Sunday, October 31, 2021
Washington Today Podcast (10/29/2021): President Biden meets Pope Francis
Today's program looks at President Biden's meeting with Pope Francis and French President Macron, Rep. Kinzinger's retirement, sexual misconduct charges against former Gov. Cuomo and Afghan war, and misspent aid accountability.
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Friday, October 29, 2021
Sen. Tom Cotton: "Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court. You should resign in disgrace, Judge."
Exchange between Sen. Tom Cotton and Attorney General Garland on school board memo.
Cotton concludes: "Thank God you are not on the Supreme Court. You should resign in disgrace, Judge."
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Washington Today Podcast (10/28/21): President Biden announces Budget Reconciliation deal
Today's program looks at the social spending & tax bill deal, oil company CEO's on fossil fuels & climate change, Justice Dept settlement in the 2015 church mass shooting in SC. Interview with WSJ's Natalie Andrews.
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Thursday, October 28, 2021
The Kind of School Reform That Parents Actually Want
School debates today feature what seems to be a paradox: Americans report exhaustion with school reform of pretty much every stripe, even as huge numbers of parents voice an appetite for novel options such as private school choice, home schooling, and “learning pods.”
What’s going on? How can parents simultaneously be exhausted by reform and hungry for options?
Let’s start with why Americans may be exhausted with reform. It’s fair to say that most parents and communities have had less-than-great experiences with “school reform” and the reformers who pursue it. From the train wreck of the Common Core State Standards to the renaissance of post-Katrina New Orleans, school reform has often felt like something that the comfortable denizens of Silicon Valley or Washington visit upon local parents and educators—whether they want it or not.
In fact, from a parent’s perspective, Big “R” Reform—in which reformers pursue ambitious reforms in pursuit of sweeping slogans (“closing achievement gaps” or “college for all”)—usually feels far removed from the things that will directly impact their child. Big R Reform can leave parents wondering how this addresses their pressing concerns about student safety, cruddy technology, or too-easy reading assignments. But instead of offering practical answers to practical concerns, reformers wind up encouraging parents to send emails to state legislators or wear brightly colored T-shirts to the state capitol—in the hope that it’ll eventually help lead to the enactment of some four-point plan.
For low-income families in particular, school reform has frequently taken the shape of yet another out-of-town funder pursuing yet another ambitious reform agenda cooked up by a mix of self-assured researchers, crusading twenty-somethings, and foundation executives. In a story that’s been told time and again, these families wind up feeling tuned out and ill-used for the sake of an outsider’s vision of “reform.” While each new wave of reform is led by reformers who pledge that “this time will be different,” it rarely works out that way.
Meanwhile, suburban middle-class families have gotten the message that school reform isn’t for them or their kids at all. For three decades, school choice reforms have been designed and marketed as tools for serving low-income children in the urban core. When suburban parents worried about No Child Left Behind-inspired cutbacks in arts, world languages, and gifted classes, they were told to worry less about their own kids and more about what “those other kids” needed.
So it’s hard to blame any parent, especially after the past year and a half, for not wanting more “reform-minded” disruption. It’s easy to see why parents who’ve got the resources and know-how would rather call a principal to get their child reassigned from teacher A to teacher B or ask a school board member to help get their kid into a program.
This understandable inclination to focus on solving specific problems rather than wading into the miasma of system change helps explain the expanded appetite for more and better school options. For millions of families, “school choice” has morphed from abstraction to potential solution.
This applies to parents frustrated that local public schools tended to stay closed last year while many private schools opened safely. To parents who found themselves tasked with home schooling when school districts closed and now want to retain some of the benefits via “hybrid-home schooling.” To the one-third of parents who are in a learning pod or say they’re interested in joining one—including more than half of Black parents and 45 percent of Latino parents. And to the parents who have doubled the nation’s home schooling population to 1 in 10 students. These parents aren’t seeking to reform their schools; they’re just looking for options that suit.
So the seeming paradox isn’t so paradoxical after all. Parents are skeptical of reform because they’re skeptical it’ll help their kids; new options appeal because parents believe that these actually will benefit their children. A useful reality check for educators, policymakers, and would-be reformers alike.
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 The Kind of School Reform That Parents Actually Want appeared first on Education Next.
By: Frederick Hess
Title: The Kind of School Reform That Parents Actually Want
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/kind-of-school-reform-parents-actually-want/
Published Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2021 09:00:14 +0000
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Talking With...Podcast: Douglas Brinkley - Ep.5
Brian Lamb talks with historian Douglas Brinkley about his teaching career, Stephen Ambrose, the National World War II Museum, President Jimmy Carter, Hunter Thompson, Rosa Parks, and James Baker.
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Washington Today Podcast (10/27/2021): WH/CDC readies for COVID-19 vax for small kids
Today's program looks at WH & CDC prep for COVID-19 vaccines for 5–11-year-olds, Attorney General Merrick Garland defends memo on protecting school board members and Sec of State Antony Blinken on internal feedback and dissent. Interview with Politic […]
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The Weekly Podcast: Where are they now: The Progressive Caucus
In this episode of C-SPAN's "The Weekly," we'll remember several members of the Progressive Caucus from the early days -- and see where they are now.
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Wednesday, October 27, 2021
Behind a School Board Recall in San Francisco, a Diverse Coalition
Siva Raj had never attended a school board meeting until his sons began struggling in San Francisco Unified’s remote classes during the Covid pandemic. Reopening was at the bottom of the school district’s agenda, he realized. “It wasn’t a priority.”
He was living with Autumn Looijen, who had three children in suburban Los Altos, one of the first districts to reopen schools. Her kids were healthy, happy, and learning, while his teenager, once an honor student, was depressed, silent, and failing online classes.
In February, Raj, a technology entrepreneur, and Looijen, a software engineer, abandoned their start-up idea and launched a new project on Facebook. With no funding or political experience, they decided to recall three San Francisco school board members. (The other four, recently elected, could not be recalled.)
It worked. They mobilized volunteers to gather tens of thousands of signatures to trigger a recall election. In a February 15 special election, voters will decide whether to remove board president Gabriela López, vice president Faauuga Moliga, and commissioner Alison Collins. It’s likely the same ballot will also decide the fate of District Attorney Chesa Boudin; a separate recall campaign aimed at him has turned in many more signatures than needed.
