(Source: Thomas B. Fordham Institute)

Business, marketing, tourism and manufacturing make up more than half of U.S. jobs — but students in high school probably don’t know that.

Only one-quarter of the career and technical education classes students take are focused on these industries, according to a new report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C.

The study is a first-of-its-kind look at how career and technical education courses match up with U.S. job opportunities, and because of this, there are as many questions as answers, the report’s authors admit. Still, the findings provide a unique perspective on whether education is living up to the demands of the economy, as well as federal education policy that says CTE courses should prepare students for labor market needs. Nearly 90 percent of high schoolers take at least one CTE course.

• Read more: Commentary: Are Los Angeles high school students ready for tomorrow’s job market?

“We have to do a way, way better job of tracking this stuff — every state, every district should have its own version of this study and be monitoring it on a yearly basis,” said David Griffith, senior research and policy associate at Fordham, who wrote the report with Cameron Sublett, associate professor of education at Pepperdine University.

While nationally, students aren’t taking many of the CTE courses associated with the most available job opportunities, there is some correlation at the local level. If local employment in arts, audio-visual technology and communications industries increases by 1 percent, the probability of a student taking a related course in high school increases by 14.8 percentage points. If information technology employment rises by 1 percent locally, the likelihood of a student taking a similar course increases by 10.2 points. Strangely, these findings aren’t as likely when looking at students who concentrate (take multiple courses) in a field.

(Source: Thomas B. Fordham Institute)

The study also found that when local wages are higher in a specific industry, students are less likely to take courses related to that industry. If wages in IT increase by $1,000, for example, the probability that a student will take courses related to IT drops by 13.6 percentage points and decreases by 14 points in arts, A/V technology and communication. But there is a slight increase for classes related to health science, architecture and construction when wages in those industries rise.

(Source: Thomas B. Fordham Institute)

While the tracking of students of color into low-paying professions through vocational education has been a troubling historical trend, the report authors didn’t find current evidence of this in their research. White students are most likely to concentrate in CTE, at 17 percent, followed by 14 percent of black students and 13 percent of Hispanic students.

But there is still a wide gender gap. Female students are more likely to concentrate in health science and human services courses, while male students lean toward STEM and construction.

(Source: Thomas B. Fordham Institute)

The report authors couldn’t say whether schools are offering courses that align to industry and students just aren’t taking them or if the classes aren’t available. They do suggest that there is still work to be done connecting education with labor markets, especially as many adults are living close to their hometowns.

Considering what “alignment” means can be a challenging problem in itself. Should leaders think about connecting high school classes with national or local markets? Should they consider current labor demands or forecast what an industry might need when today’s high schoolers have graduated from postsecondary institutions? The authors encouraged local leaders to do their own analyses as to what their industries and schools need.

“My personal view is we should be trying to do more CTE, but it should not come at the expense of general education,” Griffith said.

• Read more: When Co-Curriculars Spark Careers: Over 80 Years, How ‘Career and Technical Student Organizations’ Have Evolved From Bricklaying to Business Management to Robotics

Part of the challenge of creating this report was matching CTE classes with Bureau of Labor Statistics classifications for 459 occupations. It wasn’t an easy fit, and not every class coincides perfectly with a job. For example, the career “Food Scientists and Technologists” was matched with the “Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources” high school course.

This complex process shows that there’s more to be done to align education with workforce needs, Griffith said. “We can’t achieve workforce alignment if we can’t come up with classification systems for the classes and jobs that talk to each other,” he said.

The report uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics’ 2009 high school study, the most recent available. It also uses employment statistics from metropolitan areas, which include some rural areas but don’t account for all rural populations.

This is the latest article in The 74’s ongoing ‘Big Picture’ series, bringing American education into sharper focus through new research and data. Go Deeper: See our full series. (Disclosure: Kate Stringer was a policy intern at The Thomas B. Fordham Institute in 2015.)

(Photo: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

If you had the money, would you bribe a college official to get your child admitted?

Fifteen percent of all American adults would answer yes, according to a new poll. And that number rises to 25 percent for adults who actually have children ages 18 and under.

It’s a hypothetical question, but certainly a revealing ethical one. There’s been a flood of outrage over the recent college admissions scandal, in which federal prosecutors charged parents with everything from paying off testing proctors to lying about their child’s athletic abilities to win a spot at elite schools. But a new poll from YouGov, a global public opinion and data company, shows that a large percentage of the U.S. population certainly doesn’t rule out the possibility of cheating and bribery when it comes to college admissions.

“It speaks to the pressure of parenting a bit,” said Larry Shannon-Missal, head of data services in the U.S. for YouGov. “Parents are aware of how increasingly competitive it is out there. They’re all reading the same articles we are about kids coming out of college and moving back in with their parents because it’s hard to find jobs that will pay enough to get a living wage.”

Even more parents — 34 percent — said they would be willing to pay someone to take an entrance exam on behalf of their child to get him or her into a good college. Of the general public, 20 percent said they would do so.

Credit: YouGov

Shannon-Missal said these findings might also speak to a level of cynicism among the general population: that people see the wealthy using their resources to take advantage of the higher education system and would therefore be more likely to think that they themselves should also be able to do so, if they had the resources.

About two-thirds of adults polled said they were not surprised at the cheating scandal, and a similar number said the system is rigged in favor of wealthy students. In fact, 44 percent of adults said that, if given the money, most parents would pay to get their kids ahead.

Steering students toward specific extracurricular and academic tracks designed to catch the eye of admissions officers is not uncommon and is available at sky-high prices. A recent New York Times profile of college consultants reported that costs for these services can reach into the millions of dollars. And rigorous, expensive test prep for entrance exams remains at the center of debates around equity and inclusion.

• Read more: When the cost of admission is paying off a college, Americans are outraged. But when it’s the price of a house near a good school, there’s silence

It’s worth noting that the majority of respondents said they would not cheat: About three-quarters said they would probably or definitely not pay off a high school or college official. But if they had the money, 72 percent said they would likely pay for tutoring or test prep to get their child into college.

While the two most high-profile participants accused in the scheme — celebrities Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman — are women, the survey found that more men than women were willing to cheat in the college admissions race. When it came to paying someone to take a college entrance exam for their child, 23 percent of men said they probably or definitely would, compared with 17 percent of women. And 19 percent of men said they would probably or definitely pay a college official to secure their child a spot, versus 12 percent of women.

Some survey questions asked whether the respondent would hypothetically cheat if given the resources, but when other questions inquired as to whether they have actually cheated to get themselves or their children ahead, very few said they had. Only 2 percent said they’ve paid someone to gain an advantage for their child. Only 10 percent admitted to having personally cheated on a pop quiz, and 5 percent said they’ve cheated on a final exam.

“There are a lot of things that people could see, under the right circumstances, being willing to go to an extreme (for), but that doesn’t mean that most people have found that set of circumstances that has driven them to do so,” Shannon-Missal said.

The survey is weighted and representative of U.S. adults. It was conducted online from March 13 and 14 and included 1,259 respondents. The margin of error was 2.76 percentage points.

