To counter this unproductive narrowing of the curriculum, states should embed civic content into statewide reading assessments. This simple change would incentivize more attention to civic learning while making reading tests more engaging, equitable and accurate.

Just 6% of American middle schoolers can read an excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech and identify two ideas from the Constitution or Declaration of Independence that King might have been referring to. This is a symptom of the atrophy in the civic mission of schools that represents a grave danger to American democracy. Only 30% of Millennials think a democratic government is essential, compared with 70% of Americans born before World War II. Most Millennials say that if Russia invaded the United States, they would not fight to defend our country. These data are a wake-up call that the nation needs to recommit public schools to their foundational purpose: preparing young Americans for citizenship.

Including civic content on every grade’s reading test is low-hanging fruit because it encourages engagement with meaningful issues while signaling to teachers the importance of covering social studies content — all of which improves literacy instruction. While phonics (knowing letter sounds) and decoding (putting together sounds to make words) are essential foundational skills, they are not sufficient for proficient reading. Students also need background knowledge to make sense of what they are seeing on the page. Research shows that when students are given a text about a topic they are familiar with, they perform better on reading tests. Conversely, students perform more poorly when confronted with texts on topics they’ve never learned about, even if they have strong reading skills.  

Louisiana is piloting assessments that put this idea into practice, with promising results. Some texts in the state’s innovative reading test draw directly from books students have read, with additional passages extending into related topics. Designing tests around what students are expected to be taught makes sense and dovetails state expectations for learning, classroom curricula and reading comprehension assessments.

When students are familiar with the topics being tested, they stay more engaged and do better. Early research reveals that achievement gaps are somewhat smaller on Louisiana’s pilot tests, partly because the opportunity gap is being narrowed by creating more equitable opportunities for students to demonstrate their reading skills. Tests that use random texts privilege students who have more world knowledge from outside of school. Louisiana’s innovative test design encourages teachers to focus on the topics the state wants students to learn and more accurately assesses their reading skills.

Embedding civic content in reading tests would make teachers’ jobs easier and support better student learning outcomes. Every state already has adopted civics standards, and almost all state English language arts standards include expectations for reading and writing in science and social studies. But only Louisiana has prioritized content from its standards in innovative reading/language arts assessments. Every state could make similar progress by making small shifts in the direction it gives to its testing contractor. 

Including a focus on civic learning in reading tests is a simple solution that can be implemented by state education commissioners and testing directors without changing any laws or regulations. That said, this shift should be done with key stakeholders through an open and inclusive process. Leading with public engagement and input creates the opportunity to share the rationale and build trust with educators, parents and policy leaders, minimizing the risk that this becomes a polarizing idea. Parents are likely to support the change because they want tests of what’s being taught in class much more than generic standardized tests. 

In 2012, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said, “the only reason we have public school education in America is because in the early days of the country, our leaders thought we had to teach our young generation about citizenship … that obligation never ends. If we don’t take every generation of young people and make sure they understand that they are an essential part of government, we won’t survive.” 

Democracy is being tested in real life. Reading tests can signal the importance of civic learning and lead to more time and attention to this vital content. State education commissioners should make this a first step to reinvigorate public education’s mission as a bulwark of democracy.

The Louisiana Senate approved a proposal Monday that would limit children’s access to library material. The vote took place without any lawmakers voicing opposition to what up until now has been a controversial proposal.

Senate Bill 7, by Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, would require libraries to create a card system so parents could prevent their children from checking out books deemed inappropriate. Libraries would also have to adopt policy language to limit minors’ access to material that describes “sexual conduct,” which the bill defines in five ensuing paragraphs.

Attorney General Jeff Landry, the Louisiana Republican Party-endorsed candidate for governor, supports Cloud’s bill. It’s a response to ongoing fights in parish library systems where conservative activists have sought to restrict children’s access to certain materials — and in some cases remove them from shelves altogether. Most of the titles targeted touch on LGBTQ+ themes.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

The bill advanced on a party-line 27-11 vote, but none of the 11 Democrats against the bill raised concerns with the bill when given the opportunity.

While limited debate in the Senate is not unusual — the House is considered the more contentious chamber — critics are concerned that no senators spoke out against it.

“That’s kind of shocking,” Peyton Rose Michelle, executive director of Louisiana Trans Advocates, said in an interview. Michelle has been at the forefront of the library issue, raising concerns about the unintended consequences for young LGBTQ+ readers.

“For them to not object is really disappointing,” Michelle said. “I was expecting literally any dissent.”

The bill will next be heard in a House Committee.

A similar bill, House Bill 102, sponsored by Rep. Julie Emerson, R-Carenco, also supported by Landry, has not yet been heard in committee. It’s pending approval by the House Municipal Parochial and Cultural Affairs Committee, which last week killed another controversial library bill that would’ve allowed members of parish library boards to be fired without cause.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

A state Senate committee agreed Monday to support a nearly $9 million plan to help Louisiana public schools better prepare for mass shootings.

The idea for the legislation came from a panel of students who told lawmakers current emergency drills don’t account for incidents that happen when they’re not inside a classroom.

Sen. Barry Milligan, R-Shreveport, said he crafted Senate Bill 207 with input from the Youth Legislative Advisory Council, a panel of 31 Louisiana high school students who share policy suggestions with legislators. The council requested improvements to school mass shooting response, including a request for “stop the bleed” kits with tourniquets for every campus.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Three members of the student panel testified before the Senate Finance Committee, which must review all spending requests, to share how they feel current emergency plans are inadequate.

“This country has truly become numb to school shootings, and sadly there are not many options to create long-term solutions to this crisis,” said Clayton Baden, a senior at Buckeye High School in Pineville, adding that Millgan’s bill offered a short-term answer.

Holly Phan, a junior at Baton Rouge Magnet High School, stressed better communication was needed between school administrators and teachers for mass shooting drills. She recounted an incident in which her sister was outside of the classroom and wasn’t aware a drill was being conducted. Her fears worsened when a nearby electrical transformer exploded during the drill.

“All she could do was sit and hide in the dark, exposed gym with her scared classmates, hoping for signs of safety,” Phan said.

Daniel Price, a senior at McKinley High in Baton Rouge, said he now fears the time between classes because mass shooter drills don’t cover what students should do in that situation. He stayed home the day after a gun was rumored to have been brought to campus, he said.

The current version of the state budget for fiscal year 2023, which starts July 1, includes $8.9 million for enhanced school safety measures related to school shootings. The largest portion, $5 million, would pay for security equipment, such as surveillance cameras, safety training and expanded drills. A $1.6 million portion is set aside to provide teachers with “panic buttons” to signal an emergency.

The plan also calls for $1 million to help expand a CrimeStoppers-manned smartphone application that’s already in place for some 500 schools in 40 parishes around the state. Students can use the app anonymously to report safety concerns. Darlene Cusanza, CrimeStoppers president and CEO, said her group has worked with the state since 2020 and has received some 1,200 tips through the Safe Schools Louisiana app.

A third of the tips have been about bullying, 13% involved mental health matters and 5% were regarding planned school shootings, Cusanza said.

“It’s important because students are talking about their friends who are suffering, and that information isn’t being compiled anywhere,” she told the committee.

Tips from students have led to arrests and information regarding crimes off campus, according to Cusanza.

Milligan has also proposed $1.1 million for 11 employees who will comprise the Louisiana Center for Safe Schools, an offshoot of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP). Another $256,000 will fund the salaries of two new State Police employees who will be part of coordinating school mass shooting response with law enforcement.

CrimeStoppers launched its Safe Schools app three years ago under a contract with the State Police, and the Milligan proposal would move the arrangement over to GOHSEP.  Cusanza said another 123 schools will be added to the app over the summer, bringing it to roughly half of Louisiana’s junior and high school campuses.

Senate committee hearings on next year’s state budget are taking place this week. The House version of the spending plan removed $2,000 annual teacher raises Gov. John Bel Edwards had inserted and that Senate leaders have said they will restore.

Members of the Senate Finance Committee gave the impression the money Milligan wants for his bill wouldn’t be at risk to fund the teacher raises.

There have been no mass shootings at Louisiana schools, but the state regularly ranks high in both total mass shootings and mass shootings per capita.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and Twitter.

It’s the time of the year when young men and women turn their tassels, toss their caps into the sky and dream about a bright future.

But one group of graduates from Georgia’s class of 23 stands out from the rest.

“The thing that makes us want to do it, those of us who have taught there, the reason we love it so much is that they’re the best students we’ve had,” said Georgia State University Perimeter College geology professor Polly Bouker. “I’ve worked 23 years in higher education, and this has been my absolute top experience.”

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

On May 5, Perimeter College graduated its first class of students who earned their associate’s degrees while incarcerated, part of Georgia State University’s Prison Education Project. The nine graduates from Walker State Prison in Rock Spring earned their degrees in general studies, taking classes in a variety of subjects. According to the college, three graduated with GPAs above 3.9 and the rest were above 3.7.

Bouker began teaching the students in January 2022. Her class included 12 people, the nine graduates and three others who started later. Their ages range from 35 to 61.

At first, Bouker would send a flash drive with video lectures and homework assignments to the prison, but she said the men impressed her with their dedication and curiosity. She said they would often send questions with their homework that demonstrated they were thinking hard about the material.

“Normally, if you’re teaching about minerals to students, they’re just thinking about ‘what do I need to know to pass the test’ and not ‘how does it relate to something bigger?’” she said. “They definitely were thinking about the bigger picture, why things work the way they do and not just taking for granted what I told them.”

She said she was so impressed that despite a three-hour commute each way, Bouker has been driving to the north Georgia prison nearly every week to hold classes in person. She’s worked with prison administration to be able to bring in rocks, minerals and fossils as well as microscopes to aid in the students’ lessons. Last fall, she began working as the program’s site coordinator as well.

The Georgia Department of Corrections describes Walker State Prison as a facility that provides a pro-social, programmatic environment for change to those offenders who voluntarily request to participate in the program.

Without access to the internet, the students peppered Bouker with questions about all sorts of science and technology subjects. One student interested in particle physics wanted to know all about the CERN Large Hadron Collider, while others were fascinated with Ghat GPT, the advanced AI chatbot.

The students also ask questions about their prospects once they get out.

“They’d make comments on some of that homework they were sending to me before I met them face-to-face, things like ‘I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I really find this fascinating. Do you think someone like me could ever work as a geologist if I majored in geology when I get out of prison?’ And what he meant by someone like me is, is there any chance I could get a job with my history?”

“And of course I don’t know the answer to that, but I said, ‘I don’t think geology is going to be any harder than anything else. There are going to be biases, but you should do what you think you want to do.’”

Hurdles

Research links educational attainment with a lower recidivism rate, but previously incarcerated people face hurdles in enrolling into college, said GSU Prison Education Program Director Patrick Rodriguez.

“If our students are able to obtain an education while on the inside, then when they come home, they will be better equipped to face the challenges they will ultimately face on release,” he said. “Our policies in Georgia lay out clear challenges for housing, education and some government benefits. These issues are pressing considering the high rates of incarceration in Georgia. I am excited to continue working towards a Georgia that supports formerly incarcerated people, and I do believe that we can get there.”

Rodriguez is also the co-executive director of the Georgia Coalition for Higher Education in Prison, whose advocacy includes the Beyond the Box initiative, a push for better education access for formerly incarcerated people.

Among all the other questions on a college application is one asking about the student’s criminal background. If they tick the box indicating they have been convicted of a felony, they are subject to further questioning.

Rodriguez, who served about five years on drug-related charges before graduating from Kennesaw State University, said his application process was lengthy and difficult to navigate and involved reliving experiences from his past and collecting a large number of documents.

