter grades for schools. Educators cry foul.

2023-10-26T10:00:00+00:00

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It was supposed to make things simpler.

A 2016 Tennessee law required the state to assign each public school a letter grade, A to F, based mostly on student test results. The intent was to give parents and communities an easy way to assess the quality of education at each school.

Nothing about it has been simple, though. Since the law took effect, the state hasn’t issued any grades, mostly because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

And now there’s a new complication: As the state prepares to finally issue its first grades in November, the education department and its new leader are revamping the grading formula. The changes likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

The rollout will be a jolt to many Tennessee public school leaders, who have been waiting and planning for these grades for five years, thinking they understood what the criteria would be. And beyond the stigma, the grades could have real consequences: Officials representing schools that get D’s or F’s eventually may face hearings or audits of their spending and academic programming.

“It almost seems like we’re trying to change rules after the game’s already been played,” said Brian Curry, a school board member in Germantown, during an August town hall in Memphis to discuss potential changes with state officials.

Why the letter grades for schools matter

Tennessee’s 2016 school report card law didn’t include consequences for schools that get low grades.

That changed last year, when Tennessee passed a new system for funding K-12 education.

Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act, or TISA, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools get D’s or F’s on the state report card, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could have to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school in question.

State board member Darrell Cobbins, whose district includes Memphis schools, acknowledges that the increased funding that came with TISA warrants additional accountability. But he wonders about the feasibility of what the law asks of the all-volunteer board. Holding hearings for potentially hundreds of schools will be a “major undertaking,” he said.

The board is working with a consultant, Bellwether Education Partners, to develop a review process that Cobbins hopes will be logical, consistent, and explainable.

At the crux of the state’s late change is a long-running debate over proficiency vs. growth — whether students should be judged based more on whether they meet certain academic standards, or on how much progress they make toward those standards. Where the state lands in that debate is especially important for schools where students face extra challenges even before they walk into a classroom.

But many public school leaders believe there’s a larger political motive behind the sudden drive by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration to change the rules: advancing his school choice agenda.

Under a 2019 voucher law pushed by Lee, Tennessee now provides taxpayer money to help some families send their children to private schools. But the program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap. Lee wants to expand enrollment and eventually take the option statewide.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this,” said Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools and a former Tennessee Superintendent of the Year.

“Think about it,” he continued. “If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.”

Several other district leaders brought up the same concern to state officials at town halls hosted by the department in August and September to get public feedback about revising the grading formula. But state officials flatly deny there’s a connection between the voucher law and changes to the grading formula.

The grading law “was passed to promote transparency, and families should be able to know and to understand how their students’ schools are performing,” a department spokesman said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said the goal of the new formula is to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that make sense to Tennesseans, whether they reflect proficiency, growth, or other criteria that are ultimately chosen.

“Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, policymaker, or an interested community member, school letter grades will empower all Tennesseans with the information they need to support K-12 public education and our local schools,” she said.

Tennessee initially adopted growth-focused model

State law requires that Tennessee’s model for grading schools take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual state tests, and it allows inclusion of other reliable indicators of student achievement. The statute directed the education department to come up with a formula to turn those results into a single letter grade for each school, to be published online on the State Report Card.

When developing the calculation under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, the department stressed achievement and growth in math and English language arts. And it created two pathways for schools to demonstrate achievement.

One way was based on what the state calls “pure achievement,” meaning that a certain percentage of a school’s students demonstrated a required level of proficiency, skill, or knowledge. By this metric, a school that started the school year with a high proficiency rate was likely to receive an A even if it had not improved student learning during the school year.

The other way rewarded schools that met certain goals to move their students toward proficiency from one year to the next. The idea was that all schools, especially those serving low-income students or that have historically performed poorly, should have an opportunity to get an A as long as they make strong progress toward the state’s achievement goals.

So even the achievement part of the grading formula could be fulfilled with strong growth. In this way, Tennessee was an early adopter of a growth-heavy model when developing its accountability system.

“All means all!” became the mantra of then-Education Commissioner Candice McQueen as she worked with education stakeholders for nearly a year to design a system to incentivize improvement for all students — whether they are considered low, average, or high achievers — as well as for all schools, regardless of their demographic makeup.

Tennessee had modest success with that approach, even though the actual letter grades were never issued. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, students were showing incremental growth in math and reading based on some of the nation’s highest proficiency standards.

But state lawmakers have become increasingly impatient with the pace of improvement, especially in reading. About a third of the state’s students meet grade-level standards on the English language arts test, which requires students to demonstrate the ability to read closely.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this. Think about it. If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.” — Mike Winstead, Maryville City Schools director

“At the end of the day, I want to know: Can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and can you read, regardless of how much you have grown from one year to the other?” said Rep. Mark Cochran, an Englewood Republican, during one legislative hearing about the state’s emphasis on growth.

Meanwhile, the legislature has sought to provide more options for families dissatisfied with the performance of traditional public schools by introducing private school vouchers and allowing charter schools to open statewide.

Now as Tennessee revamps its school grading system, Lee’s administration is poised to shift weight in the equation from growth to pure achievement. Reynolds wants the state to do that by eliminating the growth pathway for demonstrating achievement. Growth would still be a component of the overall grade, as dictated by state law, but a much smaller part.

“I want to be very clear that when we’re talking about academic achievement, we’re talking about academic achievement,” Reynolds, the new education commissioner, said at an Oct. 12 meeting of education stakeholders.

State hears strong calls for retaining growth focus

Reynolds, who was sworn in to her post in July, launched the reevaluation of the grading system about a month later as her first major initiative. She invited Tennesseans to weigh in on how the state should measure a school’s academic success. At the time, state officials said all options were on the table.

At town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments from Tennesseans, state officials heard a common theme: Keep some kind of growth option as part of the achievement calculation. Measuring student performance with a single letter grade requires nuance, many educators said, and the growth-based model allows that.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” — Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee education commissioner

A formula that’s weighted too heavily toward pure achievement, they warned, would produce grades that essentially mirror the economic profiles of the schools — with high-income communities getting the A’s and B’s — and families wouldn’t be able to use the grades to differentiate the performance of one high-poverty school from another.

“Given the strong correlation between achievement and poverty, I think it’s really difficult to talk about just achievement in isolation. We really need to balance this with growth,” said Madeline Price, policy director for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, at an Oct. 5 meeting of the stakeholders group.

“All schools, especially low-income and traditionally low performing schools, should have a very real opportunity to receive an A” if they significantly improve student performance, the leaders of Tennessee’s school superintendent organization wrote in a letter to Reynolds.

Meaghan Turnbow, who coordinates programs for English language learners in fast-growing Rutherford County Schools, south of Nashville, noted pitfalls in a model that emphasizes proficiency over growth.

“We have students come to our district from all over the world with various education levels and English levels,” she wrote in a public comment. “Year to year they grow, but it may be several years before they are considered meeting or exceeding expectations.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds speaks to a gathering of school superintendents in September. Reynolds has signaled that she wants to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

But soon after asking for public feedback, Tennessee’s new education chief signaled that she wanted to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

During an Aug. 29 town hall in Chattanooga, Reynolds acknowledged that the education department, before scuttling plans to issue grades in the fall of 2022 under former Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, had run the numbers but didn’t like what it saw. For instance, she said, a school with 80% of its students reading on grade level might have received a B, but so might a school that had only 15% of students reading on grade level, while also demonstrating high growth.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” Reynolds asked.

“We should celebrate growth,” she continued. “We should also celebrate achievement, because at the end of the day, kids can grow. But if they never get on grade level, they don’t have much of a future, particularly when it comes to reading and math.”

How a single school could get conflicting evaluations

The A-F grading system, as required by the state, was billed as a simple, common-sense tool to help parents understand how their child’s school is doing and compare schools.

But changes the department is making could add a new layer of complexity for school communities.

When Tennessee developed its accountability plan in 2017, it opted for a single system to satisfy both the state law and a 2015 federal accountability law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. That way, “we’re not sending different messages to parents and the general public,” said Winstead, the Maryville schools director who served on the state task force that developed the plan.

ESSA doesn’t require A-F grades, but it directs the state to use its own criteria to identify schools that are academically in the bottom 5%, plus other schools showing low performance or significant disparities across groups of students who are Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, or English learners, or have learning disabilities. Such schools become eligible for additional federal funding.

Because of the link between the two laws, the schools that would earn the lowest grades under Tennessee’s current formula are the same ones that would get federal support to help them improve. And educators would work with a common set of goals, priorities, and incentives.

Changes that the Tennessee Department of Education is making could create two separate accountability systems, producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

Under Reynolds, the Tennessee education department appears ready to decouple the state’s A-F system from its federal compliance plan. The change would result in Tennessee having two accountability systems, potentially producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

For example, if the new state formula places less emphasis on certain student groups than the federal system does, a school that has big racial or economic disparities in student performance could still earn high grades from Tennessee based on overall proficiency rates. Meanwhile, a school with low proficiency rates would get a D or an F, even though it may serve certain groups of students better than an A or B school.

Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in Tennessee, says what’s going on here has parallels in Texas, where Reynolds used to be chief deputy commissioner. Officials there changed their grading criteria this year to apply to schools retroactively. However, after some school districts sued that state over the changes, Texas delayed the release of its grades.

Texas lawmakers are also in the midst of a special session on vouchers to debate whether students should be able to use public dollars to attend private schools. Batiwalla worries that officials in both states are hijacking the grading systems for political aims, not to incentivize school communities to improve.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers,” said Batiwalla, an outspoken critic of Reynolds’ efforts. “Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.”

Proficiency focus could shortchange some students

Other tweaks are likely when Tennessee releases its new equation in the days or weeks ahead, just before giving schools their first set of grades.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers. Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.” — Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner, Tennessee Department of Education

The department has heard calls to include social studies and science scores in the calculation, as well as data related to third-grade reading, participation in tutoring programs, and postsecondary indicators like dual enrollment and career and technical education offerings, just to name a few. There’s also a growing consensus around ditching student absenteeism data, which is a factor in the current equation.

But most educators have their eye on the growth vs. proficiency debate. They worry that greater emphasis on proficiency will motivate schools to focus on improving “bubble kids” — those scoring just under proficiency — instead of working to improve students at all levels of achievement.

“You’re incentivizing bad choices that serve just a few kids instead of all kids,” Winstead said.

Winstead’s suburban school system should be fine. Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville, is one of the state’s highest-achieving districts and stands to benefit if Tennessee’s revamped grading formula puts more weight on proficiency. But Winstead philosophically disagrees with the approach that the state appears to be taking.

“This is going to demoralize a lot of school communities,” he said, “teachers, kids, and parents — folks who have done incredible things to move kids forward.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit district’s transfer policy may be changed to reduce classroom disruption

2023-10-19T15:31:35+00:00

Detroit school district officials are proposing to standardize the transfer process for students and families looking to switch between district schools during the school year.

Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools Community District, said the new policy guidance would help address possible disruptions to classroom learning if students consider leaving a school in the middle of the year, either because they are moving or dissatisfied with their current school.

“What we’re trying to do is just create better guidelines overall to encourage families to transfer students at the beginning of quarters and beginning of semesters,” Vitti said at a DPSCD school board policy committee meeting Tuesday. “This will help teachers with just managing their classrooms. It’ll help principals and administrators create the right climate and culture.”

He added: “It doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t let students come and transfer at certain times if they’re new to the neighborhood, or there’s something unique happening in the family.”

The policy committee agreed to advance the policy draft to the next school board meeting on Nov. 14 for a first reading by the full board. All district policies must be reviewed by the board twice before they can be voted on.

Frequent school transfers have been a recurring problem in Michigan school districts, where state policy allows families to easily switch schools during the school year. Detroit families told Chalkbeat, Bridge Michigan and Outlier Media in a 2018 investigation on student mobility that they moved their children in part because of academic struggles, issues with school discipline, family moves, and new job opportunities.

About 11% of DPSCD students move between district schools in an average school year, according to Vitti. Roughly 30% move to different school districts.

In recent months, DPSCD officials have considered policies on administrative transfers, in which school officials initiate the move. In July, school board members approved an update to the district’s code of conduct that gives school officials more leeway to transfer students for misbehavior. The following month, the policy committee reviewed a proposal that would let officials at application schools request a student transfer to a neighborhood school if the student missed too many days and previous outreach efforts didn’t work.

The policy introduced at Tuesday’s meeting, however, is not intended to be punitive. Rather, it’s meant to improve communication with families about how and when to go through with a transfer. If it is approved, DPSCD officials would begin to notify families of the preferred transfer window via letters and phone calls. The policy does not specify how far in advance a student or their family should notify school officials about a transfer.

The policy would also not interfere with transfers to application or exam schools. Students who wish to transfer to those schools typically must do so during a specific application window.

The proposed language was recommended by board members ahead of Tuesday’s policy meeting. Board members Misha Stallworth West and Iris Taylor both said they had received complaints from parents that there was unclear communication about student transfers.

The transfer policy would overlap with the district’s current policies on school enrollment, transportation, and administrative transfers. According to those policies, students can be denied a transfer to a requested school based on enrollment capacity or program restrictions. Families are also responsible for bringing their students to and from a new school if they aren’t eligible for a school bus ride.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools reschedules High School Admissions Test

2023-10-18T21:27:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools announced a new testing schedule Wednesday for the High School Admissions Test, which was canceled last week after technical problems.

District students will take the test next week, on either Oct. 24 or Oct. 25. The district will assign one of those dates to each eighth grader’s school, according to a CPS letter to families. Students taking the exam in Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Urdu, or simplified Chinese will test on Nov. 1.

Non-CPS students — whose testing window last weekend was canceled — can take the exam on Oct. 28, Oct. 29, or Nov. 5 at Lane Tech or Lindblom high schools, the district said. These students must sign up for an exam date in GoCPS, the city’s admissions application system, by 9 a.m. Oct. 23.

The exam will not be the same one as was planned for last week, and students who were able to access the test will not see the same questions, officials said.

Students who were able to complete the exam will be allowed to retake the test, and their new score will be used for admissions even if it’s the lower of both tests, officials said. Students who don’t want to retake the exam must opt out by filing out this form and returning it to their school by Oct. 23. However, due to last week’s glitches, district officials “strongly recommend that students take advantage of this opportunity” to retake the exam, they said in the letter to families.

CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were set to take the HSAT in school on Oct. 11. The exam is part of admissions requirements for selective enrollment high schools and for enrollment at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries.

But on test day, a technical problem broke out with the testing vendor, Riverside Associates, LLC, officials said. The company later discovered that backlogged servers caused the problem, according to an FAQ on the district’s website. Students were unable to log into the testing platform, and the company’s help desk could not be reached, educators told Chalkbeat. District officials instructed principals to stop exam administration for students who were unable to log in.

The district later canceled the exam for non-CPS students, who were scheduled to take it Oct. 14 and 15.

The company fixed the problem by “adding server capacity” and testing the system to ensure that it works, the FAQ said.

Students’ HSAT scores help determine which selective high schools they might be admitted. This year, students must submit their top choices in the district’s admissions system — GoCPS — by Nov. 9, a month earlier than usual. Students were originally allowed to re-rank their choices by Nov. 22, but given the rescheduled HSAT, district officials have extended the re-rank deadline to Dec. 1.

After last week’s glitches, the district plans to be “very cautious” about the new testing plan and is “putting some strategies in place” to eliminate potential issues, said CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova during a Wednesday Board of Education meeting to review the agenda for an upcoming full board meeting. Neither she nor district officials immediately elaborated on what extra steps they’ve taken to ensure the test will resume smoothly.

In the online FAQ, the district said that its team has “reviewed results of vendor testing to confirm preparedness for resuming the HS Admissions Test program.”

During the board meeting Wednesday, Chkoumbova apologized to families for the glitches and said she was “a little bit disappointed” by the problems, given that the district’s aim was to reduce anxiety for students. The district had shortened the test length this year to an hour, from a previous 2 ½ hours, and had offered it for the first time in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

“Our team went into the testing session with a lot of assurances,” Chkoumbova said. “We did triple check everything, but the platform failed.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Denver is creating a Black Student Success team to spread effective strategies to its schools

2023-10-17T23:02:48+00:00

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To boost the academic success of Black students, Denver Public Schools is creating a new team of administrators to find the strategies and teaching practices that are working best for Black students and spread them throughout the district.

Tuesday’s announcement of the new initiative, called the Black Student Success team, comes 4½ years after the Denver school board passed a Black Excellence Resolution. The resolution required each DPS school to develop a plan to boost Black student success, but some schools have struggled to put those plans into place.

“This is building upon the Black Excellence Resolution,” Joe Amundsen, the executive director of universal school support for DPS, said in an interview. “The Black Student Success team is going to take that planning and really highlight what’s working across those schools to elevate practices districtwide that are leading to results.”

The team will be led by Michael Atkins, who is currently principal of Stedman Elementary School in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. Atkins was a DPS student during the era of busing to integrate Denver’s schools. He said he remembers how he was treated differently as a Black student, including the time a teacher muttered, “Here come the bus kids.”

“When I truly began to understand that I was treated differently than the neighborhood kids, I grew to hate school,” Atkins said in an interview.

“And my whole push, whether it’s leading Stedman Elementary or whether its leading this team of Black Student Success, is to ensure that the babies that look like me that enter into our school system, that I’m doing my part to change the system in a way that is going to illuminate their identities and dreams,” he said.

About 14% of Denver’s 89,000 students are Black, and data shows the district is not serving them as well as it’s serving white students. For example, 73% of white students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations on state literacy tests this past spring, compared with 27% of Black students, according to state data. That’s a 46-percentage-point gap.

The graduation rate for Black students in the DPS class of 2022 was 73%, compared with 86% for white students, a 13-point gap, state data shows.

“We know that our Black students can and do achieve at high levels, especially when they have the opportunities and support needed to excel,” DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero said in a press release. “After taking a deep dive into the most recent state test scores, we determined that we need to improve our systems of instruction and support in order to accelerate the trajectory of success for our Black students.”

Amundsen said DPS has been working with a team of researchers at the University of Denver, who have already completed the first phase of their research: identifying district-level practices to accelerate the academic trajectory for Black students, such as ensuring that students have access to rigorous courses and are being taught by experienced teachers.

