Those classes included three players who would shape the future of District of Columbia schools: Michelle Rhee (future D.C. chancellor), Kaya Henderson (Rhee’s successor) and, perhaps most importantly, Susan Schaeffler, 55, who is retiring after 25 years as the founder of the KIPP DC Public Schools charter network.

It was Schaeffler (pronounced SHEFF-ler) who proved with her 2001 launch of KIPP KEY Academy that hiring highly motivated and skilled teachers could make academic success stories out of high-poverty children with multiple at-risk flags. Six years later, standardized math and reading tests in grades 5-8 would show KIPP students outscoring their D.C. Public School peers, particularly in eighth grade and most strongly in math.

In a few years, Rhee would choose the same strategy, pushing hard on teacher quality. And Henderson would do the same.

It was Schaeffler who showed that her one school was not a fluke. By 2006, she ran three successful middle schools with long waiting lists: Today, there are 20 KIPP schools in D.C. that educate roughly 7,300 students, of whom nearly 70% meet the at-risk definition (students with families on income or food support and those who are wards of the state, homeless or overage in high school).

In the early KIPP years, veteran education reform expert Andrew Rotherham recalls leading a tour of mostly charter skeptics when they visited one of her schools. “Susan was giving a talk on how they do things and one guy thought he was really going to dunk on her, so he said: ‘I heard you talking about performance, fundraising and management, but I haven’t heard you talking about loving children.’”

That was a mistake. 

Schaeffler paused, looked at the guy, and as Rotherham recalls, firmly responded: “Let me tell you something. The way you show you love children isn’t talking about it. It’s building effective places for them to be and that means knowing how to raise money, deploy money, manage people, all of it. Doing things really well for them is how you show children you love them.”  

Don’t be thrown off by Schaeffler’s blonde suburban look: She’s got a very sharp edge, world-beating relentlessness and a mind that doesn’t shy away from the unconventional.

Shannon Hodge, who is taking over at KIPP DC’s helm, said before she met Schaeffler she asked around about her and was told: “You’ll be in a meeting discussing something and Susan will have five ideas. Two of them will be illegal, two of them will be impossible — but the last one will be the visionary thing no one ever thought of.”

Finally, it was Schaeffler and other charter operators. working with first Rhee and then Henderson, who forged the crucial compete-but-play-nice stance in D.C. that’s missing between charter and district schools in most cities.

All the experts agree: That competitive cooperation and the unwavering focus on teacher quality on both sides are the biggest reasons why D.C., across multiple school-quality measures, from the percentage of 3- and 4-years-olds enrolled in pre-K to fourth- and eighth-grade scores on the highly watched National Assessment of Educational Progress, shot  

“Part of D.C.’s story is that it is one of the few places where the charter sector and the district came together and created a culture of putting kids first,” KIPP national co-founder Dave Levin told me last week. “Susan modeled that from the start, pushing for things that were good for D.C. as a whole.”

This strategy could have happened in other cities. But for the most part, it hasn’t.

Teachers with ‘the whatever-it-takes mindset’

That Baltimore TFA experience was wild: Rhee and Schaeffler slamming into the brutal realities of urban teaching in Baltimore. It was from that time that I got the title for my book about Rhee, , after she swatted and swallowed a bee her kids were crazily chasing around the classroom.

After Baltimore, Schaeffler gave teaching in a traditional D.C. elementary school a try, but her desire to give her students the option of staying longer than the dismissal bell to allow them to catch up ran into a stone wall. It worked for a bit, but not for long. We just don’t do that here, she was told.

“I got to the point where the system was preventing me from doing what I knew needed to happen to make sure our kids are ready for college, or ready for the next grade,” Schaeffler told me in a recent interview.

The KIPP founders in Texas heard about her, sent plane tickets to come to Houston and convinced her to start a KIPP school. Their preference, Atlanta, got rejected by Schaeffler. D.C. is home, she said, and being able to tap into the talent network she knew there was crucial.

The founders relented, and soon Schaeffler was recruiting the handful of teachers who would launch KEY Academy. “I definitely wanted to recruit teachers who had the whatever-it-takes mindset. We were going to be creating and implementing and revising all at the same time.”

Schaeffler looked to the Teach for America network and then expanded by interviewing friends of friends. ”You would say, ‘I need a teacher who can work long hours, has great classroom management and gets results.” Before hiring anyone, she observed them in the classroom.

It would appear Schaeffer recruited well. Among that first small group of hires for KIPP KEY were several who in the future would launch their own new KIPP schools. 

‘The school down the street is outperforming us’

Now entering the D.C. picture in 2007 was newly appointed Chancellor Rhee, who took note of the rising quality challenge presented by Schaeffler’s KIPP network and other charter operators and stomped the accelerator on school improvement. And by school improvement I mean teacher/principal quality.

Rhee took over a bona fide mess of a school district, one that regularly was described – — unchallenged — as the worst (and most expensive) in the nation. In my book, the chapter where I recite the dismal outcome data for D.C. students is titled, “Welcome to the Nation’s Education Superfund Site.”

The city’s corrupt mayor, Marion Barry, used the district to stash political buddies. The former teachers union president got sent to jail for embezzlement. Even simple tasks such as delivering textbooks didn’t happen. There was no curriculum. In comparison to other urban districts, D.C. lagged far behind. 

Rhee moved into her role as chancellor with a bullrush, much to the distaste of many in Washington, especially teachers who preferred the status quo. Rhee told everyone that she wanted teachers with “snap.” Teachers soon learned what that meant: a mashup of energy and effectiveness that creates classroom magic.

That didn’t always go over well.

I accompanied Rhee on many school visits, and while sitting in the back of the room watched teachers dramatically roll their eyes in protest. Many teachers appeared to see their role as more social workers than academic instructors, which probably explained the abysmal test scores.

One elementary school had this sign posted: “We’re doing the best we can with the children sent our way.”

But Rhee’s vision was made easier to explain to others by the example Schaeffler set. “In community meetings,” Schaeffler told me, “I heard Rhee say that the school down the street is outperforming us.” And “that school” was KEY Academy. 

In 2007, when Rhee arrived, 100% of KEY eighth graders scored proficient on D.C.’s standardized math test, compared to 34% of district students.

There’s another aspect to KEY’s success: When researching my book , I searched nationally for schools where boys were succeeding at the same rate as girls, and KEY turned up as one of the few where that happened. I approached Schaeffler in 2006 for permission to observe, and she gave me full access to KEY. In short, teacher quality (and a relentless push on literacy skills) explains the gender equality.

Thus began Rhee’s own full-on press for principal and teacher quality, a process that would lead to several hundred teachers getting fired along with lots of principals. Those firings, however, were accompanied by the newly designed IMPACT teacher evaluation system, a first-in-the-nation attempt to define, measure and boost teacher quality — a plan that handed out bonuses to the highest-performing teachers.

The reforms began to take hold, but Rhee’s fierceness why Adrian Fenty, the mayor who appointed her, lost reelection in 2010. The new mayor, Vincent Gray, quickly fired Rhee. 

But then something interesting happened: Not only did Gray promote Kaya Henderson, Rhee’s deputy, as the new chancellor, but IMPACT survived, despite intense teacher opposition (The American Federation of Teachers to ensure Rhee and IMPACT would disappear.)

Why did the new mayor allow Rhee’s reforms to survive? When the chancellor got fired, IMPACT was only about a year old, and thus too young to measure its effectiveness. But its potential was clear to everyone.

“My last major public event before I left DCPS was “Standing Ovation” which we held at the Kennedy Center to honor the highly effective teachers in the district,” Rhee told me in a recent interview, referring to the first group of top teachers identified by the evaluations. “Watching a bevy of teachers dressed to the nines, giddy at the recognition they were receiving, made me know what we put in place with IMPACT was working and made everything worthwhile.”

That meant that the twinned philosophies of pushing teacher quality and collaborating with the charters, pioneered by Schaeffler, became permanent fixtures in D.C. One prominent example: , launched in 2017, an application/lottery system shared by parents seeking seats in either system.

There was also the leadership training program for both charter and district teachers at Georgetown University. Schaeffler’s top example: During the pandemic, everyone on both sides held hands to figure out how to teach remotely and when to return to school.

Finally, the D.C. mayors have a great incentive to make sure the two sides work together. “We can’t have half the kids not be successful,” says Schaeffler.

Two leaders who quickly bonded

Fervent D.C. school advocates at the polar opposites hate the suggestion that D.C. charters and district schools get along. They see great injustices aimed at their side. What they miss, however, is that their quibbles pale compared to the destructive hatred between the two sectors in other cities. 

Boston has some of the highest-performing charters in the country (see Edward Brooke Charter Schools), and yet the state’s powerful teachers unions ensure that those charters can’t expand to take in more students. In Los Angeles, charter leaders and district leaders talk to one another mostly through lawyers in courtrooms. 

New York City and Newark are home to what may be the nation’s most successful charter network, Uncommon Schools, that pulls disadvantaged minority students into its classrooms, who then experience college acceptance and college graduation rates close to well-off white students.

How could any district not want to tap into that expertise?

Years ago, I sat through some small-scale Uncommon collaborations in New York and Newark, which seemed promising. But those have disappeared — no teaching collaborations in New York since 2020. 

There is no way Rhee and Schaeffler would have let that opportunity slide by.

When Rhee arrived in D.C., the two leaders bonded quickly. Rhee told me she had been on the job only a couple of days when she took an urgent call from Schaeffler: “We’re starting a summer school (in a district building) and it’s 90 degrees and we have no air conditioning!”

Rhee immediately called maintenance, sent them hustling over to the summer school site and got the AC working. The next day Schaeffler called back incredulously. “Holy crap, they came out and fixed it.”

Rhee knew KIPP ran quality schools, so she never fought against them.

 “I was open to giving charters our buildings,” Rhee said. “Why would we deny families of Wards 7 and 8 (D.C. ‘s highest-poverty) schools like [the ones] KIPP runs? Everyone would want to send their kids there.”

Rhee’s memories of Schaeffler? “Throughout the time she was so helpful, so supportive.”

School choice now part of D.C.’s DNA

Today, D.C., parents embrace school choice as an unquestioned right, whether it’s choosing a charter or a non-neighborhood district school. Only about a third of D.C. parents select their neighborhood school. What that means is that choice is embedded, with schools vying to outperform and, therefore, attract students. 

In the mostly white, highly affluent 3rd Ward, there are no charters and parents send their kids either to local elementary schools, where they are surrounded by other children from well-off families, or private schools. In the 7th and 8th Wards, charters are the go-to places. Where it gets interesting are the rapidly gentrifying in-between wards, where charters often get selected by well-off “progressive” families, many of whom may frown upon charters as a concept, but love having a close-by high-quality school.

Overall, s, or about 48% of all D.C. students, attend its 133 public charter schools. D.C’s gentrification may explain why district students now outperform charter students in both math and reading (45% of district students are at-risk, compared to 69% of charter students).

“Competition between sectors is healthy,” said Schaeffer. “It pushes both sectors to get better for students. Over the last two and a half decades, that dynamic has raised the bar across the city. As the city has changed, so have the needs of our students.”

KIPP and other charters are still struggling to raise scores, she said. “At the same time, the long-term outcomes tell an important story and remain strong. Year after year, our graduates enroll in and complete college at higher rates than the city … The forward momentum between the traditional and charter schools is promising and should be celebrated. Both sides are seeking the best ways to educate and prepare our students for success.”

Where next for Schaeffler?

 “I haven’t looked around in 25 years to see what’s out there for me. I am energized to find my next thing but my priority is a successful transition. I will be transitioning from CEO in February to a special advisor role. I will always be a cheerleader for the amazing staff and students at KIPP DC.”

The bottom line remains: worst to most improved. Twenty years ago, no one could have foreseen this outcome. This could have happened in cities such as L.A., but it hasn’t — and doesn’t appear to be in their future.

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When Scott Pearson took over the D.C. charter board in 2011, and became KIPP’s overseer, he recalls visiting Schaeffler at her office and finding her and KIPP DC President Allison Fansler sharing an office.

 “Many great charters are like great British rock and roll bands. They always had two key people, and it was the genius between the two that made the band great,” he said. “Here you had the CEO of a multimillion-dollar organization and she shared an office. It wasn’t five minutes that went by that they didn’t talk to one another. Constant interaction.”

Fansler shared an office with Schaeffler for 16 years. Whenever a call came in about a problem at a school site, Fansler said Schaeffler would immediately grab her coat and head out. The two of them, no matter which bolted for the door, shared a text code for that: Imonmyway.

Deputy Mayor Paul Kihn said when he sees his cell phone light up with Schaeffler’s name, “I know I am going to get an earful on behalf of her students. She is going to tell me the real story about how something is working and what I need to do to fix it. I am incredibly sorry to see her go.”

Of all the reformers who helped with D.C.’s recovery, Rhee and Schaeffler probably qualify as the fiercest. As Kihn puts it, “Susan is a force of nature.”

All you need is the patience to wait for that fifth idea to pop up.

Disclosure: Andrew Rotherham sits on ����Ӱ��’s board of directors. He played no role in the reporting or editing of this article.

From her home-based day care in Washington, D.C., Alma peers out the door and down the sidewalks. If they’re clear and there are no ICE agents out, she’ll give her coworker a call letting her know it’s safe to head in for work.

They have to be careful with the kids, too. Typically, she took the five children she cares for to the library on Wednesdays and out to parks throughout the week, but Alma — who, like her coworker, does not have permanent legal status — had to stop doing that in August, when President Donald Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the district. Now, two of the kids she cares for are being pulled out of the day care. The parents said it was because they weren’t going outside.

Trump has deployed the National Guard and a wave of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into the district. ICE arrests there have increased . The situation has thrust the Latinas who hold up the nation’s child care sector into a perpetual state of panic. Nationwide, about child care workers are immigrants, but in D.C. it’s closer to ; about nationally lack permanent legal status. Nearly all are women.

Many are missing work, and others are risking it because they simply can’t afford to lose pay, providers told The 19th. All are afraid they’ll be next.

“What kind of life is this?” said Alma, whose name The 19th has changed to protect her identity. “We are not delinquents, we are not bad people, we are here to work to support our family.”

Alma has been running a home-based day care for the past decade. She’s been in the United States for 22 years, working in child care that entire time. With two kids being pulled, she will have to reduce her staffer’s hours as she tries to find children to fill those spots.

Her four school-age children also depend on her. This month, she had to write out a signed document detailing what should happen to her kids if she were to be detained. Her wish is that they be brought to detention with her.

“I can’t imagine my kids here without me,” she said.

She said she understands the president’s approach of expelling immigrants with criminal convictions from the country, but teachers who are working with kids? Who haven’t committed any crime?

By targeting them, she said, the administration is “destroying entire families.”

The Multicultural Spanish Speaking Providers Association in D.C., which works with Latina child care providers, has seen this panic first hand for the past couple of weeks as more and more Latinas in child care have stopped coming into work. The center also helps workers obtain their associate’s degree in early childhood education, and since the semester started in mid-August, many teachers have asked for classes to be offered virtually so they don’t have to show up to campus at night.

Latinas have flocked to the child care industry for multiple reasons: Families seeking care value access to language education, and Latinas have a lower language barrier to entry, said Blanca Huezo, the program coordinator at the Multicultural Spanish Speaking Providers Association.

“In general, this industry offers them an opportunity for a fresh start professionally in their own language and without leaving behind their culture,” Huezo said.

