Demographics are not destiny in student achievement, according to an expert who spoke at NSBA’s pre-conference session on Friday called “Disrupting Poverty: Turning High-Poverty Schools into High-Performing Schools.”
William Parrett, director of the Center for School Improvement and Policy Studies at Boise State University, studies schools that have shown strong – sometimes phenomenal – results despite having high percentages of students receiving free or reduced-price meals. He enumerated a set of strategies that he said will work in any school. The most fundamental is for adults to have the expectation that all students can succeed regardless of their home environment and family wealth.
Wait a minute, you may be saying. Poverty is correlated with poor nutrition, family dysfunction and high levels of stress. Schools can only have a limited effect on students who live in poverty, right? That’s what sociologist James Coleman said in a famous government report – in 1966. It contributed to what George W. Bush derided as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
Today, the emerging point of view was articulated by schools advocate Kati Haycock in 2010: “Some say we can’t fix education until we fix poverty. It’s actually the exact opposite; we can’t fix poverty until we fix education.”
How? Parrett said school leaders should:
Ask questions. Are we leveling the playing field for students who live in poverty? One key is extra help, including extended school day or year, small-group or individual tutoring, as well as self-paced interventions using technology.
Rely on data. Use measures of student achievement that everyone in the school, including students, understands and refers to frequently. Grades and homework assignments ought to incorporate the concept of equity. We need to meet students where they are, and then we can see the most progress.
Build relationships – especially with parents. School staff need a “whatever it takes” attitude, Parrett said. For instance, they are undeterred if parents are unresponsive to outreach attempts. They keep trying with techniques such as home visits. They attract parents to school events by offering food and childcare, and they offer programs parents want such as classes on parenting, English as a Second Language and GED.
And research shows that it’s absolutely essential to get children reading at grade level by third grade.
“We need to focus on the needs of children, not the wants of adults,” Parrett said.
Pennsylvania Education Secretary Pedro Rivera, who nearly a month ago rejected the Erie SD’s $31.8 million financial recovery plan, is holding out hope that the district’s new plan will gain his support. But he said a lot must happen first.
CHICAGO – In response to Governor Bruce Rauner’s misleading press conference this morning, Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT) President Dan Montgomery, a high school English teacher, released the following statement:
“Governor Rauner is basing his promise to Chicago school children and taxpayers on alternative facts. The pension bill Rauner demands as a condition for funding education reflects legislation that has already been ruled unconstitutional by our Supreme Court several times. This new bill, which also steals from public workers’ life savings, is likely to face the same fate, and therefore, its savings amount to nothing. For Rauner to say this is ‘good policy’ suggests he doesn’t understand the law or doesn’t care.
In the meantime, we will fall deeper into debt and students of Chicago will be deprived of the future they deserve. It’s time for the Governor to drop …
The program, which helps cover the cost of after-school, summer learning, and extended day programs, provides nearly half the funding for SHINE, or “Schools and Homes In Education,” an after-school program that operates in Barletta’s district, which includes Hazelton, Pa.
Barletta, who worked behind the scenes to make sure the program was authorized under the Every Student Succeeds Act, is not happy about the proposed cut. In fact, he teamed up with Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., on a letter to Mick Mulvaney, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, asking him to restore the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.
Later Thursday, Mulvaney was asked about the program during a briefing with White House reporters. He said he wasn’t familiar with SHINE (or it would seem, 21st Century Community Learning Centers). But he said that after-school programs in general don’t have a great track record.
“They’re supposed to be educational programs, right? That’s what they’re supposed to do. They’re supposed to help kids who don’t get fed at home get fed so they do better in school,” Mulvaney said. “Guess what? There’s no demonstrable evidence they’re actually doing that. There’s no demonstrable evidence of actually helping results, helping kids do better in school. … The way we justified it was [are] these programs going to help these kids do better in school and get better jobs. And we can’t prove that that’s happening.”
But Henderson Lewis, the superintendent of the New Orleans School System sees things differently. His district is nearly all charter schools, so he was happy to see an emphasis on public school choice in the budget. But he worries that the decision to cut the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program could hurt many of his students who are benefitting from increased learning time.
“Being able to even extend the school day allowed our students to be in a safe place and be engaged,” Lewis said in an interview, and to try new things, even Zumba classes.
Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., talks with reporters after a meeting in November with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York.
President Donald Trump’s first budget seeks to slash the Education Department’s roughly $68 billion budget by $9 billion, or 13 percent in the coming fiscal year, whacking popular programs that help districts offer after-school programs, and hire and train teachers.
At the same time, it seeks a historic $1.4 billion federal investment in school choice, including new money for private school vouchers and charter schools, as well as directing $1 billion to follow students to the school of their choice.
But the proposal would completely scraptwo big programs Supporting Effective Instruction State Grants, or Title II, which is currently funded at $2.25 billion and helps states and districts hire and provide professional development for teachers. The budget proposal would also get rid of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program, which is funded at more than $1 billion currently and finances after-school and extended-learning programs. Trump’s budget says both programs are spread too thin to be effective.
The federal spending plan still need to go through Congress for approval, and cuts of this magnitude will almost certainly be a tough political lift. And it could be months before lawmakers decide which of these cuts to accept or reject. The proposal would set spending levels for federal fiscal year 2018, which begins Oct. 1 and generally impacts the 2018-19 school year.
Associations representing local superintendents, teachers, state lawmakers and others have sent a clear message to chief state school officers: Work with us on the Every Student Succeeds Act.