“All of this was to convince Kennesaw State University that I was able to continue an education,” he said. “I feel as if my academic history and who I am as a person did not count for anything. There was a spotlight on a crime that I committed years ago, and all I wanted to do was to complete my degree so I could be a productive citizen of Georgia and realize a goal I had set for myself years before.”

Many other potential students stop in their tracks as soon as they get to that question and never complete their applications, said Lawrenceville Democratic state Rep. Gregg Kennard, author of a bill seeking to remove that question from applications in Georgia.

“We know that just that question is deterring a lot of folks from attending higher education, so we want to remove that barrier, the stigma, and get as many of our high schoolers into seeking a four-year degree as possible,” he said. “If you look at our prison population statistics, only 1% of the population reflects four-year degree holders. So you get one of our young people into a college with a four-year degree, it almost eliminates them from ever being under correctional control.”

Kennard’s bill, which will still be active in next year’s Legislative session, was amended to exempt four violent sex crimes, allowing colleges to ask applicants about arrests or convictions for rape, aggravated sodomy, aggravated child molestation or aggravated sexual battery.

Kennard said he feels positive about the bill’s chances.

“It’s got bipartisan support, the bill has three Republican sponsors and three Democratic sponsors,” he said. “It did get a hearing. We want to bring it back to the Higher Education Committee next year and hopefully get it through.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on Facebook and Twitter.

A new survey reveals that a vast majority of North Carolina voters want the state to invest more in child care — and they want that investment this year.

The NC Chamber Foundation commissioned the survey from New Bridge Strategy in April to learn what North Carolinians think about child care across political and geographic boundaries.

Nine in 10 voters say taking action to ensure that more working families have access to affordable, quality child care should be an important priority this year.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

This is in stark contrast to the current budget priorities of the Republican-led General Assembly, which do not include significant investment in early childhood care and education.

Current state of child care

New Bridge Strategies surveyed 500 North Carolina registered voters April 13-18.

“Just to give you some perspective, when we’re doing national work, we’re usually talking to 800 to 1,000 respondents in order to represent all Americans,” Lori Weigel of New Bridge Strategy said during a recent presentation of the results.

The survey participants were a representative sample of the state’s registered voters.

Among participants, only the cost of housing and crime were seen as more serious challenges than child care.

“I don’t think anyone is shocked that the top two are sort of things that are at the top of our news feeds, are on the front page of the paper often,” Weigel said. “But not very far behind that is the lack of quality, affordable childcare programs.”

Three-quarters of respondents view that lack of programs as a serious problem, regardless of whether they report living in cities, suburbs, small towns, or rural areas.

Even in a polarized political climate, there’s consensus that lack of childcare is a serious problem: 69% of Republicans, 71% of independents, and 89% of Democrats agree.

Across party affiliation, nine in 10 voters were concerned about low wages for teachers and workers, the cost of child care for families, and the challenges parents face when balancing child care and work responsibilities.

“All three of these are in that sort of stratospheric level in terms of people saying that these are serious problems in the state,” Weigel said.

More than half of parents reported relying on family, friends, or neighbors to help provide child care because it’s too expensive. For parents of children ages 0-5 it was 60%. The numbers were similar for parents who had to call out or miss a shift at work because of a problem with child care.

This has huge implications for the workforce in North Carolina.

“Lack of quality, affordable child care is causing parents to leave the workforce or turn down opportunities — exacerbating the state’s labor shortage and threatening business and economic growth,” the NC Chamber Foundation said in the executive summary of the survey findings.

Importance of quality, affordable child care

Four in five respondents said access to quality, affordable child care is essential or very important to strengthening the economy and helping workers provide for their families. Again, this held true regardless of geography.

Across political parties, 74% of Republicans, 78% of independents, and 84% of Democrats agreed that child care is essential to the economic success of North Carolina and families who live here.

“Most things I listen to people talk about fall on party lines,” Weigel said, “and this is not one of them.”

Voters also want additional state funding to go toward child care this year.

Eighty-seven percent said that more working families having access to affordable, quality child care should be a priority for the state this year.

“We’ve got 87% saying, y’all need to get on this,” Weigel said. “People are really seeing this as an urgent problem. And I think even more significantly, it’s not just the urgency of it, but that people are willing to back it with state funding.”

Seventy-nine percent supported increasing state funding to provide working families with access to affordable, high-quality child care. That includes two-thirds of Republicans.

Eighty-six percent of voters said improving the quality of child care and making it more affordable for families is a good investment. That included 76% of Republicans, 86% of independents, and 97% of Democrats.

“Across the partisan spectrum in the state, we’ve got a vast majority telling us that they connect access to quality, affordable child care with our ability to strengthen the economy,” Weigel said. “I think that’s why we see people really telling us this is not just important but an urgent problem.”

Ninety percent of voters said that child care should be a bipartisan issue that state leaders should work on together.

“I’ve talked about these issues for over 15 years,” Weigel said. “We just didn’t used to see the kinds of numbers that I’m presenting to y’all today.”

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

Faced with a growing number of options for where to enroll their children in school, parents quickly narrow their choices based on their own educational experience as students.

That’s what we found for a study published in March 2023 in Social Currents.

Historically, parents have turned to their social networks and materials produced by school districts to help them choose a school for their children.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

However, when we analyzed interviews with a diverse sample of 60 parents from the Dallas metropolitan area, we found that about one-third of them used their own experiences in school to narrow their options before they gathered other information about schools.

If parents had a positive educational experience as children, they frequently narrowed their options to the same type of school that they attended, whether that be a private, magnet or traditional public school. Their hope was to replicate this positive experience for their kids. For example, Janice, a Black mother of two, explained, “They’re in private school mainly because I went to private school.”

Although parents of all backgrounds and income levels used this strategy, it was most common among white parents, who typically enrolled their children in private or suburban public schools, which they attended themselves. We refer to this as “experience-motivated replication.”

Virginia, a white mother of two, explained that her husband, John, “just assumed our kids are going to public schools” because the suburban schools he attended were such “wonderful public schools.” To replicate John’s experience the couple was in the process of leaving the city to buy a home in the suburbs.

Similarly, Rachel, a white mother of three, quickly narrowed her school options to consider only private Catholic schools because of her own positive experience. Rachel’s husband told us: “The kids go to the same private Catholic school that she went to.”

In contrast, we find that when parents had negative educational experiences, they typically sought to avoid enrolling their children in the type of school they attended, eliminating those schools from consideration. This strategy, which we call “experience-motivated avoidance,” was common among Black parents in our sample who felt underserved in city public schools as children.

For instance, Toni, a Black mother of three, shared: “I went to a public school and I don’t think that the teachers really care about the kids’ education. That’s me personally. I didn’t get that one on one.” Based on this negative experience, she did not consider their zoned Dallas public school. Instead, Toni focused on charter school options for her children. She ultimately enrolled them in a charter school near her home.

Why it matters

Where families decide to enroll their children in school not only influences the educational resources available to their child, but also shapes broader patterns of racial and socioeconomic segregation in America’s schools.

The school selection process plays a key role in how educational inequalities span generations, especially when white parents rely on their own experiences to inform the choices they make for their children.

For example, when white families move out of the city to enroll their children in suburban public schools, or consider only private schools like those they attended, these choices replicate historic patterns of white flight. It also helps explain why white families tend to be overrepresented in private schools and suburban public schools.

Conversely, when we examine how parents’ negative experiences as students influence which schools they consider for their children, it may help us to better understand why, for instance, Black and Latino families increasingly choose charter schools.

What still isn’t known

While this study shines light on one key aspect of how parents choose schools for their children, we believe it is important to understand all of the ways parents choose schools. Examining the choice process for diverse populations of families in districts where school choice is available can reveal the full set of strategies parents rely on to select schools.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A majority of a panel of Ohio economists thinks the state could keep many of its most talented students at home if the state offered scholarships to students who graduate in the top 5% of their class, according to a survey published this week.

In doing so, the economists are effectively siding with Gov. Mike DeWine in a dispute with the Republican-controlled Ohio House of Representatives. DeWine, who is also a Republican, put $18 million a year in his proposed budget to fund scholarships for top students to attend Ohio universities, but the House stripped the money out in the budget it passed earlier this month. The House, Senate, and governor have to hammer out a spending plan by June 30.

As part of its monthly survey of Ohio economists, Scioto Analysis asked 17 economists if scholarships to attend Ohio universities for students in the top 5% of their class would combat brain drain. Thirteen said yes and the other four said they were uncertain.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

In the comment section of the survey, some economists qualified their agreement, for example saying that there might be better approaches to keeping the best students here.

“Research shows that getting students to attend college in a region leads to positive spillovers that stay in the region, but I don’t know if the payoff would be worth the cost,” wrote Jonathan Andreas of Bluffton University. “It would probably be more effective to spend the money on loan forgiveness for students to remain as Ohio residents after graduation, but that would be best announced in advance so it doesn’t just pay students who had already decided to stay in state without any additional incentive. Ideally, the loans should be sold to incoming students as grants that are only converted to loans if students leave the state to work within a set period of time.”

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that “college enrollment is strongly correlated with the number of postsecondary institutions within each state, as more populous and geographically large states have more institutional capacity to enroll more students.” And, with 75.6% of its students staying here for college, Ohio is in the top half of states by that measure, the group reports.

Statistics about where the best students land after college are tough to come by. But in 2019, Forbes reported on a survey finding that burdened with heavy student debt and other factors, half of millennials are literally returning home after college — to their parents’ house.

In the Scioto Analysis survey, economist Curtis Reynolds of Kent State said that financial considerations might dictate the behavior of top high school students as well. Many will go where the scholarship money is, he said.

“I am not sure how much this would actually keep high-performing students in state for college,” he wrote. “Out-of-state tuition is much higher so some will stay in state anyways, but these are all high-performing students who may get scholarships anyway. Furthermore, it is not clear that they would stay AFTER college.”

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.

For the first time, a majority of Ivy League schools will soon be led by women.

Starting July 1, 2023, Claudine Gay will assume the role of president at Harvard University, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik at Columbia University and Sian Leah Beilock at Dartmouth College. They will join current female presidents at Brown University, Cornell University and University of Pennsylvania.

Felecia Commodore, an associate professor of higher education at Old Dominion University, explains what this means for gender equity in the college presidency – and why U.S. colleges and universities still have a long way to go.

Why does this matter?

While women make up about 60% of undergraduate as well as master’s and doctoral students in the U.S., only about 32% of presidents of American colleges and universities are women.

However, the Ivy League is not new to selecting female presidents – they have been doing so for a few decades. Judith Rodin was the first, in 1994, when she became president of the University of Pennsylvania. She was followed by Ruth Simmons at Brown University and Shirley Tilghman at Princeton University, both in 2001. Rodin was succeeded by another woman, Amy Guttman, in 2004.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Still, one reason this moment may be one to watch is that Ivy League institutions are often seen as exemplars of elite, complex institutions. So seeing what one could consider a critical mass of female leaders in the Ivy League could signal the benefit of women in leadership to other boards that are hesitant or slow to hire women as presidents.

How unusual is this across higher ed?

I think it would be more surprising to see mostly female presidents at the majority of large public research universities, or at a majority of the schools in the Power 5 athletic conferences.

Despite what may seem like a boom in women leading institutions, the percentage of women in the presidency at colleges and universities more broadly has plateaued at between 25% and 30% for the past decade. This was after increasing from 9.5% in 1986 to 19% in 1998.

A number of factors contribute to this low percentage, including barriers within the college presidential pipeline – such as exclusion from networks that provide mentorship – reward and promotion structures that are not equitable across genders, and bias against women in academic leadership roles.

A recent analysis of data on college presidents explains how this bias against women occurs, specifically when it comes to academic leadership roles. This is important because college presidents typically find their way to the presidency through academic leadership roles such as deans, vice provosts and provosts.