For the next phase, DU researchers will go into DPS classrooms where Black students are making progress faster than their peers around the state, as measured by standardized test scores, to figure out what specific actions those teachers are taking, Amundsen said.

Meanwhile, Atkins said he and his team will be working with a small cohort of six to 10 DPS schools with a “focus on bringing academics alive for our Black students in those schools.”

Atkins will leave Stedman Elementary to assume his new role in January. The district said it is planning later this year to create a similar student success team for Latino and Hispanic students, who make up about 52% of DPS students.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

PODCAST: Instagram, cyberbullying, and free speech at a Queens school

2023-10-17T16:30:00+00:00

This episode is part of a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell, an audio journalism program for New York City students. It also aired on The Bell’s Miseducation podcast on Oct. 17.

The threat came in an e-mailed letter from the principal to the entire student body: Stop following the anonymous Instagram accounts, or face suspension.

When Principal David Marmor of Francis Lewis High School in Queens discovered two accounts — one which posted fight videos and the other which included vulgar content that in some cases targeted specific students — he didn’t hesitate to act.

In addition to threatening suspension, he promised to cancel all “celebratory events” such as pep rallies until the accounts were deleted or lost all their followers — a dramatic step that raised questions about the line between students’ free speech online and punishable behavior.

First reported by Chalkbeat, the case immediately caught the attention of students in the Bell’s New York City high school audio journalism program. Social media’s impact on the lives as teens can’t be overstated. Anonymous Instagram pages that share confessions, photos, and videos about school communities have become increasingly common. Sometimes the content is harmless. Other times, it feeds into vicious bullying.

The Bell’s Shoaa Khan (left) and Jose Santana (right).

The Bell’s Shoaa Khan and Jose Santana called up Chalkbeat’s Alex Zimmerman to break down what happened at Francis Lewis and discuss the broader implications of Marmor’s actions. Should schools be allowed to regulate students’ social media use? If so, did this principal go too far?

This episode was hosted by Shoaa Khan, a high school senior from Manhattan, and Jose Santana, a high school senior from the Bronx.

Are KIPP students more likely to graduate college? A recent study offers a complex answer.

2023-10-12T20:23:13+00:00

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KIPP, the country’s largest charter school network, touts its commitment to getting students to and through college, so a recent study offered a compelling test of its model.

Researchers compared students who won a random lottery to attend a KIPP middle school versus others who lost the lottery. The result: Both groups earned college degrees at similar rates: 22%. “KIPP middle schools had little to no impact on four-year degree completion rates,” researchers with the company Mathematica concluded.

But the story did not end there. Researchers then examined a subset of those students who also attended a KIPP high school. Although this was not based on a random lottery, these results were encouraging. Attending a KIPP middle and high school dramatically boosted students’ chances of entering and completing college.

This result was emphasized by KIPP officials and in news coverage of the study when it was released last month.

Put together, though, the findings offer a complex verdict for KIPP charter schools. The results for middle and high school combined are promising, and KIPP already has a track record of boosting student learning. But the less-encouraging middle-school-only results apply to a broader group of students and are more methodologically robust because they are based on a lottery.

That has some experts saying that more research is needed before firm conclusions about KIPP are made.

“This is suggestive evidence,” said Jon Baron, president for the Coalition for Evidence Based Policy, referring to the middle and high school results. “This really needs to be tested in further study before being accepted.” (Baron was previously an official at Arnold Ventures, the philanthropy that funded this research.)

The study examined over 2,000 students who applied to attend one of 21 KIPP middle schools in 2008, 2009, or 2011. Researchers tracked and compared lottery winners versus losers for the next decade plus.

Prior research has found that KIPP improves test scores, but this new study showed limited longer-term benefits from attending a KIPP middle school. While there was some hint that students were more likely to enroll in college, they persisted and graduated college at similar rates as students who lost a KIPP lottery. This was the study’s “primary analysis.”

But then the Mathematica researchers undertook a further “exploratory analysis.” This is researchers’ way of saying that they are a bit less confident in these findings. Here, the study used an approach that is rigorous, but not based on a random lottery. (Nevertheless, a number of news outlets and commentators inaccurately described these exploratory findings as lottery-based.)

This secondary analysis focused on a smaller group of KIPP middle school students who also attended a KIPP high school. Those students appeared to benefit quite a lot from the longer KIPP experience: 39% of them earned a four-year college degree, compared to 20% of a comparison group.

These results, which were distributed to reporters last month ahead of the release of the study, were touted by KIPP leaders.

“The Mathematica study shows that a continuous KIPP education, spanning middle school and high school, is life-changing and would essentially close the educational-opportunity gaps facing Black and Latinx students,” said KIPP foundation CEO Shavar Jeffries in a statement.

Mathematica researchers say the gains may be due to the focus of KIPP high schools in getting its students into college. “It is possible that this large effect results from combining the well-established benefits of attending a KIPP middle school (a substantial boost to students’ academic achievement) with the strong emphasis on college-related supports found in KIPP high schools,” the study says.

The two findings create something of a puzzle, though: the group of KIPP middle and high school students who saw big gains in college completion were a subset of the larger group of middle school students who did not experience any improvements. And yet the overall effect on college completion for middle school was estimated to be close to zero. This is possible because the middle and high school group was a small subset of the whole sample, said Ira Nichols-Barrer, one of the Mathematica researchers.

He said that further research would help explain the disconnect between the study’s two big findings. “Our hope is that this is not the last phase of this study,” he said.

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

Rising share of Chicago Public Schools graduates are pursuing college, study finds

2023-10-12T18:25:42+00:00

A rising share of Chicago Public Schools students enrolled in college in recent years, and far more are earning degrees or certificates at two-year colleges.

That’s according to a study released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To & Through Project, which tracks college enrollment. Additionally, the study found that more Chicago students than ever are projected to pursue and complete college over the next decade.

The study’s findings run counter to national trends of sagging college enrollment during the pandemic; nationwide enrollment in two- and four-year colleges fell by .6% from 2021 to 2022, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Many young people across the nation are questioning whether higher education is worth the cost, said Jenny Nagaoka, one of the study’s authors and deputy director of the Consortium on School Research.

Higher education is “tremendously expensive, student debt is a huge issue [and] ultimately for a lot of students they’re unclear if the payoffs will be there,” Nagaoka said. “But CPS students are still going to college. They’re still seeing there’s value in it.”

Research shows that a college education can lead to better salary-earning potential, provide better access to high-quality housing, and contribute to better overall health, according to a review of literature by Healthy People 2030, a federal government-led project that tracks health data.

“We are hearing so much discouraging news about achievement in our schools right now, and this is not to say that’s not real, but I think it’s really important to note that at the same time, we’re actually also seeing increases in attainment,” Nagaoka said.

The study used a measure called the Post-Secondary Attainment Index, or PAI, to project college enrollment and completion based on current high school graduation and college enrollment and completion rates. Researchers calculated graduation rates slightly differently from the district, which is why they’ve come up with an 84-percent graduation rate for 2022 versus 82.9% reported by CPS. (The authors emphasized that the index is not meant to be a prediction; rather, it is a “starting place” to understand how to improve current patterns.)

This year the index is 30%, meaning that if CPS graduation and college enrollment and completion rates remained the same over the next decade, 30 out of 100 current ninth graders would earn a college credential by the time they are 25, researchers project. That is a 2.4 percentage point increase over last year and the highest rate on record since researchers began calculating this index in 2013. At that time, the index was 23%.

This year’s ninth graders were in middle school when the pandemic shuttered school buildings.

Nagaoka said they’re “cautiously optimistic” that these trends won’t reverse in the future, since this year’s record-setting data reflects students who were in high school and college during the pandemic.

But the study also found significant racial disparities within the data. For example, 66% percent of Asian American women would earn a college credential over the next decade according to the PAI, but just 13.6% of Black men would do the same.

During an event Thursday announcing the study’s findings, CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova acknowledged that the district has more to do to close racial disparities.

“With these groups, especially at the high school level, we’ve learned that one of the most impactful ways we can provide support is by establishing partnerships that will provide mentorship and guidance to the students throughout their high school experience,” she said.

The researchers also studied college enrollment data from 2022 and college completion data from 2021, based on data that was available. Some highlights included:

60.8% of CPS students who graduated in 2022 immediately enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges, 1.5 percentage points higher than the class of 2021.
There are stark racial disparities in who pursued college upon graduation in 2022. For example, nearly 80% of white women immediately enrolled in college upon graduation, while just 45% of Black male students did the same.
Just over 53% of English learners immediately pursued college after graduating last year, compared with 68% of former English learners.
For the class of 2015, nearly 56% of students who immediately enrolled in a four-year college and roughly one-third of students who immediately enrolled in a two-year college eventually earned a bachelor’s or associate degree, or earned a certificate by 2021.
For those who did not immediately enroll in college in 2015, roughly 3% earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. Another 5% completed an associate degree or certificate. While those rates are on the rise, they are 1.7 percentage points smaller than similar completion rates for the class of 2009.
The percentage of students who earned some sort of college credential after enrolling in four-year schools dipped by .6% between the graduating classes of 2014 and 2015.

Chkoumbova attributed the gains to various efforts across district schools to keep students interested in school and prepared for the future, including more career and technical education and dual-credit programs. She also pointed to the district’s work on how it disciplines students. Rather than suspending students, schools are using restorative practices to keep them connected and in class.

A district spokesperson pointed to a host of other programs, such as a new pilot initiative that aims to re-engage young people who are no longer in school or working. The spokesperson also pointed to efforts to get students interested in college and staying there. That includes the Direct Admissions Initiative, which tells seniors whether they can get into a select list of colleges, and another program that provides students with support and mentorship in the two years after they graduate from high school.

Nagaoka also highlighted the increase of 5.6 percentage points in the two-year college completion rate for class of 2015 graduates, the largest increase by far over at least the past six years.

That increase, researchers and Chkoumbova noted, coincides with the onset of Chicago’s STAR Scholarship, which former Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced in the fall of 2014 and offers free tuition to City Colleges for any CPS student with at least a 3.0 grade point average by high school graduation.

Chicago’s college enrollment rates beat national figures for high-poverty schools by about 11 percentage points, researchers found. Nagaoka attributed this in part to efforts by counselors, nonprofits, and others who work in schools to ensure students know about their college options.

More specifically, CPS requires students to create a post-secondary plan, or “evidence of a plan for life beyond high school,” in order to graduate from high school. That requirement forces students to have a conversation about what’s next, she said.

Ninety-seven percent of seniors in the class of 2022 submitted a post-secondary plan, a district spokesperson said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools pauses High School Admissions Test amid technical problems

2023-10-11T21:43:28+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools paused the High School Admissions Test that was underway Wednesday morning due to technical problems on the testing platform, officials told principals.

“For any students currently testing successfully, they can continue and complete,” Peter Leonard, executive director of student assessment for CPS, wrote in an email to principals. “In any other case, schools should stop testing today.”

Students take the HSAT as part of admissions requirements for the city’s selective-enrollment high schools and to enroll at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries. On Wednesday all eighth graders were set to take the exam on computers in school. This year’s exam was set to last an hour instead of the previous 2½ hours. CPS made the change in order to “reduce anxiety for students” and increase accessibility, a spokesperson said last month.

In his note, Leonard said students who finish the test today can use their scores as they apply for high schools in GoCPS. For students who couldn’t finish, the district will share alternative testing dates “as soon as possible,” Leonard wrote.

District spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement that the district is working with the testing vendor to resolve the technical problems. They don’t expect any changes to this weekend’s scheduled HSAT testing for non-CPS students, Hart said.

“We recognize the stress many students and families experience when it comes to admissions testing,” Hart wrote.

The district authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract over the summer with Riverside Assessments LLC to provide test materials for high school admissions and other placements, including gifted programs.

At one North Side school, students received error messages as they tried to log in to the testing platform, even after refreshing the page, according to an administrator at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The school’s testing coordinator tried to call a help desk for the testing vendor but got a busy signal.

Similar problems cropped up at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy in Logan Square, said the school’s principal, Seth Lavin.

“They came in anxious and focused, and then they sat down, and for about an hour and a half, proctors tried to log kids into the test and they could not — and nobody knew what was going on,” Lavin said.

By the time CPS notified schools at 10:30 a.m. that it would pause the test, a handful of students were able to complete the exam at both Brentano and the North Side school.

Other students at the North Side school were finally able to log in by that time, the administrator said. But there were other issues. Some students saw words in Spanish pop up and had to ask teachers to translate, the administrator said. This is the first year the test is being offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

The North Side administrator called the glitches a “gross oversight” by the district, and said that it should have ensured that the system could handle tens of thousands of students taking the exam on the same day. CPS enrolled nearly 24,000 eighth graders this year, district data shows.

The administrator said all students — not just those who weren’t able to complete the exam — should be allowed to retake the test, since the process was so stressful. Students were already “very anxious” about the HSAT, this person said.

Asked about the testing issues at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the public school system should “not reject the hopes and aspirations and desires” of families — Black families, in particular.

“The ultimate desire is to actually build a school system that no matter where you are in the city of Chicago, that you have access to a high quality education,” he said. “I’m committed to doing just that.”

Lavin, who has criticized the district’s selective-enrollment system for being inequitable, said Wednesday’s problems underscore that the admissions system “is so fragile and arbitrary.” The exam accounts for 50% of the admissions rubric for selective-enrollment high schools.

“Kids who are 13 years old should not have a 60-minute experience that decides so much about the next four years of their life,” Lavin said.

He added, “If we are going to let some kids into some high schools and not let some kids into some high schools, we have to find a better way to do it than this.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

NYC test scores: Roughly 50% proficient on reading, math exams, data shows

2023-10-04T23:37:34+00:00

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Roughly half of New York City’s third through eighth graders were proficient in reading and math, according to last year’s state test scores released by city officials Wednesday.

The scores provide a first look at student performance under new learning standards, after state officials revamped the tests for the most recent academic year. The tests, administered by schools across the state each spring, offer one measure of how students are faring.

Though 51.7% of the city’s third through eighth grade students were considered on grade level based on their reading exam scores, and 49.9% were on grade level for math, student performances diverged across grades.

Eighth grade students, for example, fared worse on math exams — with just 42.3% achieving proficiency, compared to 55% of third graders.

On reading tests, the opposite occurred, with 59.9% of eighth graders considered on grade level, compared to about 48% of third graders.

In a statement Wednesday, schools Chancellor David Banks called the results “encouraging,” pointing to an “upward trajectory” from last year’s exams, which saw roughly 49% of students pass reading tests and about 38% achieve proficiency in math.

“These results tell us: we’re on the right track,” he said. “We are making strides in our recovery from the pandemic, and we are going to build on this success this year and beyond.”

But state officials have warned against comparing the data to prior years, and the city’s Education Department acknowledged the results were not “directly comparable” in a press release Wednesday.

This past spring, students took new exams that followed the Next Generation Learning Standards, which were established after revisions from the controversial Common Core. The state also established new thresholds to measure student proficiency, which delayed public release of the test scores.

David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, called the city’s framing of the results “nonsensical.”

“They need to go back to math class,” he said in an email. “Lack of comparability means this snapshot can’t be put into historical perspective.”

But even as the exams have changed, disparities continue to appear among student results.

About 77.6% of Asian American students and 70.2% of white students demonstrated proficiency their math exams, compared to 34.3% of students who are Black and 35.7% who are Latino. On reading tests, 72.3% of Asian American students and 69.5% of white students were on grade level, compared to 40.3% of Black students and 39.4% of Latino students.

Among students with disabilities, 21.7% demonstrated proficiency in reading and 24.4% did so in math. Among students learning English as a new language, 11.1% were on grade level in reading and 21.5% were in math.

Want to see how your school fared on the state exams? Use our searchable database below:

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org

At six Illinois college campuses, advocates seek to create ‘comfort’ for foster care peers

2023-10-02T10:00:00+00:00

Grace Ward spent four years in foster care before enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. On campus, 200 miles south of her hometown of Rockford, she felt alone.

Before Ward entered care, she had missed three years of school and had briefly lived in homeless shelters with her mother. In her foster home, she was expected to prioritize chores over homework, babysit younger children, and call the police if a child was having a mental breakdown, she said.

A few months before coming to the university, she had a violent disagreement that involved her foster parent, leading Ward to end that relationship and head to school without knowing anyone well on campus.

“You kind of have to figure out and navigate for yourself now,” Ward said. “How do you find comfort in your life?”

Now a junior studying animal sciences, Ward has taken up a new role: peer advocate for youth on campus who have experienced foster care. The new gig, she hopes, will create the support system for others that she craved as a freshman.

Ward has joined the state’s new Youth in Care - College Advocate Program, or Y-CAP, which pairs peer advocates like Ward with other college students who have experienced foster care. The goal is for the advocates to check-in regularly with their mentees, help them navigate college life, and ultimately create a support system they’re missing.

A 2021 study found that of Illinois youth in foster care who turned 17 between 2012 and 2018, 86% enrolled in community college. Of those, just 8% graduated, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Students told researchers that they felt alone, largely weren’t aware of financial aid options, and that they needed more specialized attention.

As for what would help them, some interviewees said they wanted someone to help monitor their academic progress. Others said they wanted a support group, the study said.

“Young people with a background in foster care on college campuses are not getting the supports they need to be successful,” said Amy Dworsky, a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall at University of Chicago who co-authored the study and helped the state create the advocate program.

The state’s Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, launched the $200,000 program this year after its youth advisory board signaled that college-bound foster youth needed more support on campus, said Chevelle Bailey, deputy director of DCFS’s office of education and transition services. Some colleges have similar mentorship programs, but “there’s no consistency” across all Illinois campuses, Bailey said.

The program has launched one year after a new state law went into effect requiring each Illinois college to have a liaison that is charged with connecting students who are in foster care or are homeless with resources and assistance.

Department officials want colleges to be more “foster-friendly,” Bailey said, noting that foster youth need extra support in a new environment like college. These youth are at higher risk of dropping out of school, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In Chicago, which houses the most foster youth of any jurisdiction, 40% graduated on time from the city’s public schools last year, compared with 83% of all CPS students, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

DCFS contracted with Foster Progress — an advocacy organization for foster youth that runs its own high school mentorship program — to oversee YCAP on six college campuses this year. That includes University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Harold Washington College, and Kishwaukee College.

