Friday News Roundup

It’s time for the Friday News Roundup!

State Officials and Educators Brace for Another Tough Budget year as the School Year Starts (Vermont Public)

Vermont, like other states, continues to struggle with their school budgets. Vermont Public reports that,

“Last year was a bad year for school budgets. And this year, things could be just as bad.”

“…Governor Phil Scott wrote to school officials, warning them that, absent interventions, property taxes could spike again – and school budgets could once again fail in large numbers on the next Town Meeting Day [Most Vermont towns still approve their municipal budgets in person by voting]”

“’If we work together, we can stabilize the school budget process, reduce the risk of historically high school budget defeats and revotes, and create capacity for all of us to focus on improving student outcomes and implementing longer-term improvements,’ the governor wrote.”

“But while most agree that another tough budget year is indeed upon us, Scott’s letter – and reactions to it – also underline how little agreement or trust exists between the parties involved in trying to solve the problem.”

“As Vermont’s school children return to class, two education funding conversations are taking place in parallel. Local districts are beginning the work of building their budgets for next year, which will be voted on by residents at Town Meeting Day in the spring. Meanwhile, a special panel created by lawmakers, the Commission on the Future of Public Education, has begun meeting.”

Let’s hope the Commission on the Future of Public Education is willing to create a different funding model for a different public schooling system, because it seems like Vermont’s present system is going broke.

To Motivate Teens, Ask Them ‘Who’s Your Future Self?’ (Edutopia)

This week, Edutopia posted an article focused on the question “Who’s Your Future Self?”, a question that I know no one asked me while I was in high school.

The article begins,

“In 2019, high school junior Gil Leal was surprised when he came to school for his AP Environmental Science class and ended p in a strawberry field not far from his home in Gardena, California.”

“Accustomed to classrooms that isolated academic topics like soil decomposition or deforestation from real-world problems, he was delighted to find out that the information could be used to improve his own life, and the lives of people in his small farming community.”

“The course also opened a window into his future. Intrigued by the way his new AP class connected his current studies to himself, his community, and their respective futures, Leal enrolled at UCLA as an environmental science major.”

“His unique classroom experience was documented in a 2021 study – funded by Lucas Education Research, a sister division of Edutopia – that looked at the effect of project-based learning on AP courses in science and history. Students like Leal who proposed real-world irrigation and soil regeneration solutions as part of their AP science curriculum, or studied constitutional principles and took part in a simulation of an electoral caucus in an AP Government class, outperformed peers in traditional classrooms on AP exams by eight percentage points.”

“Indeed, a growing body of research confirms that when adolescents are given the opportunity to project themselves into the future, engage with complex civic issues, and think about how what they’re learning might alter the course of their lives, they find more m meaning in classroom work, reflect more frequently on who they are and what they want – and perform better academically.”

So (here comes that question again) why don’t we do what we know?

If we know the question “Who’s your future self?” matters when it comes to making kids focus on becoming smarter and stronger, then why don’t more adult learning leaders incorporate that question into their academic coaching approach?

Along with “What do you want to learn today,” “Who do you want to be?” is more important than any state-approved knowledge and skill out there.

Alas, more on cellphones (I know I promised).

As More Schools Ban Cell Phones, This is How It’s Working at One Colorado School ( NPR’s All Things Considered)

Last month NPR’s Rachel Cohen reported for “All Things Considered” a story about how a cellphone ban is working for one Colorado public school. Look at what Eli Howard, the lone student interviewed, had to say about the ban:

“Howard: I hate this new phone system a lot.”

“Cohen: Eli Howard is a junior. He doesn’t think the policy will make students pay attention in class, and he worries about safety. Earlier in the morning, the school was put on a hold during a potential emergency. It turned out to be nothing, but Howard was scared.”

“Howard: Like, I was like, dude, what if there’s someone in here and I can’t – my mom and dad – I can’t talk to them?”

“Cohen: Some parents also worry about reaching their children in emergencies. [School] Principal [Hillary] Hienton has this answer when students ask why the school is doing this to them.”

“Hienton: I say, I care about you, and I care about your education, and I want to make sure that you have the tools and the skills and the competencies that are going to make you successful in life.”

And the way Principal Hienton is going to accomplish that is by taking Eli’s cellphone away so he can’t call home?

Please.

Moving on.

American Public Schools Face an Existential Enrollment Crisis (NPR’s All Things Considered)

The same day NPR’s All Things Considered reported on the Colorado high school cell phone story, host Juana Summers talked with ProPublica’s Alec MacGillis about his recent reporting on how declining enrollment is a crisis for American public schools:

“Summers: …Enrollment in public schools has decreased by about a million students in the U.S. since the start of the pandemic. Some of those kids are homeschooled now, others in private schools, partly because of voucher programs in Republican-leaning states. …I mean, it’s just a staggering number – a million fewer students in America’s public schools over the course of about four years. Is it the chaos of the pandemic to blame, or was this just the direction that perhaps public education was already headed in here in the United States?”

“MacGillis: No, it really was the pandemic and the extended school closures that we had in so many cities. In some cities, the schools were closed for a full year and a half, and so you just had a lot of families that left the system in that period. Some families felt like their kids were not getting enough instruction during the Zoom school and so moved them into private schools that were still open. Some families moved to homeschooling in that period for the same reason. Then other parents, you know, when they – when schools reopened, they came back in, and there’s a lot of really unruly behavior in the classroom. After kids got back, they were just really kind of unsocialized. So in that period, you also saw a lot of families pulling their kids out into private schooling or homeschooling. So it’s absolutely an effect of this hiatus and of some of the decisions that were made. This is one more consequence.”

What happens during the next four years? Does our traditional public school system recover? Or does it continue to lose enrollment?

Or maybe there’s a more important question: Given its current condition, especially when it comes to educating black, brown, and poor kids, should our traditional public school system be allowed to continue their “business as usual” approach to making all of our kids smarter and stronger?

I’ll be off until September 30^th. Til then. SVB