Looijen is an independent who votes for Democrats. An immigrant from India, Raj is not a U.S. citizen, though under an initiative passed by San Francisco voters in 2016, non-citizens can vote in school elections in San Francisco.
Their priority is education, they say. The school board members “talk about equity,” says Looijen. “The best way to get equity is to get kids in school so they can learn.”
The Facebook launch drew quick results: 8,500 people signed up in the first two weeks.
Sixty percent of voters – 69 percent of those with school-age children – supported the recall in a February poll by EMC Research, and the board has managed to alienate a lot of San Franciscans since then.
Enrollment in the district is 37 percent Asian/Filipino, 28 percent Hispanic, 15 percent white, 7 percent multi-racial and 6 percent black, according to the district. Asian and white students in the district’s public schools do much better than Hispanic students and black students, state and federal standardized tests indicate.
For Asian immigrant parents, “the only way to achieve the American dream is education,” says Raj. “What upsets them is the feeling they’re being shut out.”
The Chinese-American Democratic Club offered 100 volunteers to gather signatures for recall petitions.
Black parents, “hit hard when schools closed,” also signed on, says Looijen.
Teachers also joined. “The vast majority want to do their job well and they don’t see the school board as caring about that,” says Raj.
The school board angered the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club by rejecting a gay father for the all-female, all-straight parent advisory council because he’s white.
A San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Heather Knight, talked to one recall campaigner, the father of a 10-year-old. The volunteer was wearing a rainbow beard, top hat, silver pants and platform boots, partly in homage to the 16th president. In January the board had voted to remove the Great Emancipator’s name from a school on the grounds of “colonialism” toward Native Americans. “I’m Gaybraham Lincoln,” he said. “Queens for the recall!”
Monty Worth, a history teacher at Lowell High, also was gathering signatures. “It’s damaging to progressivism to have this kind of radicalism” on the board, he told Knight. “We need practical people, and frankly, much more boring meetings.”
When small donations weren’t enough, venture capitalists Arthur Rock, David Sacks, and Garry Tan became major donors.
In a May poll, also by EMC Research, 71 percent gave the board a negative rating with only 10 percent positive, a huge shift from a poll that asked the same question five years earlier.
Mayor London Breed, who would choose replacements for the three commissioners if they’re recalled, has been very critical of the board’s lack of focus on reopening schools.
In the first pandemic summer, Breed mobilized city staff to open hubs where high-need students could study, play, and get meals. The school district refused to offer space in its empty schools. In a report, researchers noted the hubs might have served more children if not for resistance by some school board members, notably Collins, and by the teachers union.
In October 2020, Breed blasted the board for wasting time on the effort to rename schools. “Get our kids back in school,” she wrote in a statement. Thanks to low coronavirus rates, private schools were teaching in person, she pointed out. Yet, district students are “staring at screens day after day instead of learning and growing with their classmates and friends.”
In January, the board voted to move ahead with renaming 44 schools, canceling Abraham Lincoln, Robert Louis Stevenson and others accused of racism, colonialism, and other misdeeds.
The board also ended merit-based admissions to the city’s academic high school, Lowell. (See “Exam School Admissions Come Under Fire Amid Pandemic,” features, spring 2021) Selectivity “perpetuates the culture of white supremacy and racial abuse towards Black and Latinx students,” stated a resolution. In the future, Lowell will admit students by lottery, regardless of grades or test scores.
A majority of Lowell students are Asian, many from working-class immigrant families who can’t afford private school. “Most people had no chance to speak” about turning Lowell into a comprehensive high school, says Looijen. “Chinese immigrants felt disrespected.”
In March, tweets by Collins surfaced accusing Asians of “white supremacist thinking.” The board removed her as vice president.
Collins filed an $87 million lawsuit against the district and the board members who’d voted against her. A judge dismissed the suit in August.
San Francisco schools are open now, and Raj’s sons are learning again. But the neediest students are way behind, he says, and the board doesn’t seem to think that’s a priority. Raj, Looijen and their Facebook friends believe they’ll succeed in February and ensure that parents’ voices will be heard in the future.
Joanne Jacobs is a freelance education writer and blogger (joannejacobs.com) based in California.
The post Behind a School Board Recall in San Francisco, a Diverse Coalition appeared first on Education Next.
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Washington Today Podcast (10/26/2021): FDA panel backs Pfizer’s low-dose COVID-19 vaccine for kids
Today's program includes the latest Senate Commerce hearing on tech and children, plus today's FDA hearing and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia (25) joins to discuss the Virginia Governor's race.
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The Weekly Podcast: Colin Powell: Not a Presidential Candidate
Colin Powell died October 18, 2021, from complications from COVID ... His career included Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, and, as National Security Adviser..... But it was one thing that he didn't do -- run for president - […]
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The Weekly Podcast: Debt Limit Politics: 2021 – And 2011
Looking back to 2011...and another debt-ceiling debate. Compromise seemed elusive, angry words seemed abundant...and it all came down to the wire. Sound familiar?
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Tuesday, October 26, 2021
The Weekly Podcast: Military Leaders Before Congress
In this episode, we'll use the C-SPAN Video Library to remember other significant hearings in Congress which involved military officials
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The Weekly Podcast: When Mark Zuckerberg apologized to Congress
After the Facebook whistleblower - Frances Haugen - testified to Congress, Mike Allen of Axios reported "Facebook says Zuckerberg has testified before Congress seven times in the past four years." In this episode, we'll remember the times Mark Zucker […]
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FDA advisors endorse Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11
"Out of 18 voting members, 17 voted yes and we had one abstain."
FDA advisors endorse Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11.
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The Causal sequence
Advocates for taxpayer-funded school-choice programs cite the potential of market competition to spur educational improvement and promote equity for low-income students. When public schools don’t have to compete for students, the reasoning goes, they have less of an incentive to enhance their performance. Students whose communities don’t guarantee access to a high-performing public school are unfairly shortchanged if their families can’t afford to pay for a better alternative. Meanwhile, school-choice critics lament the exodus of talent and resources from public schools, which they argue such programs necessarily cause.
We often read about the launches and participation in publicly funded voucher or scholarship programs, which use tax dollars to help low-income students attend private schools. Most research on these programs examines their effects on voucher recipients, but that is only part of the story—and arguably not the most important part. What we really want to know is how market pressure affects the performance of local public schools over the long run. As a private-school choice program grows, how does increased competition affect educational outcomes for public-school students who don’t use scholarships or vouchers?