“One reason we started small is to make sure we do this right and not take on too much we can’t handle,” Kim Peck, DCFS’ downstate education and transition services administrator.

Nearly 20,000 Illinois children were in foster care as of last month, according to DCFS data. These youth have likely experienced abuse or neglect that led them into the system, and often cycle through multiple foster homes before they age out of care at 21.

So far, Foster Progress has hired three advocates on Ward’s campus, and they’ve identified four mentees, said LT Officer-McIntosh, program manager for Foster Progress. She’s expecting to hire a total of 10 peer advocates, who are paid $15 an hour, to support up to 100 mentees across all the campuses.

There are three parts to the mentor-mentee relationship, Officer-McIntosh said.

Advocates are supposed to hold regular check-ins, where they’ll track goals for what the mentee would like out of the experience and will also navigate college questions and deadlines, such as for financial aid.

Peer advocates and mentees will also pick a short group training they want, such as on resume building, and volunteer together so that they feel more rooted in the surrounding community.

Beyond this framework, program leaders want peer advocates and their mentees to figure out a support system that works best for them.

“Our goal with YCAP is to not tell them, ‘This is how you build community from our perspective,’” Officer-McIntosh said. “It needs to be rooted in the things that they identify, that they want out of a campus community and the experience in YCAP.”

Ward wants to help mentees with whatever they need to grow, whether that means being “a shoulder to lean on” or just instructions for how to do laundry.

Sometimes when she walks around campus, Ward thinks about how different her life is now. She wants her mentees to similarly feel like they have a “safe space” that doesn’t involve talking about required paperwork or upcoming court dates, if they don’t want to.

“It’s not something to be like, ‘You’re a foster youth,’ Ward said. “It is something to be like, ‘You have gone through challenges in your life; this is a time to ease those challenges, so you don’t constantly struggle and feel like you’re struggling.’”

Correction: Oct. 2, 2023: A previous version of this story said a 2021 study was conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago. The study was conducted by researchers at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Blizzard of state test scores shows some progress in math, divergence in reading

2023-10-02T09:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

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When it comes to how American students are recovering from the pandemic, it’s a tale of two subjects.

States across the country have made some progress in math over the last two years, while in English language arts some states made gains while others fell further behind.

“In math, almost every state looks pretty similar. There was a large decline between 2019 and 2021. And then everybody is kind of crawling it back,” said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist. “In ELA, it’s all over the map.”

That’s according to recently released results from over 20 state tests, encompassing millions of students, compiled by Oster and colleagues. The scores offer among the most comprehensive national pictures of student learning, pointing to some progress but persistent challenges. With just a handful of exceptions, students in 2023 are less likely to be proficient than in 2019, the year before the pandemic jolted American schools and society.

“Schools are getting back to normal, but kids still have a ways to go,” said Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, a nonprofit that works with states to develop tests. “We’re not getting out of this in two years.”

Oster’s analysis of test data tracks the share of students who were proficient on grades 3-8 math and reading exams before, during, and after the pandemic. Every state showed a significant drop in proficiency between 2019 and 2021, a fact that has been documented on a variety of tests. (Testing was canceled in 2020.)

Prior studies from Oster and others have found that while schools of all stripes saw test scores decline during the pandemic, those that remained virtual for longer experienced deeper setbacks.

The recent state test data offers some good news, though: 2021 was, for the most part, the bottom of the learning loss hole.

In math, all but a couple states experienced improvements between 2021 and 2023. Only two — Iowa and Mississippi — were at or above 2019 levels, though.

In reading, a majority of states have made some progress since 2021 and four have caught up to pre-pandemic levels. However, numerous states experienced no improvement. A handful even continued to regress.

It’s not clear why state trends in math versus reading have differed. After the pandemic hit and closed down schools, math scores fell more quickly and sharply than reading, but now appear to have been faster to recover.

Testing experts say that standardized tests may be better at measuring the discrete skills that students are taught in math. Reading — especially the comprehension of texts — comes through the development of more cumulative knowledge and skills. “Is the test insensitive to what’s really going on in classrooms or are kids just not learning to read better?” said Marion. “That’s the part I can’t quite figure out.”

Oster suspects the adoption of research-aligned reading practices, including phonics, may explain why some states have made a quicker comeback. Mississippi, well known for its early adoption of these practices, is one of four states to have fully recovered in ELA. But more research is needed to understand why some states appear to have bounced back more quickly than others.

“Some people are doing a good job. Some people are not doing as good a job,” said Oster. “Understanding that would tell us something about which kind of policies we might want to favor.”

Some schools look to phonics to boost stagnant reading scores.

In Indiana, which made gains in math but not reading, officials are hoping a suite of recent laws embracing the science of reading will boost scores. In Michigan, which also saw no progress in reading, lawmakers pointed to recent investments in early literacy efforts and tutoring.

At Sherlock Elementary, part of the Cicero 99 school district in Illinois, just west of Chicago, Principal Joanna Lago saw how the pandemic set students back. Students are still climbing out of those holes, she said.

“Our scores are somewhat stagnant,” she said.

But Lago is hopeful a series of new initiatives will lead to gains for her students. This year, her district is adding an extra 30 minutes to every school day so staff can zero in on reading and math skills. This is the second year that teachers within the same grade level are working together more closely to plan lessons and review student performance data.

The district has also adopted a new reading curriculum aligned with the science of reading. Over the last two years, Lago, a former reading teacher herself, and her team got training on using decodable texts to emphasize phonics. Teachers visited each other’s classrooms to observe as they tried out new lessons. Pictures of mouths forming letter sounds now hang on classroom walls, instead of pictures of words.

It’s “a more strategic approach to help reach kids and fill some of the gaps of what they need,” Lago said. “How could this not lead to results? How could this not lead to more kids reading more fluently, having better reading comprehension?”

Educators are confronting persistent learning loss going into the last full school year to spend federal COVID relief money, a chunk of which is earmarked for learning recovery. Some school districts have already begun to wind down tutoring and other support as the money dwindles.

Marion of the Center for Assessment fears this extra programming will vanish too soon. “I’m pessimistic because I’m pessimistic about politicians,” he said.

The state test scores offer a slightly different picture of learning loss than a recent analysis by the testing company NWEA. While NWEA found little evidence of recovery last school year, most state tests showed gains in math proficiency last year.

There could be a number of reasons for this discrepancy, including the fact that some large states — including California and New York — have not released state test data yet, so the picture is still incomplete.

The new test score data comes with a few other caveats. Because states administer their own exams and create different benchmarks for proficiency, results from different states are not directly comparable to each other. Experts also warn that proficiency is an imprecise gauge of learning since it captures only whether a student meets a certain threshold, without considering how far above or below they are.

Plus, each year’s scores are based on different groups of students since regular testing ends in eighth grade. That means students fall out of the data as they progress into high school and some may never have fully recovered academically, even if state average scores have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“There are kids who will forever be behind,” said Oster.

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

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

Chicago Public Schools says $3.1 billion for ‘critical’ building repairs needed

2023-09-29T02:30:03+00:00

Chicago Public Schools facilities need $3.1 billion in “critical” repairs that must be addressed in the next five years, according to a district plan released Thursday.

The cost is part of a total of $14.4 billion in updates that the district identified in its Facilities Master Plan, which CPS is required by state law to produce every five years.

“In a district as large as ours, and with a building portfolio as old as ours, this is the investment it would take to repair and modernize each and every one of our current facilities and give our students the learning environment we know they deserve,” CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in the plan’s introduction.

The $3.1 billion in costs identified as the most urgent work includes repairs to windows, roofs, masonry, and heating and cooling systems. Another $5.5 billion would go toward repairs in the next six to 10 years, according to the facilities plan. Beyond that, the district wants money to build labs “to support STEM education,” accommodations for students with disabilities, new auditoriums, new fields for sports, and classrooms “outfitted” for career and technical education — programming that Martinez wants to expand, according to the plan.

The district released the plan during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, which was held in the auditorium of Austin Career and College Academy High School on the West Side and drew at least 200 observers. The changed location was the board’s attempt to address the longstanding criticism that the meetings, which are typically held during the day downtown, are inaccessible for many families and teachers who work during the day. (The last meeting held outside of district headquarters was in 2019, according to a district spokesperson.)

District officials said this summer that they had budgeted $155 million for facilities projects this fiscal year — roughly $600 million less than the previous year — and planned to ask for more capital funding this year.

Martinez used the plan to make another plea for more funding and “partnerships” from the city, state, and federal government. Martinez plans to press the state for more money as a way to address costs once COVID relief dollars run out in 2024.

“This plan will take coalitions and partnerships with our fellow officials at the city, state, and federal levels,” he wrote in his introduction to the plan. “It will take administrators, teachers, parents, students, and advocates pushing for the changes we need.”

Martinez said the facilities plan is a “critical” early part of its process to create a five-year strategic plan for CPS. That plan — which will build on Martinez’s three-year blueprint released last year to help the district recover from the pandemic — will be finalized next summer.

The district will also launch an advisory team that would make recommendations to Martinez on how to narrow academic disparities of Black students compared to their peers. Those recommendations would also inform a “Black Student Success Plan” and be part of the strategic plan, according to CPS.

Some advocates, however, immediately rejected that idea Thursday night. They had previously pressed officials to create a Board of Education committee that focused on Black student achievement.

“To have a strategic plan is not enough to say, ‘Oh, we hear you,’” said Valerie Leonard, a longtime West Side education advocate and the co-founder of Illinois African Americans For Equitable Redistricting. “I want to know that you see me; I want to know there is some action. At what point will Black children be prioritized?”

District officials are asking for community feedback as they develop the strategic plan. The public meetings to gather that input will be on:

6-7:30 p.m. October 17 at Kelvyn Park High School, 4343 W. Wrightwood Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. October 18 at Westinghouse College Prep, 3223 W. Franklin Blvd.
10 a.m. - noon October 21, virtual meeting
6 - 7 p.m. October 23, Little Village high school campus, 3120 S. Kostner Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. Julian High School, 10330 S. Elizabeth St.

Those wishing to attend should register here.

The facilities plan includes information like enrollment trends to highlight the district’s needs. District officials offered more analysis Thursday of enrollment this year.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment grows by nearly 1,200

Preliminary data on the 20th day of school — when district officials tally up students for the year — indicated that enrollment, at just over 322,500 students, is essentially flat compared to last year, Chalkbeat reported last week. On Thursday, officials revealed that 323,291 students were enrolled, or nearly 1,200 more students than last year.

It’s the first time since 2011 that the district’s enrollment has not dipped. Since that year, enrollment declines were driven by several factors, including population changes and dipping birth rates. Last year’s decline cost CPS’ title as the nation’s third largest school district.

The small enrollment bump was due to fewer students leaving and more new students, including a 7% increase in preschool students, officials said. Additionally, the number of students living in temporary housing increased by 47%, which could be one sign of an increase in migrant students who are living in shelters or other temporary circumstances.

The district does not track students’ immigration status. But another sign that the population of newly enrolled migrant students is growing is the increasing number of English language learners. About 7,800 more English learners enrolled this year than last year, officials said. CPS typically enrolls an average of 3,000 new English learners a year.

English language learners now make up nearly a quarter of the district’s students, up from 22% last year, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Many schools went all in to fight chronic absenteeism. Why are kids still missing so much class?

2023-09-28T11:00:00+00:00

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Last year, Santa Fe schools put in a lot of work to try to get students to show up to school consistently. It was a priority after chronic absenteeism doubled during the 2021-22 school year, compared to before the pandemic.

The New Mexico district hired two additional attendance coaches, for a total of five, to help every school form a team focused on boosting attendance. Those staffers got extra pay and training. And schools used COVID relief funds to reward students who improved their attendance with incentives like a pop-up science exhibit hosted by a local children’s museum.

But despite those efforts, the share of students who missed 10% or more of their school year, the threshold New Mexico and most other states use to define chronic absenteeism, didn’t budge. Just over half were chronically absent — the same as the prior year.

“We know we still have work to do,” said Crystal Ybarra, the district’s chief equity, diversity, and engagement officer, who is overseeing the attendance initiative. “We’re still trying to figure out the steps post-pandemic. Everybody wants to see a quick fix, and that’s just not how initiatives work.”

What happened in Santa Fe highlights multiple challenges schools nationwide are encountering as they try to drive down stubbornly high absence rates. Students’ mindsets about attending school in person every day have shifted, staff say. Families are more likely to keep sick kids home. In some places, more families are experiencing economic hardships and housing instability.

Emerging state data, compiled by Chalkbeat, suggests that the stunning rise in students missing school did not come close to returning to pre-pandemic levels last school year.

Chronic absenteeism worsened in at least 40 states during the 2021-22 school year, according to data compiled by Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor, in partnership with the Associated Press. The needle hasn’t moved much in the handful of states that have released data for last school year so far.

In New Mexico, for example, chronic absenteeism shot up to 40% two school years ago and remained at 39% last year, compared to 18% the year before the pandemic. Similar trends have emerged in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, and Virginia.

“The consequences of kids being sporadically in school and not fully engaging take a while to really shift,” said Hedy Chang, the executive director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that focuses on raising school attendance. “It’s definitely not something that happens overnight, and may take longer than we would like.”

Illnesses other than COVID, such as RSV, as well as confusion over when to send sick children to school, likely played a role, school staff and attendance experts said. Many families got in the habit of keeping kids home if they had any symptom of illness. When Los Angeles Unified school officials talked with 9,000 families last year as part of an effort to reduce chronic absenteeism, non-COVID illness was one of the three major themes that came up.

“We went from this place of requiring students to be out for certain symptoms that they might have in the 2021-22 school year,” Ybarra said, “to trying to navigate what was appropriate and what wasn’t this past school year.”

Elevated mental health struggles also likely contributed. Some students feel a lingering disconnect from their school and peers. School refusal seems to have intensified following the pandemic, some parents and educators say. In Santa Fe, many students who missed class or asked to transfer to the GED program last year reported feeling anxious about coming to school, Ybarra said.

Now that more schools provide devices to every student and post assignments online, some students have also come to believe that they can take a few days off and still stay on top of their work.

Greg Moody, a school official in Florida’s Orange County district who oversees attendance, said the ability to do assignments remotely had contributed to a “shift in mindset” about the importance of showing up to class every day. In his district, chronic absenteeism nearly doubled from 21% the year before the pandemic to 40% in the 2021-22 school year.

Amana Levi, who helps Orange County schools address truancy issues, said parents report a variety of reasons their kids stay home. But last year she frequently heard: “Well, my child needed a day off.” Sometimes that stemmed from a mental health issue, she said, and sometimes it didn’t.

In response, Levi is hosting an online training for parents that will talk about why attendance matters — for academic and other reasons — and what parents can do if they get a letter saying their child has missed a lot of school.

“It’s important that we impress upon parents: We get it, we’re all here, we’re all experiencing similar types of things,” Levi said. But her message is: “You’ve got to come to school. We are here to help as much as we can.”

Schools seek more input on attendance struggles

Schools that started attendance initiatives last year that haven’t gotten the results they wanted should try to figure out why that may be, Chang of Attendance Works said. Staff can look at how many students were directly affected by such efforts, and talk with students and families about what worked and what didn’t.

In Santa Fe, Ybarra is hoping to build on some of the positive changes in school culture that she observed last year, while making adjustments to the district’s overall strategy.

Attendance coaches realized that they previously hadn’t taught many staff members to reach out to students about attendance. So this year, they trained entire schools to do it.

With the help of a $500,000 state grant, Santa Fe is sending home letters to recognize students for good attendance and remind families to return after longer school breaks. The district also hired an organization to train high school teams to watch ninth grade attendance — a challenging transition year for many teens — and will pay staff extra to make home visits to freshmen.

School staff are prioritizing chronically absent kids for evaluations to see if they need extra academic help, or support for a disability. The goal is to “try to make them more successful so they feel like they can return,” Ybarra said. In the past, those students were often overlooked.

And last month, school officials met with students from two schools struggling with attendance to listen to some of the barriers that keep them from going to school regularly and what has been helpful to get them back on track.

Students reported getting sick, lacking transportation to school, having family problems, facing mental health issues, and caring for siblings. One middle schooler pointed to the benefits of having a day to do catch-up work when they returned from a long period of absence.

“I didn’t feel so behind when I went back into the classroom,” the student told school staff.

Orange County schools tried something similar this summer by paying a dozen social workers to call the families of students who missed 20 or more days of school last year.

The goal was to figure out what had kept students from attending and offer support “so we could start with a fresh slate,” said Juliane Cross, a senior administrator in the district’s social services department.

Social workers heard many of those families were moving around a lot, struggling to afford stable housing — a common issue in the Orlando area that has intensified in recent years. Other parents worked nights and couldn’t wake their kids up in time for class.

Social workers connected families to housing resources and made sure they knew about the federal program that offers help to students experiencing homelessness. It’s an initiative Cross hopes to repeat.

“Several of the parents were just like ‘Wow, thank you for calling,’ as if they were really surprised that this effort was made to just check on them and try to address that attendance situation,” she said. “They appreciated having that interaction.”

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

New Denver Public Schools progress report highlights goals met and missed but glosses over gaps

2023-09-27T21:43:30+00:00

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Denver Public Schools students as a whole met goals the district set for math achievement but fell short in reading, according to a new report that measures academic and other progress against Superintendent Alex Marrero’s year-old strategic plan.

But the 20-page Annual District Report doesn’t break down test scores by student race and ethnicity, obscuring wide and persistent gaps between white students and students of color — gaps Marrero acknowledged in a presentation to school board members last week.

In an interview, Marrero said he was “incredibly encouraged” by the overall results. In the cases where DPS missed its goals, it was often only by a percentage point or two. The report also highlights that the district surpassed its graduation goal, posting a four-year graduation rate of 76.5% for the class of 2022, which was the highest ever in DPS.

“We’re trending in the right direction,” said Marrero, who was hired as superintendent in 2021. “When you’re shifting a major organization, you’re given grace for an implementation dip. Everything is new. If this is our implementation dip, good Lord, where we’re going to be.”

