Tardiness, absenteeism or “subjective” offenses like defiance or disrespect, should not result in a suspension, the guidance said. And children with disabilities removed from regular classrooms for more serious offenses, or because they could harm themselves or others, must continue to receive special education services. Officials touted the materials, including a Q&A and examples of how to provide behavior support, as the most detailed guidance on students with disabilities the department has released.

“This work is especially urgent now as our schools and our students and families continue to heal from the pandemic,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “The disruptions of the last two years have led to a sharp increase in students experiencing mental health challenges.”

Recent that despite the drop in suspensions during remote learning — and recent trends toward restorative practices — students with disabilities have been disciplined more during the pandemic than their peers without disabilities. At the same time, educators said this past school year was marked by an increase in student misconduct. According to , roughly half of schools surveyed blamed the “pandemic and its lingering effects” for increases in classroom disruptions, rowdiness and disrespectful behavior. Many students with disabilities, however, also missed out on services required by their individualized education program, or IEP, during the pandemic — services that could have mitigated behavior problems, . 

The guidance also follows a May announcement that the Office for Civil Rights will update Section 504 — a 45-year-old civil rights law meant to protect students with disabilities from discrimination. 

Students with a 504 plan don’t always qualify for special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. But in their comments, Cardona and Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights, stressed that both are subject to laws preventing discrimination.

“The department is making a statement that school districts need to provide these protections even if they have not identified students with disabilities,” said Dan Stewart, an attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. 

The documents represent the first of two parts focused on discipline. Later this summer, the department is expected to release guidance focusing on racial disparities in discipline. Some expect it to echo Obama-era guidance that many thought overreached because it threatened schools that ran afoul of the policy with a civil rights investigation. 

Tuesday’s release notes that states, under the law, must measure whether there is significant disproportionality in discipline, based on race and ethnicity, of students with disabilities, and  raises the possibility that districts could be subject to a civil rights investigation “if there is question regarding whether school districts are imposing discipline in discriminatory ways.”

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a vocal critic of the earlier guidance, said there are students who are identified as having an “emotional disturbance” because of their behavior.

“We shouldn’t be surprised if they continue to misbehave, and get suspended or expelled at higher rates,” he said, adding that any civil rights investigation of a district is a “form of punishment” and that districts might “under-discipline their students with disabilities — especially those with emotional disturbance — in order to make their statistics look better.”

But he acknowledged the new document takes a more balanced approach. “[The Office for Civil Rights] is trying to be clear that it doesn’t want schools to be hamstrung in terms of dealing with safety issues, or kids that are disrupting the learning of others.”

Selene Almazan, legal director for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, agreed, noting that the guidance doesn’t “undercut” schools’ ability to remove a student with disabilities for disciplinary reasons. 

“Schools have always had at their disposal the ability to discipline students who present an immediate danger,” she said. “I don’t think this ties their hands.”

Daniel Losen, director of the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California Los Angeles, argued that the earlier guidance, which former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded, was not an overreach. Critics, he said, “complained that any disparity would be regarded as discriminatory.”

‘Didn’t have a full understanding’

Katy Neas, deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, noted that over the past year of and holding listening sessions with educators and parents that staff turnover was resulting in an increase in discipline that removed students from school.

“There are so many new people in new roles that didn’t have a full understanding of what the law required,” she said, adding that the guidance should help families and schools work toward appropriate services. “Behavior is often a sign of communication when something’s not right.”

The guidance, for the first time, addresses what are known as “,” such as shortening a student’s school day, even when parents haven’t agreed to a change in the student’s special education services. A normal school day for a student with disabilities shouldn’t be any longer or shorter than it is for those without disabilities, the guidance said.

“Informal removals have been lurking in the shadows for quite some time,” Stewart said, adding that the department’s attention to the issue is a monumental step forward” and “puts districts on notice that the department is going to take these things more seriously.”

The guidance also notes that students who have been removed from school while awaiting a threat or risk assessment — a practice that schools are increasingly using to prevent violence — are still protected under IDEA. 

“Sometimes districts say, ‘You can’t come back until you get a letter from a doctor or a psychologist that says you’re OK to return,’ ” Stewart said. “That places the burden on the parent. That’s a removal. That’s an expulsion.”