What are the biggest challenges that college presidents face?

The biggest priority or challenge really depends on the individual college or university. However, all institutions must ensure they are financially healthy and identify opportunities to strengthen their financial resources. College presidents have reported that they spend the most time on budget and financial management, followed by fundraising.

Particularly in the current higher education marketplace, where the average cost of college runs over US$35,000 per year, college leaders must work to keep their institutions fiscally strong and also competitive and affordable. This may involve, for example, building new infrastructure, creating new programs and cultivating new sources of funding.

What effect does having a woman in the top seat have?

For colleges that have only ever had a man in the president’s role, hiring their first woman as president can signal that the institution embraces change and evolution. This can be an especially important message to send to funders, alumni donors, philanthropists, state legislators and corporate partners, who all play a role in ensuring a particular college’s financial vitality.

Female presidents add to the diversity of the college presidency. They add different perspectives to conversations that shape practices and policies both within their college and across higher education. They might, for example, provide their particular perspective regarding compensation for female faculty members of color, who tend to engage in more unpaid service work on campuses.

Organizational scholars and business leaders affirm that diversity strengthens the decisions made by organizations and contributes to innovative solutions. A more diverse group of decision-makers can generate more decision alternatives than a homogeneous group that may be susceptible to group think.

And lastly, having women at the helm of academic institutions shows other women who aspire to become college presidents that it is indeed possible.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ohio legislators on both sides of the aisle are hoping to change how students learn about things like government affairs and history.

On one side, Democrats and supporters presented their argument for changing the model curriculum for K-12 social studies in a Tuesday press conference, with members of education associations and minority advocacy groups pushing for House Bill 171‘s passage.

That bill would direct the Ohio State Board of Education to “update” the social studies lessons in the state by July 1, 2024, to include “age and grade-appropriate instruction in the migration journeys, experiences and societal contributions of a range of communities in Ohio and the United States.”

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Those communities would include African American; Asian American and Pacific Islander; Arab, African and North African immigrant, refugee and asylee; Appalachian; Jewish; Latin American; and Native American communities, according to the bill.

“This bill not only positively benefits students, but also the state as a whole,” said Saanvi Gattu, a student at Olentangy High School.

As someone who emigrated from Mexico when she was an 8-year-old, Linna Jordan said she understands what inclusion means for students.

“It really is important for children to see themselves in their learning,” Jordan said.

Jordan is now the president of the Hilliard Education Association, and said including the stories of all communities who call America and Ohio home is “the most responsible thing we can do as a state.”

The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Mary Lightbody, D-Westerville, also has the support of the Council on American Islamic Relation’s Ohio Chapter, the Ohio Education Association and its Hispanic Caucus, Ohio Progressive Asian Woman’s Leadership and the Black Led Organizing Collaborative (BLOC).

A Republican-led bill that’s already seen committee activity since being introduced in March is House Bill 103, which seeks to create a “social studies task force” to develop academic standards for K-12 social studies.

Those studies have a specific model in HB 103, however, with the bill specifically targeting standards presented in “American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards.”

The Civics Alliance is a New York-based group which states in its mission statement preceding “American Birthright” that it is “dedicated to preserving and improving America’s civics education and preventing the subornation of civics education to political recruitment tools.”

HB 103’s co-sponsor, state Rep. Don Jones, R-Freeport, is listed as a state policymaker for the American Birthright Coalition.

The standards pushed by the Civics Alliance encourage student instruction that teaches “America’s common language of liberty, patriotism and national memory,” and not a social studies “filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country,” according to the American Birthright document.

“The warping of American social studies instruction has created a corps of activists dedicated to the overthrow of America and its freedoms, larger numbers of Americans indifferent to the steady whittling away of American liberty and many more who are so ignorant of the past they cannot use our heritage of freedom to judge contemporary debates,” the alliance states in “American Birthright.”

The Ohio bill is supported by conservative groups like the America First Policy Institute, as well as the Common Sense Society and the Freedom Education Foundation, Inc.

In a recent hearing for HB 103 with the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee, the American Historical Association expressed “grave concern” about using the product as part of state curriculum, calling the idea of a “politically appointed task force” unnecessary.

“Few Ohioans will agree with the premise that the state needs more bureaucracy,” the AHA told the committee. “Fewer still are likely to support the idea that yet another board with an unambiguously political mandate would streamline the already complicated process of crafting education policy.”

The AHA said singling out the American Birthright model would “hobble students” with a “pleasant fantasy” of history such as colonization by European empires “without ever meaningfully engaging with any evidence to the contrary.”

“These standards are not the product of an evidence-based study; they are merely a risky, untested document that, if they were adopted, would impose wrenching opportunity costs on Ohio students, parents, teachers and schools,” the group stated in committee testimony.

The bill is also opposed by the Ohio Federation of Teachers, the Ohio Education Association, Public Education Partners, the Children’s Defense Fund of Ohio, and the Ohio Council for the Social Studies.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.

From 2011 to 2019, Black enrollment declined at twice the rate (26%) of the overall decrease at two-year colleges (13%), a drop of almost 300,000 students. In 2020, Black enrollment plunged by another 100,000, a return to the same levels as 20 years ago. This threatens “decades of gains in Black economic opportunity through college enrollment,” according to the report, prepared for the Level UP National Panel, a coalition of 26 higher education executives, academics and national leaders assembled in response to this alarming trend. 

Not only does this promote inequitable opportunity for Black learners; it also comes at significant economic cost to Black families and the nation. Brookings Institution data suggest that downward mobility affects 7 in 10 Black Americans — a racial wealth gap that McKinsey & Co. projects could “cost the U.S. economy between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion between 2019 and 2028 — 4% to 6% of the projected [gross domestic product] in 2028.”

Ensuring Black learner success is not solely about economics. It requires a commitment to redesigning structures and systems that many Black Americans encounter as barriers to economic and social mobility. 

In recent years, community colleges have worked to introduce comprehensive supports inside and outside the classroom that help individual students access certificates, degrees and employment. They changed placement-test policies and accelerated transitions into college-level math and English courses. They implemented broad changes to strengthen advising, providing ongoing individual academic and nonacademic counseling when students need it, and created more agile financial aid policies, including emergency assistance. Additionally, community colleges have found resources for food banks and assistance to help students find housing and, in some cases, pay their rent, as poverty disproportionately impacts Black communities. In fact, according to a report from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, “an alarming 70% of Black students experienced food or housing insecurity or homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

However, this work needs to be coupled with a new strategy to bolster access for Black learners, many of whom no longer see higher education as a viable pathway. The strategy must begin by recognizing the fact that many Black college students perceive that they are not welcome. A recent Gallup survey found that Black students “are not only more likely to say they frequently or occasionally feel discriminated against, but also to say they feel disrespected and physically or psychologically unsafe.”

To reach and support them, colleges must understand students’ experiences and the strengths and challenges of their local communities; present learning content that is relevant to their lives and cultural backgrounds; encourage students to take on inquiry-based assignments and projects that reflect their interests; and eliminate barriers to their success. This requires a student-centered approach to ensure that Black learners have what they need to enter and succeed in college.

This means that schools must:

• Transform existing notions of access from open doors that students can enter to lifelong career-matching institutions for students and the communities they serve. That means looking beyond traditional recruitment strategies and providing working adults who never previously considered higher education with credentialing and degree programs that help them secure living-wage jobs. It also means partnering with high schools to bridge the gap for students who are disconnected and disengaged.
  
• Redesign dual enrollment and other college-in-high-school programs to more effectively reach Black learners. Programs such as dual enrollment, early college and joint career and technical education are increasingly important pathways. Nearly 1 in 5 community college students are enrolled through dual credit programs, which have significant potential to improve academic success. But racial inequities limit the availability of these programs to students of color and those from low-income families. The Community College Research Center reports that, “[F]our out of every five school districts have racial equity gaps in access” to dual enrollment.

• Eliminate financial barriers by creating real transparency about the cost of college and strengthen policies that can help Black learners. As the Level Up coalition reports ,“the vast majority — 80% — of Black Americans believe that college is unaffordable.” This is not surprising given that Black families have fewer assets to pay for college and, as a result, incur significantly more student loan debt than their white or Latino peers. This is true even at the community college level. Only one-third of Black students are able to earn an associate degree without incurring debt. One promising pathway would be to expand College Promise programs, which can have significant positive impact on Black enrollment.
  
• Ensure that Black students have multiple pathways to attaining a credential that leads to upwardly mobile careers — and are not steered into lower-earning fields, as research suggests happens at many community colleges.

It is time for colleges, states and the nation to commit to providing Black students with postsecondary opportunities that lead to life-sustaining jobs and economically mobile careers, and support the vitality of the communities where these students and families live. The alternative is far too costly for Black Americans and the nation.

The new tests, to be created by the Educational Testing Service and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, are meant to usher in competency-based forms of schooling that would allow students to proceed through academic material at their own pace. Leaders of both organizations hope they will also capture a broader array of non-cognitive qualities, like teamwork and relatability, that are highly prized in the modern workforce but undetectable through conventional academic metrics like grade point average or school attendance. 

The adoption of more personalized instruction and assessment has faced a key obstacle in the form of the Carnegie Unit, the namesake foundation’s strict definition of annual credit hours that students must accrue to demonstrate their grasp of material. (The calculation essentially breaks down to one hour of seat time per day, per subject, for 24 weeks.) Though largely unknown outside the education world, many high schools and universities have based their academic requirements on the Carnegie Unit for over a century. 

But Timothy Knowles, the foundation’s president, said that while the Carnegie Unit had served a useful purpose at one point, new discoveries in neuroscience and cognitive psychology have proven that pupils learn different subjects at highly variable rates. What’s more, he added, the capacity now exists to test for valuable qualities that were previously invisible to admissions officers and employers.  

“We’re in a position to do something that we hadn’t before,” Knowles said. “Unlike 20 years ago, we can actually reliably measure the skills that we know are predictive of success in postsecondary education and work.”

Competency-based learning and assessment has long been theorized as a preferable alternative to existing educational models, which critics describe as too standardized to deliver instruction to individual students with vastly divergent levels of academic preparation. Instead, they allege, the status quo came to reflect the production processes of 20th-century industry, with students replacing widgets as the product. In a recent interview, Knowles himself telegraphed his desire to phase out the Carnegie Unit, calling time a “crude” metric to determine educational attainment.

With a range of philanthropic and education-focused advocates backing the movement, virtually every state has promoted some version of competency-based policies. Those efforts hit a high-water mark in Maine, where high school graduation requirements were refigured over the last decade to emphasize proficiency on subject material. But disputes over the definition of proficiency and teachers’ differing grading standards led many to question the new approach, with legislators later backing away from the competency-based model.

Similarly rocky transitions were seen in Vermont and New Hampshire, which attempted similar shifts. The central puzzle facing critics of the current model (i.e., calendar-centered requirements and standardized assessment) is what will come to supplant it. 

Scott Marion, president of the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, said that the challenge in executing the hoped-for switch to competency-based learning lay in designing realistic measures of achievement to replace existing tests. To deliver on advocates’ promises, he observed, such measures would need to be both tailored to individual students and academically credible.

“Competency-based assessment is not for the faint of heart,” Marion said. “It’s being done quite poorly in a lot of places. So if ETS and Carnegie can bring a little more rigor to it, it might be good.”

With interest in competency-based approaches growing, more players have leapt into the field, with the best-known among them a national consortium that developed a “mastery transcript.” The project has gained adherence among high schools over the last year.  

The ETS-Carnegie proposal is also emerging at a time when traditional high school admissions exams, such as the SAT and ACT, have lost significant market share. Both the aftereffects of the pandemic and concerns about inequitable outcomes from standardized testing have led thousands of colleges and universities to go test-optional in the last few school years. With those leading indicators of secondary achievement potentially passing from the scene, demand is expected to rise for measures that could take their place.  

