September 23, 2016
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Just News is pleased to announce a couple additions. This week, we are adding a new section, "Whole Children and Strong Communities," that will highlight the holistic development of healthy, creative, and civically engaged youth as well as issues related to community schooling. Next week, we will begin a bi-monthly feature, "JUST TALK: Voices of Education and Justice." JUST TALK presents interviews with educators, students, researchers, elected officials, and community activists. Our first interview features Patricia Gándara talking about bilingual education.
September 23, 2016
Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Early childhood education is not a profession
Laura Bornfreund and Stacie Goffin, Pacific Standard
Early childhood education makes a valuable contribution to society by advancing children’s learning and development, enhancing their path toward success in school and beyond. Because of this, and tied to the belief that tangible contributions, both immediate and long-term, will be forthcoming, public investments in early childhood education are rising at federal, state, and local levels. But these results won’t be achieved if we don’t also invest in the preparation of early childhood educators and the field’s development as a recognized profession — a profession that is respected for its contributions; held accountable for providing reliable quality early education; and its professionals appropriately compensated for their specialized knowledge and skills.
Do teacher expectations matter?
Nicholas Papageorge and Seth Gershenson, Brookings
Researchers, policymakers, and education professionals alike tend to agree that it is important for teachers to believe in their students and to maintain high expectations about their students’ educational attainment. This is a key motivation underlying arguments to diversify the teaching workforce. However, little research has been able to show whether or not teacher expectations actually matter for student outcomes outside of specific experimental settings. In a new IZA Discussion Paper, my co-authors and I demonstrate that teacher expectations do matter in that they have a causal impact on students’ educational attainment. We also show evidence that teacher expectations differ by racial groups in ways that put black students at a disadvantage.
The substitute teacher's impermanence
Bridey Heing, The Atlantic
The United States public-education system is rife with issues and concerns, many of which are coming into sharp focus as, once again, students head back to class for another school year. In the landscape of testing, budget cuts, and the Common Core standards, it makes sense that little attention is paid to the plight of the substitute teacher. But in Substitute: Going to School with a Thousand Kids, the novelist Nicholson Baker explores the complicated place of the substitute in the larger educational picture and finds a system in woeful need of fixing. Substitute teachers are a ubiquitous part of public education. Anyone who attended a public school likely had both a favorite sub who allowed marginally more freedom than her regular teacher and a much-dreaded sub who was infuriatingly strict. They are part of the fabric of the school year, at least for the students. But for the substitutes themselves, their place in the school ecosystem is far more difficult to discern, and often they are left to fend for themselves with little preparation or (at least in busy schools) support.
Language, Culture, and Power
California passes game-changing ethnic studies bill
Roque Planas, Huffington Post
California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a landmark bill Tuesday ordering the creation of a model ethnic studies course for state high schools, handing a major victory to educators who contend that school curricula fail to reflect the diversity of student bodies. The bill’s aims seem modest. It directs the state’s Instructional Quality Commission to field a group of scholars and school teachers to create a model ethnic studies curriculum with standards that any state school could implement. But Nolan Cabrera, an education professor at the University of Arizona who has researched the impact of such courses on Hispanic students, said the California bill promised to help earn the field wider acceptance.
As students join national anthem protests, how should schools respond?
Evie Blad, Education Week
A silent act of protest started by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has spread beyond the NFL and onto the sidelines of many high schools in recent weeks as young players join in. Kaepernick, troubled by police treatment of black Americans, has stirred up both admiration and controversy for his decision to kneel during the national anthem rather than stand with his hand over his heart. And, as news stories from around the country show, some educators have been troubled by student athletes' decisions to follow his lead.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
California moves forward in 8-state collaboration on social and emotional learning
Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource
The California Department of Education has named 13 educators to a planning team to develop social and emotional learning guidelines for schools across the state, a sign of the growing state and national interest in teaching students the interpersonal skills that contribute to success in college and work. The planning team marks the start of California’s involvement in a new eight-state project known as the Collaborating States Initiative, launched in July by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit. The two-year initiative is intended to help state educators understand what social and emotional learning — which includes teaching students to listen respectfully, manage stress and set personal goals — looks like in the classroom and how states might map out a grade-level guide to developmentally appropriate skills.
