Superintendent Floats Autumn Circumstance of "Crossbreed" Reopening-- by Frederick Hess

Susan Enfield

Susan Enfield is the superintendent of Highline Public Schools, a district serving 18,000 students in Burien, Wash., not far from where the nation’s first coronavirus case was confirmed. I reached out to Susan to see how she’s dealing with the coronavirus challenge. Here’s what she had to say.

Rick: You’ve noted that all the PR pitches you’ve received are a distraction from an already very busy load. What’s taking up most of your time right now?

Susan: The technical work of transitioning our system to distance learning for an unknown period of time is definitely time-consuming, as is ensuring we are communicating with staff and families as quickly and accurately as we can. I am also spending a tremendous amount of time supporting—and worrying about—our team, from both a professional and emotional standpoint. Professionally, I am working to help my colleagues understand that we cannot rely on what we know and have always done—this is a time for radical problem solving. I am also checking in with them to be sure they are pacing themselves and caring for their families and one another. The phrase “this is a marathon not a sprint” has never been more true.

Rick: Can you walk us through some of the challenges you’re dealing with that people might not be aware of?

Susan: In Highline, we have made the promise to know every student by name, strength, and need so they graduate prepared for the future they choose. It is a promise we all take deeply seriously and strive to deliver on daily. Not being able to see our students each day makes it harder to maintain the relationships we have built, much less engage them in meaningful learning. This is even more of a concern—and a reality—for our most vulnerable students. I think we all fear that the achievement and opportunity gaps that exist will be exacerbated by school closure.

Rick: What percentage of your students have internet access and how are you trying to help those that don’t get online?

Susan: We estimate that before this started, roughly 65 percent of our students had at-home internet access, but now with companies offering free internet for those who need it, that number is likely closer to 90 percent or higher. We are surveying to find out the actual number. Our partnership with Sprint1Million has provided 1,000 hotspots, but that is not enough. When I am asked what we need donations for, I say hotspots. Our goal has to be 100 percent of Highline homes connected to the internet.

Rick: OK, so what are you hearing from the field about how educators are dealing with all these adjustments?

Susan: I think it varies wildly depending on where you are. The inequities within and across our school systems have never been more glaringly apparent. But regardless of location, what I see my colleagues locally and nationally doing is inspiring. Yes, we are all overwhelmed and working as hard and fast as we can to find ways to support our students and their families, but as social media is demonstrating daily, we’re doing so in nimble and creative ways that we have not tried the past. From schools partnering with local coffee shops to provide food for students and families to districts using their local television channels to broadcast lessons and then sharing those with other districts, there are many reasons to take heart and be hopeful.

Rick: How much confidence do you have that distance learning is a meaningful substitute for all the benefits kids get from being in school?

Susan: I have zero confidence that distance learning is, or will be, a meaningful substitute for school for many of our children. I believe there is no substitute for the relationship between teachers and their students and students with one another. In addition, there will be serious limitations to the level of quality and consistency in the learning opportunities our students have. These limitations include our ability to provide access for all students, particularly those with disabilities and those for whom English is not their first language. There will also be limitations to how much families will be able to support learning from home, which I heard loud and clear last week when I met virtually with our Family Action Committee. To be clear, I am not saying we should not do all we can to provide distance learning; we absolutely should and are. We must, however, be honest in what it will achieve and be prepared to remediate, in academics, behavior, and socialization once schools reopen.

Rick: All right, and what’s involved with reopening schools? How likely is it that some districts reopen this spring?

Susan: We have never had to do this before, and to be honest, those of us responsible for leading school systems have been focused on how we respond to what our challenge is now—and that is caring for and educating our students in an entirely different way. In the first few weeks of closure, I was so focused on the day-to-day decisions I had to make that I could not think long term, but I am definitely doing so now given that schools will not be reopening this spring.

We are currently scenario planning for the fall. There are several options in play: 1) continuing with full-time distance learning, 2) providing a hybrid model where students attend school certain days of the week and learn from home on others to promote social distancing, and 3) returning altogether but different from before. While we likely won’t know what the fall will look like before we end the school year in June, my goal is that our students, staff, and families know that we have a plan for whatever that may be. Honestly, the logistics of reopening concern me far less than responding to the impact closure will have had on our children, from learning loss to loss of routine to trauma. The need for remediation in academics, social-emotional learning, and socialization will be profound, and I don’t believe any of us really knows how we will meet those needs at this scale.

