Getting Pepper-Sprayed by Institution Authorities Should Not Be a Part of My Work

I have only felt the terrible sting and discomfort of pepper spray one time, and that was when I was teaching and coaching teachers in the high school setting. The last lunch had dismissed. Students filed out of the cafeteria and were rowdy and noisy. The police officer followed the students upstairs and asked them to get to class. Since they weren’t moving quickly enough, she sprayed pepper spray into the air. That spray not only reached the students, but it also reached staff members, like me, who were monitoring the halls.

I was pissed. At first, I thought maybe a fight had happened, but it hadn’t. The students were too loud, standing in crowds in the hall and not moving fast enough during the passing period. Students came into my class angry and complaining about how the police officer’s response was not fair. We were already a day behind schedule reading “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry because our discussion was so rich that I allowed it to continue for too long the day prior. Now, we were destined to fall further behind. 

Half of my room was a classroom and the other side was an office space. There wasn’t a wall to separate the spaces, so the students could see me as I was pacing to blow off some steam. A student said, “Mrs. Barnes, don’t touch your eyes. It makes it worse.” The response caught me off guard, but it shouldn’t have. These high school students already knew what not to do when pepper-sprayed by the police.

Of course, I couldn’t pretend like the situation didn’t happen. I let students vent, and I told them I would talk to the police officer after school. There were some lively comments on what I should tell her … too lively for this post. After I reminded students of the type of language we should use, we got back to reading Hansberry.

After school, the police officer appeared annoyed that I followed up with her. I expressed how the spray got to me as well as the students. She said, “The students should have complied.”

This is why there has to be a conversation about the role of school police officers in schools. Would a police officer in the suburbs spray the hallway with pepper spray during the passing period to get students to move along? I think not. During my career, I have seen students put into handcuffs and into cop cars. I have had the police come to my classroom to get a student. Not because I called them, but because the police were following up on a situation that happened prior to my class.

When I think about my own sons, I don’t want the police to be the armed muscle of teachers to get my children under control. If I don’t want that for my children, I certainly don’t want that for my students. My current school does not have a police officer on campus, and I feel good about that. A recent Chalkbeat article summarized various studies on school police. The closing paragraph caught my attention. 

A recent study found that police in predominantly Black schools were more likely to view students in those schools as a threat. ‘These findings help explain how SROs’ perceptions might expose students of color to more frequent and intense police interactions,’ the researchers concluded.

Being an educator is tough enough. Educators don’t need the extra emotional trauma of seeing students hauled away by police or even getting caught up in pepper spray by the police. If people are insisting that school resource officers are necessary, then I wonder if we are operating schools or mini-prisons.

This post originally appeared on Indy K12 as “Getting Pepper Sprayed by the School Police Shouldn’t Be Part of the Job as a Teacher.”

Photo by Adam Cohn via Flickr, CC-licensed.

By: Shawnta S. Barnes
Title: Getting Pepper-Sprayed by School Police Shouldn’t Be a Part of My Job
Sourced From: educationpost.org/getting-pepper-sprayed-by-school-police-shouldnt-be-a-part-of-my-job/
Published Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 22:05:30 +0000

Teachers, If You Haven’t Been Giving a Damn About Your Students, We Definitely Don’t Need You Now

Before I stroll into my routine of being a habitual line stepper, let me state my usual disclaimer. Educators, I love and appreciate y’all. I think you have one of the most difficult jobs in the world in educating our kids while navigating a system that doesn’t show you the respect and, in most cases, compensation you need and deserve. 

Now here comes the shade—but it’s also a heartfelt and stern truth. With the impact the coronavirus has had and will have on education, I think now is a good time to admit that some of y’all just aren’t good at your jobs and head out. And yes, I said what I said.

Last week I wrote a piece where, early on, I sympathized with district administrators, school leaders and parents because figuring out how to teach our kids during a pandemic hasn’t been easy—and I extend those same sentiments to you all. But we have to be honest about where we’ve been and where we are and we simply cannot afford to have our Black students—the most notorious victims of an already failing system—continue to sink in these abysmal opportunity gaps. Because at this point, the investment in access and quality in content and engagement around education could literally be a matter of life and death for some of them.

The investment in, delivery of access, and quality of content and engagement around education could literally mean life or death for some of our kids. I live on the south-side of Chicago…I'm looking right at the dangers and forecasting.

— PeeplesVoice (@PeeplesChoice85) July 29, 2020

Now, I’m not putting an entire ecosystem of failure solely on y’all. Everyone was thrown into distance learning with very little—if any—preparation. I’ve heard many educators—especially those in low-income, under-resourced schools—complain about limited resources and access to professional development/training opportunities. And I’m fully aware that bad leadership at the school, district, state and federal levels cause a domino effect that ultimately impacts the classroom. But teachers are still part of that ecosystem—as we all are.

We live in a world where if you’re not good at your job, you lose it. Hell, I’ve had to swallow that pill a time or two. But the exception to that rule has been with teachers unions finagling their way through policies and practices for political plays and membership gains, allowing ineffective teachers to keep their jobs and checks—much like they’re doing now with some of their demands around returning to school during the pandemic. 

The new teacher union position, per @nytimes: We don’t wanna work in-person OR remotely!

Hey, at least they came out and said it: just pay us to do nothing. pic.twitter.com/DvIpkGuGpe

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) July 29, 2020

It’s absolutely reasonable for teachers to voice their concerns about returning to classrooms in the midst of the coronavirus—essential workers have been doing it since this thing started, but they haven’t seen much grace. But for unions to go so far as to demand that teachers not return to classrooms and have stipulations around how distance learning should look, using rebuttals such as, “Many teachers have expressed anxiety over how they and their homes will look on camera during live teaching,” is ridiculous.

Four completely insane things teachers unions are doing/claiming to muck up plans for the upcoming school year: https://t.co/kVOIr9wtnm #edreform #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/O0XX8Fjj9f

— Peter C. Cook (@petercook) July 29, 2020

And if you’re one of these teachers whose superficial plight and privilege takes precedence over a child’s right and need to actually learn, do us and them a favor and quit.

Also, if you’re a teacher who hasn’t been able to overcome implicit and explicit biases and prejudices that criminalize poverty, skin color and disabilities, you need to exit left quickly. We’ve seen and had enough of our kids being over-disciplined, under-educated and overall, underestimated. 

