Equity v. Equality

Equity v. Equality

By: Naomi Shelton, Director of K-12 Advocacy at UNCF (United Negro College Fund)

Equity has been a huge buzzword in the field of education this year. Education advocates and politicians alike have called for an increase in educational equity, but what does the term really mean? Equity is not Equality. Equity creates equality by prioritizing resources to students who need them the most.

For example, think of a typical track meet. There are five runners – each in their own lane. Each runner must run one lap around the track. The first runner to complete the lap, wins the race. Now let’s use this analogy to inform our understanding of equity.

Equality would mean that every runner would start the race at the exact same spot in their lane. However, the track is oval-shaped. If each runner began at the same spot, each runner’s distance to the finish line would be different. The runner in the innermost lane would run a shorter distance than the runner in the outermost lane. Sure, they would both start in the same spot (EQUAL), but the runners in the innermost lanes would have an advantage – in distance – than their counterparts in the outermost lanes.

This is precisely why track meets do not operate this way. Since the track is oval-shaped, each runner begins the race in their own lane, at different, equal distance, spots along the track; ensuring that each runner, runs the exact same distance needed to complete the race.

Now, think of our current public education system in this same context. Students – regardless of race, geography, household makeup – start on the same marker on the track. Some students, like the runner in the outermost lane, have to run harder and faster to get to the finish line. The barrier here is distance. In the real world, barriers include low-income, resource deprived neighborhoods, disabilities that require additional expertise, culturally negligent curriculum, outdated technology, inexperienced teachers or access to critical supportive services.

Meanwhile, the runner in the innermost lane has it a lot easier. They don’t have to run as fast or as hard to get to the finish line because of their initial position in the race. The barriers here are fewer in number. In terms of education, these innermost runners attend schools in affluent neighborhoods with a surplus of resources. These students have the advantage of local tax-based funding formulas, parent lead fundraising efforts and/or private funding, and state-of-the-art technology.

What we need is education reform that promotes fairness. Fairness equals equity. As Debby Irving in her book Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race states, “Equality means giving all students the exact same thing to meet the same expectations. Equity means holding people of differing needs to a single expectation and giving them what they need to achieve it.” In other words, the playing fields need to be leveled. It’s critical that our public educational system undertakes reform – changes so that each student is given what they need to succeed.

Our education system should support students by allocating the most resources to students who are most in need, just as track athletes arrange themselves for fairer competition. The national education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) targets dollars to the highest poverty schools and districts.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools could lose funding if they failed to meet statewide standards. But under ESSA, states cannot reduce funding by more than ten percent from year to year despite school performance. ESSA also attempts to ensure that low-income students are not disproportionally taught by ineffective, inexperienced, and/or out-of-field teachers.

ESSA requires that state and district report cards include the percentage of inexperienced teachers, principals, and other school leaders as well as teachers with emergency credentials, and teachers teaching subjects out of their range of expertise. ESSA also seeks to relieve some teacher angst surrounding evaluation systems by ending the requirement for state teacher evaluation systems to focus significantly on student test scores.

ESSA gives power back to the states to control education policy. Now, members of the community must hold their school leaders and elected officials accountable to implement system-wide and school-specific measures that ensure equity in our schools.

Furthermore, UNCF’s 2017 community resource, Lift Every Voice and Lead Toolkit: A Community Leader’s Advocacy Resource for K-12 Education, offers step-by-step analysis of African American Education and highlights organizations that have effectively engaged in education efforts at a local level to support efforts in improving the quality of education for all students.

Naomi Shelton has experience in education related community engagement both at the national and local levels and public administration. Currently, she is the Director of K-12 Advocacy at UNCF (United Negro College Fund), the nation’s largest and most effective minority education organization. There, she focuses on national education initiatives and community engagement efforts to ensure more African-American students are college and career ready. Naomi is currently a member of the DC Public Charter School Board, appointed by Washington, D.C. Mayor, Muriel Bowser. Her passion is educational equity. Follow Naomi on Twitter at @NaomiSheltonDC

DeVos Defends Civil Rights Record

DeVos Defends Civil Rights Record

Education Week logoHouse Democrats and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos sparred over civil rights, the Every Student Succeeds Act, and teachers’ salaries at a hearing Tuesday, but lawmakers from both parties largely avoided controversial questions about school safety in the aftermath of a Texas high school shooting last week that left 10 students and staff dead.