Rick: What should Washington or the states be doing to help right now? What can they provide that’s most helpful, or what rules or requirements would it be useful to relax?

Susan: We have received flexibility in many ways already from elimination of state tests for this school year to how we can provide meals for our students. Where we absolutely need help is with connectivity and access. This is paramount right now, and we need action from the Federal Communications Commission, which can, and must, institute changes to the E-Rate program to make it possible for all of our students who need access to get it. Now is the time for all of us to advocate for this by pushing the FCC to provide solutions beyond what we have in regulation. In addition, we need flexibility with the timelines for supporting our students with special needs. What was written into students’ IEPs prior to closure in many cases may not be feasible in our current reality. To be clear, I am not saying that we waive any of the requirements of IDEA, but we need to be realistic and flexible in what we can do in the context of remote learning and social distancing.

Rick: OK, last question. What are you seeing that’s most promising or heartening?

Susan: I am not sure we are celebrating those public school employees who are deemed essential and, in the midst of stay-at-home and self-isolation orders, are showing up each day to provide our students with meals, technology, and child care. I have the honor of seeing them, from a safe distance, almost every day and am inspired. They demonstrate service above self, which our nation needs far more of today, and I hope this is one of the greatest lessons our children learn from this chapter in history.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

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

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EdNext Podcast: Coronavirus Might Gas Need for Better Analyses-- by Education Next

A former deputy director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lynn Olson, joins Education Next Editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss her new report. It details how standardized testing has come under bipartisan attack, and what will need for change for testing to survive.

Listen to the podcast now.

Read “Statewide Standardized Assessments Were in Peril Even Before the Coronavirus. Now They’re Really in Trouble,” by Olson and Craig Jerald.

The EdNext Podcast is available on iTunes, Google Play, Soundcloud, Stitcher and here every Wednesday.

— Education Next

By: Education Next
Title: EdNext Podcast: Coronavirus Could Fuel Demand for Better Assessments – by Education Next
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/ednext-podcast-coronavirus-could-fuel-demand-better-assessments-covid-19-olson/
Published Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 17:37:58 +0000

Shooting the Test-Messenger-- by Chester E. Finn, Jr .

“Competitive divers bridle when judges give 1.5 points to their triple backflips.”

Two cheers for Lynn Olson’s and Craig Jerald’s long, perceptive explanation of hostility to statewide assessments (“Statewide Standardized Assessments Were in Peril Even Before the Coronavirus. Now They’re Really in Trouble.”). Their chronology is spot on. They’re right about the intensity of the “testing backlash.” I assume they’re right that this year’s testing moratorium will cause a lot of people to say “it’s now demonstrated that we don’t really need those irksome, onerous assessments.” And I agree that tests would be a lot more popular with educators if they were demonstrably helpful in improving instruction, which waiting to year’s end doesn’t do much for.

Yet there may also be a fundamental flaw—blind spot, really—in their analysis. What if the hostility toward testing is not, at bottom, about the tests but, rather, about what the present testing regimen is mainly designed to do, which is to hold schools and educators (and sometimes kids) to account for their results? What if tests are the unwelcome messengers but what’s really at stake is the message? I submit that if testing vanished but some other form of results-based accountability remained, educators would complain just as much.

Think about it. Nobody likes to be held to account for their results, particularly when embarrassment, inconvenience, and unwanted interventions, possibly even the loss of one’s diploma or one’s job, hangs in the balance. Doctors and hospitals don’t much like it when their infection, mortality, or readmission rates are publicized and sometime lead to sanctions. Restaurateurs understandably hate it when the health department padlocks their bistros or a reviewer offers no stars. Competitive divers bridle when judges give 1.5 points to their triple backflips. It’s human nature—and the higher the stakes, the stronger the feelings.

It’s different, of course, when high-stakes accountability leads to bonuses, gold medals, five-star ratings and 9.5 point dives. Everyone loves accolades. That’s human nature, too.

The reason America got into results-based accountability in K-12 education is because many schools were producing totally unsatisfactory results, sometimes for everyone attending, sometimes just for subgroups within the school. We were, it was rightly said, a “nation at risk” because of those weak results.