Advocates also praised the guidance for making a strong statement against restraint and seclusion of students, saying that the department is “not aware of any evidence-based support for the view that the use of restraint or seclusion is an effective strategy in modifying a child’s behaviors that are related to their disability.”

And while the controversy surrounding the issue hasn’t changed, the pandemic offers up a troubling new context: Districts are reporting spikes in , violent attacks on school employees and blatant disregard for school rules.

“There is certainly a much higher level of dysregulation in our kids,” said Rico Munn, superintendent of the Aurora Public Schools in Colorado. He added that educators usually expect students to fall into a routine and follow rules by September. “We weren’t hitting that until spring break.”

The education department is expected to update its policy in two parts. One will focus on students with disabilities, who are significantly to be suspended and expelled than non-disabled students. The other will address racial gaps in discipline — a reality that persists in many districts despite over the past decade to keep students from being removed from school and often referred to police.

Advocates for students’ educational rights are eager for the department to make a strong statement against discipline that keeps students out of the classroom.

“Discipline is inherently an authoritative tool used to punish students for being what an adult has decided is disobedient,” said Denise Stile Marshall, president of the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, which focuses on the rights of students with disabilities. “There is a lot of research on this, but simply put, punitive school discipline does not improve student behavior or academic achievement.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s not accidental. The person leading the department’s effort is Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary at the Office for Civil Rights, the same position she held under President Barack Obama. Seth Galanter, who worked with Lhamon during the Obama years, has also returned to the civil rights office after four years at the National Center for Youth Law.

In 2014, the Obama administration issued a saying that schools where Black and Hispanic students were disproportionately removed for disciplinary reasons could be in violation of federal civil rights laws — even if those students misbehaved at higher rates. 

Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded that guidance in 2018, siding with those who called the move and said it misinterpreted meant to prevent discrimination.

The Biden administration comes to the issue not only more sympathetic to the idea of restorative justice, but in the midst of a pandemic that has seen an increase in student misbehavior. One said student behavior was so “abysmal” that educators were afraid for their safety.

‘A year of disrupted schooling’ 

That’s one reason why Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, that the department should hold off on new guidance, arguing that districts shouldn’t have to fear a federal investigation for removing disruptive students from the classroom. 

The pandemic, he noted, was worse for low-income Black and Hispanic students, who were more likely to attend schools that had been closed longer. 

“The very same students that have more catching up to do after a year of disrupted schooling are also facing the prospect of a more challenging learning environment if schools are hesitant to remove problem students,” he wrote. 

Others say the pandemic shouldn’t interrupt the administration’s efforts to revisit the issue of bias in school discipline.

“It is always a good time to say that racial discrimination is wrong [and] that children with disabilities have the right to be alongside their non-disabled peers,” said Liz King, the senior program director for education at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. 

She thinks the guidance should reflect showing police in schools don’t reduce gun violence but do increase suspensions, expulsion and arrests of students — especially for Black students. She wants the department to take a stand against seclusion and restraint of students and “lean in” to the rights of Black and Hispanic girls and LGBTQ students.

Black girls are five times more likely than white girls to be suspended from school at least once and four times more likely to be arrested at school. A 2016 from advocacy group GLSEN found that LGBTQ students are suspended at higher rates than non-LGBTQ students. 

‘Absolutely a dance’

The Obama-era guidance embraced so-called restorative justice practices that aim to give students a chance to build stronger relationships, work out their grievances and make amends for their actions in lieu of suspension. Twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have passed laws supporting the model, according to the at Georgetown Law School. 

on such programs was mixed, but a more from California showed restorative practices can shrink Black-white discipline disparities and are associated with higher grade point averages in high school.

But “good discipline is very expensive” and hard to implement with the “regular teacher allocation in the school,” said Elliott Duchon, former superintendent of the Jurupa Unified School District, near Los Angeles. 

His district launched a multi-year effort to reduce suspensions and expulsions after federal officials found that Hispanic students were more likely to be suspended than white students.