Appearing before the House education committee, DeVos emphasized that the federal school safety commission she leads is working quickly, and that its ultimate goal is to ensure that schools “have the tools to be able to make the right decisions to protect their own buildings and their own communities.”

She said the commission was developing a timeline for its work, but also said that she planned to have the commission report its findings by year’s end. 

“We are looking forward to [hearing from] every interest group, every constituency, particularly teachers, parents, and law enforcement and school leadership,” DeVos told lawmakers, later adding that, “We seek to look at models across the country.”

The commission has only met once since it was created in March after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Fla., although the secretary met last week with school safety researchers, as well as parents of children killed in school shootings. Its other members are Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. DeVos previously has said that schools should be able to decide if they want to provide staff with firearms to improve safety, but did not share detailed personal opinions on school safety in general with the committee…

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Source: Education Week Politics K-12. May require Education Week subscription.

What Literacy Skills Do Students Really Need for Work?

What Literacy Skills Do Students Really Need for Work?

Education Week logoSchools are under growing pressure to make sure that students are ready for work or job training, as well as college, when they graduate from high school. But employers say their young hires haven’t learned the reading, writing, and verbal-communication skills that are most important to a successful working life.

That gap between reality and expectations begs a boxful of questions about whether there’s a preparation problem and, if so, how to solve it.

Should K-12 schools add workplace-oriented literacy skills to their already-heavy lineup of classics like the five-paragraph essay? Who should teach young people how to write an environmental-impact report or explain quarterly business results to investors: High schools? Colleges? Or are such skills better learned at work or in job-training programs?

Surveys of employers paint a picture of discontent. Executives and hiring managers report that they have trouble finding candidates who communicate well. Good oral-communication skills, in particular, rank especially high on employers’ wish lists, alongside critical thinking and working in teams.

But do companies’ hiring struggles mean that K-12 schools, colleges, and job-training programs are doing a poor job of preparing students for work?

Some labor economists argue that the much-ballyhooed “skills gap” is caused not by inadequate career preparation but by companies’ refusal to provide the pay and training necessary to get the workers they need. And many educators argue that the primary purpose of schooling isn’t to create a jobs pipeline but to prepare young people to be informed, active citizens.

Education Week‘s new special report on literacy and the workplace won’t be able to resolve these arguments for you. But it can give you a glimpse of how some schools and employers are grappling with the workplace-literacy demands that young people face. Relatively few K-12 schools, it seems, are seriously exploring this kind of work…

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What’s in Store for States on Federal ESSA Oversight

What’s in Store for States on Federal ESSA Oversight

Education Week logoWith the 2018-19 school year in full swing, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has finished approving nearly every state’s plan to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act. But in some ways, the federal government’s work on ESSA is just beginning.

The federal K-12 law’s hallmark may be state and local control, yet the Education Department still has the responsibility to oversee the more than $21 billion in federal funding pumped out to states and districts under ESSA. That will often take the form of monitoring—in which federal officials take a deep look at state and local implementation of the law.

And the department has other oversight powers, including issuing guidance on the law’s implementation, writing reports on ESSA, and deciding when and how states can revise their plans.

Even though ESSA includes a host of prohibitions on the education secretary’s role, DeVos and her team have broad leeway to decide what those processes should look like, said Reg Leichty, a co-founder of Foresight Law + Policy, a law firm in Washington.

Given the Trump team’s emphasis on local control, “I think they’ll try for a lighter touch” than past administrations, Leichty said. But there are still requirements in the law the department must fill, he added.

“States and districts shouldn’t expect the system to be fundamentally different [from under previous versions of the law.] They are still going to have to file a lot of data,” Leitchy said.