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.  

These educators are helping students develop a growth mindset, a belief that they can improve their skills through effort. A growth mindset is one of four social-emotional learning traits the district — along with others in California — are trying to teach their students.

These schools use surveys and data analysis to track not just how well they are teaching social-emotional traits, but also how they are affecting college and career readiness indicators, such as academic achievement or graduation. So far, they’ve seen some promising findings.

“We’ve had schools that have really focused heavily on growth mindset and have seen some significant gains in … achievement in English language arts and math without significant changes in pedagogy, meaning that by just shifting the mindset of students, you can actually get them to improve in their math skills and their reading skills,” said Christopher Lund, assistant superintendent of research and school improvement in the Long Beach district.

Long Beach is part of the CORE Districts, a group of eight of the largest California districts that have created a partnership to help track how students are growing in both their academic and social-emotional skills. Education Analytics, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit, is helping decipher the data for them and refine their social-emotional measurement tools.

The challenge of measuring this was the topic of a panel at South By Southwest Education on March 6 titled “Integrating SEL into Data Systems for Improvement.” Noah Bookman, chief strategy officer of the CORE Districts, joined Libby Pier and Andrew Rice of Education Analytics for a one-hour conversation.

“We have, we think, the largest instance of a common measure of social-emotional skills that’s ever happened in the field of education. About a half-million students per year participate in this instrument,” Bookman said. “One thing I hope [the SXSW audience] sees is that you can measure social-emotional learning in a meaningful and useful way.”

The discussion covered the history of the CORE Districts’ interest in social-emotional learning, the development of their survey, and how the data analysis has helped them see how different subgroups of students are learning these skills.

CORE first partnered with Education Analytics in 2014. Together, they created a student growth model to track how well kids were doing over time in subjects like reading and math, as well as other factors like graduation, chronic absenteeism, and suspension rates.

Education Analytics also helped refine and improve a survey that CORE was using to track social-emotional learning. Specifically, CORE measures growth mindset, self-efficacy (believing in one’s ability to succeed), self-management, and social awareness (ability to empathize), in addition to school culture and climate indicators such as support for academic learning, a sense of belonging, knowledge and fairness of rules and discipline, and school safety. These metrics are then displayed on a data dashboard searchable at the school level.

Through a data collaborative, schools both inside and outside the CORE districts in California are using these social-emotional learning surveys — reaching nearly 500,000 students.

Schools are able to see not just how well their students are performing, but also how well students at other schools are doing, to provide benchmarks and context for their data.

This large collection of student social-emotional data has sparked some interesting research analysis — for example, a recent report found that students who took these surveys improved in their growth mindset from 2014 to 2016 but decreased in social awareness, self-efficacy, and self-management. Specifically, girls’ self-efficacy took a huge dive in middle school compared with their male peers.

• Read more from The 74: These California School Districts Joined Forces to Bolster Social-Emotional Development, but a Study of 400,000 Kids Reveals Learning Gaps and a Confidence Crisis Among Middle School Girls

In the Long Beach district, there is no mandate that schools implement a specific program or policy to address their social-emotional learning indicators. Instead, Lund said, schools can lead this effort. When educators saw problems they wanted to address in their data, some adopted an additional social-emotional learning curriculum. Others created training nights for parents and teachers to share ways to speak to children that encouraged skills like growth mindset. One high school developed a special two-period math course for struggling students that teaches algebra for one half of the class and social-emotional skills during the other.

Figuring out how to measure whether students are learning social-emotional competencies is still a challenge, and researchers caution against relying on these measures for stringent accountability purposes. Surveys are a common measurement tool, but other options include assessments, interviews, and observation of students.

“We’re still early in the measurement science behind a lot of this, and there’s a lot to learn, but there’s a lot to do in the meantime,” Rice said.

Pier hopes for open minds about different ways to measure social-emotional learning.

“A student self-report survey can provide some useful information and can provide actionable information for schools as they’re thinking about how to continue to improve,” Pier said.

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to the CORE Districts and The 74, the parent of LA School Report.

(Source: Education Reform Now)

It isn’t news that some students are academically ready for college before high school graduation. But it might be a surprise to know that nearly 1 in 4 11th-graders meet this benchmark at the end of the school year, according to results from the ACT that measure college readiness.

Should those students head off to college without having a senior year? Yes and no, a new report from Education Reform Now and the Alliance for Excellent Education argues. The report makes the case that there should be better pathways for these nearly 850,000 students — one-third of whom come from low-income households — to begin college coursework but still remain in high school, if they choose, and possibly save time and tuition money.

“A lot of students don’t need the ‘12’ in ‘K-12,’” said Michael Dannenberg, co-author of the report. “We can create clearer, more affordable, more student-oriented pathways to and through college.”

The paper outlines two general pathways that students could choose from. The primary one is completing senior year at their current high school but participating in an academic track that will earn them enough credit to complete their first year of college at a state school for free. The second path would let students graduate from high school early and head to a state college with a scholarship for that first year.

To do either of these requires a heavy policy lift, especially when it comes to transferring academic credits. Many students know the frustration of showing up to college having taken a handful of Advanced Placement classes or dual-credit courses earned at a college and finding that none of them count toward their degree. About 42 percent of AP exams taken each year earn marks below the passing score of 3, which is the cutoff at many colleges for accepting credit. Sometimes credits count only as electives rather than going toward the classes required for a major. Only half of states require that dual-enrollment credits transfer to all state schools, the report’s authors found.

(Source: Education Reform Now)

For this program to work, each state would have to create rules requiring that public colleges accept certain dual-enrollment credits and certain passing scores on AP or International Baccalaureate classes.

High schools would also have to increase their access to these classes or programs. This is a big ask of smaller, rural schools that can’t afford to have teachers for every AP course, but the report’s authors recommend online dual-enrollment options for these schools.

These programs could save state schools money because they’re enrolling students for three rather than four years. Those funds could then be recycled into expanding college-credit opportunities for high schoolers, the report’s authors said, estimating that as much as $1.8 billion could be reinvested.

“We’ve created an artificial distinction between K-12 and postsecondary education as though they are two separate systems … and the defined point, age 18, is when you’re ready to move from one system to the next system, and it doesn’t work that way,” said report co-author Anne Hyslop.

Some states already require state colleges to accept dual-enrollment credits or let students know if the credits count only toward an elective. In 2016, 20 states required that AP exams count toward college credit, and some even dictated what score schools must accept. Currently, 25 states and Washington, D.C., require that dual-enrollment classes earn students credit both in high school and in college.

But as states consider expanding these advanced course offerings, they must also consider equity, the report’s authors wrote. At high schools that offer AP courses, only 29 percent of students enrolled in AP are black or Latino. In 2013, only 9 percent of AP test takers were black and only 4 percent of black students earned a passing score. Research shows that while AP programs are expanding, it’s still difficult to tell whether they equitably serve all students.