ETS, which administers the widely used GRE, PRAXIS, and TOEIC tests, has itself announced multiple rounds of layoffs during and after the pandemic.

Perhaps the biggest question hanging over the newly announced partnership is the proposed measurement of not just cognitive and behavioral skills — including everything from comprehension of math content to teamwork and leadership — but so-called “affective” skills as well. As described by ETS head Amit Sevak at the educational technology conference ASU-GSV, such skills could include something like emotional intelligence, or the ability to successfully convey sincerity and empathy to others. Just how those kinds of competencies can be conveyed to students, let alone measured by third parties, is debatable even to backers of competency-based instruction.

Michael Horn, a cofounder of Harvard’s Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Education, said he would be watching the development of such measures carefully.

“This part, from my reading of the literature on assessment, is both unproven and underdeveloped. So the how is going to be very important,” Horn said. “I’m going to be very curious to see what the investments look like as they go forward, and I hope they don’t overpromise.”

While no concrete timeline has been released for the conception of the new suite of assessments, Carnegie and ETS are reportedly aiming to conduct a multi-state pilot that could begin as early as next year. In an interview, Sevak said he envisioned students being able to access a digital “transcript” detailing their ongoing growth in areas like collaboration and creativity. Real-time data could build their awareness of their comparative strengths and weaknesses, he added.

“That more holistic approach is in contrast to much of the assessments in K–12 and higher education, which are really cognitive-driven and tied to logic and reason,” Sevak said. We’re looking at a more holistic approach that is more tied to the future of work.”

Thirty-two percent of 4-year-olds attended a state-funded program in the 2021-22 school year — up from 28% the year before, when the National Institute for Early Education Research, which publishes the annual “yearbook,” reported that COVID had “erased” a decade of growth in public pre-K. 

A recent push in several states to expand universal pre-K, meanwhile, could more than make up for that decline in the coming years, said Steven Barnett, founder and senior co-director of the research center based at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

California, Colorado, Hawaii and New Mexico recently passed laws to provide universal access to early-childhood education while governors in Michigan, Illinois and New Jersey have all taken initial steps in that direction. 

“I don’t think we’ve had a wave like this. That dramatically changes the landscape,” Barnett said. Georgia was the first state to launch a universal pre-K program in 1992, followed by Oklahoma in 1998, but Barnett said, “That’s in the distant past.”

The institute’s latest report — its 20th — provides some perspective on how far states have come since researchers began tracking the data in 2001. Forty-five states now have publicly funded pre-K programs, seven more than when the institute issued its first report. The percentage of 4-year-olds served and the overall amount states are spending on pre-K has more than doubled.

But in some areas, there’s been little change. Taking inflation into account, average per-child spending has been relatively flat. And states only serve 6% of 3-year-olds. In New York City, where former Mayor Bill de Blasio aimed to make pre-K for 3-year-olds universal, his successor Eric Adams has eliminated the expansion from the city’s budget, citing the expiration of pandemic relief funds. 

While overall state spending increased to nearly $10 billion, about $400 million of that was in COVID relief funding. Barnett, however, said he doesn’t expect states to cut funding when the funds run out because most of the expansion nationwide stems from voter-approved initiatives.

“Florida voters amended their constitution. That’s why they have universal pre-K,” he said during a call with reporters Wednesday. “At the local level, cities all over the country have taken it on themselves.”

The Biden administration is also urging districts to spend more of their Title I funds on pre-K and has proposed a $500 million grant program in the 2024 budget to expand pre-K in Title I schools.

While more states are adding universal pre-K, Barnett doesn’t see the same emphasis on improving quality. During the pandemic, several states paused efforts to strengthen programs and widely granted waivers from certain staff training requirements because of teacher shortages.

Delaware, for example, hasn’t yet reinstated classroom observations to help teachers improve, and North Carolina stopped limiting long-term substitutes to 12 weeks a year, according to the report. Substitutes are required to have an associate’s degree, but not a bachelor’s. 

By noting these exceptions, Barnett said he hopes the report will “encourage states to not make this leniency permanent.” 

Five states — Alabama, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi and Rhode Island — meet all 10 of the institute’s quality standards, the same as last year. Among the indicators are a strong curriculum that includes literacy and math, teachers with at least a B.A. and a staff-child ratio of 1 to 10.

Eleven states meet fewer than half of the standards, including three that serve the largest number of children: California, Florida and Texas. 

Polis calls parents

California’s existing state preschool program for low-income children has been in place since 2008. The state then launched transitional kindergarten in 2012, but it was originally available only to 4-year-olds with fall birthdays who missed the state’s Sept. 1 kindergarten eligibility date. The state is now gradually expanding the program, which will be open to all 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year.

A state report shows enrollment in transitional kindergarten this school year fell well below projections, but that wasn’t the case everywhere. The Oxnard School District in Ventura County, up the coast from Los Angeles, expanded its program to younger students ahead of the state’s timeline. Leaders planned for nine classes and ended up having to open 25 due to demand. 

“California will have the largest preschool program for 4-year-olds in the U.S.,” Patricia Lozano, executive director of Early Edge California, an advocacy organization, said during the press call.

Even though K-12 enrollment in California and several other states is declining, Barnett said that’s actually a boon for early childhood programs because states can serve more preschoolers without having to increase spending.

In Colorado, voters in 2020 approved a nicotine tax to fund universal pre-K, and last year Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed legislation creating the program, which will provide up to $4,300 per child annually.

He’s also been reaching out to families who secured a spot this fall. He called Mitchell Smith of Colorado Springs about two weeks ago to congratulate him on getting his first choice school for his daughter Arrow. 

“I was blown away,” said Smith, a high school science teacher who also has a daughter in kindergarten. “Monday through Friday, [Arrow] sees her sister go to school. She wants to know, ‘When am I going to go?’”

Allie Caracillo, another Colorado parent, will be able to keep her daughter Giovanna in the KinderCare center that she already attends in Denver. But now the state-funded pre-K program will cover 15 hours a week.

“It was a no-brainer,” she said. She thinks she’ll be able to save several hundred dollars a week.

‘We’ve got a model’

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy is allocating $120 million in federal relief funds toward preschool facilities and expanding classes to more districts as part of his pledge to phase in a universal system. The model will expand on the state’s Abbott Preschool Program — mandated by the state supreme court in 1998 as a remedy to longstanding inequities in the state’s poorest school districts.

Barnett, who is involved in planning the program’s expansion, urged leaders not to cut back on components that have contributed to positive gains for students, such as class sizes of 15 with a teacher and an aide. A long-running evaluation showed that two years of attendance reduced half of the achievement gap between low-income children and those from more affluent families.

“We’ve got a model. We know it works. Let’s just do it,” Barnett said.

He predicts lawmakers without plans to offer universal access will likely feel pressure from neighboring states.

“If you’re a legislator in Oregon and Washington,” he said, “and California has universal pre-K, do you just say, ‘That’s nice, but we’re not going to do it’?”

TOPEKA — Tabatha Rosproy grew up in a rural Kansas community, with parents who struggled with having children at an early age and a sister who had behavioral problems. As she grew up, she watched her sister receive punishment both at school and home for conduct issues.

“There just weren’t a lot of chances to do what needed to be done for my sister,” Rosproy said.

Rosproy, who works in early education and was named 2020 National Teacher of the Year, said she used to feel guilt over the differences in her and her sister’s lives, especially in later years, when her sister struggled with bad relationships and addiction.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

“Why did I deserve to escape this situation?” Rosproy said. “What about me was different that I got out of this? And what I realized quickly was that it was not my fault, but it was the fault of these holes in our systems, not only in our schools but in the services we provide for families.”

Rosproy was one of several early education officials and lawmakers who gathered Tuesday for one of the state’s first early childhood task force meetings, ready to advocate for improving child care from birth to kindergarten statewide.

Gov. Laura Kelly created the Kansas Early Childhood Transition Task Force via an executive order in January, shortly after taking office for her second term.

Kansas currently spreads early childhood programs across three state agencies, with the Kansas Department of Education, the Department of Health and Environment, and the Kansas Department for Children and Families all housing different resources.

Critics have said this split system leads to children and programs falling through the cracks. A January 2023 Bipartisan Policy Center analysis ranked Kansas 49th in the station in terms of childhood system coordination and efficiency.

“Kansas currently utilizes an inadequately-coordinated system of governance to deliver early childhood services — resulting in inefficiencies, redundancies and structural barriers for families, communities and businesses that obstruct access to state-level support,” Kelly said in the January executive order.

The task force will deliver recommendations in early 2024 on how to create a new state agency focused solely on supporting the state’s children, with the end goal of creating a new cabinet agency that covers all early childhood needs.

Rosproy said the focus needed to remain on building better resources for children and creating long-lasting change.

“We cannot do this work alone, can’t be done in just the classroom,” Rosproy said. “Our communities are places that are going to build our kids up for generations to come.”

Early education officials from other states attended the meeting to provide advice on consolidation. Pam Thomas, assistant commissioner with the Missouri Office of Childhood, said the Missouri model led to greater attention and accountability.

“Early childhood was this little branch over here in the middle of nowhere that leadership didn’t really understand and know,” Thomas said. “They got to do their own thing, nobody really held them accountable for what they were doing because they were just kind of over here.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

Yet, despite states’ best efforts, data about postsecondary success is alarming. One recent poll found that 56% of Americans think earning a four-year degree is not worth the cost. Skepticism about higher education is rising, while enrollment is declining. So how do policymakers and education leaders prepare students for the future in a time of exceptional academic challenges across all grade levels?

By integrating college classes into high school. This reduces cost and improves outcomes.

This is a moment when America needs to reimagine the K-12 experience, remove barriers to higher ed and achieve K-16 results with K-12 dollars.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

It starts with the college readiness exam. At GEO Academies, the network of public charter schools that I run in Indiana and Louisiana, every high school student — all of whom live in high-poverty areas — takes a college entrance exam for free, starting in ninth grade. If they pass, they’re enrolled in classes immediately at a local college or university, starting in their first year in high school, alongside their traditional 9-12 curriculum. If they don’t pass, we prepare them until they do.

Having all students take college readiness exams, such as the College Board’s Accuplacer, provides each one with an academic roadmap, telling educators the kind of support they need for college preparedness. Then, our K-16 model provides transportation to our partner community and four-year colleges. This exposes students who otherwise might never have even considered getting a higher degree to college classes on real college campuses, with other college-level students.

All this — the cost of exams, registration, tuition, textbooks and transportation — is covered by our network through existing funding, without any added expense to taxpayers.

We deliver K-16 outcomes on K-12 dollars.

Experiencing college provides unquestionable social benefits for high school students, particularly those who come from low-income backgrounds. As college enrollment declines, learning how to navigate higher education while in high school makes it likelier that students will attain a degree, because college classes and campus life aren’t foreign to them. It’s a seamless transition.

There’s a financial benefit to our students as well. Working toward a high school diploma and a degree simultaneously means students will take on no debt while earning college credit, making them more likely to gain a degree while saving them precious dollars in the process.

What are the academic outcomes? This May, GEO Academies will graduate 22 students who will have earned a college degree before they receive their high school diploma. Last year, one of our students, who began taking college classes at age 11, completed his associate degree by age 13 — the youngest in Indiana to do that. He will complete a full bachelor’s degree while in high school, our third student to achieve this goal, by the time he turns 15.

The numbers speak for themselves. The graduation rate at our Gary school, 21st Century Charter School, is 22 points higher than the district average (94.5% versus 72.8%) and even surpasses the state’s overall average of 86.5%. Our college and career readiness rating, as calculated by the Indiana Department of Education, is 50 points higher than the district’s (88.9%, compared with 37.6%) and again beats the state average (68.1%).