On Tuesday, 11 groups sent a letter to the Council of Chief State School Officers expressing their disappointment that the U.S. Department of Education removed a requirement that states detail their work with stakeholder groups in their consolidated plans for ESSA. Nonetheless, they say the group has an obligation to make sure each chief “demonstrates clearly and explicitly in each state plan how stakeholders were involved in its development, and how they…
WASHINGTON – Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a devout advocate for school choice, will likely get an earful when she meets with state education officials Monday to discuss investing in the nation’s public schools.
It will be their initial encounter since DeVos’ appointment met with bipartisan resistance, barely winning Senate approval due to her support for charter schools and government vouchers for students to attend private schools.
President Donald Trump’s budget plan, unveiled four days ago, underscored DeVos’ preference, investing an additional $1.4 billion in school choice programs, including $250 million in a new initiative to provide public money for students to attend private schools.
DeVos said the proposal “places power in the hands of parents and families to choose schools that are best for their children” and represents “the first step in investing in education programs that work.”
Overall, the Department of Education budget is cut by 13 percent, or $9 billion, under the president’s blueprint to downsize the federal government and build up the nation’s military force and border security.
Among reductions are $2.25 billion to help states hire and train teachers, $1 billion for after-school programs and cuts in college aid, including “significantly” shrinking work-study programs. But grant programs for disadvantaged students would receive a $1 billion increase.
The head of an association of state schools officials that’s scheduled to meet with DeVos at their Washington conference said he’s “deeply concerned” about the proposed budget cuts and shifting emphasis to school choice.
“We must continue to invest in our public schools and provide adequate funding so every school has the necessary resources to meet the needs of every child,” Chris Minnich, executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said in a statement.
Nicole Reigelman, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education, criticized the Trump education proposal, saying Pennsylvania is still recovering from state funding cutbacks under former Republican Gov. Tom Corbett’s administration.
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration “rejects the notion of shifting funds from already under-resourced public schools to fund vouchers for private education,” said Reigelman.
DeVos and other school choice supporters believe vouchers, charter schools, magnet schools and other creative programs can provide students stuck in distressed public schools with opportunities for a better education and greater chance at success in life.
John Schilling, chief operating officer of the American Federation for Children, a school choice group formerly headed by DeVos, said Trump’s budget proposal “included some promising first steps to empower parents.” But, he added, the president should do even more by offering tuition tax credits for families who choose to send their kids to private or charter schools.
Yet an early supporter of Trump, Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Pa., called the idea of cutting after-school programs “misguided” in a letter to White House budget director Mick Mulvaney.
He said the programs assist “working families who rely more and more on afterschool and summer learning programs to effectively balance maintaining a job and raising children in a safe environment.”
Republican Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Republican Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, chairmen of the Senate and House education appropriation committees, expressed caution about diminishing and eliminating programs helpful to educating the nation’s children.
Blunt acknowledged that generally “there are many concerns with non-defense discretionary cuts” in the Trump budget plan. Cole said Congress should focus on reducing costly entitlement programs to avoid making “painful cuts to good programs.”
For some time, lawmakers have been pondering what should go into a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. Now GOP lawmakers overseeing education issues in Congress appear set to take another crack at updating the law, which was last renewed in 2008.
In a recent story, we looked at some issues lawmakers will be tackling in a refreshed HEA that are likely to have an impact on public schools, and in particular those students who are preparing to make the transition from secondary to postsecondary life. It’s clearly on Sen. Lamar Alexander’s mind—the Senate education committee chairman and Tennessee Republican recently told us that reauthorizing the law will be his committee’s “major focus” over the next year.
Among those issues are what kind of information about colleges and universities prospective students will be able to see. The Obama administration released a new “College Scorecard” with information about debt loads and graduation rates. But it’s based on a limited pool of information, and skeptics question whether the information is particularly useful (or used often) by prospective students…
Making good on a promise to heed public input, Ohio’s top education official announced last week that he would delay submitting a federally-required education plan.
“The submission of the state’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) response should be an event that unites us,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria wrote in an open letter explaining the delay. “In recent weeks, we’ve heard from stakeholders who feel their input was not reflected in the ESSA template.”
The announcement was met with a sigh of relief from those who were critical of the state’s plan. In rare bipartisan fashion, state officials, educators and lawmakers from across the political spectrum agreed that a delay was in the state’s best interest. Part of the reason was the state’s unprecedented outreach for public input. And the public didn’t disappoint.
Going “Above and Beyond” for Stakeholder Outreach
In all, more than 15,000 Ohioans provided feedback on the state’s ESSA implementation plan: about 3,100 people participated in webinars; more than 1,500 people attended meetings with Philanthropy Ohio, a statewide charity network; Ohio Department of Education (ODE) staff participated in more than 70 meetings and presentation; and there were more than 11,000 responses to an online survey.
“The [Ohio education] department went above and beyond what they often do in terms of stakeholder engagement,” said Lisa Gray, project director for the Philanthropy Ohio Education Initiative, which directed ten engagement sessions across the state last year. Philanthropy Ohio also published a white paper on that engagement, which was just one part of the state’s outreach plan.
Washington — In two nearly identical speeches Monday, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told state chiefs and state school board members that she wants to them to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
“It’s time for the [Education] Department to get out of your way and let you do your job,” DeVos told the Council of Chief State School Officers’ annual legislative conference. “Once your state has developed a plan to provide a quality education in an environment that is safe and nurturing for all children, you—together with your…
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Associations representing local superintendents, teachers, state lawmakers and others have sent a clear message to chief state school officers: Work with us on the Every Student Succeeds Act.