But advocates for traditionally overlooked groups of students aren’t holding their breath for a robust monitoring process, in part because they think the department has already approved state plans that skirt ESSA’s requirements…

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Trump Ed. Dept. Gives ESSA Feedback to Five More States

Trump Ed. Dept. Gives ESSA Feedback to Five More States

Connecticut, Louisiana, New Jersey, Oregon, and Tennessee got preliminary feedback Friday from the U.S. Department of Education on their plans to implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, which must be approved by Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

The department’s initial ESSA feedback letters €”to Delaware, Nevada, and New Mexico€ sparked wonky outrage, including from state advocates who felt the department had overstepped its bounds. Some of the department’s comments, especially on academic goals and measuring college and career readiness, €”seemed like a sharp departure from DeVos’ rhetoric, which put a big emphasis on local control and rolling back the federal footprint on K-12.

So will this round of feedback give fans of local control another case of heartburn? From our quick review, that seems less likely. (But we’ve reached out to some state advocates for their take.) Noteably, though, the department isn’t questioning whether any state has set “ambitious” goals, as it did with Delaware’s plan. And it doesn’t seem to have a problem with the way Louisiana and Tennessee have relied on Advanced Placement and dual enrollment to determine school ratings, even though that too, was an issue for Delaware. Scroll down for more detail…

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How ESSA Helps Advance Social and Emotional Learning

How ESSA Helps Advance Social and Emotional Learning

As the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) affords states the flexibility to decide how to measure student achievement, two reports released June 23 show that schools play a key role in developing students’ soft skills such as beliefs about their intellectual capacity, sense of belonging at school, and eagerness to learn in the face of adversity.

“This law calls for a well-rounded education and a shifting away from the narrow focus on academics,” said Ulrich Boser, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), which hosted a panel discussion at its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to coincide with the release of the reports.

“It’s the human side of education,” said Boser, author of CAP’s “Learning Mindsets and Skills: An Opportunity for Growth with ESSA.” At the event, titled: “With the Head and the Heart: Harnessing the Power of Social and Emotional Learning Under ESSA,” Boser and three other panelists also discussed findings from, “Student Social and Emotional Development and Accountability: Perspective of Teachers.”

“Both reports are indicating that teachers see the importance of these skills,” said event moderator Katherine Bassett, president and CEO of National Network of State Teachers of Year (NNSTOY), which published the second report.

In recent years, there has been a steady growth in policies and practices that emphasize learning mindsets, which can be defined as “student beliefs.” In one case, students improved academically after participating in a program which encouraged them to reflect on ways in which daily classroom activities connected to lifelong goals.

According to both reports, ESSA provides state and district leaders new opportunities to cultivate positive student attitudes, values, and habits.

Teachers the Strongest Influence

“Social and emotional learning makes a difference for students in terms of their academic well-being in many respects,” said panelist Elizabeth Glennie, a research analyst at RTI International and NNSTOY report co-author along with Bassett and three others. “Teachers are probably the strongest influence in a school on a student’s social and emotional learning.”

According to the NNSTOY report, inter- and intra-personal (or, “social and emotional”) competencies include attitudes and behaviors that affect how students reflect on and apply their learning capacities and skills relative to managing relationships with others. These skills are sometimes referred to as 21st century skills, deeper learning, non-academic, non-cognitive, or soft skills.

While ESSA does not mention “learning mindsets and skills,” the law did replace references to “core academic subjects,” instead calling for a “well-rounded education” for all students.

“The emphasis for so long has been placed on academic performance and academic content mastery,” said panelist Rebecca Snyder, a co-author of the NNSTOY report and member of Greater Latrobe Education Association in Pennsylvania where she was teacher of the year in 2009. “I’m really encouraged by the shifts (in teaching) where we are taking more of a whole child orientation (while) focusing on social and emotional learning.”

In its report, NNSTOY employed three focus groups comprised of 28 former teachers of the year from across the country. Participants discussed, among other items, the importance of identifying and harnessing the following three student skills or competencies: grit, growth mindset, and a sense of belonging.

Nurturing Environment

“Research shows that a sense of belonging can increase academic performance, in fact, a whole range of academic measures,” Synder said. “Sometimes, that’s the reason they even walk into the building … because they know this (school) is a great place to be.”

Given a high degree of interest among educators to implement social and emotional learning, panelists agreed that there is a need for more professional development on how to integrate social and emotional learning into daily classroom lessons.