Though the number of child care workers without permanent legal status has historically been low, recent changes from the Trump administration to revoke or reduce legal protections have . This year, the administration has at the border, from obtaining Temporary Protected Status and for groups of migrants.

The changes, coupled with increased enforcement, has fostered fear regardless of immigration status. That fear among workers is deepening a staffing crisis in an industry that already couldn’t afford additional losses, Huezo said.

“There is a shortage — and now even more,” she said. “There are many centers where nearly 99 percent of teachers are of Hispanic origin.”

Washington, D.C., has been a sanctuary city since 2020, where law enforcement cooperation with immigration officials was broadly prohibited. Earlier this year, however, Mayor Muriel Bowser proposed repealing that law and, in mid-August, Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department Police Chief Pamela Smith gave officers leeway to about individuals they arrested or stopped.

“There was some peace that living in D.C. brought more security,” Huezo said. Now, “people don’t feel that freedom to walk through the streets.”

Child care centers are also no longer off limits for ICE raids. The centers were previously protected under a “sensitive locations” directive that advised ICE to not conduct enforcement in places like schools and day cares. But Trump removed that protection on his . While reports have not yet surfaced of raids in day cares, ICE presence near child care care centers, including in D.C., .

A similar story of fear and surveillance has in Los Angeles, where ICE conducted widespread raids earlier in the summer. Huezo said her organization has been in touch with child care providers in L.A. to learn about how they managed those months.

In the meantime, the best the organization can do, she said, is connect workers with as many resources as possible, including legal clinics, but the ones that help immigrants are at their maximum caseload. The group has put child care workers who are not leaving their homes in touch with an organization called Food Justice DMV that is delivering meals to their doorsteps. Prior to last month, people who needed food could fill out a form and get it that same week. Now, the wait time is two to three weeks, Huezo said. For those in Maryland and Virginia, it’s closer to a month.

Thalia, a teacher at a day care, said her coworkers have stopped coming to work. It’s all the staff talks about during their lunchtime conversations. When she rides the Metro into work, she looks over her shoulder for the ICE agents, their faces covered, who are often at the exits.

“They are hunting us,” she said.

Thalia, whose name has been changed because she does not have permanent legal status, has been living in the United States for nine years and working in child care that entire time. Like her, many of the Latina teachers she works with have earned certifications and degrees in early childhood education.

“We are working, we are cooperating, paying taxes,” she said. “We are there all day so other families can benefit from the child care.”

As a single mother, Thalia has also had to consider what would happen to her three children if she was detained. This past month, she retained a lawyer who could help them with their case in case anything were to happen. Her school-age kids know: Call the lawyer if mom is detained and get tickets to Guatemala to meet her there.

This is what she lives with every day now: “The fear of leaving your family and letting them know, ‘If I don’t return, it’s not because I am abandoning you.’ ”

was originally reported by Chabeli Carrazana of ..

The year COVID-19 shuttered classroom doors, St. Louis’s Premier Charter School was acclimating not only to a new normal, but to a new way of teaching literacy.

The K-8 school and its 900 students shifted their curriculum in fall 2020 to include the science of reading — a  switch many U.S. districts have made because of its positive results on literacy scores. But last year, with results remaining stagnant and low, Premier’s administrators started to wonder what they were missing.

“We are not seeing the gains and the progress that our school should be making,” said Jessica Smyth, one of Premier’s elementary principals. “We just know that our kids are capable of so much more than what the outcomes are currently showing.”

So, in December, Smyth and educators from three other St. Louis schools traveled to Washington, D.C., to learn from Garrison Elementary. The school had across the nation and has seen improved literacy scores as a result. 

The trip was part of a two-year program called the Emerson Early Literacy Challenge that launched last fall to help educators from the four St. Louis-area schools brainstorm ways to improve reading in the early grades. Atlas Public School and Premier Charter School in St. Louis, Commons Lane Primary School in the Ferguson-Florissant School District and Barbara C. Jordan Elementary in the School District of University City share a $1 million grant for the work.

Efforts to improve St. Louis reading scores have been ramping up since last year, when the local NAACP chapter launched a literacy campaign and later filed a federal complaint against the city and county school districts because of disparities in reading proficiency for students of color. 

Leaders of the Emerson challenge say the biggest problem in improving St. Louis’s reading proficiency rates — which were at 20% for third graders in the city and 46% for third graders across the county in — is how the science of reading is implemented.

There are key elements besides using curriculum based on the science of reading that are needed to create substantial academic progress, said Ian Buchanan, a steering committee member for the Emerson challenge. For example, Garrison has more teachers in the classroom, efficient employee schedules and intensive tutoring sessions that allow its staff to increase their focus on literacy. 

“We can have all of the curriculum resources. We can have rock star teachers,” he said. “We can have all of that, but there are some foundational pieces that need to be in place.”

Smyth said that even before Premier was chosen for the Emerson program, administrators had eliminated outdated instruction strategies like , which encourages students to use context clues to guess what a word could be instead of sounding it out. 

The strategy is a major part of balanced literacy, an approach that has been by cognitive scientists. Its lack of emphasis on phonics can cause students to fall behind as they encounter harder text in later grades. 

While using a curriculum based on the science of reading was a step in the right direction, Premier’s administrators still weren’t happy with the school’s third grade reading scores: About 28% on the state MAP reading test last year, down from 33% in 2018.

“While we see some really strong instruction that aligns with the science of reading in some classrooms, it’s not necessarily consistent among all classrooms,” Smyth said.

Premier is still training teachers in how to teach lessons based on the science of reading, Smyth said. 

Garrison Elementary School began changing its reading instruction in 2018-19. Just a year before, only 13% of the school’s 250 students were meeting or exceeding expectations for reading on the District of Columbia Comprehensive Assessments of Progress in Education.

In 2023-24, that number rose to .

Teacher training and explicit phonics instruction are crucial to gaining results like that, but schools also have to focus on staffing, class schedules and literacy screening tests, said Katharine Noonan, an English language arts instructional coach who helped implement the science of reading at Garrison.

The school already used DIBELS, a screening tool that evaluated students’ literacy skills and identified learning disabilities like dyslexia. Noonan said teachers were coached to use the screener more effectively by catching gaps in reading proficiency early and ensuring struggling students received the most intervention. 

“(It’s) putting your best teachers in front of the kids that need the most help, and really prioritizing teacher-driven instruction,” Noonan said. 

Garrison administrators had to rethink staffing and traditional class schedules, Noonan said. Rather than giving students the same amount of time with their teachers and pulling children who needed extra help out of the classroom to work with a reading specialist, staffing and schedules were restructured for those who were the furthest behind. 

“That means, if I have 20 kids in my kindergarten class and I have three children who are behind — our screening data has showed us that they have gaps — then they see the (specialist) possibly every day, maybe even two adults a day, as a way to provide those interventions inside of the classroom,” Noonan said. “It does require a lot of creativity around staffing and schedules, because you have to sort of think, who are my available adults?”

Smyth said she and the other visiting St. Louis educators watched Garrison’s reading specialists conduct small-group lessons inside classrooms. The school “had some really great models in place, like classrooms that had two teachers in their rooms during all intervention blocks, which is wonderful. But then we got to ask questions like, ‘Who were those people? How do you have the staffing? How do you have the funding for the staffing to get these models to work?’ ” Smyth said. 

Noonan said Garrison uses federal Title I funding to provide enough staffing for interventions, but schools can also use instructional aides and parent volunteers.

Buchanan said Garrison Elementary was chosen because it has similar student demographics to the St. Louis schools in the Emerson challenge. Even if it has more resources, Buchanan said, he thinks that what Garrison has accomplished can be replicated in St. Louis.

Leaders of each selected school received $20,000 at the beginning of the academic year to brainstorm strategies and craft plans to improve early literacy. They can get up to $250,000 during the 2025-26 school year to implement those plans.

“It was an excellent visit, because we were able to see in real time what teaching and learning looks like and to understand why they have been making gains,” Buchanan said. “We have a better feel for what it takes, where we are and what we need to do.”

Clarification: Some 28% of Premier’s third graders scored as proficient or advanced on the MAP reading test last year.

Solving chronic absenteeism involves tackling big structural problems like transportation and infrastructure. But we also have to make our schools places where young people want to learn. Too many teens, in particular, had negative feelings about school even before the pandemic. Yale researchers conducting found most teens spent their days “tired,” “stressed,” and “bored.” Fewer than 3 in 100 reported feeling interested while in school.

Decades of research prove that students learn more when they experience high levels of academic engagement and social belonging in school. �ճ󲹳�’s why XQ developed grounded in the science of teaching and the importance of cultivating caring, trusting relationships within schools. These principles are being used to rethink the traditional high school experience in across the country to make learning more relevant and engaging for the needs of this generation.

Our partnerships are still new. But so far, we’re finding graduates from our first 17 schools have more interest in their classes and a stronger sense of belonging at school than their national counterparts. More than three-quarters of the XQ class of 2023 — which includes 17 high schools — said they were at least somewhat interested in their classes. And 52% of the XQ class of 2023 felt like they belonged “completely” or “quite a bit” at their school, versus only 40% nationally.

I spoke with four students from XQ schools across the country to hear what makes a difference in creating high schools young people want to attend. They are: Evan Bowie, Class of 2024 from Ron Brown College Preparatory High School in Washington, D.C.; Karisse Dickison, Class of 2024 from Elizabethton High School in Elizabethton, Tennessee; Henry Montalvo, Class of 2025 from ��í�����ܱ��Dz� in Santa Ana, California; and Lillian Roberts, Class of 2024 from Brooklyn STEAM Center. 

Create Bonding Activities

has fewer than 200 students, but Henry Montalvo didn’t know most of them when he started there as a ninth grader. That small size helped him adjust to the Santa Ana high school, but he also credited bonding activities. One called Community Week provides an opportunity for students to celebrate, pause and reflect. Students create their own schedules based on available sessions. Montalvo said they may lead the sessions alone or partner with teachers for non-academic, fun classes on topics like putting on a thrift shop and even Pokémon card-collecting.

“It’s just basically a time to come together as a community,” he said of the most recent event this past spring. “Sometimes you write a letter to yourself, and then they give it to you at the end of the year so you can reflect on it.” 

Evan Bowie said teachers at , an all-male district school in Washington, D.C. that’s part of the partnership, also look for creative ways to help students bond. Students might be asked, for example, to stand or move their desks into circles and answer a question like, “What’s your affirmation today?” Or, “How was your weekend?” He said sometimes it can feel like you’re being put on the spot, but it works.

Bowie said if he answered with, “‘It was boring.’ They’d be, like, ‘You got to give a real answer.’” The upshot: “It just pushes the student to think a little bit better.”

Want to learn more about how to create innovative teaching and learning in high schools? Subscribe to the , a newsletter that comes out twice a month for high school teachers.

Seek Student Feedback

Check-ins like this can also happen more formally, as they do at the The program takes students from several local high schools for mornings or afternoons, five days a week, offering them concentrations in career pathways including cybersecurity, design and engineering, filmmaking and more. Brooklyn STEAM Center is in the Imagine NYC

Lillian Roberts chose culinary arts as her concentration. She enjoys how teachers meet with students quarterly. She said they ask how students feel about their classes, which includes “the way they’re teaching, if you have any input.” There are also student-led town hall meetings where students can give feedback anonymously on “things that you might not feel comfortable with.”

Bowie said his teachers at Ron Brown College Preparatory High School also solicit feedback on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on the instructor. They’ll ask questions like, “What went well this week? What can I improve on? What ways can you improve your grade?” Bowie said students are also asked to rate the classes on a scale of one to five stars and provide suggestions for how to make a class better, such as including more hands-on activities or more Socratic seminars instead of written assignments.

Make Personal Connections

is located in northeast Tennessee, an area that has struggled for years with the loss of manufacturing and the opioid epidemic. It was selected as an XQ Super School largely because of its teens’ proposal for more student-centered learning to benefit the community.

Karisse Dickison, who graduated this year and is heading to college, described a close relationship with school librarian Dustin Hensley — who regularly talks to students about what they’re reading and their extracurricular activities. When Dickison helped start a group dedicated to ending gun violence, she said Hensley would ask her about related events in the news.

“It was just nice to have him reach out and make sure that I knew what was happening in the world,” she said.

Bowie also valued a personal connection with English teacher Teresa Lasley, who encouraged him to apply to Georgetown University, where he’s attending this fall. He recalled her showing the class a video about how Black students didn’t feel welcome at the prestigious school. When he spoke with Lasley, he said she told him he doesn’t have to work extra hard to prove he belongs. “Going to Georgetown means you’re adding more to Georgetown,” he remembered her saying. “It’s better for them than it is for you. You belong. You already have it in you.”

He said that exchange allowed him to “be seen,” and that he’s witnessed similar exchanges between other students and teachers.

At Brooklyn STEAM Center, Roberts recalled one guidance counselor who reached out after he saw her crying. “And then we set up weekly meetings just to have someplace to talk about what’s happening,” she said. But at her other high school, she thought guidance counselors seem to focus more on “purely more academic things.”

Leave the Building

Students at all four schools experience internships, work-based learning and partnerships with community organizations, which they said make classwork feel more relevant. 

Montalvo said teachers at ��í�����ܱ��Dz� helped him land internships at a congressional campaign and with a law firm. He said these outside experiences lead to presentations in class. At Brooklyn STEAM Center, Roberts earned an OSHA 10 as well as a New York Food Protection Certificate, and joined a class trip to Italy to study cuisine. 

Dickison worked on social media and advertising at a local nonprofit. Some classes at Elizabethton High include project-based learning, such as one in which students helped solve a cold case involving a serial killer (their work became the subject of the hit podcast this year). ��í�����ܱ��Dz� also offers , which Montalvo said makes classes feel more interesting. In his first year, he recalled how he and another student in his English class interviewed local environmental justice experts about lead contamination and the lack of green space, then made a presentation to their school and invited the greater community.

All three students who graduated this year are going to college in the fall, and Montalvo plans to go to college after graduating next year; he wants to be a lawyer. In our senior survey, 72% of XQ students in the class of 2023 planned to attend college, illustrating a great example of students remaining engaged in school beyond their high school years. 

But a sense of belonging and engagement can only happen with student input. “School is about ‘�ɾ��ٳ�’ not ‘�ڴǰ�,’” Roberts said. “Everything is with the students. It’s not for the students. You have to do everything with the students in mind.”

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of ����Ӱ��.

The extra money changed her life. She enrolled in the to begin the process of purchasing her own home in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, where she lives now in an apartment with her partner and three boys. She can now pay her rent and her bills on time. One of her children has an autism diagnosis, and she has been able to purchase therapy aids for him, such as noise-canceling headphones and a weighted blanket, and she enrolled him in swim classes. She can afford gas for her car without any stress – which matters since she travels an hour each way for work.

Ashley Ross also saw a drastic pay bump. She has worked in child care for over 15 years and has seen a number of small salary bumps, including a several thousand increase after she received her associate degree through a specialized program, which allowed her to work and go to school simultaneously. But even after a decade of teaching and the extra credentials, Ross made a salary of $51,000, which made it hard for her to support herself and three children. When the D.C. Pay Equity Fund bumped up her salary, she made $63,000 a year, with her bimonthly take-home pay moving from $1,500 to more than $2,000 per pay period.