Some advocates have criticized the new report as spin. The higher test scores and graduation rates of white students from middle- and high-income families in DPS mask how the district is struggling to serve Black and Latinx students and students from low-income families, who make up the majority in the 89,000-student district, critics say.

“When you just release the totals, it gives a very different impression,” said Rosemary Rodriguez, co-chair of the advocacy group EDUCATE Denver and a former DPS school board member. “But when you break it down into subgroups, it’s not such a rosy picture.

“I think it’s important to be as honest as possible with as many people as possible so that we all can appreciate what’s going on with achievement in the district.”

A more detailed presentation Marrero gave to the school board last week shows that the district mostly missed its academic targets for Black and Latinx students in both reading and math.

The lack of progress perpetuates yawning gaps between the test scores of students of color and white students in DPS, which have been the largest in the state.

For example, state data shows 73% of DPS white students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations on state literacy tests this past spring, compared to 27% of Black students and 24% of Latinx students.

Similarly, the graduation rates for Black and Latinx students were 73% and 74%, respectively, for the class of 2022, compared to 86% for white students, according to state data.

Marrero’s strategic plan, which he released last year, listed several goals he hoped DPS would accomplish by the year 2026. The plan did not include incremental annual benchmarks. But the just-released report does, at least for last school year and this school year. The goals in the report are different from the goals the school board will use to evaluate Marrero’s performance.

Here’s a snapshot of how DPS is measuring up, based on the data in the new report and the presentation Marrero gave to the school board.

Goal: 62% of all kindergarten through third grade students would score at grade level or above on reading tests in spring 2023. By spring 2026, the goal is 70%.

Result: Not met. 58% scored at grade level or above in spring 2023.

Goal: 40% of all third through fifth grade students would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests in spring 2023. By spring 2026, the goal is 48%.

Result: Not met. 39% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 28% of all sixth through eighth grade students would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. By spring 2026, the goal is 36%.

Result: Met. 28% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 26% of Latinx students in third through fifth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 23% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 15% of Latinx students in sixth through eighth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 13% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 26% of Black students in third through fifth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 24% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 16% of Black students in sixth through eighth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Met. 16% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 21% of English language learners in third through fifth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests taken in both English and Spanish in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 17% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 22% of redesignated English language learners, meaning they no longer need ELL services, in grades six through eight would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Met. 22% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

The report and presentation also summarized results from new surveys the district conducted of students, families, and employees. For instance, 89% of families said they feel safe and welcomed in DPS, according to the presentation, and 52% of employees said they feel valued.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Denver Public Schools pledged to pay tutoring vendors based on their results. Did it work?

2023-09-27T16:00:00+00:00

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Two outside companies that Denver Public Schools hired to tutor students in an effort to make up for lost learning fell short of some targets that could have earned the companies extra pay.

Though one company fared better than the other, many students didn’t hit the academic benchmarks spelled out in the district’s contracts. Some students struggled with participation, and staffing was a challenge for the company that tutored students in person.

“It was definitely a learning experience,” said Angelin Thompson, the director of expanded academic learning for DPS. “It’s great if you can do it with fidelity and if you have qualified tutors. There are just a lot of components that go into it that make it effective or ineffective.”

But because the contracts with the companies linked part of their payments to the achievement of certain targets, DPS isn’t paying for outcomes that weren’t achieved.

The concept of outcomes-based contracting is catching on at a time when school districts across the country have more cash to spend and bigger gaps to close.

Pandemic-era disruptions caused many students to miss key lessons, which prompted the federal government to invest billions of dollars of COVID-19 relief funding in America’s schools.

Tutoring quickly emerged as a leading research-based strategy to catch students up — especially high-impact or high-dosage tutoring, which DPS defined as 36 hours per student.

Colorado lawmakers set aside nearly $5 million in state funding in 2021 for grants to school districts to set up high-impact tutoring programs, and the State Board of Education pumped even more federal COVID relief aid, known as ESSER, into the program.

Denver Public Schools, the state’s largest district, applied for the grants and won. The tutoring began in fall 2021 and ramped up last school year when DPS signed contracts with two companies: Cignition and University Instructors. But the program was still pilot-size, serving only about 1,500 students total, or about 2% of all students in DPS.

Younger students made less progress

University Instructors struggled the most to meet the benchmarks in its contract.

In the 2022-23 school year, the Virginia-based company provided in-person literacy tutoring to DPS students in kindergarten through third grade. Its contract was for a maximum of $1.2 million: $900 per student in base pay with the possibility of $1,500 per student in payments based on hitting target outcomes.

The outcomes were based on the mechanics of reading: Did students’ fluency improve, as measured by a test called iStation? How about their vocabulary or phonemic awareness?

The answer for many students was no — or at least not enough to meet the benchmarks in the contract. For example, about half of the 641 students tutored by University Instructors met the benchmark in fluency, but only 17% met the benchmark in vocabulary, Thompson said.

University Instructors will likely be paid about $826,000, or about 68% of the maximum in its contract, according to calculations by Thompson’s staff.

The company did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

Staffing challenges contributed to the results, Thompson said. University Instructors struggled at times to hire qualified local tutors and provide substitutes when tutors were out, she said.

Another hiccup was more technical. Not all DPS schools use the iStation test that University Instructors’ target outcomes were based on. Thompson’s staff tried to approximate whether students who took other tests met the benchmarks, but she said that wasn’t always possible.

Online tutoring was more successful

Cignition fared better. District records show DPS paid the California-based company $1.25 million to provide online math tutoring to students in third through eighth grade in 2022-23. Cignition’s contract with DPS was for up to $1.3 million, and the company served 924 students.

Cignition had four outcomes it was trying to achieve: two based on students’ confidence about math, as measured by surveys before and after tutoring, and two based on students’ academic growth, as measured by test scores before and after tutoring. The company was paid a base rate of $720 per student and could earn $940 per student on top of that if it met all targets.

In an interview, Cignition provided a detailed breakdown of its results. The majority of students reported higher confidence, with as many as 89% meeting one of the survey-based benchmarks. Fewer students — 72% — met the academic benchmarks, the company said.

Michael Cohen, founder and CEO of Cignition, said he’s proud of the outcomes.

“We care about quality,” he said. “We’re there to help their students that are struggling the most. Some of those students are really, really struggling, and we do everything we can for every student to bring them up as far as they can possibly get in that school year. There’s going to be a range. Not every last one will get to the highest possible grade.”

Unlike University Instructors, Cignition did not struggle with staffing, according to both the company and DPS. Its model calls for one tutor, who can live anywhere in the country, to work online with a group of four students, giving that group undivided attention.

But Cignition did report issues with student attendance and schools occasionally canceling virtual tutoring sessions. While DPS was aiming to provide students with at least 36 hours of tutoring, Cignition said 50 hours is the gold standard. Only about 10% of DPS students logged 50 hours, the company said. About half of the students logged 25 hours.

Outcomes-based contracts catching on

At a time when other school districts across the country have had trouble with external tutoring companies, the state grant allowed DPS to try high-impact tutoring relatively risk-free — an opportunity that Thompson said will inform the district’s tutoring strategy going forward.

“Because of the grant, we were able to try these things and learn what works and what doesn’t,” she said. “Now as we plan for what tutoring will look like with Denver Public Schools’ money, we can think about all the things we learned and do it differently.”

One aspect DPS will likely keep, Thompson said, is outcomes-based contracting. While the concept has been around for years in industries such as health care and construction, it’s new in K-12 education, with about 13 school districts actively participating, said Brittany Miller, the director of outcomes-based contracting for the Georgia-based Southern Education Foundation.

Before Miller worked for the foundation, she worked for DPS and helped set up the outcomes-based tutoring contracts. The benefit, she said, is that school districts have a tangible way to judge whether the results are worth the millions of dollars they spend on external vendors.

“There is a lack of infrastructure in K-12 education, particularly in the procurement process, to say, ‘After we spent these funds, what happened for kids?’” Miller said. “This shores up a lot of that.”

Miller said outcomes-based contracting benefits vendors, too, because it sets clear expectations rather than the fuzzy goals that companies sometimes complain about. It also gives the companies the opportunity to earn more money for good performance.

Toni Rader, vice president of learning quality and operations for Cignition, said the company has been doing outcomes-based contracts with districts since 2021.

“We love to do outcomes-based contracts,” Rader said. “It’s helpful for all parties involved, because it makes it clear what we’re shooting for.”

As for DPS, its state grant goes through this school year. But Thompson said the dollar amount is much lower this year, and there are new restrictions. DPS will have just $400,000 to spend, and only on middle school math tutoring, for which the district will request proposals soon.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Homeless and suspended in California

2023-09-27T09:00:00+00:00

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates inequality.

Federal education law explicitly seeks to help homeless children and youth stay in school, in the hopes academic opportunity will allow them to break the cycle of housing instability.

Taking them out of class could worsen their chances of success.

But an analysis of data in California shows the state’s homeless students are suspended at higher rates than their peers.

California schools suspended more than 12,000 students who were identified as homeless in the 2021-2022 school year, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of the most recent data available. That means nearly 6% of all homeless students were suspended compared to roughly 3% of all other students.

And in about 20% of school districts across the state, homeless students were suspended at rates at least double the district baseline in recent school years — in some cases, far higher. The disparity persisted in some districts as overall suspension rates rebounded after school closures earlier in the pandemic.

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act — the federal law promising equal access to education for homeless students — requires schools to remove obstacles to those students’ education, whether by arranging transportation to school or waiving normally required paperwork.

There’s no ban on suspensions — but they’re hardly in keeping with the spirit of the law.

“The whole point of the McKinney-Vento Act was to ensure that students that are experiencing homelessness are in school,” said Lynda Thistle Elliott, a former state homeless education coordinator in New Hampshire. “It’s really important to look at in what instances do we actually remove students from school, which is the one thing they really, really need to make a difference.”

And the figures in California may only scratch the surface, since many homeless youth aren’t identified as such by their school system and struggle without federally required help.

Earl Edwards, an assistant professor at Boston College, said that when he interviewed students experiencing homelessness, he found that the threat of school discipline often discouraged them from telling teachers or other staff about their housing status.

“They would say, ‘I didn’t tell the school anything about what was going on, because every time I got to school, they was yelling at me for being late,’” he said. “[Discipline] actually deteriorates the trust that those kids have, when they’re being punished, a lot of times, for being impoverished.”

California educators said their school systems have already implemented disciplinary reforms that emphasize reconciling students with their classmates and teachers while preventing behaviors that could result in punishment. Still, many noted that nothing in state law mandates school officials to adjust how or whether to discipline a student based on their homeless status.

“There’s no requirement for educators currently to, per se, consider housing,” said Jennifer Kottke, who helps to train districts on homeless education law through the Los Angeles County Office of Education. But she added that educators ought to consult colleagues who work with homeless youth to weigh “what’s happening in the lives of the students” when deciding how to respond to behavior.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which tracks school discipline data nationwide, does not break it out by housing status.

But California, which has the third-highest rate of student homelessness in the country, is not the only state where available data suggests children and youth without stable housing are more likely to experience discipline, too.

Students experiencing homelessness in Washington were suspended and expelled at almost three times the rate of their housed peers, The Seattle Times reported in a 2022 article produced as part of a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Times, Street Sense Media, and WAMU/DCist. And studies in Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Texas and Washington found similar results.

Homeless students, high-stakes suspension

A student who qualifies under the U.S. Department of Education’s definition of homelessness — which includes children forced to share housing because they lost their own — may be suspended more frequently than their stably housed peers for a number of reasons.

Homeless students may change schools, disrupting opportunities to build meaningful relationships with adults or fellow students. They may miss school days, causing them to fall behind academically and socially. They may experience other trauma related to losing their housing, whether it be a sudden eviction or domestic violence.

Racial discrimination could also play a role. African American students in California are disproportionately suspended from schools — and are overrepresented among homeless students, too.

Accessibility is another potential factor. Students receiving services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are both more likely to receive a suspension than peers and are more likely to experience homelessness.

As a result of those disparities, guidance under California law encourages educators to consider students’ disabilities before disciplining them.

Educators interviewed for this story said they cannot divert a homeless child to an alternative other than a suspension where the law requires one.

Still, nothing prevents schools from examining the broader picture of students’ lives in situations where suspension is not mandatory. Cynthia Rice, legal director at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, said current California law already guides school administrators to consider contextual factors like a child’s home life before issuing a suspension.

“Whether or not you would suspend a kid for getting into a verbal altercation, you would look at whether or not the nature of that altercation had something to do with his or her homeless status,” said Rice, previously with California Rural Legal Assistance, a nonprofit law firm that has represented students in litigation challenging school discipline policies. “To just kind of separate those two things completely? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Rice said she would argue that school districts receiving McKinney-Vento funds must take into account the housing status of students when deciding whether and how to discipline them. But most school districts do not have a formal policy to that effect, she said.

Federal law recognizes that students experiencing homelessness often must overcome formidable obstacles to attending class. For example, children without stable housing may find it difficult to catch a ride to school. That’s why federal law guarantees them such transportation, including to the school they attended when they lost housing.

School discipline can jeopardize that right.

Thistle Elliott, who now works as an advocate for homeless youth, said some New Hampshire districts revoked students’ transportation temporarily because of behavioral issues.

“A district could say, ‘Well, this isn’t working out, because we’ve got behavior issues. Maybe the child or youth needs to attend school where they’re temporarily residing and not their school of origin,’” she said. “But remember that, in making those decisions about the best placement for attending school, it’s the placement that is in the child’s best interest, not in the school’s best interest.”

And that’s assuming educators know a child is without stable housing. A 2022 investigation by Public Integrity estimated that hundreds of thousands of children who are eligible for assistance because of their housing instability may go unidentified in schools around the country. That means schools may also suspend students without knowing they qualify as homeless under federal law.

A disconnect between homeless support staff and school discipline could be costly. Numerous researchers have linked school suspensions to long-term negative consequences.

One recent study found that students in schools with higher suspension rates were more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. Another concluded that receiving more severe exclusionary discipline decreased the likelihood of graduation. Yet another found that just one in-school suspension predicted a significant risk of failing a standardized test.

Districts, data, and discipline

One immediate consequence of California’s emphasis on reforming school discipline is that district administrators know that anyone, including parents or the press, can see their suspension statistics online.

The state has put suspension rates on an easy-to-search website – and put schools on notice that high rates will trigger “differentiated assistance,” an accountability plan designed to improve that metric.

“Our suspension rates are high on the California School Dashboard – full transparency,” said Chuck Palmer, the senior director of student services and innovation at El Dorado Union High School District in Placerville, where homeless youth in recent years have been suspended at rates roughly four to six times those of students presumed to be housed. “We’re going to see ourselves in the red in a lot of our schools, and that’s not acceptable.”

But district administrators interviewed for this story were quick to argue their discipline data was incomplete or misleading, failing to capture subtleties in how many homeless students they suspend and why.

For example, Fresno Unified in California’s Central Valley suspended 109 homeless students in the 2021-2022 school year, a frequency twice the rate of suspension for all other students.

Caine Christensen, who was the district’s director of student support services when interviewed by Public Integrity this spring, said homeless students only appear to be disciplined disproportionately because the district has so few of them. (Christensen has since left the district.)

That assertion is not backed up by the district’s statistics. Public Integrity’s analysis found that Fresno’s tendency to suspend homeless students more than housed peers is not a fluke of small cohort size. A statistical test that takes into account the total number of homeless students showed a significant difference between suspension rates for housed and unhoused students in the 2021-2022 school year.

Other school administrators said that steps they took before resorting to suspension aren’t evident from top-line statistics, nor are their efforts to return children to the classroom quickly.

The Placer Union High School District northeast of Sacramento suspended 14% of the 112 homeless students enrolled in the 2021-2022 school year — almost three times the rate for all other students in the school system. Trent Wilson, who serves as the district’s executive director of educational services, noted that virtually all those suspensions were shortened, served at least partially on school property or preceded by suspension alternatives such as meetings with counselors.

Another district said relatively high suspension rates for homeless students reflect the rigor with which their staffers serve that population and record state-mandated data.

San Juan Unified in Sacramento County suspended homeless students for defiance-only behaviors — a broad category that covers actions that “disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied” a teacher or other school authority — at three times the rate for all other students in the 2021-2022 school year.

Dominic Covello, the district’s director of student support services, said San Juan Unified may appear to suspend homeless students more than other districts because personnel trained to follow federal law are identifying homeless students more effectively than other districts’ staff. He said the data also doesn’t capture a district-wide shift toward more in-school suspensions and fewer out-of-school suspensions. And he suggested that San Juan Unified is more faithful to the Education Code definition of willful defiance than other districts.

“I’ll just say that you can take any incident of defiance and disruption, and you can suspend that student for something else under the Ed Code,” he said.

The California Department of Education has acknowledged that some school district officials may seek to manipulate their discipline statistics so that rates of suspension and expulsion appear lower. In February, the state launched a tip line for those wishing to report school districts they suspect are masking how frequently students are disciplined.

Recognizing trauma, seeking alternatives

At Elk Grove Unified southeast of Sacramento, nearly 13% of homeless students were suspended in the 2021-2022 school year compared to about 4% of the remaining student body.

“You’re dealing with families who are unhoused — a level of trauma and instability in their lives that can be all-consuming,” said Tami Silvera, the district’s liaison to homeless students. “That has a trickle-down effect to their children, and then how their children are able to manage when their families are having such a difficult time.”

She said the district aims to reach students upstream of the disciplinary process as a result, whether by offering therapy or access to a small district food bank — and connecting students to similar resources outside of school.

At Placer Union, Wilson said school counselors attend regular meetings where staff discuss how to respond to student behavior and consider factors like housing.

“We’ve done, absolutely, things where we know that a kid’s living situation is such that we were not going to suspend at home and [instead we] do something entirely different,” Wilson said.

El Dorado Union’s Palmer also emphasized prevention. One of the district’s strategies: Get kids plugged into school activities like sports to strengthen their ties to adults on campus as well as fellow students, and make sure they know resources are available if money is a barrier. The district suspended 24 of 128 homeless students enrolled in the 2021-2022 school year.

At Hanford Joint Union High School District, 35 miles south of Fresno, an administrator pointed to logistical issues that may lead to suspensions of homeless students.