Los Angeles Unified’s restorative justice program costs $13 million a year, according to the district, and funding for the Oakland district’s program — considered — was almost cut until the city and private funders stepped in to pick up the cost. 

Critics of alternative discipline practices argue the Obama-era guidance created tension between teachers who make discipline referrals and administrators who send students back to class without any consequences.

“It’s absolutely a dance,” said Jacqueline Shirey, at-risk coordinator for the Beaumont Independent School District in Texas. “If we are going to say that students can’t leave, what are we doing to help the teachers?”

With that in mind, Shirey began training teachers last fall to set up “de-escalation” spaces in their classrooms — a desk with a box that includes stress balls, 500-piece puzzles and writing materials. 

“I saw a way for students to learn how to manage their own emotions before it became disruptive, and I didn’t want students to leave my classroom to do that,” she said, but added that ground rules are necessary. “If you don’t implement it with a purpose, then it really does become supplies in a corner that students can play with.”

When students returned last fall, some administrators decided it was important to take a business-as-usual approach to discipline. 

In Nashville, Hunters Lane High School Principal Susan Kessler said her teachers “enforce dress code this year and every year” and that it helps in “maintaining school culture, enforcing building security and reducing distractions in the classroom.”

Other school leaders factored in the impact of school closures on students’ behavior.

Aaron Eyler, principal at Matawan Regional High School in Aberdeen, New Jersey, brought his staff together in September for a frank conversation about what to expect when students returned. 

He told them not to worry about trying to “win the battle” against students wearing hoodies and hats. And he wasn’t surprised to see more of what he referred to as insubordination, like students wearing Airpods and being late to class. The point, he said, was to keep students from missing even more instruction.

“With … what happened last year and the lack of consistent structure,” he said, “there was no way we weren’t going to have greater instances of discipline than what we’re accustomed to in school.”

Ronn Nozoe, executive director of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, said any guidance from the department is likely to “ruffle feathers,” but he added, “You never want to tie the hands of folks who are actually doing the work.”

Between 2016 and 2021, the average GPA for students taking the test increased from 3.22 to 3.39. But scores on the ACT I — reflecting performance in English, math, reading and science — declined slightly, from 20.8 to 20.3. The trend was especially noticeable among Black students and those from low- to moderate-income homes.

The results, based on a sample of over 4 million students in almost 4,800 schools, reflect “persistent, systemic,” grade inflation, wrote the authors, both researchers at ACT. Following a recent from the National Assessment of Educational Progress — or NAEP — the ACT analysis provides further evidence that grades, which often include points for effort and class participation, don’t reflect objective measures of academic achievement.

The study found more grade inflation in higher-poverty schools. Edgar Sanchez, a lead research scientist at ACT, said it’s unclear why that’s the case and called the study “a starting point.”

But Seth Gershenson, an American University researcher who has the issue, attributed the problem to what President George W. Bush “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Schools, Gershenson said, award passing grades “and let someone else deal with the lack of learning later on.”

His research also showed growing grade inflation over time in wealthier schools, where “more entitled parents and students” are putting pressure on teachers to give A’s so students can get into top colleges.

It’s unclear to what extent the relaxation of grading standards during the pandemic affected the study’s outcome, wrote the ACT researchers. California students, for example, were allowed to change their lowest grades. And reduced how much scores on end-of-course tests counted in students’ final grades. The authors noted that students who tested in the middle of a pandemic, especially the spring after schools shut down, “could be different from typical tested students” and also from those who didn’t test until 2021.  

At a time when more colleges and universities are making both the ACT and SAT for admission, ACT CEO Janet Godwin acknowledged the risk that the paper’s argument in support of standardized testing might seem self-serving, 

But she said the company has “a responsibility” to contribute to the conversation.

“We have the means and the data to do this kind of research,” she said.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank that has published Gershenson’s work, agreed that ACT has “a big dog in that fight.” Regardless, he agreed that current trends in grading are leaving students less prepared for higher education.

“The heart of the problem is that there aren’t any standards or guidelines for grading in most places,” Petrilli said. “Teachers are on their own, and don’t get much, if any, guidance. Nor do they get much training in [education] schools.”