Peer-led anti-bullying efforts yield payoffs
Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week
No matter how diligent teachers and administrators are, it's easy for bullying to happen under the noses of adults at school. In the bathrooms, the hallways, and on social media, students are often the only ones around to police themselves. That's why researchers at Princeton, Rutgers, and Yale universities are analyzing middle schoolers' social networks to find the students most likely to change their classmates' attitudes around bullying. They are finding that bullying is generally driven not by a few bad apples but by a majority of students within the overall culture of a school.
Here's how schools can support students' mental health
Meg Anderson, NPR
About one in five children in the United States shows signs of a mental health disorder — anything from ADHD to eating disorders to suicide. And yet, as we've been reporting this month, many schools aren't prepared to work with these students. Often, there's been too little training in recognizing the problems, the staff who are trained are overworked, and there just isn't enough money. When there are enough people to handle the job, how should all the different roles fit together?
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
On early ed, the U.S. is light years behind other industrialized countries
Lauren Camera, U.S. News
No sooner did the two presidential candidates spar over their plans to boost early childhood education than new indicators showed just how far behind the U.S. is in providing access to such programs compared to other industrialized countries. Out of 36 countries, the U.S. ranked 29 in enrollment rates for its 3- and 4-year-olds, according to Education at a Glance 2016, the 500-page report released Thursday from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD. “This is an area where the U.S. is left behind by quite a large margin,” said Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD's Directorate for Education and Skills. “When you look at early childhood education and care, they are quite low by international standards.”
Schools starting to nix felony conviction box on college applications
Lauren Camera, U.S. News
The largest university system in the country no longer will ask applicants about their felony convictions prior to admissions consideration. The decision by the State University of New York largely was spurred by a report published last year that found nearly two out of every three applicants who check "yes" to the question on a SUNY application about whether they've had a felony conviction do not complete the application process and are never considered for admission.
At last, your financial aid ordeal has gotten easier
Susan Dynarski, New York Times
Applying for financial aid and choosing a college in the United States is still much too complicated, but some long-overdue reforms are finally underway, and in the nick of time. A flurry of aid forms, essays and applications are due between November and March. Parents with resources, who have gone to college, can help their children through this byzantine process, with some paying experts to advise them. But many smart, low-income students don’t have that kind of help. As a result, they don’t get financial aid, don’t go to the school that is a good fit, or don’t go to college at all. Change is coming, and even if it is imperfect and incomplete, it is definitely welcome. Students can now find out much earlier whether they qualify for federal aid — getting this critical information before they start to make decisions about applying to college.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
School reform: What went wrong, what went right, and what we should do in the future
Valerie Strauss, Answer Sheet, Washington Post; William J. Mathis and Tina M. Trujillo, National Education Policy Center
Washington was euphoric. In a barren time for bi-partisan cooperation late in 2015, both Democrats and Republicans were happy to get rid of No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The K-12 education law was almost universally excoriated as being a failure — particularly in that most important goal of closing the achievement gap. Looking at long-term trends from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, gains were seen in some areas but the achievement gap was stuck. NCLB provided no upward blips on the charts. Thus, it is stunning that the successor law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed by Congress last December, is basically an extension of NCLB. Fundamentally, ESSA maintains the same philosophy and direction. It is still a standardized test-driven system that is punitive in nature.