We examine these questions based on a rich dataset from the state of Florida, where a tax-credit scholarship program for low-income students has been operating since 2002. During that time, the number of participating students has grown sevenfold to nearly 110,000 as of 2017–18, or 4 percent of total K–12 school enrollment in the state. We construct an index of competitive pressure to measure the degree of market competition each student’s school faced prior to the program’s start. Our analysis then looks at whether non-scholarship students experience negative effects, either in terms of their scores on reading and math tests or their rates of absenteeism and suspensions, based on this pre-program market pressure and the expansion of the program over time.
Instead, we find broad and growing benefits for students at local public schools as the school-choice program scales up. In particular, students who attend neighborhood schools with higher levels of market competition have lower rates of suspensions and absences and higher test scores in reading and math. And while our analysis reveals gains for virtually all students, we find that those most positively affected are students with the greatest barriers to school success, including those with low family incomes and less-educated mothers.
Learning from Florida’s Long-Lasting Scholarship Program
Twenty years ago, then-Governor Jeb Bush signed a groundbreaking new tax credit into Florida law. The 2001 initiative, soon renamed the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, provides dollar-for-dollar tax credits to corporations that contribute to nonprofit Scholarship Funding Organizations. These organizations then distribute funds to low-income students to help cover the costs of private-school tuition and transportation. Because the funds are not directly collected through tax dollars, the resources students receive are conventionally described as scholarships, not vouchers. But in reality, the program operates much like a voucher program would.
In 2002–03, the first year of operation, the program spent $50 million to fund annual scholarships of up to $3,500 for 15,585 students whose household incomes were no greater than 185 percent of the federal poverty line (or $33,485 for a family of four at that time). The program has expanded over the years and now awards scholarships worth $6,815 a year, on average, to students with household incomes up to 260 percent of the federal poverty line, or $68,900 for a family of four.
We look at the program’s first 16 years, ending our analysis with the 2016–17 school year. Our data include students’ test scores, absences, and suspensions, as well as race, ethnicity, and whether they qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch. We restrict our sample to the 81 percent of enrolled students who were born in Florida, some 1.2 million in all, for whom we also have detailed birth-records data. That includes measures of families’ socioeconomic status at the time of the student’s birth, neonatal outcomes such as birth weight, and characteristics of the student’s mother at birth, including age, race, ethnicity, whether she was born in the United States, marital status, years of education, and whether Medicaid paid for hospital care.
We focus our analysis on students attending public schools in grades 3 through 8 during those years, because standardized test scores are most consistently available for this set of grades. Our main cognitive outcomes are scores on annual high-stakes standardized state tests in reading and math. While we include results on reading tests from the entire study period, the math results are from 2002–03 to 2013–14, after which accelerated math students could opt to take more advanced exams. We also calculate averaged mathematics and reading test scores for each student for those school years.
Uniquely, our analysis also explores the effects of competitive pressure on student behavior, including school discipline and truancy. We consider whether a student has ever been suspended in a given school year as well as the share of days that a student is reported absent, less the number of days suspended. Higher rates of separation from school, either due to absences or discipline-related suspensions, are associated with a higher risk of failing to graduate and being involved in the criminal-justice system in adulthood, making this an important predictor of student success (see “Proving the School-to-Prison Pipeline,” research, fall 2021). We observe suspension and absenteeism rates through the 2011–12 school year.
Calculating Competition
Building on our earlier work on the same program (see “Does Competition Improve Public Schools?” research, winter 2011), we use five measures to capture the degree of competitive pressure that each school is likely to face based on the pre-program presence of private schools within a five-mile radius. These are: density, distance, diversity, slots, and churches. We calculate these measures individually and then use those values to construct a single composite “Competitive Pressure Index” measure. We then divide schools into two groups based on whether they face more or less competition than the median school and compare the effects of the program’s expansion on student outcomes within each group. This enables us to determine whether the program’s expansion matters more in places where schools faced a lot of competitive pressure than in places where schools faced relatively little.
The “Density” measure is based on the number of private schools serving the same grade range within a five-mile radius—for example, for a public elementary school, this measure would include the number of nearby private schools that also serve grades K–5. The “Distance” measure captures the distance between each public school and the nearest private competitor serving the same grade range. The “Diversity” measure is based on the number of different religious denominational categories represented among nearby private schools. The “Slots” measure captures the number of private-school students served in the same grade range within a five-mile radius divided by the number of grades served. The “Churches” measure is based on the number of houses of worship nearby. This measure captures two potential contributors to private-school enrollment: the religiosity of the community, which is associated with demand for private religious education, and the availability of building space where private schools may co-locate.
Our calculations are based on data from 2000, the last year before the tax-credit scholarship program was announced. We opt to measure competitive pressure based on the pre-program landscape to avoid conflating the effects of increased competition with other school-quality factors that might influence outcomes. Each student is then assigned a school-level competition value based on the school attended in first grade. This addresses the concern that, if students move between public schools based on their perception of school quality, our estimates would capture more than just market competition.
We look at the demographics and performance of schools that are exposed to more or less than the median degree of pre-program competition and find substantial differences. At schools facing less competitive pressure, white students account for 68 percent of enrollment compared to 37 percent at schools with more competition. Schools facing less competition also enroll smaller shares of low-income students, with 67 percent of students ever qualifying for free or reduced-price school lunch compared to 76 percent of students at schools facing more competition. At schools with more competitive pressure, average test scores are 10.8 percent of a standard deviation lower in reading and 9.1 percent of a standard deviation lower in math than at schools facing less competition. These differences underscore the importance of using the changes in student outcomes that occurred within schools as the program expanded in order to discern the causal effects of competitive pressure, independent from selection effects.
Results
Our analysis finds consistent evidence that, as the scholarship program scaled up, academic and behavioral outcomes improved for students attending traditional public schools. More specifically, we find that students attending schools with more competitive pressure made larger gains as program enrollment grew statewide than did students at schools with less market competition. This difference was more pronounced for low-income students than their wealthier peers, suggesting that students eligible for the program benefited most from the increased competition it created.
In looking at schools initially facing more market pressure, we find that a 10 percent increase in the number of students using scholarships to attend non-public schools increases reading scores by 0.7 percent of a standard deviation and math scores by 0.3 percent of a standard deviation, as compared to schools facing less competition. At the same time, the share of students being suspended each school year declines by 0.13 percentage points, or 0.9 percent of the statewide average of 13.7 percent. In addition, the proportion of days that students were absent falls as well, by 0.03 percentage points, or 0.6 percent of the statewide average of 5 percent.