That led to national goals, to statewide academic standards, to mandatory assessments in core subjects, and to complex regimens by which to evaluate the scores on those tests and the remedies to be applied when scores were low.

It did not, in theory, have to be tests by which results were gauged. But for a host of reasons—cost, convenience, security, the appearance of uniformity, objectivity and a sort of fairness, etc.—standardized tests are what we ended up primarily relying on.

Of course we got carried away, particularly in clumsy efforts to use kids’ test scores to evaluate teacher performance. Of course we neglected other important elements of learning besides what’s readily tested and important elements of good schools besides academic achievement. Of course we muddled—and still do—the balance between achievement and growth. Of course we didn’t pay enough attention to the seemingly Sisyphean quest for tests that would be both “formative” and “summative.”

All true, all culpable. Perhaps still all fixable. But I submit that the “peril” in which state assessments find themselves, according to Olson and Jerald, is not fundamentally about testing burden or the distortions it causes in curriculum, pedagogy, calendars, etc. It’s about results-based accountability for a system that’s producing unsatisfactory results. Educators trying to escape the accountability have resorted to a war on tests themselves and convinced many, many others—especially parents—that tests are the problem.

Think about it this way: imagine that we start rating elementary schools, A-F or five stars to one, based on how well their graduates do in middle school. We judge them by middle school grades, discipline, etc, not by tests. And we find a way to adjust for “value added” so as not to penalize schools just because their pupils are disadvantaged.

Extend that thought experiment to high schools. Imagine that we find ways to gauge—and report—their effectiveness based on how their graduates do in college and the labor market, as glimpsed in a recent Mathematica study of Louisiana high schools. Then we sanction or intervene in various ways in the high schools whose graduates fare poorly.

Would F schools be any happier once their grade isn’t derived by tests? Would unions complain less vociferously if states moved to intervene with tough love in one-star schools?

There are ample good reasons to find additional real-world measures of school quality and effectiveness, but let’s not deceive ourselves that doing so will end the war on accountability—or make our schools any better.

I repeat: Tests are the messenger, and it’s the glum message they continue to convey about many schools that’s the problem. Shooting them down won’t cause a single child to learn more, a single inept teacher to do a better job in the classroom, or a single crummy school to improve.

Otherwise, Lynn and Craig got it about right.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

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“We’re likely to face another wave of the virus” – by Education Next

John Bailey: “The summer break will give districts and policymakers a chance to develop better remote learning plans and do professional development with teachers.”

School closures have emerged as a centerpiece of efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Education Next editor-in-chief Martin West recently interviewed John Bailey about when schools should reopen and what school leaders can do in the meantime. Bailey is an adviser to the Walton Family Foundation and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He previously served in the White House, U.S. Department of Commerce, and U.S. Department of Education. His article, “Covid-19 Closed Schools. When Should They Reopen?” is available at EducationNext.org.

Martin West: Initially, most closures were scheduled to last only two to four weeks. Why do you think governors took that approach, and was it the right move?

John Bailey: First, that approach took advantage of a natural break in the school calendar, spring break. Second, the Centers for Disease Control has always recommended two-week closures, because that’s thought to be the maximum time in takes symptoms to surface, so you can see if other cases arise. Third, it gave governors time to reevaluate, based on our evolving understanding of the virus and on any firmer guidance coming from CDC and health officials.

These initial short-term closures mean that governors now have to decide when they should reopen schools. Many efforts are underway to model the disease’s spread and inform policy through the results. Where do school closures fit in? 

Schools will probably be closed for the rest of the academic year, given current projections. We’re likely to see schools back open for next year, but we’re also likely to face a rebound, another wave of the virus. As a result, we may see targeted closures, meaning that when cases start reaching a certain threshold with local hospitals, schools would be closed for two to four weeks in an area or entire state, depending on how widespread the outbreak is.

There are questions around a lot of the data variables that go into those models. The faster we can get tests out there, and the faster we can get some of that data into these models, the clearer the picture will be, and we can generate recommendations for how long these closures should last and when we can open up schools.

Not everyone is on board with the idea of extended school closures. You point to experts like Thomas Frieden, who directed the Center for Disease Control under President Obama, and Andy Slavitt, another Obama administration official, both of whom have been skeptical of the value of school closures. What’s their perspective, and why do their recommendations differ?