We’re living in traumatic times. In addition to fighting a deadly virus, we’re in a space of civil unrest fueled by racial tension, violence and injustice and I’m pretty damn sure all of these emotions and anxieties will find a way to manifest themselves in the classroom. We can’t have a teacher Karen sounding a false alarm and exerting her disciplinary power over a Black boy whose residual feelings over the murder of George Floyd, or maybe his own interaction with police, caused him to come to school emotional or distracted. Nor can we have anyone leading a classroom who’s decided to give up on their students because distance learning during COVID-19 put them too far behind.

Police Violence and COVID-19 Have Been Traumatizing. Here Are Tools That Can Help Schools https://t.co/bU9JwsQxTR via @educationweek

— Stacy Williams, PhD.,NCSP, LP (@Scheeatow) June 25, 2020

Finally, and keeping it real, some of y’all just don’t and haven’t given a damn in a long time.

I’m not a teacher—I knew a long time ago that it wasn’t a good fit for me. But I’m a diehard education activist and advocate and I believe both our missions are rooted “passion work.” And if at any point we lose that zeal, we should remove ourselves from the work to not do a disservice to those we initially sought to support. 

So on that note, if you’re unwilling to incorporate the innovation it’ll take to truly engage our kids in classrooms or virtually; if you’ve struggled with using technology but don’t care enough to learn; if you never have the time, energy or interest in developing a positive rapport with your students to better understand where they’re coming from and how they need to learn; if you checked out on them a long time ago—go ahead and fully check out now. Because it’s going to take commitment, broad and new thinking, patience and devotion to educate students in this “new normal.”

Bottom line, these kids are our future. The ones—if given the right people and resources—who can develop vaccines and cures for the coronavirus and all other ailments that plague us. With education and civic engagement, they’re the future leaders who can ensure no one else with Donald Trump-like tendencies ends up as our president. And with a consistent and strong support village in and outside of the school system, they can survive the systemic racism and intra-communal violence that threatens their lives daily. So if you know deep down inside that you haven’t done even a basic job or aren’t for real interested in cultivating their brilliance, you need not be in their classrooms. Period.

By: Tanesha Peeples
Title: Teachers, If You Haven’t Been Giving a Damn About Your Students, We Definitely Don’t Need You Now
Sourced From: educationpost.org/teachers-if-you-havent-been-giving-a-damn-about-your-students-we-definitely-dont-need-you-now/
Published Date: Fri, 31 Jul 2020 18:19:28 +0000

The Price Students Pay When Schools Are Closed

Teacher Kara McGrath, 42, waits as second-graders file into her room at Harding Elementary School in Erie, Pa., on the first day of classes for the Erie School District on September 3, 2019.

Numerous school districts are announcing plans to return to the online education they attempted last spring or to open their schools only with highly restrictive regulations on the teaching and learning experience. The primary consideration in making these decisions has to do with calculations as to the effect of school operations on the spread of Covid-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have put “a sharp focus on the necessity of in-person learning, outlining the social, emotional, and physical toll on students if they aren’t in the classroom,” but the agency “also emphasizes that there is a physical risk to returning.” Yet too little attention is being given to the educational price being asked of students, though many parents are beginning to think about exploring home schooling, micro-schools, tutors, and other alternatives. Just as workers lose jobs and businesses risk bankruptcy when a public health emergency shuts down an economy, so students pay a high price when governments place public health concerns above educational ones. Only with a full understanding of the great costs of staying closed will policymakers be able to make a proper decision about whether those costs are outweighed by the potential risk of further spreading the virus to the students, their families, and the faculty and staff. In my view, the question isn’t close. Following are seven ways in which students—and the nation as a whole—lose out when schools are closed or their operations are sharply restricted.

1. Every year—indeed, every month—counts, if students are to fulfill their potential.

Economists have estimated that each additional year of schooling yields a return over an economic lifetime of somewhere between 8 percent to 13 percent, with consensus estimates hovering around a 10 percent return. Studies of twins show that these returns are not simply a function of genetic differences between those with more or less education. Research also suggests that a year of elementary school and high school yields about as large a return as does another year of college.

But do students lose much if schools close for a portion of a year? One answer to this question is to be found in studies of learning loss during summer vacation. Some researchers show a widening of gaps between students from more and less advantaged homes; others are yet to be convinced. But researchers agree that students, on average, fail to make the same educational progress over the summer that they make during the school year.

Other evidence comes from school closures that happen unexpectedly when severe weather, teacher strikes, and/or wartime conditions preclude school operations. The most frequent cause, adverse weather events, has been repeatedly shown to have negative impacts on student performance exams taken at the end of the school year. Students performed less well on tests in North Carolina districts hit hard by Hurricane Floyd. Results are much the same for closures due to snowstorms in Minnesota and severe weather in Colorado and Oregon. In Maryland, an average of five days of weather-induced school closures shifted test-score performance downward by 3 percent among children in 3rd grade. Less extreme losses were registered by older children. One study suggests partial school closures may be worse than complete shutdowns. If a school remains open but absenteeism is rampant, the challenges of coordinating instruction across students with differential attendance contributes to learning loss. A study of the effects of Hurricane Katrina found that affected suburban students were 3 to 4 percentage points less likely to enroll in college. However, students attending schools in New Orleans benefited from the disruption, as their new schools provided a better learning experience than those previously attended in the “Big Easy.”

Teacher strikes are the second most frequent cause of school closures. During the first decade of this century a series of strikes in Ontario, Canada adversely affected growth in elementary-student test performance. A second study found particularly large negative impacts for disadvantaged children. In South Africa, the adverse effects of strikes were greatest for marginalized students. In Belgium, a May-to-December strike in 1990 resulted in higher levels of student retention from one year to the next and lower levels of educational attainment over the long run. When repeated strike-induced disruptions occurred between 1983 and 2018 in Argentina, those in affected cohorts lost an average of a half year of schooling. Those impacted by the strike were less likely to pursue postsecondary education and suffered an average lifetime earnings loss of 3.2 percent for males and 1.9 percent for females. In Chile, in 2011, it was a student strike that essentially closed the schools. The increase in student absenteeism of 10 percentage points was associated with a 3-percentage-point decline in the probability of enrolling in a university.