“Once this started, everything changed for me,” Ross said. She can easily pay her water bill and electricity bill, and she no longer receives threatening notices to have either turned off. She can pay the internet bill, so her 10-year-old can do homework. She no longer has to rely on her fiancée to pay an extra portion of the bills. She has more money for groceries, and can buy fresh food, such as whole grain pasta and organic yogurt instead of the cheapest options, like white noodles and mac and cheese. The healthier food is especially important for her 4-year-old daughter who has been diagnosed as pre-diabetic.�� When Ross’s daughter wants to go to a bounce house or out for ice cream, she has enough discretionary income to say yes. “I don’t have to tell her to wait until next week when Mommy gets paid.”

For child care workers all over the District of Columbia, the D.C. Pay Equity Fund, the $75 million program that allows early-child care educators to be paid similar salaries to their D.C. public school counterparts, has been “life-changing” and “shocking” and “gave me room to breathe” as described by educators when explaining what the salary difference did for themselves and their families.

At the time of its inception, the D.C. Pay Equity program was and supporting in this role, . Washington, D.C. was in the child care landscape, investing tens of millions of dollars into a child care system, including direct payments to providers and child care centers so that staff could be paid a livable wage. But Mayor Muriel Bowser’s would zero-out the Pay Equity Fund. (Washington, D.C. is one of the rare jurisdictions in the country to offer pre-K3 and pre-K4, ). If the budget goes through with those existing cuts in place, teachers who received a pay bump through the D.C. Pay Equity Fund will now see a drastic pay cut in its place.

Note:

Noah Hichenberg runs the Gan HaYeled Preschool at Adas Israel Congregation, where Briyana Holloway and Ashley Ross work.��The D.C. Pay Equity funds have been “a total game changer” for his staff, allowing the school to recruit and retain teachers and show a level of respect for the profession and difficulty of the job, which has long been seen as separate from traditional public school teachers. Hichenberg says that 90-95% of the tuition revenue he gets from families goes to paying his staff, and even though the Gan doesn’t pay rent or mortgage for the building space they use in the Adas Israel Synagogue, they still cannot afford to pay their teachers the higher wages without the D.C. Pay Equity funds.

Without the funds, Hichenberg would have offered a new employee applying for a job a starting salary in the high 30,000s or low 40,000s. “It really diminishes anyone wanting to apply for these jobs,” he said. But the D.C. Pay Equity Fund came with mandatory levels of which to pay early childhood educators, aligning with their education level and role as a lead or assistant teacher. The fund was able to lift salaries for both new hires and existing employees, and Hinchenberg said many of his teachers were motivated to receive additional accreditation to reach that higher salary level.

For an employee like Holloway, with a bachelor’s degree and as a lead teacher, she now makes over $75,000. “Everyone has been in awe of this program,” Hichenberg said, referring to the other preschool directors and members of the early education field who have been aware of the innovative and transformative nature of the D.C. Pay Equity Fund program. “No one else pays their teachers $75,000.” Hichenberg says he has the most stable workforce he’s ever had this past school year, along with happier teachers since they have less financial stress at home.

But if the Fund goes away, as the budget is slated to zero out? Hichenberg doesn’t know how he can afford to keep the teachers, or how he can expect them to weather such a pay cut.

“To take this away now is cruel and callous,” said Hichenberg. “It’s far worse than not having attempted it in the first place.”

***

The D.C. Pay Equity Fund came out of the D.C. Early Childhood Educator Equitable Compensation Task Force, which was in 2021 during the pandemic with the goal of finding ways to disburse funds from the District’s . This was one of many programs that state and local governments to the stress on child care providers that the pandemic had exacerbated. Hichenberg explained that when D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education first unveiled the program to educators, they reiterated multiple times to educators that “there is no sunset on this legislation” and it would exist in perpetuity. But it’s a piece of legislation, so politicians can still kill it, he explained. The goal had been to make early childhood educators’ compensation more equitable with people who worked in D.C. public school early childhood — including DCPS pre-K3 and pre-K4 teachers — the same job that Ross has, though she works at a private child care center. But the DCPS contracts are union-negotiated, so not eligible for cuts in the Mayor’s budget.

Neidia Ramsay-Swann has been working at the Gan for 8 years, and the salary bump under the D.C. Pay Equity Fund meant she no longer had to take on a second job to pay her bills. Under her previous salary, Ramsay-Swan picked up jobs over the weekends babysitting or caring for the elderly. When the synagogue needed weekend or holiday coverage, she volunteered to work to make the extra money. “But that took time away from my own family just to fill in that gap,” she said.

Ramsay-Swan had enrolled in the same associate degree program that Ashley Ross attended, and got a small bump to $47,000 per year after earning her degree. But after the D.C. Pay Equity raises, her income jumped to $63,000. For the first time that she can remember, she had money to put in her savings account. She could cover her own expenses without relying on her husband. “Now I can do it by myself. Which is like freedom. Who needs a man?” she asks, laughing.

The extra money meant Ramsay-Swan could help her daughter, who was pregnant and out of a job, pay her rent. And she’s saved enough to take a trip of her own this July, to Jamaica to visit her mother.�� Her face brightens when she explains that she hasn’t been to Jamaica in 30 years, and hasn’t seen her mother since 2007. “It’s been a really long time,” she said.

But if the program is cut, “It’s going to be sad,” she says. “You hear in life that you aren’t supposed to go backwards, only forwards. If the money stops, it’s going to be a lot of going backwards, a lot of planning, things you shouldn’t have to worry about again.”

LaVonda Butler-Means has worked at the Gan for six years, and the D.C. Pay Equity salary bump took her from $43,000 per year to the $50,000s. She no longer chooses between groceries and gas to get to work — though Butler-Means says it was never a real choice, gas won because “of course I am going to come to work.” The extra money has allowed her to breathe, she explains, and enroll her two kids in extracurricular activities — gymnastics and swimming for her daughter and football and basketball for her son – though she is looking into soccer options for him as well.

The extra money allowed her to get caught up on her bills. “I had to play catch up from a long time ago, but I’m caught up,” she said. She can pay for school activities, for the book fair, for the small things her kids need and ask for. This year, when the Gan is closed for its spring break, Butler-Means and her family are going to Williamsburg, Virginia, for their first vacation in over a year. But her kids have gotten used to their activities, and Butler-Means recognizes she may have to pull them if the funds get cut. “I don’t like to tell them no, but if I don’t have it, I don’t have it,” she said.

Hichenberg says there is no winning path for his child care center if the D.C. Pay Equity funds go away. “I don’t have a waiting list of potential employees,” he says. “[These teachers] are going to walk away from the job because they can’t afford their lifestyles, and they aren’t flashy.” He doesn’t know if he can find someone to teach who can make $38,000 a year, and without the adequate number of staff, they can’t serve the families unless they raise tuition further. Yet D.C. has some of the in the country, and the Gan charges families $34,000 a year for full day, year-round child care, with a discount to $30,000 for members of the synagogue. “I don’t see how the whole operation sustains itself through this,” he said.

For the teachers, the uncertainty itself is harrowing. LaVonda Butler-Means tries to keep her kids from worrying about it. “Your kids are not supposed to know that you are actually struggling,” she said. But if the funds go away, “it will be a downward spiral for us.” Briyana Holloway is worried that she may no longer qualify for the home ownership program.��She has the documentation now to prove she can provide the monthly mortgage payment, “but I can only prove this up until the program is taken away. I don’t know where I stand after that, honestly,” she said. Neidia Ramsay-Swan feels she’s already gotten “two strokes of good luck” – the associate degree program and then the pay bump. “But now it’s about to change,” she said.

Ashley Ross knows she may need to consider other options if the D.C. Pay Equity Funds cuts happen, but she doesn’t want to. She has worked in early childhood education her entire adult life. She loves the work but feels the role is chronically under-appreciated, especially when programs like the D.C. Pay Equity Fund cuts threaten to take away the financial cushion her family has been given. “We don’t give teachers enough credit,” Ross said. “Parents love us of course. They need us to be able to work, and they trust that their children are safe with us. But we work really, really hard and we should be paid,” she said. “We are due for more shine.”

To infuse the landscape with greater equity, funds innovations in financial systems that support long-term increases of compensation for the early care workforce. A recent round of grants supports systemic change in Colorado, D.C. and Louisiana.

“Focusing on compensation requires innovating on financing systems,” said Ola J. Friday, director of the Collaborative. “You need someone from the fiscal and budget office at the table.” The Collaborative designed the request for proposals to incentivize these partnerships, and many applicants, even those that didn’t receive funding, noted that the process of applying spurred collaborations that needed to happen anyway.

Friday introduced leaders from the three new grantees to Early Learning Nation magazine.

Colorado

An educator quoted in the reflected, “When I think about the vulnerability of young children under six years old . . . how impressionable they are . . . how important a caring relationship with an adult provider is . . . and how much time providers spend with young children, I can’t get over the fact that the compensation is not equitable. It’s not even a living wage. I would love to see greater compensation.”

The Collaborative’s $3.8 million investment will advance this vision through an expansion of the Teacher and Family Child Care Home Salary Increase and Compensation Pilot, among other initiatives. According to Rebecca Vlasin, Early Childhood Workforce division director of the state’s recently formed Department of Early Childhood, early findings from the pilot’s randomized control trial have shown a 92% retention rate for the providers receiving hourly increases of $3-8, compared to a rate of around 82% for those not receiving the boost.

Friday hopes that the Collaborative’s investment helps them demonstrate the effectiveness. “We’re playing a part in supporting their advocacy so they can get the funding they need to sustain the pilot,” she says.

“As we designed the pilot, we wanted to be sure that we were considering any unintended consequences of salary increases for teachers as well as for providers across Colorado communities,” Vlasin Said. “For example, we know that one-third of our workforce qualifies for public benefits due to the compressed wages, and we want to understand how a wage increase might make them ineligible — essentially, pushing them off a benefits cliff without a systemwide commitment toward a sustainable, livable wage.”

The Collaborative previously to help University of Colorado at  Denver facilitate a consortium of institutions of higher education to explore credentialing and access to postsecondary degrees — efforts that relate directly to the continued quest for equitable compensation. The recent grant will build upon this work by helping the various agencies to create the structures needed to facilitate greater inter-agency coordination, capacity-building and action.

According to Vlasin, Colorado’s long and unwavering commitment to supporting children and families results from collaboration between state and local entities across private and public domains.��“Families, professionals, advocates and policymakers have worked together to build coordinated systems that support local areas to be responsive to the needs of their communities,” she says. This spirit of collaboration permeates the state’s .

The District of Columbia

Comparable to a state department of education in any other state, functions as D.C.’s education agency as well as its lead agency for the federal . Since 2021, the has increased compensation for early childhood educators, bringing it within range of what K-12 teachers earn.

Initially, OSSE partnered with an intermediary to issue payments directly to educators, but according to Sara Mead, OSSE’s deputy superintendent for Early Learning, the long-term vision was always that providers would see an increase in the paychecks they receive from their employers, and this shift is currently under way. “This is the first time any jurisdiction has tried to do what we’re doing at this scale,” she said.

A new mom herself, Mead said, “Parents just cannot afford to pay what it costs to really compensate our early childhood educators at the level they deserve. So, the only way to untangle that situation and really address the pay they deserve is by having a revenue source that comes from someplace other than the traditional early learning revenue sources. In our case, we are blessed with a rich ecosystem with so many supportive elected officials. The resulting tax measure enables us to do some of the most exciting work in the country.”

, a partnership with the District’s health benefits exchange, is making health care coverage affordable for child care employees. About a thousand individuals have enrolled so far, 40% of whom were previously uninsured. And deductibles are lower this year, thanks to an upgrade from the silver plan to the gold plan.

The Collaborative’s $2.4 million grant will also support an initiative called the D.C. Business Collaboratory, an OSSE collaboration with:

• Hurley & Associates

The Collaboratory will support child care programs with business administration, operational and management issues.

“We are excited to support D.C.’s success,” Friday said. “And to help OSSE bolster its data and information technology systems to more effectively implement the Pay Equity Fund and health care benefits.”

 “One of the challenges when you are standing up programs really quickly is that you are doing a lot of innovation really fast and don’t have as much time to reflect on what you’re learning and really document it,” Mead said. “�ճ󲹳�’s why this investment is so important.”

Louisiana

For Friday, one of the things that stood out about Louisiana’s plans for increasing provider compensation was the local-to-state implementation approach. “Orleans Parish has an existing compensation pilot,” she says, “We’re looking to support Louisiana to scale up that model to additional parishes around the state.”

Another distinguishing feature of this investment is that the grantee, the , is a nonprofit and not a governmental agency. Executive director Libbie Sonnier recalls, “We took this opportunity to the state department of education and asked if we could apply for the grant, since it aligned with our work, which is about systems improvement. And they were like, ‘Absolutely,’ since we are all working together so closely anyway.”

Candace Weber, partnerships director at the Louisiana Policy Institute for Children, notes that the timing of the project was perfect for their organization because it followed on the heels of their cross-sectional “Tiger Team” project (a term popularized by NASA) that resulted in their report. The team, which comprised experts from academia as well as educators with lived experience, found, “Competitive pay can boost employee retention and recruitment, which will encourage long-term quality improvements and directly benefit the young children in their care.”

“Louisiana isn’t the only state that’s grappling with compensation,” Weber said. “We know the economic benefits associated with child care and understand what’s at risk if we don’t address workforce compensation.�� We get contacted by other states to learn what we’re doing, especially around our , which tracks the cost of child care breakdowns.”  ( found that parental absences cost Louisiana businesses $762 million annually from missed work, turnover and other related costs.)

Louisiana just inaugurated Jeff Landry as governor, and Sonnier anticipates continued growth in state investments in early childhood, building upon $87 million of recurring state funding over the last four years. “We have buy-in from the business community and the legislature,” she says.

The system building funded by the Collaborative will help early childhood educators by reflecting the true value of their professional work. Friday adds that the Collaborative is actively seeking aligned funding to support additional states.

Meanwhile, Hawaii appeared at the bottom, with students there learning the equivalent of a year-and-a-half less than the typical charter school student.

The study, by Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel of Harvard University and published Tuesday in , finds that students in Alaska turned in the strongest academic performance as judged by National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests.

Students in Colorado, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, and New Jersey followed closely behind, the researchers found, while charter school students in Hawaii, Tennessee, Michigan, Oregon and Pennsylvania performed the worst.

Peterson said using NAEP data for the analysis offered researchers an opportunity for a fresh, unvarnished look at charter school performance, one not often seen via state achievement tests, which for years have been criticized for manipulating proficiency levels. 

NAEP, he said, is “a low-stakes test” that’s not tied to teacher pay or school rankings. And the data is “very clean because exactly the same test is being administered to every single student. So we are comparing student performances on the same tests and no other.”

The disadvantage is that the results are much more constrained than typical state tests, offering scores in just fourth and eighth grades. That makes it impossible to analyze high school performance, a key concern. But Peterson noted that most charter schools are elementary or middle schools, so the data actually capture a more accurate picture of how the sector performs.

One thing the NAEP data revealed: a serious achievement gap among charter school students in several states.

In D.C. and five states — Missouri, Wisconsin, Delaware, Michigan and Maryland — the  gap between Black and white charter school students was roughly the equivalent of  three-and-one-half years of learning.

They found the largest score differences between white and Hispanic students in D.C., Pennsylvania, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho and Massachusetts. 

In a statement, the said the new data are “sobering in many respects,” showing that charter schools in many places have “room to grow.” But it said the data show “many bright spots in the charter sector, and we are especially proud of the exceptional work being done in states like Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, New York and Oklahoma to produce positive outcomes on NAEP.” 