District Superintendent Victor Rosa said it’s possible some students without a stable home are suspended because they’re caught with prohibited items they bring to school, having no permanent home to store them.

“For some of these kids, especially if they’re truly homeless, they have all their stuff on them,” Rosa said, “so sometimes it’d be a situation where you got caught with a vape, but then you have a knife, or you have something else on you that then just lends itself to us not really having any alternative options” except to suspend.

In 2021-2022, the rate of suspension among the district’s 87 homeless students was more than twice the rate for other students.

Rosa said his goal is to change Hanford’s culture and its formal policies, moving away from immediate punishment and toward alternatives like a drug treatment course.

“Our board policies are still a little antiquated from a standpoint of ‘Two fights, you’re expelled. Two marijuana offenses, you’re expelled’ — the type of things where other districts have moved forward already to another means of correction,” he said in a November 2022 interview.

In Fresno, Christensen said the district employs clinical social workers assigned to foster and homeless students. Staff try to keep housing-unstable students in the school they currently attend to strengthen their relationships with peers and adults.

A union official said the district’s approach has several shortcomings.

Manuel Bonilla, the president of the Fresno Teachers Association, said Fresno officials speak of using “restorative practices” to prevent students from facing suspension, but fail to implement steps that would allow students to make amends and reestablish trust when they disobey school policy. After a teacher removes a student from class, he said, “there’s no accountability. What happens is, a student is back in your class 15-20 minutes later. That’s not restorative.”

Plus, teachers on the front lines may not be aware of a student’s housing status.

Bonilla said teachers are often left guessing about the circumstances driving disruptive behavior and forced to decide how best to respond by themselves.

“Eventually, [teachers] reach a breaking point, like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what am I gonna do?’ You’re just surviving at a certain point,” he said.

Tumani Heights, the Fresno Unified district liaison to homeless students, said teachers can access records showing a student’s housing status and can ask school social workers for information. In Fresno schools that have restorative practice counselors, she said, children who have been disciplined can attend a meeting to discuss support they need “as well as try to repair whatever harm was done.”

But one thing that would help homeless students the most might not be within school districts’ control: gaining stable housing.

“Especially when we’re looking at our families who are transient, a lot of them have evictions and different things that they’re facing,” Heights said. “Being able to help them and link them to stable housing sometimes can be a barrier.”

Reform, backlash, and what’s next

California won praise from school discipline reform advocates in 2014 when it became the first state to ban suspensions for children in kindergarten through third grade and to eliminate expulsions for misbehavior known as “willful defiance.”

The state later expanded those protections. California law now shields students up to fifth grade from willful defiance suspensions. There is a moratorium on that type of discipline for sixth through eighth graders through 2025.

Lawmakers in at least seven states are going the other direction, proposing stricter disciplinary measures that would make it easier for educators to remove students from class, according to reporting by Chalkbeat. Those measures are pitched as a response to student misbehavior after the trauma and disruption of the pandemic. Critics say the bills will do more harm than good.

Federal policy on discipline, meanwhile, has vacillated.

Obama-era guidance from 2014 urged schools to avoid zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. The Education Department under Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded those guidelines during the Trump administration, citing an interagency report that found the measures “likely had a strong, negative impact on school discipline and safety.” Research on the impacts of the Obama-era school discipline guidance is limited and broader evidence on the effects of reducing school suspensions is mixed.

The Biden administration in May released a document summarizing recent investigations into racial discrimination in student discipline, saying such discipline “forecloses opportunities for students, pushing them out of the classroom and diverting them from a path to success in school and beyond.”

But some observers said the document is light on specific policy guidance or even marks a retreat from prior efforts to reduce suspensions. The letter “does seem to signal a more conciliatory federal approach to discipline issues as public schools struggle to respond to heightened levels of violence and misbehavior,” wrote Boston College professor R. Shep Melnick in the journal Education Next.

In California, a law that went into effect in January requires schools to notify attorneys, social workers, and others when a foster child receives a suspension notice.

That can help county education officials detect patterns in discipline that might otherwise go overlooked.

Allyson Baptiste, a homeless youth advocate who works for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, said the law incentivizes school administrators to explore alternatives before taking students out of class.

“We’re making sure that if you are suspending or expelling a foster youth, you better make sure that you really, truly followed the letter of the law, and that you did what you could have done to try to prevent the expulsion or suspension,” she said.

“My hope is that something like that is created at some point for homeless youth as well,” she added, noting that homeless students do not have social workers or attorneys to notify.

For now, Baptiste is urging the district administrators to go beyond the minimum requirements of state law and tell their district’s liaison to homeless students when a child they support is suspended. Some districts consult the county superintendent’s office in those cases, too, though it is not required.

But without a law for homeless children like the foster-student notification, Baptiste and her colleagues in the county office of education likely won’t learn about all suspensions until the state updates its online data portals.

Long after the school year ends — and too late to try to intervene.

Amy DiPierro is a data journalist at the Center for Public Integrity.

Journalist Ian Whitaker contributed to this article.

How to shrink class sizes in NYC? A working group shares its recommendations

2023-09-26T23:29:44+00:00

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Capping enrollment at high-demand schools. Merging schools located in the same buildings. Moving some 3-K and prekindergarten programs out of K-12 schools. Paying extra to bring more teachers to hard-to-staff schools.

Those are some of the steps New York City may have to consider in the coming years to comply with a new state law requiring schools to shrink class sizes for hundreds of thousands of students, according to preliminary recommendations from an Education Department working group.

The recommendations, unveiled at a public hearing Tuesday night, are in the early stages and haven’t been adopted by the Education Department. The group is set to deliver its final recommendations Oct. 31. But the initial recommendations give the most detailed look yet of some of the complicated tradeoffs and challenges ahead as the city attempts to shrink class sizes across hundreds of schools in accordance with the state legislation.

Under the law, K-3 classes must have fewer than 20 students, 4-8 classes must be under 23, and high school classes can have no more than 25 students. The caps will phase in gradually over the next five years before fully taking effect.

Currently, more than half of the classes across the city’s 1,600 public schools are out of compliance — over 73,000 classes, according to the 48-member working group, which includes parents, teachers, administrators, union representatives, advocates, and education department officials. Bringing all of those classes under the legal limits will likely require creating thousands of new classes –- and a multi-pronged effort that involves shifting enrollment policies, moving around existing programming to maximize physical space, significantly boosting teacher hiring, and building some new facilities, according to the recommendations.

The recommendations didn’t come with a specific price tag, but included a suggestion that the city should “aggressively pursue new opportunities for potential funding” to cover the costs of implementation.

Previous estimates from the Independent Budget Office have put the cost of the additional staffing alone at between $1.6 billion and $1.9 billion a year.

“We tried to take on a challenging and vexing problem of, ‘How are we going to do this,’” said Patrick Sprinkle, a history teacher at the Lab School for Collaborative Studies in Manhattan and chair of the working group’s staffing sub-committee.

Deborah Alexander, a Queens parent and working group member, added, “we were really focused on … how to use our diverse perspectives to guide the [Education Department] in ways we are hopeful… will not have too many costs along with the benefit of smaller class sizes.”

Since its passage last year, the law has drawn fervent praise from many educators, union officials, and parents, along with criticism from city officials, and some parent groups and experts.

Research has consistently shown that lowering class sizes can increase student achievement, and lowering class sizes is a major priority for educators and many parents.

Mark Henderson, an English teacher at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often has classes of 34 students, which is the limit outlined in the teachers union’s contract. Bringing the number down to 25 would mean “the classes, the teaching, every element of the school experience would be better,” he said.

But city officials contend that the state hasn’t provided sufficient resources to meet the new mandate, and that it will require shifting resources away from other critical programs. Several analyses, moreover, suggest that the highest-poverty schools will benefit less from the law because they are already more likely to have classes under the legal cap.

Working group eyes enrollment changes

One method the city can use to control class sizes is shifting its enrollment policies. The working group acknowledges that the Education Department will likely have to “limit enrollment at overcrowded schools that do not have the space to comply with the new class size caps.”

Working group co-chair Johanna Garcia, the chief of staff for state Sen. Robert Jackson, explained that many oversubscribed schools sit right next to under-enrolled ones. Spreading out enrollment across nearby schools “could lead to benefits at both sets of schools, creating more space for smaller classes and less chaos at the overcrowded schools” while saving the city the cost of building new facilities.

Many of the city’s most oversubscribed schools are among its most popular, and multiple parents voiced vehement objections in Tuesday’s public forum to any efforts to cap or reduce enrollment at overcrowded schools.

“For high schools, in particular, cutting seats” at the most in-demand schools “would have a devastating, cascading impact” resulting in fewer students getting their top choice schools, said Shane Harrison, a parent of a seventh grader.

There is a provision in the law that would temporarily exempt schools from the class size requirements when a lack of space, overenrollment, a shortage of teachers, or “severe economic distress” make it impossible to comply, but the law offers no specifics about the thresholds for qualifying for an exemption.

Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, a parent advocacy group that supports selective schools and programs, has called for legislators to amend the law to exempt “high-performing” schools and programs from the class size law.

But Tom Sheppard, a Bronx parent and member of the Panel for Educational Policy who also served on the working group, countered that offering a blanket exemption to high-performing schools would “allow schools that people ‘want to go to’ to stay bursting at the seams while schools where you have issues with enrollment, it perpetuates that.”

The working group also recommends instituting multiple shifts at overcrowded schools — so that not all students would be in the school building at the same time — as a temporary stopgap in place of capping enrollments. Some of the city’s large high schools already have multiple overlapping shifts of students.

Some schools will need more space and teachers

The working group suggests shifting school programming in order to maximize all available space to create additional classes. That could involve moving 3-K and pre-K programs out of district school buildings to free up space and merging separate schools co-located in the same buildings to streamline operations, according to the recommendations.

Garcia said relocating pre-K classes from district schools to community-based organizations with “thousands of unfilled seats” in their city-funded pre-K programs could open space in elementary schools without sacrificing quality of the preschool programs.

But Martina Meijer, a Brooklyn public school teacher, raised a concern that such a move would make staffers from those programs ineligible to be members of the United Federation of Teachers.

The group cautioned that spaces for physical education, art, or elective classes shouldn’t be taken over to create more space for core classes.

Opening new facilities should be a last resort — and in cases where the city does need additional school space, it should prioritize leasing existing buildings like shuttered parochial and charter schools, rather than building new schools, according to the preliminary recommendations.

The city’s School Construction Authority recently estimated that between 400 and 500 schools will need additional space in order to comply with the class size law. An estimated 40% of those schools — between 160 and 200 — would likely need entirely new facilities, according to the estimates.

Finding enough physical space, however, is only one part of the equation. The city will also need enough teachers to staff newly opened classes. Education Department officials have estimated that the city’s teaching force, currently at around 76,000, will need to grow by 9,000 by the time the law takes full effect.

Suggestions for boosting teacher hiring include easing the process for paraprofessionals and teacher aides to earn their teacher license and offering pay incentives for teachers who work in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas — an idea the city has experimented with before.

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

Out with letter grades, in with report cards: Indiana schools have a new measure of quality

2023-09-26T11:00:00+00:00

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Gone are the days of a single grade serving as a measure of an Indiana school’s quality. Under a new state law, schools are instead getting what amounts to a report card.

Beginning Oct. 15, each school must post on its website a school performance report from the Indiana Department of Education that shows how its students are doing on academic and other measures.

What’s included will vary by the grade levels the school serves. Elementary schools, which are defined as schools serving K-8 grades, will include:

Pass rates for the 3rd grade literacy test, the IREAD
Pass rates for the state test, the ILEARN
Chronic absenteeism rates
Per-student funding.

High schools’ report cards, meanwhile, will include the following:

Average composite SAT score.
Graduation rate and non-waiver graduation rate.
Per-student funding.
Percentage of students who enrolled in and passed any of the following: an Advanced Placement exam, International Baccalaureate exam, dual credit course, or Cambridge International exam.

Several metrics will also be compared across schools serving the same grade bands.

The change marks the beginning of the end for the state’s previous evaluation metric — A-F grades. They’ve been effectively suspended since 2018 as Indiana shifted to a new state test and later grappled with the pandemic.

Technically, the requirement for A-F school grades is still on the books. Yet under the new law, the state will again issue “null” grades for each school for the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, as it has since 2018.

The school performance reports will cover the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. For subsequent years, the Indiana education department is charged with coming up with new recommendations for accountability to present to lawmakers by Dec. 1, 2024.

The data for the new report cards will come from the Indiana Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) dashboard, which the state developed this year with the aim of making it easier for parents to access information about their schools.

Many of the data points required by the new report cards are already available on each school’s GPS profile — with the notable exception of per-student funding.

Schools will receive their reports and instructions to embed them on their websites in the coming weeks, according to an education department memo.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How teachers are addressing pandemic learning gaps

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aubria Myers teaches an English lesson at Comer Middle School.

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

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

Student mental health and engagement still top of mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I learned a lot from him,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chicago Public Schools hired hundreds of tutors with federal COVID money. Can they keep them?

2023-09-18T10:30:00+00:00

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A. Philip Randolph Elementary School parent Victoria Wicks has hair as vibrant as her personality. Last week it was colored a bright teal, but she changes it up frequently — sometimes picking a color requested by the students she tutors.

The mother of eight, with children ranging in age from 10 months to 16 and including twins, is deeply involved at Randolph in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side. Six of Wicks’ children currently attend the school and she’s on two parent councils.

On a recent Friday, Wicks sat across the table from a student and gave instructions in a practiced, serious tone. This exercise would assess what level of tutoring the girl would be placed into for the rest of the school year.

Once the reading of passages and sight words was over, Wicks let her nature shine to the fullest, telling a student, “Good job! That’s what I’m talking about!”

Wicks became a tutor during summer 2021, when a fellow parent invited her to join Randolph’s contingent of the Chicago Public Schools Tutor Corps. The district had earmarked $25 million in federal pandemic relief money to hire and train 850 tutors to help kids catch up on much-needed early reading and middle- to high-school math skills.

Wicks took on the job of reading tutor with her trademark enthusiasm, rehearsing how to teach the lessons and give assessments, using the curriculum provided. She found success helping her tutoring groups read better.

But across the district, the corps got off to a slow start. Only 450 tutors were hired by halfway through the 2021-22 school year. Onboarding was slow and it took a few months to get the curriculum providers — Amplify for reading, Saga Education for math — under contract and training tutors.

Since then, the number of tutors has grown. On the first day of school, CPS had more than 600 tutors, about three-quarters of the initial hiring goal of 850. Currently, tutors are working in 229 schools, but the district declined a request to provide a list of the schools and their locations.

A summer hiring push helped schools, including Randolph, staff up, some principals said. But this school year marks the final year the district will have federal COVID relief funds to spend on tutors before the dollars run dry next fall.

Chicago’s tutoring is high-quality but small scale

According to district officials, Tutor Corps has reached 10,000 students with at least one tutoring session since its 2021 launch. Like many districts nationwide, Chicago’s program aimed to provide students “high-dosage” tutoring, which means students meet in a group of no more than four with the same tutor over an extended period of time, like a semester or a full school year. The intensive sessions are 30 minutes during the school day, at least three times a week.

The tutors must be trained to use a structured curriculum that can meet students where they are and offer lots of chances to practice the skills they are learning. Research shows this kind of tutoring benefits struggling students the most.

Meeting these exacting requirements can be tough. Other districts have struggled to make it work, but Chicago has stayed true to it from the beginning.

At Randolph, tutors meet with no more than three students up to five times a week. Principal Keviyona Smith-Ray also makes sure tutors have time to meet with the teachers of the students they are tutoring.

“CPS is doing something we’re not really seeing across the United States,” said Maryellen Leneghan, vice president of district partnerships for Saga Education, which provides training and curriculum for the math tutors.

She said Chicago’s uniqueness is threefold: The district has chosen to keep tutoring fully in person, maintain control of tutor hiring, and balance strict adherence to the model with flexibility for schools.

“The number of students it has been able to help has been impressive,” said Becky Betts, chief marketing and external affairs officer for A Better Chicago, which has financially supported tutor hiring.

But 10,000 students is barely a drop in the bucket for a district of more than 300,000 students, said Natasha Dunn, a CPS parent and Black Community Collaborative co-founder.

Though data on the tutor corps’ effects has yet to be made public, a study from the University of Chicago’s Education Lab is expected later this school year.

While kids learn, schools develop teacher talent

Like many tutors, Wicks had the same students all year last year and got to know them well, even attending a parent-teacher conference for one of them to show how much the child had progressed over the year.

As a parent herself, she has seen some of her own children grow as readers through tutoring, and she uses what she’s learning as a tutor to help them at home.

“Being with Tutor Corps helps them understand how to break down the words,” she said. ”When it’s time for them to go into that classroom and read, they’ll use the strategies we have taught them.”

Smith-Ray said the tutors are also building relationships with students beyond their academic sessions and helping them open up about tough issues in their lives.

She’s also seen an unexpected perk: Two of last year’s tutors have joined the permanent staff — one as a special education classroom assistant and the other as an office assistant.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to hire within the community,” said Smith-Ray. “The students want to be with them. They’re familiar with them.”

The six tutors who are part of CPS Tutor Corps at Haugan Elementary in Chicago’s Albany Park. The school’s co-principal, Heather Yutzy, said the program has become a helpful hiring pipeline for the school.

Across town, at Haugan Elementary in Chicago’s Albany Park, co-principal Heather Yutzy said Tutor Corps is becoming a “stepping stone” into teaching or other permanent jobs. At Haugan, one of last year’s tutors has moved into student teaching. That tutor’s younger sister, a recent graduate of Northeastern Illinois University, is now tutoring and planning a career change to go into teaching.

Northeastern is among a group of local colleges, led by Roosevelt University, that is creating a tutor-to-teacher pipeline. A Better Chicago awarded $1.6 million to Roosevelt University to build a tutoring pathway in partnership with other local higher ed institutions. According to A Better Chicago, about 65 Roosevelt students completed a full year of tutoring last year. Of them, seven Roosevelt students are moving into student teaching this year and another 10 students are expected to move into student teaching in fall 2024.

Getting sold on the program and finding the money

Though hard data on Tutor Corps’ effectiveness is not yet publicly available, tutors and principals can see early signs of progress on the ground.