“Teachers are clamoring for this type of professional development,” Boser added. “We have a policy opportunity under (ESSA) that allows us to spend monies in new ways, create new partnerships, and to develop this work.”

According to the CAP report, ESSA gives state and district leaders a unique chance to advance learning mindsets and skills through reform efforts. A growing body of research shows that learning mindsets “significantly depend on the conditions within a student’s learning environment and the messages students receive about their learning ability. When educators nurture positive learning mindsets among their students, students are far better able to view new challenges as a natural part of the learning process.”

“This (ESSA implementation) is an opportunity for our students to receive a high quality education,” said panelist Amalio Nieves, an assistant superintendent for Boston Public Schools in Massachusetts.

Nieves alluded to the importance of acknowledging students who live under adverse conditions from low-income neighborhoods with limited community resources.

“Youth in urban settings bring assets to the table, like a level of resiliency,” he said. “How do we help our teachers capitalize on this mindset?”

Learn more about how to get involved at getessaright.org.

NATIONAL: Betsy DeVos defends school spending plan that cuts $9 billion

NATIONAL: Betsy DeVos defends school spending plan that cuts $9 billion

By The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Education Secretary Betsy DeVos refused to say Wednesday whether she would block private schools that discriminate against LGBT students from receiving federal dollars, explaining that she believes states should have the flexibility to design voucher programs and that parents should be able to choose schools that best fit their children’s needs.

DeVos returned frequently to the theme of what she called a need for more local control in her first appearance before Congress since her rocky confirmation hearing in January.

Fielding questions from members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, she said that states should decide how to address chronic absenteeism, mental health issues and suicide risks among students and that states should also decide whether children taking vouchers are protected by federal special-education law.

Researchers have found that many states allow religious schools that receive taxpayer-funded vouchers to deny admission to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students or children with LGBT parents.

Asked by Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., whether she could think of any circumstance in which the federal government should step in to stop federal dollars from going to private schools that discriminate against certain groups of students, DeVos did not directly answer.

“We have to do something different than continuing a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach,” DeVos said.

Democrats immediately criticized DeVos’ philosophy, saying the nation’s top education official must be willing to defend children against discrimination by institutions that get federal money. “To take the federal government’s responsibility out of that is just appalling and sad,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif.

DeVos pushed back against the notion that the Education Department would be abdicating its authority. “I am not in any way suggesting that students should not be protected,” she said.

DeVos traveled to Capitol Hill to defend a spending plan that has drawn criticism from both ends of the political spectrum.

President Donald Trump has proposed slashing $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, including after-school programs, teacher training, and career and technical education, and reinvesting $1.4 billion of the savings into promoting his top education priority: school choice, including $250 million for vouchers to help students attend private and religious schools.

The administration is also seeking far-reaching changes to student aid programs, including the elimination of subsidized loans and public service loan forgiveness and a halving of the federal work-study program that helps college students earn money to support themselves while in school.

In her opening remarks Wednesday, DeVos said that while the size of the proposed cuts to K-12 and student financial programs “may sound alarming for some,” the president’s budget proposal reflects a push to return more decision-making power to states and more educational choice to parents.

“We cannot allow any parent to feel as if their child is trapped in a school that is not meeting their needs,” DeVos said.

Democrats predictably attacked the administration’s budget proposal as an effort to undermine public schools and low-income students’ ability to attend college.

“This budget reflects the views of an administration filled with people who frankly never had to worry about how they were going to pay for their children going to college,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, N.Y., the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. “And yet I’m most upset that this budget would undermine our public education system and the working families who depend on them.”

Several Republicans praised DeVos, particularly for her push to expand school choice.

“I’ve always made known my preference for giving parents the choice of where to send their students, because in the end the parents are the taxpayers. The parents are the ones who probably know best,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md.

But GOP members also displayed their share of skepticism about the administration’s proposed cuts.

Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., chairman of the education subcommittee, questioned the proposal to dramatically cut college financial aid programs such as work-study and college-access programs for low-income students. “Frankly, I will advise you,” Cole said, “I have a different point of view.”