‘In the dark’

Parents rely on grades to give them an accurate portrait of their children’s performance — especially since they are given more frequently than annual state tests, said Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes, a nonprofit that helps parents become better informed about their children’s progress. 

But many parents might not understand that grades are sometimes more about effort than knowledge, she said. 

“When we ask teachers why they don’t share more with parents about student achievement, they report it is fear-based — fear of not being believed, of being blamed and of their principals not having their back,” she said. “The system is designed to keep parents in the dark about their child’s grade-level performance.”

In recent years, some districts have adopted an approach known as “standards-based grading” that educators say offers a more accurate measure of whether students are meeting expectations. It takes the emphasis off non-academic factors like turning in assignments early and attendance — practices that can vary from teacher to teacher.

The 3,000-student Pewaukee School District in Wisconsin, outside Milwaukee, implemented such a model in 2015. Students are graded on a one-to-four system, with one representing below expectations and four indicating advanced performance. 

“We didn’t want students’ grades dependent on whether they brought in a box of Kleenex,” said Danielle Bosanec, the district’s chief academic officer. “We wanted kids to stop chasing grades and start chasing learning.”

Parents bought into the plan because it allows students more than one chance at a passing grade on an assignment or test so long as they can demonstrate the additional work they did after their first try. The district agreed to convert final scores into letter grades for transcripts.

Bosanec also conducted her own research to test the connection between the new grading model and ACT scores. In general, she found that in a standards-based model, “as students’ grades go up or down, the impact on ACT scores follows suit.”

Despite the studies pointing to grade inflation, there’s no “widespread evidence that institutions have lost trust in GPAs,” said David Hawkins, chief education and policy officer at the National Association for College Admission Counseling. What colleges crave, he said, is more context. 

In the future, he thinks, like research projects or class presentations — used widely in some states like New Hampshire in lieu of tests — could become part of the admissions process.

“There is more to be mined from the student’s high school record than we’re currently getting,” he said. “We’re missing a lot of data about what students can do.”

The High School Transcript Study, from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, shows that high school graduates’ overall scores in math declined between 2009 and 2019, while science scores remained flat. 

Only students taking the most rigorous math courses — including precalculus or higher — scored at the proficient level. But even their average score declined from 189 to 184 over the 10-year period. During that same decade, the typical high school senior’s graduating GPA rose .11 points to 3.11, or roughly a B average.

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the NAEP program, suggested that the content of high school courses is not always “as advertised.”

“Algebra I is not Algebra I just because it’s labeled Algebra I,” she said during a Tuesday call with reporters, but noted that the reasons behind the mismatch are complex. During a separate interview with ����Ӱ��, she added, “We do have evidence from prior investigations that these courses may say they’re doing one thing, but they’re suspect about the rigor.”

The good news, she said, is that more students of all backgrounds are taking higher-level courses — often because schools require them for graduation. She also noted that the average scores of Black students taking calculus have increased, from 161 to 177.

The lack of alignment between NAEP results and student performance in high school is not a new phenomenon. Officials reported the same trend in 2009, Carr said.

GPAs have increased for all racial groups over time, but since 1990, the gaps between Black and white students and Hispanic and white students have increased. The study also shows that students are earning their highest GPAs in career and technical courses or in those described as “other” — not in the core academic courses measured by NAEP. 

The findings, based on a sample of 14,300 graduates from 1,400 public and private schools, follow a series of NAEP results that point to sagging academic performance for the nation’s students. Data released last fall showed disturbing declines among 13-year-olds in both reading and math between 2012 and 2020. And the gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students have grown over time. More students, however, are taking tougher courses in high school. The percentage taking “mid-level” or rigorous courses, including Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses, has climbed since 2000 from 46 percent to 63 percent.

Some say the mismatch between students’ grades and NAEP performance reflects that students earn credit for tasks that don’t necessarily reflect learning. Others argue the traditional A-F grading system is and that grade inflation is rampant: Higher grades might boost students’ confidence and increase graduation rates, some experts say, but leave them less prepared for college.

Seth Gershenson, an associate professor of public policy at American University, who studied in 2018, said the pandemic has probably exacerbated grade inflation, but added he hasn’t seen any recent data on the issue. 