Haugan parent Rita Tello joined the corps in the middle of last year as a math tutor. She has worked hard to help struggling middle schoolers see math as both challenging and fun.

Her groups broke into two-on-two teams to take Kahoot quizzes and play Jeopardy-style math games, often with a small prize for the winners.

Though not every student’s math grade improved, she could see growth based on their “exit slips” — a quick, weekly progress check — and a difference in their attitude toward math.

She said her students were skeptical of her and reluctant to do math at the start. But by the end of the year, she said, they were eager to come to tutoring. They would ask her, “Are you picking us up today? Are you picking us up tomorrow, Ms. Tello?”

At Randolph, Smith-Ray said one of the most obvious signs of improvement in math is that children know their multiplication facts fluently and no longer need a times table reference with them in classroom small groups.

She said the youngest students are the most likely to outgrow the need for tutoring quickly, because many of the entering kindergartners had little preschool experience with pre-reading skills to learn sounds and letters.

Smith-Ray added that tutoring has also helped identify students who need individualized education programs, or IEPs, for special education services and provided “clear data” to help case managers and teachers “make sure students were given what they needed.”

However, for most students, Smith-Ray said continued tutoring will be key, “[They] are meeting their growth targets. They’re just still not at grade level yet.”

Not all students see linear progress. Barbara Formoso Minarik is the grandmother of alumni of James Monroe Elementary in Logan Square and has been part of the Tutor Corps since it started. Over the past three school years, she has seen children bounce in and out of tutoring.

Formoso Minarik wonders if some of her students need more support than tutoring can offer, like a referral for special education services. But that’s not a quick fix. “It’s just a long process,” she said.

It’s also a long process for a school district to embed and sustain a program like Tutor Corps. It can take about five years, said Leneghan, with Saga Education.

“Every year you learn more and more and build your capacity,” she said.

Chicago, like districts nationwide, doesn’t have much more time. The federal deadline to spend COVID recovery money is next September.

In a statement, the district said it “values this program and is exploring ways to continue providing these foundational services even after all federal [COVID]dollars are expended by September 2024.”

Whatever district officials decide, the principals at Randolph and Haugan want tutors like Wicks and Tello to continue their work.

“If I had to use my budget, I would still keep Tutor Corps,” said Smith-Ray. “It may not be six people, maybe it’ll be four, but I would still employ them.”

Yutzy, the Haugan co-principal, is just as determined.

“I’m totally sold on this program,” she said. “I think it has been a 100% valuable experience.”

Maureen Kelleher is a freelance journalist and longtime education writer. For Chalkbeat, she has previously written First Person pieces about choosing a new school for her daughter and helping migrant students enroll in school. Kelleher is now the editorial director at Future Ed, an independent, solution-oriented think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.

At Denver’s Hallett Academy, principal says intentional hiring — and love — helped boost rating

2023-09-14T22:09:29+00:00

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To recruit students to Hallett Academy, Principal Dominique Jefferson said she tells the truth.

“Here at Hallett, we will love your child into learning,” Jefferson said, sitting in her quiet office on a recent Friday morning. “That is the commitment I make to you. And I keep my word.”

Jefferson’s commitment was clear as she moved through the hallways in a tutu, greeting students by name and opening her arms wide. At a weekly assembly in the gym, she offered a squeezy hug to each of the 289 children who wanted one before she led the entire school in a lesson about self-care, one of Hallett’s school-wide expectations.

The Friday before, she’d handed out green cupcakes — a celebration of the fact that for the first time in nearly a decade, Hallett earned the state’s highest school rating, signified by the color green, based on student progress on state tests taken this past spring.

“Life is hard for the children who look like me,” Jefferson said. “I am just committed to making sure that when they come to school every day that they experience freedom. And they are reminded of the power that they have.”

Jefferson is Black, as are 71% of Hallett students in kindergarten through fifth grade. That high proportion makes Hallett unique in Denver Public Schools, where just 14% of students are Black.

Every single student must choose to attend Hallett. That’s because the school is one of just a few Denver district-run schools without an enrollment boundary that directs neighborhood children there, a circumstance that several families said is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because that intentionality is part of Hallett’s magic, they said. But it’s a curse because as lower birth rates and high housing costs drive down enrollment in DPS districtwide, small elementary schools like Hallett are at risk for closure.

Hallett has been closed before. In 2008, Hallett was one of eight DPS schools closed for low enrollment. The building, which is located in the historically Black neighborhood of Park Hill, reopened as the new home for a public magnet school, Knight Fundamental Academy.

Omar D. Blair, the first Black DPS school board president, helped start Knight in the early 1980s. It focused on “structured, stay-in-your-seat learning,” and posted high test scores, according to newspaper reports from the time. At Hallett, the school was renamed Hallett Fundamental Academy. As a magnet school, Hallett no longer had a boundary.

Hallett Academy Principal Dominique Jefferson, in the black tutu, raises her hand as a signal for students to quiet down during a schoolwide assembly.

Bringing healing and restoration

When Jefferson became principal of Hallett seven years ago, one of the first things she did was rebrand the school and remove “fundamental” from its name. A few years before, Hallett had been publicly accused of cheating on standardized tests. The former principal was put on leave while the state investigated Hallett’s high scores, which had earned the school a green rating.

The investigation turned up no wrongdoing; Hallett students and staff hadn’t cheated. But it wounded the community, Jefferson said. When she arrived, the school was rated red.

“I made it my responsibility to bring healing and restoration,” Jefferson said. “I remember them being slandered and never receiving a ‘sorry.’”

To accomplish her goal, Jefferson didn’t focus on curriculum or schedule changes, or stricter rules for teachers or students, as many schools do in their attempts to boost academic performance. Her strategy was much simpler.

“In short,” she said, “I hired well.”

When interviewing job candidates, Jefferson said she doesn’t require a certain background or set of skills. She listens. She waits to hear candidates say they believe all children can learn and achieve. That when children are at school, 100% of the responsibility for their success rests with their teachers, regardless of what’s going on at home. And that the candidates feel called to work at Hallett, just as Jefferson did, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

“I wait to hear potential team members say things like, ‘This may sound strange, but I just think I’m supposed to be here,’” Jefferson said.

That’s how kindergarten teacher Joy Wills felt when she visited Hallett at the end of last school year. Wills was a teacher in a neighboring district who knew Jefferson from years ago but had no intention of leaving her job. The visit — to a school with predominantly Black students in a historically Black neighborhood — changed her mind, Wills said.

“It was great to have that sense of home community that I haven’t had since I’ve been here in Denver,” said Wills, who is from Chicago.

Hallett’s staff is diverse, and Jefferson said that she’s proud that the adult population at Hallett mirrors the student population. “If you are a white boy student, there are teachers who are white and male that you will see at least once a week,” Jefferson said. “If you are a multiracial girl, you will see, ‘Here are three multiracial folks. They look just like you.’”

At the assembly Friday, the entire school played a game called “Just Like Me.”

“If you have your hair in braids, you would stand up,” Jefferson explained to the students and staff. “And you would say, ‘Just like me!’ On the count of three: One, two, three.”

“Just like me!” the students and staff said over and over again in response to questions about whether they were left-handed, an only child, or if summer was their favorite season.

Hallett Academy students hug Principal Dominique Jefferson in the hallway.

‘Children are loved here’

The cultural mirror is one of many aspects of Hallett that parents said they appreciate.

“They just do a lot to make every kid feel seen throughout the day,” said parent Amy Martinez, who described her family as multiracial: She is white, her husband is Mexican, and their first grade daughter Jaliyah is Black. “They instill that pride in the students.”

Parent Emily Nelson said that when she and her husband were looking for a school for their children, who are biracial, she was struck by how the staff at Hallett interacted with the students.

“That was probably the biggest thing, just to walk through the hallways and hear peace,” Nelson said. “Before looking at test scores or any of that, I looked at how the children were acting. The self-esteem was something I was looking for, of just fostering strong humans.”

Parents credit Jefferson with creating that atmosphere. Faith and advocacy are a big part of how she’s gotten there. When DPS tried to change Hallett’s start time this fall from 9 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. as part of a districtwide policy to have elementary schools start earlier and middle and high schools start later, Jefferson and the parents successfully pushed back.

Families come to Hallett from all over the metro area, driving up to 45 minutes from Lafayette to the north and Castle Rock to the south, Jefferson said. Starting school an hour and a half earlier would have made that journey untenable for many families.

When DPS predicted Hallett’s enrollment would dip to just 171 students in kindergarten through fifth grade this year, necessitating that Jefferson cut $697,000 — the equivalent of six and a half teachers — from the school’s budget, she decided to do something district staff told her was impossible: request DPS supplement her budget by the full $697,000.

But Superintendent Alex Marrero said yes, and then Hallett proved the predictions wrong: When school started, 225 students in kindergarten through fifth grade showed up. The school also has 64 preschool students, though preschool is funded separately.

As Jefferson sees it, the last barrier is Hallett’s lack of a boundary. Having a boundary could boost the school’s enrollment and ensure Hallett stays off any future school closure lists.

She’s holding out hope that DPS will restore the boundary, just as she had faith that Hallett would restore its green rating. After years of red ratings, the state’s lowest, and no rating last year because not enough Hallett students took the state standardized tests, Jefferson began telling everyone that Hallett would rocket to the top of the ratings chart this year.

Before third, fourth, and fifth graders took the state tests known as CMAS this past spring, Jefferson wrote each of them a personalized postcard.

“You are an extraordinary human, blooming in boldness, speaking your truth,” she wrote to Nelson’s daughter Gianna, who was in fourth grade last year. “CMAS starts soon. Show up and do your very best because you can and you are more than capable.”

The postcard is still hanging on the Nelsons’ fridge. While Nelson said test scores were never most important to her, the green rating is a public testament to the environment at Hallett.

Jefferson feels similarly.

“What I want folks to know is that children are loved here, that they are seen, that they are thriving, and we are a mystical, magical community in that whether or not we’ve been given what we need, we always have what we need,” she said.

“That’s what I want folks to know. And now they’re starting to know.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

State Board concerned about Adams 14’s pause to work with TNTP, but some members are encouraged by improvements

2023-09-14T15:02:29+00:00

State Board members Wednesday expressed concern that Adams 14 has not yet resumed work with a partner helping with improvement efforts, even as some also praised achievements that have already been made.

Adams 14, a school district north of Denver, has had the most years of low performance ratings of any other in the state. Because of those continued low ratings, the State Board of Education last year ordered the district to work with a partial manager on its improvement plan.

The state had also ordered the district to begin reorganization, which could have closed schools or split up the district, but has since cleared Adams 14 of that obligation.

The district signed a contract to work with New York-based nonprofit TNTP, formerly called the New Teacher Project, for three years on things like teacher training, coaching of leaders, and reviewing employee policies. But last month, after one year of the contract, the district and TNTP paused the work, unable to reach a new agreement for how the work in the second year should go.

In an update to the State Board Wednesday, Colorado Department of Education staff told the board that the pause has not been as disruptive as when the district also stopped its work with the previous external manager, MGT Consulting. Some professional learning planned for schools was put on hold, but the pause was less disruptive because TNTP did not hold district administration positions the way MGT had, staff told the State Board.

Still, State Board member Karla Esser said she was concerned that this pause in the work meant more inconsistency in a district that has had a lot.

“It feels to me very disruptive to be on this path,” Esser said. “It’s very disappointing.”

District leaders have pointed to budget problems as a reason for needing to scale back.

State Board member Steve Durham pressed department staff for more details on where the disagreements were, and whether they had to do with how much authority or control each party had.

Staff said they had not heard any discussions or disagreements about that.

“It was more about the scope and where we’re reducing services and what outcomes can we expect with TNTP expressing some concern,” said Lindsey Jaeckel, executive director of school and district transformation. “We didn’t hear a discussion over authority. We’ve seen them work collaboratively.”

In an effort to help pay for the contract, the Colorado Department of Education has agreed to give the district more money than it planned this year. Instead of the expected $850,000 in grants for its improvement work, the state will offer an extra $350,000, for a total of $1.2 million. But an agreement has still not been reached.

A vote on a TNTP contract was on the agenda of the Adams 14 school board meeting on Tuesday night. The board instead tabled the item.

The contract with TNTP originally called for $5 million over three years, with the cost going up slightly in the second year. From September through June this school year, the district was to have paid TNTP $1.8 million, up from $1.6 million it paid in the last year.

State Board member Kathy Plomer thanked department staff for their work with the district. She said that while people may want to see “astronomical growth,” the smaller improvements the district is making are good news.

“For a district that’s struggled for so long, I’m encouraged,” Plomer said.

“We are all eager for this work to continue,” Andy Swanson, director of accountability pathways for the Colorado Department of Education told the State Board. “I think we’re hopeful this resolves sooner rather than later.”

Department staff told the State Board that depending on the agreement the district might reach with TNTP, a request for an amendment to the State Board improvement order may come next month.

Correction: Due to an editing error, this article incorrectly identified State Board member Karla Esser as representing the Adams 14 school district. The article has been updated to remove the reference.

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

Families have their students’ state test scores. But NYC will have to wait for overall numbers.

2023-09-13T21:42:38+00:00

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New York City families can now see their students’ state test scores from the last school year, though broader data has yet to be released.

The individual scores, released Wednesday as the first full week of school is underway, come later than usual. A change to the state’s learning standards, which required an overhaul of the exams and scoring, delayed the results.

Every spring, schools administer standardized exams in reading and math to third through eighth grade students. The test scores offer one look at how students are faring.

The 2023 exams followed the “Next Generation Learning Standards,” which were established after revisions from the controversial Common Core. The new standards sought to clarify previously vague language, such as outlining specific theorems students had to learn in geometry.

Since it was the first time the new standards were used, state education officials had to develop new “cut scores,” or metrics used to measure student proficiency.

State officials have yet to release overall data for kids across the city or state. But schools Chancellor David Banks said the city’s test scores were up in both reading and math during an appearance on ABC7.

State officials warned against interpreting the scores that were distributed Wednesday. They did not specify when they expect to release more comprehensive data, though noted teachers and principals had received reports over the summer on how their students performed on each test question.

The state’s Department of Education provided individual student test scores to districts and families for “programming and instructional services, as well as parent engagement,” Commissioner Betty Rosa said in a statement.

“After ensuring that all student results are accounted for and final data quality checks, the Department will release the aggregate data statewide by district, school, and other subgroups,” Rosa said. “As such, accurate inferences about how districts and the state are doing overall cannot be made until the data is finalized.”

The state Education Department also urged against making comparisons to prior years because the exams were changed to match the new learning standards.

“You wouldn’t compare your U.S. history class to your physics class, because it’s measuring something different,” said Zachary Warner, assistant commissioner of the department’s Office of State Assessment, in an interview last week.

“But with that said,” he added, “we do want people to look and say, ‘Are kids meeting the expectations of the learning standards?’ So you could look backwards and say, ‘Okay, on those standards, here’s how kids were doing. On the new standards, here’s how kids are doing.’”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org

Comisionada dice que el distrito escolar de Adams 14 no tiene que reorganizarse

2023-09-08T19:45:03+00:00

Read in English.

El distrito escolar de Adams 14 no se verá obligado a reorganizarse.

Al aceptar una recomendación presentada en agosto por un comité, la comisionada de educación para Colorado, Susana Córdova, liberó al distrito escolar de una orden del Consejo de Educación del Estado que lo obligaba a reorganizarse. Este proceso pudo haber resultado en cierres de escuelas o que distritos vecinos integraran partes del distrito.

La decisión del estado se envió al comité de reorganización el 30 de agosto.

En ella, la comisionada señala que la ley no permite una reorganización cuando los distritos circundantes no están dispuestos a replantear sus límites geográficos.

“No beneficiaría los intereses de ningún distrito involucrado invertir más recursos o tiempo en este asunto si no existe un interés básico entre los distritos circundantes”, la respuesta declara. “No habrá más expectativas de que el proceso de reorganización continúe”.

Los representantes de Adams 14 celebraron la derrota del intento del estado.

“La Ley de Reorganización de Distritos Escolares en Colorado es un proceso anticuado y no comprobado que no funciona y que no debería incluirse en el sistema para rendir cuentas”, dijo Reneé Lovato, presidenta del consejo escolar de Adams 14 y presidenta del comité de reorganización, en una declaración publicada el 1º de septiembre. “No hizo más que causar miedo e incertidumbre entre los estudiantes, el personal y la comunidad”.

La superintendenta Karla Loría agradeció la ayuda de los distritos vecinos y dijo en una declaración que “es nuestra ferviente esperanza que el Consejo Estatal deje de implementar medidas negativas contra Adams 14 y nos permita enfocarnos en nuestros estudiantes”.

El Consejo Estatal ordenó que Adams 14 se reorganizara en mayo de 2022. En noviembre de 2018, el Consejo Estatal había ordenado que el distrito, basado en la comunidad de clase trabajadora de Commerce City, cediera el control a una gerencia externa, lo cual se inició en 2019. La orden de reorganización de 2022 sucedió después de que una nueva superintendenta expulsara al grupo gerencial externo, MGT, del distrito.

Esta semana, los líderes de Adams 14 publicitaron avances en sus calificaciones como prueba de que van por buen camino. Las mejoras todavía no son suficientes como para que el distrito deje de seguir lo que se conoce como el “reloj para rendir cuentas”. Según la ley estatal, a las escuelas o los distritos que reciben una de las dos calificaciones más bajas se los coloca “bajo el reloj” y tienen cinco años para demostrar mejoras antes de enfrentarse a órdenes del Consejo de Educación del Estado.

Adams 14 fue el primer distrito escolar en Colorado a quien le ordenaron reorganizarse como una consecuencia de múltiples años con bajas calificaciones en su desempeño. El distrito ha desafiado la orden de reorganización en los tribunales. Queda pendiente una decisión de la Corte Suprema de Colorado sobre si el estado tiene la autoridad de forzar a un distrito para que se reorganice.

Mientras tanto, Adams 14 formó un comité con integrantes de los distritos vecinos—el primer paso necesario hacia la organización. El grupo se reunió cuatro veces, pero en lugar de diseñar un plan borrador para cerrar escuelas, cambiar límites geográficos o disolver el distrito, adoptó una recomendación de 40 páginas que encontró que la reorganización no beneficiaría los intereses del distrito.