Louisiana does not track college and career readiness like Indiana does, but it did report that just 159 of 42,650 graduates in 2019 received associate degrees while in high school. This year, we will have our first graduating class, with 10% of our 60 seniors earning an associate degree.

Integrating college classes into the high school experience for all students is truly a scalable model that is yielding game-changing results for high-poverty children. But the barriers to doing so are clear: It requires policymakers to rethink what it means to go to high school and reimagine higher education as part of an educational continuum for students.

Reinventing the high school experience requires bold thinking.

Fortunately, America has the funding to be innovative. Tens of billions of ESSER dollars have gone unspent, and many states and districts — so often risk-averse — can capitalize on this moment as an opportunity to reimagine the high school experience. 

As policymakers search for answers to accelerate learning, they should look to students in schools in Gary, Indianapolis, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Our schools are showing why college has never been more important and are providing the blueprint for integrating college credits into the high school experience.

The settlement provides all teachers with a 10% salary increase retroactive to Nov. 1, 2022, plus a one-time payment of $5,000.

This was a strike with unusual features, but they will become increasingly common as teachers unions continue to win generous compensation packages and greater influence over district operations. School systems will be forced to deal with these tactics, not just in California but wherever state law allows them to be employed.

Unfair labor practice strikes

A standard teacher strike over wages and working conditions — otherwise known as an economic strike — requires a long administrative process. In California, this means formally declaring an impasse in negotiations, which is followed by analysis and a report by an independent fact-finder.

But there’s a loophole. If the employer commits an unfair labor practice, such as bargaining in bad faith, the union can legally walk out at any time.

The problem for school districts, and parents who want their kids in school, is that determining whether the union’s complaint has any merit cannot be made instantaneously. It may take months, or even years, before the state labor board can hear the case and render a ruling.

If there is no unfair labor practice, then the strike is illegal and penalties can be levied. But by then, it’s too late to matter, and the union has probably already won a settlement that ensures it will come out ahead financially.

So while the strike is ostensibly called to bring an end to specific alleged unfair labor practices by the district, its real purpose is to jump-start contract negotiations and bring about an advantageous settlement.

Union-friendly publications have articles on how to precipitate an unfair labor practice by an employer and so legitimize a strike. Among the suggested methods are to “pepper the employer with detailed information requests” or to cite employers for “refusing to bargain at reasonable times and locations.”

Since 2019, school employees unions have conducted two unfair labor practice strikes in Sacramento, two in Los Angeles and now, two in Oakland.

Bargaining for the common good

This term is used to describe union demands for contract provisions that are geared to benefit a wider community than just teachers and school employees. These include restorative justice, ventilation, affordable housing and even climate change. The Oakland union sought contract language regarding housing vouchers and use of vacant district properties for housing students’ families, as well as union input on facilities upkeep. 

Asking for such things allows the union to position itself as altruistic, seeking more than just better compensation for its members. It also increases the scope of its influence over district operations. Many of these items may, in fact, be beneficial.

But the union is the legal representative for teachers, not for anyone else. The public at large did not elect the Oakland Education Association to decide what was “good” to bargain for. Nor is the union accountable for the consequences that might arise from its demands. The school board is supposed to represent the public and choose between competing desires and needs within an available budget — which brings us to the most disturbing aspect of the Oakland strike and its settlement.

School board leverage

There has been a lot of media attention over the past couple of years about the politicization of school boards. Special-interest groups’ clout in politics is a problem as old as the Republic, but the situation in Oakland went well beyond the usual arguments over who funded whose campaign.

“The school board, which currently has six members, has been split on the issue of OEA’s common-good demands,” reported The Oaklandside during the strike. “Three members, Jennifer Brouhard, VanCedric Williams and Valarie Bachelor, have joined the union in urging the district’s bargaining team to discuss the common good demands with OEA, while other directors have said the demands should be left to the school board to discuss and implement, or left to OUSD to partner with other organizations on.”

It’s true that all three of the named board members received union campaign contributions, but that’s just a standard public policy issue. These three have unique relationships with teachers unions.

Bachelor is employed as a lead organizer for the California Federation of Teachers.

Brouhard is the former secretary of the Oakland Education Association and sat on its executive board at least through the 2021 school year.

Williams was elected to the California Teachers Association board of directors in October, after serving as treasurer of United Educators San Francisco and a member of the National Education Association board of directors.

The union went on an unfair labor practice strike despite having three teacher union activists on the school board. It claimed to be bargaining for the common good even though the common people were woefully underrepresented in negotiations. Lakisha Young, founder of the parent advocacy group The Oakland REACH, wrote in a recent newsletter that her organization “has organized and mobilized hundreds of district parents and none of us have been a part of the process.”

She added, “OEA is replaying tactics Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) parents and students just experienced: say on repeat that the district is bargaining in ‘bad faith,’ avoid fact-finding, mediation, impasse and then strike!”

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow the state’s educator licensing agency to better hold teachers and school nurses accountable for violating professional ethics or committing crimes.

Senate Bill 218 – which passed through the Oregon Senate last month on a 25-4 vote and is scheduled for a House vote on Monday – addresses several aspects of the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission’s investigation system.

If passed, the commission would be able to close certain outstanding cases after 12 months. It would also give the agency’s executive director more discretion on which reports are reviewed.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

Proponents argue these changes would dramatically reduce agency costs, better utilize state resources and allow the agency to focus on cases that pose the most risk to student safety and professional standards. This is especially significant given the agency has dealt with being understaffed and backlogged due to the pandemic and school closures.

But the main emphasis of the bill is that it would give the agency, which disciplines teachers, greater access to crucial records when investigating alleged crimes.

Oregon has more than 550,000 students in K-12 schools, and every year, dozens, if not hundreds of complaints against educators and school nurses are filed to the state by members of the public and considered for investigation.

In 2022, the commission reviewed 199 investigations. Historically, about a third of them result in licensing sanctions, according to agency data. Teachers and administrators who are sanctioned are also put on a public discipline list.

About 46% of last year’s cases involved educator sexual conduct with a student, physical assault on a student, drug and alcohol violations, or internet pornography violations.

This session’s bill would allow the agency to access reports from the Oregon Department of Education and law enforcement while investigating suspected sexual conduct or child abuse.

Currently, the commission can only obtain police reports through the Oregon Department of Human Services and only if human services has investigated the same incident. This limits what information the commission can get, officials said, leading to incomplete investigations, delays and added expenses.

“(The commission) is not asking for special treatment,” Trent Danowski, deputy director and director of professional practices for the commission, told the Capital Chronicle. “(It) is simply asking to be included with the other state agencies – under the same confidentiality requirements.”

There is no organized opposition to the bill. Senators Brian Boquist, I-Dallas; Dennis Linthicum, R-Klamath Falls; David Brock Smith, R-Port Orford; and Art Robinson, R-Cave Junction, voted against it in April.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

Yet, despite all the attention and enthusiasm, tutoring currently reaches at most 10% of students in the country — and probably many fewer. How can schools, with the support of tutoring providers, harness the very real positive effects of tutoring and deploy it quickly to more students?

At Accelerate, the national nonprofit I lead that aims to help make tutoring a standard part of the American school day, we believe that one key answer lies in state policy, regulation and infrastructure. On April 26, Accelerate announced $1 million in States Leading Recovery grants to Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Louisiana and Ohio that will help their education agencies make tutoring more widespread and effective. Our hope is that these states can help create model policies and plans that others can adopt, and that we can continue to build a cohort of states working jointly to make tutoring more effective in the years ahead. 

Quality tutoring relies on several things that innovative new technology and programs are well-positioned to provide: time management, data collection and tailored content. But providers are just half of the equation for scaling high-impact tutoring — schools, and the public education sector writ large, make up the other half. 

Our States Leading Recovery grant program aims to push the tutoring marketplace to become one in which school districts pay only for programs that have a strong evidence base, and tutoring providers bring research backing their effectiveness and commit to outcomes-based contracts. States can play their part by cutting back regulatory snags and creating a path for effective programs.

School leaders sometimes argue that providers, failing to understand the daily challenges of running a school, have overpromised and underdelivered. Entrepreneurs retort that schools have failed to accommodate new ideas, creating implementation barriers that impede success. But cynicism about promised revolutions that never materialized must not be allowed to thwart the ability to significantly upgrade the education system of the future. 

The message we are hoping to send with our state grants is twofold: 

First, to states: It’s time to align policies with priorities and make it easy for school districts to implement effective tutoring. The research now shows what high-impact tutoring can look like — and researchers are beginning to learn that virtual tutoring can be as effective as in-person; that volunteers, paraprofessionals and college students can make good tutors; and that tutoring can be effective one-on-one or in small groups. Additionally evidence makes clear that it should happen during the school day in order to reach the highest-need students in a consistent way.   

At the same time, most school districts have never been stretched thinner. If they are to add tutoring to their plate, policymakers need to set the table. States can do that in a number of ways, such as identifying research-backed programs, funding and supporting implementation, and removing regulatory barriers that make it harder for schools to find blocks of time for tutoring.

Second, to providers: A concerted effort by the public sector to remove barriers to innovation will not mean a no-strings-attached payday — the stakes for students are simply too high. Ed tech leaders and other tutoring providers should anticipate a public marketplace in the years ahead that relies more heavily on outcomes-based contracts with a willingness to cut loose programs that do not meet goals. 

The private sector should also assume that states and districts will increasingly build and rely on preferred-provider lists that overtly prioritize public spending on programs that have a strong base of research and evidence, vetted by outside experts. Curriculum providers know this marketplace well — and it is coming soon to the tutoring space.

In the words of L.A. Unified School District Superintendent Alberto Carvalho at ASU+GSV, the private sector should increasingly expect to “engage in efficacy-based contracting. … If I [as a superintendent] deliver on the fidelity of implementation, meaning I deliver the kids and number of minutes, I expect you to deliver the results. And to the extent that you exceed the bottom line, you get more money.”

Rapid advances in technology are exciting for tutoring and for education. New products and services have the potential to put widespread, effective, personalized instruction within reach in the years ahead. States must get ahead of this by building a marketplace that rewards research-driven and outcomes-oriented providers, and helps schools and districts serve the highest-need students.

Schools and providers stand at the precipice of potentially radical changes in the capacity to deliver tailored, excellent content to students. It will take a collective effort to redesign the standard American school day in order to close longstanding opportunity gaps and help the highest-need students. 

Department civil rights officials eschewed either blanket inclusion of trans students in teams consistent with their gender identity or banning such policies altogether.

In a sign of the controversy the issue has generated, the department received over 134,000 comments by Monday’s deadline. But if those remarks are any indication, a hoped-for compromise could remain elusive.

“No young person should ever be excluded just because of who they are — especially students who just want to play sports,” wrote Tim Turbiak, a board member for the Ballston Spa Central School District, north of Albany, New York. 

North Carolina state Superintendent Catherine Truitt, meanwhile, said the proposal undermines Title IX’s intent.

“Under no circumstance can we assume that Congress, when crafting this important law 40 years ago, fathomed a biological male playing competitive sports in an all-female league or competition at any level,” she wrote.

Such views are among the many the department must reconcile before issuing a final rule. The existing draft largely puts interpretation of the policy in the hands of individual districts. But several experts said it lacks clarity on several key issues and leaves school systems in a legal no man’s land if they’re in one of 21 states with a categorical ban on trans students in sports. 

In a state with a ban, “What does [the Education Department] expect the recipient to do?” the Association of Title IX Administrators, a national membership group, asked in an 11-page comment. 

Nineteen states have already filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit opposing the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX. A separate case involving a transgender West Virginia middle schooler who runs track is before the 4th Circuit.