We see a similar pattern if we set aside program enrollment numbers and simply look at how the effects of initial levels of competitive pressure changed year by year as the program grew. Our analysis shows that reading and math scores at schools in markets with more competitive pressure increase by about 14.5 percent of a standard deviation by 2014, as compared to schools facing less competition (see Figure 1). By this time, the tax-credit scholarship program had quadrupled in size to about 60,000 voucher students. We also see growing improvements in student behavior at schools in higher-pressure markets as the program expanded, with statistically significant declines in suspensions starting in 2006 and in absences starting in 2009.
But schools in higher- and lower-competition environments did not have the same starting line—schools facing more competitive pressure experienced greater improvements but also tended to start with poorer outcomes. At the dawn of the program’s launch, schools with more market competition had reading and math scores that were 12.6 percent and 10.2 percent of a standard deviation lower than scores at schools with less competition (although absence and suspension rates were closely comparable). Our evidence suggests that increased competition contributed to a narrowing of this achievement gap.
We also investigate effects by student socioeconomic status, based on whether students have ever received free or reduced-price school lunch. While we find larger positive impacts for low-income students, there are positive impacts for affluent students as well. This is of note, since, though affluent children were not eligible for the program, its expansion is associated with improvements for this group in more competitive landscapes nonetheless. This suggests that the benefits of competitive pressure are diffuse and extend to children who local public schools do not stand to lose when tax-credit scholarships are available.
We also look at results according to the level of education of students’ mothers. As with income level, we find larger positive impacts among students whose mothers did not progress beyond high school compared to those whose mothers graduated from college. We then consider these factors in combination, along with other details such as whether Medicaid paid for the hospital bill at birth and the median income of the mother’s zip code at birth. We divide students into deciles based on their relative level of socioeconomic advantage to see whether the impacts of expanded competitive pressure differ along this spectrum of resources. While the effects are strongest for students in the bottom six deciles, students in every decile except the very top decile benefit from more competition. Notably, even students in the top decile do not suffer educational losses as a result of program expansion. Taken together, these patterns of results suggest that scholarship expansion may work partly through stimulating competition in schools that serve lower-income neighborhoods, through intensifying neighborhood schools’ focus on better serving their low-income students, or a combination of both.
Alternative Explanations
So far, we have suggested that the improvements we have documented are due to public schools’ responses to the increased competitive pressure they face as a result of the scholarship program’s expansion. But could the improvements in fact be driven by other factors? For instance, growth of the program could change the composition of students remaining in the public schools that face the most competition. It could also reduce class sizes in these schools if many children withdraw.
First, we consider the possibility that our results are due to changes in patterns of enrollment in different schools. For instance, if students who leave public schools to use the scholarship program tend to be lower-achieving on average, then the loss of those peers could leave behind a group that is, on the whole, more likely to earn higher scores on standardized tests. Such compositional changes could produce test-score improvements even if schools make no new efforts in response to the competitive pressure caused by vouchers.
To investigate this, we look at whether schools facing increased competitive pressure would have higher predicted test scores and improved discipline, all else equal, based solely on changes in the background characteristics of the students enrolled. We calculate indexed values of those outcomes predicted in each school and year, given only student background data. If we see that schools with more competition also have student cohorts with greater predicted scores and better discipline enrolled over time, this would provide evidence that changes in student composition, rather than any efforts by schools, may explain the effects we documented above. We do see some hints of this pattern; however, the differences are generally statistically insignificant and too small in magnitude to explain much of the effects.
We then turn to the potential effects on public schools based on changes in class size associated with increases in competitive pressure. However, in considering the likely impact of class size on our results, we find that the coefficients are simply too small to explain away much of the cognitive or behavioral effects. Our estimates imply that schools would experience a reduction in class size per 10 percent expansion of the program of less than 0.1 students, which would translate into an improvement in test scores scarcely different from zero. Thus, class-size changes would explain only a small portion of the observed effects of program expansion.
Evidence of a Rising Tide
School-choice programs have been growing in the United States and worldwide over the past two decades, and thus there is considerable interest in how these policies affect students remaining in public schools. Although we now have relatively comprehensive knowledge on the immediate short-term effects of the introduction of such programs, our understanding of their effects as they scale up is virtually nonexistent. Here, we aim to provide new evidence using data from Florida where, over the course of 16 years, participation in a tax-credit scholarship program increased nearly seven-fold.
We look at the market landscape of local public schools, based on the availability of nearby private-school options, to compare the effects of the scholarship program’s expansion on students whose schools face more and less market competition. We find consistent evidence that as more students use scholarships to attend private schools, students in public schools most likely to experience heightened competition due to the program see positive effects. Students at schools that face greater levels of market competition exhibited greater gains in reading and math tests compared to students attending public schools with less competitive pressure.
While these impacts are somewhat smaller than we might expect given the growth of the program, it’s important to note that our comparisons are among students whose schools are theoretically more or less affected by market competition—not among students whose schools were and were not affected at all by the presence of a scholarship or voucher program. As a result, these differences are likely conservative estimates of the true impacts of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program on non-participating students. We further find that program expansion and increased market pressure are associated with positive behavioral outcomes among non-scholarship students, which have not been well-explored in prior research on the effects of competition from voucher programs or charter schools.
Finally, we note that the public-school students who are most positively affected come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, which is the set of students that schools would potentially lose to competing private schools under a scholarship or voucher program. However, in most cases smaller effects remain statistically significant, even for students who are very unlikely to qualify for scholarships themselves. This suggests that benefits may come partially through generalized school improvements rather than through improvements targeted solely at eligible students. That raises an interesting question about the overall impact of more recently expanded taxpayer-supported school-choice programs, which also include students from middle-income families. Our findings from this long-lasting early program show that in Florida, at least, it seems that a rising tide of competition has lifted many boats.
David N. Figlio is Orrington Lunt Professor and Dean of the Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Cassandra M.D. Hart is associate professor of education policy at University of California, Davis. Krzysztof Karbownik is assistant professor at Emory University.
The post The Ripple Effect appeared first on Education Next.