Thirty-four states have already tried the second pathway recommended in the report by creating options for students to graduate early and enroll in college. But only 1 to 2 percent of students have taken advantage of this opportunity. This could be because just six states offer scholarships, and in some, the grant is too low (it ranges from $1,000 to $7,500), or because students and parents don’t want to give up traditional high school experiences like homecoming or football games too soon. To make this option more palatable, the report recommends that higher-spending states offer a scholarship of at least $6,200 to match the size of a Pell Grant.

• Read more from The 74: Analysis: Average In-State Colleges Now Cost $20,000 a Year. 10 Ways Families Can Plan Ahead to Reduce Those Expenses and Make College More Affordable

Although these policies are targeted toward the students who are ready for college, the authors said they could have cascading positive effects for all students who are trying to enroll in or transfer to college and earn credits for classes they’ve taken in the past.

“The benefits of this extend beyond students who are fast-track eligible,” Hyslop said.

Even for students who are college-ready but have no plans to attend an in-state public school, the authors argue that this plan is still beneficial because it would expand rigorous course opportunities at the school.

“What we’re trying to do is create more options for families within the public system,” Dannenberg said.

Go Deeper: This is the latest article in The 74’s ongoing ‘Big Picture’ series, bringing American education into sharper focus through coverage of the latest data and research. Get new additions delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter; here are a few notable recent dispatches:

• Student Engagement: Bored in class — A national survey finds nearly 1 in 3 teens are bored ‘most or all of the time’ in school, and a majority report high levels of stress
• School Choice: New Florida study shows students using state’s tax credit scholarship program more likely to attend and graduate college
• Academics: Is homework too easy? With half of parents expressing concerns, new study says students’ assignments lack rigor, favor lower-level skills
• Trauma: Despite prevalent trauma, from school shootings to the opioid epidemic, few states have policies to fully address student needs, study finds

]]> https://www.laschoolreport.com/whats-in-a-report-card-depends-on-who-you-ask-new-report-shows-that-parents-and-teachers-have-very-different-understandings-of-grades-tests/ Mon, 17 Dec 2018 21:30:14 +0000 http://laschoolreport.com/?p=53290 If a child earns a B– in math on his report card, is that a good grade, or does it mean he’s the worst in the class?

Ask a parent and a teacher, and you’ll likely hear very different answers. But that disconnect is just the beginning when it comes to how these two groups understand the education system and all the grades, jargon, and communication within it, according to a new report from the nonprofit Learning Heroes.

“We’re not helping parents in ways that we should be to make sure they have that complete, accurate picture of how their child is achieving,” said Bibb Hubbard, founder and president of Learning Heroes. “The system puts all these barriers in the way.”

One of those barriers, Hubbard said, is the report card. It’s the No. 1 way parents say they know how well their children are doing academically. But report cards usually fail to say whether students are performing at grade level. The survey found that most parents — 6 in 10 — said their children earn As and Bs, which they think means their kids are performing at the level they should be for their grade.

But teachers said report cards are only the third-most important tool for understanding student achievement. For teachers, a report card is a combination of grades, effort, and progress. About one-third of teachers said they feel pressure from administrators or parents to avoid giving too many low grades, and more than half said they are expected to let students redo work for additional credit.

“I think grades have been inflated for years — 100 percent,” an elementary school teacher from New Hampshire told Learning Heroes. “I think most teachers would be lying if they didn’t say a B–, C+, C are the lowest kids.”

This disconnect was surprising, Hubbard said.

“To hear teachers qualitatively say, ‘Oh yeah, report cards do not measure achievement alone and do not equate to grade level,’ and then to hear the juxtaposition of parents who … say, ‘That’s what I have to go on — that’s all I have to know if my child is achieving,’ was just really powerful,” Hubbard said.

Learning Heroes

Parents usually receive their child’s state test scores from the previous school year in the summer or fall. While these scores show whether or not students were on grade level, they can sometimes be difficult to decipher, Hubbard said, and parents often see them as old news.

“Parents say, ‘My child is wearing a different shoe size, they’ve grown 3 inches since they took that last test, of course they’re not in the same place that they were last year,’ so when the results come in, if they come in such a delayed time frame, they feel less relevant for parents,” Hubbard said.

There’s a big gap between how well parents think their children are doing and how well students across the nation actually perform. While about 90 percent of parents surveyed in 2017 said their child was achieving at or above grade level, only 30 to 40 percent actually were, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which looked at fourth- and eighth-graders’ performance in math and reading.

The Learning Heroes survey found that teachers feel untrained and unsupported in how to have difficult conversations with parents. Teachers said that when they tell parents about their child’s poor grades, some parents blame the teachers and some don’t believe them. A little more than half of teachers said they have no training on how to talk to parents about their child’s academic challenges.

Another area of disconnect is which worries parents and teachers have about their students. Parents are most concerned about the happiness and emotional well-being of their children, while teachers are most worried about challenges students might face at home, like poverty and food insecurity. Teachers are more worried about a student being on track academically than parents are, with about one-third of educators citing this as a worry, compared with one-fourth of parents.

Learning Heroes

There’s also a gap between how much parents think they’re involved in school versus how much teachers say they are. While two-thirds of parents said they rank their involvement in school between 8 and 10 on a 10-point scale, only 28 percent of teachers said they consider it that high.

“Parents definitely believe that they are doing a good job being involved, without a doubt,” said Adam Burns, chief operations officer of Edge Research, which conducted the study. “What’s really fascinating is that teachers see it very differently.”

Learning Heroes

To get parents and teachers on the same page, Learning Heroes recommends that schools provide more information about whether students are performing on grade level, like using a worksheet its team developed that provides this information and advice for how parents can help students at home. To improve communication with parents, Hubbard recommends using established programs like home visits or “Academic Parent Teacher Teams,” a model that allows more time for teachers to meet and collaborate with parents.

The report includes both qualitative and quantitative data collected by Edge Research in 2018. The study consisted of two nationally representative online surveys of both parents and teachers, as well as focus groups of parents, teachers, and students.

Disclosure: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York provide funding to Learning Heroes and LA School Report’s parent organization. 

This year, the nonprofit YouthTruth started noticing an upsetting trend. The organization, which works to improve school climate and culture by distributing anonymous student surveys in districts, was noticing an increase in bullying rates.

Sonya Heisters, YouthTruth’s director of partnerships and outreach, observed it first in Quincy, Washington. The rural district, perched above the Columbia River in the center of the state, had bullying rates of 28 percent for the past two years. But this year, 46 percent of students said they were bullied.

Heisters doubled-checked with her research analyst to make sure they’d measured the data correctly (they did). But the next day, she received a call from a district in Northern California wondering why their bullying rates were higher than the national average. Then another call came from Texas. And one from Pennsylvania. All with the same question.

That’s when YouthTruth decided to do dig into its archive of student survey data. The team looked at the past three years of responses — and found that 1 in 3 students in the districts they worked with reported being bullied in the 2017-18 school year, an increase of five points over 2015-16.