A profound closing of schools occurred in Europe during World War II. Forty years later the annual earnings of cohorts of students affected by the closures were reduced by somewhere between 9 percent and 16 percent. The price paid by children of less educated parents was even larger.

2. Online learning is no substitute for classroom instruction.

Many schools attempted to provide online instruction when schools were closed in the spring and early summer of 2020. Virtual learning is very likely better than no education at all, but at its present stage of development, it remains a poor substitute for classroom instruction in elementary and secondary schools. Even at the community college level, virtual learning is less effective than classroom instruction.

The adverse effects of online learning at the elementary and secondary level are best documented by studies of virtual charter schools. Numerous studies show lower performance by students at virtual charters than by those attending nearby public schools. A study of virtual schools in Indiana reaches the following conclusions:

We find the impact of attending a virtual charter on student achievement is uniformly and profoundly negative, equating to a third of a standard deviation in English/language arts (ELA) and a half of a standard deviation in math. This equates to a loss of roughly 11 percentile points in ELA and 16 percentile points in math for an average virtual charter student at baseline as compared to their public school peers.

Nor is there any evidence that public schools operated by school districts fared any better with online education when they switched from classroom instruction to virtual learning in the spring of 2020. “For most children, the school year effectively ended in March,” observes University of Michigan economist Susan Dynarski. According to surveys administered by the EdWeek Research Center during spring closures, “teachers report they’re spending less time on instruction overall, and they’re spending more time on review and less on introducing new material. Nationally, on average, teachers say they’re working two fewer hours per day than when they were in their classrooms. And they estimate that their students are spending half as much time on learning—3 hours a day—as they were before the coronavirus.” The Center on Reinventing Public Education reports the following results from a nationally representative survey of school districts in the United States: “Just 1 in 3 districts has been expecting all teachers to deliver instruction.” The researchers find large disparities depending on the wealth and well-being of the district: Districts with the most affluent students were twice as likely as the districts with the highest concentrations of low-income students to require at least some teachers to provide live, real-time instruction.” In a survey of parents conducted by Education Next in May 2020, 71 percent said their child learned less, with 29 percent saying a lot less, after their school closed; only 13 percent said their child learned more.

3. Rules and regulations reduce learning.

The quality of the experience at school is at least as important as regular attendance itself. Many states and school districts contemplating a partial reopening are setting conditions for school operations that will degrade the learning environment. If suggested plans come to fruition, in many districts only half the students are to be invited back at any given time, teachers and students are to wear masks for much of the school day, repetitive temperature taking and sanitation are to consume large blocks of school time, and sports, recess, and physical exercise are to be heavily restricted. All these policies are certain to limit the learning that will take place.

The most important factor affecting school quality is the teacher. Students who have higher-quality teachers are more likely to perform better on standard tests, graduate from college, earn more during their productive years, and avoid incarceration. When teachers are masked, it degrades their effectiveness in the classroom. Students find masked adults hard to hear, difficult to understand, and, in the absence of detectable facial expressions, challenging to interpret. It is even worse for teachers asked to understand masked students who articulate and project their thoughts less clearly than a trained adult.

Masks are hot, uncomfortable, and stuffy. They interfere with normal, relaxed breathing. In these kinds of hot, stuffy, uncomfortable, poorly ventilated circumstances, learning is degraded.

In the absence of air conditioning, students perform less well on end-of-year tests in years marked by a disproportionate number of extremely hot school days. Excessive heat and poor ventilation also increase student absenteeism. Conversely, an attractive school setting has a positive effect on student performance.

Time spent on task is closely associated with the amount of learning that takes place. But frequent hand washing, temperature taking, and other sanitation requirements subtracts the time available for instruction.

To allow students to sit six feet apart inside a classroom, many districts are planning to invite only half of the students to school at any one time. The plan is to invite half on the first two days of the school week, with the other half on the last two days, leaving the schools closed on Wednesdays for cleaning and maintenance. This essentially closes the schools to students for 60 percent of the time that this distancing rule remains in effect.

4. Closing schools damages the social and emotional well-being of children and young people

Many benefits of schooling are priceless. It is at school where students develop friendships, learn to be patient and to trust others, become more goal-oriented, and acquire valuable social and communication skills. Social and emotional learning at school is crucial for the development of the person. Grit, the ability to pursue success despite the odds, is learned in part inside a well-run schoolhouse. The acquisition of these skills is invaluable in and of itself, and the skills also contribute to student achievement. A review of multiple studies finds that young people are as much as three times more likely to develop depression in the future due to social isolation, with the impact of loneliness on mental health lasting up to nine years later.

5. Closing schools places the physical health of young people at risk.

Public schools provide a vehicle for a wide variety of public health and social services. Schools administer vaccines, conduct ear and eye examinations, serve free and reduced-price lunch to students from low-income households, provide emergency nursing care, and identify children at risk of abuse in other settings. Public health measures that close an official institutional agency that reaches into all segments of the child and adolescent population increase the risk of accidents, infections, illness, malnutrition, and premature fatalities.

The closure of schools in spring 2020 has reduced the number of vaccinations administered for a variety of serious child-related diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, orders for vaccines for measles and related diseases declined beginning the week of March 16, 2020. That the decline was affected by school closings is suggested by the steeper rate of decline among those over the age of two than for very young infants and toddlers.

Millions of students are nourished by the federal free and reduced-price lunch program. But when schools are not open, there is no convenient way for the schools to transport lunches to the children. Districts have tried to reach children by announcing the availability of school lunch boxes at specific sites, but this has required substantial efforts by parents to access lunches, leaving a sizable segment of students without access to the program. And if schools open with highly restrictive social distancing rules, the problem is nearly as severe. “Right now, kids have about 20 minutes to eat their meal,” says one school administrator. “If [we have] them coming into the cafeteria and keeping six feet apart, they’ll take 20 minutes just to get through [the lunch line], let alone them sitting down and having that time to eat.”

The loss of sports and physical exercise opportunities have already had a massive impact on students since school closed. According to a survey by GENYOUth, “Over half (54.5 percent) feel their physical activities have been disrupted with lower income kids at 63 percent. For many kids, sports are a path to an affordable higher education, as well as an invaluable source of leadership skills, self-discipline, team-work skill development and personal identity.”

