After a , the department’s Office for Civil Rights said the district must create a new division focusing on students with disabilities, improve transportation services for those students, and take steps to better identify and accommodate their needs.

“The district must take immediate action to remedy their violations and protect the rights of current and future students to a free and appropriate public education,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement. 

The proposed resolution agreement also requires the district to train staff, including bus drivers, on any updated policies. If officials don’t agree to the terms, OCR “may initiate enforcement,” the announcement said. 

The district, which said from the outset that it would cooperate with the department, is “carefully reviewing” the findings, a spokesman said, adding that OCR makes important points about providing clear information to parents and getting their children to and from school. 

Neither the department nor the district, however, has made the full results of the investigation available.

With OCR largely focusing its resources on investigating districts that allow students to compete in sports or use bathrooms based on gender identity, the D.C. investigation is one of the few disability-related cases it has launched and completed since President Donald Trump returned to office. A from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which sparked the probe, found that the district has one of highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. An advisory committee to the commission determined that young children in the district were under-identified for special education services or accommodations for disabilities and that parents were often encouraged to file lawsuits in order to get their children help. 

“That obviously favors those who have means, can hire an attorney and know how to get through the system,” said Craig Leen, former vice chair of the advisory committee. A civil rights attorney who served in the Labor Department during Trump’s first term, he also struggled to get services for his daughter. Now a senior at a charter school in the district, she has autism and an intellectual disability.

The bus was often late or didn’t arrive at all, creating disruptions to his daughter’s routine, Leen said. Since the investigation began, he said he’s seen improvements. The bus comes on time, and to keep parents updated, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees transportation for students with disabilities in both DCPS and charter schools in the city, is developing a bus .

The district, according to the spokesman, is working with the state agency to “improve real‑time visibility into bus delays to make certain students do not lose instructional time or access to required services.”

Leen said he’s not concerned about Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s plans to transfer OCR or the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to another federal agency as she continues efforts to phase out the department. 

“My main concern is that they have a designated agency addressing special education,” he said. 

Many of the advisory committee’s recommendations were based on testimony from Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., The organization trains parents and provides to families who haven’t been able to get services for their children.

The organization is “thankful that OCR is paying attention to the many challenges that students with disabilities in the District of Columbia are facing,” Blaeuer said. But she added that it would be premature to comment on the department’s announcement “without access to the actual determination” or until a resolution has been reached.

“The money’s coming. The money’s not coming. Oh no, we have to shut all of our Head Starts. No we don’t,” she said, describing the ping-ponging state leaders have been through between U.S. Secretary Linda McMahon’s efforts to downsize the department and court rulings reversing her actions. “We’re going through total D.C. chaos right now. Every time you turn right, it says turn left.”

To make sense of those shifts, she turns to Adam Schott, her associate secretary for student support and another top official at the Education Department during the Biden administration. In Washington, he oversaw the distribution of $122 billion in relief funds and was a primary point of contact on school improvement efforts. Having him on her team, Marten said, is like having “phone-a-friend on speed dial.”

Schott is part of an exodus of former experts in federal policy, budgeting and data who have literally gone “back to the states,” to borrow McMahon’s catch-phrase. In her eyes, the state level is where the magic happens, away from the one-size-fits-all ethos of Washington. The irony is that a recent crop of state officials are themselves federal ex-pats who resigned or were displaced by McMahon’s layoffs. ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ also spoke to former department staff working in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Illinois. Because of the secretary’s efforts to shutter the department, there have never been so many federal staffers looking for work. 

With the future of the federal government’s role in education uncertain, observers say their expertise is more valuable than ever. 

“The people I worked with were there for like 15, 20 years,” said Kiara Nerenberg, a top data expert who resigned from her position with the National Center for Education Statistics just ahead of the mass layoffs in March. “There’s just so much knowledge that’s now looking for a place to land.”

Maryland’s ‘biggest score’ 

Marten’s team in Delaware also includes , who served as acting secretary at the department before McMahon was confirmed and has decades of experience in the federal government. 

Marten called her “the right hand and the left hand” of multiple secretaries, including Democrat Arne Duncan and Republican Betsy DeVos. Carter stepped into the role of acting chief operating officer for Federal Student Aid last year following after a disastrous launch of the redesigned financial aid form. She oversaw corrections that contributed to a this year. Carter resigned in April and is now helping to overhaul Delaware’s outdated school funding formula.

But Marten didn’t get all the talent. Because of its proximity to Washington, Maryland has scooped up several former staffers. Montgomery County even launched targeting displaced federal employees.

Richard Kincaid leads the division of college and career pathways at the Maryland State Department of Education. His “biggest score,” he said, was hiring Nerenberg, the former NCES staffer. One of her responsibilities was making “all of the tens and hundreds of thousands of points on maps that tell you where schools are,” she said. She was part of to identify neighborhood demographics — vital information for programs like Title I for low-income schools and grants for rural areas.Ìę

Now, she gathers data for career and technical education programs, but is also working to better align career-focused education with the needs of local labor markets. Having Nerenberg “catapulted us years ahead,” Kincaid said.Ìę

Others searching for new jobs traveled far outside Washington. 

Tara Lawley spent 17 years with NCES, where she worked on both higher education and K-12 data collection. She was laid off along with over 1,300 other staff at the department in March while her husband, who worked in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, took the “fork in the road” option, a deferred resignation with several months of paid leave.

In August, she found her new position with the Illinois Board of Higher Education, where she’s the managing director of policy, research and fiscal analysis.

“We sold our house, tore our children out of everything they knew, and moved them across the country,” she said.

Her kids, 5 and 8, are doing fine, she said. But the experience reinforced her view that some decisions shouldn’t be left up to the states. 

“How do you take a [special education plan] from one state to another? That’s a challenge that still exists and it’s certainly not going to be solved if you do it state by state,” she said. “If you’re in a state that’s really not doing well in K-12 education and you move to a different state, your kid can be really far behind.”

‘Connective tissue’

Some former staffers have branched out into agencies that focus on more than just education.

Sarah Mehrotra spent two years in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, where she administered pandemic recovery efforts like curbing chronic absenteeism and preventing students from becoming homeless. She left the department in January along with other members of Cardona’s team, but knew she wanted to keep doing similar work.

Now she’s part of Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s Office for Children, where she works on an initiative to in specific communities. They include Frederick County’s , where more than 80% of students in two elementary schools qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, and Baltimore’s Cherry Hill neighborhood, where a state grant supports a .

When she was with the department, she said officials were “screaming from the rooftops” about ways districts could blend federal dollars with other sources of funding to re-engage students who became disconnected from school during the pandemic. Now, she said, “It’s super helpful to have the federal, state and local perspective” when working with grantees at the community level.

Those with federal experience, she said, can serve as “connective tissue” between states and the Education Department. 

Republicans say there should be fewer ties to Washington, not more. At least one former department official, now at the state level, agrees. McKenzie Snow, Iowa’s education director, worked as an aide to DeVos and held top education positions in New Hampshire and Virginia. 

She’s among those who, like McMahon, say that states are well equipped to manage federal education funds without the department’s strict oversight. Her state was the first to submit to roll federal funds into a block grant.

‘Their own innovation’

McMahon often points to reading gains in Mississippi and Louisiana to argue that the department is unnecessary. 

“The states that are making great progress — it’s through their own innovation,” she said during a recent . “It’s not coming from the Department of Education.”

But not all states have seen the same progress, and many have experienced significant turnover in leadership since the pandemic, which can contribute to disruption across an agency. Just the state chiefs changed in Florida, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oklahoma and Utah, and since the beginning of 2023, more than 30 states have changed superintendents. 

Having staff with some knowledge of federal grants and requirements is a plus right now, said Anna Edwards, co-founder and chief advocacy officer at Whiteboard Advisors, a consulting group. 

“Given the uncertainty at the federal level, having those answers in house within a state is valuable,” she said. “During the shutdown, leaders couldn’t even talk to anyone at the department.”

Elizabeth Ross, who served in the department during the , has worked for three chiefs since joining the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education in 2020. 

“It’s our job to make sure that students don’t feel that transition, that they continue to have access to all of the resources and support,” she said. 

A former third grade teacher in D.C., she led federal efforts to turn around low-performing schools and revamp No Child Left Behind, with its tough testing and accountability requirements, into the more-flexible Every Student Succeeds Act. 

Under Secretary Duncan, the department used stimulus funds as leverage to get states to adopt the Common Core standards and incorporate student test scores into teacher evaluations. The incentives often drew complaints about government overreach, but they also “catalyzed and generated a lot of reform,” she said. 

What she didn’t have was frequent contact with teachers and parents directly affected by those programs. Now an assistant superintendent, she spends a lot of time in schools and often runs into teachers in the community who ask about specific curriculum materials.

She has new appreciation for their input. 

“My perspective has shifted, compared to when I was at the federal level, on how important local buy-in is for the success of policies,” she said. “It’s something that I understand in a much, much deeper way.”

He would cry and run off during fire drills. Teachers put his desk in the corner, so he wouldn’t disturb his classmates. They would call her during the day so she could talk him into sitting still. Jones was shocked then that when Kelsey reached first grade, the school said he no longer needed extra support, like a teacher’s aide and a plan to help him control his behavior.

“I’m like, ‘’If there’s not a problem, why were you calling me all these days?’ ” she said. Kelsey, who has autism, went a year without any special education services, and Jones was preparing to sue the District of Columbia’s public school district. The toughest part, she said, was that her experience wasn’t unusual. “If you have 30-plus parents 
 and they have very similar stories, there is something systemic. They put it on the parents, like this is a one off.”

Ordeals like hers are why the U.S. Department of Education last month launched into the school district. A from an independent civil rights committee showed the district has failed to identify and adequately serve thousands of students with disabilities and has one of the highest rates of special education complaints in the nation. This marks the first investigation the Office for Civil Rights launched that didn’t focus on President Donald Trump’s priorities, such as on university campuses and transgender students competing on . 

The district says it will “fully cooperate” with OCR. But the agency’s review is kicking off in the midst of disruption to the federal government’s enforcement of protecting students with disabilities. Education Secretary Linda McMahon gutted OCR’s staff, and Trump is attempting to move oversight of special education programs to the Department of Health and Human Services. If the investigation results in a plan for improvement, it’s unclear who would hold the district accountable.

“HHS lacks the expertise needed to administer the [Individuals with Disabilities Act],” said Maria Blaeuer, director of programs and outreach with Advocates for Justice and Education, Inc., a District of Columbia advocacy group. Her testimony informed many of the recommendations in the December report. Moving IDEA to HHS, she said “does nothing to improve services for students with disabilities and it deprives state and local education authorities of the expert advice and support they need.” 

Craig Leen, a civil rights attorney who served in the Department of Labor during Trump’s first term, may have played a role in turning the department’s attention to students with disabilities. He is vice chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights’ D.C. advisory committee, which issued the report, and he navigated the district’s special education system for his own children.

The report found that the district under-identifies children with disabilities when they are young, which creates delays in students getting the extra help they need. When disagreements arise, the report said, the school district takes a “sue and settle” approach, which favors parents who can afford litigation in order to get services or accommodations for their children.

“That’s not a best practice, obviously,” said Leen, who became involved in disability rights when he was the city attorney for Coral Gables, Florida. “You shouldn’t have to sue to get what you’re entitled to.”

Leen’s daughter Alex, who has autism and an intellectual disability, attended Hardy Middle School in the district, but he didn’t feel she was getting the support she needed to be engaged in class. When he inquired about getting Alex into St. Coletta, a charter school that specializes in serving children with disabilities, an administrator suggested the family file a due process complaint, like a lawsuit.

Transportation — a key focus of the advisory committee’s report — was also a frequent problem.

“Sometimes [the bus] would not arrive at all. Sometimes it would arrive an hour late,” he said. Alex would only wait so long before she got frustrated and wanted to go back to her room. “My daughter needs a very routine schedule. Waiting for an hour for the bus would disrupt the whole day.”

But Leen’s struggles are not uncommon —  as indicated by a class action lawsuit from families over transportation problems last year and a 30 years ago. 

One factor contributing to the transportation headaches is that the district doesn’t actually have its own buses and drivers. The Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which oversees both the traditional public school district and more than 120 charter schools, provides no transportation for most of the city’s students. It is responsible only for getting children with disabilities to and from school consistently. Many attend schools far outside their neighborhood, or even in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs, where their needs can be met.

The superintendent’s office told the committee that it has the fleet necessary to cover all the bus routes and has offered incentives to recruit drivers. But parents say the system is still unreliable. 

They want GPS tracking for buses, nurses and aides, more vehicles that are wheelchair accessible and better communication — like an app. The committee’s report also pointed to teachers who ultimately quit because they were sometimes stuck at school until 7 p.m. waiting for buses to pick up students. 

Santanya Prince-Abdoul, whose 7-year-old son attends school in D.C., started keeping track. She recorded in a notebook over 20 times since fall of 2024 that the bus was late or didn’t arrive.

“I was promised that I would be contacted by a supervisor on various occasions, and no one has ever called me,” she said. “I stopped using the system and started to transport my son to school, which defeated the whole purpose.”  

She also clashed with educators over updating his individualized education program with a goal of counting up to 100. The plan still said her son, who has medical issues and seizures, should practice counting to 20.

“Those are the kinds of things that we are having to sit in meetings to negotiate,” she said. “Even with the attorney involved they’re still resisting, they’re still opposing.”

The committee concluded that “chronic underfunding” contributes to the district’s inability to adequately serve students — an issue not unique to D.C. Congress intended for the federal government to cover 40% of states’ special education costs; instead it’s about 14%. 

In other ways, D.C. schools are atypical. The district has to depend on Congress to approve its budget every year — an often . In most places, a parent dissatisfied with how their district is handling their child’s case can file a state complaint. But D.C.’s state superintendent’s office often refers parents directly to OCR, said Blaeuer, with Advocates for Justice and Education.

“Very often by the time they’re filing with OCR, they’ve given up on solving it for their student this school year,” she said. “They’re hoping to make it better for the following school year and for the other students who come after their child.”

In its statement, the district said it has made “significant investments to strengthen our special education programs, expand inclusive learning opportunities and engage families as partners in their children’s success.”

At a in February, Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee elaborated. 

“We have reduced our number of complaints over the last couple of years.” Last year, he said, parents filed 205 due process complaints, but the number has dropped over 60% over the past decade, he told Council Chairman Phil Mendelson. Ferebee added that the district is trying to “enhance” communication with families as a way to resolve problems before educators and parents reach an impasse. “This is something that we will continue to work on.”

But some families are unwilling to wait. At the end of 2023-24 school year, Jones pulled her son out of Miner and enrolled him in Two Rivers Public Charter School, also in D.C.  She cried at her last parent-teacher conference when she realized how far Kelsey, now in third grade, has come.

“My son can now write a story out of his imagination. At Miner, he was regressing, wasn’t even verbal,” she said. “He’s learning how to advocate for himself, like ‘Hey I need a break. My battery is low.’ He’s going to stay there until eighth grade.” 

Focused on schools in Washington, D.C., the preliminary results show middle school students attended an additional three days and those in the elementary grades improved their attendance by two days when they received tutoring during regular school hours.  

But high-impact tutoring —defined as at least 90 minutes a week with the same tutor, spread over multiple sessions — had the greatest impact on students who missed 30% or more of the prior school year. Their attendance improved by at least five days, according to the study from the National Student Support Accelerator, a Stanford University-based center that conducts tutoring research. 

Susanna Loeb, who leads the center, called the data “the first evidence of a strong causal link between tutoring specifically and attendance.” 

Hedy Chang, executive director of the nonprofit Attendance Works, said it makes sense that students come to school more often when they’re keeping up in class and getting good grades. 

“Part of why kids don’t show up is because they don’t feel successful in school,” she said. Forming a connection with a tutor over several weeks or months can also make students more motivated to attend, she added. “I do think it’s an impact of high-dosage tutoring, not necessarily just tutoring.”

The early findings, which will be expanded in a future paper, reinforce the benefits of offering high-impact tutoring during the school day. The extra instructional time helps schools address two of their biggest post-pandemic problems — learning loss and chronic absenteeism, the researchers said. The White House has urged districts to not only target remaining federal relief funds toward those areas, but explore ways to sustain those efforts when they dry up. 

Districts that continue tutoring programs will likely keep “student achievement top of mind,” Loeb said, “with greater engagement — including increased attendance — as another outcome they hope to see.”

also demonstrated how to successfully integrate tutoring sessions into the school day. The state education agency, which has spent $35 million on the program, funds staff members in charge of rearranging the schedule to accommodate the sessions and track data on student participation.Ìę

“They took that off the plate of the principal,” Christina Grant, D.C.’s state superintendent, said at a January conference hosted by Accelerate, an organization that works to scale high-dosage tutoring. She added that working with researchers like those from Stanford can help districts communicate the impact of federal relief funds. Without those partnerships, she said, “we would look back three years later and not be able to tell the authentic story around what happened to $35 million.”

The district, which had a chronic absenteeism rate of last school year, began its tutoring program in 2021. Officials awarded grants to a variety of providers, including , which focuses on high school math and teacher preparation program.

Sousa Middle School, in southeast D.C., works with George Washington University’s , which pays college students interested in STEM or education to work as tutors.

“My challenge, when this program first began, was getting students to come and not look at it as a form of punishment,” said Sharon Fitzgerald, Sousa’s tutoring manager. Now students who have “graduated” out of the program ask why they can’t come back. 

Students responded well, she said, because it’s a “break away from seeing their regular teachers every day” and because they look up to the college students. The tutors, she added, also have a clever way of giving students a taste of how much more they’ll learn during their next meeting and if they attend class everyday.

“It was what the tutors left them with in the last session that encouraged them to come to school,” Fitzgerald said.

The results are likely to spark more interest in how tutoring and attendance initiatives can work in tandem.

“We have not intentionally used tutors as a way to address attendance. I can imagine that it could help if part of their work focused on that,” said A.J. Gutierrez, co-founder of Saga Education. “I see potential.”

Chang, with Attendance Works, said the results are “on the right track,” but don’t go far enough. During the , several states still had chronic absenteeism rates over 30%, including Alaska, New Mexico and Oregon.

Tutoring doesn’t address all of the barriers that keep students from attending school, like health conditions or bullying, she said. But tutors could refer students to school attendance teams when those concerns surface.