By: David Figlio
Title: The Ripple Effect
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/ripple-effect-how-private-school-choice-programs-boost-competition-benefit-public-school-students/
Published Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 09:00:42 +0000
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Monday, October 25, 2021
U.S. Supreme Court hears Challenges to Texas Abortion Law
U.S. Supreme Court hears Challenges to Texas Abortion Law
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"Is Facebook evil?"
John Nicolson: "Is Facebook evil?"
Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen: "Good people who are embedded in systems with bad incentives are led to bad actions. There is a real patter of people who are willing to look the other way are promoted […]
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“The Choice Engine Is Revving While the Accountability Engine Is Stalling,” Says Troublemaker Checker Finn
Chester E. Finn Jr.—or, as I’ve always known him, Checker—has been a force in American education for more than four decades. (Full disclosure: He’s also a longtime friend, collaborator, and mentor.) The longtime president of the Fordham Institute (now in an active/emeritus role), he’s served in the White House and the U.S. Department of Education, chaired the National Assessment Governing Board, co-chaired the Maryland state board of education, and done much else. He’s also penned influential books on topics ranging from school choice to gifted education. (My favorite, if you’re in the mood for a wonderful, wide-ranging yarn, is the autobiographical Troublemaker.) Given that many of the issues on which Checker has spent years observing, advising, and leading are front and center in this tempestuous time, I thought it worth asking what he makes of recent developments. Here’s what he had to say.
Hess: Forty years ago, in the wake of A Nation at Risk, you were a leader of the two-pronged push for school choice and accountability. Today, it seems like we’re in the middle of an explosion of school choice and an unraveling of accountability. Is that accurate? What do you make of it?
Finn: Damn, you’re being perceptive again. I’ve long said that education reform in the U.S. has had two energy sources: the dynamism and empowerment of school choice and the “tripod” of academic standards/assessments/results-based school accountability. What’s more, I see them as co-dependent. The marketplace alone doesn’t produce school quality or higher achievement—sorry Milton Friedman—but the accountability system is far better at labeling schools than at fixing them, meaning that kids and families need exit options when they’re otherwise stuck in dismal schools. So yeah, today the choice engine is revving while the accountability engine is stalling. This isn’t going to work well in the long run if the goal is to transform achievement and close gaps in what was fairly termed a “nation at risk” back in ’83. That said, let’s do acknowledge that states are differing quite a lot on both fronts. Some are sluggish on choice, others are more or less sticking with the program on accountability. ESSA—and the COVID-induced testing-and-accountability holidays—has encouraged these differences.
Hess: You’ve long been an outspoken champion of “excellence.” Today, you’ve sounded the alarm about things like attacks on gifted programs and the potential pitfalls of social and emotional learning. Can you say a bit more about what you’re seeing that gives you pause?
Checker: I generally view “excellence” in education as a relentless push to maximize student learning—for all kids, including the very bright and those who move at a slower pace, certainly including kids from every sort of background. There’s a meritocratic element to it, but there’s also a strong push for accelerating everyone to the max. Today’s push for “equity” is surely at war with meritocracy, especially if it leads to things like eliminating “gifted education” in the name of equality rather than augmenting the scope of gifted ed. to serve many more kids. The “war on testing” is ultimately a “shoot the messenger” project that would blind us to the failings, gaps, and shortfalls that beset both equity and excellence. And the distraction of nonacademic mandates for schools, such as SEL and other “softer” school qualities and pupil attributes, can only deflect us from the pursuit of excellence. Do please bear in mind that “Excellence in Education” was the name of the commission that issued A Nation at Risk!
Hess: The National Assessment Governing Board has been unusually visible of late, after its long and public fight over a new literacy framework—a fight in which you were actively engaged. As a former chair of NAGB, can you say a bit about the role of NAGB and what’s ahead for the National Assessment of Educational Progress?
Finn: Just finished writing a “biography” of NAEP over half a century and look forward to its publication in the spring! It delves into all that, including a bunch of current issues and challenges that NAEP faces and some alternate scenarios for its future. Two issues are front and center in my mind. First, will the National Assessment Governing Board—like just about everything else in the public-policy world—lose the capacity for consensus and find itself deteriorating into factions with different agendas, as recently almost happened over the new reading framework for NAEP? So much of NAEP’s credibility and authority hinges on NAGB’s own credibility, which in turn owes much to its capacity to reach agreement that transcends the priorities and preferences—and politics—of individual members. Second, can NAEP—and its budget—fill in some big data gaps, such as the dearth of state-level 12th grade results in key subjects? NAEP is relatively expensive today for what it’s actually delivering, and a huge fraction of its budget goes to testing reading and math every two years, which is more often, say I, than necessary.
Hess: Can you say a bit more about the reading-framework controversy. What was the issue exactly and how did it turn out?
Finn: It came out more or less OK thanks to valiant efforts by a handful of NAGB members to bridge wide differences within the board. The controversy had multiple parts and changed some over time, but essentially it was about how radically to alter NAEP’s longtime approach to reading and the threat that major alterations would kill a multi-decade trend line. Perhaps the stickiest wicket is the extent to which the actual NAEP testing instrument should supply various assists to kids who may not possess certain vocabulary or background knowledge needed for comprehension. My own contention is that the “real world” doesn’t provide this kind of help, and if NAEP does so, it’s apt to result in generally misleading cheery data, maybe masking bona fide issues that educators should be obliged to confront. In the end, the new framework will almost certainly enable the trend line to endure. As for the assists to test-takers, there will be some. We’re told they’ll be few and won’t alter outcomes—but I continue to fret that cracking this door open invites much future mischief to enter.
Hess: On a different note, I’m curious about your general take as to how schools and systems are responding to COVID-19?
Finn: Mostly it’s been a catastrophe, with huge learning losses, widening gaps, and an inability to rectify the situation. And that’s without even getting to the overly politicized issues of masks and vaccinations. For Pete’s sake, states have for decades required schoolchildren to get vaccinated against all manner of childhood diseases. . . One other thing that’s been underscored by the schools’ failure—in most places—to meet kids’ learning needs during the pandemic: Schools are ruled by adult interests!
Hess: Meanwhile, back here in Washington, the Biden administration has proposed a sweeping education agenda as part of its “Build Back Better” bill. What do you make of the Biden proposals and, more generally, the job Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has done?