Peterson said he was most surprised by Alaska’s performance, but soon realized he shouldn’t be: It’s got a highly educated population and an unusual education culture. Because it’s so remote and sparsely populated, he said, correspondence schools have had a presence there since the 1930s. “And not just a few, a lot of them,” he said. “So the idea of having alternatives to the neighborhood school is very much part of their history.”

He also theorized that Alaska’s charters may have the resources to staff and equip new schools more easily than elsewhere.

As for Hawaii, he noted that half of its charter schools are explicitly serving the indigenous Hawaiian population — and half of those are teaching not in English, but in Hawaiian, as their purpose is to preserve that disappearing language.

States’ rankings based on charter students’ NAEP scores, the researchers said, were “only weakly correlated” with state rankings based on NAEP data for all public school students. And they found no significant difference in performance among states with different per-pupil charter funding levels or percentages of students enrolled in charter schools.

And though the study looked at charter schools nationally, the analysis isn’t all-encompassing. 

Peterson and Shakeel looked at 145,730 NAEP results for fourth- and eighth-graders in 35 states and D.C. from 2009 to 2019, but excluded 10 states without enough data: Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Washington, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

In five other states — Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Vermont — there were no charter schools during the time period studied.

Management, authorizers matter

The researchers also found that the type of charter school matters, as does the governmental body authorizing it.

Students in schools managed by a nonprofit network scored better on NAEP tests, while those at freestanding independent charters and for-profit charter schools did more poorly.

Though just 20% of charters are in networks, said Harvard’s Peterson, “It’s clear that if you have a network, you have more opportunities for promotion within the organization. So you can keep people for a longer period of time. You’ve got more management roles that people can grow into.”

Charter schools in networks can also share practices and standardize back office functions. “A lot of the problems that the little mom-and-pop school faces when it’s starting up, it’s got to sort of invent the whole wheel all over again.”

Who authorizes the school also matters: Students whose charter schools are authorized by a state education agency fared better than those whose schools were authorized by a school district, mayor’s office or a university. Peterson said that shouldn’t come as a surprise either, since a state department of education’s job is to supervise schools’ performance. “They have been doing this for 100 years. So if they’re now given a task to also do this for charter schools, they have the institutional capacity to do it. If you ask a university to do it, the university has never done this before. So they’re probably not going to be likely to have the equipment to do a great job of it.”

Shavar Jeffries, CEO of the KIPP Foundation, which supports the U.S.’s largest public charter school network, said the new findings “confirm our experience, which is that public charter schools perform better when they are part of a larger network.”

The new analysis differs from the recent Stanford University , which compared charter school performance to that of students in nearby district schools. In its statement, the alliance said the CREDO study affirms that students who attend charter schools “generally have better academic outcomes when compared to their peers at nearby district schools. And we maintain our commitment to serving all students well, especially those who have been chronically underserved.”

One aspect of this new landscape is a state-of-the-art Advanced Technical Center in D.C.’s Eckington neighborhood, where students from a dozen high schools are studying an in-demand field such as cybersecurity and general nursing. Their classes are taught by college professors from Trinity Washington University or the University of the District of Columbia, carry college credit and build toward industry-recognized credentials. The curriculum has been designed with industry leaders like hospitals and informational technology firms—places that are looking to hire employees with the exact skills being taught.

Another factor is how students are engaging in both in-person core classes and hybrid courses at their home schools, with live virtual instructors supported by on-site learning coaches. This model, which can enroll students from multiple schools in one class, takes lessons learned in high-quality virtual instruction from the pandemic and allows students to access engaging electives not offered at their home school, such as Advanced Placement psychology, American Sign Language and animation.

Further adding to the custom high school experience, some students then spend their afternoons participating in paid internships and honing career skills that will be valuable in growing fields — all while earning more credit toward graduation.

For young people who haven’t yet reached ninth grade, the District has begun to establish and strengthen the pathway from middle school through college and other postsecondary opportunities. Career exploration courses for sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders focus on topics like automation and robotics, green architecture and video production — introducing middle school students to diverse career pathways and offering a strong foundation for skill development starting before high school.

The kind of flexibility offered to students in D.C. as they chart their own paths is a thoughtful approach based on hard-won insights. Around the country, in places like Phoenix and Madison, Wisconsin, policymakers are sounding alarms and stepping away from how high school has been delivered in the past. Instead, they are implementing new ways to prepare their students for life, in response to data on high school attendance and graduation rates, college enrollment and completion, and postsecondary career outcomes.

For example, in D.C., while graduation rates have steadily increased over the past decade — with 75% of students receiving a high school diploma in four years in 2021-22 — college enrollment has decreased. Only 51% of students from the Class of 2021 enrolled in a postsecondary program six months after graduation, a 5-point decline from the year before. And most D.C. students do not complete a postsecondary degree within six years. 

Transforming the high school experience by providing more programming shared across all schools, focused on postsecondary pathways, can put more students on track for success after graduation. In this way, every student can graduate with the means to enroll in advanced and specialized courses, the opportunity to gain at least one semester of college and career experience and greater access to options that culminate in a degree, industry-recognized credential or offer of employment.

Increased employment in well-paid jobs, and real and sustained access to the middle class, benefits everyone in any given community. This is especially important for students who have historically had the least access, including those who are designated as being at risk, Black and Latino students, and those who attend school in the most impoverished communities.

In addition to shared programming, the District also continues to innovate in individual schools. One example is a unique partnership with the that teaches Anacostia High School students about environmental science and justice, including skills like hydroponic gardening. Another is how the is supporting six D.C. public high schools as they expand bold concepts to redesign the high school experience with community input so all students graduate ready for college, career and life.

Limiting the opportunities of students simply because of the school they attend is a relic of the past. Providing shared postsecondary programming across all schools — investments in increasing access to high-quality career and technical education, bringing college courses more fully into high schools, expanding access to engaging courses and strengthening the pathway starting in middle school — will better prepare students for life after graduation. In this changing world, this sort of reimagined high school experience is what every student deserves.

Disclosure: The XQ Institute provides financial support to ����Ӱ��.

My dad hates that I wear sneakers to work. 

A high school teacher for 38 years, my dad, Darrell Blake, wears a shirt and tie to school every day. To him, it’s a matter of professionalism and respect: teachers teach, and students learn. �ճ󲹳�’s how it’s always been. In order for students to respect your authority as the teacher, you need to set yourself apart from them — that’s the power of a shirt and tie, and it’s why he’s always telling me, over and over again, “I just wish you’d wear some hard bottom shoes to school!” 

I used to agree with him. 

My dad was my first role model of a Black male educator. Growing up, I spent night after night at the dinner table, listening to him tell stories from the classroom. He spoke passionately about his hopes and dreams for his students and the kids he connected with and mentored, some of whom became lifelong friends and part of our family. Seeing those relationships inspired me to become an educator, connect with students and work to shift their life trajectories. My father’s legacy became my life’s work, too.

I started my career as a high school teacher 17 years ago. Like my dad, I wore a suit and tie every day. I quickly found a disconnect in the classroom — between teachers and students, between schools and communities, and between what we teach our kids and what skills and knowledge they need to succeed in this world. We were still trying to teach students the same ways we did 38 years ago when my dad started teaching, which was the same way we did things 100 years ago: teachers in suits and ties standing in front of a board talking at students who sit at their desks and work quietly on rote memory assignments. 

We were having a one-way conversation with our students. I realized that in order for kids to learn, grow and be successful, they need to do more than just respect their teachers — they need to relate and connect with us, and we need to communicate with and respond to them. They need learning experiences and structures that are . Those experiences and structures form the foundation of that have a real, lasting impact on their education.

I was thinking about these interactions at around the same time I took a job as redesign director at Cardozo Education Campus in Washington, D.C. The position was supported by , a new partnership between the D.C. Public Schools and the XQ Institute. In my role, I collaborate with school and district staff, families and community partners to help bring our reimagined vision for Cardozo to life. Out of all these stakeholders I engage with, . �ճ󲹳�’s why a fundamental part of my job is asking myself every day, “How can I break down barriers and build authentic connections with our kids?”

I read about the importance of sneakers to Black boys, that “sneakers are statements that define their personality and character and speak to their self-worth and self-respect.” It pointed out how educators can use that recognition to build relationships with their Black students, so I decided to give it a shot and started wearing sneakers to school. 

Listening to students is just one way to rethink high school. For more, check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

As redesign director, I focus on rethinking systems. I have the opportunity to work with my school community and district to disrupt what traditional schools have looked and sounded like over the past 100 years, and what has been invaluable about this partnership is that it’s entirely community-driven. 

I don’t sit in my office every day and think up all these grand ideas. We directly partner with our students and their families, asking them, “How can we create a productive learning experience for you?” “What support do you need to be successful as a student?” At the same time, we ask our teachers, “How do we imagine a new teaching environment?” “What support do you need to be successful as a teacher?” Redesign is the process of facilitating and systematizing these conversations, engaging closely with our stakeholders, and breaking down barriers between schools and communities.

As the nation’s first all-Black business high school, dating to the early 1940s, Cardozo’s student population is now more than 50% Multilingual learners. We knew the immense learning potential in our student body, so we jumped at the chance to move through the DC+XQ design journey, an opportunity to boldly reimagine what life at Cardozo could look like. As a part of the process, we deeply engaged students, families, educators and community members to redesign education from the ground up. 

We heard a common theme: students were hungry to take control of their economic futures and wanted to learn more about financial literacy. �ճ󲹳�’s why we redesigned our high school as the “Cardozo School of Business.” We are centering the student experience on entrepreneurship in ways that build on Cardozo’s strong history while being responsive to the needs and interests of our current community.

From enrollment to graduation, all Cardozo students will become inventors of their own learning paths, careers and lives, as they develop and implement small business plans that build year-over-year through their high school journeys. At the same time, we are infusing rigorous high school academics with real-world business and financial skills. By integrating a list of , or “E-Skills,” as we call them, into every classroom, we are ensuring that every one of our students gains fluency in financial literacy, gains skills and experience in entrepreneurship, and, ultimately, will graduate with the ability to approach any opportunity or challenge with an entrepreneurial mindset. 

Cardozo’s old educational model could not have enabled us to provide these resources and opportunities to our students and educators. A more traditional or typical reform process may have treated financial literacy as a garnish on top of an existing school. 

But through DC+XQ, the XQ have become an integral part of everything we do at Cardozo. One of those outcomes is . We are working to ensure our students can take their entrepreneurial mindset beyond Cardozo and continue learning through the evolving process of opening and sustaining a business. This mindset will help our students succeed after graduation, whether in college, the workforce, the military or at a trade school. Ultimately, Cardozo’s redesigned structure will allow us to fundamentally shift the trajectory of our marginalized families and ensure they have equal exposure and access to becoming financially stable. 

And that’s where my own redesign fits in. Changing from hard-soled shoes to sneakers helped me build better connections with our kids. Students started saying things like, “Oh, Dr. Blake got the newest J’s that just came out,” or, “Oh, I see you out here, Dr Blake!” These are things that the students all say to one another in jest or due to familiarity.

Once I have that connection and shared interest with them, I can use that to invite students into their educational journey and let them know they have agency and power at Cardozo. When we break out of these century-old ideas of what relationships between teachers and students should look like and what teachers’ shoes should look like, when we invite students to be decision-makers and stakeholders in their own education, and when we systematize relevant, rigorous and engaging learning, that’s how we build authentic connections and institutions that impact and shape the lives of our students.

What gives me the greatest satisfaction as redesign director is witnessing the same joy in our students that my dad described at the dinner table growing up: The students are exhilarated to learn in the classroom, connecting with their teachers and developing skills they relate to and value. At Cardozo, the DC+XQ design process gave us a playbook and resources to boldly rethink what high school can be — and not just here in the nation’s capital. These tools and resources are available for any community with big dreams for its students.

The truth is that any school can walk the walk of creating innovative, community-based education models for our kids. We can do it boldly and proudly. And we can do it in sneakers.

William Blake is a longtime educator and redesign director of Cardozo Education Campus in Washington, D.C., a public high school that’s part of the DC+XQ partnership.

To learn more about the DC+XQ partnership, please visit .

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of ����Ӱ��.

Just before the start of the new school year for D.C. Public Schools, dozens of people gathered under a bright August sun in the northeast neighborhood of Deanwood. They were there to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a local institution: H.D. Woodson High School. A prominent new street sign, reading “Woodson Way,” was unveiled directly in front of the campus, forever enshrining a legacy. 

But this joyful event did more than just reflect on the high school’s storied history: it also set the stage for a bold new vision that’s reshaping the whole learning experience for both students and faculty.

The energy was infectious. A teacher’s choir performed and five decades of alumni, each displaying their graduation year on T-shirts, chanted school slogans. Speakers included a city council member, a founding teacher and a current Woodson student. 

“What is the Woodson Way? We need to recommit to it,” said alumni council member John Cotten, Woodson High School Class of 1981.

This past summer, Woodson was among four DCPS high schools selected for a multiyear partnership between DCPS and the that aims to make high school more meaningful and engaging for all learners so they’re better prepared for college and career. Woodson’s community united around a new theme for the school: cultivating and activating students’ passions so every graduate earns a career certification or an associate degree aligned with their interests. 

Launching a redesign effort in a school with generations of tradition like Woodson is not simple. Neighborhood high schools carry memories for residents and alumni, who recall athletic teams and veteran teachers. The tangible camaraderie at Woodson’s anniversary event reflects a commitment to meeting a changing world with new educational experiences while still holding on to the fabric that makes a school what it is. Woodson’s journey also carries four major lessons for other high schools and their communities.

A new video series from XQ follows the journey of the DC+XQ schools and features the stories of the educators and leaders rethinking high school across D.C. Learn about the goals of the partnership and follow along as new videos are released each month. 

1. Ground Your Goals in the Data

The DC+XQ partnership started in 2022. Participating schools create design teams and receive financial and professional support as they rethink learning from the ground up — hand-in-hand with their students and communities. Along the way, school teams meet with experts and visit other already deep in the transformation process.

The DC+XQ partnership also included a chance for schools to complete XQ’s , a tool that examines student transcripts to shine a spotlight on long-standing inequities. The EOA helps design teams figure out which students in their high school are more prepared than others for college and career, often due to inequitable practices, to avoid replicating the same patterns. A previous audit in Rhode Island led the state to enact higher graduation standards. 

In D.C., the EOA found that even schools with high graduation rates were not preparing all students for postsecondary success. To overcome these inequities, DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee encouraged the city’s high schools to think big, without restraints. 

“My responsibility is [to ensure] that the schools know they can go as bold as they need to give students the schools and learning experiences they deserve,” he explained. This could include changing traditional schedules and course offerings. 

2. Build a Coalition

Woodson was founded by Howard Dilworth Woodson, one of the first Black licensed architectural engineers in D.C. and a powerful advocate for extending city services to this far, northeast corner of the city. Before the school opened in 1971, high schoolers in the Deanwood neighborhood had to travel three to five miles to the nearest campus. Woodson formed a broad coalition that pushed the city to pave and widen roads, build a new seven-story building and launch a public school lovingly nicknamed the “Tower of Power.” 

But the Tower of Power suffered neglect and eventual demolition (a new Woodson building opened in 2011). The neighborhood also experienced gentrification and displacement. Meanwhile, the world was changing. Today’s students need different things from high school than they did 50 years ago.