“What more could we get,” she asked “if tutoring was tied to a bigger strategy, a more comprehensive approach?’ ”

In 2004, when he was 17, Michael Jeffery stole a patrolman’s badge out of a police cruiser in Plano, Texas. He admits it was a “dumb decision.” He’d dropped out of school in ninth grade and was in the habit of “car hopping” — breaking into vehicles to look for valuables. 

Police arrested him quickly.

“They left me in jail,” he said. “And all I know [is] I went to court nine months later. I had a felony charge for something — I didn’t know what was going on.”

Nearly 20 years later, at 36, he’s about to enroll at Catholic University, where he plans to study law, saying, “I want to fight for myself.”

On July 14, he finally graduated from high school — as valedictorian, no less, a feat that seems all the more amazing because Jeffery has spent virtually all of his time in D.C., nearly two years, living in a tent near the city’s Navy Yard, showering at a neighborhood pool and riding a city bus 15 minutes to class. 

He graduated thanks to an unusual program housed in a two-campus school with one mission: to help adults get their high school diploma, sometimes decades after they dropped out. 

Its oldest graduate is 72 and the youngest 15. The average student, if there is one, is 28 years old.

The school gets its name and startup funding from the place where most of us shop for castoff Pyrex pans, old vinyl LPs and vintage T-shirts.

The Goodwill Excel Center Adult Charter High School is the only adult charter in the district that awards a real high school diploma rather than a GED. After seven years in operation, it boasts about 500 graduates, all of them searching for a second chance to prove to the world — and themselves — that they can succeed in school.

Excel does it by front-loading essential services and personalizing everything it can. Among its features: on-site childcare, free transportation to and from school and classes that meet just four days a week — Fridays are devoted almost exclusively to tutoring. And each student has an academic coach. 

The typical class size is just 10 to 12 students, with many even smaller. It does all this, its leaders say, with the same level of funding that other D.C. charter high schools get: about $16,000 to $21,000 per student.

“People know your name, know your story — and then your coach is your main person,” said Chelsea Kirk, the schools’ executive director, who calls the approach “curated” to the students it serves.

The individualized approach is intentional, designed to reframe the task of high school completion. 

“We like to put high school dropouts into a box and say, ‘This is why they’re a dropout,’” Kirk said. “But we don’t ever think about what structures caused that. We don’t ever think about ‘How could a school change its structures to embrace people?’”

Like Jeffery, many graduates push to get their diplomas because they want to work as attorneys, social workers and the like, devoting their lives to changing the “poor service and broken systems” they’ve experienced in school and elsewhere as they looked for help.

Doing it for someone

Many Excel students push for their high school diploma because not having it is holding them back from promotions and higher salaries. One alumnus told the school he worked as a paralegal at the same law firm for 18 years, earning minimum wage. A diploma bumped his salary by $20,000.

But for others, the reasons are highly personal. Carla Thompson, 41, said she made her way to Excel after one of her four children, ages 9 to 21, began asking about the point of finishing high school instead of dropping out and getting a job.

“My 14-year-old is questioning that part,” she said. “I can’t be a hypocrite and say, ‘You have to,’ and I don’t have it.”

Brendan Hurley, who handles public affairs for the D.C.-area Goodwill region, said messaging for the school has adjusted to this reality. When the school opened in 2016, recruiting materials were “very data driven,” with statistics on how much more high school graduates earn and how they’re more likely to find sustainable employment. Two years in, an alumni focus group found that message paled in comparison to the blush of pride students felt from simply getting the diploma and sharing the accomplishment with their loved ones. 

“It’s the diploma itself that’s important,” said Hurley. “They want that piece of paper. They want the high school experience that they did not have when they were 16, 17, 18 years old.”

The big prize, Kirk added, is the external validation they get, the ability to hold their head up among their children and grandchildren. She calls it a “two-generation” approach. “It’s not just about you. It’s about the next generation and a generation after that.”

‘Small wins‘

The originated in Indiana in 2010, when Goodwill centers there struggled to find high school graduates to be front-line store workers. It has since spread to five states and D.C. 

The approach takes hold at a moment when U.S. high school graduation rates, while at 86%, are unequally distributed. In fact, D.C. has the worst graduation rate in the nation, at 69%, far below even the worst two states, New Mexico and Arizona.

In D.C., enrollment in the two campuses now sits at 405, with a planned, separately privately funded campus in Baltimore this fall as well. The student body is overwhelmingly Black and about 70% female. For these students, the schools maintain a full-time staff of 49 — many of them younger than the students they serve.

Discussions with Goodwill about opening the center began in 2014, when it got a grant from D.C. to train employees at a planned Marriott hotel. But they found that the No. 1 barrier to jobs at the hotel was a lack of high school diploma. The school opened two years later among the corporate and government highrise canyons just north of The White House. Another campus opened last year near D.C.’s National Mall.

Though most Excel students come from the poorest neighborhoods in the city, miles from downtown, the schools’ geography is intentional, Kirk said: Students wanted safe locations away from the crime and violent schools of their neighborhoods. But they also wanted a place that brought them into contact each morning with professional opportunities. As it is, the original school lies squarely between the World Bank and the Council on Foreign Relations.

One key to the school’s success is its prioritization of “small wins” for students who may have had few of them in school until now. For instance, a big difference between Excel and virtually every other school model is its academic calendar. No matter what their education or skill level when they enter, every student starts as a ninth-grader and proceeds at her own pace, without a cohort of classmates on the same track.

Students ideally can complete their entire high school education in just two years, with individualized education plans and tutoring for every student that allow them to maintain work and family duties. In reality, many students complete the program more slowly, coming and going as life allows — a few who graduated this July first enrolled in 2016, when the center’s doors opened. 

The school licenses with the local YMCA to run a full-time, licensed daycare and child development center upstairs from the classrooms.

And instead of 20-week semesters, as in most high schools, Excel offers all its courses in five compact eight-week terms, all of them based on competency, not seat time. Four assessments over the course of each term keep students on track.

But if they lose the thread of a course and tutoring doesn’t help, they can simply start over again at the end of eight weeks, without having to wait months or even a year for a “re-do,” a major pain point for many students who drop out.

For students with heavy work or family commitments, the school offers a nearly unheard-of accommodation: Staying enrolled requires taking just one class per term.

Jeffery, the valedictorian, showed up to the school in the spring of 2022, after years of bouncing between jobs: dental assistant, tax preparer, fast-food restaurant manager. 

“I can get a job without a high school diploma,” he said. “I have experience. I know I could have probably come out here and got a job that pays well with my resume. But that wasn’t my plan. My plan was to do more with myself because I know I can do more.”

He was ready to get on with his schoolwork: “I told them just to fill my schedule up, give me all the classes I can take.” He graduated barely a year after he started. 

With the school’s help, he’s close to moving into his own place, if a background check clears. But he acknowledges that he’s spent a lot of time “lost, trying to find my way.” 

By Jeffery’s telling, upon his arrest in Texas in 2004, authorities offered this deal: Plead guilty to felony assault stemming from a fight at a nearby high school and walk away with time served plus probation. Or risk going to trial for the fight and serve as much as eight years in prison. Because he was a juvenile, the records remain sealed.

He’d been at the school the night of the fight, but nowhere near the clash, he said — and he hadn’t even been questioned about it while sitting in jail for months. But he soon realized he had no choice: With a public defender who did little to stand up for him, Jeffery said, he took the plea deal and earned his release shortly after his 18th birthday. 

“I didn’t know how the system worked,” he recalled, the ordeal still stinging nearly two decades later. “The lawyer that I had, and the judge, they didn’t fight for me. They didn’t care. They just wanted to get a conviction and call it a day.” 

For the past year or so, Jeffery’s been known to spend more time than most at the school’s downtown campus, arriving early and leaving late, ferreting out the teachers who can offer a bit of extra tutoring. He made a point to get to know every teacher and administrator, lingering over conversations before heading back to his tent.

“Those cold nights and those hot summers and those rainy days and those rats, those people who are under the influence of all kinds, they’re not fun to live around,” he said. The school was “my escape from that world.”

‘I came in like a sour lemon‘ 

The school follows 12 accountability goals set by D.C.’s Public Charter School Board. One of them requires Excel to graduate 20% to 25% of its students each year, which it typically does. According to its 2019 , it graduated 31.7% and exceeded the board’s reading and math proficiency goals. In 2022, ; this year that dropped to 22%, still meeting the board’s goals.

Its annual attendance goal: 60%, but the school adjusts to students’ lives if they show a willingness to persevere and be honest when they can’t make it to class. If students have two consecutive absences, the school requests that they create an attendance plan with their academic coach. Students can be kicked out if they don’t meet the requirements, but can easily reapply.

Many students, Kirk said, work overnight jobs and care for children and grandchildren, as well as parents. And many, approaching and in some cases exceeding middle age, have health issues that keep them away.

“We don’t take it lightly that you show up,” she said.

Cheryl Smith, 49, enrolled at Excel 33 years after leaving her D.C. middle school at the end of eighth grade — and a year after beating a lifelong PCP addiction, one that began around the time she dropped out of school. An adoptee who never met her biological parents, Smith had children of her own very young. She eventually had three kids, all before turning 20. 

She can count the number of times she tried to quit PCP: 35. Her addiction tore her family apart. Her two sons would eventually be put up for adoption, but she stayed connected to them through a friend and has once more become a steady presence in their lives. Her kids all grew up, and she’s now a grandmother of eight.

She enrolled in 2021, recalling, “When I came here, they opened up their arms to me. I came in like a sour lemon, but rose to be an apple.”

For Smith, getting her diploma amounts to a kind of redemption and face-saving for her grandkids, the oldest of which is now 16, who spent their lives seeing their grandmother get high.

“The older ones knew,” she said. Though she never used drugs around her grandkids, they all saw the aftermath: “sitting there, looking stupid.”

She tried to get clean one last time, saying to herself: “I’m just tired of it. It’s not a good look.”

She had extra motivation: The birth of her youngest grandson Dontae, now 3. Born premature, at just 2 lbs. 11 oz., the size of your hand, “he came out eating,” Smith said, thus earning the nickname Munchy.

Now in her care much of the time, he’d come to school with her most mornings, spending his days in the YMCA childcare center upstairs. Growing up in D.C., she said, he’ll undoubtedly see drug use around him. But not from his grandma.

Positive affirmation

In the end, the secret of the school’s success may boil down to the simplest of principles: It believes in its students. Ask any Excel student what they missed in their high school career and they’ll easily tell you: a sense of possibility, of success.

“That’s the piece that a lot of our students have missed, that affirmation piece, that ‘Atta boy,’” said Vershaun Terry, who heads special education for the schools. “They want to be seen.”

Many observers might mistakenly believe that positive affirmations are only for small children. Even prospective staffers at the school believe they’re walking into a space where adults can succeed without a lot of affirmation, Terry said.

“They don’t. They come in chronologically at a higher age, but socially, emotionally, they’re youth,” he said. Many still need that guidance, those affirmations, that structure. “They have a whole world out there to take care of, but they still need it here. They need to get refilled here, too.”

As for Cheryl Smith, she graduated alongside Jeffery and 54 others, 35 years after she finished middle school. She has told Kirk she wants to mentor students at Excel, but for now she’s grateful for the opportunity to be a role model after all these years. Next she wants to get off disability and find a home that’s not Section 8 public housing.

“I’ll be 50 next year,” she said. “When I get older, I want to be able to sit back in my rocking chair with my great-grandkids and be able to tell the story: ‘Yeah, Grandma was a pistol, but she turned out to be a winner.’ ”

]]> /article/in-and-out-of-class-these-top-teachers-thrive-off-connections-with-students/ Mon, 10 Apr 2023 19:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=707228 Like many adults cooped up during the pandemic, science teacher Carolyn Kielma broke the tedium by learning something new. After a lightning-quick online ordination from the Seattle-based Universal Life Church Monastery, she became a licensed wedding officiant.

“I just love love,” said Kielma, who teaches at Bristol Eastern High School in Connecticut and is one five finalists for 2023 National Teacher of the Year.

By chance, her first time leading a ceremony was the marriage of a former student. The two stayed in touch on Facebook after Andrew Michaud graduated in 2014. He didn’t learn Kielma was a minister until he and his fiancĂ©e Jane began searching for a venue.

“I couldn’t have drawn a more perfect hand of cards,” Michaud said. “I didn’t feel nervous standing at the altar because I’m just kind of hanging out with my favorite teacher.”

All of this year’s finalists hold a similar place in the hearts of their students, parents and colleagues. While passionate about their subjects, and deeply skilled, they are perhaps best known for the relationships they’ve forged. 

“I thrive off connections in my classroom,” said Kielma, who teaches biology and sees a lot of the same students in her biotechnology and forensics elective. “The students won’t work for me if they can’t connect with me.”

This month, the Council of Chief State School Officers will name one of these five state teachers of the year the national winner. That educator will serve as an ambassador for the profession, speaking across the country and focusing on an issue that defines them as a teacher.

Kimberly Radostits of Illinois mentors ninth graders to help them get a strong start in high school. Jermar Rountree from the District of Columbia helped build an afterschool program where students can learn fencing and cooking. Rebecka Peterson of Oklahoma helps administer a blog where educators highlight the positive side of teaching, even when it’s hard to find. And Harlee Harvey has immersed herself in the culture of one of the most remote places on earth — the Alaskan tundra, accessible only by bush plane. 

Harvey teaches first grade at Tikiĥaq School, which serves a native whaling community in Point Hope, a narrow peninsula that juts out into the Chukchi Sea. After growing up in Fairbanks, where she went to the University of Alaska, she felt drawn to teach in the rural Iñupiaq village.

Most educators there don’t last long.

The school is “constantly restarting,” Harvey said. “We’ve had a new principal just about every year.”

In the spring, children often hunt with their parents for bowhead and beluga whales. The resulting bounty forms the centerpiece of the village’s spring festival and can feed families for months. Harvey designs culturally relevant lessons on topics such as ice fishing and how Native Alaskans melt ice and snow to make water in winter.

“The big push is framing education through their worldview,” Harvey said. “If there’s a story about going to the market and buying watermelon — they don’t do that out here.”

Harvey consults with Molly Lane, the school’s librarian, on hunting seasons throughout the year, blending facts about bearded seals, caribou and other animals into her lessons. Her attention to enduring traditions reflects broader efforts in the North Slope Borough School District, which includes TikiÄĄaq School, to infuse the students’ culture into the curriculum. 

The year Harvey took charge of the yearbook, for example, she included students’ Iñupiaq names along with their English ones.

“That had never happened before,” said Lane, who has had three children taught by Harvey. “So many people appreciated her effort in getting the names spelled correctly.”

‘An outsider looking in’

Earning students’ trust, as Tulsa’s Peterson learned, is all about vulnerability. Born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Iranian father, the Union Public Schools math teacher likes to share her experiences living in four countries before arriving in the U.S. 

“As a child moving that much,” she said, “I always felt like an outsider looking in.” About six years ago, she began sharing her story with students and inviting them to meet with her one-on-one to tell theirs. The experience, she said, has “transformed” her classroom and made students more willing to speak up about their needs.

Daniel Flores, a senior who took Peterson’s Advanced Placement Calculus class in 11th grade, said he initially felt unsure of himself after a rocky experience taking pre-calculus remotely during the pandemic.

“She assured me that we would work through it. We did. She answered every question I asked,” said Flores, who will attend Stanford University on a full scholarship this fall. “I have always had a strong support system in my family, but Mrs. Peterson stood out in the way she made her classroom a little home for every one of her students.”

The past three years have been some of the most challenging many teachers have ever experienced. But in the blog, Peterson always finds an encounter or observation worth celebrating. Entries include the time a student wrote her after her husband’s grandmother died and when she teared up watching members of the school’s perform in a musical.

“It shifted my mind as a teacher to be intentional about adding meaning to those small beautiful moments,” she said.

‘The most heartwarming thing’

Radostits, a Spanish teacher at Oregon High School, in a rural area east of Chicago, has the same outlook toward students in her Hawks Take Flight mentoring program, which she launched with colleagues in 2008. The program’s weekly afterschool sessions target students who struggled with absenteeism or missing assignments when they started ninth grade.Ìę

They discuss what’s going well and where they get stuck. If the students meet their goals for the week, they earn incentives, like an extra $5 on their meal accounts.

“I love teaching Spanish, but honestly my content is just a vehicle to connect with students,” she said. “These kids become another part of my family.” When COVID closed schools in March 2020, the program took a pause, but the mentors still offered individual support. Those one-on-one Google Meets often turned into group homework sessions.

“It was the most heartwarming thing for me,” Radostits said. “I thought they were going to go rogue on us and they didn’t.”

Radostits knows that shows freshmen who are on track academically are more likely to graduate on time. Rather than relying on teacher recommendations to identify students who needed mentoring, she pushed for a more data-driven approach. She turned to Adam Larsen, assistant superintendent in the Oregon Community Unit School District, who helped to develop an to detect which students might need extra help. Sixteen schools outside the district have since adopted it.

“We ultimately wanted to be laser-specific about finding kids who were at-risk of dropout, not necessarily the ones who were causing the most visible problems in class,” Larsen said.

‘They miss me’

Radostits is on a sabbatical this year, but she’s still mentoring students. Being a statewide winner can leave teachers feeling torn. Even if they’re still teaching, they often take time off for speaking engagements and conferences. 

“They miss me, and I miss them,” Rountree, a physical education teacher, said about his students at Center City Public Charter School’s Brightwood Campus. He said it’s especially hard to keep his pre-K students in a routine when he’s out. 

Noticing that the pandemic left many students feeling isolated or quick to anger, he takes time in class to let them air frustrations and share what makes them happy. When they come to P.E., they grab a clothespin to indicate their feelings — red for angry, blue for sad, yellow for OK and green for happy. 

“Isaiah loves Coach Rountree,” Toya Newton said of her youngest son. “He comes home explaining the different activities.” 

The 10-year-old recently brought home some sticks the class used to bang out a rhythm on the floor. Rountree said Isaiah asked to practice drumming at home. Newton’s oldest son Eric had Rountree for flag football, and she especially appreciated the coach taking his class across the street to Walmart to explore healthy meal portions and learn to read nutrition labels. 