Another key Republican, Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, N.J., chairman of the Appropriations Committee, emphasized that it is members of Congress and not the president who hold the power of the purse and will ultimately design the federal budget.

Declaring “awe” for special-education teachers’ hard work, Frelinghuysen also questioned whether the administration had proposed adequate funding for students with disabilities. DeVos seemed open to devoting more money, calling it a “matter for robust conversation.”

A 1975 federal special-education law promised that Congress would pay 40 percent of the cost of providing additional services to students with disabilities. Lawmakers have never come close and in 2017 are footing only about 15 percent of the cost. The Trump administration is proposing to hold funding at that level.

Critics said they are hopeful that Congress will reject many of Trump’s ideas, as lawmakers did this month when they reached a bipartisan deal to fund the government through September.

But even in that scenario, Trump’s proposal creates damaging uncertainty for school districts and students seeking to pay for college, said John King, who served as President Barack Obama’s education secretary and now helms the nonprofit group Education Trust.

“The administration has framed the conversation as a conversation about cuts rather than a conversation about investment,” King said. “We should be talking about investing more.”

While the administration’s proposed cuts have been embraced by fiscal conservatives who argue that Education Department programs need to be trimmed or eliminated, some conservatives are also troubled by the administration’s proposal to invest new money in school choice, saying that represents an unwelcome expansion of the federal footprint in education.

“As much as I want to see every single child in America have school choice, it is just not appropriate for the federal government to be using new dollars and new programs to push states in that direction,” said Lindsey Burke, an education policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “You need local buy-in for these school-choice options to really be supported and viable in the long run.”

Trump and DeVos are seeking to increase the federal investment in charter schools by 50 percent, bringing the total appropriation to $500 million per year. They also want to establish a new $250 million fund to expand and study private-school vouchers, and they want to dole out $1 billion in grants to school districts to adopt policies that allow tax dollars to follow students to the public school of their choice.

In a speech Monday night, DeVos called the push for school choice “right” and “just” and an opportunity to “drag American education out of the Stone Age and into the future.” She referred to her critics as “flat-earthers” and said that while the federal government would never force states to adopt choice-friendly policies, those who opt out are making a “terrible mistake.”

By Emma Brown, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel
Copyright 2017, The Washington Post 

NATIONAL: A Growing Recruitment Strategy for a Diverse Teacher Workforce

NATIONAL: A Growing Recruitment Strategy for a Diverse Teacher Workforce

grow your own teachersIn the last three years, Alejandra Guerrero Morales has been making her way through the education profession with the Salem-Keizer School District in Oregon. Two years ago, she started as a bilingual instructional assistant. Today, she’s a special education instructional assistant. By September, 2017, she’ll be a special education teacher. Born in the U.S. to Mexican parents, Guerrero brings her skillset and commitment to the table. She also brings her culture—a resource that centers on the need for more teacher diversity.

Guerrero was one of the many panelists who were brought to Washington, D.C. on May 17 for a two-day conference called, “Grow Your Own: Teacher Diversity and Social Justice Summit,” hosted by the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, and the AFL-CIO. The summit focused on a growing recruitment strategy called “Grow Your Own” This approach addresses the national need to recruit, develop, and retain diverse and culturally responsive, community-based educators of color to help advance the achievement of all students—particularly students of color.

Research supports that students of color who are taught by a teacher of the same race or ethnicity perform better in school. In March, the IZA Institute of Labor Economics released a study called, “The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers.” One of the findings underscored that “assigning a [B]lack male to a [B]lack teacher in the third, fourth, or fifth grades significantly reduces the probability that he drops out of high school, particularly among the most economically disadvantaged black males.”

John Hopkin University’s Nicholas Papageorge, one of the co-authors of the study, said, “Black students matched to [B]lack teachers have been shown to have higher test scores but we wanted to know if these student-teacher racial matches had longer-lasting benefits. We found the answer is a resounding yes.”

Despite evidence that shows the need for diversity within the education workforce, gains have been slow.

In her remarks to summit participants, NEA President Lily Eskelsen García shared that when she entered the profession, she had all the right support systems: support from other teachers, encouragement from her family, and federal grants to help her get through college.

