Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday! Time for the Roundup.

Most Students Don’t Have Connections to Their Teachers, Survey Finds (EducationWeek)

According to EducationWeek online this week,

“Student perception of teacher connection has declined over time to a new low in the current school year, after a brief increase in spring 2020, according to a new survey from YouthTruth, a nonprofit that surveys K-12 students and families for school districts.”

“Less than a quarter (22 percent) of middle and high school students said that ‘many’ or ‘all’ of their teachers make an effort to understand what their life is like outside of school, according to the survey of more than 88,000 secondary school students between October and December 2022.”

The problem with making connections inside the traditional public school system, especially at the secondary level, is that there is no time reserved for that type of activity. Instead, we expect students to attend seven to eight classes a day, with short passing periods in between. For teachers, we expect them to take on 150-200 middle school or high school students a year. That data does not suggest an optimal environment for building relationships.

Exclusive Data: As Post-Pandemic Enrollment Lags, Schools Compete for Fewer Students (The 74)

According to The 74 online,

“Three years and counting since the pandemic shuttered schools and tethered students to their laptops, new data shows that enrollment in the vast majority of the nation’s largest school districts has yet to recover.”

“Kindergarten counts continue to dwindle in many states – evidence of failing birth rates and an every-growing array of options luring parents away from traditional public schools. Experts fear those trends, as well as a possible recession and the looming cut-off of federal relief funds, amounts to a perfect storm for U.S. education.”

“Since last year enrollment has declined 2.5% in Chicago, 2.4% in Houston and 2% in Nevada’s Clark County, while New York and Los Angeles saw drops of just under 2%. The Hillsborough County district in Florida, which includes Tampa, and the Gwinnett County School District, near Atlanta, are the only two large districts where enrollment now exceeds pre-pandemic levels.”

So here’s the question:

Is the public school system ever going to get their numbers back up to pre-pandemic levels?

And another question:

If not, what could a new learning system look like for those young children and their families who choose “different” when it comes to their schooling options?

NYC Charter School Raises Teacher Starting Salary to $140,000 (The 74)

“A New York City charter school’s starting pay for teachers will be $140,000 in the fall, more than double the national average.”

I can’t tell you how many people just can’t believe we paid our learning coaches $100,000 a year when we ran our personalized learning lab school in the Houston Museum District several years ago.

It’s like we’ve been trained to think that adult learning leaders just can’t make that type of salary.

Well, those people who think that way are wrong.

It can happen.

Parents Don’t Know How Far Behind Kids Are (The New York Times)

In a New York Times opinion piece this week, Tom Kane and Sean Reardon (professors of education at Harvard and Stanford respectively) writes,

“Parents have become a lot more optimistic about how well their children are doing in school.”

“In 2020 and 2021, a majority of parents in the United States reported that the pandemic was hurting their children’s education. But by the fall of 2022, a Pew survey showed that only a quarter of parents thought their children were still behind; another study revealed that more than 90 percent thought their child had already or would soon catch up. To hear parents tell it, the pandemic’s effects on education were transitory.”

“Are they right to be so sanguine? The latest evidence suggests otherwise. Math, reading, and history scores from the past three years show that students learned far less during the pandemic than was typical in previous years. By the spring of 2022, according to our calculations, the average student was a half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.”

My experience tells me most parents are clueless when it comes to their children’s academic achievements, or lack thereof.

This is a big part of the problem when you try to change learning systems to make kids smarter and stronger. The young learner’s biggest advocate, their parent, has no idea how bad things are for their kids when it comes to their reading, writing, and problem-solving abilities. So they seem satisfied even though data suggest they shouldn’t be.

Dissecting Iowa’s $8.5 Billion State Budget. Here’s What Got Funded and What Got Cut (The Des Moines Register)

According to The Des Moines Register online this week,

“Senate File 578 funds the state’s annual standing appropriations, including $3.71 billion in state aid for K-12 public education and $107.4 million for Iowa’s private school scholarships.”

Kim Reynolds is Iowa’s governor. Governor Reynolds missed a golden opportunity because of her lack of vision. Reynolds convinced the Iowa Legislature to appropriate a little over $1 million of public money to line the pockets of the Governor’s private school friends. What she failed to do was to open public money to more out of school enterprises, including home school, learning pods, and micro schools.

Maybe next session.

Have a great weekend, and we’ll talk Monday. SVB