“My son was overweight,” she said. “Now he’s playing flag football in high school and his weight is perfect.”

Rountree seeks help from community organizations in D.C. to address other needs — partnering, for example, with , a nonprofit that provides meal tokens that families can use at participating food trucks or restaurants throughout the city. And he helped launch an afterschool program featuring nontraditional activities like boxing and learning Japanese. 

As if Rountree weren’t busy enough already, he also stepped in this spring to serve as stage manager for the school’s first musical since the pandemic — “Annie Jr.”

“I just want to make sure my kids get it all,” he said.

]]> /article/analysis-are-schools-progressive-or-regressive-the-hidden-figures-behind-per-pupil-funding-in-d-c-maryland-and-virginia/ Tue, 10 May 2022 14:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=589019 Today, the biggest question in school finance is: Do America’s schools meet the oft-stated goal of infusing additional dollars to support students in low-income areas? In other words, are schools funded progressively, to give a leg up to disadvantaged students, or regressively, to spend money in schools where the children have the advantages of wealth?

Researchers have found that at the and district levels, school funding has fallen short of the progressive funding that is the goal of the federal government and many states. 

---

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Newsletter

---

Using a new, more precise dataset, I analyzed the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area (known locally as the DMV) and found that the region’s K-12 funding is regressive â€” but individual districts provide progressively more per pupil as the income range decreases. This is known as a Simpson’s Paradox, a statistical phenomenon in which combined numbers do not reflect the patterns of smaller groups. 

The dataset was made possible by the Every Student Succeeds Act, which requires states to report actual per-pupil funding in every public school in America. Previously, officials had reported individual school budgets based on average teacher salaries for the whole district, not actual teacher salaries in those schools. 

This almost always underestimates spending for high-income neighborhoods in a district, where teachers tend to be experienced and earn more on the standardized pay scale. And the converse is true for schools in low-income areas that employ young, lower-paid teachers.

The new data, reported for the 2018-19 school year for the first time, accurately measures a school’s per-pupil allotment from both federal and state/local sources. This enables comparisons across state lines. 

In my analysis, I combined the funding figures with Census data on the per-capita income for almost 1,000 schools in D.C., Maryland and Virginia based on their zip codes and classified those zip codes as ultrarich, wealthy, average and low income. 

When school spending is totaled by income group, the picture looks regressive. Wealthy and average-income areas receive more than the low-income and ultrarich. Low-income schools receive about 6 percent less than affluent schools. While the difference is not significant, it is far from the progressive ideal in which low-income schools would get extra money for their students. 

When broken down by jurisdiction, however, the picture looks different. D.C. Public Schools spends 22 percent more in low-income areas than the ultrarich ones, a classic progressive model. 

Maryland is somewhat progressive. It allocates less to ultrarich and wealthy areas than average or low-income areas. But low-income schools get $270 less than those with average income, based on the Maryland zip codes in the sample. 

In Virginia, spending is regressive. Wealthy and ultrarich schools are funded with an additional $2,400 per pupil compared with those in low-income areas — a 17 percent difference. The average low-income school in Virginia receives less money per pupil than schools do in the wealthiest zip codes in Maryland and D.C. 

But that is not the end of the story. Looking at Virginia districts, all appear progressive. In other words, the lowest-income category in each section spends more than the groups above it. 

So how is it that total Virginia spending is so regressive when all its districts in the sample look progressive?

The answer is at the bottom of the chart. Prince William County and two small cities within its borders spend far less per pupil than the other northern Virginia districts. In Prince William, schools in low-income zip codes spend 8 percent more per pupil than those in average-income zip codes. 

Yet, Prince William’s per-pupil spending in low-income schools is almost 50 percent less than that in the low-income schools in the neighboring districts in Fairfax and Loudoun. They also have less per pupil than the average and wealthiest schools in the other districts. 

These charts show the paradox. In total, funding looks regressive. For the states and D.C., it is a mixed bag. But even in the most regressive state, individual school districts look progressive.

Two factors combine to create the region’s regressive funding, and both are tied to the distribution of wealth within each jurisdiction.

As part of the analysis, I categorized schools and their income relative to the averages for each state as progressive, leaning toward progressive, status quo, leaning toward regressive and regressive. For example, the progressive schools included ultrawealthy and wealthy schools with low spending and low-income schools with high spending levels. Regressive schools were the reverse.

Schools that were nearly progressive or regressive were close to spending the correct amount to be considered fully progressive or regressive. Because a progressive funding model provides all schools with spending levels appropriate to their income, some average-spending schools fell in the wrong direction. If the middle-income schools were either above or below the average, I classified them as leaning regressive. 

The status quo group included middle-income schools with average spending. 

The charts below show that large countywide districts with wealthy areas have the resources to distribute funding in progressive ways. In general, the greater the percentage of schools in high-income zip codes, the higher the rate of schools with progressive financing.

In short, districts have to have wealth to share the wealth. 

That is why 89 of Prince William County’s 91 schools in the sample were regressive or leaning that way. Without any wealthy schools to generate revenue, the district did not have enough money to invest in its low-income areas or even provide its average-income schools with average funding levels for northern Virginia.

By comparison, the wealthier districts generated enough revenue to spend progressively in some schools and ensure most of their average-income areas got within the average amount of spending. 

The uneven distribution of wealth is not the only contributing factor to the degree of progressivity in districts. State funding formulas may play an even more significant role.  

Virginia “,” according to The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis. As in most other states, local property tax revenue provides most school funding. The formula aims for overall K-12 spending to be 45 percent from local sources and 55 percent from the state. Federal funding for Title I, special education and other grant programs is allocated based on their formulas.

Although Virginia creates an index to determine each school district’s “ability to pay,” it does not correct the imbalances in property tax revenue between the wealthy areas in the inner-ring suburbs (Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax ) and the relatively lower-income zip codes in Prince William County. 

Without local funds to invest, Prince William County will not be able to raise spending in its low-income areas to create a progressive picture for northern Virginia.

By contrast, Maryland sets a minimum amount of per-pupil funding for each district, distributing a larger share of state resources to lower-income communities. In addition, there are programs for addressing the needs of children who are at risk, have limited English proficiency or have disabilities. As with the foundational grant, the low-wealth districts get a larger per-pupil share of that funding.

In 2021, the Maryland legislature passed a improving the one in place in the 2018-19 school year. The changes could tip the state toward a progressive distribution of school money.

Finally, Washington, D.C.’s sets a per-pupil amount that provides the foundation for each school and then adds money for each at-risk student, English learner and child in several special education categories. Schools receive an additional 22 percent per pupil at risk and up to three times per pupil for students with the most severe disabilities. 

The result is the most progressive school funding in the region.

When measuring school funding, there is more than meets the eye. Digging deeper into the data helps understand the nuanced story and the detailed policies that result in progressively or regressively funded schools.

The situation is better in some places than others, but this much is clear: In the DMV, the states and districts can do better and should be striving to do so. 

David J. Hoff is a writer and data analyst based in Arlington, Virginia.

]]> /article/hbcu-leaders-decry-waves-of-bomb-threats-as-federal-investigators-probe-origin/ Thu, 10 Feb 2022 20:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=584627 Washington

Hours before theÌęSouthern Poverty Law Center heldÌęaÌęvirtual panel Tuesday about recent bomb threats made to dozens of historically Black colleges, yet another bomb threat was reported — this one toÌęSpelman College,Ìęa historically Black institution in Georgia.

“This was a racist attack that aims to not only disrupt the start of Black History Month, but the perpetrators, we believe, wanted to send a message that even learning while Black is not safe from hate,” said Lecia Brooks, the chief of staff and culture for the SPLC. None of the threats came to HBCUs in Virginia, according to news reports.

---

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Newsletter

---

“They clearly underestimated the strength of our treasured centers of learning, whose very existence is rooted in resilience.”

Leaders from five historically Black colleges and universities and an official with the U.S. Department of Education discussed how coordination between the institutions and the federal government could help protect students, faculty and the communities around those campuses. Nearly 20 HBCUs received bomb threats in the past weeks, with more than a dozen on Feb. 1, the first day of Black History Month.

The FBI isÌęÌęthe bomb threats made to HBCU institutions as hate crimes.

Michelle Asha Cooper, the acting assistant secretary for postsecondary education at the U.S. Department of Education, said that the department was working with the Justice Department, FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security to investigate the threats.

“These threats are reminiscent of the civil rights era,” she said. “Bomb threats against Black people is an unfortunate part of America’s history.”

Multiple media outlets haveÌęÌęthat the FBI has identified six juveniles of interest in the calls made to HBCUs.

Zachary Faison Jr., the president of Edward Waters University in Florida, said that he was concerned to learn that the threats could stem from young people, and added that he’s worried that children are not properly being taught about the history of racism in America.

“When I thought about young people, I’m thinking about people that don’t really understand or appreciate the historicity and the pains to African Americans in this country, particularly historically Black colleges and universities,” he said.

Brooks agreed and said that “we are seeing this more and more from our elected officials at the highest level, and those responses from our elected officials are having an impact on young people.”

Republicans at the state and congressional level have introduced or passed legislation to ban the teachings of critical race theory, an academic subject in higher education that has been around since the 1970s that looks at how race and law intersect. It’s not a subject taught in public schools.

Felecia Nave, the president of Alcorn State University in Mississippi, said that following the threats, her priority was students’ well-being.

“I’m extremely saddened for our students who continue to be traumatized, in what is truly unprecedented times,” she said.

Nave said that when she talked to students, she also talked to them about solutions and how they can help their community.

“They are disappointed, they are traumatized,” she said. “They’re resilient, and they are resolved to continue to move forward and to make it known that we won’t be threatened.”

She said they talked about voting rights and how it’s a constant struggle to fight for the right to vote and how important it is to educate people in their community about when certain legislation comes up, such as critical race theory.

“They’re being that next generation of civil rights leaders that our community is gonna need,” she said.

Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University in Louisiana, said that while his university has not yet received a bomb threat, the institution is no stranger to racist threats.

“I think that this has been a wake-up call for us,” he said. “Let’s lean into the history and deal with those issues and then say, how do we learn from that and apply it in this new context?”

Those institutions that received bomb threats include:

• Howard University and the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C.
• Bethune-Cookman University andÌęEdward Waters University in Florida
• Albany State University,ÌęFort Valley State University and Spelman College in Georgia
• Southern University and A&M College andÌęXavier University in Louisiana
• Bowie State University andÌęCoppin State University in Maryland
• Philander Smith College in Arkansas
• Delaware State University in Delaware
• Kentucky State UniversityÌę in Kentucky
• Alcorn State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi Valley State University and Tougaloo College in Mississippi

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Robert Zullo for questions: info@virginiamercury.com. Follow Virginia Mercury on and .

]]> /article/analysis-how-d-c-s-teacher-hiring-process-is-drawing-a-larger-pool-of-high-quality-candidates-and-diversifying-the-teaching-corps/ Tue, 19 Oct 2021 17:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=579320 Many states and school districts are working to bolster their teacher workforces as educators endure a third school year under the pandemic. Some have used bonuses to reward teachers. Others are using technology to get their strongest instructors in front of more students. But an infusion of federal COVID relief aid provides an opportunity to address an often-overlooked strategy: improving the way schools hire teachers. The school district in the nation’s capital has , with great success.Ìę

For years, the 50,000-student District of Columbia Public Schools started school in the fall with scores of classrooms staffed by last-minute hires, substitutes or no teachers at all. But over the past decade, the school district has turned the problem around using a comprehensive hiring system that combines a multi-step vetting process with a state-of-the-art web portal and extensive data analysis to help school leaders select the best applicants. The results are impressive: many more candidates and a higher-quality, more diverse teaching corps.Ìę

---

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Newsletter

---

Under the system, known as TeachDC, applicants first complete an online application and answer short essay questions focused on student achievement — such as how they set goals and track progress — as well as on their core values and beliefs about whether all students can learn to high standards. If they pass that stage, applicants complete a phone interview conducted by a trained teacher rated effective or highly effective, who focuses on those topics as well as instructional expertise. Selected candidates then advance to a “recommended” pool and may submit an audition video of their teaching. (The audition tape was required before the pandemic.) School principals and personnel committees, who make final hiring decisions, are encouraged to select candidates from that pool for interviews and additional screening before making an offer.Ìę

The school district’s pioneering teacher-evaluation system is an important component of TeachDC’s success, with highly rated educators playing a role in interviewing candidates, and with the evaluation system’s ratings validating both the TeachDC process and efforts to hire strong candidates early in the cycle.

Researchers have found that this multi-step vetting system than the traditional, often ad hoc, hiring practices used in most of the nation’s school districts. In particular, applicants with strong undergraduate achievement and highly rated essay and interview scores subsequently earned much higher marks in the school district’s Impact evaluation system than low-rated applicants whom DCPS also hired, according to a by researchers at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Michigan.

Results from the Impact system also revealed that teachers hired earlier in the process are more effective in the classroom, leading DCPS to start the recruitment process in December. To help schools identify vacancies as early as possible, the district provides incentives so that teachers who are planning to leave or retire let the school district know by April 1. These efforts have resulted in a significant reduction in the sorts of last-minute hires that plague many urban school districts. In the 2020-21 school year, 98 percent of DCPS’s openings were filled by the first day of classes. The percentage of teachers hired before the end of the previous school year — so-called early hires — has increased by 71 percent since 2016-17, and by 158 percent in Washington’s high-needs schools.Ìę

DCPS has combined this earlier and more rigorous hiring process with a focus on diversifying its teaching force. It has pursued partnerships with national organizations that have a track record of recruiting strong and diverse teaching talent, including Teach For America, the Urban Teacher residency program and Relay Graduate School of Education, which also offers a residency program in DC schools. It’s partnering with Howard University to recruit high-quality teachers of color in science and math. And it has trained those who interview prospective candidates to recognize and eliminate bias from those conversations.

One measure of success: 14 percent of the DCPS workforce were male teachers of color in 2019-20, 3.5 times the national average. And the district has retained effective and highly effective Black and Latino teachers at higher rates than comparable white teachers.

None of this is rocket science. But too few districts across the country prioritize teacher selection, despite the importance of educator quality to student success. Too often, hiring is a superficial, last-minute exercise, and students pay the price in inferior instruction. For school districts hoping to use the historic influx of to address the problem, the school system in the nation’s capital points to what’s possible.Ìę

Lynn Olson is a senior fellow at FutureEd, a think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Thomas Toch is director of FutureEd.

]]> /article/watch-education-experts-talk-student-literacy-covid-learning-loss-and-how-teachers-can-confront-the-widening-achievement-gap/ Thu, 30 Sep 2021 20:09:44 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=578497 How hard can it be to teach kids how to read?

Well, if you ask Mary Clayman, it’s the equivalent of rocket science. “We cannot put any curriculum in front of a teacher and expect them to become a master of their craft,” said Clayman, Director of the .

“There is a huge body of knowledge that teachers need to have access to and to understand to be able to adequately diagnose and intervene with a student.”

In her role at the reading clinic, Clayman trains teachers in the science of reading, which she defines as “this vast body of knowledge, decades of research, fMRI studies, which is cognitive science, information on the English language, [and] the theoretical underpinnings of how we think children acquire print.”

But that leads to a big question for education leaders: “Is the instruction in schools informed by this vast body of knowledge?”

If this video isn’t playing,Ìęclick here to watch.

Clayman was among a panel of experts assembled by the Progressive Policy Institute and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ on Wednesday to deal with the enormous question of how educators will close the achievement gap in literacy that has grown to a chasm during the COVID-19 pandemic. The panel was also sponsored by Education Reform Now DC.

Dr. Kymyona Burk, Policy Director for Early Education at the policy and research group, , laid out the challenge that educators face. Even before the chaos and disruption of the pandemic, only about 35 percent of the nation’s 4th-graders were scoring as proficient in reading. But that number doesn’t tell the full story, she said.

“We can no longer mask how our states are performing by how well our white students are performing,” said Dr. Burk. If you look at a racial breakdown of those reading scores, 45 percent of white students are scored as proficient, while only 18 percent of Black students and 23 percent of Hispanic students.

“Whether we call it learning loss, interrupted learning, unfinished learning, all of these terms, our proficiency rates in English declined but what’s also very eye-opening, for math, it decreased even more.” In some states, the pandemic decline in reading proficiency has been measured at 3 percent, in others at 12 percent.

“Students who are not proficient readers turn into adults who are not proficient readers,” Dr. Burk said.

Cassandra Gentry, a parent leader with the group in Washington D.C., spoke from experience about the plight of students who lost so much learning time during the pandemic.

Gentry said she was the guardian of a 5th-grader who wasn’t proficient in reading last year, “and after 19 months, she has really lost a lot more.” The young girl did not attend kindergarten or 1st grade, “so she did not learn the basic fundamentals that she needed in order to be proficient. She’s still struggling because of that.”

“So one of the things that I noticed about the science of reading is that early childhood intervention is so important.”

Gentry also noted the importance of getting reading programs in all schools, not just a select group of them. “We need equity,” she said. My school doesn’t have reading clinics; they don’t have reading partners.”

“Our children of color and our Hispanic children are in need of these resources also,” Gentry added. “This science of reading is going to have to be equitable.”

The panelists offered a variety of ideas about how to improve literacy for students 
 and adults. , a member of the D.C. State Board of Education, said he has “extended literacy programs to spaces like barber shops and laundromats and to weave literacy programs into the daily rituals of people’s lives.”

“That’s where ±ő’v±đ seen the greatest impact.”

Chang also urged that education leaders learn from health care decision makers. “They’re currently investing more and more in what they call the social determinants of health,” he said. “In 2018 Kaiser Permanente invested $200 million to take on housing instability, knowing that the investment would actually reduce their health care costs downstream.”

He added: “Let’s advocate for similar funding to be invested in what we can call the social determinants of education.”

Dr. Burk called for states to use the huge influx of federal money from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan to “invest in people.”

“Invest in your teachers; build their knowledge,” she said. “Empower your teachers to stand in front of children every day and know that they are skilled enough to address the different needs, the different proficiencies and challenges that students bring into those classrooms.”

Dr. Michael Durant, chief academic officer of the in Washington, D.C., said it’s important to deal with other social challenges that “people have to battle before they even set foot into a classroom.”