La carta con la decisión de Córdova señala: “El comité busca una autorización para dar por terminado el proceso antes de [realizar] audiencias con la comunidad porque no hay nuevos límites [geográficos] que presentarle a la comunidad”. Debido a que el estado entregó el proceso para que la comunidad lo liderara, el estado ahora tiene la opción de decir que el proceso se completó, Córdova escribió.

Córdova también señala que si partes del distrito de Adams 14 tuvieran que votar para decidir que las integre o no un distrito escolar vecino con un mayor impuesto sobre la propiedad, también tendrían que votar para aprobar ese impuesto mayor—algo que probablemente no suceda en el distrito con bajos ingresos donde han fracasado múltiples veces medidas relacionadas con aumentar los impuestos.

Aunque el distrito ya no estará obligado a reorganizarse, sigue estando obligado bajo una segunda orden del Consejo Estatal de contratar a un gerente parcial para que lo ayude con su trabajo de mejoras, la decisión dice.

“Desafortunadamente, el Consejo Estatal recibió una notificación esta semana de que Adams 14 no renovará su contrato con TNTP, y el trabajo de TNTP se ha suspendido en el distrito”, la decisión estatal menciona. “Esto es una sorpresa”.

Los líderes del distrito dicen que el costo del contrato de TNTP es una de las principales razones por las que suspendieron su trabajo, y en su notificación al estado dijeron que tanto la organización sin fines de lucro como el distrito acordaron suspender el trabajo mientras llegan a un acuerdo.

Adams 14 había firmado un contrato con TNTP en el verano de 2022. El contrato iba a ser por tres años con un valor total de $5 millones durante ese período.

Representantes del estado le dijeron a Chalkbeat que habían ofrecido aumentar los fondos para las mejoras del distrito en $350,000, para un total de $1.2 millones este año. “Esperamos que esto ayude a que el distrito continúe su trabajo con TNTP”, dice una declaración del departamento.

Philadelphia school leaders celebrate small gains in standardized test scores

2023-09-07T22:48:37+00:00

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Some Philadelphia students are making minor gains in math, English, and science and are catching up to their pre-pandemic scores, according to preliminary standardized test data the district released Thursday.

While the increases are incremental — only a few percentage points in each category — and many students still have not reached proficiency, school leaders said they are hopeful they can keep up the momentum this school year and in the years to come.

According to early data from the 2022-23 Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, students scoring “proficient” in math in grades 3-8, English in grade 3, and science in grades 4 and 8 increased from 2021-22, and students who scored “below basic” declined in those grades and subject levels.

“Students may not have reached … proficiency [yet] but they are moving in the right direction,” Jermaine Dawson, the district’s new deputy superintendent of academic services, told board members on Thursday. “We are catching up and we are closing the achievement gap in those areas.”

Superintendent Tony Watlington cautioned the final data — including a deeper look into disaggregated data sorted by race, gender, and grade level — would be coming in the late fall or early winter.

Board members expressed optimism that Philadelphia students may be making progress.

“Knowing that there are thousands of more students who are now proficient at math … that excites me,” Board President Reginald Streater said.

English Language performance

Third grade students — who have been under the national microscope as districts across the country confront the way they teach reading in their classrooms — were given special attention in the district’s presentation on Thursday.

The percentage of grade 3 students who scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the English PSSA rose from 28.1% in 2021-22 to 31.3% in 2022-23 — an increase of 3.2 percentage points.

The percentage of grade 3 students who scored “below basic” on the PSSA ELA declined during that time period, from 38.2% to 30.3%.

According to the district’s data, the percentage of students in grades 3-8 who scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the English PSSA “remained stable,” dropping 0.3 percentage points from 34.4% in 2021-22 to 34.1% in 2022-23.

The percentage of students in grades 3-8 who scored “below basic” in ELA dropped from 28.2% to 25.4% between 2021-22 and 2022-23 — a decline of 2.8 percentage points.

Watlington said the district has committed to shifting schools towards implementing structured literacy, sometimes known as “the science of reading,” to students in the years to come and are looking to implement new curriculum in that vein next school year.

“We’re not saying that teachers have to take away academic creativity and freedom … but we have to draw the line in the sand and say all kids will have a rigorous and guaranteed viable curriculum,” Watlington said. “The best available in the United States.”

Math performance

Watlington also highlighted the new math curriculum that’s already being rolled out in classrooms citywide this week. He said he hopes those new materials will build on the gains reflected in the PSSA scores.

The percentage of students in grades 3-8 who scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the math PSSA rose from 16.5% in 2021-22 to 20.1% in 2022-23 — up 3.6 percentage points.

In 2022-23, 57.3% of students in grades 3-8 scored “below basic” on the math PSSA, down from 61.7% in 2021-22 — a decrease of 4.4 percentage points.

The percentage of grade 3 students who scored “proficient” or “advanced” on the math PSSA rose from 20.8% in 2021-22 to 26.0% in 2022-23 — a gain of 5.2 percentage points.

In 2022-23, 52.1% of grade 3 students were “below basic” on the math PSSA, down from 58.9% the previous year — 6.8 percentage points.

Science performance

The science portion of the PSSA is only given to students in grades 4 and 8. The district reported from 2021-22 to 2022-23, the percentage of students scoring “proficient” or “advanced” on that test increased from 37.1% to 40.5% — an increase of 3.4 percentage points.

Still a long way to go

To be sure, even with the gains, last year’s scores remain well below levels school officials said they’d like to see.

“We know we’re not where we need to be. We’re not even close to where we know the kids deserve to be,” Board Vice President Mallory Fix-Lopez said.

Tonya Wolford, the district’s chief of evaluation, research, and accountability, told board members it’s important to keep in mind, “students likely are not going from below basic to proficient in one year.” They’ll need more time, resources, and attention to catch up to their peers.

Philadelphia also didn’t see the drastic “drop in performance” during the pandemic from 2018-19 to 2021-22 that districts saw across the country and across the state, Wolford said. “But we’re still not back to pre pandemic levels.”

What are they doing about it

Dawson, Wolford and Watlington all pointed to their efforts to increase student attendance and implement some high-dosage tutoring through a pilot at six to eight schools this year.

Board member Joyce Wilkerson said the board would need to know more details about specific efforts that are working or not in schools across the city, especially as federal covid relief funding comes to an end and dollars may need to be stretched.

“We’re going have to make some budget decisions in the next couple of months, and we’re going to need to know and in fairly specific ways what are we going to fund and what are we going to cut out,” Wilkerson said.

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

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

School officials insist the money has made a difference.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collin Binkley is an education reporter for the Associated Press.

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

Commissioner: Adams 14 school district doesn’t have to reorganize

2023-09-01T18:20:33+00:00

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The Adams 14 school district will not be forced to reorganize.

Accepting a committee recommendation submitted in August, Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova has released the school district from a State Board of Education order that it reorganize — a process that could have led to school closures or seen parts of the district absorbed by neighboring districts.

The state decision was sent to the reorganization committee Thursday evening.

In it, the commissioner finds that the law doesn’t allow for reorganization when surrounding districts are unwilling to redraw their boundaries.

“It would not be in the best interest of any of the districts involved to spend further resources or time on this matter if there is no foundational interest from the surrounding districts,” the response states. “There will be no further expectations for the reorganization process to continue.”

Adams 14 officials celebrated their defeat of the state’s attempt.

“Colorado’s School District Reorganization Act is an outdated, unproven process that does not work and has no place in the accountability system,” said Reneé Lovato, the president of the Adams 14 school board and chair of the reorganization committee, in a statement released Friday. “It did nothing except instill fear and uncertainty among our students, staff and community.”

Superintendent Karla Loría thanked neighboring districts for helping and said in the statement, “it is our fervent hope that the State Board will stop taking negative actions against Adams 14 and allow us to focus on our students.”

The State Board ordered Adams 14 to reorganize in May 2022. In November 2018, the State Board had ordered the district based in the working class community of Commerce City to cede control to an external manager, which began in 2019. The 2022 reorganization order came after a new superintendent pushed that external manager, MGT, out of the district.

Adams 14 leaders had touted ratings improvements this week as evidence that they are on the right track. The ratings improvements aren’t yet enough to get the district off of what is known as the “accountability clock.” Under state law, schools or districts that earn one of the two lowest ratings are placed “on the clock” and have five years to show improvement before facing orders from the State Board of Education.

Adams 14 was the first school district in Colorado to be ordered to reorganize as a consequence of multiple years of low performance ratings. The district has challenged the reorganization order in court, and a Colorado Supreme Court decision on whether the state has the authority to force a district into reorganization is pending.

In the meantime, Adams 14 formed a committee with members from the neighboring districts — the first required step toward reorganization. The group met four times, but instead of crafting a draft plan to close schools, change boundaries, or dissolve the district, they adopted a 40-page recommendation that found that reorganization was not in the district’s best interest.

Córdova’s decision letter notes, “The committee seeks authorization to end the process before community hearings because there are no new boundaries to present to the community.” Because the state turned over the process to be led by the community, the state can now choose to say that the process is complete, Córdova wrote.

Córdova also notes that if parts of current Adams 14 district had to vote on being absorbed into a neighboring school district with a higher property tax burden, they would have to also vote to approve that higher tax — something that is unlikely to happen in the low-income district that has failed to pass its own tax measures multiple times.

While the district will no longer be bound to go into reorganization, the district is still bound by a second State Board order to contract with a partial manager to help with improvement work, the decision says.

“Unfortunately, the State Board was notified this week that Adams 14 is non-renewing their contract with TNTP, and TNTP’s work has been stopped in the district,” the state’s decision notes. “This comes as a surprise.”

District leaders cite the cost of TNTP’s contract as one main reason for stopping their work, and in their notice to the state, said that both the nonprofit and the district mutually agreed to stop the work while they negotiate.

Adams 14 had signed a contract with TNTP in the summer of 2022. The contract was to be for three years and for a total of $5 million over that time.

State officials said late Thursday they had offered to increase school improvement funding for the district by $350,000, bringing the total to $1.2 million this year. “We hope this will help the district continue its work with TNTP,” a statement from the department says.

Read the state’s decision here:

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

Tennessee hires leader to jump-start school turnaround efforts statewide

2023-09-01T01:00:09+00:00

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Tennessee has appointed a school improvement leader to manage all of its school turnaround work under a powerful new position that will touch urban, suburban, and rural districts.

Bren Elliott, who was a Nashville school administrator from 2001 to 2007 and has been school improvement chief for District of Columbia Public Schools since 2017, will begin her job as state turnaround superintendent on Tuesday.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced Elliott’s hire on Thursday, three years after launching its first search to fill the job. The position is considered key to jump-starting school improvement work in Tennessee, which has helped pioneer several turnaround models with limited success.

Bren Elliott, Tennessee’s new school turnaround leader, returns to the state from Washington, D.C., where she was a school improvement leader. Elliott has previously been a teacher, principal and administrator in Nashville.

She is among the first major hires for Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds, who started her job on July 1 with an early focus on school accountability.

Elliott’s experience in school improvement “will be an asset to the state and provide intentional support to these schools to ensure all students receive a high-quality education,” Reynolds said in a statement.

Chief among Elliott’s new responsibilities will be overseeing the Achievement School District, the state’s most aggressive lever for improving low-performing schools. The state-run district, which takes over schools and assigns them mostly to charter operators to manage, has itself struggled, with little to show so far for its turnaround efforts over the past decade.

Elliott also will be responsible for supervising interventions for all 95 of the state’s so-called priority schools — those that score academically in the bottom 5% — as well as schools that need targeted support due to large achievement gaps among groups of historically underserved students such as English language learners, students with disabilities, or those from low-income families.

In all, nearly 300 Tennessee schools fall in those categories.

She will also work closely with local leaders of district-level turnaround initiatives, from the Innovation Zone in Memphis and Nashville to the Partnership Network in Chattanooga.

“I look forward to working with our schools most in need of support and intervention, including the Achievement School District, to improve student achievement and help all students in these schools succeed,” said Elliott.

Turnaround efforts are at a crossroads

For many local school improvement leaders, the education department’s naming of a statewide turnaround chief came as a surprise. Under Gov. Bill Lee, the department launched multiple searches to fill the job, even naming three finalists in 2021. But those searches stalled due to the pandemic, budget issues, and uncertainties about what direction the state wanted to take its turnaround work.

Victoria Robinson, the department’s spokeswoman, said making the hire was a priority for Reynolds.

“Dr. Elliott was identified several months ago as a potential candidate, and since that time has completed the interview, hiring and other processes with the state, including with Commissioner Reynolds and TDOE leadership,” Robinson said.

Reynolds has not said what she has planned for the ASD and other turnaround work. State law gives the commissioner the authority to identify schools for state takeover and place them in the ASD.

Under Reynolds’ predecessor, Penny Schwinn, the department unveiled a new vision for the ASD that would have had a “smaller footprint” and new takeovers, but none of the updates materialized.

The ASD, which launched in 2012, has been mostly a disappointment. Under charter management, its schools typically performed no better than low-performing schools receiving no intervention. As a result, Tennessee has not taken control of a neighborhood school since taking over four in Memphis in 2016.

Most of the ASD’s schools are Memphis, with a few in Nashville, but the district has shrunk by more than half to just over a dozen schools in recent years. A few have closed, some have returned to their local districts, and many that have shown the most improvement have moved under the oversight of a new state commission for public charter schools.

A lack of steady leadership in the ASD has complicated the complex exit process for schools once their charter contracts expire. The district’s last leader, Lisa Settle, departed in summer 2022. Since then, other staff with the education department have managed it.

Elliott has Tennessee ties

Elliott, who is a member of Chiefs for Change, an influential national education leadership network, is a native of North Carolina and no stranger to Tennessee.

She was a teacher and administrator in Nashville public schools for 15 years, and spent her last year at the district as a director focused on priority schools. She earned her master’s degree from Tennessee State University.

In 2020, Elliott lost a bid to become director of Metro Nashville Public Schools to Adrienne Battle, who was the interim leader at the time. This summer, Elliott was a superintendent finalist for Huntsville City Schools in Alabama, which also picked its interim leader instead.

Before joining the Washington, D.C., school district, she spent eight years as an administrator for two school districts in North Carolina, where she focused on support services for students in Wake and Guilford counties.

As the state’s overarching turnaround leader, Elliott also will work with local officials who manage district-run turnaround models.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools operates the Innovation Zone with funding assistance from the state. The so-called iZone gives its schools autonomy over curricular, financial, scheduling, and staffing decisions, similar to charter schools.

State officials also have worked closely with Hamilton County Schools’ Partnership Network, a model that seeks greater collaboration between the state and the local district.

But the ASD is the state’s most scrutinized turnaround program.

This spring, state Rep. Antonio Parkinson received bipartisan support for a bill that would revamp the state’s turnaround model and halt school takeovers altogether.

On Thursday, the Memphis Democrat said the department needs a school turnaround leader, whether his legislation passes or not next year.

“We need to be utilizing and putting our efforts and resources behind those practices that actually work,” Parkinson said, “and stop feeding millions and millions of dollars into the practices that didn’t work.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 leaders cite ratings improvements as they make case against state reorganization orders

2023-09-01T00:45:30+00:00

Adams 14 leaders are hoping to stop efforts to reorganize the district and point to improved state ratings as evidence they’re on the right path.

A reorganization committee that was formed in November following state orders, submitted a recommendation earlier this month asking the state to stop reorganization, calling the process “unproven, time-consuming, and resource-intensive.”

Reorganization would hurt the community, the committee argued in its 40-page report.

This year, the Adams 14 district improved from the lowest rating of turnaround, to the second-lowest of priority improvement on the state’s annual ratings. Priority improvement is the same rating the district had in 2019, and four other years in the last decade during which the state gave the district consecutive low ratings.

Superintendent Karla Loría highlighted the improvements on state tests and in performance ratings compared to last year at a press conference Wednesday.

Loría pointed to the improvements as evidence the district is on the right track, and that they don’t need state intervention.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but we are heading in the right direction,” Loría said. “We just need to be given the opportunity.”

Based on the state’s accountability law, the priority improvement rating isn’t enough to release the district from state intervention. But Loría said she’s confident that, with more time, the changes she’s implementing will lead to better results than the district has seen under previous improvement plans in the last decade.

How the district got here

Adams 14 has had one of the two lowest ratings for more than 10 years. State law requires the state intervene and order certain changes after five years in a row of low ratings.

Adams 14 was one of the first districts in the state to reach that mark, and to remain with low ratings after various state-ordered improvement plans.

Current district leaders point to turnover, state pressures, and biased standardized tests that don’t account for many of the socioeconomic factors that impact children in Adams 14. The district has one of the highest percentages of students who are learning English as a second language, as well as a high number of students from low-income families and students with disabilities. The district points to poverty, trauma, immigration fears, and environmental contamination as some of the many factors that impact learning in Commerce City more than elsewhere in the state.

This spring, just 17.6% of third graders met expectations on state reading tests, up from 13.6% in 2022, but still lower than the 21.2% who did in 2019.

In May 2022, Adams 14 was the first district ordered by the state to reorganize when State Board members said they no longer trusted that local leadership could make necessary improvements. The process for reorganization is spelled out in state law, but since it’s never been implemented this way, several questions remain. A Colorado Supreme Court decision that would impact whether the state can order reorganization is pending.

The law requires the district under order to reorganize to form a committee including members of neighboring districts and draft a plan for changes. That could mean anything from rebranding the district, changing district boundaries, closing some schools, or dissolving the district altogether.

The draft plan would be finalized with community feedback and sent to the state commissioner of education for approval. Lastly, voters would have the final say.

Instead, the reorganization committee, after meeting four times, approved a 40-page recommendation that asks the state to stop reorganization.

A spokesperson for the state Department of Education said the commissioner is reviewing the request and will issue a decision to the committee. The recommendation is not being considered a reorganization plan, which would have triggered some timelines for a response.

“Statute doesn’t contemplate a report that is a recommendation to not reorganize,” reads an emailed statement from the department. “The report asks the commissioner to accept the report and absolve the committee of any further obligations related to reorganization.”

The report initially was displayed on the district’s board website, but has since been removed and can only be viewed by search.