Current Woodson Principal William Massey knew all this when he raised his hand in March of 2022 to join the DC+XQ design journey. He assembled a core team of a dozen diverse stakeholders, including students, teachers and community members, to respond to data from the EOA about student satisfaction and success and to define a new shared vision. But Massey acknowledged he was “very protective of the process.” He was concerned about how people in his school and neighborhood would respond to the phrase “high school redesign” after DCPS had undergone previous waves of reform.

“People often think it means something wrong is happening,” he said. “So someone is going to come in and shake things up via a mandate.”

Amber Owens, a longtime teacher now in her fifth year at Woodson, was initially skeptical. “Great opportunities often come to the schools, and they die or fizzle out, and we’re left holding the bag to keep it going,” she said. 

Though Massey convened the core design team and began engaging others through school visits and focus groups, Woodson was not selected for the first cohort of DC+XQ last fall. (That initial cohort consists of and .) Nonetheless, Woodson was among three other schools — Columbia Heights Education Campus, Coolidge High School and Ron Brown College Preparatory Academy — given a “cultivation year” to continue developing their proposals and visions. 

In Woodson’s case, the review panel encouraged Massey to reach beyond his original redesign team and seek broader community engagement. Massey took that feedback to heart. With funding and support from DC+XQ, the school was able to hire Rachel Curry-Neal, a former educator, counselor and youth organizer, as a full-time in-house redesign director. Students, teachers, school counselors and union representatives all served on the hiring and interviewing panel that selected Curry-Neal.

3. Stick to Mission and Vision

Curry-Neal was able to focus 100% of her time on the school’s redesign effort, leading to increased participation in the process: the design team went from just one active student to two from each grade level. Curry-Neal also reached more adults. “People came to sit with her and talk with her,” Massey explained. “She was able to have more prolonged conversations and walk different school community members through the full journey.”

Meanwhile, Woodson’s Parent Teacher Organization, which had been inactive since 2016, started meeting again in 2022 with 45 participating families. Curry-Neal attended their meetings to update families about the school’s redesign efforts and get input. The school continued collecting feedback through surveys, weekly meetings of the student government association and conversations with families and alums.

It paid off. In June of this year, Woodson was , along with the three other schools that had been given more cultivation time. Woodson’s new model is inspired directly by feedback from students, who shared that high school didn’t always feel relevant to their interests and hopes for life after graduation. 

The redesign centers on activating students’ passions and ensuring each student has a head start on their interests, which is why all graduates will earn career certifications or associate degrees. Students will also chart individualized paths early in their high school career, enabling them to take advantage of relevant internships, travel opportunities and apprenticeships. is one of XQ’s six research-backed for successful high schools where learning is more . 

The Woodson team’s experience showed the importance of another XQ design principle: . Having a clear shared mission gave diverse team members and stakeholders something to unite around. After joining the design team in 2022, Owens found the common purpose helpful when balancing competing ideas. “As long as we understand the mission, getting input from others is not a scary thing,” she said.

Ferebee said he saw a similar pattern in the other school teams that applied for DC+XQ. 

“Once we opened the door to the conversation around a community-driven process, I think people really welcomed that idea and understood that this wasn’t like previous efforts around high school that felt top-down,” he said. “Redesign is about each school’s unique design and context and history.”

We have more ideas for how to rethink high school. Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

4. Get Creative with Class Time

One of the most tangible new offerings at Woodson is the new Legacy, Leadership and Learning (or “L3”) class. The Woodson design team developed this course, which is currently being piloted with all ninth graders. The school received approval from the district for it to count as an elective toward graduation. In the first week, students studied the poem “Where I’m From” by Reneé Watson and used it as a prompt to write about their own communities of origin.

The goal is to introduce all new students to the history of Woodson, D.C. at large and the Deanwood neighborhood. They’ll leave the building to meet community members who already work in their area of interest. The design team believes this class will help students explore their interests and future ambitions, whether college, career, military or otherwise. 

At a symposium for the end of the course, ninth graders will present a passion project to an audience comprising members of the Woodson school community and beyond. Students will select from one of Woodson’s three career academies — IT, engineering, and finance — that will shape the rest of their time in high school. 

“[L3 is] a very innovative idea of bringing together students who are currently on campus with alumni to get pride and purpose while also pursuing career passions,” Ferebee said.

Owens, who was hired as the inaugural L3 teacher, plans for alums to come in and help first-year students learn Woodson traditions. “These people will actually make this course so much better,” she said. “Many hands make light work … I make sure I let the village come in and help raise these kids.”

In an example of youth voice and choice at work, Wynnter Price, an 11th grader at Woodson, helped design the class and hopes to join as a guest speaker. Even though she’s too far along in school to take the class, she is proud to have built something to help future Woodson students succeed. 

“My ninth grade year, I wish I had a class that navigated the ways of high school,” Price explained. 

As Woodson celebrates half a century of tradition, its faculty and students are collaborating with community members past and present to better serve the young leaders of today. Cotten, who came up with the idea of renaming the street “Woodson Way,” addressed the crowd at the August anniversary event.��

“We always have to evolve and reinvent ourselves but stick with traditions that got us through the first 50 years,” he said. The high school’s redesign journey is a meaningful start to the next 50.

We have more ideas for how to rethink high school. Check out The XQ Xtra, a newsletter for educators that comes out twice a month. .

You can follow Woodson’s journey on and or learn more about . 

Disclosure: is a financial supporter of ����Ӱ��.

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/u-s-house-democrats-push-for-congressional-hearing-on-child-labor-violations/ Mon, 19 Jun 2023 14:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=710565 This article was originally published in

WASHINGTON — Top Democrats on the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee are urging Republican Chair Virginia Foxx of North Carolina to hold a hearing this month on the uptick in child labor violations.

Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia, the ranking member of the committee, and Alma Adams of North Carolina, the ranking member of a panel on workplace safety, outlined their concerns that the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has shown “a near quadrupling of the number of children involved in child labor violations since 2015.”

“This surge in child labor violations is happening while WHD has had steadily decreasing resources to invest in enforcement,” the lawmakers wrote in a

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During fiscal 2022, there were 835 companies that employed more than 3,800 children in violation of labor laws, according to data from the Wage and Hour Division. �ճ󲹳�’s an increase from fiscal 2015, when 542 companies employed more than 1,000 children in violation of labor laws.

Scott and Adams are asking for a hearing so that members of the committee can understand the “scope of the child labor problem confronting the country and the legislative solutions to address it.”

In a statement to States Newsroom, Foxx said Democrats’ request for a hearing is “all for show,” and that Republicans on the committee grilled Acting DOL Secretary Julie Su on Wednesday about reports on child labor violations for migrant children. Su has been nominated by President Joe Biden as labor secretary.

Foxx said the issue will likely come up again when Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on June 13.

“DOL needs to answer for a 37 percent increase in child labor violations in the previous year alone,” she said.

“When you weigh the seriousness of Committee Democrats’ request for a hearing on child labor violations, consider this: they spent four hours sitting in a room with Acting Secretary Su and not once did they ask a pointed question about the DOL’s failure to address this problem,” Foxx continued. “Why would we expect their hearing to be any different?”

Legislation in the states

Multiple states have , a push that’s come from businesses and conservative lawmakers, States Newsroom has reported. found a McDonald’s in Kentucky had children as young as 10 working past midnight and operating deep fryers.

Republicans and Democrats on the U.S. House Oversight & Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs about multiple reports on unaccompanied migrant children  exploited as workers in U.S. meatpacking plants and elsewhere.

In their letter to Foxx, Scott and Adams added that Democrats are working on their own piece of legislation “to toughen penalties for child labor violations and unsafe workplaces that harm children, expand research and expertise on these issues, update standards about occupations too hazardous for the employment of children, and track the statistics on the scope of child labor violations.”

They quoted the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a 1937 message to Congress asking for passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which was enacted and regulates child labor in the United States: “A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor.”

Scott and Adams added: “Nevertheless, as we near the 85th anniversary of that landmark law later this month, the ‘existence of child labor’ still looms large.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on and .

]]> /zero2eight/generation-hope-one-desperate-teens-story-grows-into-hope-for-hundreds/ Thu, 11 May 2023 11:00:32 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=8019 Two little pink lines. Sometimes that’s all it takes to derail a person’s life and torpedo any plans they might have had for their future. Regardless how successful a student has been in high school or college, those two slender lines on a pregnancy test mean the world has changed forever.

“That moment is something you always remember,” says Nicole Lynn Lewis, founder of , a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that supports teen parents in getting a college degree. Lewis got pregnant in high school and clearly remembers the moment those little pink lines on the pregnancy test hit her life like a lightning bolt.

“Particularly for teen parents,” she says, “you remember where you were, the circumstances and how you felt knowing you would be forever in a different category from what you had imagined for your life.”

Not every teen facing those circumstances uses that experience to create a national organization to address the needs of young people in the same situation. Lewis did.

“In that moment, if someone were to have told me I was going to be CEO and a founder of a nonprofit organization, I never would have believed them. As a high school student staring at a positive pregnancy test, I was overwhelmed even by what I might achieve in the near term.

“Would I be able to provide basic needs for this child? Was I going to be able to go to college myself? In the moment, I had no concept of what the future could hold for me.”

Going through college as a young mother, she found every day a 24-hour struggle to stay on top of her studies while paying the rent, putting food on the table and being the best mom she could be.

“When I got to the (William & Mary) graduation stage four years later, it was clear to me that I had made it for a reason,” she says. “I knew that my story was rare, but I didn’t know how rare. It wasn’t until I graduated from college and started looking into the statistics around how many teen moms actually get a college degree that I understood. And I knew that I had been through everything for a reason, that my story could benefit other people.”

Those statistics were daunting in the early 2000s when Lewis graduated, and they remain so now. Fewer than 2 percent of teen mothers earn a college degree before age 30, and more than half of all parenting college students leave school without a degree — but often with mountains of debt they incurred in their attempt to improve their lives.

Lewis began to realize that she might be the right person to launch an organization to turn her story into action. But first, she had some work to do.

“I didn’t have a playbook for starting a nonprofit organization, so I immersed myself in as much information as I could about the nuts and bolts of a nonprofit startup,” she says. “By this time, I had worked for several nonprofits so without doing so consciously, I had given myself a training ground on nonprofit work. I picked the brains of every founder I had met in my professional network, asking them what they wished they had known when they first got started, what lessons they had learned and what advice they had for me as I embarked on this adventure.”

Growing an Organization with Equity at Its Heart

Brick by brick, Lewis built Generation Hope, which works directly with young parents in college, surrounding these scholars with what Lewis knows is needed, based on her own experience. The organization provides mentoring, tuition assistance, a peer community and other wraparound services, as well as an early childhood program, Next Generation Academy, that provides literacy, academic and social-emotional supports that enable the scholars’ children to enter kindergarten ready to thrive.

Beyond providing support to individual families, however, Generation Hope works with higher education professionals, policymakers and practitioners to drive systemic change for the one in five college students today who are parents. Of those, 40 percent feel isolated on campus, which has a direct effect on their college completion rates. Many higher education institutions are not designed for students who are parents and many have an out-of-touch idea of the realities these students face.

“I talk to people every day who work in higher education,” Lewis says. “I share the statistic that one in five undergraduate students are parenting — almost a quarter of all undergraduate students are caring for dependents while going to school every day — and for many of these educators, it’s the first time they’ve heard this. It’s a significant population of our students, but an invisible one that has fallen under the radar of most people working in higher education.”

She adds, “When you think of the average college student, you’re not thinking about them having a little one that they’re caring for every day.”

Recognizing the need for data to help colleges and universities understand that parenting students are a substantial part of their student body, Generation Hope works with the institutions to establish methodologies for collecting the data on their students’ parenting status. Without this information, Lewis says, schools are flying blind to the lived experience and needs of their students.

“What we know is that data leads to investments, it leads to supports, it leads to services, it leads to policy. If we don’t measure this data, it’s easy to say, ‘Well, we don’t need that child care solution. We don’t need to ensure that we have lactation spaces that students and faculty can access. We don’t need policies that ensure that professors are supportive and inclusive of parenting students. So, one of the first things we have to do is make this population visible, and that happens with data.”

Generation Hope’s website offers for educators and advocates to support parenting students and eliminate barriers to opportunity for this population that is often so invisible in higher education.

Racial equity is at the heart of Generation Hope’s work as it champions antiracist strategies and policies aimed at the racial disparities that exist at all levels of American society. One arena where this disparity is particularly glaring is in the uneven representation of Black parents in the student loan debt crisis. Black parents hold more student debt than parents or nonparents in any other racial or ethnic group, Lewis says, borrowing an average of $18,100 for college compared with the $13,500 among all students. More than a third of Black college students are parents, and nearly half of all Black female undergraduates are mothers.

“We know that student parents as a group have higher amounts of debt than other student groups,” she says. “The cost of going to college is higher for this population, factoring in the cost of child care, the cost of living for not just the parent but a family. Many student parents can’t live on campus, so they pay for transportation that on-campus students don’t have to pay for.” A Generation Hope found that 82 percent of its student parents reported annual household incomes below $30,000.

Generation Hope provides each of its scholars with up to $2,400 in tuition assistance for up to six years, with an additional $1,000 available each year for emergencies such as car repair or groceries. It provides students with coaches who can help them understand and take advantage of financial aid and has developed relationships with the financial aid offices at more than 20 higher-education institutions in the Washington, DC, area that enable staff to advocate for Generation Hope’s scholars when the need arises. The organization also assists with child care costs, and covers fees and books for students as needed.

Community Support

Another remarkable way Generation Hope supports its students is by surrounding them with a readymade community that connects them with needed resources, and helps with basic needs such as diapers, school supplies, and gas cards. These Resource Families, which can be actual families or families created by a group of friends, coworkers, or colleagues — meet their scholar families throughout the year with group dinners (childcare provided) to break bread together, talk about parenting challenges, and provide a network of support for whatever the scholars are dealing with.

Now in its 13^th year, Generation Hope has demonstrated the practicality of its philosophy that student parents can make it—and alter both their own and their families’ futures—if they’re given what they need for success. The statistics speak volumes: 61 percent of Generation Hope Scholars earn a degree within 6 years, on par with all U.S. college students; 89 percent are employed full time and/or enrolled in a graduate studies program within six months of graduating; 100 percent of Next Generation Academy children scored “on track” on measures for social-emotional development after two years in the academy. Since its founding, Generation Hope has provided over $1 million in tuition assistance. Its six-year graduation rate for Black students is 52 percent — 8 percent higher than the national average.

The organization has now expanded to New Orleans, the next step in its strategic plan on its way to creating a world in which young parents, student parents and their children have every opportunity to succeed. Lewis said her vision is to create transformation across higher education but also to educate people to see this population differently and to create a mindset change regarding the issues they face.

Lewis points out that despite the barriers and challenges, student parents are highly motivated to earn college degrees and broaden the economic possibilities for their families. Her work has shown that they can do that if they have advocates and champions giving them the emotional and material support they need. Her life, as well as the organization she created, are living proof that it can be done. Her memoir, “,” tells the story. She now holds a bachelor’s, a master’s and an honorary doctorate, and sits on the board of trustees of Trinity Washington University. She is married, and together she and her husband are raising their five children.

It’s a life that could inspire big dreams for other young people staring at those two pink stripes—and a call to action for the rest of us to help them achieve those dreams.