“Learning decreased, but a variety of pressures likely kept grades from dipping too hard,” he said. The current NAEP study only reflects scores and GPAs prior to the pandemic.

Carr said her team is already considering what adjustments they’ll have to make when they conduct the next transcript study in 2024, since it will focus on students whose education was disrupted by the pandemic, when many students completed courses online. Most districts across the country shifted to policies that kept grades from slipping below what they were when schools shut down in March, 2020. Some students also had opportunities during the 2020-21 school year to raise their lowest grades. 

In Ohio’s Oberlin City Schools, near Cleveland, high school history teacher Kurt Russell said there was some pushback from teachers at his school when administrators decided to give all students an A or a C on the work they submitted once schools shut down. 

But even before the pandemic, he said he noticed a shift toward allowing students to make up assignments that were significantly past due. 

“In the past, it was a 0 in the gradebook. Now I see a lot of teachers giving full credit for assignments that are very tardy,” said Russell, one of four current finalists for National Teacher of the Year. His policy is to knock off a letter grade for each day an assignment is late. 

“I think we still need to hold our students accountable,” he said.

Gershenson also studied teachers’ in 2020 and found that students learn more when teachers are tougher. 

“Teachers who set a higher bar for a good grade had students who went on to learn more, even after they left that teachers’ class,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which published the study. “Students learned to exert more effort. They inferred that their teacher held high expectations for them. Teachers face a ton of pressure to give easy A’s. Those that don’t are real heroes.”

Non-achievement factors 

Some experts who study grading policy note that teachers traditionally consider a lot more than a student’s academic work when assigning final grades.

Matthew Townsley, an assistant professor of educational leadership at the University of Northern Iowa, said there’s a “widening disconnect” between GPAs and standardized assessments because course grades reflect a lot of non-achievement factors, such as attendance and assignment completion — regardless of the quality of student performance on  assignments.

The NAEP study, he said, could help strengthen the case for a movement called — giving students credit for what they actually learn and often more than one chance to learn it.

Some educators consider the practice more equitable because submitting assignments early or racking up extra credit points might be easier for students with high-speed Wi-Fi at home and access to private tutors, but can be an ongoing struggle for those in lower-income families. 

While were moving toward such a grading system before the pandemic, interest has spread as educators look for methods that don’t unfairly disadvantage students in poverty. 

“I believe schools seeking to separate achievement from non-achievement factors in their grading were not only well positioned to assess and communicate learning during the pandemic,” Townsley said, “but also to communicate learning in the future that better aligns with NAEP and other external measures.”

Quality of schools in the region, which encompasses Boise, could be a factor, according to a from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation that identifies the nation’s best and worst metro areas for educational effectiveness. 

“Literally, you see the houses springing up like mushrooms,” said Terry Ryan, CEO of Bluum, a nonprofit supporting charter and district schools in the area. 

The region is among those where schools made above-average academic progress prior to COVID-19, the report shows. With the pandemic now accelerating toward suburbs and smaller metro areas — and often away from high-priced coastal cities — the authors say families and business leaders looking to relocate should factor in school quality when deciding where to settle down.

Michael Petrilli, president of the Institute, cautioned that there’s no guarantee the pandemic hasn’t stalled progress in areas where student performance once trended upward. Some experts, for example, have called recent “staggering.” But he said the message to districts and charter schools that were effective before the pandemic is to stay the course, and those that are ineffective “cannot just go back to normal.”

“I would assume that school districts and charter schools that were doing well by kids before the pandemic are probably largely the same ones doing well by them during the pandemic,” he said.

Using the — a national database of student performance — and graduation data from the U.S. Department of Education, the Fordham-Chamber project focuses on 100 large and mid-sized metro areas. The top locales include Miami, which recently received back-to-back from the state; Memphis, where Black, Hispanic and low-income students have shown above-average academic growth; and the Atlanta region, which ranks fourth in the study.

Atlanta has been ranked among the best places to start a new business, attracting tech leaders like . Collaboration among districts across the metro area is one reason why students were making progress before the pandemic and are “well-positioned to return to growth,” said Kenneth Zeff, executive director of Learn4Life, a nonprofit working to improve education outcomes across the metro Atlanta area. “Substantial inequities still exist, but the gap in several key indicators has been slowly eroding.”