But it wasn’t just the overall increase that bothered them: The jump was among students of color who attended majority white schools. They reported a 7-point increase in bullying, as opposed to their white peers, whose rate increased by 3 points.

“It was a shocker for me,” Heisters said.

“Especially because, you know, (educators) care so much about it and you know they’ve been working at it, so it is surprising and disheartening,” added Jen Vorse Wilka, YouthTruth executive director. “Even educators who are so attuned to this problem and working so hard to address it are still swimming upstream.”

Nationally, bullying rates have been decreasing over the past decade, the U.S. Department of Education reports, with 1 in 5 students reporting being bullied in 2015. But researchers have been looking into whether bullying has increased, especially since the 2016 presidential election, when groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center started reporting an increase in race-related bullying.

Whether an increase, which some have dubbed “The Trump Effect,” is real is still up for debate. A June report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that bullying remained steady between 2015 and 2017. But new research looking at Virginia found overall increases in bullying in districts that voted for Donald Trump and some slight decreases in those that voted for Hillary Clinton. As The Hechinger Report reported, bullying about race was 9 percent higher in these GOP districts.

The YouthTruth data was not meant to analyze any link between bullying and the political landscape, Wilka said. But it did ask students why they felt they were being bullied. About three-quarters of students cited their appearance as the top reason, followed by race, sexual orientation, and family income.

In schools with a majority of students of color, there was no change over the years in the rate of bullying. However, white students in these schools were more likely to report being bullied than students of color: 37 percent, compared with 30 percent.

“In our analysis, we don’t have any political markers or variables, so we aren’t able to say from our data whether these differences…are due to political factors or not,” Wilka said. “We clearly see that bullying is on the rise from our data and…we hope that contributes to the conversation that we clearly need to be having in this country about bullying.”

YouthTruth’s findings are not nationally representative, because the results come from districts that pay for the organization’s surveys and programs. About 160,000 students in 387 schools in 27 states took these surveys. Of those students, 29 percent were white, 29 percent were Hispanic, 17 percent were multiracial, 7 percent were black, and 6 percent were Asian. YouthTruth counted results from each district only once, so the data do not follow the same students or schools over multiple years.

The Quincy School District saw an 18-point jump in bullying, with 46 percent of students reporting being bullied. District leaders are less convinced the reason is about race, as 88 percent of their students are Hispanic. Instead, they think it might have something to do with tension caused by cramped conditions during a drawn-out renovation of the junior high school.

Still, “It was very concerning,” said Principal Scott Ramsey. “It was something we were saying, ‘Hey we’ve got to address this. This is not OK.’”

So educators at the school created lesson plans to teach students about empathy. They let students paint murals on the walls — which would be coming down during construction — with positive messages. A class of eighth-graders and their teacher made a video to raise awareness about bullying that was shared across the school and picked up by a local news station.

“As we’ve gotten older, we’ve started labeling ourselves as the cool kids, the nerds, the wanna-bes, the desperate kids, and the weird kids,” says student narrator Evelyn Ortega. “Then, with all of these labels and all of these groups, rumors get started and rumors lead to a ton of bullying.”

So far, the new school year is going well at Quincy Junior High, educators said, with an increased emphasis on anti-bullying efforts and amplifying student voice.

“There is research that shows when kids feel happy and safe at school, they’re going to learn better,” Ramsey said. “We don’t want them to come to school like they’re coming to battle every day.”

If you are a student and are looking for resources on bullying, visit pacer.org/bullying/resources/.

If you are an educator who is looking for training resources on preventing bullying, visit stopbullying.gov.

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

(Education Images/UIG via Getty Images)

When school districts adopt personalized learning, the bulk of the work falls to teachers, who, while excited about the opportunity to innovate, are often not supported by their school systems to implement and share their ideas.

That’s according to new research from the Center for Reinventing Public Education, which analyzed the efforts of districts and organizations that received funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create personalized learning models in their schools. The research comes at a critical moment for the personalized learning field, as scant evidence has emerged to demonstrate whether the billions of dollars invested in these scattered efforts are paying off.

Researchers found successes in smaller districts in the northeastern United States as well as charter schools, underscoring their argument that the bureaucracies of large district systems often impede the implementation of personalized learning.

“This study is very clear that just asking our teachers to do this work is probably not going to work in the long run,” said Betheny Gross, research director at CRPE and co-author of the study along with Michael DeArmond, a senior research analyst. “We noted just tremendous misalignment between what the folks in the schools were trying to do and what their school systems were prepared to support them to do.”

In 2014, the Gates Foundation gave $6-7 million to each “Next Generation” grantee, 12 districts and organizations tasked with creating replicable personalized learning models. The foundation then asked CRPE to analyze how these efforts performed in the first few years. Researchers wrote that “the system change envisioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as necessary for widespread adoption largely did not occur in the early years of these initiatives.”

Personalized learning changed how instruction was taught and the physical arrangement of the classroom, but rarely reinvented the way students engaged with the academic content, researchers said. Students and teachers both reported preferring the individualized style of instruction that is a hallmark of personalized learning, but felt stymied by a lack of support and ambiguity in expectations from their superiors.

The tension between taking innovative risks and delivering on yearly state and federal accountability benchmarks, as well as lack of curricular or financial resources, often stifled schools’ work, principals told researchers.

“The initiative’s challenges through the first few years of effort underscore the difficulty of innovating inside a system that was never designed for innovation,” the researchers wrote.

But not all schools failed in their explorations. Gross found that principals played an important role in whether personalized learning was implemented well. Successful leaders allowed teachers to innovate but then paused to analyze what worked, decide whether those approaches met the school’s goals and what innovations to stick with, the researchers found.

The newly envisioned classrooms in these schools — from Denver to Dallas to Chicago — emphasized social-emotional supports, project-based curriculum, “playlists” that helped students navigate their learning, internships, and flexible seating arrangements. Schools used grant funding for professional development, coaches, and consultants to help educators plan.

“The thing to understand about all of this is that we have to learn not to think of it as another flavor or version of reform,” said Andrew Calkins, director of Next Generation Learning Challenges, one of the initiatives launched by the Gates Foundation to award these personalized learning grants. “This is a fundamental rethinking and reimagining of everything about what schools focus on.”

ENTHUSIASTIC, BUT IN NEED OF SUPPORT

To analyze the effort, researchers interviewed more than 300 educators, principals, and district staff, observed classrooms, and conducted a survey of teachers both inside and outside the initiative to compare experiences.

The survey revealed that teachers implementing personalized learning models were more likely to let students work at their own pace, say that their students had choice in what they learned in class, and report that their students moved through the curriculum based on successfully mastery of a topic.

Based on a survey conducted by CRPE, teachers in personalized learning schools (defined here as “NGLC/NGSI”) report their students moving through content based on whether they’ve mastered a topic, moreso than national peers. (Courtesy: CRPE)

Teachers found themselves putting in extra hours after school, on weekends, and over the summer to create personalized learning models for their students. But despite the extra workload, teachers told researchers that they preferred this type of instruction.

