Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup.

‘I Used to Think School Systems Were Broken’: Educators Reflect (EducationWeek)

Recently EducationWeek online printed responses from a group of Harvard University future systems leaders to this prompt – “I Used to Think…and Now I Think…” Richard Elmore, the late Harvard education professor, started this response practice while teaching a graduate class. I’ll let you Google the article if you want to see the responses shared by current Harvard students, but, just for fun, here’s my response:

“I Used to Think our public school system could be saved, and Now I Think we need to create a new system of learning, especially for our young black, brown, and poor kids.”

What would be your response?

Wanted: Education Secretary Who Can Manage ‘Complex Issues,’ Believes in ‘Transformational Power of Education’ (Vermont Digger)

The State of Vermont is looking for their next Secretary of Education. The state’s job posting tells us that “Candidates for the job, which pays roughly $168,000 a year, will be expected to reduce inequality, increase test scores and promote career and tech education.”

I thought about applying for the position – for about a minute.

Then I realized that when the State of Vermont talks about believing in the “transformational power of education,” they actually want someone who can transform the current system to improve outcomes for kids.

That can’t be done.

States like Vermont would be wise to begin looking for a new type of learning leader, one that believes in focusing on the individual young learner as the unit of change instead of these places called school.

Inventing a New Public Education System Requires New Energy for R&D (Education Reimagined)

Education Reimagined, the Washington D.C.-based think tank, has decided to raise $20 million to apply to research and developing ways to create a new public education system for our country’s children. According to Kelly Young, Founder and President of Education Reimagined, “As we experience the ways in which our world is monumentally shifting – and the ways in which those shifts are accelerating – it’s becoming ever-clearer that we need to implement groundbreaking new ideas, systems, and technologies to reshape the ways our young people learn and develop. Inventing a new public education system requires investment in research and development. Full stop.”

It does. And $20 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what it will take to shift learning for our children to a new system.

But it’s a start!

Post-Pandemic, 2 Out of 3 Students Attend Schools With High Chronic Absenteeism (The 74)

According to The 74 online,

“It’s well established that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic. But a new analysis of federal data shows the problem may be worse than previously understood.”

“Two out of three students were enrolled in schools with high or extreme rates of chronic absenteeism during the 2021-22 school year – more than double the rate in 2017-18, the report found. Students who miss at least 10% of the school year, or roughly 18 days, are considered chronically absent.”

“The analysis, from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University, shows a fivefold increase in the percentage of elementary and middle schools with extreme rates, where at least 30% of students are chronically absent.”

I keep reading stories like this and I wonder…are these the early signs of a failing system, a system that need to be replaced with a new one that is more attractive to our country’s young learners and their families?

Study: Virtual Tutoring Boosted Young Readers’ Literacy Scores (The 74)

Virtual learning has taken a whipping lately, being blamed by traditional educators for “learning loss” across America during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. But recently, The 74 online reported that,

“Young children learning to read made significant progress after participating in a high-dosage virtual tutoring program, according to new research released Wednesday – results that seem to defy conventional wisdom about effective ways to improve performance.”

The new learning system will be a combination of the virtual and the real world – online and in-person.

The Biden Administration Still Hasn’t Defined Its K-12 Agenda. Why? (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek online reported this week that President Biden and his administration still has not released a clearly defined public education policy for the country.

According to EducationWeek,

“George W. Bush had No Child Left Behind, and Barack Obama had Race to the Top. But nearly three years into President Joe Biden’s tenure, the Democratic administration still hasn’t clearly defined its policy agenda for the nation’s K-12 schools.”

The reason for this not happening is simple – public education concern has left Washington D.C. and now rests with the states and their legislatures and local communities and their school boards.

Voucher Proposal Spurs Mix of Excitement, Wariness in Texas Home Schooling Community (The Texas Tribune)

The Texas Tribune online reported this week that,

“Parents of Texas’ growing population of home-schooled students are split over whether education savings accounts would give them much-needed financial help or represent an unwanted government involvement in their kids’ education.”

When we launched our personalized learning lab school in Houston back in 2014, we told our learning coaches there were three types of accountability they were responsible for: learning outcomes, effective use of funding, and accepting our supervision and coaching.

Home-schoolers, learning pods, and microschools would be wise to adopt similar viewpoints when it comes to their accountability to those who are providing the funding for their learning enterprises.

Miguel Cardona: There’s No ‘Magic Strategy’ to Help Students Get Back on Track (EducationWeek)

Further proof that the federal government has lost influence regarding public education across America is part of the story released by EducationWeek online this week:

“Student achievement in math and reading has hit its lowest point in decades. Students’ mental health has continued a long decline. And many schools are still dealing with teacher and staff shortages.”

“U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona says the Biden administration’s major accomplishment in response to those challenges has been the distribution of tens of billions of dollars in federal funds through the American Rescue Plan Act, passed in the administration’s first few months in 2021.”

“In an interview with Education Week, the secretary spoke about the Biden administration’s K-12 track record so far and its goals for the future. And he made clear that he doesn’t think there’s a ‘silver bullet’ solution to those challenges that the Biden administration will push from Washington.”

So it appears the role of our federal government is to provide funding to states and local school districts to do much of the same they’ve been doing the past 50 years.

The feds actions don’t provide much hope moving forward.

Enjoy the weekend, and I’ll be back Monday. SVB