Smaller metro areas, such as Jackson, Mississippi, and Brownsville, Texas, also emerged as places where schools performed better than expected based on demographics.

Those on the lower end of the spectrum include the Salt Lake City area, Las Vegas and Tulsa. Average achievement in math and English language arts has improved over the past six to 10 years in the Las Vegas metro area — essentially the Clark County School District — but schools still perform below average nationally, according to the report. 

Eighty percent of the population

The researchers focused on the nation’s metro areas because that’s where 80 percent of the U.S. population lives and where economic activity and labor market trends tend to have the most impact. Issues such as school choice and racial segregation also affect multiple districts. 

In addition to identifying areas with above- and below-average academic growth, the researchers factored in progress among Black, Hispanic and disadvantaged students, a region’s improvement over the past six to 10 years, and high school graduation rates. They combined these indicators into a measure they call “student learning accelerating metros” — or SLAM. The report includes interactive features so users can isolate results for specific indicators, subject areas or demographic groups.

The authors stressed that while achievement scores might seem to be an obvious indicator of high-quality schools, achievement alone often reflects students’ family backgrounds instead of a school’s effectiveness.

That’s why “Best Places to Live” lists should provide families a more comprehensive view of school quality instead of relying on standardized test scores, the authors wrote.

The SLAM rankings show that a metro area in which students have high achievement scores overall might not perform as well on the other measures. 

In North Carolina, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools, in the state’s Research Triangle region, has among the highest ACT scores in the state, but also large in achievement between Black and white students. 

That hasn’t stopped the region from attracting Google, Apple and Nike, which are in the area.

And the Raleigh area ranks fourth in raw achievement scores, but falls to 48th in the report when the other indicators are considered. On the other hand, the McAllen, Texas, area — which includes the Sharyland, Edinburg and Hidalgo school districts — ranks 41st in raw achievement, but third based on the report’s SLAM measure.

Brenda Berg, president and CEO of BEST NC, a nonprofit organization of business leaders in North Carolina, praised the report for providing relevant data for her state, where countywide districts include both urban centers and higher-performing suburbs. 

She said in an email that she’s “most concerned” about Wake County, which includes Raleigh, and is “most eager” to see where the Guilford and Charlotte-Mecklenburg districts go in the years to come.Those two districts, she said “have some really interesting promising practices emerging” around literacy and teacher recruitment in high-needs schools.

The authors note that while charter growth and district reform efforts have often focused on the cities at the heart of a metro area, the “suburbs are where many of the kids — and much of the action — are at, and they often explain a metro’s grade.”

Looking at broad trends across metro areas, however, can hide “meaningful variation” from one district to the next, said Alex Spurrier, associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners. In October, the think tank released a report showing how a lack of affordable housing in some of the nation’s most sought-after districts limits educational opportunity. 

“Even if families decide to move to a metro area with higher-performing public schools,” Spurrier said, “their access to specific public school systems may be limited based on where they can afford housing,” Spurrier said.

Citing the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Black, Latino and low-income students — and reports that charters were quicker than traditional schools to provide virtual instruction during school shutdowns — Bloomberg’s statement said, “Charter schools can help spread opportunity more equitably to students of all backgrounds nationwide.”

With plans to add 150,000 new seats for students, Bloomberg Philanthropies will award grants to new and existing nonprofit, non-virtual charter schools in 20 metro areas, provide funding to launch new models, and support efforts to create more racial diversity among charter teachers and leaders. Grants can also be used to build and upgrade facilities. 

Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which published on the charter sector’s response during the early months of the pandemic, called the news encouraging and “potentially transformative.”

“The evidence base continues to build showing that urban charter schools are highly effective, and that their growth has positive impacts on students in nearby traditional public schools as well,” he said. “It’s the closest thing we have in education to a win-win proposition. Thank you, Mayor Mike.”