“We’re dealing with homelessness; we’re dealing with food disparities; we’re dealing with lack of transportation; we’re also dealing with child-care issues,” he said. “All of those resources are needed, especially when you want a person to be able to be committed to education.”

, Acting State Superintendent of Education in Washington, perhaps put it mostly directly.

“Our country is only as good as our most literate person,” she said. “We have to make sure that our resources and our priorities are all in alignment of ensuring that our children are learning and are being taught in the best ways to make them love reading.”

]]> /watch-live-education-experts-talk-the-science-of-reading-pandemic-learning-loss-and-the-need-to-close-literacy-gaps-in-a-post-covid-world/ Wed, 29 Sep 2021 16:01:22 +0000 /?p=578362 The headlines have been relentlessly bleak. Across the nation, standardized testing has found an alarming decline in reading proficiency because of the ongoing disruption from the pandemic. Now enterprising educators are trying to come up with ways to reverse these declines.

Today at 1 p.m. Eastern, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ is honored to partner with the Progressive Policy Institute to present an online panel discussion: “The Science of Reading and Closing Literacy Gaps in a Post-COVID World.” Joining the conversation will be:

• Dr. Kymyona Burk, early education policy director for ExcelinEd
• Mary Clayman, director of the D.C. Reading Clinic
• Cassandra Gentry, a parent leader with DC PAVE
• Dr. Michael Durant, chief academic officer of Academy of Hope Adult Charter School
• Rep. Allister Chang of the D.C. State Board of Education
• Christina Grant, Acting State Superintendent of Education in Washington, D.C.

, or watch the Wednesday livestream by refreshing this page at 1 p.m.  You can also stream directly on .

---

Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ Newsletter

---

See some recent coverage of literacy and equity from ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ:

• Giles: Schools in Washington, D.C. Are Facing a Reading Crisis. The District’s New Literacy Initiatives Could Change That
• A New Kind of Curriculum Night: Armed With Protest Signs and Data, Diverse Group of Minneapolis Parents Demands Better Reading Instruction for Their Kids
• The Gifted Gap: Best and the Brightest among Black & Low-Income Students Fall Behind Their Whiter, More Affluent Peers, Study Finds
• Whitmire: Looking for Answers to the Current Male Education Crisis? Start With Elementary School
• Curriculum Case Study: From ‘Focus’ to ‘Exceptional,’ How a Delaware School Transformed Student Literacy in Just 3 Years

]]> /article/d-c-s-missing-students-and-the-rush-to-avert-a-covid-classroom-crisis/ Sun, 08 Aug 2021 23:05:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=574750

On May 22, 2020, heading into a holiday weekend that would, in non-pandemic times, draw throngs to the National Mall’s monuments and museums, Washington, D.C.’s positive COVID-19 test rate was the highest in the nation. Accordingly, Mayor Muriel Bowser extended her city’s shutdown order. 

On the surrounding streets, businesses were shuttered or operating at vastly diminished capacity. Food trucks that normally feed families touring on a budget — and, by extension, feed the families of the people who own the trucks and cook the food — were idled. Steakhouses were echo chambers. Underground, DC Metro cars ran empty.

It wasn’t just the lack of tourists. Half of D.C. residents can do their jobs from home, the third-highest rate in the nation, and those high earners had been cutting back on spending for weeks.

When residents of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where median household income is $126,000, stopped shelling out for lunches and happy hours, for example, small business revenue downtown plummeted by 86 percent or more.

Safe at home, these high earners had the lowest COVID-19 death rates.

In nearby neighborhoods — across the river in Anacostia, for example — it was a totally different story.

The new frugality among the city’s rich took money, literally, from the pockets of their neighbors in the city’s southeastern neighborhoods, where median income crests at $36,000. But in those wards, the poorest in the city, whose residents were unable to work from home — if they still had jobs — spending stayed constant or even rose, a sign there were no luxuries to cut. 

In fact, credit card use and other forms of borrowing by D.C.’s lowest-income households rose 17 percent early in the pandemic, worrying economists who fear people are going into debt to pay for basic necessities — the start of a financial tailspin that often leads to homelessness. 

When economists talk about the pandemic recession being K-shaped, this is the divide they mean. Instead of a typical recession’s V — everybody dips and recovers relatively uniformly — D.C. residents at the top of the K have simply shifted their spending, from consuming services provided by their low-income neighbors, at its bottom, to ordering Pelotons and standing desks.

When the pandemic recession struck, economists John Friedman and Raj Chetty realized it looked different from previous downturns. While even small changes in the way money changes hands create ripples, COVID was a shockwave. The co-founders of — a team at Harvard University that researches income inequality and education’s potential to lift children out of poverty — persuaded credit card companies, payroll processors and other businesses that track money as it moves through the economy in real time to turn over what are essentially trade secrets. Using that information, the researchers built a nationwide online pandemic tracker capable of providing a down-to-the-day snapshot of who is spending and who is struggling, by income level, city, state and county and, in some instances, by zip code.

The data quickly revealed stunning implications on virtually every front.

Affluent Americans at the top of the K bounced back right away — much more quickly than in a typical recession. But their new spending patterns crippled the businesses that supported their lower-income neighbors; those impoverished families on the bottom continue to struggle disproportionately on every front, beset by challenges long proven to be detrimental to children’s ability to learn in school. 

(Friedman and Chetty update the tracker as the underlying information changes. The data in this story was downloaded June 29, 2021.)

The Opportunity Insights tracker contains one academic dataset: student participation and progress on the math app Zearn, which one-fourth of the nation’s K-5 students have access to. Immediately after schools closed, use of the app among low-income students “completely dropped off,” notes Zearn CEO Shalinee Sharma. As they started logging on again, a yawning gap became apparent. A year into the pandemic, these students’ progress was behind where it should have been, while their wealthier peers were ahead 28 percent.

New studies . and the nonprofit assessment concern found wide disparities between white/affluent students and their low-income peers/children of color. Depending on grade and subject, low-income students ended the 2020-21 school year with up to seven months of unfinished learning.

Researchers, Friedman told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, fear the resulting losses — of jobs, of mental health supports and reliable food supplies — may have even more devastating impacts for children that schools were already failing to serve, with education’s potential for lifting a family out of poverty moving further out of reach.

Compounding the inequity is a chilling racial disparity in the pandemic’s death toll. Blacks, who make up half of D.C.’s overall population, represent 94 percent of residents southeast of the river — and in May 2020 were 80 percent of COVID-19 deaths, Bowser noted as she extended the shutdown.

Another disparity: In the weeks before D.C. Public Schools called an early end to the academic year, low-income students were absent from distance learning at much higher rates than affluent children. On Capitol Hill, parents hired tutors and downloaded educational games to keep their kids engaged. Across the Anacostia River, as the stresses borne by their parents compounded in the pandemic, many kids disappeared from their online classes.

WATCH: Beth Hawkins details her latest investigation into COVID’s K-shaped recession and how the fallout will challenge America’s schools

By the start of the 2020-21 school year, it was clear the city’s missing students weren’t just disproportionately the poorest — they were also the littlest. Though the numbers would fluctuate throughout the year as families’ circumstances shifted, kindergarten enrollment was down by more than 500 students over projections, and by 1,800 in D.C.’s publicly funded preschools for 3- and 4-year-olds. Even before the pandemic, only half of U.S. 5-year-olds were considered kindergarten-ready. The number unprepared doubtless is much higher now. 

Which raises the question: When this year’s missing 4- and 5-year-olds show up for kindergarten next year, they will be both far ahead and far behind — in some places, in the same classrooms. How will D.C. schools meet their needs? 

 

With a little help from a gumball machine

In March 2020, the pandemic claimed Natalya Walker’s last side hustle. She had been cleaning houses, but suddenly that was unsafe. Scared at first into wiping down their mail and groceries, her affluent clients decided overnight to scrub their own bathrooms. 

Walker was pretty good at patching gigs together. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2018, but before that she clerked in grocery stores, drove a limo and entertained kids at Gymboree. Once officially declared disabled, she found cleaning homes for cash was her best option for supplementing her meagre income. Since she didn’t work a formal job, when COVID-19 shuttered Washington, D.C., she didn’t draw unemployment benefits.

Housecleaning gigs on hold, Walker bought four small gumball machines and looked for places to set them up where there was still foot traffic. A city council candidate let her put two in his campaign headquarters, one stocked with gum and one with nuts. For a while, she could count on $5 to $10 in quarters every time she checked them. She gave the other two to her 18-year-old, Brian Clark, to supplement his pay from his job working on a garbage truck. 

Walker’s other son, 4-year-old Mustafa Fletcher, lives with her in a battered public housing complex in Anacostia in Ward 8, the city’s most impoverished section. As grim as the economic statistics are for the area as a whole, for Walker’s census tract, they are worse. Median household income is less than $20,000 — but economists have long known that traditional data underestimates the impact of financial crises on people in neighborhoods like Anacostia, who are disproportionately dependent on public benefits and less likely to show up in unemployment statistics. One in five children who grow up there will not leave. 

Still, with its dense concentration of kids, Walker’s neighborhood is home to a number of schools and community organizations offering universal, full-day pre-K, which the District of Columbia offers for free to 3- and 4-year-olds regardless of family income. In 2017, 90 percent of D.C. 4-year-olds and 70 percent of 3-year-olds were enrolled. 

High-quality early childhood education is very expensive, but former Federal Reserve Bank economist Art Rolnick estimates that for every public dollar invested, $10 returns to the economy. Kindergartners who have an 82 percent chance of mastering basic skills by age 11, versus 45 percent for those not prepared, and are 14 percent more likely to graduate from high school, according to the nonprofit First Five Years Fund, which conducts research on best practices in early ed. They are less likely to repeat a grade or be identified as needing special education services. 

Harvard economists tracking the pandemic recession have found that, controlling for a child’s circumstances, having an generates an additional $320,000 in earnings over a student’s lifetime. Indeed by an adult’s mid-20s, there is a clear relationship between kindergarten and college attendance, retirement savings, home ownership and mobility. 

“Next year, kids are going to show up with wildly divergent needs.” —Chelsea Coffin, D.C. Policy Center

(Data on the effectiveness of D.C.’s near-universal pre-K are hard to come by. In March, the city auditor said education officials are key data under a nearly 15-year-old mandate to track student outcomes. Since the program’s creation, District of Columbia schools overall have shown nation-leading progress on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called nation’s report card, but a number of factors could be at play.)

Mustafa started out in the 3-year-old program at the Parklands@THEARC campus of , a much-lauded D.C. network of public charter preschools. Walker had wanted to send Mustafa to Martha’s Table, an early education center closer to home that also offers health care, clothing, employment assistance and other services for neighborhood families, but there were never seats when she called. A couple of weeks before the pandemic arrived, space opened up. 

The school provided Walker with a tablet, but Mustafa’s participation was spotty. At home, the internet didn’t work reliably, and when it did, it didn’t always line up with the 30-minute Zoom windows for class. But the boy’s teacher gave Walker explicit instructions on everything from getting online to making sure he understood lessons.

“I asked for the same work they do at school,” Walker says. “I’m adjusted now, but in the beginning it was hard.” 

In Washington, the steepest enrollment declines appear to be in schools with concentrations of children considered at risk, says Chelsea Coffin, director of the D.C. Policy Center’s Education Policy Initiative. Focus groups on pandemic schooling her organization has held with parents and teachers suggest that families that lack good technology are prioritizing keeping older kids — who don’t require constant prompting to sit still — caught up. Younger students, like Mustafa’s potential classmates, fall by the wayside.

“Maybe kids are sitting down for half an hour a day, and that’s a big win for parents,” says Coffin. “Next year, kids are going to show up with wildly divergent needs.”

Educators are aware of the size of the problem, says Coffin, but for months were too overwhelmed trying to navigate school closures and physical safety to begin planning for next year’s kindergarten crisis. “I don’t think schools have the bandwidth right now,” she says. “There’s just a lot of oxygen being taken up by reopening debates.”

‘Teacher, administrator, short-order cook’

Distance learning has been a trial for Jennifer Turner, a single mother of four, ages 13, 9, 5 and 3. 

“I’m a teacher, an administrator, a short-order cook,” she says. “The last year was definitely a challenge for me.” 

A 911 dispatcher, her normal shift is 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., which used to give her time to get home, make breakfast and get the children dropped off at the different schools D.C.’s enrollment lottery had assigned them. Then she would sleep. 

School shutdowns changed all that. The first few months, Turner relied on catnaps to try to stay alert night and day. In September, she got two lucky breaks. A spot opened up for her son, Zailyn Morsell, in a pre-K classroom for 4-year-olds at the school where her fourth-grader, Javen Hutchins, is enrolled, cutting down on her daily drive time. 

Then, she realized that she didn’t have to contract COVID-19 to take advantage of the city’s leave program. She was eligible for 80 hours of paid time off just for being impacted by the pandemic. Turner took her leave in four-hour chunks, allowing her to stop work at 2 a.m. and get a solid four or five hours of sleep before she had to start overseeing distance learning. 

Getting Zailyn to participate in virtual preschool was a struggle. “He was very reluctant to get on the computer,” she says. “He felt since he was home he shouldn’t have to do school.” 

With the boy focusing in 15- and 20-minute increments, Turner worried that he wouldn’t be ready for kindergarten. She bought dry erase boards, puzzles and workbooks so he could trace letters. 

“The burden for all of this is really on the parents,” she says. “It’s up to you to make sure your kid is reading enough. It’s up to you to make sure they’re practicing enough. The struggle is real.” 

Last year, stranded without day care or preschool, lots of parents couldn’t piece things together the way Turner did. In 2020, three times as many families as in a typical year did not enroll their kindergarten-age children, according to . Nationwide, the children held back in the 2020-21 school year are also poorer and more likely to be of color than in years past. 

Twenty-three percent of Hispanic kindergartners deferred enrollment, as did 14 percent of Asians, 13 percent of Blacks and 18 percent of whites. Contrast this with 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, when 7 percent of kids who put off enrolling were white and 3 percent Black. 

Writing on the Thomas B. Fordham Institute’s “Flypaper” blog, Michael Petrilli calculates that on a national level, some 8 million 4- and 5-year-olds will enter kindergarten next year with academic and behavioral needs that, left unmet, could persist throughout their academic careers. And because classes will contain children of different ages who missed the 2020-21 school year, the challenges this will pose will persist for years, he and other experts say.

“Just being honest, there’s going to be a whole set of experiments that are taking place,” says Jack McCarthy, president and CEO of the AppleTree Institute for Education Innovation and the associated network of preschools where Mustafa Fletcher originally enrolled. “We’ve not been through anything like this before.”

The number who are unprepared likely has mushroomed and will stay high for several years. Teachers will be expected to address an unprecedented array of unmet needs, which may take multiple school years to meet. The timeline could stretch on even longer if the missing students — or their teachers — don’t show up for the 2021-22 school year. 

With the first day of school just weeks away, McCarthy says AppleTree has re-enrolled just two-thirds of its preschoolers and is unsure how many staff will be back. in Ward 8 have trailed the rest of the city, while problems with access to child care and employment continue. 

“I think it is going to be hard to understand who enrolled and who is planning to teach until early in the fall, which is not at all optimal,” says McCarthy. “Normally, by this time we would be fully enrolled with waiting lists and have teachers introducing themselves to parents and establishing relationships for the coming year, and all of that stuff is way behind.”

Grappling with a raft of challenges

Early childhood education in normal times includes heavy doses of the social skills that students will need to succeed in school, ranging from turn-taking and sharing to following instructions and transitioning from one activity to another. But many children who show up for pre-K and kindergarten next year will have spent a year or more essentially in a bubble, says McCarthy.

While their experiences at home will have varied widely, many of these young learners will have had little exposure to other kids or adults outside their immediate families, whose pandemic norms may well have included scary aspects of keeping COVID-19 at bay. “Fear of bad things happening,” he says. “That’s why we have to stay inside. That’s why we can’t go to the park. That’s why we have to keep our mask on. That’s why we have to wash our hands all the time. I have to think that’s going to have some effect on [the] socialization of these young children.” 

One goal as AppleTree welcomes back families, then, will be creating a “positive narrative of success” about reopening that acknowledges that families’ degrees of comfort with in-person learning and vaccine rollout will vary. At the same time, teachers will gain a better understanding of how mental health issues may have affected each child.

A key thing AppleTree preschools hope to do is to shift from an age-based progression to one based on skills mastery. While some parents may want their child to enroll in the same grade as their same-age peers, McCarthy says, others may see the value in making sure preschoolers are truly ready for kindergarten, so missing skills don’t translate to learning gaps as the kids move up.

“If you can prevent learning difficulties with a higher degree of success, it pays off throughout the K-12 experience and on into adulthood,” he says. “I think it makes a lot more sense to focus on mastery, particularly in these early years, so that we can avoid all of the bad things that happen when kids aren’t prepared to do well in kindergarten and primary grades.”

“That range of experiences [in the classroom] is wider than it has been in generations, maybe ever, given the effects of a pandemic.” —Erica Greenberg, Urban Institute

McCarthy hopes D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education will allow children to remain in preschool until they acquire key skills — something he says the officials seem open to. To that end, AppleTree staff have been encouraging parents to consider keeping their children in preschool for more time, but again, the conversation has been made much more difficult by continued reluctance to return to in-person schooling. 

Moving away from an automatic grade-level-a-year progression will likely be easier at the six AppleTree preschools than at schools that don’t have a formal relationship with the early childhood organization. AppleTree’s preschools are operated in conjunction with public charter schools, which already take personalized approaches to helping students hit developmental and academic milestones. In the case of children who enter the city’s kindergarten lottery and end up in a district-run or unaffiliated charter school, AppleTree preschool teachers will try to supply copious information about each child’s development, although, McCarthy says, “The handoff might not be as effective.”

A senior research associate at the Urban Institute, Erica Greenberg agrees that schools should consider flexible age groupings. To prepare children with different early experiences, kindergarten teachers typically rely heavily on a strategy educators call differentiation, modifying instruction or materials for pupils at different levels, she says. 

“Now, this year, that range of experiences is wider than it has been in generations, maybe ever, given the effects of a pandemic,” Greenberg says. In addition to adapting activities and lessons, she suggests schools adopt trauma-informed approaches and consider that race has likely played a large role in a family’s experience of COVID-19. It’s important, she adds, for “parents not to feel like they are solely responsible for mitigating the impacts of the pandemic, both health-wise and economy-wise.”