“I love teaching like this,” a Florida elementary school teacher told researchers. “The students can see how excited I am, so they’re feeding off of that.”

Another 10th-grade science teacher said, “I think we all instinctively know that it’s the most natural, effective way to teach and learn.”

Some students also reported enthusiasm for having so much control over their learning. One student told researchers he had worked his way up to a fifth-grade academic level, despite technically being a fourth-grader. When students were asked whether they would prefer if teachers just told them what to do, they said no.

However, some expressed frustration during these transition years, telling researchers that expectations weren’t always clear.

“We really didn’t know how [standards-based grading] worked and there was a lot of confusion,” a high school student said. “It was just thrown on you.” Students told teachers they didn’t understand why they got a certain grade, a confusion that increased anxiety for high school seniors applying for college.

Not everyone was engaged in rigorous academic instruction, researchers found. In one classroom, a student made a model of a circus tent, which involved calculating measurements of shapes like columns, semi-circles, and rectangles, and scaling them to a smaller size. But in another corner of the same room, a peer, who was significantly behind academically, was described by researchers as looking “utterly bored,” “mindlessly” clicking through remedial math software on a computer.

It’s unclear what the academic outcomes looked like in these classrooms. CRPE researchers weren’t tasked with calculating achievement, but in 2017, RAND researchers found that schools with personalized learning models improved in math by 3 percentile points in relationship to a comparison group.

WHAT SCHOOLS CAN LEARN

Educators, researchers, and leaders participating in this grant work said they weren’t surprised by the findings, and recognized that schools have more work to do.

To that end, researchers compiled recommendations based on two years of observations, including several strategies that districts can implement to help scale their personalized learning efforts.

1. Decide what problems need to be solved — Bring together teachers to pinpoint problems and set goals that focus on innovation.

2. Create flexibility in schools — Identify what policies in schools conflict with innovation and create flexibility. Ensure the district office understands the personalized learning goals of schools.

3. Support change management strategies — Add coaching support to schools and help leaders learn how to manage innovative changes.

4. Pick leaders for innovation in districts — Identify leaders to help guide the work of personalized learning and allow time for collaboration amongst teachers so they can share best practices.

The work is still in progress, said Mark Kostin, associate director at Great Schools Partnership, one of the grantee organizations that partnered with 21 schools in the northeast region of the U.S. to help them implement personalized learning models. He said the schools he’s been working with have found success in sharing their ideas with each other and creating a common language about what they want to implement in their schools. But he agreed that schools have also experienced the challenges outlined in the new research.

“This work we always knew would take time and effort and energy and persistence,” he said.

Disclosure: This article was published in partnership with The 74, which receives funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation also provides financial support to the Center for Reinventing Public Education and the personalized learning efforts analyzed here in this research. 

Girls’ self-confidence plummets as they enter middle school even though they perform significantly better in academics than their male peers, according to a recent study of nearly 400,000 California students in some of the state’s largest school districts.

As they progress through school, students are getting better at believing they can master challenging subjects, but they are getting worse at managing their behavior and empathizing with others.

Those are highlights of a recent study of nearly 400,000 California students in some of the state’s largest school districts, which have collaborated over the past several years to teach and measure a common set of social-emotional learning skills.

But the study, which looked at how social-emotional learning developed from fourth to 12th grade, found that not all students are learning these skills at the same pace. Girls’ self-confidence plummets as they enter middle school, while white students consistently report higher social-emotional learning than their non-white peers.

Researchers used data from California’s CORE Districts, a network of large districts in Fresno, Garden Grove, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, and Santa Ana, that formed in 2010 to collaborate on education challenges, including social-emotional learning. The districts identified four skills they wanted to teach students — growth-mindset, self-management, self-efficacy, and social awareness — and created a common survey to measure them annually. CORE also partnered with the research group PACE — Policy Analysis for California Education — to measure its progress.

While growth-mindset increased between 2014 and 2016, researchers found that social awareness, self-efficacy, and to a smaller extent self-management, decreased as students progressed through school. But these findings aren’t necessarily indicative of a failure on the schools’ part, said Martin West, associate professor of education at Harvard University, who worked on the study. Instead, they may speak to how little the field knows about how social-emotional skills develop over time and how to best measure them.

“I don’t think this data can speak directly to the success of individual CORE Districts to support students’ social-emotional development, in part because we just as a field don’t have much of a baseline,” West said. “This research is really an effort to try to begin building that baseline understanding of how students’ social-emotional skills develop as they move through school systems.”

As students age through school, their social-emotional skills change. Students in California increase their growth mindset over time but see decreases in self-efficacy, social awareness, and to a lesser extent, self-management. (Credit: PACE)

The data also revealed how certain subgroups of students vary in their social-emotional development.

One of the most surprising findings for West was how girls’ self-efficacy — or belief in their ability to achieve — plummeted in middle school. Girls had higher confidence in themselves during elementary school than boys, but this changed in sixth grade and only started to increase between junior and senior year of high school. Boys’ self-efficacy also decreased during this period, but it’s a modest decline compared to the trend for girls. Despite having low confidence, girls continued to perform significantly better in academics than their male peers.

While academic self-efficacy can typically predict a student’s performance, West said this finding shows that the survey is not asking students solely about their confidence to succeed academically.

“There are a lot of things in here that we don’t know how to interpret,” West said. “With this project, we are trying to lay a foundation and raise questions as well as offer definitive answers, and I think (the self-efficacy finding) is a nice example of it.”

Girls also reported higher levels of self-management and social awareness than boys, though social awareness for both genders declines in middle school. Growth mindset trends were similar for both genders.

Male and female students vary in how they learn social-emotional skills. Girls surpass boys in social awareness and self-management but fall well below their male peers in self-efficacy. (Credit: PACE)

White students reported higher levels of social-emotional learning than Asian, Latino, and African-American students. Low-income students also reported low levels of social-emotional skills, though some of these gaps narrowed in high school. The researchers noted that this could be reflective of the trauma that some students from disadvantaged backgrounds face as well as the fact that school culture and climate surveys show students of color often rate their schools as less friendly than their wealthier, white peers do.

Social-emotional learning varies by race in California’s major urban districts. White students report higher levels than their Asian, Latino, and African-American peers. (Photo credit: PACE)

It’s important for schools to see if there’s anything systemic that could be causing certain subgroups to lag behind their peers in these social-emotional skills, said Robert Jagers, an expert in social-emotional learning research who was not involved in the study. For example, he said some students might internalize biases from their teachers that could cause them to feel like they don’t belong or aren’t understood. Or those students could be in need of more support in certain social-emotional areas.

“Clearly the data are important and clearly they are telling us something, but we need to dig into the data more to understand these diverse groups of young people,” said Jagers, vice president for research at the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, a nonprofit that studies social-emotional learning.

One of the reasons students might have progressed in growth-mindset more so than other areas is because educators might know how to teach that skill better than self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness, West said. “I don’t think there’s a consensus on how best to cultivate students’ ability to manage their behavior,” West said.