Racial segregation in New York schools starts with pre-k, report finds
Elizabeth A. Harris, New York Times
From elementary through high school, New York City children tend to go to school with others similar to themselves, in one of the country’s most racially segregated systems. Turns out that racial segregation is an issue in prekindergarten, too. A report by the Century Foundation, a public policy research group, which will be released on Tuesday, found that in 2014-15, the first year of the major prekindergarten expansion pushed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, prekindergarten classrooms tended to be more racially homogeneous than even the city’s public kindergartens. In half of all prekindergarten classrooms, over 70 percent of students belonged to a single racial or ethnic group, despite the fact that the overall program was diverse, with no racial or ethnic majority. In one out of every six pre-K classrooms, more than 90 percent of the students were of the same race or ethnicity. In kindergarten, that is true in one out of every eight classrooms.
What's causing the increased enrollment at HBCUs?
Michel Martin, NPR
Historically black colleges and universities are having big increases in student enrollment. Dillard University president Walter Kimbrough thinks it's because of increased racial tensions on campuses.
Public Schools and Private $
What happens to 116 high school students when their charter school closes a month into the year
Joy Resmovits, Sonali Kohli and Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
Outside a synagogue on Pico Boulevard, home to the independent charter City High School, signs beckoned families to join: “Now Enrolling! 9th and 10th grade.” But on Friday morning, the classrooms were mostly empty. Instead, the blue chairs on which students sat for the last month were arranged in a circle outside on the courtyard’s cracked asphalt. Parents, students and teachers passed around a palm-sized stuffed lion and mourned the loss of their school, just a month into its second year. “It’s like a funeral,” said Tiffany Bowen, whose son Sudan was in 10th grade. “You know how I feel? You know on the iPhone, there’s an emoji with a bandage on its head? That’s me.” The charter school’s board of directors voted Monday evening to close the high school, citing financial and facilities problems. L.A. School Report first reported the news Thursday.
Obama administration goes ahead with $71 million grant for Ohio’s scandal-ridden charter sector — but calls it ‘high risk’
Valeria Strauss, Washington Post
In October, the U.S. Education Department announced $157 million in charter school grants, including a recommended $71 million to Ohio, despite the fact that its charter sector has long been, at best, a mess. At the time, many in the education world wondered why the department had given any money to Ohio, given that a newspaper had done an analysis revealing that the state’s charter sector had misspent tax dollars more than any other, including school districts, court systems, public universities, hospitals and local governments. When asked, federal officials admitted that they hadn’t quite realized just how scandal-ridden Ohio’s charter sector was, and decided that it would investigate. In June, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) asked the Education Department to review its grant-making process and said that if the grant was to be given, tough restrictions should be put in place, including an independent monitor.
Where charter-school suspensions are concentrated
George Joseph, The Atlantic
Shanice Givens’s son, Cyrus, was 6 years old when administrators at his charter school, Success Academy in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, put him on a list of students they wanted to push out. “They’d suspend him for not having on shoes, for not having his shirt tucked, for going to the bathroom,” says Givens. “So he lost courage and a will to want to do better.” According to Givens, Cyrus was suspended 30 times that school year. Success Academy spokesperson Ann Powell says the kindergartner was suspended only seven times. Either way, that’s a lot of suspensions for a 6 year old. Today, city leaders are increasingly pushing to reform school-discipline practices to minimize suspensions for students like Cyrus, heeding calls from activists and researchers who say excessive discipline can fuel rises in student dropout rates and push young people into the criminal-justice system.
Other News of Note
Global education is civil rights struggle of our age, says Gordon Brown
Press Association, The Guardian
Gordon Brown has described funding education in the world’s poorest countries as “the civil rights struggle of our generation”. Almost half of the world’s children face the prospect of growing up without proper schooling unless there is a transformation in education funding, the former Labour prime minister said. Brown, who heads the international commission on financing global education opportunity, said the shortage of schooling represented a ticking timebomb that could trigger new protest movements among a generation frustrated by a lack of life chances.
Just News from Center X is produced weekly by Leah Bueso, Anthony Berryman, Beth Happel, and John Rogers. Generous support from the Stuart Foundation allows Center X to provide this service free to the general public.