Fordham’s Petrilli goes a step further in reconsidering normal grade-level progression, suggesting schools add a “grade 2.5” for this year’s kindergarten class and next year’s, spreading out over four years the academics and socialization normally taught in grades K-2. This could be accomplished by slowing down kindergarten and first grade in 2021-22, first and second grades in 2022-23 and grades 2 and 2.5 the year after, to allow teachers to cover all the early grades’ foundational material. 

‘The reset is going to take a lot longer’

For people who live in D.C.’s prosperous neighborhoods, the recession may basically be over — if it was ever really felt. But for its poorest residents, there are dominoes yet to fall. One data point on the economists’ maps has generated intense speculation: Net small-business revenue in the zip code where Anacostia is located, 20020, rose 175 percent between the pandemic’s start and May 22, 2020. There are theories about this, but no certainty. 

Extra federal unemployment benefits could have fueled higher spending by Walker’s neighbors. Much of the commerce in Wards 7 and 8 consists of mom-and-pop convenience stores, pharmacies and other small businesses selling essentials. Stuck at home, people could just have been consuming more.

Census records show that in the zip codes that are home to the lowest-earning 25 percent of District residents, the number of households using credit cards or loans to meet basic needs rose 17 percent in the first few months of the pandemic.

“This increased credit card spending among lower-income households does not necessarily mean that they are spending more,” produced by the D.C. Policy Center for the local chamber of commerce. “They could be relying on credit to meet household needs and pushing the payments into the future when economic conditions improve.”

Whatever the answer, it wasn’t a sudden wave of prosperity. In the early weeks of the pandemic, one in five residents of Wards 7 and 8 anticipated not being able to afford their homes. By July 21, 2020, 23 percent of D.C. households overall said they had missed their last rent or mortgage payment. 

This so-called chain reaction of material hardship compounds stressors on parents, in turn worsening conditions for children, notes Greenberg. “Families are now week-to-week, month-to-month making decisions about trade-offs. ‘Should I pay rent, or should I pay utilities? Should I pay rent or should I pay for food?’” she says. “Some of those decisions are conditioned by policy. When there are rent and eviction moratoriums, families feel like, ‘Okay, maybe I can prioritize food for this week,’ but then there’s always that fear that the bill will come due.” 

The bottom line, says McCarthy, is that people should let go of the notion that the beginning of the coming school year, with its kindergarten class like no other, represents a fresh start. Students and teachers may continue to show up throughout the fall — or not — as unemployment benefits run out, COVID case counts and vaccine rates shift or according to a host of other factors.

“The reset is going to take a lot longer and involve a lot more data analysis than anyone thought,” he says. “People will watch and see what happens.” 

Because students may continue to trickle into kindergartens and preschools through the fall and into winter, McCarthy says the flexibility with staffing, budgeting and other major elements of schools’ ability to serve a continually shifting student body that the mayor and other city and education officials are discussing is paramount.

For her part, Walker has a plan to revive her housecleaning business. She has earned a private COVID disinfection and safety certification and had business cards printed up with a new business name inspired by her kids: Two Boyzz in a Buckit. She’s taking the cards to local barbershops, hair salons and laundromats. 

“Everybody’s going to want their home clean at this point,” she observes.

Turner’s leave ran out around the holidays. With schools slated to reopen to a small number of students at the start of February, she had a third stroke of luck: Zailyn and her fourth-grader won the lottery for in-person seats at Hyde Addison, their D.C. Public School. 

With Zailyn back in school, Turner’s juggling act got a little easier. She can oversee 3-year-old Jax Morsell’s preschool, napping when the girl does or when her teenager, still at home, can spell her. 

At her first parent-teacher conference a month later, Turner got to exhale a little more. In distance learning, Zailyn’s teacher had concerns about him. He didn’t participate much and, as with all her students, she was unsure whether he was getting too much family help in coming up with the right answers when he did join the class. Once back in the classroom, however, the teacher’s concerns evaporated. 

In March, Walker learned that Mustafa had been accepted into a private, parochial school located in the same building as Appletree Ark. He will start kindergarten at , which asks all its families to apply for the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the first federally funded school voucher program in the country. The school will provide a private scholarship for any remaining tuition. 

Mustafa had to interview in person to be admitted, making Walker anxious. After all the dropped Zooms and truncated activities, maybe he wouldn’t be ready for kindergarten after all. “I was so nervous,” she says. “But he aced it.”

This article is part of a series examining COVID’s K-shaped recession and what it means for America’s schools. Read the full series here.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provide financial support to Opportunity Insights and ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ.

---

Lead images: Getty Images

]]> /article/3-d-c-charter-networks-seek-permission-to-continue-offering-all-virtual-learning-as-city-and-other-urban-districts-large-move-to-fully-reopen-schools/ Thu, 15 Jul 2021 18:01:13 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=574622

Get essential education news and commentary delivered straight to your inbox.ÌęSign up hereÌęfor ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s daily newsletter.

Updated July 28

The D.C. Public Charter School Board voted Monday to approve KIPP DC’s virtual program proposal for grades K-12. It held off, however, on approving its request for creating an all-virtual campus in SY 2022-23, wanting to see how the virtual option works in the next school year. The two other charter networks that submitted all-virtual proposals did not get greenlighted: The board denied Howard University PCS’ request to continue its simulcasting model, determining the network had not shown its virtual program will result in improved performance or that there would be demand after theÌę pandemic ends. AppleTree withdrew its application.ÌęÌę

With school districts around the country increasingly adding virtual learning for the fall, three D.C. charter networks are seeking approval for their own all-virtual options, citing parent demand amid pandemic safety concerns.

, and are asking the D.C. Public Charter School Board, the city’s charter authorizer, to allow them to permanently offer all-virtual learning to a limited number of students.

“We know in-person is ideal,” said Andhra Lutz, KIPP DC’s managing director of secondary schools. But “we [also] have so much respect and so much love for our families. And our families have asked us for this.”

The plans range from launching all-new programming with virtual staff to sticking to last year’s learning models. Officials say there would be various safeguards — such as mentorship programs, attendance eligibility requirements and parent check-ins— to assure a high-quality experience rivaling in-person learning.

Projected capacity ranges from 20 students at AppleTree to nearly 300 students at KIPP DC, or about 4 percent of its student population. KIPP DC is also requesting approval to transition its virtual program into what would be the city’s second free, all-virtual public school in SY 2022-23.

A fourth school, , is requesting to permanently offer hybrid learning.

Without the PCSB’s approval, these schools could only offer all-virtual learning starting next year to students such as severe asthma, in line with from the Office of the State Superintendent of Education.

A virtual hearing and vote are scheduled for Monday.

“Khamal won’t even go to the grocery store with me,” KIPP DC mom KyShawn Route-Crowder said of her seventh grade son, who’s stressed about returning to school and wants to stay virtual. His father had a heart attack in 2016, is immunocompromised and can’t get a COVID vaccine.

Route-Crowder added that her son, who attends KIPP DC’s KEY Academy, has flourished in virtual learning without classroom distractions. “You have to know what type of student you have. And I know my child specifically, and I know he can excel online right now.”

While most students nationwide are expected to head back to the classroom full-time this fall, virtual learning is sticking around. A estimated 56 percent of schools will offer a remote learning option this fall, including in , , and Cleveland. Another report found nearly two-thirds of the country’s largest school systems will provide students an option to learn in stand-alone, remote academies.

Currently, D.C. Public Schools — which serves about 53 percent of the city’s public school kids —Ìęis only allowing those with a “documented medical condition” to learn virtually next year. , and have made similar calls.

This wouldn’t be the first time the PCSB considered changes that ran counter to local guidance, experts noted. It broadly a by the Deputy Mayor for Education cautioning against adding more charter high schools, for example. Any backlash to these plans, they surmised, would be less about regulations and more about concerns with program quality.

For most, distance learning last year was an inadequate substitute for in-person class. Slow Internet, digital literacy challenges, competing family obligations and distracting home environments upended many students’ progress — especially students of color from under-resourced neighborhoods. Numerous reports point to that districts now flush with recent federal stimulus aid are rushing to address.

For some families in D.C., though, online school has been working. In a sample parent survey Howard University PCS conducted last month, about 94 percent said it was “extremely” or “very” important that they at least had the option of all-virtual schooling this fall.

Ward 4 mom Keisha, whose eighth grade son attends Howard University PCS, hopes her son goes back to in-person class — just not next year. She’s holding off on vaccinating him — the vaccine for kids is still new, she said — and developments have her wary of him resuming his Metrobus commutes to school.

“Keeping him safe and healthy is my main priority,” she said. “I’m not rushing him back.”

A PCSB spokesperson said while the “goal is for schools to return to in-person learning as the primary mode of instruction,” the board is open to the conversation, wanting “to be responsive to the questions and concerns that we have heard from schools and students.”

KIPP DC: A new model in the making

Virtual programming this fall would look “vastly different” from last year, said Caitlin Maxwell, KIPP DC’s director of virtual learning programs.

On a typical day, kids would log on to in the morning, watch a seven-to 10-minute video for each of their class subjects and complete class work testing comprehension of the material.

KIPP DC’s “learning coordinators,” who are certified teachers, would then take about two hours to review students’ submissions, crafting their lesson plan for small group instruction that afternoon based on the concepts students struggled with most that morning.

During that two-hour period, students would have a break to eat lunch and take an “enrichment” class — like a foreign language or cooking — via a partnership with .

Spokesman Adam Rupe confirmed KIPP DC is poised to hire 20 to 25 all-virtual staff members using recent federal stimulus funding. If the all-virtual campus is approved, “we’d use our per-pupil dollars” to pay for the program long-term, he added.

So far, KIPP DC has identified 66 medically eligible students for this program. Broader polling of the school community informed the estimate that around 280 students in total may opt-in if able.

Not every student would be eligible to participate, though, Lutz clarified. A student would need to have had at least 90 percent daily attendance in remote learning last year. Staff would also review the student’s academic records and have a conversation with the parents “where we’re really upfront about what’s different [from last year],” she said.

If a family changed their mind after the school year began, KIPP DC would allow that student to return to in-person during one of its quarter breaks.

Lutz and Maxwell feel confident in students’ ability to succeed virtually; recently compiled data shows 76 percent of KIPP DC middle schoolers saw growth in math over the 2020-21 school year. (ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ asked for that same data pre-pandemic, but comparable data wasn’t available). They confirmed virtual learners would take “the same assessments” as students learning in-person.

While these students wouldn’t be working alongside their peers, Maxwell said KIPP DC’s virtual student clubs and monthly outdoor field trips would provide opportunities to socialize.

“That creates a sense of belonging for kids, and that’s often what they look forward to the most,” Maxwell said.

Howard University PCS: Sticking to what it knows

As of last week, there were about 18 Howard University PCS families with some 25 students interested in staying virtual, Principal Kathryn Procope said.

If approved, the school would stick to the model it’s used since late January: Simulcasting, where the teacher is physically in the classroom with some students and streaming the lesson live via Microsoft Teams for others tuning in virtually.

All classrooms are already equipped with — 360° camera, mic and speaker devices — for an immersive virtual experience, Procope said. Students at home could use the platform’s raised hand function to ask their teacher a question in the middle of the lesson.

No new staff hires would be needed under this model, Procope said. If a student decided to come back in-person during the school year, they wouldn’t need to change teachers.

Procope acknowledged the network overall saw “some slight dips in math and reading” performance last year, “but they weren’t significant.” Virtual students’ academic growth, she added, would be monitored with fidelity: The network’s learning platform, , is full of practice assignments to gauge students’ mastery of the content.And online quizzes and tests would only be released at specific times when a teacher is available to monitor the students on camera.

The school’s existing mentoring program is another safeguard to ensure students would have what they need to succeed, Procope said. Every student has an established relationship with a mentor who checks in at least weekly.

“It gives us an opportunity to know, ‘Hey, Mary’s family is experiencing homelessness, they may need X,'” she explained. “It allows us several touch points.”

“If we’ve learned anything from the pandemic,” Procope said, “it’s that we’re going to adjust and shift the way we educate them to make sure we reach them.”

The virtual public hearing and vote will be on Monday starting at 6:30 p.m. Information on registering to attend will be posted on www.dcpcsb.org.

Three years ago, when Jevael German received his assignment through Washington’s , he wanted nothing to do with it. He would be working with , a community garden in the city’s troubled Southeast – known for police sirens much more than produce.

A Washington native himself, Mr. German dreaded the months of labor in the district’s humidity. He didn’t even like vegetables. While meeting his supervisors on his first day, Mr. German laid his head facedown on the desk.

“Sir, if you don’t want to be here, you’re welcome to leave,” he heard back. “But you can’t put your head on the desk.”

Mr. German stayed, and the summer surprised him. He enjoyed the outdoor work, which reminded him of childhood gardening with his grandmother. As an older member of the summer group, he began mentoring some of his younger co-workers. He even started eating greens.

At the program’s end, Mr. German asked to continue with Project Eden for another summer. After returning, he learned that a former summer employee at the garden had died in a shooting. Mr. German, who was still living with one foot in the streets at that time, saw in that tragic death a version of himself if he didn’t change.

“Right then and there, I was like, ±ő’v±đ got to leave the streets alone,” he says.

Mr. German is one of hundreds of young people who have worked with Project Eden, and been an embodiment of its mission: to be a source of opportunity and healing in a community so often defined by limits and loss.

Almost 10 years ago, Cheryl Gaines, a local pastor, started the garden as a response to the South Capitol Street massacre, one of Washington’s worst mass shootings in decades. Her idea then, as now, was that no community chooses violence when it has another option. Since then Ms. Gaines, her son Kwesi Billups, and hundreds of local employees and volunteers have sought to offer such an option.

While simultaneously addressing challenges of health, food insecurity, and unemployment, Project Eden is at its roots an alternative. The work is rarely convenient, and resources are often low. But the garden’s legacy is that seeds can grow on what may seem like rocky soil – if only there’s a sower.

“This garden gives back to you what you give to it,” says Mr. Billups.

Helping a community resist despair

In 2012, Ms. Gaines was Project Eden’s sower, though an unlikely one at that.

She grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father in public housing outside New Orleans, only to trade that past for a career in law, and later the ministry. While at seminary in Rochester, New York, she had a persistent vision that God was calling her to live in Southeast Washington, begin a church, and plant a community garden.

In 2010, after having lived in the Washington area for years, she felt the time had come.

Leaving four dead and six more injured, the South Capitol Street massacre rattled Southeast, and brought the community together to mourn. At a vigil, Ms. Gaines met the owner of an apartment building just blocks away from the the shooting. In that conversation, she eventually shared her vision. Before long, the owner told her she could use her building’s backyard.

On that land two years later, Project Eden (“Eden” stands for Everyone Deserves to Eat Naturally) began as a 10-by-20-foot patch of dirt, with only rows of tilled soil. The next year Ms. Gaines and her team turned that plot into a 28-by-48-foot greenhouse, complete with aquaponics, and have since expanded to another location at nearby Faith Presbyterian Church.

A community garden may seem like a boutique project in some areas, but not in Southeast, says Caroline Brewer, director of marketing and communications at the Audubon Naturalist Society, which recently named Mr. Billups its yearly .

The area is a food desert, she says, with only one major grocery store for just over 80,000 residents. Many of those living in Southeast Washington have some of the lowest per capita incomes in the country, and the . The holes left by limited opportunity and education are often filled by crime and violence.

“When people have opportunities to give back … that allows them to grow and develop and mature and make [an] even greater contribution to their families and their communities,” says Ms. Brewer.

Project Eden isn’t just resisting material challenges of nutrition and income, says Ms. Brewer. It’s helping the community resist despair.

“It’s a constant battle,” she says, “and they’re winning that battle.”

Seeds that keep growing

Winning involves sweat-stained shirts and dirty hands in the growing season from early spring to late autumn. To Mr. Billups, who has spent almost half his life working in the garden, those hours are part of his identity.

Project Eden sources its produce in the form of seeds through donations, grants, and community partnerships, including one with the Capital Area Food Bank. While the selection depends on what’s available, volunteers follow a loose crop rotation of roots, legumes, fruits, and greens – like the lush Swiss chard growing tall this season. Sometimes, all by themselves, last season’s crops will sprout back up, like a living legacy left in the soil.

Volunteers distribute the food, along with donations from the food bank, to the community, using Faith Presbyterian as their distribution site. Thousands in the area have benefited from their work, says Mr. Billups, and, without prompting, many of them volunteer. One man offers to cut the grass. Another woman in a neighboring apartment building keeps watch, lest an intruder break in.

“Project Eden was really founded as an engine of agency for people to be able to see that you can grow your own food and you can stake your own claim in your own environment,” says Mr. Billups, who recently graduated from American University and plans to continue his work with urban gardens when he starts a job in Baltimore.

Ervin Bias, a deacon at Ms. Gaines’ church, is one of the volunteers. He’s been with the project almost since its beginning and has worked so many hours that Mr. Billups calls him the “master gardener.”

Despite having two jobs, Mr. Bias visits the garden at least once a week. Getting his hands dirty reminds him of childhood moments in the garden with his father. On still mornings, tending to the crops alone – especially his fragrant mint – makes him think of God.

Volunteers at the garden regularly call each other “brother” and “sister.” On a mid-April Saturday, the day of weeding, watering, and other scattered work began with an a cappella rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem. Everyone stood in a circle and sang together.

But the sense of community fostered in the greenhouse is fragile. The building whose yard houses Project Eden’s greenhouse recently went up for sale, and they couldn’t compete with an enormous bid from developers.

While they hope to stay, they’ll move if they need to, says Ms. Gaines.

But even if their work at that location is done, it’s not over, Mr. Bias says. A seed planted in the garden is a seed planted in the gardener. In him, and in Mr. German, Ms. Gaines, Mr. Billups, and thousands of others who’ve passed through the greenhouse, eaten the food, and tasted the fruit of their land, that seed still grows.

“I don’t know when this will ever end,” says Mr. Bias. “It’s something I can always take with me, to share with somebody else.”

This article originally appeared at and is published in partnership with

As our country wrestles with the murder of George Floyd, Daunte White and far too many other Black individuals at the hands of white police officers, as a public school educator, I wrestle with how to help my fourth-grade students make sense of the violence they see being perpetrated against people who look like them.