There’s significant evidence that social-emotional learning can boost student graduation rates, improve academic performance, and lead to better life outcomes. But one of the challenges researchers are facing is how to measure how students are learning social-emotional skills.

Right now, the most common and scalable measurement tool is surveys. While survey data have been shown to be a reliable predictor of behavioral outcomes, West said he urges caution when relying solely on this data because of biases that can appear when people are asked to evaluate themselves.

California has also administered student surveys, called the Healthy Kids Survey, which schools could take every two years, and was mandated if schools wanted to receive funding for drug prevention. But that initiative ended in 2010, EdSource reported, and now the survey is mandated for use in seventh, ninth, and 11th grades in exchange for funding around tobacco prevention.

While CORE has a common set of social-emotional standards, it doesn’t dictate how schools or districts teach it. Instead, the group serves as a resource for schools to learn from and collaborate with each other, said Noah Bookman, chief strategy officer of the CORE District. For example, CORE schools can tap into this baseline of student survey data to use as a comparison for their own school’s progress.

“It’s important to appreciate that collecting new data and understanding it is a journey and it takes time,” Bookman said. “It takes a mindset of, ‘What are we trying to learn and are we going to be open to that learning?’”

Fresno Unified School District is one of the CORE Districts that has been surveying students for the last few years to measure social-emotional learning and school climate. But it’s not their only measurement tool — leaders also look at suspension rates, discipline, and office referrals.

To improve its students’ social-emotional skills, Fresno is embedding training directly into its middle and high school curriculum. For example, in English class, a teacher might talk to her students about empathy and how to understand the different perspectives of characters in a text.

Another focus for the district is building the emotional intelligence of its teachers. Right now, Fresno is turning to its teachers to help improve the feeling of connectedness students have to adults in the building, an area their surveys indicated could be better, said Ambra Dorsey, executive director of Fresno’s department of prevention and intervention.

Rita Baharian, director of climate and culture at Fresno, emphasized that a district of Fresno’s size can’t implement radical change each year based on survey results but instead will monitor student growth over time.

“We need to have a culture to value emotional intelligence just like we value our IQ,” Baharian said. “Students need to be explicitly taught these skills.”

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to the CORE Districts and The 74, parent company of LA School Report. The Walton Family Foundation provided financial support to the PACE research and The 74.

Photo credit: Reed Van Dyk

It was a school shooting with a very different ending.

On Aug. 20, 2013, a man walked into an elementary school in DeKalb County, Georgia, with an AK-47 and 500 rounds of ammunition. Shots were fired. Students were in lockdown. But no one got hurt.

Many say that is thanks to Antoinette Tuff, the school bookkeeper, who talked the shooter down — literally onto the floor — persuading him to hand himself over to the police instead of harming innocents.

This scene of empathy in the face of horror is the focus of DeKalb Elementary, nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. The 20-minute movie is based on the real 911 call from McNair Elementary School, where Tuff kept dispatchers on the line as she tried to calm down the shooter, Michael Hill.

Filmmaker Reed Van Dyk came across the 911 call accidentally, as he was working on another project for his master’s in directing at UCLA. He couldn’t stop listening to the recording, filled with questions about how Tuff could remain calm, authoritative, and shockingly empathetic in a situation that has played out too many times in schools across the U.S.

Photo credit: Reed Van Dyk

“The fact that she was able to see a suffering person and a person who was in need of help… It’s extraordinary,” Van Dyk told The 74.

The entire film takes place in the elementary school office, delving into the relationship formed between Hill and Tuff, played by Bo Mitchell and Tarra Riggs.

Hill confided in Tuff that he was mentally unstable and off his medication. She then told him her own story, of having tried to commit suicide after her husband left her. “But look at me now. I’m still working and everything is OK,” she told him.

After Hill said he’d turn himself in to the police, Tuff told him she loved him and was proud of him.

Hill pleaded guilty and was eventually ordered to serve 20 years in prison. Tuff, who said her faith helped her navigate the most frightening experience of her life, was praised as a hero and published a memoir about her experience.

The outcome of this shooting is very different from the tragedies that have claimed hundreds of lives in U.S. schools, most recently 17 students and adults in Florida. But Van Dyk pointed out that Hill was very different from the other mass shooters: He quickly made it clear that he wasn’t trying to hurt kids, but instead wanted to attack the police. He was also willing to engage in dialogue with Tuff.

Still, as debates rage around the need for gun control and mental health services, there’s also room in the conversation for the role of empathy, Van Dyk said.

“We have to keep trying to understand people, and why, in America, young men keep walking into schools trying to take as many lives as possible,” he said. “Understanding and empathy are essential.”

Van Dyk said he hopes his film can help extend the discussions around why these shootings take place, discussions, he said, that “end all too abruptly.”

Watch the trailer:

Hockey player and Olympian Alex Rigsby visits her class of mentees in Alexandria, Va. Rigsby is one of more than 100 professional athletes who deliver social-emotional mentorship through the global nonprofit Classroom Champions. (Courtesy: Classroom Champions)

She’s one of the best bobsledders in the world. She was one of the first women to compete against men in the four-man bobsled. She’s won two world championships and three Olympic medals, including the silver last week in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Olympian Elana Meyers Taylor is also a mentor for six classrooms in the United States, sharing her own lessons in perseverance, determination, and grit with hundreds of students every month.

Meyers Taylor is a Classroom Champion, one of 125 athletes who virtually mentor students to share social-emotional skills they’ve learned from their athletic experiences. Co-founded in 2009 by another American Olympic bobsledder, Steve Mesler, Classroom Champions has grown to serve 25,000 students in 1,000 classrooms in seven countries.

“We want to make kids realize that [athletes] aren’t superheroes; they are just people who work really hard,” Mesler said. “These kids identify with the athletes in such a powerful way, it changes the way they treat each other.”

A former gold medalist, Mesler grew up in a family of teachers and often visited schools for one-off speeches, usually about the importance of staying healthy. But he left those events feeling as if he wasn’t having an impact other than potentially disrupting the school day. At the same time, Fortune 500 companies were inviting him to talk with employees about skills he’d learned as an athlete: overcoming failure, determination, goal-setting.

Mesler knew there had to be a way to more meaningfully impact students.

So he teamed up with his sister, Leigh Parise — an education researcher and former New York public school teacher — to create a program that could scale this kind of mentoring work. Classroom Champions pairs athletes with several classrooms, and the athletes make monthly videos on topics like fair play, determination, and community that they share with the students. Once a week, teachers present lessons on these skills, and they incorporate social-emotional vocabulary words such as grit, perseverance, and determination throughout the school day.

“I try to make it understandable,” said Meyers Taylor, who works with staff from Classroom Champions on her videos to make sure she’s delivering the appropriate educational goals. “[I’ll say] in bobsledding, my short-term goal is to lift as much as I can squat today in my workout. Your long-term goal is to have a B average, so today your short-term goal is to work hard on an assignment.”

