A Little About a Lot

Catching Up in Learning Doesn’t Make Sense

Last month, EducationWeek online ran an article titled “Is This the Year Students Finally Catch Up From the Pandemic? Educators Think So.” The article states that,

“Educators are optimistic that this could be the year that students make up the academic ground lost during the pandemic.”

What does that really mean? Any education researcher will tell you that learning does not work incrementally, but traditional public educators measure all progress according to increments – daily improvement, six-week grades, end-of-year testing.

Learning follows a breakthrough path, where the learner struggles and struggles again, and then they get it, and they experience a breakthrough. That breakthrough could happen the day after six-weeks grades are turned in, and it may happen a week after end-of-year testing.

In addition, “catching up” probably means kids aren’t given the opportunity to accelerate beyond the desired outcomes. Learning becomes captive to time.

So when educators say kids are catching up, you might want to ask “Catching up to what?”

Cardona’s Tutoring Program a Mixed Bag

The 74 online recently reported that U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s tutoring program, announced in January of 2022, hasn’t been as successful as the federal government hoped. According to the article,

“Cardona’s 2022 speech was a ‘good use of the bully pulpit,’ said Phyllis Jordan, associated director at Georgetown University’s FutureEd think tank. ‘But it couldn’t overcome the implementation problems school districts had – from finding tutors to signing contracts to getting students and families to commit the time.’”

Tutoring failure is just another example of why the traditional school district is a tired and ineffective institution. In order for tutoring to become the powerful force it can be, it needs to move outside of these old, decrepit places called schools.

Are Charters Taking a Step Backward?

Recently, The 74 online reported that Los Angeles school board voted to restrict charters’ access to some district schools. Linda Jacobson reported that,

“Los Angeles charters could lose access to space in nearly 350 district schools under a resolution the school board approved… The action is likely to upend decades of practice in one of the more charter-rich districts in the country.”

“Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has 45 days to draft a policy that makes co-location – as the arrangement is called – off limits at schools that serve low-performing, minority and poor students.”

“Charter school advocates lobbied hard against the plan, arguing that it unnecessarily pits the two sectors against each other and violates a state law requiring school systems to provide classrooms for both charter and district students.”

Truth be known, most traditional school districts never liked the fact that they had to open classroom space to charters. Most school districts made the decision to share space with charters because they were losing money around under-enrolled campuses. The only traditional spaces that might have enjoyed co-locating with charters were the campuses that were able to share test scores with their charter counterparts. In many cases, high-performing charters kept a struggling traditional campus out of the “low-performing” category because they shared test scores.

If school districts are kicking charters out, it doesn’t bode well for learning pods and microschools if and when they want to partner with traditional districts.

No One Wants to Be a Teacher These Days

EducationWeek online recently reported that,

“Teachers have a seemingly never-ending-to-do list: Make bulletin boards. Plan lessons. Connect with parents. Do bus duty. Chaperone the prom. Write college recommendation letters. Run active shooter drills. Participate in professional learning communities. Learn new software. And on and on.”

“Do prospective teachers eye those job responsibilities and say, ‘no thanks, I’ll find another line of work?’ Ninety percent of educators surveyed by the Ed Week Research Center say yes.”

“In fact, more than half – 56 percent – fully agree that the demands placed on teachers are too high and that is why it has been hard to attract and retain people in the profession, and 34 percent partly agree with that perspective.”

Too many kids, too many things to do, and not enough money. That doesn’t sound like a strong future for the job we like to call “teacher.”

School Districts are in Financial Trouble – What’s New?

According to The 74 online,

“To understand the current state of the teacher labor market, you have to be able to hold two competing narratives in your head.”

“On one hand, teacher turnover hit new highs across the U.S., morale is low and schools are facing shortages as they seek to hire mor educators.”

“At the same time, the latest data suggests that public schools employ more teachers than they did before the pandemic. Thanks in part to strong state budgets and an infusion of federal funds, districts had about 20,000 more teachers in 2021-22 than they did five years earlier (a gain of 0.7%).”

“Meanwhile, those same schools were serving 1.9 million fewer students (a decrease of 4%). Those declines are widespread, with 35 states and more than two-thirds of districts enrolling fewer students than they did five years before.”

With more teachers and fewer students, districts are set up for future financial trouble. And what else is new?

Too many school districts exist in a world where their budgets expand and constrict based on undependable funding sources – soft money from either the state or federal government, fluctuating student enrollment, and shaky human resource decisions.

School Vouchers are Here

Call them what you like – vouchers or education savings accounts – but the program where families receive public money to use toward education costs, either public or private, seems to be here and here to stay.

The 74 online reported earlier this month that,

“The rapid growth of universal school choice programs continued…as the North Carolina legislature passed a state budget with an education savings account available to any family that want to opt for private education. Funding for the program would increase each year, reaching $520 million by 2032.”

More and more states are approving vouchers, but most of them are limited in their vision. Most offer support to parents who want to use public money to enroll their children in private schools. What vouchers should be used for is to arm families with public money in order to design a personalized learning plan that meets the needs of the individual learner – whether that plan includes private or public schools, or not.

Why I Think Public Schools are in Trouble

Edutopia online published a story recently titled, “Why I Embrace Seating Charts in High School.”

I will spare you the details of the article, only to say that focusing on seating charts is probably one of the reasons why public school are in trouble and may be a dead institution moving forward.

Another Reason Why I Think Public Schools are in Trouble

This week, EducationWeek online reported that only 1 in 5 high school graduates in 2023 are fully prepared for college.

Wow.

I’ll be off until October 19^th. Enjoy your fall season. SVB