6. School closures and online learning widen gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

The achievement gap between students from higher and lower socioeconomic backgrounds remains as wide in the second decade of the 21st century as it was 50 years earlier. If schools remain closed or opened only partially and fitfully, the gap will almost certainly enlarge for the current student generation. The effects of closures, digital learning, and restrictive controls on pedagogical settings shall be far more detrimental for those students who already have learning deficiencies or do not have access to alternative educational resources in the home or elsewhere. As discussed above, school closures have larger negative effects on student outcomes if a student comes from a disadvantaged background. Online learning is less effective with those who are less academically prepared. Disadvantaged students are more dependent upon the school system for vaccinations, eye and ear examinations, school lunches, identification of child abuse, and a host of other social services.

7. Closing schools and degrading school quality damage the human capital the country depends upon.

Just as schooling is critical for developing the economic potential of the individual, it is no less important for enhancing the wealth of nations. The average number of years students are in school is highly correlated with the size of a country’s gross national product. It is not just the number of school years that is important. The quality of a school—the amount of learning that takes place—is also associated with the rate of economic growth. Even within the United States, those states with higher-performing schools are the states experiencing the most rapid economic growth.

Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University, director of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, and senior editor of Education Next.

Read more from Education Next on coronavirus and Covid-19.

The post The Price Students Pay When Schools Are Closed appeared first on Education Next.

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The President’s Trumped-Up Claims of Voter Fraud

In a July 30 tweet, President Donald Trump suggested for the first time that the 2020 election should be postponed, drawing — once again — false distinctions between mail-in and absentee ballots.

With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020

For months, the president — who is trailing in the polls with the election less than 100 days away — has been warning about the potential for voter fraud in 2020.

But the president has no authority to delay the election — only Congress can do that, and that’s not going to happen, Jerry H. Goldfeder, a lawyer who teaches election law at Fordham University School of Law, told us via email.

“It is beyond remote that a divided Congress would postpone the election,” Goldfeder said. “We have held 58 presidential elections — during wars and depressions— and they’ve always gone forward.“

In an article in the New York Law Journal, Goldfeder wrote: “The U.S. Constitution explicitly provides that a president’s term is four years, and the new or re-elected president is sworn in at noon on January 20th. There is no provision or precedent for a sitting president to extend his term beyond then. … Congress alone has the authority to adjust this election timeline — provided there is sufficient time for either Biden or Trump to take the oath of office at noon on Jan. 20th.”

As we’ve explained, there is no evidence to support Trump’s overall claim that “mailed ballots are corrupt,” as he said in April. Voting experts told us the president is exaggerating when he says mail ballots are “fraudulent in many cases.” While the instances of voter fraud via mail-in or absentee ballots are more common than in-person voting fraud, the number of known cases is relatively rare.

Here we briefly recap the false, misleading and unsupported arguments that the president has made this year about the potential for voter fraud — starting with the case that he makes for delaying the 2020 election.

Absentee vs. Mail-In Ballot Spin

The president is drawing a distinction without a difference when he claims that absentee ballots are “good” but mail-in ballots will result in an “INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election.”

Voting experts told us the verification process is the same for absentee and mail-in ballots, and many states consider them to be the same thing — including Florida, where Trump has cast what he calls an “absentee” ballot. But it’s not really the case that Florida has absentee ballots.

Florida is one of 34 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that have “no excuse” absentee or mail-in voting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Voters in those states do not need to attest that they will be out of the voting jurisdiction on Election Day, or unable to vote in person because of an illness or disability.

So there is no special process that “absentee” out-of-town voters go through that other mail-in voters do not, Darren Hutchinson, a law professor at the University of Florida and an elections expert, told us in June, describing the “absentee ballot label” as “somewhat of a relic.”

“The differences between the two systems are trivial,” Hutchinson said. “There is no rigid screening process that distinguishes the two methods of voting. Once registration and address are verified, the elections office will process the request and send the ballot. In Florida, almost 30% of votes in the last presidential election were cast by mail, and voters did not have to provide an excuse, be absent from the state, or go through an enhanced screening process. On this issue, Trump is simply wrong.”

For more, see “Trump’s Absentee vs. Mail-In Ballot Spin,” June 19.

Bogus Claims about California

In May, Trump falsely claimed that California will send mail-in ballots to “anyone living in the state, no matter who they are or how they got there” and “people that aren’t citizens.” California plans to send every registered voter in the state a mail-in ballot for the November general election, due to the potential threat of COVID-19.

Sam Mahood, press secretary for California’s secretary of state, told us the ballots, which will be mailed to voters living domestically 29 days before the election, “will only be sent to active registered voters.” Inactive voters would be those for whom county elections offices receive an undeliverable election mailing “indicating the voter no longer lives at that address,” Mahood said. And if such a voter doesn’t vote in two subsequent federal elections, “their registration will be cancelled.”

Twitter appended a warning label to Trump’s tweets on this topic, encouraging people to “Get the facts about mail-in ballots,” with a link to more information about the president’s claims.

For more, see “More False Mail-In Ballot Claims from Trump,” May 27.

Trump also falsely said that California agreed that 1 million people should not have voted in the state.

Trump, April 8: I think there’s a lot of evidence, but we’ll provide you with some, okay? And there’s evidence that’s being compiled just like it’s being compiled in the state of California, where they settled with Judicial Watch, saying that a million people should not have been voting in — you saw that. … I’m telling you, in California, in the great state of California, they settled, and we could’ve gone a lot further. Judicial Watch settled where they agreed that a million people should not have voted, where they were 115 years old and lots of things, and people were voting in their place.

As we have reported, that’s not what happened. In January 2019, the conservative group Judicial Watch announced that it had reached a settlement requiring Los Angeles County to purge the names of inactive voters from its voter rolls after a period of time, pursuant to the National Voter Registration Act (and a 2018 Supreme Court decision that found such removal is mandatory).

The county sent notices to people it determined to be inactive, and agreed that if they did not respond, or did not vote in the next two federal general elections, their names would be removed from voter rolls. California agreed to notify its other counties to do the same. The settlement noted there was no admission of wrongdoing by the state or Los Angeles County. It also made no mention of voter fraud.

That’s where Trump’s comments go off the rails. No one alleged or provided any proof that any of those people actually voted, fraudulently or otherwise. Judicial Watch said “there were approximately 1,565,000 registrations on Los Angeles County’s inactive file of registered voters.”