It’s SILVER for @eamslider24 and Lauren Gibbs in Women’s Bobsled! Way to go, ladies! Also, great job @JamieGreubel and @AjaLEvans! #TeamUSA pic.twitter.com/PC2ErmkzDv

— Johnny Quinn, OLY (@JohnnyQuinnUSA) February 22, 2018

The experience has created a community for the athletes and the students. Teachers say their students look forward to Classroom Champions lessons, and the athletes follow their classrooms on Twitter or Google Plus, encouraging the students through their comments.

“For these kids, this is their Olympian,” Mesler said.

Some classrooms watched their Olympic athlete go for the gold over the past two weeks. But lessons from athletes who didn’t make the Olympic team are just as powerful. Sugar Todd, a speed skater and Classroom Champion mentor who competed in the 2014 Olympics, didn’t make it through the Olympic trials this time around.

“The process of trying and failing and trying and failing and trying again only reads as captivating when you finally cap it all off with a success,” she wrote in a blog post afterward. “I was ready. I was capable. I was going to crush. But I didn’t. And the heartbreak that followed stunned me. At no point this season did I feel uncertain about qualifying for the 2018 Olympic Team.”

But Todd’s journey — even her failure to make the Olympic squad — was captivating and powerful for the second-graders in Racine, Wisconsin, who had been following her progress all year. Todd made videos about perseverance, discussing her training and athletic goals with the students, and teacher Amy Simon brought up that theme every day in class.

“The kids are much more willing to try something that’s difficult for them,” Simon said. “They’re much less likely to give up on something now than they were in September.”

Just as important was the lesson in sportsmanship Simon’s students learned when Todd shared how she congratulated the skater who had beaten her in trials for a spot on the Olympic team. Someone else gets to live her dream, Todd wrote. “I can celebrate that.”

Todd’s interactions and lessons were just as powerful for Simon, who had considered leaving teaching after feeling drained and frustrated. Delivering Todd’s lessons on perseverance helped Simon push through her own challenges, able to start each day with a positive attitude, she said.

During the 2016-17 school year, Classroom Champions conducted a survey to measure its impact around student engagement, growth mindset, goal-setting, and academics. Teachers said student perseverance increased, more students were engaged, the number of disciplinary referrals decreased, and fewer students reported bullying than national rates.

Athletes are attracted by the impact of the work, Meyers Taylor said. It’s all volunteer, and she estimated that creating videos, connecting via social media, and live-chatting with classrooms takes about 10 hours a month.

“I try to be as real as possible,” Meyers Taylor said. “I tell them when I struggle with something…. It’s amazing to see we’re having an impact.”

Mesler is excited by Classroom Champions’ model of scaled mentorship, which has transformed traditional one-to-one mentoring by using technology to pair one athlete with up to 300 students, or 12 classrooms. In five to 10 years, he hopes to see the program reaching millions of students.

This article was published in partnership with the74million.org.

Bill Gates announced that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will be giving $1.7 billion toward innovation in K-12 education over the next five years. (Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

Of the $1.7 billion that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged to public education over the next five years, the majority will go toward supporting innovations within schools that have joined together in collaborative networks.

Philanthropist Bill Gates made the announcement in Cleveland Thursday afternoon during his keynote speech at the Council of the Great City Schools’ 61st annual conference.

Gates hopes that the flexibility network schools have to drive “durable” and “impactful” change will make them incubators for best practices other schools can eventually adopt.

When it comes to education, “I don’t think any of us are satisfied,” Gates said. “Our role is to be a catalyst of good ideas.”

In his speech, Gates gave three examples from California to support his foundation’s direction for the next five years:

1. Fresno Unified — Gates noted the importance of investing in data systems that drive evidence-based change. He cited a Fresno project where data revealed that college-bound high school seniors were not aware of their options for attending college. Seniors whom the data showed were meeting college requirements received packages showing them their college options. This produced a 50 percent increase in students applying to public universities. His point was that students with the ability to attend more challenging schools were presented with the data that showed they were capable of doing so.

2. Summit charter network — The Summit Public Schools charter network, centered in San Jose, used data to identify best teaching practices among its staff to boost achievement for English language learners. They then shared those practices with their other teachers. Doing this decreased the achievement gap between ELL students and their English-native peers. 

• Read more: Summit charter schools launch nation’s first teacher residency program for personalized learning

3. CORE districts in California — CORE, a partnership of eight large urban school districts including LA Unified, along with Tennessee’s Lift Education and Chicago’s Network for College Success, were examples of network schools Gates listed to show the direction his foundation wants to support. Tennessee’s LIFT collaboration of superintendents share innovation across the state, and Chicago’s Network for College Success looks to boost college-attendance rates with a specific focus on ninth-grade students. 

Gates’s latest investment marks a slight shift in the foundation’s direction. In the past, it has invested in small high schools, teacher evaluations tied to student test scores, and support for the Common Core standards, but those investments weren’t driving the scale of change hoped for, Gates said.

“Based on everything we have learned in the past 17 years, we are evolving our education strategy.” – @BillGates https://t.co/JkxMdCzgND pic.twitter.com/yz5OREZJS8

— Gates Foundation (@gatesfoundation) October 19, 2017

In addition to cultivating data-driven, evidence-based innovations in network schools, the foundation will support curriculum development, professional development, and charter schools, especially in their work serving special education students.

Of the $1.7 billion the foundation will give over the next five years, 60 percent will support network schools to share what does and doesn’t work so that best practices can be expanded to other schools.

“Big bets” in innovation will receive 25 percent of funding, Gates said. He cited education research as one of the most underfunded of any subject area. Advancements like artificial intelligence should be expanded throughout a school day to make learning fun, Gates said. Math will also be an area of focus, Gates said, as the foundation searches for evidence-based solutions for teaching and boosting student achievement.

Fifteen percent of the foundation’s funding will go toward expanding charter schools nationwide and specifically in Washington state, where 10 charter schools operate amid a years-long lawsuit threatening their constitutionality. The foundation also wants to support how charter schools serve special needs students.

As co-founder of Microsoft, Gates is worth an estimated $89.8 billion, a fortune he and his wife, Melinda Gates, have used to spur change around the globe in health care and education. Created in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation headquarters is based in Washington state.

The full video of Gates’s remarks to the Council of Great City Schools, a group of 68 of the country’s largest urban school districts, will eventually be available for viewing on the 90.3 WCPN ideastream Facebook page.

Disclosure: LA School Report and its parent organization, The 74, receive funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

Alexis Morin (Photo by Kate Stringer)

Four years ago, a group of college students from across Los Angeles gathered in a coffee shop to share stories. Some of them were difficult to hear: what it felt like to take remedial classes, to be talked down to by a professor, to be the first person in their neighborhood or family to attend college.

But something else was happening in that room: The students were realizing they weren’t alone. The education system they’d spent the past two decades in wasn’t working for them, or for their peers who shared their socioeconomic background. Still, they had hope in it. And they had hope that they could change it.