]]> /zero2eight/5-top-takeaways-hunt-institute-and-alliance-for-early-success-explore-big-wins-for-little-kids-2022/ Thu, 22 Dec 2022 12:00:36 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=7516 Last year at this time, early childhood advocates and experts were cautiously optimistic about massive federal relief in the form of the Build Back Better Act, and reflected those high hopes. Although the optimism gave way to disappointment soon thereafter, 2022 nevertheless produced an impressive number of big wins, which the and explored in this year’s edition. Hunt’s Dan Wuori once again served as moderator. Here are our takeaways:

1. Policy victories are happening all over. According to the Alliance’s newly released , 71% of states reported a child care win. “Working together is more effective—and equitable,” writes Helene Stebbins, the Alliance’s executive director, in her introduction. “The pandemic blurred the lines that divide the ‘lanes’ we work in, and more diverse state constituencies are working to sustain the trust and cooperation forged in the crisis of the pandemic.”

2. All eyes are on New Mexico. Amendment 1, which devotes a portion of the state’s to early care and education, passed in New Mexico with 70% of the vote. Mariana Padilla, director of , credited Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, saying, “She recognizes what’s at stake. Prenatal to three is the foundation for learning.” (Nevertheless, as Wuori pointed out, Lujan Grisham won her re-election with just 58%, so a good number of presumably Republican voters embraced the amendment.)

Padilla explained that the measure expands income eligibility to 400% of the federal poverty level. “No state provides free care so broadly,” she said. “We’re on the brink of a robust cradle to career system.”

The state’s , which Governor Lujan Grisham signed into law just before the pandemic, is projected to be worth $4 billion by the end of 2024. grants will raise the floor for entry-level child care workers to $15 per hour. is expanding career pathways in early education across the state.

“This doesn’t have to be a uniquely New Mexico story,” said Amber Wallin, executive director of .

3. D.C. is paying early educators. Compensation matters, and since the pandemic, advocacy voices have gotten louder about ensuring child care workers to earn enough so that they don’t abandon the field. (Explore the on the issue.)

Things got rolling in the Nation’s Capital with the of 2018, and in February 2022, the D.C. Council passed the , which increases the salaries of early childhood educators, starting with one-time payments of up to $14,000 per worker. The funds are coming from a new tax on earners making more than $250,000 per year. Advocacy from and its played a pivotal role.

“A lot is to right historic wrongs,” said DC Action’s Kim Perry, referring to the racial inequities that led to poverty wages in the first place. “Many educators thought they weren’t worthy, but the impossible becomes possible when we all work together, and our base is fired up now.”

4. Oregon, Alabama and Hawai’i chalked up wins. Panelists gave context and insight into other significant victories from the year. Lori Coyner of described her state’s move to provide continuous Medicaid coverage to children from birth through age 5. Bernard Houston of the Alabama Department of Human Services noted that the manufacturing sector provides intense competition for labor in his state, threatening to draw talent away for early education. Using American Rescue Plan funds, the state is providing bonuses of $500 per month to child care workers, resulting in augmented salaries of $36,000.

Nichole Woo of the discussed the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, which was extended and made fully in 2022.��Hawai’i also raised the minimum wage to $12 per hour. “For 20 years,” Woo said, “Nonprofits and advocacy groups were siloed, and then the brought them together to speak with one voice.”

5. “How” matters just as much as “what.” The Alliance surveys in every state, and for Stebbins, the way that policy analysts, organizers and advocates have sustained the drumbeat for change is just as important as what they accomplished, because that’s how progress is made. New Mexico’s campaign dates back to 2009, Wallin said, recounting 13 years of op-eds, reports, lobbying, radio and billboards, and extensive get-out-the-vote efforts.

“None of this happened overnight,” Perry confirmed.

]]> /zero2eight/neurons-and-neighborhoods-in-the-nations-capital/ Wed, 07 Dec 2022 12:00:41 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=7449 Early in the pandemic, Dr. Alicia Lieberman, director of the Child Trauma Research Program at the University of California, San Francisco, “The first five years [of life] are the most dangerous, epidemiologically speaking.”

COVID exploited this vulnerability with devastating precision. In addition to its well-known health consequences, it set off a mental health crisis, especially in communities with constricted access to professional help. For many Black families, the pandemic piled on top of years and generations of trauma.

Lieberman also stressed, however, that the early years present the greatest opportunities to promote the strengths of children and families, and that’s why an innovative partnership between and matters.

In Washington, D.C., as with most of the country, exist in the COVID mortality rates between races. Many Black children lost parents and other caregivers. The pandemic made life even harder for the clientele of House of Ruth, which was founded in 1976 as D.C.’s only shelter for homeless women. In 1990, the House of Ruth opened a child care center called Kidspace as a safe and secure place for children to come while their mothers recover from trauma, go to school and work. A new and expanded Kidspace opened last year that is capable of serving 84 children in 10 classrooms. “We realized that if we help women, children often come with them,” says Kidspace Director Tara Villanueva, who started as a volunteer there in 1994.

The partnership enables interventions that address and support parent mental health, early childhood mental health and the relationship between the parent and child. “Stimulating and supporting healthy brain development for young kids is critical for their long-term success at school, success in the community, and health and well-being,” says Dr. Matthew Biel, professor and vice chair and chief of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital and Georgetown University School of Medicine. (Biel also cofounded the .)

“Mental health conditions are biological and can profoundly impact development if they are not addressed,” Biel continues. “Mental health also depends significantly upon social context. If you want to boil early childhood mental health down to one most vital factor, it’s the relationship between the child and their primary caregivers. A child who has a close, consistent, safe, warm and responsive relationship with their caregivers is much more likely to grow up healthy.”

Although Biel focused on clinical care for adolescents early in his career, emerging findings from developmental neuroscience, including the landmark National Academies study , confirmed for him that brain-based social skills of self-regulation, forming relationships, paying attention and controlling impulses all develop in the first months and years of life. “If we help families to get this right early on, it sets children up for long-term success.”

Recognizing that all parents want their children to thrive, Biel contends, “Parents often don’t prioritize their own health and well-being. However, we know that if we address the mental health challenges parents are experiencing and help them feel well enough that they can engage in nurturing interactions with their children, then the children won’t just benefit in the short term, but will benefit for the rest of their lives.”

Biel says, “We’re protecting and nurturing the mental health of children and their parents or caregivers — at the same time.”

Multigenerational therapy is now part of the healing process. Clinician-led groups for families use the intervention program as well as mindfulness and healing circles. A child and family psychiatrist from MedStar Georgetown provides clinical care; a child and family psychologist provides clinical care and consultation to teachers in their classrooms; and a therapist and mindfulness instructor provides mindfulness classes, healing circles and therapy for parents.

Therapy has not been a hard sell for House of Ruth families. Villanueva says they have been more receptive to participating than the organization anticipated. “Parents have issues that they want to focus on and deal with before even thinking about bringing their children into the therapy sessions,” she notes.

Because many Black families want to see a Black therapist, House of Ruth makes culturally responsive therapy a priority, and is making progress despite a shortage of Black therapists. Biel says Medstar Georgetown has made an effort to recruit and retain therapists of color. “Our therapists are often highly motivated to work in communities in D.C. and to draw upon personal lived experiences,” says Biel. Having relevant personal experiences can be valuable in connecting with patients, he says, but most important is for clinicians to have a “stance of humility” regardless of the therapist’s race and background.

Given the population they serve, Kidspace staff encounter more than the usual amount of job stress. The organization provides extensive training on trauma-informed practices. Kidspace teaching staff members meet regularly with a clinician to assess and improve their own wellness. Staff also have access to an online wellness portal created specifically for teachers, among other supports.

“There’s a movement throughout health care today,” Biel says, “to design and implement interventions that work well in communities that have been consistently underserved by health care systems and other social systems. That is an important trend we are beginning to see in clinical training.”

Villanueva is grateful that funders believed in the work of Biel, the team at Georgetown and House of Ruth. “We take special measures,” she says, “to ensure that parents and caregivers are nurtured and supported in the same ways that we nurture and support the children.”

]]> /zero2eight/5-top-takeaways-from-the-prenatal-to-3-policy-impact-centers-summit/ Thu, 17 Nov 2022 12:00:15 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=7355 The state where you’re born has a huge impact on your health and well-being. Last month, the (PN-3) at Vanderbilt University hosted the to mark the publication of its annual .

“State leaders need to be prepared to do big things,” urged Executive Director and Founder Cynthia Osborne. The PN-3 team compared the progress of the 50 states and the District of Columbia on five policies that the evidence says are most effective at creating the conditions in which young children thrive, along with six strategies that help them get there.

States have different priorities and political contexts, and according to PN-3, “the level of resources a family has available to meet their basic needs varies substantially, from nearly $47,000 per year in the District of Columbia, to less than $23,000 in Georgia.”

“Federal dollars are needed to level those differences out,” ’s Elliot Haspel stated. As filter through the states and then dry up, sustainable revenue sources are needed. “Politicians aren’t taking it seriously enough,” Haspel said.

Here are our 5 top takeaways:

1.  Five states are five-for-five. Connecticut and Washington State joined California, Massachusetts, New Jersey and D.C. in implementing all five policies deemed most effective:

• No new states adopted and fully implemented Medicaid expansion this past year, but 11 of the 12 remaining non-expansion states introduced legislation to do so.
•  Participation in SNAP among those eligible has risen in recent years but still varies considerably by state.
• Only 56% of workers qualify for the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, and the policy largely benefits higher-income and white workers.
• Currently, 31 states have a minimum wage that is higher than the $7.75 federal level, with D.C., California and some cities already at or above $15.
• (EITC). According to , this is the most effective anti-poverty policy for children, compared to SNAP, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and state child tax credits. Currently, 21 states have a refundable state EITC of at least 10% of the federal credit.

2. PN-3 identified six strategies that states are using to boost equity:

• Specifically, the report mentions Developmental Understanding and Legal Collaboration for Everyone (; an initiative of the Center for the Study of Social Policy), and (a ZERO TO THREE initiative).
• , which, according to PN-3, “may allow more parents to work or complete education and training programs, and may support healthy child development when care settings are high quality and stimulate children’s early brain development.”
• Group prenatal care, exemplified by , a program running at approximately 350 sites across more than 40 states.
• , including traditional and virtual models, which proliferated during the pandemic.
• which can be based in a center or the home, providing nurturing and responsive relationships and improving the physical and mental health of parents.
• for infants and toddlers with disabilities or developmental delays.

3. The pandemic changed everything. Businesses, governments and families are all still managing the fallout from COVID. The child care sector, in all its various forms, is undergoing a workforce crisis that hits low-income families especially hard. Haspel noted that the price of child care is rising “faster than inflation, even in this inflationary era” and called for “permanent, dedicated and significant funding.” Hawaii state senator , noted that the unemployment rate there skyrocketed when tourism cratered. She has advocated for Medicaid expansion and a refundable, permanent state EITC as well as a Child Wellness Bill that would provide incentives for checkups. “COVID changed work,” said , state senator of the Maryland General Assembly, who shared that becoming a father reconfirmed his commitment to paid leave.

4. Change doesn’t happen overnight. The panelists described the process by which legislation is proposed and debated in the states. Once it finally passes, implementation can take years. Bipartisanship can accelerate change. , state senator of the North Carolina General Assembly, belongs to the Republican Party. “Every child,” he said, “should have the opportunity for a healthy birth and a great life.” He mentioned Medicaid expansion as a policy solution he supported, stipulating, “Medicaid should be robust but temporary.”

5. Business leaders should wield their influence. member Bridgette Roman quoted Nelson Mandela: “Our children are our greatest treasure. They are our future. Those who abuse them tear at the fabric of our society and weaken our nation.” , state senator of the Colorado State Legislature, concurred that the business community has an important role to play on children’s issues. , state representative of the Louisiana House of Representatives, credited for its advocacy.

]]> /zero2eight/susan-neumans-unbound-ambitions/ Wed, 07 Sep 2022 11:00:44 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=7084 “Literacy learning for young children is not bound in time and space,” proclaims Susan Neuman’s latest paper for Reading Research Quarterly. , coauthored with Jillian Knapczyk, celebrates the potential for “intentionally designed everyday spaces” such as laundromats, grocery stores and banks to ignite a love of reading. Neuman, professor of childhood and literacy education at New York University, shares about her findings, inspirations and convictions.

Mark Swartz: Your name has become strongly associated with the concept of and the vast difference between a home that has books everywhere and a home that doesn’t. How did you come to look at that variable?

Susan Neuman: It was literally out of frustration. I was in Philadelphia at the time, and we were trying to understand why so many communities seemed to be succeeding and others not. We conducted an audit that turned up enormous differences in access to print for those children who were living in concentrated poverty. It was not just in the home. It was in the child care institutions, it was in the library, in the school library. It was everywhere.

Swartz: How did JetBlue get involved?

Neuman: They have a social responsibility office, and they have been giving books for a long time. They wanted to gain a better understanding of the impact they were having. So we selected [D.C. neighborhood] Anacostia as well as Detroit and Vermont Square in Los Angeles. And again, we saw massive differences. We saw that those places with concentrated poverty virtually had no books. The sheer inequity was extraordinary to me. And it seems like an easy fix, but somehow it hasn’t been fixed.

By itself, our small win might seem…small. However, small wins can lead to short-stacked gains to create a big win.

More books in the hands of kids=more literacy experiences and opportunities for kids.

Read more
and visit

— Susan Neuman (@SusanBneuman)

Swartz: What do we know about the best ways to get books out there?

Neuman: First of all, choice is critical. Book reading is not just about reading. It’s about finding out stuff and becoming an expert in a domain. So kids want to be smart, or they want to be funny or they want to have the best knock-knock jokes. Another thing is to make it precious. dispense books wrapped in cellophane. The children say, “Oh my gosh, this is mine. It’s never been touched.”

Swartz: Are you tracking what’s popular? Is there a surprise runaway bestseller?

Neuman: The ones with diverse characters. In Anacostia, which is primarily African American, all those African American books were taken. TV- and movie-related books, too, which is fine, we’re trying to establish that early reading habit very early.

Swartz: How do create a culture of reading?

Neuman: We’ve tried very hard to find the trusted leaders in a community, and every community will be different. In Anacostia, it was Pastor Maurice, who always had a gaggle of kids hanging out with him and who believed that kids should be reading. He was a big prophet of reading.

Swartz: What else works?

Neuman: We’re always looking for the big bang. What is the big thing that’s going to make the difference? But I’m convinced it’s not going to be just one big thing. It’s going to be collaboration among community members working together to support our children, to view every single child in that neighborhood as our children, and coming together in all sorts of different ways to support literacy early on.

Swartz: What worries you most about the way reading is taught?

Neuman: We still have this pedagogy of poverty that the children who live in poverty should acquire nothing but basic skills and basic foundations. People are returning to the importance of phonics and phonemic awareness and forgetting that these children have interest, choice and a love of reading when we give them opportunity. It really worries me that we haven’t learned the lessons of the past.

At the end of the 8-week project, over 22,000 books were distributed through these bright blue vending machines.

What was the community feedback?
“This is so needed.”
“This is the greatest thing ever!”
“This is what the community needs!”.

— Susan Neuman (@SusanBneuman)

Swartz: What gives you hope for the future of literacy?

Neuman: I’ve spent a lot of time working with children in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. We have a vocabulary intervention for 3- and 4-year-old kids, and they are so capable and such robust language learners. We just had this wonderful study where the children learn the word ‘hypothesis’ and it was just by watching videos.

Swartz: I noticed a lot of references in this paper to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s 1979 book . How did this work shape your approach?