As Judicial Watch noted in its January 2019 press release, “Inactive voter registrations belong, for the most part, to voters who have moved to another county or state or have passed away.”

“No matter how much he repeats them, Trump’s lies about voter fraud are patently untrue,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement to FactCheck.org in June 2019. “Specifically, the settlement with Judicial Watch, Los Angeles County, and the Secretary of State contains absolutely no admission to or evidence of ‘illegal votes.’ The President’s claims are untrue and yet another distortion aimed at undermining confidence in our elections.”

For more, see “Trump’s Latest Voter Fraud Misinformation,” April 10.

An Unsubstantiated Mail-in Ballot Conspiracy

In June, Trump ramped up his rhetoric about voting fraud to include foreign interference — specifically making the unfounded claim that “MILLIONS OF MAIL-IN BALLOTS WILL BE PRINTED BY FOREIGN COUNTRIES,” resulting in a “RIGGED” election.

Voting experts told us at the time that there are numerous logistical hurdles, such as reproducing ballots in multiple jurisdictions, and security safeguards, such as bar codes and signature checks, that would prevent a foreign government from slipping large numbers of fraudulent ballots past election officials. Those safeguards make such a plan highly unlikely to result in fraudulent votes being cast, experts say, and certainly not enough to sway a presidential election.

Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and author of “The Voting Wars,” told us that the kind of massive fraud described by Trump is “farcical.”

“It cannot happen,” Hasen said. “Foreign entities would have to figure out how to make the exact ballot of voters on a large scale — with each ballot differing in terms of the races covered, duplicate the same paper stock, replicate bar codes on many state ballot envelopes, forge signatures (and potentially witness signatures) and have detailed voter information, such as last few digits of a drivers’ license.”

Hansen said Trump’s claim “is beyond ludicrous, and seems intended to do no more than undermine voter confidence in the integrity of the 2020 election.”

Numerous voting experts told us they were not aware of any cases of counterfeit ballots being used in past elections. But if foreign actors were to attempt something like that this year, some experts believe the goal might not be to fool election officials, but rather to create chaos and confusion among American voters, many of whom might be voting by mail for the first time and might be tricked into voting with a counterfeit ballot that is never counted.

For more, see “Trump’s Shaky Warning About Counterfeit Mail-In Ballots,” June 25.

False Claim About Michigan

Trump — in a tweet he later deleted — falsely claimed in May that Michigan’s Democratic secretary of state was “illegally” sending “absentee ballots to 7.7 million people” for this year’s primary and general elections.

“Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of Primaries and the General Election,” he wrote. “This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue Secretary of State. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this Voter Fraud path.”

But Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, in her own tweet correcting the president, explained that Michigan would send absentee ballot applications — not ballots — to all registered voters.

“Hi! I also have a name, it’s Jocelyn Benson. And we sent applications, not ballots. Just like my GOP colleagues in Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia,” she wrote.

Politwoops reported that Trump deleted his tweet six hours after he posted it. He replaced it with one saying “ballot applications” — instead of just “ballots” — but still claimed the action was “illegal.”

Benson had announced May 19 that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all of the state’s registered voters would be mailed an application to vote by mail in the August and November elections. A press statement on the announcement said that 1.3 million of the state’s 7.7 million registered voters were already on the permanent absent voter list, and receive applications from their local election clerk prior to each election.

“By mailing applications, we have ensured that no Michigander has to choose between their health and their right to vote,” Benson said, according to the statement. “Voting by mail is easy, convenient, safe, and secure, and every voter in Michigan has the right to do it.”

She was also correct that Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska and West Virginia had mailed absentee ballot applications to voters.

The National Conference of State Legislatures says that all U.S. states allow qualified voters to vote by absentee ballot, and five states (Utah, Colorado, Hawaii, Washington and Oregon) currently conduct all their elections primarily by mail. Michigan is one of 34 states that do not require an excuse from those who want to vote by absentee ballot, according to the NCSL.

For more, see “Trump’s False Tweet About Michigan Absentee Ballot Applications,” May 20.

The post The President’s Trumped-Up Claims of Voter Fraud appeared first on FactCheck.org.

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• 3D Comfort mask design
• Convenient earloop design
• Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
• Easy to put on & remove

Note: These masks are not FDA approved nor are they N95. These masks are tested to meet the standards for Chinese KN-95. Tests confirmed almost 90% of particulate pollution, bacteria and viruses were successfully filtered when the mask was used. 20x more effective than cloth masks.

Specs

• Color: white
• Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
• Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
• 3D Comfort design
• KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
• CE 0194
• FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level

It Will Take More Than a Name Change to Rid Your School of White Supremacy

There is a myriad of disparities and gaps that exist in our society, placing people of color at a disadvantage. We are seeing this play out in real-time with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the coronavirus has disproportionately affected Indigenous, Black and brown communities. 

The response of the U.S. government has been one of ineptitude, infighting, and ultimately, tragic results for people of color. We are now seeing academic disparities rear their head, as Black and brown families wait for the public school system to open safely, while affluent, white families pay for school services and private tutors to ensure their children are prepared for their reality after this experience. These circumstances serve to widen existing gaps.

The foundations for these gaps were created when our systems began with individual actors working together to forcibly and strategically placed whiteness as the norm and first priority. Today, disparities are perpetuated by intentional action, but also by those who fiercely uphold the status quo or who have internalized whiteness as the standard to meet and serve. This is white supremacy. 

To some, white supremacy only means extreme violence and calculated menace from an era we have left behind—white hoods gathered at night beneath burning crosses. Time may have passed, but white hoods have transformed into police uniforms, teaching attire, corporate suits and business casual garb on the streets of our nation.

In our education system, it shows up in school policies that ban Black children from wearing their hair in natural styles or when schools don’t bother to translate important communication for non-English speaking families. It shows up as a noticeable difference in vendors who resemble the student population and serve the school community in a social sense—not simply business. It shows when districts post equity statements and continue to ignore widening achievement gaps between their white students and students of color—or low literacy rates among their African American students. 

None of it is fair to the children we serve. None of it is fair to us. 

The education system in our country was created by and for white families in every legal designation the system espouses—traditional, charter or private. The voices and needs of Black and brown students were not taken into account when this system began, and in many instances, are still passed over today. And our entire society lives with the consequences. 