Their recommendations reflect the disagreement within the scientific community at that time. We know little about this particular virus, and that has complicated our previous assumptions. Normally, with a pandemic influenza, you close schools to slow the spread and also to protect children, who tend to be more vulnerable. With Covid-19, though, children seem largely resistant to the most severe symptoms but might still be carriers. The data have a lot of question marks, so officials are falling on the side of not overreacting but instead buying a bit more time before making a final decision on the schools. Even those who were skeptical at first have since supported not only school closures but also the more aggressive social distancing measures we saw used in March and April.

Despite much uncertainty, it seems clear that education leaders and policymakers should expect a longer closure at this stage that may even extend into the next academic year, at least in virus hot spots. How should they be preparing? 

Schools have heroically but hastily thrown
together remote learning plans as well as distribution sites to help get meals to students. Now there’s a bit of time to start reflecting on what’s working, what’s not, what are the gaps, and how do we patch together a system to help serve kids, teachers, and families for the remainder of the school year.

We need to use the summer to prepare for the next school year. The break will give districts and policymakers a chance to develop better remote learning plans and do professional development with teachers.

Schools are usually in what’s called medical surveillance, meaning that as children show up with different symptoms, that information feeds to local health officials, and then up to state officials, that data will likely help trigger some closures and other social distancing measures. Schools will be on the front line of surveillance. And they’re going to be on the front line of helping make sure that kids are getting the education and other supports they need to continue their learning.

This is an edited excerpt from an episode of the EdNext Podcast.

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

By: Education Next
Title: “We’re likely to face another wave of the virus” – by Education Next
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/likely-face-another-wave-virus-policy-adviser-john-bailey-close-schools-prepare-for-fall/
Published Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2020 09:01:55 +0000

“Existential Fear and Constant Worry” – by Frederick Hess

John Deasy

John Deasy is superintendent of Stockton Unified school district. Previously he gained recognition and awards for his work as superintendent in districts including Los Angeles Unified and Prince George’s County. I reached out to John to see how he is dealing with the coronavirus and if he has any advice to share. Here’s what he had to say.

Rick: Can you walk us through some of the challenges you’re dealing with that people might not be aware of?

John: Some of the most serious challenges are with the youths that require and had been getting one-to-one contact with adults—things like physical and occupational therapy, speech therapy, and mobility and physical support for immobile youths. We are also trying to figure out what individual and group counselling looks like in the age of distance. And then there’s the issue of honoring all the laws of confidentiality while attempting to provide this type of support. Another very emotional issue that we’re grappling with is providing support when a student dies. Grief counseling and individual counseling are all different now; we simply can’t send out a crisis team to a school and a home right now. These are just a few examples.

Rick: How much confidence do you have that this distance learning is a meaningful substitute for all the benefits kids get from being in school? Is it a pretty close approximation or a pale imitation?

John: We actually do not know right now. This will take time to ascertain. It certainly is not a meaningful substitution for human connection. There are many skilled components to the acquisition of new knowledge—that is appropriately scaffolded and then used to solve new problems—and chief among them is that this has always been a communal and convivial event. Just think about how many times a teacher says: “Now turn to your elbow buddy and work together on this problem.” Or how many times do we see a teacher kneeling aside a student demonstrating a skill on the paper? The loss of this type of interaction and so many other intangible experiences of proximity will be felt, just not immediately understood. Another point I want to raise is that the development of executive function in early years is modeled and practiced in community, not at a distance. Students need to actually see and witness older students and adults use the skills found in a developed executive function in action so that they can apply these and model these skills. It is a set of skills that are unlikely to be developed and mastered in isolation or by reading. An analogy is trying to teach someone to swim by never entering the water. This will certainly need to be addressed.

Rick: What are you hearing from the field about how educators are dealing with the adjustment?

John: At the moment, my colleague superintendents across the country are dealing with too many variables to sufficiently catalog them all. However, among the commonalities of all these variables are:

1. We are at the center of both school and community responsibility nearly 24 hours a day. This is exhausting and emotionally draining in a way we have never faced.

2. The fact that decisions are now affected by so many external entities makes things very complex. We’re having to balance the advice of county and state health agencies, federal agencies, local emergency centers and their leaders, mayors and governors, and, as always, state departments of education.