Neuman: Bronfenbrenner really inspired me, and the reason is that is it takes a community in a neighborhood to create a literacy learner. It’s not just parent involvement. And typically what we’ve done is we’ve relied on the school, we’ve relied on the home, but we haven’t recognized that the community or the neighborhood has a powerful influence on children’s learning. Much of my work in the past year in particular has focused on literacy in barbershops and different social offices, in nail salons, laundromats and playgrounds. I’m trying to surround children with the notion that books matter.

]]> /zero2eight/sharing-the-findings-from-better-life-lab-improving-child-care-assistance-and-investment/ Tue, 23 Aug 2022 11:00:19 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=7038 Zonia Sanchez works a long day. She begins at 6 a.m. and remains on the clock until 5 p.m., taking care of her four grandchildren, aged 2 months, 3-, 5- and 11-years old. She logs her hours into a notebook, and submits the total each month to the Child Care Resource Center in Palmdale, California, where she lives. She’s paid different hourly rates for each child — $3.61 per hour for the 3 year old, $3.34 for the 5-year-old, and $2.63 for the 11-year-old. For the infant, she receives nothing; his paperwork has not yet been processed into the CCRC system.

“These are my grandkids and my daughter has to work,” she explained in an interview with Better Life Lab, published in . “If it wasn’t for me, who would take care of my [grand]baby for no pay?”

The complicated, bureaucratic process around child care subsidies and payments is something many child care experts believe must be addressed for the system to work for more families. In better news, innovations surrounding the subsidy model are showing great promise for correcting some of these problems – including changing the way rates are set.

“For years, subsidies were set by a market rate,” explained Simon Workman, principal of Prenatal — Five Fiscal Strategies, a consulting group focused on early education. States determine the “market rate” via a survey of what parents are willing to pay for care.

But in 2016, federal regulations changed and states were allowed to explore alternative models for setting subsidy rates. Instead of looking at market rates (what families are willing to pay), innovative states began to look at true cost (how much actual care costs to deliver). What followed was a burst of innovations across the states focused on the way subsidies are determined, delivered and at what amount to a variety of providers.

Understanding the flaws of the current subsidy system

Currently, only a small fraction of families that qualify for child care subsidies actually receive them, — 75% — receiving subsidized care attend licensed child care centers. go to families who use informal, Family, Friend and Neighbor caregivers like Sanchez in the child’s own home.

Much of the funding for child care assistance comes from the federal Child Care and Development block grant, . The CCDBG gives states flexibility in how they develop their child care programs and policies, and distribute funds given to them annually by the federal government. Under federal regulations, the block grants subsidize child care for families with incomes up to 75 percent of state median income (there are proposals to raise this rate to ), and also provide funds for activities to improve the overall quality and supply of child care, .

”The problem with relying on states for child care innovations is that at some point, states will run out of money. States have traditionally been these laboratories of democracy, they serve that role well. With the political realities at the federal level, states have more of the burden to bear. States can help lead the way, to help inform and have a two way dialogue. There is no way we are going to get a fair system until we get federal funding flowing.”

Today, approximately 1.8 million children receive CCDBG-funded child care in an average month, but that includes just one in seven eligible children. It is through these funds that a provider like Sanchez can get paid, in a state like California which allows FFN providers, who are unlicensed, to receive child care subsidies. (Eight states and D.C. to receive subsidies). FFN care is especially crucial for marginalized communities, who may seek a cultural connection or relation for their preferred caregiver, as in Sanchez’s case where the preference is for a grandmother to care for her grandchildren.

In addition to subsidies going to too few children, another major flaw is the way subsidies are calculated that makes quality care out of reach for families. Until recently, the subsidy reimbursement amount set forth in the rules of the CCDBG was pegged to the 75th percentile of that market rate. That means if a state finds the market rate for child care is $419 per week ( — the most expensive in the country), then families who qualify for child care subsidies will receive three-fourths of that price to send their child to a qualifying provider. In most instances, it is up to families to pay the differences or for providers to absorb the cost difference.

But this model often doesn’t work well, explains Workman. In practice, most states can’t afford to set the subsidy rate at the 75th percentile. Even with the federal block grants and any additional state revenue earmarked for child care (only some states contribute; others rely solely on federal funds), there often isn’t enough.

Further, in rural areas, the subsidy rate is even lower. The market rate of child care established in surveys could be very low, and yet the cost of providing care still remains high. For example, rural providers must still pay for educators, facilities, supplies, equipment, food and all other expenses, even if their clientele are more dispersed and live farther from the provider. Finally, the low rates from subsidies mean providers take in less money per child, and then are forced to cut costs even further. “What it really means is that providers who cannot get much money from parents get very little from the government. Inequities from the market continue into the subsidy system,” Workman said.

Key finding: Innovations are still needed around subsidies and making the process more accessible and understandable for families. This includes making more subsidies available at higher dollar amounts and for different types of care, including home-based and family, friend and neighbor care.

Washington, D.C.’s cost estimation model

In 2016, the Office of the State Superintendent developed and conducted a to further understand the actual costs of care. This model, which was later revised in 2018 and 2021, took into account different types of child care, at different ages, in both home-based and center-based offerings.

This was the first locality to set rates based on true cost, not market rates. True cost is defined as how much care costs to provide; market rate is the the sticker price a family is willing to pay.

According to Workman, this cost modeling has helped inform other improvements surrounding child care: reforming licensing rules, improving ratio and group size requirement, updated quality rating and improvement systems, and including additional support staff — like coaches and health consultants — in calculating the base rate of what constitutes quality care.

New Mexico’s cost-modeling

, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, made creating a universal early childhood education system a big part of her platform. The state built a cost model, similar to that done in D.C., to find the true cost of quality care, and then set reimbursement rates based on costs, not market rate. Under this new approach, centers are incentivized to accept the subsidies and better compensation to provide high quality care.

New Mexico also drastically increased the income level of families who qualify for subsidies, raising it to 300% of the poverty line. As of May 1, 2022, New Mexico has since , the only place in the country to do so.

Higher subsidy reimbursement for FFN in California

Traditionally, non-center-based care models — including home-based or family-care, or Family, Friend and Neighbor Care — are paid less money per subsidy for the same work. And in eight states and D.C., unlicensed providers, like FFN, are not eligible for subsidies at all.

California is an example of a state that provides subsidy reimbursement for unlicensed Family, Friend and Neighbor Care providers like Sanchez, and California recently negotiated an increase for those providers’ pay.

Some of this support can be attributed to the new union: California’s Child Care Providers United. The union has successfully negotiated better reimbursement rates both for FFN and family-care providers. Licensed family caregivers who accept families on child care subsidies receive up to 75 percentile of the 2018 regional market rate survey , and FFN caregivers get 70% of the licensed caregiver rates — a 40% increase in their previous pay.

The CCPU also negotiated with the state to provide one-time supplemental payments to family child care providers as a bonus during COVID. in spring and summer 2022, large family child care providers (more than six children) received $10,000, and small family child care providers (fewer than six children, , can be fewer than eight children) received $8,000. And FFN providers each received $1,500. Additional payments will be forthcoming in FY 22-23.

“What we hear from our members is that this [stipend] allowed them to pay off credit cards and expenses from COVID,” Aroner said. “It was these providers that carried the ball during the pandemic. They were the ones that stayed open and put themselves at risk.” And if the money runs out? Nationally this continues to be a problem, as closed during the pandemic, due in large part to operating costs.

Georgia’s Quality Rated Subsidy Grant Program

To address the shortage of licensed high-quality infant and toddler care, Georgia’s Department of Early Care and Learning began its program in 2015 to change the way providers and families interacted with child care subsidies. Rather than using a traditional child care voucher, in which a voucher is paid to a child care center when an eligible child enrolls, Georgia’s new program relied on grants to pay providers directly and to contract a select number of slots. Using this “contracted spots” modeling, the state guaranteed the providers a level of income that allowed them to pay staff and stay open, even as a child’s circumstances changed and enrollment dipped.

Participating centers received reimbursement that was 50% higher than the base subsidy rates, a strong incentive to participate in the program. The providers were trained by DECAL staff in how to recruit families, and verify and re-certify family eligibility. Families in the program did not owe copayments, unlike in Georgia’s traditional subsidy program.

This process achieved several goals.

1. It kept a certain number of slots in high quality programs for low-income children.
2. It allowed the child care providers to maintain some stability even as families and children changed child care centers.
3. It allowed participating centers to receive more money for accepting children with subsidies, rather than less.

Katrina Coburn, Senior Manager of State Policy at Zero to Three, who provides technical assistance to state advocates and policy makers, says that more states are beginning to explore this model as a way to stabilize child care programs and to increase access to high quality programs. The infusion of funds through ARPA has given some states the means to pilot this approach.

Unfortunately, Georgia cut funding for the program in 2020, which Coburn attributed to the political landscape. Mindy Binderman, the executive director of the nonprofit Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students, and child care advocate, explained that each state department was directed by the governor to come up with a 4% across-the-board cut. “In the context of the budget cuts mandated by the Governor, it was the least worst option,” Binderman wrote in an email.

Is it enough? Not without more federal support.

Georgia’s break with a successful program exposes the limits of state innovations, even successful ones. Coburn says that the contracted spots model of Georgia is “starting to be recognized as the norm,” with the funding for ARPA being used for similar programs underway in Pennsylvania and Illinois.

“The issue is that subsidies can only do so much,” explained Workman, the early education consultant. Unless a program runs on 100% subsidies, there isn’t going to be a guarantee that the teachers and staff can get a salary. Even improvements in the level and availability of subsidies will not fully solve the fragmentation as only dedicated funding streams create stable jobs at affordable salaries. , subsidies reach only one in seven eligible children, and many more families who are not eligible for subsidies still struggle to afford quality care.

Even the states that have worked to institute such significant public investment — like Vermont and New Mexico, discussed in , will face other limitations.

“The problem with relying on states for child care innovations is that at some point, states will run out of money,” explains Elliot Haspel, author of Crawling Behind, and a top voice in child care and early education. Haspel also write for Early Learning Nation.

“States have traditionally been these laboratories of democracy, they serve that role well. With the political realities at the federal level, states have more of the burden to bear,” Haspel said. “States can help lead the way, to help inform and have a two way dialogue. There is no way we are going to get a fair system until we get federal funding flowing.”

Read other parts of this series here: , , .

]]> /article/back-to-school-shopping-inflation-hits-home-for-parents-teachers/ Tue, 09 Aug 2022 18:00:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=694448 Lavinia Aguião is feeling the pressure as a single mother and educator in Washington, D.C. as surging inflation cuts into her back-to-school shopping budget.

“I feel like the most expensive thing is literally clothing, new backpacks and lunchboxes,” Aguião said of her search for supplies this month.

Aguião is not alone in feeling the pinch.  

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As prices have surged on everything from technology to clothing to backpacks, parents and teachers nationwide are scrambling to afford classroom necessities for kids.

A found 57% of back-to-school shoppers are concerned about inflation anticipating spending surges to reach a new high of $661 per student – an increase of $53, or 8%, from the 2021-22 school year.

The Deloitte survey also found K-12 spending is expected to focus on clothing and accessories compared to last year’s pandemic-fueled technology spree.

According to the , clothing prices are expected to grow 2.9% for girls’ apparel and 3.4% for boys’ apparel compared to 2019. In addition, technology-related items will grow 2.2% and educational books and supplies will grow 4.5%.

But experts say parents are willing to spend the extra funds for their children.

“Even as economic and inflationary pressures sit top of mind, parents seem resilient and determined to ensure their children get the school supplies needed to succeed this coming year,” said Nick Handrinos, Deloitte vice chair and U.S. retail and consumer products leader.��

To ease costs, many parents plan to reuse school supplies, skip travel plans or dip into savings, according to .

“Generally speaking, American shoppers are still spending a lot on back-to-school supplies — certainly more than before the pandemic,” NPR found. “But financial anxiety is now a common part of the experience.” 

This rings true for Sabrina Ortiz-Santos, an incoming 1st grade Spanish and math teacher at Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, D.C., who, like many teachers across the country, has often drawn from her own salary to purchase classroom essentials.

The bulk of Ortiz-Santos’s back-to-school spending has been cleaning supplies and other COVID-19- related items.

“The school I was previously at was very helpful in the beginning, but as the weeks went on I found myself having to repurchase a lot of the things that were running out,” Ortiz-Santos said. “To get the classroom ready and prepared for the first day, I’ve definitely spent more than $500.”

However, this experience does not always resonate with families in her community.

Ortiz-Santos also works as a teacher at D.C.’s Theodore Roosevelt High School and often supports newcomer students.

“It gets progressively harder each year for these families to provide the resources their kids need,” she said. “But schools like [Theodore Roosevelt High School] are mindful of the economic circumstances their students face and go to great lengths to provide them with things like a hotspot and a tablet.”

Aguião said parents in her community are not always eager to accept help from their school.

“It’s kind of embarrassing,” Aguião said. “So I always tell my son’s friends that if they can’t get supplies let me know and I’ll get supplies for them too.”

Although the Deloitte survey found technology-related purchases have reached a saturation point, , a project-based website for teachers, technology-related items continue to be a high priority request, said organization spokesman Juan Brizuela. 

According to Brizuela, DonorsChoose fully funded 342,108 projects in the 2021-22 school year — a significant hike compared to the 261,282 projects in the 2020-21 school year and the 262,959 projects in the 2019-20 school year.

“Since the pandemic hit, we saw quite a big jump in instructional technology,” Brizuela said, adding that included requests for items such as digital software for the classroom, and headphones for students while they’re at home doing school work and hoping to avoid distractions.

]]> /article/williams-welcome-to-d-c-publicly-progressive-privately-guarding-its-privilege/ Tue, 12 Jul 2022 17:01:00 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=692672 This summer will mark 15 years since I moved to Washington, D.C. Spending that much time in a place makes a person reflective — given the way Maryland commuters , my bike and I may not have too many more years left. 

How to explain the District? When friends elsewhere ask about my adopted hometown, I often tell them that, for better and worse, “Washington, D.C. is a Very Serious Town for Very Serious People Thinking About Very Serious Things.” Forget the sinister fictions you’ve seen on political TV dramas, ignore the vacuous rhetoric of candidates demagoguing against the federal government they’re purportedly campaigning to lead — this is a town that runs on dopey, , civic-minded faith in public service, public debate, the public sector … in the public.��

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But it’s also a city like many others in the United States: a hub of consolidating well-paying jobs and economic power inexorably pulling in waves of privileged newcomers. Here, as in New York, Seattle, Austin, San Francisco and Oakland and so many other places, , so there’s a corresponding undertow displacing longstanding residents from the city. Between its persistently and an almost universally , D.C. is muddling towards a future where an upper-middle-class income may become a prerequisite for any family trying to live — and stay — in the city. 

�ճ󲹳�’s D.C. in 2022: a town of goodhearted progressives strung tightly between their broadminded public philosophy on the one hand, and the increasingly taut pressures shaping families’ private lives on the other. 

from researchers at SocialSphere puts some data on these musings. Compared with respondents from nine other states included in the poll (and the national average), D.C. residents were the most politically engaged, the most attuned to national politics and the most likely to identify as progressive. They were more likely to respond favorably when asked about Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and local D.C. public health officials.