I teach at Rocketship Rise Academy, an elementary charter public school east of the river in Washington D.C., where 98 percent of our students are Black and 83 percent are at-risk. At Rocketship, we believe in the potential of all students, and our school is intentionally designed to help our students understand their value. One way we do that is by giving them what we call windows and mirrors. We give them mirrors with a teaching staff that looks like them and understands them — 86 percent of our staff are educators of color. And we give them windows by helping them envision a life beyond what they currently know, while celebrating their culture and community.

For my students, the trauma of police brutality stretches beyond high-profile incidents that they see in the news and on social media. In their own daily lives, my students struggle with the dissonance between being told that the police are trusted adults, while already having witnessed — despite their young age — countless examples of the police mistreating their family, friends and neighbors.

It’s the ultimate responsibility of our public education system to prepare students to be engaged and informed citizens. Our democracy literally depends on it. For that reason, understanding modern society through the context of history should be a critical part of every student’s education.

But the same structures of systemic racism that have made the type of police accountability we saw with the Derek Chauvin trial incredibly rare have also allowed the history books and social studies curriculum that are mass produced for use in public education to be told, almost exclusively, through a white, male lens. History stories often treat the white actors kindly, while failing to recognize the contributions of African-Americans or actions that have undermined their well-being. We can’t teach Black students how to become active citizens if we’re not giving them a true understanding of how 400 years of history has shaped their lives today.

So last summer, as protests against racial injustice spread throughout the country following the murder of George Floyd, our school community felt the pain of this injustice deeply — and we knew we needed to do more. Our school principal asked me to develop our own social studies curriculum. We call it Seeds of Civil Power.

The idea is that we are planting the seeds of a civic education for students so they will one day be able to convert that understanding into power. The definition of “civil” is, “relating to ordinary citizens and their concerns.” But since history is rarely taught in a way that relates to ordinary citizens and their concerns, our public education system is preventing the masses from truly being empowered. While elementary students may not fully embody the learning that they’ll need to change society, we can at least plant the seeds. We’re doing this by helping them learn, think about and question the world around them.

The curriculum is designed as a series of five units, starting with a study of community and how our students fit in. The units build on each other. After community, the units cover culture, economics, government and activism, all through the lens of the Black experience. Too often, students are taught history and culture as something that only happens to others — that was definitely my experience growing up. I was never made to feel, as a Black person, as an American, that I had a culture. I want my students to understand that their lives as Black people are part of a rich, historic culture that’s worth studying.

Lessons are implemented once a week, during our regular community meeting time. Each lesson involves both discussion- and project-based learning, and includes a series of guiding questions that open the floor to discussion on the topic we’re exploring in depth that week. This format is designed to encourage critical thinking, so students can reflect on their own experiences as well as information about societal structures and the experiences of others, and begin to envision how they can influence the world in which they live.

Some of the first lessons were about family structure. We looked at the history of families in the African-American community and discussed how they are similar and different today as compared to the 1800s, when many Black people in our country were enslaved.

Part of the discussion included students sharing what their own families look like. One student, who I know lives with his single mom, intentionally misstated that his dad lives with him as well. We discussed that there’s no right or wrong family structure, despite what the dominant narrative in society tells us, and by the end of the lesson, the student felt confident in sharing with the group that he actually just lives with his mom. He may not even realize it, but his perspective about himself changed that day.

By design, the curriculum we’ve developed is equal parts social studies and social-emotional learning. If we start by getting students to think of themselves as social beings within a specific culture, we’re not only improving how they view themselves, we’re also laying a foundation for them to understand and accept other cultures. Most importantly, they begin to understand that all cultures and societies have been shaped by individuals throughout history, and it’s something they can work to shape, as well.

Seeds of Civil Power in its current form is really just the beginning of what it can be, and where I hope to take it. All students should be learning history and civics through a variety of perspectives. But for now, at our elementary school, our Black students are seeing themselves in these lessons and, therefore, know that they matter.

Riah Williams is a fourth-grade humanities teacher at Rocketship Rise Academy in Washington, D.C. 

In late March, DaSean Jones was ready at his computer at 11:59 a.m. — paperwork in hand — to register two of his kids for the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation’s summer camps at noon.

But for the first time in 13 years, he got stuck on a waitlist.

“The desperation is a lot greater now than in the past” to get into these camps, he told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “There’s scratching and clawing to get a spot.”

While many D.C. parents, especially those of color, chose to keep their kids home this year even as schools reopened, families are seeing summer programming as especially critical after an unprecedented stint of remote learning. Many are being asked to return to work in-person and need child care; others want their children to socialize and get back to a structured schedule for fall.

But demand is far exceeding supply—especially for the popular and low-cost Department of Parks and Recreation camps, which are operating at lower capacity because of COVID-19 — leaving many parents scrambling for options with just a week until school lets out.

As of last week, DPR had a waitlist of about 7,000 for its full-day summer camps, even after upping its number of available seats from 4,500 to more than 5,900. (DPR hosts four two-week sessions; kids can be on the waitlist for multiple camps and sessions).

“[We want her] getting on a schedule to prepare for school. Getting some exercise,” said Miah Robinson, who’s on the waitlist for her 7-year-old daughter. “And honestly, I really want her to have some fun. She’s been locked to a computer for over a year. She deserves to go run and play.”

In 2019, . This year, though, camp groups are limited to 10 kids each, down from 15 to 30 kids before the pandemic. Nationwide, nearly two-thirds of all park and recreation agencies are expected to operate at reduced capacity this summer, .

“We have considered” adding even more spaces, a spokesman for the D.C. DPR wrote in an email. But he noted the department is facing “several limitations, including: space, money for staffing, money for supplies and operations.”

There has been a historic injection of federal funding in wake of the pandemic, including for summer and after-school programs nationwide through the American Rescue Plan.Asked whether DPR is benefiting from that investment or the in ARP fundsD.C. is receiving, the spokesman said federal money DPR received went toward creating its new Boost Camps, a free education-focused program for students at select D.C. schools.

Reporting suggests that pre-pandemic, it cost the city about $5 million to add 1,000 DPR camp spots.

DPR camps are not the only summer camp options for families.But they’re highly sought after because they’re more affordable — most are $110 for a two-week session, compared to . Their nearly 40 also make for convenient options for working parents.

It’s “the location, the price” that’s most attractive, said Robinson.She likes how there are “specialized” , too, like aquatics and cheerleading, to give kids an array of experiences.

Robinson, who works for D.C. government, found out just a few weeks ago that she’s expected back to work in-person starting July 12. But as of now, she’s only secured one of the four DPR sessions. And while her daughter’s school, Anne Beers Elementary in Ward 7, is offering summer programming, spots were prioritized for children who teachers recommended for additional academic assistance.

For waitlisted families like the Robinsons and Joneses, there’s no set timetable for when they’ll hear back; a spot becomes available “when a refund is requested by another family” who’d initially signed up, the DPR spokesman said.

So Robinson and her husband are getting “creative,” currently looking at dance camps and swimming schools in Maryland as a backup. Jones is trying to squeeze his 4-year-old into her charter school’s summer program, and plans to lean on his mother to help watch his 12-year-old — especially when his job transitions to a hybrid model in July.

Other parents, like Jemahl Nixon, missed the sign-ups for camps like DPR altogether, not realizing until recently how many in-person options have opened up for this summer amid loosening restrictions. His 6-year-old’s charter school is offering summer programming through late July, but August remains an open question.

Affordability is critical, he said, as his work hours have been cut down during the pandemic — most recently, to 20 hours a month.

If you don’t have connections, “you won’t really know what’s going on. That’s the issue I have right now, there’s frustration with that,” Nixon said. “Though being a parent is a great job … you have to still have resources to do it effectively. You can’t be a parent alone and support your child alone.”

Finding other options

D.C. Council member Christina Henderson had been “hopeful” that more DPR spaces would be available this year, she told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ in an email.

But with spots in short supply, she’s been recommending alternative options to families, like , a network of programs and summer camps supported by the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education; summer enrichment opportunities through and charter networks; and community organizations like the and the .

DPR is offering a few other camp opportunities separate from its traditional camps as well. It’s partnered with D.C. public schools to host new Boost Camps — academics-infused summer programming for more than 700 kids in wards 5, 7 and 8. Availability is limited to students attending the participating schools: Creative Minds International PCS, Two Rivers PCS, Randle Highlands Elementary, KIPP DC Smilow Campus, Stanton Elementary and Ingenuity Prep PCS.

The department is also hosting a virtual “” option for free. As of last week there were about 500 registrants; “there is a capacity limit, however we still have plenty of availability,” the spokesman said.

Families with younger kids may also have increased access to subsidized child care in the coming months. Mayor Muriel Bowser more than $184 million in her FY 2022 budget proposal “to expand access to affordable, quality childcare and strengthen early childhood education programming across the District.”Her office did not respond to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ, though, on whether child care centers have any of this funding on-hand for this summer.

As the D.C. Council continues its review of Bowser’s FY22 proposed budget, Henderson said she’ll look to invest more in out-of-school-time programming that both provides child care options for families and high-quality learning opportunities for kids.

It’s “a priority of mine,” she wrote.

More than 30 percent of Achievement Prep’s students became chronically absent from virtual learning after COVID-19 shuttered schools last spring. At the K-3 school where more than three-quarters of the students are considered at-risk, educators knew that something needed to change. Now, the so-called Culture Team ventures out every Wednesday to celebrate some students for their attendance, to support others who are struggling with remote learning, and to suss out the students who have fallen off the map entirely. But, Ms Tilgman says, “Chronic absenteeism is a huge, uphill climb for us.” That means that those home visits are critical for engaging students who need those touch points now more than ever.

Watch how the Achievement Prep team responded quickly to the worsening problem and started to turn it around — by meeting students and families where they are to ensure that families remain engaged and students continue to learn through the pandemic.

— Edited by Jim Fields; Produced by Jim Fields & Emmeline Zhao

States have until Monday to distribute $81 billion in federal relief funds to districts — two-thirds of the total for K-12 schools in the American Rescue Plan. And while the law requires districts to put aside 20 percent of their funding to address learning loss, an early review of spending plans shows most aren’t adding tutoring programs, extending the school year or adopting other programs expected to help students catch up.

Instead, they are largely using the money to fill budget gaps, hire staff and issue “thank you” bonuses to teachers, Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab, said during a Tuesday webinar. Her team has consulted with district finance officials and reviewed school board documents and media reports.

“That surprised us because tutoring is sort of the darling … for how to spend federal funds,” Roza said Tuesday, referring to multiple studies in recent months about the effectiveness of “high-dosage” tutoring programs.

Chad Aldeman, policy director at Edunomics Lab, added there’s little evidence so far of efforts to focus on the needs of the most vulnerable students. “The pandemic has affected different students differently, and we’re seeing a lot of one-size-fits-all,” he said. Facility improvements, he added, might be a smart use of one-time funds, but they don’t really help students most impacted by the pandemic.

The relief bill, passed in March, represents the largest-ever, one-time influx of federal funds for K-12, setting up a “fast and furious” planning process for districts over the next few months, Roza said. According to the law, districts have to submit spending plans to their states in August and provide updates or revisions every six months. They have until the end of September 2023 to spend the money. Meanwhile, leaders are facing heightened scrutiny from parents and advocacy groups looking to hold leaders accountable for helping students recover from months of remote learning. District spending plans must demonstrate that officials made extensive efforts to involve parents, educators and students.

“That means districts can’t go into a dark, smoke-filled room and make a plan,” she said, urging officials to be more transparent than usual about hiring staff, launching new programs and issuing contracts for services. Some superintendents, she said, are still operating under emergency powers, allowing them to sign off on expenditures without school board approval.

‘They can do better’

The National Center for Youth Law, a nonprofit law firm based in Oakland, California, is among those closely tracking whether districts are spending the funds on students with the greatest need. On Tuesday, the organization joined with three other California groups to release of how 48 districts in the state planned to use relief funds from last year.

While there were some bright spots, the analysis showed plans often lacked detail, especially on how schools intended to respond to students with limited internet access, seek parent and community input, and target support to English learners, students in foster care and others likely to face the most earning disruption.

Vague descriptions of goals make it “hard for folks to follow up, so at the end of the school year, they can ask, ‘How did it go?’” said Atasi Uppal, an attorney focusing on juvenile justice and education at the firm. “We want to give some grace to districts that were planning last September, but we also just think they can do better.”

As districts in the state begin to develop plans for a combined $55 billion in state and one-time federal funds, the groups are calling for greater input from the public and offer a list of questions parents and others can use to seek details on programs and expenditures.

Roza and other school finance experts warn districts against using time-limited funds on raises, new staff and other recurring costs. But Ted Lempert, president of Children Now, one of the other California groups, added that schools in the state already have such large shortages of school counselors and nurses that it might be wise to increase staff. “There is a need for a lot of extra support now,” he said.

However, districts planning to hire may struggle to find enough qualified applicants, Aldeman said, based on labor market data showing districts have more job openings than they’re able to fill.

In Colorado, the Denver Public Schools tried to get a jump on the planning process by meeting with a budget advisory committee in December, even before the Biden administration took office and the relief bill passed. Those meetings — involving students, parents and union representatives — inspired a new $3 million to provide on-site mental health professionals at schools.

Chuck Carpenter, the district’s chief financial officer, said schools want to have “the most welcoming and ready environments” when students return in the fall. But the challenge is to avoid committing to new programs they won’t be able to sustain financially in the future. “It’s a grant and you have to treat it like that,” he said. “There will be a time when it’s not there.”

Meanwhile, not all states will meet the deadline to allocate funds to the local level. One possible complication is that they are holding onto the money at the state level as part of their annual budget process. And in some states, the legislature doesn’t approve the budget until the end of June. “If that’s the case, then generally those funds can’t leave the state treasury to be liquidated 
 until the state’s budget has been enacted,” explained Austin Reid, education committee director at the National Conference of State Legislatures.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, some states have alerted the department that they will miss Monday’s deadline as well as the June 7 deadline to submit a state plan for using relief funds. A department spokesperson did not offer specifics, but said, “states are providing updates on a regular basis.”

As the weather turns sunny across much of the country and students and teachers alike find their minds wandering to summer, school districts, too, are mulling what the warmer months will bring.

Seventy percent of the top 200 school districts nationally have announced their summer learning plans, and over one third include significant expansions from last year, according to a .

Meanwhile, as the academic year winds down, students’ return to classrooms appears to have leveled off, with schools’ attention instead going toward planning what’s to come next fall.Ìę

Here’s what you need to know about the state of play on school reopenings across the nation, powered by .

1 School reopenings level off

After steady declines in remote-only schooling since President Biden took office, reopenings have slowed with only slight changes from last week.

The share of schools offering daily in-person learning barely budged, climbing from 67 to 68 percent, while schools operating on a hybrid model notched down slightly, falling from 30 to 29 percent. The proportion of virtual-only schools held steady at 3 percent.

But as has been the case throughout the spring, reopening does not imply a return to in-person instruction for all students, as large shares of parents opt to keep their children learning from home, especially in population-dense urban areas.Ìę

In Chicago, for example, when high schools opened their doors last month, buildings remained unusually empty — with . And as Los Angeles high schools have returned for in-person learning, just .

2 Over 1 in 3 districts expanding summer learning

More than one-third of the districts tracked by Burbio that have announced their summer learning plans will be expanding their offerings.

Washington D.C., for example, is adapting its famed summer jobs program to offer stipends for high schoolers looking to take classes in June and July.

The trend reflects many observers’ hope that as coronavirus cases continue to fall in the U.S. and eligibility for vaccines continues to expand, the summer will be an opportunity for accelerated learning after a disrupted academic year.

Still, some experts remind officials that summer break holds another sacred promise: fun.Ìę

While learning should be a priority this summer, many children are understandably exhausted after a year like no other. Programming should emphasize outdoor activities, socializing and field trips to re-engage kids and set them up for success next fall, researchers at Georgetown’s FutureEd think tank argue.

3 Districts plan virtual school options for fall

In previous school reopening updates, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ has tracked states and districts as they launch virtual academies for 2021-22.

More districts joined the list this week, rolling out remote learning opportunities of their own.Ìę

announced a K-12 virtual academy that will be able to accommodate 2,000 learners next fall. will offer a remote option for K-6 in the fall, while older students retain the option to enroll in a statewide online program. And will also launch its own virtual school, though like Columbus, officials note that “space is limited.”

While acknowledging the importance of remote learning through the pandemic, U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona stressed his preference for students to be back in classrooms, cautioning that districts should not over-rely on virtual options next year. That starts with making sure schools meet the needs of all learners, he said while speaking to the Education Writers Association last week.Ìę

“What I don’t want, to see to be very candid with you, is a system where students who were underserved in the past select remote learning because they don’t feel that [their] school is welcoming or safe for them,” said the education secretary. “We need to make sure all students prefer to learn in the schoolhouse because it’s a warm place for them, it’s a welcoming place, they see people that look like them.”

4 Ed Department seeks to build trust in reopening by engaging families

Cardona also said last week he wants “families at the table” as schools prepare for the fall, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Linda Jacobson reports.

The words come as welcome news to parents who have felt shut out of efforts to help their children recover from the pandemic.

In April, Education Department officials met with Keri Rodrigues, founding president of the National Parents Union, a network of advocacy groups that has been critical of distance learning, especially for low-income youth and students of color, and has pushed for schools to reopen.

“They feel like we represent a really important constituency,” Rodrigues said. “We were very clear with them. We’re not here just to be disseminating information from [the department]. We need to be informing policy.”

5 4-day weeks restrict learning

As a pandemic precaution, thousands of school districts — even those that have “fully” reopened — are operating on four-day schedules to leave buildings empty once a week for cleaning. Skeptics, however, believe the sanitation measures may be unnecessary for preventing a mostly airborne virus while robbing students of valuable in-person learning time.

Now the numbers are in, and the results are stark. Schools that cut instructional time by switching to four-day schedules, even pre-pandemic, saw meaningful reductions in student learning, ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ’s Kevin Mahnken reports.

The results indicate that, even amid worry for transmission of COVID-19, schools should emphasize mask-wearing and ventilation, which need not restrict learning time, over school-wide sweeps for disinfection.

