Friday News Roundup

It’s Friday. Time for the News Roundup.

Amid Explosion of School Choice, Report Spotlights the Marginalized Families Left Behind (The 74)

As feared, the families that need choice the most, when it comes to their child’s education, don’t have real options when it comes to K-12 public schools.

The 74 reported this week that,

“As a mom with three children who have autism, Ashley Pihlman has spent the past 10 years on a frustrating search for doctors, therapists and schools to provide the structure and support they need.”

“Her youngest two attend the Mesa Public Schools, Arizona’s largest district. But public school wasn’t a good fit for Kain, who at nearly 11 still doesn’t speak. He needs constant supervisions and requires help with tasks like handwashing and opening snacks.”

“The state’s education savings account, held up as a model for school choice among conservatives, allows Pihlman to spend state funds on private school tuition or homeschooling costs. But that program didn’t work for her either. Schools that accept the ESA only offered to put him on a waitlist. For now, they’re homeschooling.”

…

“For parents like Pihlman, school choice hasn’t lived up to its promise as an alternative to traditional classrooms. With states like Texas and Tennessee aiming to pass voucher programs next year – and President-elect Donald Trump vowing to nationalize private school choice – a new paper from the Center of Reinventing Public Education focuses on the families that choice has left behind. Confusing admission policies, transportation challenges and inadequate supply means that minority students, kids from low-income families and those with disabilities often miss out.”

“’You can’t use choice as a solution to the quality problem,’ said Ashley Jochim, the author of the study and a principal at CRPE, a think tank. ‘Policymakers should make it so there aren’t any really bad choices. That’s priority number one.’”

I disagree. Priority number one is to better educate parents about what they should look for when it comes to their child’s learning plan. Then, parents can make better decisions about “the quality problem” moving forward. I trust parents more than policymakers to make the right decisions for our kids.

A Decade Ago, Universal Pre-K Seemed Inevitable. What Went Wrong? (The 74)

Conor P. Willliams, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, wrote this week in The 74 that,

“Early in my career – when the world was still young and the nihilistic carnival wing of our politics seemed safety marginalized, I was a periodic columnist for Talking Points Memo. Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote what seemed like a pretty decent prediction:

It’s increasingly clear that universal pre-K is coming. It probably won’t arrive in 2015. It might not be for a few more years. But this longtime progressive dream is going to happen – you can take that to the bank.”

“If any of you happen to be longtime readers who did, in fact, take my optimism to the bank, I’m sorry. Here in 2024, universal pre-K remains a distant dream – the National Institute for Early Education Research reports that just 35% of all 4-year-olds were enrolled in public programs. U.S. pre-K enrollment actually dropped from 1,378,146 children in 2014-15 to 1,332,999 in 2022-23.”

All research agrees that pre-K investment is one of the best “bangs for your buck” you can get in the public education world.

So why aren’t we doing what we know works for kids?

Can Immigration Agents Make Arrests and Carry Out Raids at Schools? (EducationWeek)

EducationWeek reported this week,

“Will immigration agents carry out arrests and raids at schools?”

“It’s a question on the minds of educators in districts and schools with large numbers of immigrant students as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office next month with a pledge to carry out mass deportations.”

“And it’s a question that grew more urgent Wednesday following a news report that Trump plans to rescind a longstanding policy that has discouraged immigration agents from carrying out enforcement activities in places considered to be ‘protected areas’ – schools; hospitals; churches; and other places where children gather, such as bus-stops, after-school programs, and child care facilities.”

So, yes, it appears raids and arrests will be made in and around our public schools.

Scary. Very scary.

39% of Des Moines Students Are Chronically Absent: What Schools Are Doing to Get Them Back (The Des Moines Register)

The Des Moines Register reported today nearly 4 in 10 of Des Moines Public School students are chronically absent, meaning they have missed more than 10% of this year’s school days.

“Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts walked through a light drizzle to a two-story red house.”

“He was looking for a 10^th grade Lincoln High School student who by early November had missed almost one-quarter of the school year.”

“Roberts stood on the front steps for several minutes, knocking and looking for a sign that someone was home. Finally, he opened the storm door, tucked his business card inside and walking away.”

“He had four more absent kids to look for that day – and yet, he remained hopeful.”

“’Whenever I visit a home and no one answers, I’m usually incredibly optimistic, because (the hope is) this is the one day that they are in school,’ he said.”

Really? Is that really the hope?

I’ve done what Superintendent Roberts is doing – searching for kids who have given up on the public school system. My experience – walking for dropouts and kids with serious attendance problems – suggests that even if we found the kids, we ended up returning them to the same boring conditions they walked away from to start.

No, Ian Roberts would be smart to stop knocking on doors and start improving learning for the kids of Des Moines, Iowa – especially those kids who are black, brown, and poor. Engagement is the key to getting kids to show up for learning. Figure out engagement and your attendance woes will improve.

Trump’s School Improvement Plan: Deport American Kids (The 74)

The 74’s Mark Keierleber wrote today that,

“Even as student enrollment declines drive staggering public school closures nationally, one group of students in particular – children from immigrant households – have been blamed for straining education budgets.”

“Politically aligned media sources are laying the groundwork for President-elect Donald Trump’s mass deportation plans. The Fox News station in El Paso, Texas, for example, rans a story this week stating that America’s public schools have endured a massive financial hit ‘by accommodating illegal migrant children’ and removing these students would be an ‘attempt to alleviate the problem.’ Its only source: an interview a right-wing pundit from the Leadership Institute gave to the conservative Sinclair Broadcast Group.”

“With the estimated arrival of more than half a million school-aged children to the U.S. since 2022, according to an October Reuters report, some districts have described budget constraints and challenges in accommodating language barriers and unmet educational needs.”

“Trump and his allies, who plan to use the military to carry out massive deportations at the onset of his second term, have made clear their intention to:

End the constitutional right to citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.

Overturn the 1982 Supreme Court case affirming undocumented children’s right to a free public education

Give immigration agents permission to carry out raids in classrooms.”

…

Is this the way we are going to improve our schools? If so, what a pathetic way to do it.

Til Monday. SVB