As New York mayor from 2002 to 2013, Bloomberg supported exponential growth in the city’s charter sector, opening more than 150 charter schools. The foundation’s announcement follows recent data showing that during the pandemic, the charter sector has seen its highest period of growth since 2015. Charter schools, however, continue to face criticism from Democrats, who argue they drain resources — and students — from district schools. The Biden administration recommended no increase in funding for the $440 million federal Charter School Program for fiscal year 2022, while the House proposed a $40 million cut from the budget for charters. The Senate has not yet acted on the budget. Some states, such as California, have also taken steps to limit charter growth in recent years. 

Aside from the New York City region, the foundation is not yet confirming the other sites slated to receive grants. But according to the announcement, the cities chosen “offer a strong opportunity for serving the most in-need children coupled with conditions that could facilitate charter growth.” 

James Merriman, CEO of the New York City Charter School Center, which supports new and existing schools, said Bloomberg’s policies, such as allowing charters to co-locate in public school buildings, allowed the sector to flourish. 

“I’m thrilled to see that their focus will be on high quality,” he said. “It’s about having more great schools — not just having charters for the sake of charters.”

In cities such as Los Angeles, however, co-location arrangements have and are among the reasons teachers unions have lobbied against charter growth.

In his , which ran Wednesday, Bloomberg took shots at teachers unions, recalling United Teachers Los Angeles President Cecily Myart-Cruz’s that “kids didn’t lose anything” because of remote learning. 

“What nonsense. How about reading, writing and arithmetic, the critical skills we are funding schools to teach?” Bloomberg wrote, adding that because charter schools generally don’t have union contracts, they have more flexibility and can “create a culture of accountability for student progress week to week that many traditional public schools are missing.”

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a leading critic of charters, countered Bloomberg’s praise of the charter sector, noting that Success Academy, New York’s largest charter network, last school year. Her two grandchildren, she said, were able to return to in-person learning in district schools.

“I am deeply disappointed that Mr. Bloomberg would take the tragedy of COVID and use it as an excuse to undermine public schools,” she said.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew added his concerns that charter schools “pick and choose their students, rather than … take the responsibility to educate children.” He that few students who enrolled in Success Academy in 2007 as first graders remained at the school to be part of its first graduating class.

While the announcement doesn’t mention charter authorizers, it does mention partnering with local and national organizations. Karega Rausch, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, said there’s room for improvement in the way authorizers evaluate new applications so the process isn’t so “burdensome and bureaucratic” but also ensures a school has a “high chance of doing great things.”

Nina Rees, president and CEO for the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said Bloomberg’s announcement is timely, not only because of increasing parent demand, but also due to efforts in many states to limit growth and the federal government’s flat funding of the charter program for the past five years.

But Merriman said whether the federal government is supportive of charters is less important than the climate at state and local levels. 

When former President Barack Obama was in office, and John King and Arne Duncan were education secretaries, that “didn’t make a difference to Democrats in statehouses,” he said. 

“Charter policy has always been at the state and local level. That’s what has mattered.”

In contrast to traditional public schools, which saw a significant, 1.4 million drop in student enrollment during the tumultuous year, charter schools in 39 states saw an influx of 240,000 new students — a 7 percent increase over last year, the Alliance’s review showed.

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Of the 42 states covered in the report, only Illinois, Iowa and Wyoming saw declines in the charter school population. While ​​Tennessee, Kansas, Puerto Rico and Guam also have charters, data was unavailable for those states and territories.

The analysis further confirms that a large segment of the nation’s students changed where they attended school last year, prompted by school closures, job loss and dissatisfaction with remote learning. Parents looking for in-person learning, however, weren’t the only ones driving the shift toward charters. In a few states, such as Oklahoma, enrollment increases in full-time virtual schools — those that operated remotely even before the pandemic — accounted for much of the nearly 78 percent growth.

It’s too soon to know whether some families have returned to traditional public schools this year, but Nina Rees, president and CEO of the Alliance, predicted the trend is not a blip.

“Families are sending a clear message. They want more public school options,” she said. “From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South, the pandemic forced families to rethink where and how education could be delivered to their children. And now that they know what’s available, why would they go back to an option that never really worked for them in the first place?”