“If you’re losing instructional time year over year, that learning loss is growing over time,” said Oregon State University economist Paul Thompson.Ìę

Despite enrollment loss during the pandemic, D.C. Public Schools will receive at least the same level of funding as last year.

At least 35 percent of DCPS schools were poised to lose anywhere from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million as the district about 1,500 fewer students in FY22. In line with nationwide trends, families shifted to homeschooling, or may have transferred to charters or private schools, advocates told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ last fall. Immigrant families, especially, to live with others amid job loss and financial strains.

But after public outcry not to penalize schools for the enrollment drop, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced district schools will receive $14 million of DCPS’ latest federal funding to close the gap.

“DCPS is committed to securing a strong foundation for our road to recovery, even as student enrollment — a primary driver of school’s funding — decreased this school year,” DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee to families announcing the $14 million.

Experts and advocates welcomed the news, but told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ they believe even more will be required to address students’ burgeoning academic and emotional needs after the pandemic and going into next school year, as well as inflation. Some are also questioning whether the funds will be distributed equitably, considering schools that stood to lose the most money serve above-average percentages of at-risk youth and students of color.

“Some progress was made,” Ward 7 Education Council chair Marla Dean told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. But it “definitely does not mean that [schools are] going to be able to do more. And this is a more year, not a less year.”

Experts said schools could still lose staff, or not be able to hire additional personnel like mental health professionals, because of inflation, which is projected at 2 percent for 2022, .

Longtime D.C. budget expert Mary Levy calculated that accounting for inflation, it would cost about $17.7 million to truly eliminate funding losses between FY21 and FY22.

DCPS isn’t particularly strapped for cash, experts noted — it’s anticipating nearly $300 million in federal aid, a historic investment — but district officials have restricted schools’ ability to use those funds for budgeting staff. The mayor’s announcement, which directed $14 million of DCPS’ latest round of federal funding to erase schools’ budget shortfalls, marked a departure from those guidelines.

Prior to Bowser’s announcement, Dean had shared anecdotes from Ward 7 parents and schools: Full-time staff being reduced to part-time. Librarian, music, art and PE jobs on the chopping block. Eliminated funding for college tours, experiential learning off campus, and teacher and student “celebration and recognition.”

While many positions may now be reinstated, the reality that DCPS has this federal windfall to support recovery efforts like and technology access but could simultaneously still see staff cuts is confounding parents, D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson said. DCPS instructed schools early on not to use supplemental federal funds to keep or hire full-time, permanent staff, citing concerns of a “fiscal cliff” once funding runs out.

(D.C.’s two largest charter networks more than 100 full-time teachers. Charters are receiving and deciding what to do with their federal funding separately).

“My biggest concern is just the process DCPS will use to communicate to schools that they now have access to this [$14 million] funding and can indeed use it to stabilize staff,” Qubilah Huddleston, an education policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ. “Hopefully DCPS is supporting principals in re-engaging their [school communities] to make collective decisions.”

On top of asking whether the $14 million will sufficiently cover staffing, experts have reservations, too, about whether the funds will be distributed equitably.

Along with leveling out DCPS schools’ budgets, the allotment is being used to “fulfill all outstanding budget assistance requests from school communities,” Ferebee noted in his letter to families. That statement left some experts wary of whether schools that were more aggressive in demanding additional funding earlier in the budget process will reap outsized benefits.

There’s “a level of privilege” involved here, Levy said. “There are some people who are more aggressive about petitioning; these are usually middle-class parents at middle-class schools. … [some lower-income] parents are just not in that mode. They may be working two jobs. Or they’ve been evicted and they don’t know where to go. 
 They have bigger fish to fry.”

“The fact that somebody petitions,” she continued, “doesn’t mean they’re the most deserving.”

Prior to Thursday’s announcement, the schools struggling the most financially were by and large those educating some of the district’s highest needs students. An analysis by ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ determined nearly 80 percent anticipating losses served a higher percentage of students of color than the district average, while about 60 percent served an above-average percentage of at-risk students, which include low-income, foster and homeless youth.

All are populations that have shouldered much of the social-emotional and of the pandemic.

Data on this latest school budget assistance is so far only available in snippets. A teacher on Twitter reported one school, MacFarland Middle School, ; it was initially expecting to lose about $360,000, according to Levy’s analyses. A Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School parent told ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ the school gained an additional $299,354 after facing about $61,000 in cuts.

A DCPS spokeswoman noted that if any schools experience an uptick in enrollment come fall —Ìęsomething experts say is possible — the district has an “enrollment reserve” handy to allow for additional staff hires and resources, if necessary. The amount of money in that pot wasn’t provided.

With the mayor expected to submit her proposed FY22 budget to the D.C. Council on May 27, those like Patterson, the D.C. Auditor, hope there will be rigorous oversight to ensure both DCPS and charter networks are spending their federal and local money in adherence with guidelines.

Patterson is already wary, she said, of how the $14 million is being used — though does say districts can use part of the latest round of federal funding “to stabilize the workforce and avoid layoffs.”

These funds are geared toward fulfilling schools'”additional needs” from the pandemic and getting students back in class, Patterson said. “Not, ‘Oh good we can plug our budget holes and spend our [local dollars] elsewhere.’”

Local legislators like D.C. Council member Christina Henderson plan to keep a close eye.

Henderson last Thursday had announced she would introduce emergency legislation to hold DCPS school budgets harmless — just hours before the mayor implemented that same policy. She kept the legislation , though, to stress her and other members’ ongoing attention to school funding.

The legislation passed unanimously that evening.

“We know there needs to be more done,” Henderson’s communications director Amanda Farnan said. A vote “holds accountable what the mayor has said publicly in law.”

Lead Image: Map: Taylor Swaak;ÌęSource:Ìę

Juliana Urtubey — pre-K-to-5 special education teacher from the Clark County School District in Nevada — is the National Teacher of the Year, the Council of Chief State School Officers today on CBS This Morning.

First lady Jill Biden surprised Urtubey at Booker Elementary School to make the announcement.

Urtubey works with classroom teachers to improve instruction for students with special needs.Ìę

“I get to be part of a whole new world with so many students,” she told host Gayle King about her love for teaching, adding that her students “have made that same kind of impact on my life.”

John Arthur, Utah’s Teacher of the Year, recently received a visit from a former student at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City. Addressing him as “Captain” — the nickname students gave him based on a manga character — the eighth grader didn’t mince words.

“What’s it like being the teacher of the worst year ever?” he asked.

Arthur emphasized the positive. He worked on becoming more dynamic, using song, dance and stories to maintain his students’ interest during the long, lonely days of Zoom. And on Wednesdays, he and a few students jump in his car after school to deliver math and science materials and meals to the doorsteps of students learning from home.

“I got into this out of a love of teaching,” said Arthur, whose parents wanted him to become a doctor. “I believe in public service, and never will that service mean more than it does this year.”

Arthur — along with Alejandro Diasgranados of the District of Columbia, Maureen Stover of North Carolina and Juliana Urtubey of Nevada — are candidates for National Teacher of the Year, which the Council of Chief State School Officers is expected to announce this week. In their own way, each would likely echo Arthur’s sentiment: Even the best educators had to learn new skills this past year to connect with students.

“We are welcomed guests in families’ homes. We got to peek in and see what it looks like,” said Urtubey, a pre-K-5 special education teacher who supports 10 classrooms at Booker Elementary School in the Clark County School District, which includes Las Vegas.

She watched a mother, father, grandmother and cousin take turns helping a student with autism during distance learning so the responsibility wouldn’t fall on one family member, and witnessed other parents upend their work schedules to stay home with their children.

“Not a day goes by that a teacher doesn’t tell me something awesome their families did,” Urtubey said.

She was trained as a bilingual teacher in Arizona — just as the state implemented Proposition 203, requiring English as the only language of instruction.She gravitated to special education because of a provision in the law allowing students with disabilities to receive bilingual services.

One day, she had an “aha” moment about the potential of all students to learn: She caught a fifth grader, who couldn’t read at a kindergarten level, “running a business out of his backpack.” He sold pencils, erasers and snacks, keeping a balance sheet to track revenues and expenses.

“He planted a seed,” she said. “I was like, ‘OK, let’s figure out a way to use this for academic intervention.’”

Unlocking the magic

At Cumberland International Early College High School, located on the campus of Fayetteville State University, a lot of Stover’s students enter ninth grade needing intervention. The state’s early college high schools target students from underrepresented minority groups in line to be the first in their families to attend college.

The students who thrive in the model are “motivated, but behind,” Stover said. “There is magic in them that we can unlock.”

A former intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force who served in the Middle East, Stover teaches biology, environmental science and a class that prepares students for college. When her students transitioned to distance learning, the casual interactions she shared with them in the classroom and eating lunch together in the student union stopped.

Over Zoom, many clammed up. She encouraged them to bring their pets on screen and gave them a virtual tour of the raised beds in her backyard, using the outdoors to spark conversation and teach a lesson on photosynthesis.

One outcome of remote learning, she said, is that students have learned some “digital citizenship,” such as not showing their house number on social media and recognizing that a classmate’s joke in the chat field can sometimes be taken the wrong way.

They’ve collaborated on projects remotely through videos and documents. For years, educators would talk about 21st century skills, but “it always felt really forced,” Stover said. “Now my kids have those skills.”

‘Their voice can make change’

In northeast D.C., Diasgranados’s fourth and fifth graders at Aiton Elementary School have sharpened advocacy skills they’ve been learning since second grade when he began moving with them from one grade to the next.

A letter from the students explaining that many lacked devices for remote learning caught the attention of a producer for The Drew Barrymore Show on CBS. In October, Barrymore featured Diasgranados as a guest and for every student and staff member.

In past years, his students have written to the Washington Football Team, explaining how unwashed clothes contribute to chronic absenteeism. The $10,000 for a school laundry. And when Washington Capitals forward Devante Smith-Pelly faced racist taunts at a game in Chicago, the students wrote him letters of support. Smith-Pelly visited the school and donated coats to the students.

“My students are activists,” Diasgranados said. “They really understand their writing and their voice can make change.”

Unlike most teachers this school year, Diasgranados didn’t have to form new relationships with students he’s never taught before. He already had numbers for grandparents, aunts and uncles he called when he couldn’t find students during the early months of the pandemic.

But teaching remotely in one of D.C.’s poorest neighborhoods — even with the laptop donation — was no less challenging. As children of essential workers, a lot of his students have had to connect to school from their parents’ jobs or a city bus.

Aiton was holding a talent show March 13 last year when texts about school shutting down began pouring in. Diasgranados started to get emotional and gave more hugs and took more selfies than normal.

“They didn’t really understand what was going on,” he said. “I remember telling them to take as many books home as they could.”

Lead Art: Alejandro Diasgranados, Juliana Urtubey, John Arthur and Maureen Stover. (Council of Chief State School Officers)

Portia and her two boys were living at the St. Ambrose Family Shelter in Dorchester, Massachusetts, located in an old Catholic church, when the pandemic hit. 

To protect her family from the virus, she moved in with her mother in a one-bedroom apartment. But with a baby brother in the same room and unreliable Wi-Fi, 13-year-old Quentin began to struggle in school. Then the landlord threatened to evict them, calling the arrangement a fire hazard.

By May, Portia and family had returned to the shelter. “We were just moving so fast that I didn’t even have a moment to tell a teacher, ‘This is the situation,’” said Portia, who declined to give her last name to protect her identity.

She worked full time and fed the children in her car because the kitchen closed at 6 p.m. She occasionally broke the rules, cooking them ramen noodles and oatmeal in an electric kettle she snuck into their room. 

The whole time, Quentin’s school knew nothing of the disruption in his life.

“No one at the school knew we were homeless,” said Portia, who finally landed at her own government-subsidized apartment in July.

Her story is a common one among families that have gone without stable living arrangements over the past year. With students learning remotely — and sometimes leaving their cameras off during Zoom sessions — teachers and other school staff have missed many of the clues that students lack permanent housing. 

Under the $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill passed in March, the federal government has dedicated $800 million to support homeless students, a commitment that advocates say will go a long way to finding those students and addressing their needs. This comes on top of a temporary child tax credit included in the same law, which could cut child poverty in half and which advocates hope will be made permanent.

About 1.5 million school-age children in the United States are homeless, according to . Last fall, researchers estimated that many of them were among the 1 to 3 million students potentially from classrooms during remote learning. Experts say that even homeless students who have a device might not have Wi-Fi or a place to charge a laptop.

“Identification is hard because we depend on teachers and social workers and others to see what the signs are,” said Deborah Dempsey, a homeless student advocate for the Kane County Regional Office of Education, outside Chicago. 

The 34-year-old Education for Homeless Children and Youths program, also known as McKinney-Vento, ensures that children living in shelters, hotels or “doubled-up” with other families can stay in their school. It also guarantees transportation and access to additional services, such as referrals to housing, food and health care. 

But the law wasn’t designed with distance learning in mind, and many families are reluctant to volunteer that they’re living in a car or moving from couch to couch. “We’ve got this federal law with a set of rights that is being overlooked right now,” said Barbara Duffield, the executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, an advocacy organization. “The delivery system is not being used.”

‘Can’t get assistance’

The new federal funding is eight times the amount states typically receive through McKinney-Vento and represents a significant change from the two relief bills passed last year. States had the option of using previous funding to give homeless students extra academic support and help with basic needs, but according to SchoolHouse Connection’s November survey of over 1,400 homeless liaisons, just 18 percent responded that their districts used them that way. By contrast, the American Rescue Plan dedicates specific funds for homeless students, allowing districts to increase staff to help identify them and connect them to other services.

Last Friday, the department of education issued to state school chiefs outlining how much they’ll receive and urging them to support districts that don’t have a lot of experience serving homeless students. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Senate education Chair Patty Murray of Washington and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia held a roundtable discussion with students who have experienced homelessness. Some said their schools had been sources of comfort but others said teachers were often unaware of their struggles.

“I didn’t receive any communication from my school,” said Eric, a high school senior from Texas who lives with friends. “I kind of wish my teachers had tried talking to me instead of counting me absent. They just kind of wrote me off.”

In North Carolina, homeless liaisons plan to use the new funds to rebuild relationships with students who were the most disconnected from school this year. They’re planning afterschool, weekend and summer tutoring programs and creating remote learning and homework corners in homeless shelters. Sheryl Kimbro, the director of accountability and testing for the Pender County Schools, along the coast, said the goal is to provide more in-person services.

“Our students have had three years in a row in which they have missed a significant portion of face-to-face instruction,” Kimbro said, noting that during the 2018-19 school year, schools closed for a month because of Hurricane Florence. “Our students are going to need as much support as possible to help bridge any gaps.”

The district works with a network of churches in the county to gather food for needy families. Volunteers gather at Pender County Christian Services to stuff backpacks full of mini cereal boxes and fruit cups to deliver to schools.

As more families faced pandemic-related hardship, Sandy Harris, executive director of the nonprofit, saw the cost to stock her food pantry more than double in 2020 — from $32,000 to $67,000.

“A lot of these are single mothers who had to quit their jobs to stay home with their kids,” she said. “They sit here and cry, and all I can do is what I do.” 

The latest relief bill included another $25 billion for rental assistance, but those programs often don’t reach families doubling up with friends and family. With the pandemic-related eviction ban expiring June 30, advocates are concerned more students will face homelessness this summer.

Harris keeps in close contact with the Pender district’s liaisons to ensure families at risk of homelessness are receiving assistance — the type of partnership the new federal funds can support.

Last year, Pender County residents Michael and Casey Guerriero wondered if they would lose their home and if their children would have to change schools again. They had just gained custody of Michael’s three school-age children from a previous marriage when the state locked down last March. They enrolled the boys, who had been living with their mother in Wake County, in the Pender County district, but due to the shutdown, the children’s first contact with classmates and teachers was through Google Classroom. 

When his job as an electrical worker slowed down, he didn’t know if he’d be able to pay the rent. He suddenly found himself tracking three remote and in-person school schedules on a whiteboard while picking up side work mowing lawns. Guerriero turned to Harris’s organization for groceries and help with Christmas presents.

“There were times where we were sitting up, scratching our heads and wondering what we were going to do if things got worse,” he said. Because he was still working, he didn’t qualify for unemployment or other government support.

“I’m in a bracket where I’m right in the middle and can’t get assistance,” he said.

showed that more than 8 million households were behind on rent in December, and the number of those at least three months behind on their mortgage payments — over 2.1 million borrowers — had reached levels not seen since the Great Recession.

According to a weekly University of Oregon on their experiences during the pandemic, 40 percent of those who have received at least one stimulus check have put the money toward rent or mortgage payments.

Finding the siblings

As difficult as it can be to identify K-12 students with unstable living arrangements, it can be even harder to find families with younger children outside the school system that can benefit from the new relief funds. According to , there were an estimated 1.4 million homeless children under age 6 in 2017-18.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued regulations stating that child care programs receiving federal funds should prioritize serving homeless families with young children — and that, like schools, they should serve those who might have moved in with friends of relatives. 

In the Boston area, that rule spurred a stronger relationship between the nonprofit Horizons for Homeless Children and the Boston Public Schools.

“We reached out and said, ‘We know you have children registered as homeless, and my guess is they have siblings,’” said Kate Barrand, president and CEO of Horizons, which has three early-childhood centers and “playspaces” in 90 family shelters throughout Massachusetts. 

Amid the chaos, Portia and her sons experienced last year, a Horizons center offered some sense of stability. A caseworker helped her file for unemployment when she temporarily lost work at a health care office and texted her when she heard about free diaper programs and gift card giveaways. Horizons has delivered food to families and made a one-time deposit of $100 into their bank accounts — services they’ve never provided before, Barrand said.

Before last year, Portia’s son Quentin usually made the honor roll at his charter school. But as his family moved and bounced between internet providers, his grades began to drop.

Now in their new apartment, he has better Wi-Fi and a quiet place to do his work. “There’s no excuse for him to not get on that Chromebook and go,” she said.

Since September, D.C.’s $3.3-million program has “received interest” from about 9,000 households of the 25,000 the program can serve for a year — just 36 percent, according to the Office of the Chief Technology Officer.

OCTO would not say how many of those families are currently receiving the service or are waiting for it to be set up — only that it put those 9,000 families in touch with Comcast or RCN, the providers D.C. is compensating to supply free Internet.