In general, the draft rule would allow elementary-age students to play sports consistent with their gender identity and likely continue in middle school. In high school, however, districts could make a case for excluding trans athletes if they can show how that decision achieves an “important educational objective.”

District leaders will need clearer guidance than the department has provided so far to write those policies, according to the Title IX association’s statement.

In general, the organization wants a plainly written rule allowing students to participate in athletics consistent with their gender identity. At this point, the draft addresses a “phantom fear” that trans female athletes would dominate competitive sports, wrote board Chair Brett Sokolow and President Daniel Swinton.

If the department fails to heed that advice, the association urged officials to provide examples of restrictions that would and would not comply and offer clarity on specific scenarios that are likely to arise if the draft becomes official policy. 

For example, if a trans student makes a team, but is “benched” and never gets to play, would that qualify as discrimination on the basis of gender identity? They want the department to clarify exactly what rights Title IX protects. 

“Is it the right to be on a team, the right to compete, the right to have the opportunity to win or play, etc.?” they asked.

‘Case-by-case basis’

With the issue likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, Max Eden, a research fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who opposes the change, said the political debate currently favors those who oppose any restrictions on trans students in sports.

Democrats, he said, “will publicly argue that Republicans are going to the Supreme Court to defend sex segregation in mostly non-existent elementary school sports.”

He argues that the administration’s attempt to bridge the divide over the issue has failed.

“It appears to concede everything, because high schools can adopt policies that predicate competitive sports participation on biological sex,” he said. “But actually, it concedes nothing, because [the Office for Civil Rights] reserves the right to insist that those policies change on a practically arbitrary and case-by-case basis.” 

When Sandra Hodgin, founder and CEO of the Title IX Consulting Group, first read the draft, her initial thought was, “Oh boy, the conservative side is going to have a heart attack.” She said she’s heard some district leaders in more conservative parts of California, where she’s based, discuss rejecting federal funds rather than comply.

Progressive districts, she said, seem more willing to balance inclusion with respecting the concerns of conservative parents. 

“They don’t want to make it seem like they are just jumping on the Biden bandwagon,” she said.

Co-ed teams

While debate over the issue focuses mostly on trans girls, an incident last fall in Florida demonstrates some of the confusion over the issue. The Duval County Public Schools denied a trans boy’s request to play on the boy’s soccer team, citing the state’s ban on trans girls playing on a girls team. But the district later reversed its decision and apologized. 

Six states — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, New Mexico and Texas — require students to compete on teams consistent with the sex listed on their birth certificate, according to the advocacy group TransAthlete. Several more require documentation that a student’s gender has changed before they can play on a team where they feel most comfortable.

Rules for middle school students, who often enter puberty during those years, should be more explicit, the Title IX association said, since only about a third of state athletic associations have policies governing middle and junior high school sports.

“Given the changes the body undergoes during puberty, educational objectives like injury avoidance or fairness may increase in significance after puberty,” they wrote.

Finally, the association wants the department to explain vague terms such as “minimize harms to students” and clarify whether districts would have to organize or pay for alternative opportunities for trans students to play. 

Districts stuck in limbo between the federal government and state law should consider adding a co-ed team, Hodgin recommended. 

“I’ve been saying this for well over a year. It costs money, time and attention. Who is going to coach it? And who are they playing against?” she asked. “But if we’re really looking at equity and ensuring there’s no discrimination, that would be my suggestion.”

Advocates for LGBTQ students agreed that the draft rule should be more straightforward. While the introduction notes that across-the-board bans in sports would violate the law, Olivia Hunt, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality, wants that statement reflected throughout the text.

Any case where a trans student is excluded has “to address a well-founded concern and not be based on over-broad generalizations. The regulation should spell that out,” she said. “This is an issue where there is a lot of confusion among policymakers at the state and district level.”

While large districts may have legal teams prepared to advise board members and administrators as unexpected challenges arise, the final rule, she said, “needs to be something that can apply in large and small districts.”

In our home state of Connecticut, more than 70% of jobs require higher education, yet only 25% of high school graduates from low-income backgrounds earn a college degree within six years. Through our Pledge to Advance Connecticut (PACT) program, the state’s nationally recognized community colleges are essentially free — but only if students complete the FAFSA.

The pandemic forced the education community to reimagine how we support schools and students in pursuit of college and certificate programs. So in December 2020, leveraging federal American Rescue Plan Act funding, the Connecticut State Department of Education, the Office of the Governor and the Connecticut RISE Network launched the Connecticut FAFSA Challenge. The idea was to partner with high schools in new ways to improve their FAFSA rates.

Now in its third year, the investment is paying off for over 21,000 Connecticut students who have already completed the FAFSA. In March, Connecticut’s FAFSA completion rate reached 54.5%, up from 45.8% in 2022 and surpassing the national average of 45%.

How is Connecticut moving the needle on FAFSA completion and advancing the goal of postsecondary success for all students?

• Partnerships to Build Capacity: Over the past three years, schools with low FAFSA completion rates and high concentrations of need have been invited to participate in the FAFSA Challenge. School leaders and educators participate in a statewide community of practice, meeting monthly to educators review data, share promising practices, and troubleshoot barriers and obstacles. Schools also participate in monthly coaching with RISE, and educators have access to free FAFSA training via FAFSACT.org. Additionally, the department has partnered with colleges and community-based organizations to better connect schools, students and families with service providers.

• Resources to Fund Innovation: Through American Rescue Plan funding, schools participating in the challenge receive microgrants to pursue innovative strategies to promote FAFSA completion, such as family events, communications campaigns and staff stipends. For example, Norwalk’s Brien McMahon High School formed a FAFSA Task Force of teachers and counselors who receive training to support a caseload of students. Together they review data, share ideas and stay motivated as a team working toward a shared goal. Bridgeport’s Central High School expanded its family engagement efforts. Counselors reach out to caregivers of students who have not completed the FAFSA and promote the campaign through school signs and raffles that recognize students after they complete this important milestone.

• Data to Drive Action: Too often, educators lack the user-friendly data necessary to provide students with timely and equitable support. A new FAFSA dashboard and data tools allow schools to monitor their progress daily and personalize support for students and families. These tools also promote shared accountability for results. They were made possible through a data-sharing agreement among the department, the Office of Higher Education and school districts. Gov. Ned Lamont’s 2021 workforce bill further spurred FAFSA completion and the focus on these data by requiring school districts to adopt policies to improve completion rates.

The FAFSA Challenge represents a coordinated, collaborative and multifaceted approach to promote FAFSA completion. In 2020-21, schools participating in the challenge increased their completion rates by 4 percentage points, and in 2021-22, that number doubled to 8 points. Building on the successes of the first two years, the 57 schools participating in the 2022-23 FAFSA Challenge are already on pace to exceed these results by the end of the school year.

Schools are working together in new ways to promote FAFSA completion and postsecondary success, closing opportunity gaps for students and enabling them to achieve their dreams despite financial barriers.

We challenge other states across the country to make FAFSA completion a core component of their education and economic recovery efforts. Connecticut’s approach is customized to its needs, but also highly replicable. By working together to improve educational outcomes, state policymakers and their partners can contribute to increased employment, decreased incarceration, and better economic prosperity for local communities and the nation. 

Advocates focused on ending hunger in Ohio gathered at the Statehouse Thursday for the Praying for our Daily Bread Faith Leaders luncheon to discuss solutions in the state’s proposed operating budget.

The Ohio Association of Foodbanks would be funded $39,550,000 a year, as distributed by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services under the House’s version of the budget, but advocates are asking the Senate to increase funding to $50 million per year. The budget is in the hands of the Senate and must be signed by June 30 for it to take effect on July 1, the first day of the new state fiscal year.

“Things are getting really hard for all of us, but even worse for our most vulnerable and our foodbanks are being called upon to fill the gap,” said Hope Lane-Gavin, the director of nutrition policy and program at Ohio Association of Foodbanks.

Get stories like these delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter

About 1.4 million people face hunger in Ohio, including 412,000 children.

“This should not be a Democrat or Republican issue to make sure people can eat because if we care about economic development, if we care about workforce shortage, how can people do any of that without eating?” asked state Rep. Bride Rose Sweeney, D-Westlake.

Bishop Gregory Vaughn Palmer of the Ohio West Area of The United Methodist Church mentioned several gospel passages that showed Jesus’ concern for those dealing with food insecurity.

“God doesn’t want people to be hungry,” he said. “We care about kids. I’m not suggesting they are the only hungry ones, but they are even more vulnerable because often their voices are not developed yet, not just because of age, but actually because of lack of proper nutrition.”

Senior Food Incentive

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government temporarily expanded its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and older adults saw their monthly SNAP increase to triple digits. But soon those benefits for 70,000 older Ohioans will go back down to the pre-pandemic amount of $23 per month.

Advocates are calling on legislatures to offer a Senior Food Incentive for seniors on SNAP to up their state minimum to $50 a month, instead of $23.

“We really need it,” Lane-Gavin said. “High inflation has wiped out many gains Ohioans have made.”

School lunches

The House version of the budget added funding for reduced-price-eligible students in Ohio schools and requires the Ohio Department of Education to reimburse school districts so that all school breakfasts and lunches are free for those that fall under the reduced-price eligibility requirements.

This change from the initial executive proposal happened after school nutrition leaders urged legislators to provide more funding to feed children and prevent the stigma children face when identified as eligible for the low-income programs.

“We need to make sure that no student goes hungry in our schools,” Sweeney said. “You are not learning trigonometry or you’re not learning how to read if you are hungry.”

Kim Eckhart, interim director of the Children’s Defense Fund Ohio, said while it would be ideal to have a universal school meal program, an alternative idea would be making breakfast free at schools.

“Those families that need that, they are going to get to school early if they are hungry,” she said. “Many children, especially in high school, will just go without food. We want to make sure that is no longer an issue.”

Sweeney said it would cost $26 million in the state’s budget for every student in Ohio to get a free breakfast at school.

To put that in perspective, she brought up Wednesday’s controversial House vote that advanced a resolution that would ask voters in a $20 million August special election to raise the passage threshold for constitutional amendments.

“Comparatively, for what we’re talking about (free breakfast in schools), it isn’t that much money,” Sweeney said. “Clearly, it’s not that much money if we can do an unnecessary election with it.”

When the pandemic first hit, Congress allowed the U.S. Department of Agriculture to implement child nutrition waivers in March 2020, which allowed schools to be reimbursed at higher rates for serving free food to all students, regardless of family income.

That program expired last summer, causing the number of families struggling with school meal debt to rise, Eckhart said.

Even though the free school meals was through the federal government, she said she would love to see the state government enact something similar.

“We just want school to be a place where everybody can come around the table and share a meal and there’s no distinction (between students who have free and reduced lunches and those who don’t),” Eckhart said to a round of applause.

All People’s Fresh Market

Katelin Hansen, executive minister for United Methodist Church For All People, talked about All People’s Fresh Market on Columbus’ South Side, which provides fresh fruits, vegetables and dairy products to households making less than 200% of the federal poverty level — $27,180 for a one-person household and $55,500 for a four-person household.

All People’s Fresh Market served about 200 people a week when it first started back in 2012 and today it serves 300-400 people a day, she said.

“Everything we give away is healthy food,” Hansen said. “Everyone wants to eat healthy food. Everyone wants to live a long life. No one wants to be sick.”

Thursday’s luncheon was hosted by the Hunger Network in Ohio, the Ohio Council of Churches and the Dominican Sisters of Peace.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.

And yet, in most American cities — and a wide range of red, blue and purple communities across the country — a quiet consensus has formed around dual language immersion programs. These bilingual schools appear to appeal to everyone — for the past two decades, their numbers have rapidly increased. They’re popular because they offer 1) all students the chance to become bilingual in diverse learning settings, and 2) English learners the best chance to retain their emerging bilingual skills and succeed academically. But in a joint Century Foundation and the Children’s Equity Project report published this week, we show that these bonuses aren’t a certainty. 