Finn: Secretary Cardona so far has been almost invisible—sort of the opposite of Secretary DeVos—and it’s been evident since day one that he’s inexperienced in Washington. The administration and Senate have also been extremely sluggish in supplying him with capable lieutenants. As for the Biden education agenda, I couldn’t be more disappointed by their emphasis on “inputs” reminiscent of a pre-Coleman era, when schools were judged by their resources and promises rather than by whether kids learned anything in them. This follows from the administration’s seeming lack of interest in school outcomes and results-based accountability. I never expected them to support school choice. Their education agenda is pretty much that of the teacher unions which, sadly, is no big surprise.
Hess: In my 2012 book with Andrew Kelly, Carrots, Sticks, and the Bully Pulpit, you wrote a marvelous chapter reflecting on why some federal education initiatives are agenda-setters while others are duds. With that in mind, which of the Biden proposals strikes you as the best bet to wind up as one or the other?
Finn: The biggest duds are universal pre-K and universal/free community college, both beloved of the teacher unions but neither calculated to equalize opportunity and boost achievement in serious ways. I don’t see anything that should qualify as “promising,” but maybe I’m missing something. Please let me know when you spot one!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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 “The Choice Engine Is Revving While the Accountability Engine Is Stalling,” Says Troublemaker Checker Finn appeared first on Education Next.
By: Frederick Hess
Title: “The Choice Engine Is Revving While the Accountability Engine Is Stalling,” Says Troublemaker Checker Finn
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/the-choice-engine-is-revving-while-the-accountability-engine-is-stalling-says-troublemaker-checker-finn/
Published Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2021 09:01:48 +0000
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The Education Exchange: The Problem With Vital Race Concept
A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and author of Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss some of Riley’s reservations with adoption of critical race theory into school curriculum.
Follow The Education Exchange on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or here on Education Next.
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The post The Education Exchange: The Trouble With Critical Race Theory appeared first on Education Next.
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Friday, October 22, 2021
Vice President Harris speaks at 10th Anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Dedication
Vice President Harris speaks at the 10th Anniversary celebration of the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Full video here:
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Thursday, October 21, 2021
President Biden speaks at 10th Anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Dedication
President Biden speaks at the 10th Anniversary celebration of the dedication of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Full video here:
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Attorney General Garland: "FBI agents will not be attending local school board meetings."
Rep. Jim Jordan: "Will FBI agents be attending local school board meetings?
Attorney General Garland: "No. FBI agents will not be attending local school board meetings. There's nothing in this memo to suggest that."
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Alyssa Milano: "It’s the ghost of Alice Paul."
Complete opening statement from Alyssa Milano at House Oversight hearing on the Equal Rights Amendment.
Ms. Milano has to pause in the middle of her statement due to technical difficulties. She responds, "It’s the ghost of Alice Paul."
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Decreasing NAEP Scores Are Flashing Red Lighting for the Covid Generation
Last week brought the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’s Long Term Trend series, and they were sobering. Just before the pandemic kicked in, U.S. thirteen-year-olds saw statistically-significant declines in both math and reading—a first in the study’s nearly fifty-year history. Black, Hispanic, and low-achieving students saw the largest declines.
The question is why, and the answer is: Nobody knows for sure. The Nation’s Report Card is great for tracking trends across time and across subgroups, but clunky for looking inside the black box of cause and effect. So we pundits are left to float hypotheses and stitch together what evidence we can to test them.
So it was that I suggested to several reporters last week, and on Twitter, that the Great Recession might be to blame. I’ve floated the idea before, given that “main” NAEP results have also lagged of late for more or less the same cohort of students. This led to some gentle teasing from some of my edu-wonk friends, making fun of my supposedly tortured logic that blames a long-ago economic downturn, and related spending cuts in schools, rather than a more proximate cause, like the Common Core. Heck, even Checker is skeptical of my theory. (He’s more apt to ascribe the score decline to the switch from NCLB accountability to ESSA’s milder form.)
And you know what? All these folks might be right! Test scores alone are akin to a Rorschach test. Just as we don’t have consensus on why America’s violent crime rate dropped precipitously in the 1990s and 2000s—or why it’s on the rise again—we struggle to make sense of gyrations in national test scores. But allow me to make my case.
Education policy is rarely the star of the show
Test scores go up, and test scores go down. It’s powerfully tempting for us wonks to believe that policies deserve the credit or the blame. Most notably, when achievement for Black students rose sharply in the 1970s and early 1980s, especially in the South, most analysts argued that it reflected the impact of desegregation and the access to greater resources that came with it. (Later studies would question these assumptions, though they remain the conventional wisdom.)
So when test scores started shooting up again—in the late 1990s and early 2000s, especially for Black, Hispanic, low-income, and low-achieving kids—pundits and politicians alike wanted to credit the major policy shifts underway at the time, especially the advent of results-driven school accountability. And indeed, rigorous studies found that accountability did cause some improvements in NAEP scores. But those impacts were relatively modest and limited to math, while the national improvements were huge and seen across multiple subjects.
A few years ago, I dug into the data and concluded that most of the achievement gain was likely the result of plummeting child poverty rates in the 1990s. For example, using the “supplemental poverty measure,” which looks at income both from jobs and social programs, the Black child poverty rate dropped from close to 55 percent in the mid-1980s to 32 percent in 2000. This was a wonderful development in its own right and meant that millions more American children came to school ready to learn. And once those kids were old enough to sit for NAEP exams, we started to see those trends reflected in test scores.
The lesson is an important one: We must be careful not to put our ed-policy selves at the center of the story. As a George W. Bush Administration alumnus who still has his NCLB pin stored away somewhere, I want to believe that it was accountability policies that lifted achievement. And I believe they did—a bit. But the forces lifting families and their children out of poverty almost surely did even more.
So why should it not also be true that the worst economic catastrophe since the Great Recession put these trends into reverse? The thirteen-year-olds who took the Long Term Trend exam in January 2020 would have been babies when the economy started falling apart in 2007. Parents were thrown out of work. Many families were thrown into poverty. And the hardship was deep and long lasting. It would have been a miracle had such shocks not had a negative impact on the academic and non-cognitive development of these children.