They were the most likely to view U.S. public schools as good or excellent and to have favorable views of local school officials. They were second most likely to respond favorably about local teachers (behind Missouri). They were — by far — the most likely to approve of a hypothetical proposal to overhaul school funding to send more resources to schools serving low-income children and children of color.��

Basically: even amid the tumult of American politics in our current era, my D.C. neighbors have retained their solid faith in public institutions. When asked about the pandemic’s impact on kids, fully 52% of D.C. respondents said that kids were “disadvantaged” in the short term, but were likely to catch up over time. Again, this result was the most optimistic in the poll, compared with any of the nine states included. 

And yet, it’s hard to square this talk with the path the city’s walking. New housing construction lags demand — particularly denser and/or affordable units. Efforts to address this from . The hot housing market sustains racial and socioeconomic segregation in the city. , the demographics of a single school, Deal Middle School, which is the primary middle school school serving D.C’s. wealthy enclaves west of Rock Creek Park, produce nearly 16% of citywide racial school segregation. By congregating a large segment of D.C.’s white (and largely rich) families in its enrollment, Deal makes the rest of the city much more segregated. 

How is this possible? How does a family get into Deal? It’s simple! They buy a house in one of the neighborhoods that have guaranteed by-right access to the elementary schools that feed directly into Deal. Except that the median price for a three-bedroom, single-family home in these particular neighborhoods was , before the pandemic . So, unsurprisingly, a quick search on real estate site Redfin reveals that the current median price of a three-bedroom home in-boundary for Deal . 

So, of course, these neighborhoods’ corresponding elementary schools — disproportionately white and gilded campuses like Janney (contributing to 4.1% of D.C.’s school segregation), Lafayette (4%), Murch (2.6%) and Hearst (1.1%) — all add to the problem. Affordable housing is almost nonexistent .��

�ճ󲹳�’s us, D.C.: bleeding hearts and sharp elbows. A city increasingly dominated by a crowd of relatively privileged crusaders working to make the world fairer, better, safer, cleaner … while also fighting to retain our ability to sustain and transmit our advantages to our kids. We’ll do nigh on anything to make our city more open, fair, progressive, and tolerant — various , implementing , pushing for , etc. — so long as it doesn’t meaningfully influence our ability to buy access to predominantly white and wealthy neighborhoods and schools. Yes, we drift along, trying at the edges of our school enrollment policies to make them just a little fairer, a little less reflective of shifting the demographics of the city. 

It almost seems like a cruel joke: in 20 years, D.C. may well have the fairest, most progressive, most equitable public policy systems in the United States … and will have displaced most of its communities of color and low-income residents who might have benefitted from those.

]]> /zero2eight/reading-their-way-to-better-parenting-baby-book-projects-show-it-can-be-done/ Thu, 07 Jul 2022 11:00:38 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=6900 An unfortunate fact about the health care and child development information physicians try to cover during well-child checkups is that it can sometimes go in one ear and out the other, says researcher Dr. Stephanie M. Reich. These office visits are usually stressful for parents as they wrangle their baby, sometimes with siblings, and try to absorb what the doctor is saying while the child gets weighed, gets a shot or just tries to escape from the exam table.

But the information is critical. A large body of research shows that the more parents know about typical child development and effective parenting, the better they interact with their children and provide them with stimulating environments. Parents with a better understanding of what to expect as their babies develop feel less stressed, more effective, and better about themselves and their infants.

By contrast, parents who don’t know what to expect are often impatient and intolerant of the baby’s actions, misinterpreting normal child development as bratty or malicious behavior, increasing the possibility that the child could be mistreated. Parental impatience and intolerance also directly affect infant attachment, which can lead to harsh, inconsistent, disengaged parenting and the cycle of issues that can arise from that.

Reich, a professor in the School of Education at the University of California-Irvine, researches the factors that influence parenting behavior and how those influences affect children’s development. While working on her doctorate at Vanderbilt University, she and a fellow in developmental pediatrics, Dr. Kim Worley, along with their advisor, Len Bickman, began looking at how the process of delivering parental education might be improved.

In 1994, the American Academy of Pediatrics created the — well-structured, evidence-based parent-education material intended to be delivered across 31 age-based visits. The guidance has been updated and revised over the years, most recently this year, to help health care professionals spread the word on child health and behavior to parents and caregivers. The information is there but getting it into the hands of parents is rarely as simple as it ought to be.

“Theoretically, well-child checkups should be a good time to educate parents about injury prevention, typical development and optimal parenting practice,” Reich says. “But there’s a lot of evidence that if physicians can spend any time covering parent education it tends to be a minute or less, and maybe covering three topics. When parents are interviewed later, even if the physician covered a lot of material, they don’t remember much of it.”

Sometimes the doctor’s office will give parents handouts based on the Bright Futures Guidelines, but often their literacy level is too high for many families. As the two researchers discussed alternative methods of spreading the word, they hit upon the idea of embedding the information in baby books — not books about babies a lá Drs. Spock and Brazelton — but books for babies. The books are written at a first-grade level, have pictures to supplement the text and will be read multiple times.

“If you’ve had a child, you know that you read the same books over and over and over,” Reich says. “We thought we could capitalize on this repetition.”

For the initial Baby Books Project (there are two so far), Reich and her colleagues at Vanderbilt created a three-group randomized study to compare the impact of educational books with noneducational books or no books at all. The researchers created a series of professionally illustrated board books targeted to different stages in babies’ development, with content addressing why babies might be behaving in a particular way, which parents might interpret as misbehavior, and how hitting won’t correct the behavior. The text also discussed tantrums and the value of praise, distraction and redirection when dealing with baby’s meltdown. The noneducational books feature the same illustrations, but without the informational approach. Both sets of books contained images of ethnically diverse families and were written in short, catchy, rhyming stanzas.

The books featured messages on the inside of each cover about self-care for the moms with such topics as managing stress, eating well and what to do when they’re feeling overwhelmed. The first project followed 145 low-income, first-time, predominately African American mothers in the southern US, from their last trimester of pregnancy until their child was 18 months old. In Baby Books 1, all books were delivered in person during home-based data-collecting visits.

Baby Books 2, which Reich developed in partnership with Dr. Natasha Cabrera at the University of Maryland, replicates and expands on the first project by including first-time mothers and fathers, and targeting co-parenting. Families in the study are low- to moderate income in Washington, D.C. and Southern California, and are racially and ethnically mixed. The books were written in both English and Spanish and the project was divided into four parts: families receiving books for mothers, books for fathers, books for both mothers and fathers, and noneducational books.

Thanks to a grant from the National Institutes of Health, the second study, which had been derailed by COVID-19 because researchers could no longer go to subjects’ homes, was expanded to 46 months and the books were mailed to families rather than requiring in-person visits. The results are now being evaluated but early analysis indicates many of the same positive results as Baby Books 1.

Based on assessments at all stages of data collection for Baby Books 1, mothers in the group receiving educational books increased their knowledge of child development and positive parenting practices, showed reduced support for spanking, increased efficacy and read more often to their children.

Children of the mothers receiving the educational books had fewer preventable injuries compared with the other groups. An analysis of medical chart audits of doctor office, emergency room visits and hospitalizations found that the impact of preventing injuries such as burns, cuts, falls and dropping showed that the educational book resulted in an overall estimated cost savings of $14,194 compared to the noneducational book group and $128,954 compared to the no-book group.

“The economist who did the analysis tried to calibrate the cost considering that when a child is injured, they have to be taken to the doctor and the parent has to miss work. There are costs around preventable injuries beyond the injury itself, and if the injury is significant, that can change the family’s quality of life.

“As we were hoping, the families did change some of their safety practices in the home,” Reich says. “If the action was putting away choke hazards or removing plastic bags or keeping dangerous things away from the kids, the moms changed those behaviors — mainly the practices that didn’t cost them money. If it meant installing smoke detectors or using baby gates, we didn’t see any changes because our families were very low income.”

The women’s feelings of stress and depression were measured at regular intervals throughout the project. At baseline — the women’s third trimester of pregnancy — the scores for depression hovered just below the criteria of clinical depression for all the women. Though those symptoms gradually decreased for all in the children’s first 18 months, the intervention group became less depressed faster than women in the comparison and control groups.

Where the needle didn’t move, Reich says, was the mothers’ practices around food. The first books included a lot of information about nutrition and breastfeeding.

“We had zero impact on any of that. The parents did better on demonstrating their knowledge, but they didn’t change their feeding practices whatsoever. �ճ󲹳�’s a common finding — food practices in families are a really hard thing to change. So, in the second baby books, we took all of that out because it was space in the books that wasn’t having an impact on behavior, so we moved in other information.

“We’ll see how that goes,” she says. “My hope is that with each study we’ll figure out what pieces are really amenable to change, and which aren’t and then really target those that are will have utility.”

Though the books are not available for distribution, the researchers hope that they eventually might be able to partner with a publisher to make the books widely available, for instance in Reach Out & Read programs in pediatric clinics or offered during Women, Infants and Children clinic visits. The books could also be made available through public libraries, preschools or bookstores.

“Maybe it could become like the TOMS shoes model where if someone buys a book, the publisher gives a free book away,” Reich says. “It’s such a low-cost, easy-to-disseminate, easy-to-implement intervention, I would love to see it expand.”  ​​​

]]> /article/terror-at-dc-rally-after-screaming-man-reportedly-claimed-he-was-armed/ Sat, 11 Jun 2022 21:05:34 +0000 /?post_type=article&p=691161 Washington, D.C.

Gun violence survivors and their families were left in terror Saturday at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C., after a man close to the stage reportedly began shouting that he was armed. 

The disruption came during a moment of silence for the 21 lives lost in the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting last month. To the shouts of ‘get down, get down,’ gun control activists and their supporters dropped to the ground as others began stampeding away from the stage.

The U.S. Park Police said an “individual was detained by officers” after the suspect’s screams pierced the silence, sending some of the tens of thousands of rally goers on the National Mall into a panic. “No weapons were involved and there is no risk to the public,” Park Police . 

Video of the man being taken into a police car

— Skyflyer Channel 8 News (@skyflyer81)

For the families and survivors of mass shootings, the chaotic scene forced them to relive the most traumatic experiences of their lives. Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, was visibly shaken just moments after the commotion, remarking that it “took me back to the worst day of my life.” 

“Thankfully, there was no threat but it got everybody really frightened,” Guttenberg told ����Ӱ��. “The reality is, no matter where we are in America today, people do have a fear that a gun could be in the vicinity and that was an unfortunately horrifying and scary experience.” 

The disturbing scene, he said, gave him a deeper understanding of the horror that his daughter experienced at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a former student gunned down 17 people. That event sparked the March For Our Lives movement, which mobilized again this weekend to call for gun control regulations after the killings in Uvalde and a racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, 10 days earlier.

Video of organizer addressing the event

— Skyflyer Channel 8 News (@skyflyer81)

Saturday’s rally went on after frightened attendees were reassured that an active threat did not exist. But before that, there was intense fear among the crowd, including one Parkland woman who said she was immediately reminded of the 2017 mass shooting at a Las Vegas concert that . Others from Parkland, like Guttenberg, said it brought back the terror their children experienced at Marjory Stoneman. 

Homer Harvey, who identified himself as a friend and neighbor of Parkland survivor and March For Our Lives leader David Hogg, was backstage during the chaos. Hogg had just finished speaking and Harvey was walking over to congratulate him when he saw the suspect. He said a man, threatening that he was armed, hopped a fence into a secured backstage area. The fear of the moment, he said, “is not a video game.” 

“There are a lot of kids back there that are now crying and can’t get their heart rates down because this is what they have lived through,” Harvey said. “This is something that they have seen, and it just triggers everything in their brain saying that they are going to die.”

Hours earlier, Hogg that he knew there were supporters who would have liked to attend the march, but were afraid to “because of the state of violence in our country.”

Guttenberg said the experience reinforced the advocacy that brought him to the U.S. Capital. 

“All I can tell you is I’m not going to stop fighting until we have legislation that solves this problem,” he said. 

]]> /zero2eight/5-top-takeaways-from-the-investing-in-child-care-careers-webinar/ Thu, 05 May 2022 15:10:05 +0000 https://the74million.org/?p=6722 On April 26, the Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR) School at Cornell University hosted a webinar titled Equity in Focus: Investing in Child Care Careers. Catherine Creighton, director of the ILR Buffalo Co-Lab, served as moderator of the conversation, which featured:

• Lea J.E. Austin, executive director of the (CSCCE) at University of California, Berkeley
• Wendy Chun-Hoon, director of the at the U.S. Department of Labor
• Lindsay McCluskey and Darlene Lombos from , a Boston-based coalition of grassroots community groups and labor unions
• Kimberly Perry, executive director of
• Martine Sadarangani Gordon, senior advisor of
• Erica Crawley, commissioner in Franklin County, Ohio
• Allison Julien, organizing director of , a project of the
• Julie Kashen, director of Women’s Economic Justice at

Here are our takeaways:

1. Occupational segregation is a longstanding crisis worsened by the pandemic. This term refers to women’s overrepresentation in sectors (including hospitality, education and health care) that experienced the pandemic’s worst job losses. “The costs of occupational segregation are untenable,” declared Chun-Hoon, blaming “generations of underinvestment.”

The Department of Labor’s recent report dissects the issue and proposes solutions. In his foreword, Labor Secretary Martin J. Walsh writes, “It is far too common that women work hard and still cannot achieve economic independence in our economy.” Austin decried the and the median wage for roles disproportionately filled by women of color.

2. The American Rescue Plan was a start. Highlighting the $39 billion in new child care funding that’s going for recruiting, supporting and retaining child care professionals, Gordon underscored the distinction between this infusion of cash and the sustained investment the sector needs.

Thanks to the efforts of , $23 million in Rescue Plan money is going toward early learning scholarships, incentive pay and rental assistance for child care workers in Ohio’s most populous county. The National Association of Counties (NACO) has been a valuable resource for officials like Crawley.

For Kashen, achieving the sustained funding that Gordon described demands a recognition of child care as a public good, like infrastructure. Among the benefits she cited of adequate investment: $60 billion in reduced business disruptions.

3. It’s a question of dignity. This is a vital concept to understand, if society is going to pivot from a care quality focus to a job quality focus. “What conditions do educators need to experience dignity?” Austin asked.

Marcia St. Hilaire Finn, founder and owner of Bright Start Early Care and Preschool in Washington, D.C., provided this answer: “Workers want to know you care about their needs.”

Another factor is collective power, but organizing is hampered because domestic workers — including nannies — are . Julien contended this circumstance, rooted in the history of slavery, subjects them to massive exploitation and highlighted ways her organization is helping through “Know your Rights” and negotiation training.

4. The labor movement is innovating. McCluskey and Lombos presented , an initiative of Massachusetts Community Labor United. This connects women (especially single moms) interested in construction and hospitality industries—which often demand nonstandard work hours — with a subsidized network of licensed family child care providers. “An amazing and diverse coalition of women,” McCluskey said, “is demonstrating a vision of a system that supports women and communities.”

5. “Those closest to the pain should be closest to the power.” Perry cited this dictum of Representative Ayanna Pressley in her remarks describing recent child care advancements in the District of Columbia — notably, the of 2018 and the establishment this past February of the . The latter measure increases taxes on affluent Washingtonians in order to boost early educator salaries from $33,000 to $43,000, on average. While giving credit to funders like the and advocacy organizations like the and the , Perry maintained that it has been the steady drumbeat of educator and parent voices that caused one council member to remark, “My god, wherever I go, somebody’s asking me about child care!”

What’s next for D.C.? Health benefits, including affordable mental health care, Perry said.

Patricia Campos-Medina, Executive Director of the Worker Institute concluded the program with the words: “All work has value, and all work should be dignified.”

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