Advocates are pointing to the lag as a key reason to shift from patchwork fixes to sustainable, long-term solutions that establish low-cost, fast and reliable service citywide, so all residents have more equitable opportunities to succeed in school and the workforce.

While families could still benefit in the interim from the Internet for All program, “We haven’t done enough as a city to make it appealing,” D.C. Council member Janeese Lewis George wrote to ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ in a statement.

George noted how Chicago, which adopted a similar program last year, collaborated with “existing and trusted community based organizations” to spread the word, “and they’ve a lot more people.”

More than a year into the pandemic, unreliable Internet is still a reality for many D.C. families. About 76 percent of teachers in a said slow student Internet continues to impede learning, while 42 percent said students “having no Internet access” is a barrier.

Yet the free program remains under enrolled.

Early on, officials struggled to convince families the program wasn’t a scam. Many had also already opted to rely on school resources like hotspots, which were available sooner after schools first closed and were less of a lift for non-tech savvy parents who couldn’t “set up the basement WiFi,” said Maya Martin Cadogan, executive director of D.C. parent advocacy group PAVE.

D.C. Council member Brooke Pinto also worries some families fell through the cracks as program outreach largely involves emailing, texting or calling families and requiring them to opt in.

“Not everybody has access to Internet to even know” the program exists, she said. “[We need] more proactive outreach 
 so families can access this service without having to do their own homework.”

Some parents who did hear about the program and sought to enroll said there was confusion around eligibility requirements, too.

D.C. mom Sharnetta Boone-Ruffin inquired twice last year, believing she was eligible because she has a sixth grader and was receiving SNAP benefits. She said Comcast first told her she was ineligible because of an outstanding bill. Boone-Ruffin paid the bill, she said, only to be told that as a previous Comcast customer, she was still ineligible.

OCTO confirmed that per its agreement with Comcast, these shouldn’t be disqualifying factors.

With her daughter struggling to meaningfully engage in school work with only a hotspot, Boone-Ruffin, who’s a daycare teacher, felt she had no choice but to shell out $269 a month for a robust Comcast package— even if it meant taking up a side job tutoring to foot the bill.

“It was very frustrating,” she said. “How is [this program] helpful if I can’t give my child the free resources she needs to do a successful job in school? To stay on the principal’s honor roll? To keep perfect attendance?”

An OCTO spokeswoman said their team is “continuously working” to reach more families. The program’s funding is usable through September 2022, and “we will continue to allow residents to sign up as long as capacity and funds are available,” she added.

A short-term fix

Even if Internet for All had engaged more families from the onset, Cadogan noted the current program was meant as a band-aid during distance learning. Thinking long-term, she said, residents need Internet solutions that are both sustainable and higher quality.

Initially, “We were just trying to answer the question of, ‘Do people have access?’ And a yes or no question is important,” she said. “But a yes or no question is not where it stops when you’re talking about equity.”

In addition to the program’s fixed funding allotment, the service quality can be spotty, especially for families with multiple kids and devices. The package speeds recently grew from 25 megabits per second to 50 mbps, but still fall well of 94.6 mbps recorded last year.

Kesara Brewster, a mom of five students, used to pay $9.95 a month for the Internet Essentials package Comcast offers families via Internet for All, and said Comcast automatically transitioned her to the free program. While she appreciates the savings, Brewster said the service speed hasn’t been sufficient during virtual learning; the family often uses hotspots and cell phone WiFi to compensate.

She wishes the program let families choose between free service or continuing to pay $9.95 a month for upgraded broadband speeds. That way, “I wouldn’t be spending more money than I was already spending, but I would be getting better service,” she said.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser did she expects all D.C. public schools to fully reopen starting in the fall. This shift back to in-person learning doesn’t diminish the importance of improving Internet access, though, sources interviewed said.

“The world is technology based right now,” said Dayana Smith, a junior at Eastern High School. “Either way, we’re still going to have to use [Internet]” to be successful.

“There’s definitely some parts of virtual teaching that I want to keep,” like using Canvas and having students submit assignments online, added her Spanish teacher, Danielle Imhoff. “They’re going to need reliable Internet access at home to do that.”

 A move toward long-term solutions

How to make affordable, high-speed Internet accessible to everyone is a nationwide conversation. Maryland, for example, recently investing $300 million to expand its broadband infrastructure and subsidize Internet costs; New York guidelines all new affordable housing that taps city funds must be wired for free high-speed internet.

OCTO has yet to divulge specific next steps beyond Internet for All, but referred ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ to to the Federal Communications Commission outlining its interest in harnessing “creative and non-traditional use of government networks,”, to connect more residents.

D.C. Council legislation has added urgency. Council member Charles Allen this month that, if passed, would charge OCTO with setting a minimum city broadband speed, identifying disconnected households and those paying more than 0.5 percent of their monthly income on Internet, and developing a long-term plan. One solution it is establishing a municipal Internet provider— something like Cleveland have considered.

At the school district level, D.C. Public Schools is also working to better track students’ Internet and tech needs. It’s including a question about access on enrollment forms for the 2021-22 school year, and is surveying current students this month, a spokeswoman said.

With the mayor’s proposed FY2022 budget slated for release , Pinto said she and other Council members will be on the lookout as well for additional government investments in “Internet for our public housing and our public spaces,” like libraries and recreation centers.

D.C. is already expected to reap benefits from the new federal Emergency Broadband Benefit program, which will allow participating Internet providers to shave up to $50 a month off eligible families’ bills. Comcast confirmed with ĂÛÌÒÓ°ÊÓ that it will participate, with further information expected on its website April 26. A spokeswoman added Comcast is also in the process of expanding the number of that offer free Internet in select community centers.

What parent Boone-Ruffin wants most is city infrastructure enhancements that would enable more Internet providers to service the lower-income and majority Black Wards 7 and 8.

More providers “would give us more choices, it would give us more help,” she said. “It seems like everybody’s hands are tied when you come on this side [of the river]. … It isn’t fair.”

One way to measure the depth of a particular element of structural racism is to check the burden of proof it takes to force the privileged to notice it. Structures are where racial injustice goes to hide. That is, most of the deep, systemic biases in American life are woven so deeply into the fabric of our daily lives that they’re not only beyond questioning, they’re beyond noticing.

These innocuous, neutral-seeming rules and norms — if an officer thinks you might have a weapon, — encode of color as “fair” and “normal.”

Consider: most white Americans have only recently begun to reflect on how police wield violence towards Black men. The burden of proof? Repeated video documentation of the problem, from Jacob Blake to Eric Garner to George Floyd (et al). That’s what it took for them — for us — to even begin to see it, even as the country waited some 11 hours to find out late Tuesday afternoon that a Minneapolis jury had found ex-police officer Derek Chauvin in Floyd’s murder.

What about in education? What might it take to alert the white and privileged to the profound inequities tilting the daily normal operation of public schools away from providing equitable opportunities to historically marginalized families? The data aren’t lacking. We know that our schools segregate students by , , , and more. We know that this segregation facilitates a privileging mostly white school districts. Perhaps most of all, we know that our system responds to the and of privileged white families first — and all other stakeholders second.

. The study analyzed discussions of Washington, D.C. schools on a popular local discussion forum, “DC Urban Moms and Dads.” The largely anonymous online forum is ubiquitous in white D.C. parents’ discourse — it’s widely as the place that some of the city’s of race, , and schooling. Researchers Vanessa Williamson, Jackson Gode, and Hao Sun surveyed more than 400,000 forum messages across more than a decade of discussions.

What they found was — well, you be the judge. The forum is obsessed with real estate. Mentions of being “in-bound” for a neighborhood school “appeared in nearly two-thirds of all conversations in the forum,” that is, roughly 10,000 of the forum’s 15,000 schools conversations since 2008 included discussion of how to buy guaranteed access to particular schools. “In-bound” is the common term on the forum. Not coincidentally, “the zip codes most commonly referred to on DC Urban Moms are 20016, 20015, and 20007, the three most expensive zip codes in the District.”

As a result, , “Within the DC Urban Moms’ forum much of the local school system is simply invisible; many schools are never discussed.” Within the pool of schools that are visible to the forum, those that get the most attention are disproportionately white and privileged. What’s more, these schools are generally discussed in terms of what they offer — services and extracurricular options, for instance — while some of the analysis found that conversations about less-discussed schools were more likely to center on student demographics.

So: is that shocking? In this deeply progressive city, where Joe Biden won , where Black Lives Matter signs, murals, and artwork are nearly as common as street signs, white parents are still grinding their gears to ensure that there are fewer Black people in their children’s lives.

I wasn’t surprised. I’m a white, middle-class D.C. dad, which means that I am already privy to these conversations, the ones that white people have when they think they’re unaccountable. ±ő’v±đ written for years. .

But those of us sounding this alarm haven’t broken through. Most communities seem content to leave these educational inequities intact. Remember, that’s how we know that a bias is systemic. “Children who live in this neighborhood get to go to this neighborhood school” is innocuous enough. And yet, it lives atop a deep, broad legacy of race-driven policies that have established intergenerational wealth gaps and segregated housing and schools. In theory, anyone can buy access to a neighborhood school where housing for a two-child family runs at least $3,000 per month. In practice, that restricts access to a narrow band of wealthy — — families.

Why can’t we confront the unjust systems that facilitate the toxic privileged behavior visible in tony enclaves like DC Urban Moms? It’s because structural racism in public education runs particularly deep. Consider: if (some) white Americans have learned to decry violent police acts that endanger — or end — Black lives, it’s still the case that the current moment in racial justice activism has not yet required much new behavior from most of us. We’ve been permitted to treat this as a movement exclusively about other white people.

But white supremacy is built into broader structures of American life and it’s daily reinforced by white choices. Schools are a central mechanism for its maintenance: If you are a white person who moved to a “nice,” mostly white, upper-middle class town or neighborhood “for the schools” (full of mostly white, upper-middle class children), for instance, you are following a well-trodden — but privileged — path. You are moving to a place where the are likely to be better and of a higher quality. You are weaving the thread of your family’s life into the United States’s social fabric and reinforcing its inequities.

Those comfortable choices sustain American white supremacy. They keep Americans from one another. keep American , housing, society, and life unequal and inequitable and unjust. And they are much for most white Americans to notice, acknowledge, face, unpack, and reverse than clear acts of police brutality caught on video.

Not coincidentally, white Democrats are than Black Democrats when it comes to major school integration policies, such as busing, or policies that give students to purchase through the housing market.

D.C. isn’t unique. , white, middle-class progressives are when it comes to building or public housing that might make their neighborhood schools more accessible to a wider range of diverse families. “I don’t want my kid to be an experiment,” write thousands of like-minded white parents on listservs in cities across the country, as they move to the whiter, wealthier neighborhoods nearby. “I couldn’t sacrifice my kid to my beliefs,” write thousands more. And thus, white supremacy will persist and continue threatening Black lives until white Americans actually turn and confront the perniciously hidden systems that keep us from including Black Americans in our daily lives.

Many children who did enroll have attended remotely for much of the year and may have not received any live instruction from their teachers, said the report, published annually by the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

And because of the pandemic, several states have waived or modified requirements regarding classroom observations, child screenings or assessments, teacher qualifications, even background checks — further contributing to what the institute describes as uneven quality across states.

“Some states have made no progress in 20 years, and other states have risen to become national leaders,” Steve Barnett, senior co-director of the institute, said on a call with reporters.

This year’s report follows the institute’s efforts since last summer to monitor the impact of the pandemic on early-childhood education. In February, the organization released parent showing that enrollment in preschool programs dropped by almost a quarter compared to fall 2019. Parents are also reading less to their children, the survey showed. The yearbook, however, also comes amid expectations that President Joe Biden will soon unveil details of his plan to fund universal pre-K, as he promised during the campaign. Some and districts are setting aside federal relief dollars for pre-K this fall. But experts note that any efforts to scale up access should include attention to improving classroom quality.

The annual report tracks enrollment, state spending and quality in public pre-K. For the first time, Hawaii and Missouri joined four other states with programs that meet all 10 of the institute’s quality benchmarks, which include having lead teachers with a bachelor’s degree, a strong curriculum and health screenings for children.

But states serving the most preschoolers, such as California, Florida and Texas, don’t meet more than four benchmarks. The researchers estimate it would cost $12 billion to improve the quality of existing state pre-K and Head Start programs and another $62 billion to cover high-quality programs for all 3- and 4-year-olds.

Participation across all public pre-K programs in 44 states and the District of Columbia grew by 12,000 in the 2019-20 school year, to more than 1.6 million — an increase of less than 1 percent over the previous year. But that’s significantly less than the 4 percent growth the year before.

Gaps in funding, teacher pay

States spend on average $5.496 per preschooler, which, adjusted for inflation, was a $141 increase over the previous year. But the researchers estimate that states spend far less than it takes to provide a high-quality program.

That’s one issue that North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper is hoping to address with to spend $50 million over the next two years for a 16 percent increase in pre-K per-pupil funding. The state currently spends $5,355 per child, leaving districts to make up the difference in salary costs and nonprofit programs to pay teachers thousands less than their counterparts in public schools.

In addition, Cooper’s plan includes more than $9 million toward salary parity for licensed teachers in community-based centers, which can keep teachers from leaving for higher-paying school jobs.

“Continuity of relationships between teachers and children is so important,” Dan Wuori, senior director of early learning at the Hunt Institute, said in an interview. “Helping to bring some pay parity can make it attractive to work in any North Carolina pre-K setting, public or private.”

The institute’s report notes that even if states protect pre-K funding this fall — regardless of the current year’s enrollment decline — cuts in future years are still possible. And some states, including Utah, Virginia and Nevada, are spending less on early-childhood education this school year than originally budgeted. In March, the institute estimated that the of the pandemic could match that of the Great Recession, when enrollment growth slowed and 21 states cut per-child spending.

With Biden in office, early education advocates are eyeing a much larger federal role in expanding access to pre-K. On April 9, he previewed his federal 2022 budget priorities, including more than doubling spending for Title I. During the campaign, he promised to triple funding for the program, which supports high-poverty schools, to extend preschool to all 3- and 4-year-olds.

In recent years, have moved ahead of their states in expanding local programs, paying for them with a variety of revenue sources, such as a soda tax in Philadelphia and a sales tax in San Antonio. And last week, Los Angeles Unified School District board members to use federal relief dollars to expand preschool this fall and push for universal access by 2024.

The relief package “is a game changer if you use it for the foundation for a plan to move forward,” Barnett said during the media call, but added, “making long-term commitments based on short-term resources Is not a smart idea.”

Lessons from New York

Rapidly expanding the number of classrooms can compromise quality, according to a recent of the New York City Department of Education’s pre-K program.

The research shows that as Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to ramp up services for 3-year-olds, centers that enroll larger shares of white and Asian children meet higher quality standards than those serving more Black and Hispanic children. The report, however, notes as a positive sign the district’s to focus pre-K expansion in communities hardest hit by the pandemic.

The findings have implications for Biden’s push for universal pre-K, said author Bruce Fuller, an education and sociology researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

“The clear lesson from the Big Apple is that big entitlements must be managed carefully, tilting quality gains fairly toward low-income families,” Fuller said. “Otherwise, as our findings reveal, better-off families win higher quality pre-K.”

In response, Sarah Cassanova, a spokeswoman for New York City schools, said the Berkeley study “only considers one narrow measure of quality” and that the city’s programs continue to “make important gains in both quality and equity.” The department, she said, is “committed to understanding and addressing any disparities in access to high-quality early education, particularly as our city recovers from the pandemic that has disproportionately impacted communities of color.”

Sharp enrollment declines

The institute’s data on pre-K enrollment this year shows the most dramatic declines in participation among children in poverty. Only 13 percent of preschoolers were attending an in-person program, according to the parent survey. Overall enrollment rates in center-based programs have dropped by almost a quarter since the start of this school year — a decrease from 71 to 54 percent for 4-year-olds and from 51 to 39 percent for 3-year-olds.

After kindergarten enrollment plummeted last fall, district leaders expect to see an increase in overage kindergartners as well as 5-year-olds who have not had a typical early-childhood experience. In addition, the institute’s survey showed a decline in parents reading to their children at least three times per week and practicing numbers, words and letters — activities that help children make the transition to a more formal curriculum. But they increased the time spent telling stories and singing songs.

Hawaii is offering a for children who skipped pre-K this year, and in a recent Hunt Institute webinar, New Mexico Secretary of Education Ryan Stewart said his state plans to use relief funds to offer a summer transition program.

“I worry the most about early numeracy work,” he said. “Families still have books and reading opportunities, but it’s harder to create those natural ways [to introduce] number concepts.”

Parent Michelle Galindo of San Diego opted to keep 3-year-old Roberto out of virtual public preschool this year but might send him to transitional kindergarten in the fall if it’s in person and not so “limited and structured.”

“My priority is for him to experience hands-on learning, to be able to share and collaborate and cooperate,” she said. “Why else enroll him in preschool?”

Cecilia Santiago-Gonzalez, another California parent, enrolled 4-year-old Camila in the Azusa Unified School District’s virtual pre-K program last fall but sometimes wondered if the daily Zoom sessions were worth the effort, since she was also working at home and caring for a 1-year-old.

“Asking a 4-year-old to be still and pay attention and to remain engaged is a big task,” she said, adding that she signed her daughter up for a soccer league so she could interact with other children.

Other parents have had a more positive experience with remote programs. In Philadelphia, Maritza Guridy said her 5-year-old son, Tarrell, and her 4-year-old foster daughter, Ja’Ziyah, “are more than ready for kindergarten” and have adjusted well to Google classroom. “They know how to put themselves on mute. They know how to share the screen.”

Still, as soon as the district started its hybrid schedule March 8, she jumped at the chance to send the children to school twice a week.

With Black and Hispanic communities hit hardest by the pandemic and experiencing more financial stress than white families, experts say teachers will likely need to spend more time than usual on children’s social and emotional adjustment as well their academic skills.

Albert Wat, senior policy director at the Alliance for Early Success, noted during the Hunt Institute webinar that Black children, especially boys, were already being suspended and expelled in the early grades at much higher rates than white children before the pandemic.

“If all the focus is on catching up kids with academics,” he said, “we’re going to lose more of those kids.”