Then this unlucky cohort of kids got hit again when they entered kindergarten during the era of deep spending cuts—roughly 2011 to 2013—after federal relief funds had been spent and districts went over a fiscal cliff. This was no typical downturn. It was the first time in recorded history that real per-pupil spending declined nationally. High-poverty districts were hit hardest. And despite much pleading by us pundits, those districts, by and large, did not make cuts strategically, but wielded a meat cleaver—laying off the most junior teachers (regardless of their effectiveness), raising class sizes across the board, eliminating reading coaches, getting rid of tutoring programs, and on and on. This happened just as this cohort was making its way through kindergarten, first, and second grades—arguably the most important period for developing literacy and numeracy skills. So it’s not surprising that Kirabo Jackson and his colleagues have found compelling evidence that these school-budget cuts did real harm to student achievement.
We can, and should, bemoan that we allowed these kids to get off to such a slow start, that we didn’t find a way to insulate them from the storm around them. And we can wish that schools had accelerated their learning over the last eight years so they might have recovered from their early life challenges. But are we really surprised that, in general, at scale, the American education system failed to do so?
Again, I can’t be sure that I’m right. Maybe it was Common Core—though the timing isn’t quite right, given that few schools were implementing the new standards in earnest until the new tests came on the scene around 2015. The cohort of kids we’re talking about would have missed the Common Core in their most formative years.
Or maybe—Checker’s theory—it was the end of consequential accountability starting early in the Obama Administration when waivers allowed most states to take the pressure off low-performing schools, or certainly by the advent of ESSA. But if accountability can’t take too much credit for test score gains, can the lack of accountability take much blame for test score declines?
What this means for the Covid Generation
The reason all of this matters is that it helps us make better decisions going forward. If we think Common Core is the culprit for these latest scores, for example, we would conclude that we should ditch the standards. But that might turn out to be a huge mistake.
And we are entering a very challenging period, given the Covid-19 crisis and its already-all-too-clear consequences for student achievement. Needless to say, it’s the impact on kids that we should worry most about. But we also need to be smart when it comes to analyzing achievement trends now and over the next decade. In particular, we need to expect that scores will be depressed through at least the early 2030s. Think of today’s first-graders, who spent last year doing “remote kindergarten.” Many of those kids likely learned next to nothing, meaning they entered first grade a year behind. For our neediest students, who tend to enter kindergarten years behind in normal times, the challenge is even greater.
And of course we’re not yet out of the woods, given the lack of an approved vaccine for young children, the aggressive quarantine policies of many states and districts, and the disruptions to districts caused by staffing shortages. So our first-grader is probably going to fall further behind this year, too.
In three years, when he takes the fourth-grade NAEP, these scars are going to show. And they will still be apparent seven years from now, when he sits for the eighth-grade NAEP, and eleven years from now, when he takes the twelfth-grade NAEP. (If he makes it to twelfth grade, that is.)
Unless.
As the Lorax famously said, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
Changing the course of history for this cohort of kids is the challenge at hand today. Accelerating student learning will take commitment, smarts, and the political will to invest federal relief funds strategically. A decade ago, it’s now pretty clear to me, we failed to rise to the challenge in the wake of the Great Recession. Let us not repeat the same mistakes again.
Michael J. Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and an executive editor of Education Next.
This post originally appeared on the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog.
The post Declining NAEP Scores Are Flashing Red Lights for the Covid Generation appeared first on Education Next.
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Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Plan for Vaccinating Kids Ages 5-11
White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Jeff Zients outlines the Biden Administration's plan for vaccinating kids:
"We have secured vaccine supply to vaccinate every child ages 5-11 and as soon as the vaccine is authorized by the FDA we […]
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“The Only Way We’ll Have Economic Development in Some Parts of the World Is to Improve the Schools”
Eric Hanushek, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a longtime Education Next contributor, is the 2021 recipient of the Yidan Foundation Prize for Education Research. The prize honors Hanushek’s work linking the fields of economics and education and comes with an award equivalent to nearly $4 million, half for research and half for the recipient. Andreas Schleicher, chair of the Yidan Prize committee, noted that Hanushek has made a wide range of education policy areas amenable to rigorous economic analysis, thereby connecting better learning outcomes to long-run economic and social progress. Education Next’s senior editor, Paul Peterson, recently spoke with Hanushek.
Paul Peterson: As an early pioneer in the economics of education, how do you assess the progress the field has made? Is the quality of the research today better than it was when you began?
Eric Hanushek: The quality has improved enormously, not just in the use of economics in education research, but in education research overall. Much of this is related to having better data about student outcomes and linking that data both to what goes on in schools and to household and family factors, and also linking performance data to subsequent gains in the labor market and national economy. With the
data that have become available, we have seen enormous progress in research—research that’s overturned a lot of strongly held beliefs.
If the quality of research has improved—the data, the analysis—does education research have a bigger policy impact today?
I think so, but this is where politics comes in. There are lots of forces pushing to resist any change in education, and people bemoan the fact that legislatures don’t devote more attention to education issues. But, in fact, the results of education don’t appear until many years after kids leave school, so politicians seem to be able to write it off. I think that started to change during the pandemic. With the widespread school closures and hybrid instruction, parents have become more attuned to what’s going on in the schools.
In the developing world, at least the focus has changed. I’m proud of the influence I had in changing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in education. Starting in 1990, the goals of the UN and the World Bank said that all kids should get at least a lower secondary school education—but they never said anything about the quality of that education. So there was more education provided around the world but not much sign that people were learning a lot more. In 2015, the agencies added a quality element to those goals, and I think it is helping to focus attention on what students are learning in many countries.
Andreas Schleicher, as head of the Program on Individual Student Assessment, has played an important role in that regard. By administering the PISA in the developing world, not just developed countries, he’s highlighted the very low level of educational achievement in so many developing nations.
The differences across the world are astounding. And I believe the only way we’ll have economic development in some parts of the world is to improve the schools. We can invest in bridges and improve the infrastructure, but that won’t have a long-term development effect unless we can improve the skills of the people. And that’s a matter of schooling.
There are places where we have already seen the results of improved schools. East Asia is the obvious example, where education has dramatically changed the character of those places in the last 50 years. After the Korean War, the average education level of Korean parents was about two years. Now Korea is one of the most educated societies in the world, and you see the results in their industry and their ability to interact globally in ways countries that have not emphasized education haven’t been able to do. China has made some dramatic strides in education. Along the developed East Coast they have created top-notch schools, and that’s leading to the development of science and engineering that is making the country a world force.
Turning to the Yidan award, I understand that you plan to use the research money for a project in Africa. There’s no place that could benefit more from your emphasis on school quality and raising the level of human capital. What’s your agenda?