First: What are they? The most effective are “two-way” dual language immersion programs. These offer bilingual instruction and a bilingual social world — by enrolling roughly equal shares of children who are native speakers of English and children who are native speakers of the program’s other, “partner,” language. This is a major improvement on traditional U.S. language courses, where one Spanish-speaking (or French-speaking, or Arabic-speaking, etc.) teacher tries to cajole a classful of native English-speakers into conjugating verbs. It is also an improvement on traditional U.S. bilingual education programs, which usually only offer bilingual instruction long enough to transition English-learning children to English-only instruction. 

But, as one of us noted in a 2017 article — and the New York Times’s hit podcast Nice White Parents flagged in 2020 — the relative scarcity of dual language schools means that these goals are in tension. One in 10 American students is an English learner and these students gain unique benefits from dual language programs, particularly when they’re integrated. And yet, in some cases, high demand for dual language from privileged, English-dominant, and often white families displaces less-privileged ELs, who are disproportionately likely to be children of color, have immigrant parents and come from low-income families. 

It’s an elemental question of fairness: research suggests that policymakers should prioritize equitable dual language access for English-learning children, but also that diverse, linguistically integrated programs work best for ELs and English-dominant children alike. And, of course, the program’s popularity with the privileged can make it difficult to find a balance. 

To get a clearer view of the situation, our new report analyzes more than 1,600 dual language schools enrolling more than 1 million students across 13 states and the District of Columbia. It explores the different ways that cities and school districts are navigating that tension in their dual language programs. 

Given the tension between prioritizing English learners’ access and maintaining diverse dual-language campuses, it can be difficult to define and measure what counts as fair access. For instance, we found that a majority of dual-language schools in Dallas, New York City, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Oakland, San Francisco, Houston, and Portland enrolled a lower share of white students compared to their share of the district population in 2020. 

But we also found that access to these schools is changing over time. ELs’ share of dual-language enrollment shrank between 2015 and 2020 in a majority of these schools in New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and San José. Meanwhile, white enrollment shares grew in a majority of dual-language schools in New York City, Dallas, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Portland, and Washington, D.C.

These patterns are particularly striking in the context of shifting American public school demographics, where the share of white students has been shrinking — and the share of English learners has been growing.

Up to a point, enrolling more English-dominant students (of any race or ethnicity) can make dual-language schools work better for all students — including ELs. Indeed, while 92 of Dallas’s 154 dual-language programs got whiter since 2015, just 33 were whiter than the district in 2020. This is mostly because Dallas enrolls relatively few white, English-dominant students. A majority of the district’s students are current or former English learners and most come from Spanish-dominant homes. As a result, most of Dallas’s programs are “one-way” dual-language models, serving classrooms of only Spanish-dominant children. The upshot: the district might benefit from finding ways to increase English-dominant enrollment in these schools. Notably, San Antonio is pursuing this strategy in some of its dual-language programs.

The challenge, however, is to ensure that privileged, English-dominant families don’t fully colonize these schools and push ELs out. Fortunately, there are relatively straightforward ways for policymakers to protect English learners’ access. For instance, in rapidly gentrifying Washington, D.C., 13 out of 17 dual-language schools had student populations whiter than the district in 2020. But in San Francisco, another gentrification epicenter, just 3 out of 21 dual language schools were whiter than the district. 

Demand for dual language is high in both places. Thousands of children wind up on D.C. dual language schools’ waitlists each year. In San Francisco, in one program, there were two applicants for each seat reserved for native Japanese-speakers and 15 applicants for each seat available to non-native Japanese speakers — and similar patterns in other dual language programs. 

Notably, district leaders in San Francisco are much more aggressive about reserving seats for native speakers of the non-English partner language (e.g. Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, etc.). The data suggest the reserved seats are perhaps the key difference — without them, demand from San Francisco’s English-dominant families would rapidly shift programs away from English learners who are native speakers of the program’s non-English languages. Our research suggests that more schools should consider similar policies to ensure that ELs have fair access to the dual-language classrooms that serve them best. 

Finally, as we note in the report, “nothing exacerbates educational unfairness like scarcity.” The tension between prioritizing English learners’ access and enrolling diverse dual language classrooms would dissolve if there were enough programs to meet family demand. Local, state and federal policymakers should increase public investments in growing these programs. Above all, this means committing resources to train and license more of the bilingual teachers necessary to expand dual language instruction. 

Without reforms like these, the country’s growing number of dual language programs could fall well short of their potential for ELs and English-dominant students alike. Dual language schools full of privileged, English-dominant children will be less effective at producing bilingual graduates. Dual language schools that segregate Spanish-dominant (or Arabic-dominant, Vietnamese-dominant, etc.) English learners away from their English-dominant peers risk reinforcing social separation between families of different backgrounds. Given the popularity and effectiveness of dual language programs with children from linguistically, racially, socioeconomically, ethnically and politically diverse communities, that would be a failure indeed. 

Century Foundation senior fellow and 74 contributor Dr. Conor P. Williams; Children’s Equity Project executive director Dr. Shantel Meek; Century Foundation fellow Dr. Maggie Marcus and Century Foundation senior policy associate Jonathan Zabala are the co-authors of “Ensuring Equitable Access to Dual-Language Immersion Programs.”

Many capable Hispanic, Black and English learner students did not elect to join these classes on their own or were passed over by their instructors. And their parents were often unaware they could make the request. 

Dallas ISD, which serves some 142,000 children, took note of the disparity and in 2017 formed a racial equity advisory council — some of whose members had children in the district — with the goal of improving opportunity for all. 

It decided to move from an opt-in model to an opt-out policy in the 2019-20 school year. Since then, all students who score well on state exams are now automatically enrolled in advanced mathematics, reading, science and social studies — or some combination of the four. Under the current model, students cannot opt out without written parent permission. The move has dramatically increased participation among traditionally marginalized children.

The initiative is particularly consequential in mathematics. It places far more students on track to take eighth-grade algebra, a prerequisite for more advanced coursework in high school. Prior to the shift, only 20% of Dallas ISD 8th graders were enrolled in Algebra I compared to 60% today. 

“We talked about some cold hard facts and part of that was to … increase enrollment in the good stuff and ensure students are going to be successful once we get them in there,” said Shannon Trejo, Dallas ISD’s chief academic officer. “Advanced coursework in high school is a pipeline: You have to get in in middle school. The question was, ‘How do we ensure students who are prepared are enrolling?’”

And the policy has not led to a decrease in student scores as some speculated: Last year’s 8^th-grade Algebra I students had similar pass rates as those in years prior, the district said, with 95% of Hispanic students passing the test and 76% meeting grade-level proficiency; 91% of Black students passing and 65% meeting grade level and 95% of English learner students passing the state exam and 74% meeting grade level. 

Drexell Owusu, chief impact officer at The Dallas Foundation, which connects donors with charitable organizations among other endeavors, said he appreciates the district’s decision to raise the bar for students who’ve shown they are capable of more challenging work. 

“As a parent to three Dallas ISD students, I hold my own children to this standard, knowing that the challenge of advanced coursework is how they will reach higher heights as learners and people,” said Owusu, a member of the district’s advisory council. “As a business and community advocate, I’m thrilled with the increase in success rates for honors courses knowing that this will lead to great jobs and increased living-wage attainment for these students in the future.”

Dallas’s decision to open up its honors classes comes as educators and advocates across the country are reckoning with racial inequities in advanced courses and questioning whether current curricula serve today’s students. Some are urging decision makers to include access at every turn of a child’s academic career and to consider more modern and relevant coursework. 

This is particularly true of calculus, long considered a benchmark of high school success and often perceived as a prerequisite of college admissions — at least for wealthier students who have access to the course, which can be hard to find in Black, Hispanic and impoverished communities.

Like many school districts across the country, Dallas saw its math scores falter in recent years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the “Nation’s Report Card.” Eighth-grade math scores dropped by eight points nationally since the test was last administered in 2019, while fourth-grade scores dropped by five points — the largest decreases ever recorded.

The results were less alarming for Hispanic eighth graders in Dallas, who saw their scores fall from 265 to 261 and Black students in that grade who saw their marks dip from 252 to 249. The city’s fourth-grade math scores were about as dire, with Hispanic students in that grade seeing a six-point drop, from from 236 to 230, while Black students slid from 222 down to 218. 

Hispanics make up 71% of Dallas’s student body, Black students account for 20% and English language learners, who the district refers to as emergent bilinguals, make up 49%, according to Dallas ISD’s most recent data. White students account for 5.5% of total enrollment.

Students of color had been dramatically underrepresented in the district’s advanced programming. Just 33% of Hispanic sixth graders, 17% of Black sixth graders and 31% of English learners in that grade were enrolled in 6^th-grade honors math classes in the 2018-19 school year. Conversely, 51% of white sixth graders took advanced math that year. 

By the 2022-23 school year, 59% of Hispanic sixth graders, 43% of Black sixth graders and 59% of that grade’s English learners were enrolled in 6^th-grade honors math classes. The percentage of white sixth graders in advanced math also grew substantially, to 82%.

In past years, Dallas ISD school board Trustee Ben Mackey said some students weren’t selected for such programs because teachers believed they misbehaved in class. 

“Maybe that kid was acting up because they were not challenged,” he said. “Within two years of this policy, 94% of eligible students are taking these classes. It makes such a drastic difference in terms of whether the student will be college ready and career ready. We need to give every single person a chance to be successful in life, so when they leave us, they are not three steps behind.”

Juany Valdespino-Gaytan, the district’s executive director of engagement services, said the new model helps capture talented students who might not have known about the honors path. 

“The whole premise is that we are really trying to increase access to all students,” she said. “The policy change was our first effort toward that goal, making these courses available to any student and automatically requiring them to opt out. It puts students in a space where they are advocated for based on their performance.”

Trejo, the district’s chief academic officer, said Dallas ISD is tracking outcomes year over year, with a focus on whether students continue on an advanced pathway in high school. 

“I want our kids to graduate and be able to choose among different colleges and among different careers because they have been so well prepared in mathematics that people want them,” Trejo said. 

The New Jersey Board of Education decided by a one-vote margin this month to lower the minimum passing score on the state’s high school graduation test.

In four words, here’s what that decision means for families across our state: Expect less, get less.

For decades, no matter whether Democrats or Republicans were in charge, our elected officials have agreed that the state should set high standards for academic achievement — standards that correlate with being truly prepared for success in life.

This decision represents a stunning abandonment of that principle.

It also undermines the critical goal of equity. One board member who supported lowering the passing score suggested that it was “unfair” to “Black and Latino students” to require underperforming students to demonstrate a higher level of proficiency in reading and math before graduating. This gets it exactly backward. Every student, regardless of race or economic circumstances, should be launched into adulthood ready for success.

For too many years, our education system — sometimes subtly and sometimes more explicitly — set lower academic expectations for many students of color or those born into poverty. 

Holding all students to high and equal expectations is a core purpose of public education. The State Board’s decision, made at the behest of Gov. Phil Murphy, is directly contrary to this fundamental value.

So what is the justification for lowering the passing cut score in reading and math? It is certainly not that the state is achieving at a level that would somehow support lowering the bar. New Jersey rightly views itself as one of the top school systems in the country. 

In recent years, however, the trend line has had a decidedly downward trajectory.

With scores in both math and reading declining on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (the NAEP), I applaud our efforts to give our great teachers the tools they need to help their students succeed. It is critical, however, that we also double down, not let up, on our academic expectations.

More broadly, while “accountability” seemingly has fallen out of favor in some political circles, setting high standards without honestly measuring whether they are being met is flatly inconsistent with the best interest of students.