Imagine what our world could be if we truly educated Black and brown minds to their fullest potential. We could have had the cure for cancer by now. Think of the discoveries, art, policies, writing and leaders lost to the perpetuation of this system. 

A society operating at only a fraction of its capacity can solve nothing. But, we don’t have to keep withering in the suffocating prison built for us by white supremacy.

Over the last 18 months, The Mind Trust worked to analyze our ability to act as an antiracist organization and the path forward from ways we have failed. We examined and acknowledged the ways we held up a white supremacist system and asked ourselves what deep work and outcomes are needed to become conspirators against racial injustice. 

We are asking ourselves questions that we call on other organizations to ask of themselves:

• How do we begin to reimagine and dismantle a system like this? 
• In what ways do we participate in the system? 
• How do we start building systems predicated on a different reality? 
• How do we not criminalize African American men, women, and children? 
• How do we not remove or ignore Latino perspectives and needs? 

We will all have to engage in deep interrogation and corporate soul searching to upend this current system. We cannot truly repair our country’s broken soul until we explore the root from which it came and why we continue to align with its principles. 

We need an effective strategy to masterfully challenge the system—because just as we will fight to tear down this house, some in our midst will fight to rebuild every wall that falls. Some will work diligently to protect this system—a prison to some and a palace to others. 

We will need to hold a deep commitment to this work as a social and moral imperative that can only be judged by outcomes, not feelings of pity or vain name-changing gestures. 

The commitment will need to produce tangible results for our communities that go beyond the notion that this is simply the right thing to do. For it is right, but it also creates an opportunity for our nation to live up to the promise of equality that has been a farce since the beginning. 

The Mind Trust is committed to continuing the necessary work to dismantle inequitable systems, as doing so can only make this nation—this world—truly live up to its fullest potential. We ask you to join us in examining the biases that live within your organizations and the systems that support your organization.

Photo by AS Photo Project, Adobe Stock-licensed.

Colorado News

New civil service report meant to bring people together has driven them apart

The authors of a new federal human capital report recently made the case that after years of studies, congressional testimony and panel discussions, the time is now for an extensive, large-scale modernization effort of the federal civil service and the executive branch agency that’s supposed to manage it.

Some of their recommendations, which were detailed in a 120-page report spearheaded by the Senior Executives Association and the Center for Organizational Excellence, are familiar.

Others, especially those covering the organization and leadership structure of the Office of Personnel Management, offer perhaps a different take on past proposals.

“My goal is to bring people to the table that can collectively work together,” Steve Goodrich, CEO of the Center for Organizational Excellence and one of the report’s study chairs, told reporters Tuesday. “There are very few members of Congress who spend their time focused on workforce issues but complain about it when they’re not being addressed. It’s time for all of us to come together, in a facilitated way, to start that dialogue and move that forward.”

But circumstances around the report and recent feedback about its recommendations illustrate just how difficult “coming together” will be.

The document itself has sparked a debate between the authors and at least one federal employee group, who believes its brief participation in civil service discussions was mischaracterized and creates a false impression that it supports and endorses the report’s 16 recommendations for OPM and the civil service.

The report lists seven people as study committee members and contributors. It also lists about 20 other “contributors,” who include representatives from the IBM Center for the Business of Government, the National Academy of Public Administration, private sector organizations, former federal and state human capital leaders and two federal employee unions.

But Richard Loeb, the senior policy counsel who was listed as a “contributor” from the American Federation of Government Employees, said the word doesn’t describe his involvement with the report.

In a July 27 letter to SEA and the Center for Organizational Excellence, Loeb said he represented AFGE at a day-long session in January to discuss “ideas on improving HR management.”

Loeb heard from the session’s organizers once in Feburary and again in May, who described an effort to conduct further research and solicit more feedback. But the report’s organizers didn’t solicit more input from AFGE, he said.

“You and your contractor patrons are certainly entitled to publish your views regarding the federal civil service,” Loeb said. “But this report has been falsely advertised as reflecting the views of a broad range of individuals and organizations who do not support its recommendations. Spending one day with 20 people talking about the future of the civil service and then using that day as a pretext for writing a report to justify the dismantlement of the basic structures of the civil service is dishonest.”

Loeb has asked that SEA and the Center for Organizational Excellence remove his name and AFGE’s name from the report.

Goodrich said he would honor Loeb’s request. A future version of the report will refer to its “contributors” as “participants,” he added.

“They were there, and they were engaged,” Goodrich said of AFGE and its involvement in the January brainstorming session. “They were listened to.”

In a press call with reporters Tuesday, both Goodrich and SEA said it was never their intention to achieve consensus with all of their contributors and participants.

But beyond its objections with how the union was characterized in the report, AFGE has numerous criticisms of the recommendations themselves.

“It is nothing but a dishonest attempt to promote the administration’s effort to abolish OPM and politicize the career civil service, and simultaneously destroy the pay and benefits programs that protect the civil service from the corruption of politics and discrimination,” Loeb wrote in the letter.

AFGE’s letter surprised Goodrich, who said he ultimately thought both he and the union shared the same goals.

“Our position is that we need to honor this workforce,” he said in a brief interview with Federal News Network. “OPM should be a standalone agency with a term appointed leader.”

The report from Goodrich and SEA makes several recommendations about OPM and its structure. It proposes reorganizing OPM’s policy offices and creating new ones. It suggests lengthening the term of the OPM director from four years to a five or eight-year term.

OPM should have a different name, mission statement and leadership structure, human capital authors said.

They contemplate moving OPM’s retirement services and healthcare and insurances functions to a different agency or to the private sector.

But clearly, AFGE and the authors of the federal human capital report see these recommendations in drastically different ways.

For Goodrich and SEA, creating a five or eight-year term for the OPM director would bring some much-need stability to a position that has seen a constant “revolving door” of leadership in recent years.

The Trump administration alone has nominated four different people in less than four years to lead OPM on a permanent basis.

But AFGE sees it differently.

“The OPM director position is already a four-year term appointment requiring presidential nomination and Senate confirmation,” AFGE wrote. “What possible advantage is gained from increasing the term of the appointment, other than to embed someone who many reflect an administration’s policies? Given the tenure of recent appointees to this position, increasing the term of office seems quite irrelevant.”