3. Unlike other crises—a hurricane, wildfire, earthquake, and worse, violence—here was no emergency plan, “playbook,” or set of well-practiced drills for a global pandemic. What’s more, amid concern about serious threats to physical health and safety, the guidance we’ve been given has been shifting constantly. And furthermore, this event, unlike nearly all other emergency events, had no clear beginning and does not seem to have a clear end. When there is an earthquake, it strikes, it ends, we clean up, and we move forward. Disruption is usually temporary, and we can typically count on things going back to normal in the near future. Not so with this pandemic.

4. Finally, this is an invisible threat. All other crises can be seen. This kind of context is missing with the pandemic. Taken in total, this has led to a sense of existential fear and constant worry. The daily death rates and new case announcements are very difficult to wrap your head around. It is like the shock of 9/11 every week. We are being told that after the pandemic subsides dry up, we will face a historic shock to the economy. Leaders are being called upon to be models of assurance with positive and clear direction, and to create a sense of normality. Needless to say, this has and will continue to be very difficult.

Rick: How are you thinking about grading and promoting kids to the next grade?

John: We immediately established an executive team to deal with this problem and make proposals so that we can issue guidance soon. Like everything else with this crisis, it is complicated. High school students, and seniors in particular, have had a long understanding of a universal concept of grades and their importance. It goes far beyond the classroom. Car-insurance costs can be positively affected by grades, employers rely on report cards and transcripts during hiring, obviously colleges and universities rely heavily on grades (especially the final grades after acceptance), and the military relies on grades for making their acceptance decisions. All of this is now in flux. And I have not even mentioned things like English-learner reclassification and special education identification. We very well may be in the place where we will need to temporarily move to pass/fail for grading during the shutdowns. Obviously, there is more to come on this issue over the next month.

Rick: What percentage of your kids have internet access? And how are you trying to help those that don’t get online?

John: About 60-70 percent have home connectivity. We are lucky because we’ve been providing youths with hotspots to help with this for two years. So we were almost there already, and it has been more manageable to deal with the remaining families that don’t have internet.

Rick: Your schools serve a lot of kids who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. Can you talk a bit about efforts to continue serving those kids and how they’re going?

John: We are providing lunch every day. Families drive up to their own school and receive a hot lunch and breakfast for the next morning. This has gone excellently so far, and we will be continuing it. We are now discussing how we might provide one meal over the weekend as well.

Rick: Similarly, some of your schools have high rates of poverty and homelessness. What can you tell us about efforts to help those kids?

John: We had established a remarkable program and support network for our youths and families in transition. Now we are very worried about those that we have lost physical and electronic contact with. We can still make contact by driving by and speaking to individuals who are homeless, but we need to know where they are. There are many supports and services that we can provide or help them understand what other supports they can have and where to find them. For example, where to take showers and obtain personal-hygiene products, food and meal services on the weekends, and free medical clinics. The main problem is maintaining contact with our more than 1,100 homeless youths and their families.

Rick: If a governor determines that schools can reopen in a state, how much lead time does a district need to actually make that happen? What’s involved?

John: Honestly, it will only take us about three days to open when we are given the green light.

Nothing is really involved that we wouldn’t have to do if we were opening back up after a summer or winter break anyway. Our janitorial staff have been great about ensuring the buildings have stayed sanitized and ready to go.

Rick: OK, last question. What should Washington or the states be doing to help right now?

John: Well, some leadership from the Department of Education be helpful. We are experiencing a significant lack of specific, actionable, and helpful guidance in dealing with: special education, migrant education, grading and our immediate future relationships with universities across the county, and since we have waivers from state testing regimes, what guidance do we have on language- learner progress and reclassification.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

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

Colorado News https://coloradomedia.co

Federal Appeals Juries Discover Constitutional Right to "Fundamental Minimum Education"-- by Joshua Dunn

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday announced that federal courts can do what billions of dollars, countless curricular reforms, No Child Left Behind, and state takeovers have not achieved: guarantee a decent education for children in failing urban schools.

