Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday, and it’s a cold day in Iowa.

Here’s your news roundup.

America’s Public Schools Are Losing Students (Axios Finish Line)

According to a report by Axios Finish Line this week,

“The pandemic has supercharged a trend that has plagued districts across the U.S. for years – students are fleeing public schools.”

“Why it matters: Public schools lose funding as they lose students, and some schools have been forced to shutter altogether. That disadvantages the many millions of students – typically lower-income students in cities – who can’t turn to private schools or homeschooling.”

“By the numbers: Public schools lost more than a million students from fall 2019 to fall 2020, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Enrollment fell from 50.8 million to 49.4 million.”

“What to watch: The federal government projects public school enrollment will fall even further – to 47.3 million – by 2030. Even the districts that have seen rising numbers in recent years are expected to shed students.”

Does this trend data suggest the formation of a new system of learning?

It’s clear that there is some sort of correction happening within the traditional system.

How impactful this correction will be on the present system remains to be seen.

Why Districts’ Initial Learning Recovery Efforts Missed the Mark (EdWeek)

This week EdWeek reported that,

“Districts’ struggles to implement widescale, academically intensive interventions stunted their ability to boost students’ academic performance, regardless of the recovery approach they used, according to new research.”

“In a working paper, researchers at the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research found that across the 12 mid- to large-sized school districts they studied, math and reading test scores saw gains that mirrored the pace of pre-pandemic years. But the districts weren’t able to exceed that pace – despite funneling millions of dollars in federal COVID-19 recovery money into intervention strategies like tutoring, small group instruction, extended school days or years, and expanded summer school opportunities.”

“The efforts often fell short of expectations because district leaders struggled to implement the programs at the intended scale and intensity, the research said. Districts faced difficulties in getting and keeping students engaged, staffing, scheduling, and getting buy-in from parents and community groups.”

Interesting.

It seems that the traditional system is built to get the same incremental progress when it comes to student achievement, no matter how great the inputs change coming into the system.

That seems problematic to me.

A New Playbook to Recruit Tutors: Tap Teachers in Training (The 74)

According to a report released by The 74 this week,

“Amid labor shortages, hiring from teacher prep programs could ‘unlock’ up to a half million new tutor candidates nationwide, experts say.”

“It’s a model experts say has the potential to help millions of K-12 students recoup learning lost during COVID. Researchers point to tutoring, either one-to-one or in small groups, as among the best proven methods for academic recovery. But school leaders looking to roll out such programs have often been hindered by educator shortages and pandemic fatigue.”

“’There are more than a half a million people at any given time who are studying to become a teacher in this country and very few of them tutor,’ said Kevin Huffman, CEO of Accelerate, a nonprofit organization working to scale tutoring nationwide. At the same time, ‘you’ve got districts that need people and it just feels like a match that needs to be made.’”

On the surface, this seems like a win-win for both the K-12 and higher education systems. But, with both of those systems, my experience tells me the “devil is in the details”. Getting these two systems to work together is easier said than done.

New Data: Post-COVID, School Leaders Frustrated in Efforts to Curb Misbehavior (The 74)

The 74 reported this week that,

“U.S. school leaders feel increasingly hampered in their ability to curb student misbehavior, according to federal data made public Thursday. Inadequate training in classroom management, pushback from parents, and fear of student retaliation were all cited as greater obstacles than they were before the pandemic.”

“The revelations came from the latest release of the School Pulse Panel, an ongoing data collection effort led by the National Center for Education Statistics. And while the results don’t include data on the number or rate of behavioral problems observed by school staff, they illustrate the methods that educators are embracing to address those problems and their sense of their own effectiveness.”

“Notably, 50 percent or more of all respondents to a panel survey said that they were limited in either major or minor ways by a wide array of hindrances. Nearly three-quarters of participants said they were constrained by a lack of ‘alternative placements or programs’ for disruptive students, while majorities said the same of inadequate funding (61 percent), lack of parent support (60 percent), insufficient teacher training in classroom management (60 percent), and the likelihood of complaints from parents (50 percent).”

When we ran our personalized learning lab school in and around the Houston Museum District, we had almost zero disciplinary issues. We always thought it was because our kids were surrounded by adults most of the day, instead of being in the midst of hundreds if not thousands of peers inside traditional school space.

Maybe it’s time to rethink what we expect from our young learners, and where we want to make learning happen.

Enjoy the weekend. And stay warm. SVB