The union took offense with the proposals to restructure OPM and possibly move the agency’s retirement and healthcare services. OPM’s healthcare and insurance division “does a good job negotiating prices and coverage” for the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, AFGE said.

Moving these entities out “would reduce OPM by over 1,700 positions, meaning the agency would be at least 61% smaller than it is today, which is already at a historic low,” the union said.

To be clear, SEA and the Center for Organizational Excellence don’t offer a firm proposal on where OPM health and retirement services should go. In an interview, Goodrich suggested employees with outsourced positions could transition to new, “higher value” jobs within the federal workforce.

SEA and the Center for Organizational Excellence also suggest a review of the responsibilities and authorities of the deputy director for management position at the Office of Management and Budget.

For AFGE, the proposal represents another attempt to make OPM a “mere vassal of OMB,” “vesting real authority in OMB, an arm of the White House,” the union said.

But SEA and the Center for Organizational Excellence argue those concerns demonstrate the need for a review of the OMB position.

“Since its creation, it’s been a kitchen sink for Congress, throwing responsibilities across a myriad of areas, including many areas of human capital policy,” Jason Briefel, SEA’s executive director, said of the DDM position. “No one knows what that means and how it’s impacting these interactions between OMB and OPM, and the concerns that it raises about the independence of OPM and decisions its making with regard to federal workforce policy.”

The report comes as the National Academy of Public Administration is currently conducting its own, congressionally-mandated review of OPM and its statutory functions, which SEA and the Center for Organizational Excellence plainly acknowledge in their own report.

Goodrich said NAPA has a copy of the human capital report, but the organization didn’t provide real input on the recommendations.

“We’ve tried to be real honest brokers in this,” he said. “We’re trying to reduce the amount of tension so we can talk about the real issues.”

Stay informed: https://thecherrycreeknews.com/category/latest/

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• 3D Comfort mask design
• Convenient earloop design
• Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit
• Easy to put on & remove

Note: These masks are not FDA approved nor are they N95. These masks are tested to meet the standards for Chinese KN-95. Tests confirmed almost 90% of particulate pollution, bacteria and viruses were successfully filtered when the mask was used. 20x more effective than cloth masks.

Specs

• Color: white
• Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE
• Product dimensions: 1"H x 8"L x 5"W
• 3D Comfort design
• KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)
• CE 0194
• FFP2 - EN149 Filtration Level

Steer Federal Stimulus Cash to Poor Students

After months of anticipation, Senate Republicans finally released their bid for the next big Covid-19 relief bill this week, dubbed the HEALS act. The headline news for K–12 education is the proposal to steer the bulk of education aid to schools that open for in-person instruction, which is triggering angry reactions from most of the education establishment.

It’s hard to imagine that idea surviving negotiations with House Democrats. But if members of Congress are looking for less controversial and more constructive strings to attach to Uncle Sam’s help, here’s a suggestion: Return federal education policy to its roots and require schools to provide “targeted assistance” to their disadvantaged, low-achieving students. Rather than just letting schools dump their federal funds into a general pot that can be used for almost anything, make them steer Washington’s dollars into customized help for the kids who need it most. In other words, roll back the clock to 1965, when Congress birthed Title I with the goal of providing extra help for disadvantaged students, not schools.

—

Let’s recall a bit of history.

The question of whether federal aid would actually help kids learn more has been top of mind for policymakers ever since Senator Robert F. Kennedy famously asked if there was a way to make sure that money wouldn’t “just be completely wasted.” He was right to be concerned: The first wave of Title I funds was spent on all manner of nonsense, football uniforms included.

But the policy response to that problem created new headaches, as Congress demanded a clear audit trail showing Title I dollars being spent on the children who were the intended beneficiaries. Districts followed orders and soon were setting up separate and unequal Title I “programs” that often pulled kids away from qualified teachers to get low-quality remedial help instead. Guess what? That didn’t work, either.

So a quarter-century ago policymakers hit upon a new formula: Don’t micromanage how schools spend the money—and in fact, allow high-poverty schools to spend the money on everyone, via core “schoolwide” programs—but hold them accountable for results. This was simpatico with the standards-and-accountability movement that was then getting off the ground.

Judging by outcomes, that strategy worked reasonably well, at least for a time, both in terms of academic progress for the lowest-performing kids, and in higher graduation rates. But the backlash was fierce, and the politics could not hold, especially as parents and educators railed against “too much testing,” which came with few tangible benefits for individual kids. So the Every Student Succeeds Act all but obliterated the consequences part of “consequential accountability,” instead allowing states to do almost nothing when faced with chronically low-performing schools, and not even requiring them to issue school ratings anymore. To their credit, most states kept school ratings anyway, and about a dozen even had praiseworthy A–F systems. And then the pandemic struck.

Enter Covid-19

Now we’re facing the start of a school year unlike any other in history, one that will feature “remote learning” for virtually all public school students. The only question is whether it will be three days a week or five. And given the high number of cases, and the lengthy delays in coronavirus test results, in-person instruction looks to be the exception rather than the rule, especially in metropolitan America. Meanwhile, state accountability systems are sure to be suspended, even if testing returns in spring 2021. So we won’t really have “schools” as we typically picture them, and we won’t have results-based accountability, either.

So here’s the big idea: At least for as long as the pandemic lasts, let’s return to the notion that districts should be held accountable for helping individual kids who are falling behind. Let’s get back to targeted programs for struggling students.

I know what some of you middle-aged policy wonks are thinking: Mike’s about to propose bringing back Supplemental Educational Services! This was perhaps the least successful aspect of NCLB, a Frankenstein destined to fall on its face from the moment it was born. The idea was that low-income students in low-performing Title I schools would enjoy the ability to access extra services of their own choosing—after school or on the weekends—to help them catch up. And these services could be offered by a panoply of non-profit and for-profit providers, along with the school systems themselves. In fact, originally the school systems were not allowed to provide the services if they themselves were considered to be “in need of improvement.”

It was a mess. States were supposed to set up systems to vet potential providers; most did a terrible job. Districts were supposed to give providers classroom space and let parents know that these services were available—but they had every incentive to play games and hide the ball because the payments came straight from their Title I allotments. A few vendors were sincere about offering good tutoring and such, but plenty just chased the money. Eventually it was allowed to quietly disappear.