In Gary B. v. Whitmer, a three-judge panel ruled that the Constitution guarantees a right to a “basic minimum education.” To reach this conclusion, the court had to sweep aside decades of Supreme Court precedent, most importantly the high court’s 1972 decision in San Antonio v. Rodriguez. In a truly strained and contradictory piece of reasoning, the court ruled that even though “the Constitution cannot guarantee educational outcomes,” the substandard outcomes in Detroit’s public schools were evidence of a constitutional violation. The district’s lack of competent teachers, decrepit facilities, and insufficient instructional materials deprive students of a fundamental right of “access to basic literacy.” The court located this hitherto unknown right in the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Of course, the Due Process clause does not mention education, so the court relied on “substantive due process”—the idea that the clause protects unenumerated rights. It has long been criticized because it allows justices to manufacture new rights or, more bluntly, to impose their own policy preferences under the guise of constitutional interpretation.

While the constitutional basis for the court’s judgment is dubious, even more dubious is the idea that courts can solve the problem. The history of judicial forays into educational reform is dispiriting. Courts lack the capacity both to determine what reforms are likely to succeed and to monitor schools to ensure that the reforms are effectively administered. As the Supreme Court put it in Rodriguez, that courts “are not equipped to resolve intractable disagreements on fundamental questions in the social sciences.” Education is a maddeningly complex area of public policy and student performance depends on a host of factors many of which are outside a school’s control. When courts have been called on to implement reforms they have often retreated to easily measurable variables like overall spending and ignored that which is more important but difficult to measure.

Given these difficulties, it’s not surprising that the opinion provided no analysis of what reforms might correct the alleged constitutional violation. It’s far easier to pronounce platitudes than hazard concrete proposals for fixing schools.

The opinion was by Judge Eric L. Clay, who was nominated by President Clinton, and by Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, who was nominated by President Obama. The plaintiffs are students in Detroit public schools, including “Gary B.,” who were represented by Carter Phillips of the firm Sidley Austin, and are suing the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.  The majority opinion documents a series of awful conditions in the schools: “Classroom temperatures in Plaintiffs’ schools regularly exceed 90 degrees during both the summer and winter due to malfunctioning furnaces…there is no air conditioning at Hamilton, and one west-facing classroom has reached 110 degrees during the school year…. On the first day of the 2016–17 school year, the temperatures in the school grew so extreme that multiple students fainted, both students and teachers got so sick they threw up, and multiple teachers developed heat rashes.” Also, “Mice, cockroaches, and other vermin regularly inhabit Plaintiffs’ classrooms, and the first thing some teachers do each morning is attempt to clean up rodent feces before their students arrive. Hallways and classrooms smell of dead vermin and black mold.”

Judge Eric Murphy, who was nominated by President Trump, dissented, writing in part, “If I sat in the state legislature or on the local school board, I would work diligently to investigate and remedy the serious problems that the plaintiffs assert. But I do not serve in those roles. And I see nothing in the complaint that gives federal judges the power to oversee Detroit’s schools in the name of the United States Constitution.”

Detroit already spends nearly $2,000 more per-pupil than the state average, $16,737 to $14,837. Since the city already spend more per-pupil, what exactly will draw better teachers to the district or lead to better facilities or guarantee that schools have sufficient textbooks? If the cause has been mismanagement, what can the courts do to create better management?

If the decision is appealed, it is highly unlikely to survive. However, shortly after the opinion was announced, Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General, Dana Nessel, announced via Twitter her support for the ruling. Since the attorney general is responsible for defending the state’s interests in court, it could be that Nessel, along with Governor Whitmer, might decline to challenge the ruling. However, the 6th Circuit could review the decision en banc of its own accord—sua sponte. The 6th Circuit has recently been challenging the 9th Circuit’s status as the most overturned by the Supreme Court, so it might well decline to do so. But one way or another, the issue will certainly be appealed. Other states under the 6th Circuit, including Tennessee and Ohio, would be obliged to follow the decision. Those states, one suspects would be less likely to prostrate themselves before the 6th Circuit’s novel constitutional reasoning and would appeal its application to them to the Supreme Court.

Should the 6th Circuit allow the matter to reach the Supreme Court, there are easily five votes—Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh—to overturn, and possibly two more—Breyer and Kagan. Justice Breyer, in in his separate opinion in Morse v. Frederick (2006), cautioned against increasing judicial supervision of schools, arguing that “no one wishes to substitute courts for school boards, or to turn the judge’s chambers into the principal’s office.” And Justice Kagan just displayed her preference for upholding longstanding precedents, even ones she likely disagrees with, by joining Justice Alito’s dissent in Ramos v. Louisiana, a case in which the majority held that non-unanimous jury verdicts violate the 6th Amendment. Hence, whether because of institutional incapacity or as a result of being overturned, today’s promised judicial shortcut to educational utopia is unlikely to materialize.