Growth in the charter sector ranged from less than 1 percent in Washington, D.C. and Louisiana — cities that already have a strong charter presence — to the 78 percent jump in Oklahoma. Alabama saw a 65 percent jump in enrollment. The state only had five charter schools in the 2020-21 school year, one of which was new, enrolling 413 students and increasing charter enrollment from 1,115 students in 2019-20 to 1,841.

The report, however, doesn’t offer further details on whether overall growth nationally was due to students leaving district schools or new schools opening. Some, such as Gem Prep in Idaho, added more grade levels, which contributed to a 24 percent increase in that state.

The authors, who draw on data from state education agencies, also provided some additional context from a few states, such as Arizona, where 20 percent of public school students now attend charters, and California, which saw growth in charter enrollment among nearly all racial and ethnic groups.

In 2019, the state passed a law — considered a compromise between charters and the teachers union — that gave local districts the authority to consider whether the opening of a new charter would negatively impact their own schools. Lawmakers attempted earlier this year to impose additional financial and enrollment restrictions on virtual charters in California — known as nonclassroom-based — but parents lobbied against and the sponsor withdrew it. There is already a moratorium on new virtual charters in the state.

Navigator Schools, with 1,405 students at three sites in central California, is among those that saw growth at the network’s newest campus in Watsonville last year. The others were already at capacity, with waiting lists. Kirsten Carr, director of engagement and partnerships, believes the on-site distance learning program — for families that didn’t have internet service and needed child care — was one feature contributing to the growth. The schools serve a large farmworker community.

“Our families went back to work before a lot of other industries,” Carr said. “They had to have a place for their kids to go to school.”

She added, however, that growth for charters can be a “double-edged sword.”

“We do have pressure from our families to grow,” she said, but added that districts, which have lost enrollment, are increasing efforts to hold on to their students.

Some charters might have experienced growth last year even without the pandemic. In the Seattle area, Rainier Valley Leadership Academy — formerly part of Green Dot Public Schools network — has done an “about-face” since 2020, said CEO Baionne Coleman. The school has gone from a predominantly white leadership team under Green Dot to having a mostly Black administration and a racially diverse teaching staff as an independent charter. Its target enrollment for 2020-21 was 125 students; they hit 159 and are now at 176.

“Families were actually coming from all across Seattle, some as far as Olympia,” she said. “They were looking for teachers who looked like their kids, being able to learn their own histories along with the history of America.”

‘Didn’t have much choice’

Parents have generally given charter schools — which are publicly funded, but independently run — higher marks than district schools during the pandemic. One showed charters were quicker than district schools to set up a regular class schedule during school closures and stay in close contact with students and parents. A recent found that charter school parents were less likely to report negative effects of COVID-19 mitigation measures on their children’s education.

Parent satisfaction, however, seems to contrast with data in that poll showing declining public support for charter schools — from 48 percent in 2019 to 41 percent now. Brian Gill, a senior fellow with Mathematica who has conducted research on charter schools, said both can be true.

“The fact that [parents] have a more favorable impression is consistent with the well-known finding from polling that people give their own community’s schools better reviews than they give to schools nationwide,” he said, adding that school quality doesn’t necessarily influence opinions about charter schools. “Opposition to charter schools usually is motivated less by concerns about their quality than by concerns about whether their existence and growth might harm conventional public schools and the students and communities they serve.”

Some observers suggest that when given the choice between a virtual charter and a district school shifting to online teaching for the first time, many parents opted for schools with an established virtual program.

“Parents looking for remote learning options didn’t have much choice in big chunks of the country,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “Despite the low quality of a lot of virtual charter schools, at least they had experience in providing remote instruction and weren’t figuring it out on the fly.”

Virtual charters, many of which operate as for-profits, have suffered from scandals over enrollment and financial practices in the past, with students than their counterparts in district schools. But of over 10,000 parents published in January this year showed strong satisfaction with how virtual charters responded at the onset of the pandemic, and some argue states and local charter authorizers should support virtual charters instead of seeking to cap their number.

Petrilli said he suspects many of the families who opted for virtual charter schools will find their way back to district schools — “once things return to ‘normal,’ whenever the heck that is.”