So that didn’t work. But there was something to the underlying notion: get extra help to the kids who need it most, especially in the form of tutoring.

In the current context, there are couple of ways that Congress could immediately shift federal funding back to a focus on individual students. First, lawmakers could disallow “schoolwide” Title I programs for the current year. To tap Title I, and maybe new stimulus funds, schools would identify eligible Title I students (i.e., those disadvantaged students who are “identified by the school as failing, or most at risk of failing, to meet the challenging State academic standards,” according to ESSA) and then spend these dollars on services designed to address their needs.

Second, Congress could funnel money into ESSA’s “direct student services” provision, which is a bit like the old Supplemental Services program, but run by districts instead of outsourced. This would likely go down easier with districts, given that it wouldn’t upend their spending plans and accounting systems in the same way that eliminating “schoolwide” Title I programs would. Either approach could mean more individualized attention, especially in the form of much-needed online tutoring, for the kids most at risk of falling even further behind. That would be an important contribution.

As a side benefit, it might also help to restore a constituency for assessments, as parents would see a clear benefit resulting from diagnostic testing. Shifting the accountability conversation from “identifying and intervening in struggling schools” to “identifying and providing extra help to struggling students” would be a win for ed reform advocates, now and in the future.

—

Let’s not fool ourselves: No school in the country is going to engage in serious “improvement” efforts this year. Nor will there be any “schoolwide” initiatives to help students reach high standards, given that there won’t really be “schools.” Rather than keep up the pretense of normalcy, federal policy should embrace the chance to focus on individual students instead.

Mike Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared in Flypaper.

Read more from Education Next on coronavirus and Covid-19.

The post Steer Federal Stimulus Money to Poor Students appeared first on Education Next.

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What a Democratic Sweep This Fall Would Mean for Education

Joe Biden speaks at a campaign stop in Hampton, N.H.

It’s looking entirely possible that Democrats will emerge from November with unified control of the White House and Congress. There’s a lot of time until Election Day, but no one expects Republicans to threaten in the House, the Senate looks to be in reach for the Democrats, and Joe Biden has a sizable lead on President Trump—with polls suggesting that voters may be ready to pull down the curtain on the Trump Show.

That raises the question of what might lie ahead. Amid all that we’ve been through in the past six months, it’s a query that’s fallen by the wayside. But it’s one worth pondering, as unified Democratic control of Washington could lead, for good or ill, to some profound changes in American education.

Why is that? Well, four constraints that long served to narrow the scope of federal education policymaking have largely given way. The most important is the increasing talk among influential Democrats—including Biden—of abolishing the Senate filibuster. This means that a bare majority would be enough to pass major legislation. It’s hard to overstate just how big an impact this could have on federal education policy.

Second, it’s tough to imagine that the green-eyeshade types will be much of a check on spending after a Republican president who ridicules concerns about the federal debt and after a coronavirus response that has sidelined talk of fiscal probity. Third, both political parties have grown far more homogenous, so the kind of intra-party squabbling that frustrated Presidents Bush and Obama is less likely to plague the Democratic caucus in the year to come. Finally, the give-and-take brand of compromise that once restrained both parties has been smashed to pieces.

So what does all this mean? The upshot is that, come January 2021, Democrats could be in a position to enact an education agenda that would’ve been inconceivable just a few years ago. How things actually unfold will depend on presidential priorities, where things stand with COVID-19, and much else. But here are a handful of remarkably ambitious proposals that could race through a Democratic Congress if Mr. Biden takes up residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and the filibuster is no more:

• Big New K-12 Outlays. Biden is promising to triple funding for Title I to $45 billion per year, increase federal outlays for IDEA, and double the number of “psychologists, guidance counselors, nurses, social workers, and other health professionals” in schools.
• Free College: Biden has promised to make up to two years of community college free for all students. He’s also “endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ original proposal to make public colleges and universities free for families earning below $125,000 a year.” And Biden’s plan is more modest than what some influential Democrats have endorsed. One can certainly imagine, for instance, a more expansive Sanders-Warren plan getting traction.
• Debt Forgiveness. Biden would forgive all undergraduate “tuition-related” student debt for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year and attended public community colleges or four-year institutions. Biden has also backed Senator Elizabeth Warren’s call to immediately cancel at least $10,000 of student debt per person.
• Equality Act. If Democrats scrap the filibuster, they’d almost certainly enact the Equality Act, which adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act while expanding the law’s definition of public accommodations and circumscribing the reach of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The result would require changes in policies governing athletics, dress codes, locker rooms, dormitories, single-sex schools, and more.
• Teachers Unions. Biden promises to enact two changes that would hugely benefit the NEA and AFT. Biden has pledged to “establish a federal right to union organizing and collective bargaining for all public-sector employees” and to “ban state laws” which stop unions from collecting fees “from all workers who benefit from union representation” (effectively reversing Janus v. AFSCME).
• School Choice. Biden’s proposals are less ambitious here than on many other fronts. He pledges to put an end to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program and to stop federal funds from going to for-profit charter schools. While prominent congressional Democrats have called for much more, including a moratorium on charter schooling, this is one place where splits in the Democratic caucus will limit what gets done.
• Title IX. Biden has promised a “quick end” to Secretary DeVos’s Title IX rules. DeVos’s rules reversed Obama-era guidance by adding due-process protections for accused students and relieving schools of some legal liabilities. Biden would reinstate Obama administration Title IX guidance that encouraged schools to aggressively expand investigations of misconduct.
• Universal Preschool and Child Care. Biden has sketched a 10-year, $775 billion proposal to promote universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds, new federal funds to support the construction of new child-care facilities, and an $8,000 tax credit to help low-income families pay for child care.

Every president is elected with a long laundry list of promises. It’s usually a mistake to make too much of them. But, come January, the usual rules may go out the door. If Biden winds up enacting even half of this agenda, it could fundamentally alter the shape of American education. Almost unremarked amidst the focus on COVID-19, school closures, this summer’s protests, and our fierce culture wars, we could be just over three months out from the most momentous education election in American history.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

The post What a Democratic Sweep This Fall Would Mean for Education appeared first on Education Next.

By: Frederick Hess
Title: What a Democratic Sweep This Fall Would Mean for Education
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/what-democratic-sweep-this-fall-would-mean-education/
Published Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2020 05:00:39 +0000