I want to try to find ways to take research and evaluation and apply it in sub-Saharan Africa through the kind of work I’ve been doing elsewhere—trying to understand the patterns of student outcomes and the quality of schools. Africa, Latin America, and South Asia stand out as being way behind the developed world. The World Bank and other development agencies have focused on trying to improve schools, but in many places, it hasn’t happened. The idea I’m pursuing is that you need local people who have the skills to evaluate and read data and research and analysis, and then try to transform that knowledge into policy.
I plan to develop a fellowship program that would give local people in Africa a yearlong crash course in evaluation methods, research, and policy development, so they can go back to their countries and start to introduce modern, rigorous thinking into education policy. It’s akin to what you and I are doing in the States with the Hoover Education Success Initiative, taking what we know from research about good education policies and disseminating it, with the goal of affecting the policymaking process in states and localities.
How would you quantify the impact of the Covid pandemic on the learning of this generation of Americans?
I’ve done estimates with Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich. Looking at the school closures from March 2020 through that summer, we estimated that students would earn, on average, 3 percent less income throughout their lifetimes. That was based on the assumption that schools would return to their old quality state in September 2020. But in many places, the closures continued, relying on hybrid learning that just wasn’t as effective as in-person schooling. We now estimate that if the 2021–22 school year returns us to the schools we had in 2019, the average student will lose 6 to 9 percent of their lifetime earnings.
That will also have a huge impact on the U.S. economy. I would estimate that the GDP will be 3 to 4 percent lower than it would have been without the pandemic. If we could improve the schools, we could hope to ameliorate some of those economic losses.
The Biden and Trump administrations have dedicated a total of more than a trillion additional dollars to education over the next three years. Won’t that massive infusion of resources make a difference?
This touches on a debate in the economics of education. If you just drop a lot more money on the schools, will achievement go up? In effect, we’re now getting a natural experiment that can shed light on that. I worry that many school systems, finding themselves awash in money, will just increase teacher salaries. Then two or three years from now, when the federal money goes away, they’ll find that they can’t afford those teachers. So that money could actually make schools worse off in the long run. On the other hand, if schools use the funds to enhance the abilities of their teachers, to provide technology to expand the reach of their most effective teachers, and to allow them to individualize instruction, it could make schools better. The current discussion doesn’t make me very sanguine about the possibilities, but perhaps it will be better.
The latest information is that school enrollments are down, especially in big cities. Juniors and seniors are not coming back to school, and many young kids aren’t coming to school either. There are a lot of kids—probably concentrated among disadvantaged groups—who are not getting any education at all.
Absolutely. And this group will end up much worse at the end of their schooling career, and it will follow them throughout their time in the labor market. It’s also going to follow the United States, because our workforce will be less skilled, less qualified. That has ramifications for the growth rate of the GDP and incomes in the future. We’re going to be noticeably worse off and poorer unless we can find ways to improve the quality of schools.
Many states are thinking of abandoning the accountability systems that were in place. When do you think we will return to accountability and regain the ability to track what is happening in our schools?
It’s worrisome, because teachers unions and others have opposed having any accountability for some time, and many have used the pandemic as an excuse to justify doing away with tests. In March 2020, for instance, the Massachusetts Teachers Association argued for permanently eliminating the accountability tests in the state as a response to the pandemic. People are now promoting the idea elsewhere, saying maybe we don’t need the testing—but how can you improve schools if you don’t know where you are and whether you’re getting better or not?
This is an edited excerpt from an Education Exchange podcast, which can be heard at educationnext.org.
The post “The Only Way We’ll Have Economic Development in Some Parts of the World Is to Improve the Schools” appeared first on Education Next.
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Tuesday, October 19, 2021
January 6th Cmte Votes Unanimously to hold Steve Bannon in Criminal Contempt of Congress
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol met to consider holding Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to testify before the committee.
Chair Rep. Bennie Thompson: "Our goal is simple. We want Mr. […]
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Country's Transcript to Shine Limelight on Pandemic-Related Knowing Loss
The full extent of Covid-19’s impact on student learning remains unknown, in part because the pandemic disrupted not just schooling but also the assessment systems used to monitor student progress. Annual tests were cancelled in all states in spring 2020. In school districts where diagnostic testing continued, large numbers of students did not participate. Of those who did, many took the tests from their homes, raising questions about comparability to prior years. Parents certainly do have a sense that progress has slowed; 57 percent of the parents in the Education Next survey of public opinion reported that students were learning less during the pandemic (see “Parent Poll Reveals Support for School Covid-Safety Measures Despite Vaccine Hesitancy, Partisan Polarization,” features).
In my role as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP testing program, the challenges of gathering data on student learning at the very time when it is most needed became clear in our deliberations over the course of the pandemic. Was it prudent to send more than a thousand program staff on planes to schools across the country to administer NAEP tests? Would they find students in schools when they arrived? These considerations and others led us, reluctantly, to postpone the administration of the biannual NAEP tests scheduled for spring 2021.
Yet, as that opportunity to gauge the pandemic’s impact closed, we realized that another had opened. Just before the onset of Covid-19, in January 2020, the NAEP Long-Term Trend math and reading tests had been administered to nationally representative samples of 9- and 13-year-olds. The testing of 17-year-olds, however, slated to launch in March, was abruptly postponed. Our board initially planned to test those older students in early 2022, but over time, we began to question how useful their results would be. Since the Long-Term Trend test had not been administered for nearly a decade, it would have limited ability to speak to changes over the past two years.
In our August 2021 board meeting, my colleagues unanimously approved a motion I authored to revise the assessment schedule to test 9-year-olds rather than 17-year-olds in January 2022. In other words, we will test the same population of students we tested on the eve of the pandemic exactly two years later. Because that population is defined based on students’ age rather than their grade level, the results will not be blurred by any increases in the share of students repeating a grade due to the disruption of their schooling.
The picture that emerges from this unconventional NAEP assessment will necessarily be incomplete. It will be limited to students aged 9. (Budget limitations precluded also testing 13-year-olds.) It will speak only to math and reading skills. It will provide data for the nation as a whole but not for specific states or school districts. Over time, other NAEP tests will help to address some of these gaps. In the meantime, we are pleased that the Nation’s Report Card will provide the first high-quality, nationally representative evidence on just how much additional work needs to be done to help students catch up.
Martin West
The post Nation’s Report Card to Shine Spotlight on Pandemic-Related Learning Loss appeared first on Education Next.
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