What’s the real motive behind the change? The answer is in the numbers. 

Under the prior passing score, 39% of students would be “graduation ready” in reading and 49.5% in math. With the decision to reduce the required score, the numbers would leap to 80% in reading and 56.5% in math.

There may be superficial political value in this statistical parlor trick, but it comes at the expense of New Jersey students.

This essay originally appeared at NJ.com. 

In an evaluation of 26 public and private Ohio teacher training programs by the National Council on Teacher Quality released today, seven received A grades for instructing new educators in how to use the science of reading with young students, while six received Fs.

The report offers some encouraging news for DeWine who wants to ban other literacy approaches that have lost credibility: Colleges are teaching phonics — a key part of the science of reading — to teacher trainees. 

But just nine of the 26 programs fully covered all five parts of the science of reading — phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, along with phonics. In addition, most did not give new teachers enough practice with students. 

“The review yields mixed results, with some programs providing strong coverage of reading science and others barely scratching the surface (or worse, actually teaching candidates bad stuff),” the report concluded.

Colleges are also training prospective teachers in strategies that many consider outdated or damaging, the study found.

“When teachers use these methods, it takes valuable time away from scientifically-based reading instruction, the best methods for children to efficiently and effectively learn to read,” said Shannon Holston, author of the report.

How well Ohio’s colleges are teaching science of reading is a big factor in whether, and how fast, DeWine can succeed in his plan to ban other reading approaches by the fall of 2024; or if the state will have to spend years retraining teachers.  

Though the state will likely start tracking what colleges teach soon, it does not now, so the NCTQ analysis offers an advanced insight.

“It doesn’t make sense to shift elementary schools to science of reading, but not address teacher preparation,” said Aaron Churchill, the Ohio research director of the Fordham Institute, which partnered with NCTQ on the study.  “Future teachers will struggle and need expensive retraining when they are expected to teach reading consistent with the science.”

The Ohio analysis is part of a larger report coming from NCTQ in June on teacher training in reading across the country. Ohio results were released early at the request of the Fordham Institute, which is active in Ohio education advocacy and helped create NCTQ in 2000. Reports from NCTQ have often been controversial and critical of teacher training programs overall.

One surprise finding: “Three-cueing,” a strategy that DeWine and legislators in other states have singled out to ban from elementary schools, is not commonly taught to new teachers. That strategy, which has students guess at words from pictures or context clues, is part of the popular whole language and balanced literacy lessons used in many elementary schools.

Only three of the 26 rated programs — the University of Akron and Ashland University’s undergraduate and graduate programs — teach new teachers to use cueing with students, Holston said. 

The report graded each teacher training program in the science of reading instruction by reviewing course descriptions and syllabi to see what classes cover. They did not observe classes.

The review gave seven Ohio programs overall A’s: Marietta College, Mount St. Joseph University, Ohio University, University of Dayton, University of Findlay, University of Rio Grande, and Youngstown State University.

Six programs were given F grades: Ashland University (undergraduate and graduate programs), Defiance College, Kent State University, Miami University, and the University of Toledo. 

Ohio State University, the state’s largest university, scored well, earning a B grade overall.

The 74 is sharing the findings immediately as the Ohio Senate weighs DeWine’s proposal. Universities have not yet had a chance to respond to the report, but The 74 plans to provide additional coverage soon.

The Ohio analysis is part of a larger report coming from NCTQ in June on teacher training in reading across the country. Ohio results were released early at the request of the Fordham Institute, which is active in Ohio education advocacy and helped create NCTQ in 2000. Reports from NCTQ have often been controversial and critical of teacher training programs overall, not just on this specific issue.

Don Pope-Davis, dean of Ohio State University’s College of Education and Human Ecology, has previously said  his school, the largest in Ohio, prepares students well in the core skills of teaching reading, including phonics. In a letter to the legislature in March, he said that 96 percent of his graduates in the last three years have passed the state’s teacher licensing test in reading knowledge.

“Our teachers perform at that level year after year because they are well-prepared to teach reading,” Pope-Davis wrote.

“What we teach at Ohio State is in no way at odds with the administration’s proposal.”

At the same time, Pope-Davis joined the Ohio Education Association and Ohio Federation of Teachers, the state’s two large teachers unions, in warning against banning any strategies that could help different students.

“No single commercial program is appropriate for all students, just as no single tool is the only implement for a given task,” he wrote. “We would urge caution with any legislation that prescriptively adopts one approach without any consideration for the individual student.”

Though DeWine, like other Republican officials in other states, is seeking to ban three-cueing, the NCTQ report did not find that it was a major part of teacher training in the state. Out of nine practices that NCTQ considers contrary to the science of reading, the most common ones taught to prospective teachers in Ohio, according to Holtson, are “guided reading,” “running records” and “miscue analysis.”

Though three-cueing is not prevalent in teacher training programs, Aaron Churchill, Fordham’s Ohio research director, said he still wants that strategy banned. School boards are still buying lessons that use it, he said, and veteran teachers who graduated years ago are using it in whole language and balanced literacy instruction.

“If Ohio reforms teacher-prep but does nothing in K-12, we’ll end up with well-prepared teachers in science of reading who end up conforming instruction to what their school is doing,” Churchill said.

White, the senior vice president of programs and advocacy for the Schott Foundation for Public Education, explored this through her contribution to The Ira A. Lipman Center’s Uncovering Inequality — a research project that dissects racial justice issues in education, housing, criminal justice, health and economics.

“We’re seeing an increasing narrative that we do have racial equality in our nation,” White told The 74. “I want to lift up this entire report as a counter to that prevailing and pervasive narrative.”

White’s research delves into how the promise of Brown v. Board of Education — a historic decision by the U.S. Supreme Court declaring racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional — has not been fulfilled.

In addition, White noted that there are new ways racial integration has been repealed post-Brown as schools recover from pandemic learning loss. 

“One of the key takeaways is that Brown’s promise has not been fulfilled, and there are new ways inequality is not only surfacing but also re-entrenching,” White said. “We’re seeing some of the opportunities from Brown in the integration of curriculum be repealed based on interests of the political right.”

“When we have examples like the racial identity of Rosa Parks extracted from our curriculum, we are being regressed into something that is steps before Brown,” White said.

The goal of White’s research is to show how the state of K-12 education speaks to the broader conversation of America’s racialized society.

“Racial inequality not only exists, but in every layer of our society there’s opportunity and necessity for us to enact a solution,” White said.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Your research centers around how the state of school funding, high-stakes testing and curriculum instruction today are as a result of the policies and practices made post-Brown. Tell me more about this and how racial inequities continue to persist in K-12 education.

When we took up the question posed about how racial inequality exists in our present day K-12 education system, we cannot do that separate from understanding what happened post-Brown. The very structure of contemporary K-12 education rests on the approach, or attempt, to fulfill the promise of Brown. When we begin to unpack its potential, its design and the resulting policies that came after Brown, it is then that we get to see the ways that inequality endures in our K-12 education. 

Thinking about the contemporary ways inequality persists is seminal in the education sphere because it’s not just one of the biggest policy restructurings in education, but by design it was intended to address racial inequality. So there was no question of whether or not to start with Brown because of that frame by which it was shaped in the mainstream to really undo this unequal system, unequal funding, unequal facilities and all of the things that segregated schools had endemic to their nature. So noting that we’re in a contemporary society where racial inequality has persisted, let’s fill in the gap between those two bookmarks.

As schools recover from pandemic learning loss, how does your research speak to the disparities of students of color?

The majority of students of color are attending schools, often in urban districts, that are under-resourced in terms of their class sizes, teacher turnover and limited teaching resources. When you’re in an under-resourced school, especially Title I schools, there is support for students based on various needs. Whether students are unhoused or receiving free or reduced lunch, there are services provided through schools so they can get breakfast, lunch etc. As we think about them post-COVID when schools were shut down, there were students who were experiencing the squeeze — especially within those first couple of months. There were some schools that had to really ramp up what it would look like to ensure students had food to eat. And we felt that squeeze especially for students of color to just get basic needs. 

You also have the digital divide. It wasn’t an easy shift for students to just go home and hop on a computer to engage in their classrooms. So much of the world went to Zoom-landia and that wasn’t so easy for your average student of color who either had limited technology — whether that be a laptop, phone or tablet — and/or sufficient internet to get onto those platforms. During the pandemic when a lot of industries were able to shift to remote work, there were also essential workers and many others who were still going in-person. So there was this squeeze for students of color to engage with the technology while also having limited parent support.

And then there was an overwhelming impact for students of color to get through their classwork. As the pandemic shook and shut down the world, one in three or four students of color experienced a close loved one pass away. That’s a lot of children over the last few years that are not just experiencing the squeeze of a new format of education, but also having lost people who’ve raised them. So when we think about the impact of the pandemic, there’s a particular effect on not just learning laws, but also the social-emotional aspects that absolutely had an effect on the educational outcomes of all students — and certainly for students of color.

What would you say is a key piece of your research readers should take the most away from?

There’s a lot and it’s hard to whittle down. We took stock to identify those key areas you’ve named in terms of high-stakes testing, curriculum instruction, etc. So in each of those areas, I do think there’s a key point. To zoom out, solutions are both needed and possible. We need equitable state and local policies in the education sector in order to shift all of these key areas named in the report. But we also need folks to understand the key learnings in this. 

One key learning is that inequality has endured since Brown v. Board of Education. We’re seeing an increasing narrative that we do have racial equality in our nation. There’s this counter narrative that it already exists, so why are we attempting to put in different practices and policies that would advance equity? I want to lift up this entire report as a counter to that prevailing and pervasive narrative. It is true that inequality has endured, we do not have a panacea, and all levels of society — both political and individual — are required. 

Systemic change does not get resolved by one shot policies. There are multiple and they’re persistent because of how entrenched racial inequality is in our society. So at every level of our K-12 education system, both opportunity and a necessity for action is needed in order for equity to be achieved and realized. So that is the key takeaway. It is that racial inequality not only exists, but in every layer of our society there’s opportunity and necessity for us to enact a solution.

What is something nobody has asked you yet about your research?

People often ask what can be done and what does this mean for educators. But so far, I have yet to hear about what communities and students themselves can do. There’s opportunities for policy changes and districts to use their voice to shape who is selected on school boards. However, mobilization and organizing are not just local needs. Using their voice at the state level is needed to ensure legislators are giving schools resources at the level they need so students can thrive. 

There’s also ways parents need to be supported when addressing learning loss. Parents and families are often overlooked and seen as marginal to the education system. But they’re absolutely core, their voice matters and they have agency. So that is something I want to lift up when thinking about how we see educational inequality. 

Parents, families and students themselves have agency to really be co-constructors in the type of educational experience they need. They’re the closest to it and they have the voice to really answer what it is that they want and need. So giving space for that and having them empowered to know that is beyond important.

Taking note of the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, how should educators, researchers, policymakers, journalists, etc. apply your research to their work today?

One of the key takeaways is that Brown’s promise has not been fulfilled, and there are new ways inequality is not only surfacing but also re-entrenching. We’re seeing some of the opportunities from Brown in the integration of curriculum be repealed based on interests of the political right. When we have examples like the racial identity of Rosa Parks extracted from our curriculum, we are being regressed into something that is steps before Brown.

By design, all levels of our K-12 education system are Eurocentric and explicitly racist. So when we’re at a place where we can’t even name the histories and heroines and heroes for communities of color, we are going back to a place pre-Brown. Whether you’re a policymaker, teacher, principal or whomever, if you understand how we are repressing some of the earliest civil rights gains in education I think that is the powerful takeaway. It’s a key takeaway when it comes to curriculum, when we think about high-stakes testing and absolutely when we dive into school funding.