“Today, that is happening against all odds, especially in communities of color and in communities of poverty,” she said. “How do we find ways to get people to college and not be crushed by student debt … How do we help those who should be [in classrooms] working with students who look like them, sound like them, and will connect with them?”

The answers may rest within grow-your-own programs.

What Is Grow Your Own?

In short, these programs recruit local community members and help them become teachers, creating a workforce that’s reflective of the full diversity of the student population.

No one program is alike. Some programs have an intense focus on undergraduate students while others reach out to students in middle school and high school. Colorado-based Pathways2Teaching, for example, works with high school juniors and seniors. Throughout the school year, students explore related careers through a social justice and equity lens.

“It’s a sad reality to think that a child can go from K-12, get a bachelor’s degree, get a masters, and complete a Ph.D., and never have one teacher of color throughout his or her trajectory,” says Margarita Bianca, an associate professor in the School of Education and Human Development at the University of Colorado Denver—and founder and executive director of Pathways2Teaching.

Alejandra Guerrero Morales

“What message does that send to students of color,” she asks, adding that “you can’t be who you don’t see.” A point that is critically important considering the growing shift in demographics.

Approximately 42 percent of PK-12 public school students today are students of color, and this number is expected to rise through 2024.

For Oregon’s Guerrero, she wants to be seen as someone who can represent the growing Latino population in the Salem-Keizer school district. This was one of the reasons that propelled her to apply for a grow-your-program through Pacific University’s Master of Arts in Teaching Flex Program. The program is a 17-month experience composed of university coursework and school field experience. The program is flexible and accommodates part-time students with courses that meet late afternoon, early evening, and on weekend. Upon completion of the program, Guerrero will qualify for a Master of Arts in Teaching degree and an Oregon Initial Teaching License.

“Many of our teachers in the Salem-Keizer district are not bilingual, and with a population of students who are Latino, they need a voice, “says Guerrero, who grew up in the Salem-Keizer area and is the first generation in her family to graduate from a four-year university. “We need more people who speak Spanish and who know what it’s like to live and grow up in the area.”

The Summit

During the summit, participants discussed some of the framework for growing your own teachers. One key takeaway emphasized that this work needs to be done with different organizations.

Brian A. Turner, a special education teacher, high school baseball coach, and athletic director from the Salem-Keizer district, urged participants to work with local unions to help change school policy. “Our local union established a pathway for paraeducators to get into the teacher workforce,” he explained. “The change allowed them to work in the schools that they’re currently in—that’s a policy change.”

Other programs have been developed with the help of higher education institutions, which have offered free or reduced college tuition for students entering education programs.

State legislators have passed laws that promote respect for different cultures, too.

“You often don’t feel included if your mascot is racist,” says Matt de Ferranti, legislative director for the National Indian Education Association. He explained that states like Washington and Montana have passed legislation that incorporates native American history, culture, language, and government into the curriculum.

This curriculum change opens the doors for elders in native communities to become teachers. “Elders can be phenomenal teachers, and we have to get them to the classrooms,” said de Ferranti. “They know the history, culture, and language—and those are the pieces that are often missing.”

Cultural sensitivity and cultural diversity are essential components of a qualified teacher workforce that positively impacts student learning. These components need to be inclusive and mindful of students and their communities, too.

“There are a number of programs to diversify the workforce, but it’s done the wrong way,” says Colorado’s Margarita Bianco. “Bringing teachers from Puerto Rico to teach Mexican kids, just because they have brown skin, doesn’t mean they understand the kids and the community. Insider knowledge is what we have to promote.”

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NATIONAL: Trump’s First 100 Days: How Does He Stack Up to Obama, Bush on K-12?

NATIONAL: Trump’s First 100 Days: How Does He Stack Up to Obama, Bush on K-12?

Have you been waiting for President Donald Trump to work with the Republican-controlled Congress and get rolling on a big K-12 education initiative? If so, you might be getting a little bit antsy. But is that unusual during the first 100 days or so of a presidential administration?

Here’s a quick sketch of some of the bigger things the Trump administration has gotten done so far on public school policy after nearly 100 days in office:

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