Joshua Dunn is professor of political science at the University of Colorado–Colorado Springs.

By: Joshua Dunn
Title: Federal Appeals Judges Discover Constitutional Right to “Basic Minimum Education” – by Joshua Dunn
Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/federal-appeals-judges-discover-constitutional-right-basic-minimum-education/
Published Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2020 22:01:51 +0000

Lunchtime Yoga, The "Mute" Button, and also Easier Distinction: Why One Educator Enjoys the Unique e-School-- by Kerry McKay

When the school district for which I teach announced a shift to synchronous e-learning, I did a dance of joy and then felt guilty.

After the first week of e-teaching, colleagues were frustrated. A few were getting headaches after toggling for hours from one application to the next. Others said it was impossible to keep up with the workload while trying to learn all this new technology on the fly and look after their own young children. One colleague said to me, “I’ll never again complain about having to go to work.” I have sympathy, but so far, for me, at least so far, it’s all working out pretty well. I am one happy introvert.

To keep my e-instruction simple these first weeks, I’ve continued with the silent, sustained reading familiar to my students. Anticipating school closures, I had students take home a book of choice from our classroom library. At the start of each e-class, after we check in on Zoom, students read their book for 20 minutes and then write a response that they submit on Google Classroom. Many students seem to be really engaging with their books. I’m hearing voices in their writing that didn’t get expressed in the traditional classroom. One student who early in the school year said that she hates reading, now writes about finding a place in the sun and reading for well over the required 20 minutes because she gets lost in her book. I like getting to know kids this way. The quietest ones are now the loudest.

In the traditional classroom, it’s nearly impossible to conceal differentiation because students notice if I give out different levels of an article or ask a few students to do more rigorous work. Online, students can be in the same class but participate in different tasks without knowing one another’s business. And students can stay on Zoom after a mini lesson to ask questions without other students hearing their confusion.

In e-teaching, misbehaviors can be turned off. Predictably, on the first day of e-learning two lunkheads thought it would be funny to invite buddies onto our Zoom, under aliases, and then shout out profanities during the seconds it took me to find the mute button. Yes, in a traditional classroom these students wouldn’t be so emboldened. However, it is easy as the commander of Zoom, especially once you enable the “waiting room,” to simply remove a student from a class session with the touch of the screen. Tap. You’re gone. Misbehavior no longer needs to waste other students’ time.

Synchronized e-learning provides students and teachers with a schedule but a flexible one. Between classes, I can hop onto my yoga mat and do a few poses when I need to stretch. When I have a block of time on the schedule for preparation, I can go for a walk and do the prep work in the evening. And so can students. Both of my own teens have fit a run into the middle of their online school days.

My students with ADHD have been more productive. Maybe it is helping to be able to move around and separate from distracting classmates? Perhaps the privacy built into e-learning allows students to avoid negative peer pressure too. Kids with organizational challenges who I had urged prior to Coronavirus to use a planner are now writing down their assignments and keeping track of them. I asked a student why he’s now keeping the planner I had encouraged him to keep all year, and he said it doesn’t feel embarrassing anymore. One parent told me that her 17-year-old son is thriving—earning higher grades than when he was in the school building and restricted by the role he plays. At home, he can be himself, a curious intellectual.

For years sleep experts have espoused that the circadian rhythm of the teenager doesn’t match the start times of high schools. Since schools don’t have to juggle a bus schedule, many school have started their days later. The students I surveyed reported getting enough sleep for the first time since beginning high school. Furthermore, students have time to do their work. They don’t have to wait until 9:45 p.m., after a full day of school, piano lessons, driver’s education, and club volleyball practice.

E-learning is not for everyone. My students with individualized education programs are struggling more than ever despite individual Zoom sessions with teachers.

Once we’ve weathered the coronavirus storm, I hope that we will let today’s lessons enact positive culture shifts. I hope we will remember how good it feels to slow down, spend time with loved ones, and breathe cleaner air. I also hope that educators will recognize that there is great promise and possibility with e-learning. Students can have more autonomy. And so can teachers.

Kerry McKay is a public-school teacher in Darien, Connecticut.

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

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