Under the law, the committee was supposed to review data, and gather community feedback about their draft plan before presenting it to the state.

In its vote on Aug. 11, all members voted in favor of forwarding the report to the state, except committee member Chris Gdowski, superintendent of neighboring Adams 12, who recused himself because he had not seen or read the 40-page report before the 10-minute meeting.

The report claims the public had ample opportunity to provide feedback, since its meetings were publicized, school board members held individual meetings, and community members could comment at the end-of-year Adams 14 town hall meeting.

However, the announcement for that meeting included no mention of the reorganization process, a draft plan, or recommendation.

An archived online notice for that town hall meeting is just a handful of sentences: “Please join us for an end-of-year town hall meeting on Wednesday, May 31, 2023. The superintendent will share some of our incredible achievements this year regarding state metrics, community engagement, and district initiatives. Join us in the Adams City High School auditorium on May 31 at 5:30 p.m. Dinner and child care will be provided. Interpretation services will be available.”

The report also cites that other local boards, including the neighboring school boards involved in reorganization, and the Adams County Commissioners, have passed resolutions in support of Adams 14. Teachers unions including the local Adams 14 association and the state teachers union also have voiced their support of the district and opposition for reorganization.

District attorney Joe Salazar said that community members always have a right to speak about reorganization or any topic at any meeting.

Salazar said “by and large, people from all four districts didn’t want to take part in reorganization. They are so over this process.”

What is happening in the district now?

Since the state ordered Adams 14 to enter reorganization, the Department of Education is now led by a new state commissioner and has new state board members.

Momentum to make changes to the state’s accountability system have picked up over time and a task force has been formed to make recommendations for changes.

Meanwhile, in the district, Adams 14 worked this past year with consultant TNTP, formerly known as The New Teacher Project. TNTP was supposed to take the place of an external manager the state wanted the district to work with to ensure success.

Adams 14 filed notice with the state this week that they don’t plan to renew TNTP’s contract due to budget constraints. Asked about that decision Wednesday, Loría said “we’re working with the state through that.” A department spokesperson said ending that relationship would put the district in violation of existing orders. However, the state is willing to give the district more money to cover some of the costs.

Two years ago, just after being hired, Loría cut ties with a state-ordered manager, for-profit consultant MGT, by locking them out of the district, and the State Board of Education temporarily removed the district’s accreditation.

This time, Salazar, the district’s attorney, said the district would seek an amendment to the State Board orders to remove the requirement that the district have an external partner. It’s not clear whether the State Board would approve such a request.

Loría said the district is continuously re-evaluating district needs and prioritizing improvement efforts, but said the district’s budget woes also pushed her to the decision.

The contract with TNTP was signed in June 2022, for $5 million over three years.

Loría said among other things, she has restructured administration staff for a savings of about $800,000. The district also closed Hanson, a low-enrollment elementary school, at the end of last school year, and is considering other closures in the coming years.

She said the district has been “bold” against the state’s orders, and now has a strong local vision and that has contributed to the district’s improvements. She also discussed the new career-focused academies that are being started at the high school, the district’s commitment to fund full-day preschool for all 3- and 4 year-olds, and the rollout of the community schools model at Central Elementary, one of the low-performing schools that has improved over 2022.

Loría also announced Wednesday that the district is one step closer to earning an alternative accreditation from Cognia, a Georgia-based nonprofit that conducts reviews of schools, grants accreditation, and offers suggestions and resources for improvement. The district began seeking that one after the state removed its accreditation.

Read the full report from the reorganization committee:

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to add additional information about Adams 14 considering cutting ties with TNTP, including a response from the Colorado Department of Education.

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

One Detroit school’s multilayered effort to get absent students back to school

2023-08-31T13:06:56+00:00

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After missing four days of classes last fall at Gompers Elementary-Middle School, Jay’Sean Hull was called into the cafeteria with 100 other students with similar attendance records.

The group was introduced to attendance agent Effie Harris, a key figure in the school’s efforts to improve on a dismal statistic. The previous school year, a staggering 82% of students in the northwest Detroit school were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more days.

Harris explained that the students had been selected for a relatively new program pairing students at risk of becoming chronically absent with 20 adult mentors in the building.

Jay’Sean’s mentor: Harris herself. Over the next few weeks, she would greet the sixth-grader at a side entrance designated for middle schoolers, visit him in his classrooms on days that he arrived late, and regularly check in with his family.

This high-touch, relationship-based investment was part of a multipronged approach at Gompers last school year to tackle a problem with tragic consequences: Chronically absent students are more likely to become disengaged from school and more likely to drop out, research shows. Frequent absences also make it harder to get students on track academically, a pressing need coming off pandemic-fueled declines in academic achievement.

Gompers Principal Akeya Murphy, a veteran educator, tapped just about every staff member to help with the effort. Along with the mentorship program, the school dispatched staff to students’ homes to help families solve problems contributing to absenteeism, used data to track attendance patterns, and offered incentives ranging from field trips to the local movie theater for students to grocery store gift cards for parents.

Students eat lunch at Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. In 2021-22, a staggering 82% of the school’s students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 or more school days.

Murphy, Harris, and other leaders at Gompers set an ambitious goal for last school year: to shave 20 percentage points off the school’s chronic absenteeism rate.

To get there, they would need to reach students like 13-year-old Jay’Sean, and dozens of other students whose absences put them at risk of missing out on their education.

“By the time they’re 16, they’re already thinking about going to work or exiting out of the educational system, because it is rigorous,” Murphy said. “We know the curriculum is rigorous, and so we want to prepare them, and the way we do that is by them being at school every single day, so that they’re not missing anything.”

Attendance struggles reflect Brightmoor’s economic challenges

Across the Detroit Public Schools Community District, 77% of students were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, when COVID-19 cases in Michigan reached their peak. But even before the pandemic caused a spike in absenteeism in school districts across the country, students in Detroit district and charter schools were missing school at crisis numbers.

The reasons for that vary, but they’re largely rooted in the economic challenges that accompany Detroit’s high poverty rates — transportation hurdles, health problems, family and housing instability.

Brightmoor, where Gompers is located, is one of the most economically challenged areas in the city, with a high concentration of housing instability, poverty, and transportation challenges. They contribute to a high level of transiency among the school’s student population, school officials say.

At Gompers, 91% of students come from low-income homes. The list of reasons for missed school days ranges widely at Gompers, from inflexible parent work schedules to student illnesses and bullying.

By January 2023, Haydin Griggs had missed about 50 days of the school year, primarily because her mother, Shetaya Griggs, had health problems that often prevented her from walking her daughter to school, and she didn’t want the sixth-grader walking to school on her own in their rough neighborhood.

Many parents “don’t have a bunch of money, they don’t have a whole bunch of resources,” said Harris, the attendance agent. “They’re thinking about just surviving.”

The Detroit school district’s strategies to reduce absenteeism have increasingly focused on these economic challenges. The district’s Family Resource Distribution Center regularly offers toiletries, dry goods, school supplies and winter coats.

The district is also set to launch 12 school-based health hubs in the next three years to provide medical resources and services that families would need to keep students attending school regularly.

Students wait in line in the main hallway at Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. The reasons for missed school days range widely at Gompers, from inflexible parent work schedules to student illnesses and bullying.

One issue that came up at Gompers ahead of the school year was how many parents were holding their children back from school because they did not have a uniform or clean clothes. Murphy said she sent out a back-to-school letter encouraging parents to send their kids to school regardless of what they had to wear.

“We would prefer them to be at school and just have them wear their regular clothes versus feeling like they can’t come to school because of a uniform,” she said.

When Murphy became principal at Gompers at the start of 2022-23, she made sure to move the attendance agent’s office into the main office, a decision she hoped would amplify the importance of student attendance to families as they walked into the building.

Harris spends a portion of her days reaching out by phone and in person to parents and caregivers, trying to help them make plans to get their kids to class. It can be difficult, she said, stressing to families how two absences a month can quickly add up to a student being chronically absent. Some are unaware of how significant the absences are, and many are weary of the pandemic’s impact on their health, jobs, and households.

“The dust is still settling,” Harris said in February, during a spike in absenteeism. “Families have been affected, loved ones have been lost. There have been readjustments, people have had to adapt to whatever their new normals are and a lot of shuffling.”

A student’s absence, whether excused or unexcused, still counts toward the total number of missed school days they accumulate in a given year.

Gloria Vanhoosier’s three elementary school-age children each accumulated over 80 absences (out of 180 days) during the 2021-22 school year.

In Vanhoosier’s case, a bedbug infestation that lasted more than a year was a contributing factor. She was often too exhausted to take her children to school after spending so much time trying to rid her home of the critters, while also doing her children’s laundry nightly so they didn’t bring the bugs to school. They also missed school because of multiple of COVID infections, because of car problems, and because the children sometimes overslept.

Alarmed by the absences, Harris reached out multiple times asking Vanhoosier to meet with her at the school.

“‘I’m not superwoman,’” Vanhoosier remembers telling Harris when they finally met. “‘I got too much on my plate. I’m trying to take care of my kids and trying to take care of my family.’”

“Once I opened up to her, it’s like her whole face changed,” Vanhoosier recalled. “Now I feel that she sees my struggle and is concerned for me.”

The conversation with Harris motivated Vanhoosier to rethink her attitude about her children’s absences and its impact on their grades. Seeing her daughters happy and thriving after they began attending school more regularly has also helped. The girls participated in volleyball step dance, and after-school tutoring programs.

“I’ve gotten a lot better,” Vanhoosier said in the spring. “We still miss days, but I’m open with her now.”

Absenteeism has ripple effects on students in the classroom

Brittany Parker, who has been teaching for 10 years, wrestles with what to do when her kindergartners don’t show up for class. Absences can create lasting turmoil in a child’s education — children who are chronically absent in early grades are less likely to read at grade level by the third grade.

They can also hamper the rest of the class. “The question for me is: Do I push ahead to the next lesson or do I wait for them to come back?” Parker said.

“As a district, they want us to keep going,” she said. “If it’s four kids out, I’m going to push ahead. Sometimes if it’s a larger number I’ll hold back. I’m also looking at: Are these kids who can catch up?”

An instructor works with students at Gompers Elementary-Middle School in Detroit. Children who are chronically absent in early grades are less likely to read at grade level by third grade.

By May, more than half of the 50 third-graders La’Dawn Peterson taught between her morning and afternoon math classes were chronically absent. An additional nine were severely chronically absent, meaning they had missed more than 36 days of school.

One of them missed more than 60 days during the year.

“He would be so good if he came to school,” Peterson said of the boy. When he did show up, he was able to grasp the material, but she worried whether he’d retain the information.

Despite her many attempts to communicate with his family, she said she’s not entirely clear why he was absent so much.

Peterson said she’s tried exhaustively to impress upon her students and their families the importance of daily attendance, and the harmful impact of missing school. It shows up in their academic performance, she said, and explains why some students can become classroom distractions.

One day in June, when extreme heat prompted the district to shorten the school day, just nine students showed up — about half as many as usual. One of them was the boy who had missed 60 days.

On that day, while other students quickly got to work on their online multiplication and fraction exercises, he was slow to get started. He rubbed his eyes with the sleeves of his black and white Adidas tracksuit, and rested his head on one hand as he clicked through the exercises.

About 10 minutes later, he raised his hand, and a classroom tutor walked over to his desk in the back corner of the room. With a little bit of support, he seemed to grasp the lesson and began to work through the exercises.

Teachers like Peterson are cramming in four to five lessons a week, and they depend on weekly small-group lessons to catch up absent or struggling students. But if kids miss those opportunities, the challenges multiply.

“They’re missing out on so much and then, most of the ones that are absent all the time … there’s no motivation at home,” Peterson said. “So they come to school, and they’re not motivated to do anything.”

Over 18 absences: ‘You can’t bounce back from that’

Eighteen days. Thirty-six days. Fifty days. Sixty days. Eighty days of missed school. How does a student’s attendance record ever get so bad?

That’s the question that haunted Murphy and her team at Gompers, and motivated them to work on curbing absenteeism long before it becomes chronic.

Third grade teacher DeAnna Weeden, far right, instructs a group of students during an English lesson at Gompers Elementary-Middle School. Teachers depend on weekly small-group lessons to catch up absent or struggling students.

“You want to, for lack of a better word, stop the bleeding,” with students just below chronic absenteeism, Murphy said in January. “We need (families) to know that they’re on their way to being over the 18 absences … you can’t bounce back from that.”

In Jay’Sean’s case, it was four missed days of school by the end of October, too many so early in the school year. Jay’Sean blamed inconsistent school bus service that prompted him to start walking to school.

That was enough to warrant an intervention from the new mentorship program for him and the other students at risk of becoming chronically absent. The school’s mentoring program is an offshoot of a national initiative launched by the U.S. Department of Education.

The program’s premise sounded easy enough to Jay’Sean. “I just had to keep coming to school,” he recalled.

In reality, it took more effort than that from Harris and others on the team to ensure that Jay’Sean stayed on track. But it worked.

“By the beginning of the new year … he was always coming,” Harris told Chalkbeat this summer. If Jay’Sean came in late some days, she’d stop by his classroom to check in.

“He always wants to go to school,” said Shamika Hull, Jay’Sean’s mom. “He’ll go stand outside, and it’ll be raining, and he’s out there waiting for the bus.”

Hull also has an 11-year-old son at Gompers who got the message on attendance.

“The only times they have been absent from school since (the program began) has been either they were having a doctor’s appointment, or I wasn’t able to wash their clothes.”

For those whose absences are already beyond the “chronic” threshold, Murphy said she and her staff “continue to work with the family. We continue to make those calls. We continue to try to remove barriers.”

Those efforts won’t help the school improve its chronic absenteeism rate, Harris said, “but it’s still going to help the kid.”

“I tell them, ‘OK, let’s just take it a week at a time. Just five days. Four more days. Just three more days,’” she said, adding: “It’s going to make a difference for the kids and their scores.”

Attendance incentives are a ‘means to an end’

The conference room at Gompers is testament to the school leaders’ determination to make a dent in absenteeism. On all four walls are dozens of easel paper sheets, with handwriting in bright pink, green and orange marker. Each sheet details strategies Gompers staff have employed to try to make kids come to school every day.

Posters hanging in the conference room at Gompers Elementary-Middle School highlight some of the school’s strategies to combat student absenteeism.

Field trips to the local movie theater and bowling alley. Gas and grocery store gift cards for parents. Arts and crafts activities in the gymnasium. A mobile video game truck. “Gator Bucks,” named after the school’s mascot, for students who complete classroom assignments and exhibit positive behavior.

“These are the kinds of things that we’re discussing, constantly thinking and trying to be innovative about,” Murphy said. “How can we entice kids and make sure that families are consistently bringing their children to school?”

“It’s a means to an end … initially to draw them in and then to get them into the habit” of going to school, said Harris, the attendance agent.

A line of plastic trophies sit on a shelf behind Harris’ desk. Every two weeks, the awards go to the classrooms that have the most students with perfect attendance.

Gompers deploys some of these incentive programs when students are more likely to be absent, such as before and after holiday breaks or crucial days such as Count Day or state testing periods.

But while incentives are a significant part of Murphy’s vision to encourage student attendance, relationship building remains the core tenet of the school’s efforts.

“Children need to know that you care for them, that they’re in a safe space, that they have a trusted adult that they can communicate with and someone that is building a relationship with them, because that’s going to open the pathway for learning,” she said.

When absences go unexplained

For all their efforts — and progress — the sense of crisis is never far away.

On a Friday morning in early February, a handful of master teachers and administrators gathered in that same conference room for a weekly meeting to discuss academic performance, attendance, and behavior.

It had been close to a month since students and staff returned from winter break. And yet, teachers were still reporting near-empty classrooms.

“It’s that two-week break, where a lot of our students are moving,” said Shannon Harper, a fourth grade master teacher. “They may have been (evicted from) their homes. They may be living now with a relative, and there’s some friction there. And cars break down in the winter, especially here with all the potholes.”

“I just had a student that was out for 10 days,” Harper told the group. “We don’t know why, and he doesn’t either.”

Despite a barrage of robocalls going home when a child is absent, many parents don’t send their children back to the building immediately. And even when students do return, some may not have notes or reasons explaining why they missed school.

“If you never say this is your issue, we can’t help you,” said Adrian Harrell, Gompers’ parent outreach coordinator. “We can’t see what our next solution is to help you. All we know now is they are absent.”

Gompers Elementary-Middle School in the Brightmoor neighborhood is one of the Detroit district’s newer buildings. But Brightmoor is one of the most economically challenged areas in the city.

After a year of effort, Detroit students and leaders reap the rewards

On the last day of school, the grin on Jay’Sean’s face was hard to conceal, even behind the black hoodie that shrouded his head.

He was one of nine students who won a new bike in an end-of year-raffle to reward students who showed up every day over the last weeks of school.

As he took a seat on his red and black Mongoose bicycle, Jay’Sean welcomed the compliments and cheers from his friends.

The whole school had something to cheer about, too. By the end of the year, the chronic absenteeism rate declined to 64% — just shy of the 20-point decline school officials were aiming for, but down significantly.

The district experienced a similar decline, from the peak of 77% in 2021-22 to 68% last year. District officials attribute some of that to the end of quarantining requirements that forced many students to miss school.

Encouraged by the progress last year, Gompers school staff plan to continue their strategies in the new school year that began this week.

The mentoring program will remain in place, along with the range of incentives the school experimented with. But most significant for Gompers will be the addition of a second attendance agent to work alongside Harris.

Superintendent Vitti announced earlier this year that the district would shuffle its 80 attendance agents to schools in areas with the highest concentration of chronically absent students and poverty.

The added resources provide validation that attendance agents with a coordinated, hands-on approach can make a difference.

Harris said she is proud of seeing her mentees like Jay’Sean avoid chronic absenteeism. He finished the year with 13 absences, five days below the threshold.

Under Harris’ guidance, he found an accountability system that worked for him. By the end of the winter break, for all the attempts he made to get to school on time and every day, he and other students earned snacks and mini-parties every month.

With a challenging sixth grade year behind him, Jay’Sean is ready to get back to school.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Tracie Mauriello covered state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. Reach the team at detroit.tips@chalkbeat.org.