These students all belonged to Students for Education Reform, or SFER, a nonprofit network of 2,000 students on 93 college campuses that trains young education activists. Alexis Morin, executive director and co-founder of SFER, listened to these conversations that day, and even though she created SFER in 2011, she credits that moment in the coffee shop as a turning point in her understanding of the importance of student voice in education.

“I was beyond energized by what a group of people who are realizing what they deserved from this system — and didn’t get — could do to shape the system,” she said.

Now 27, Morin has grown her SFER staff team to 23, which oversees student organizing in six cities: Los Angeles, Denver, Boston, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Charlotte, and Richmond, California. The 4,000 students who have been a part of SFER over the years — over 60 percent identify as low-income, first generation, and/or students of color — have influenced school board races, fought stringent school policing practices, decried raids on immigrant families, and advocated for high-quality teacher hiring.

Morin spoke with The 74 about the lack of student voice and power in schools, and why students must demand it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you decide to start SFER? What inspired this?

I connected with Catharine (Bellinger), my co-founder, at the end of our freshman year and both of us were hungry to spend some of our time at (Princeton) doing something we considered meaningful. My co-founder had done an intensive teaching internship at KIPP in Washington D.C. I had served on my school board in my hometown in Massachusetts (during high school). That was a great experience. I learned the Education Reform Act of 1993 in Massachusetts outlines that every district in Massachusetts is supposed to have a student representative on the school board. But that often falls by the wayside. My district was generally delivering high-quality academics. There were tons of phenomenal courses and teachers, and still there were students not being well served and there was huge disparity in the quality of teachers across the school. I thought all of that was really interesting.

Did you pick up on that from the school board meetings?

I picked up on that from being a really engaged student and also being the editor-in-chief of my school newspaper. My goal on the school board was to raise some of these questions and to talk about what it would look like to have teachers who are at the level of our all-star rock star teachers in every classroom.

There was another thing that I couldn’t name at the time, but I think it was missing in my hometown — a deep commitment to developing students’ sense of purpose and character and a sense of your role as a citizen. The school as a whole didn’t have a mission around students locating themselves in the country, in the world, and thinking about how to combine their gifts with pursuit of justice.

I started to understand the difference between student voice and student power. I think both are important, but the student school board member, for example, is a non-voting position. That’s one of the ideas that have come to life in our student organizing work: We absolutely believe we need to build a platform for much of our student voice. People and decision makers need to understand what students’ dreams are and whether or not their experience is propelling them towards those dreams. Students need power. Power is the ability to compel someone to make a decision that will benefit you in pursuit of your dreams. Students through us are building power through collective action, community organizing, issue campaigns, and these electoral campaigns. When we can combine those two things, we’re going to see districts be much more responsive to student and community needs.

How do you think schools or districts are doing when it comes to giving students power versus students voice?

There’s very little student voice and there’s very little student power.  “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will,” — the Frederick Douglass quote. These institutions and the leaders who run them — particularly when they’re underperforming and they’re not supportive environments for students — are never going to give students power or, I believe, even be particularly interested in hearing students’ voices. But student can organize together and demand power and demand recognition.

We have incredible inspiring examples of this in our nation’s history. Probably the example that has been most inspiring to us at SFER has been the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement and the work those undergraduates and young people did to register voters, challenge racist policies, agitate people to get in touch with their dignity…the sacrifices and risks that those young people were willing to take changed our nation forever.

Much more recently, we’ve seen a wave of Black Lives Matter protests often led by young people and the campus expression of that, where black students organizing together, demanding to have their needs and their experiences recognized on campus, doing things like sits-ins and threatening to have a football team strike. I think the DREAMer movement is another movement that has inspired the nation and completely changed the empathy with which Americans understand the experiences of immigrants and immigrant children and undocumented children.

This question of, “How are our schools doing at giving students voice and power?” is pretty much always going to be that they’re not. That’s not their function. But how well are students doing in getting together, creating their own agenda, and building the power to demand that? I think we’ve seen examples of that historically, and now we see examples of students doing that when it comes to this question of a quality education.

What are some of SFER’s biggest accomplishments?

Building this movement of students. There’s now been over 4,000 members of SFER cumulatively that is diverse and representative of the students going through our school system. That means there’s first-generation college students, there’s immigrant students, there’s undocumented students, there’s students of color, and all these students have been trained in advocacy and organizing. Those who are undergrads are taking actions, and those who are alumni, 60 percent are working in education or advocacy.

The next accomplishment that we’re so proud of is the work that SFER Action Network members have done to reshape their city school boards. Since 2013, across five different city school districts, young alumni of those districts have been actively engaged in evaluating candidates for school board, endorsing the people they believe are going to fight for the education of low-income students, and then communicating with voters about the power of a vote for school board. Those campaigns have led to anywhere from an 8 percent increase in voter turnout when our members are communicating at the door. The folks turning out are families who are being underserved by the district and don’t usually vote in school board elections. Now these neighborhoods and voters are saying, “Wow, I do have power to push the district to make the meaningful changes that my family needs.”

When students have played a role in helping shape that (school board), those board members know there are young alumni of their district watching them. They care about what this group thinks of them, and they often want to learn from students.

As an example, one of our members, Brenda Contreras, who is a first-generation college student at Sacramento State, navigated her way to college by utilizing an afterschool program and getting advice from her friends. While she had some teachers in her journey through the Richmond public schools who supported her, she did not have a teacher who helped her think about applying to college. A really powerful call to action that Brenda has for the district is to build college support into the academic program.

What are some of the issues you advocate for?

Our members have taken on issues that represent their experiences in the school system: the struggle for dignity, safety, respect, and civil rights. Other issues represent their demand to be educated. I know that sounds so simple, but it’s not happening in way too many places. I’ll give you some examples of different types of campaigns.

Last year, in North Carolina, ICE, the immigration agency, was doing raids with the intention of detaining and deporting students, including young refugees from Central America. ICE was doing these raids at bus stops to pick up students and parents that they knew would be there. These raids were terrifying to the immigrant community in North Carolina and in Charlotte and led to depressed attendance as families didn’t want to jeopardize being separated and were forced to choose between their child attending school and getting educated or risking their safety and their ability to live in the country. SFER members in Charlotte went to school board meetings and said, “This district needs to stand up for every student regardless of their immigration or documentation status,” and asked the school board members to go on record in support of all students, including undocumented students, and to call ICE off of this tactic. This activism and ICE’s actions and the community reaction was even picked up by the New York Times editorial board. There was one student who our members were in particular organizing around, and he was given a stay of deportation in large part because the community said, “Absolutely not. He’s a student and he should be in school and he should be learning.”

A similar, related issue that our members have taken up in Minnesota has been a campaign to define and limit the role of school resource officers. Our members in Minnesota, many of whom have known Philando Castile and have seen their own city rocked by racist policing practices, said, “What is the role of police in our schools?” There is no legislative guidance around this and there’s not a thoughtful approach. But what we see is heavier policing in schools that serve black students, in schools that serve students of color, and schools that serve low-income students. Our members have been conducting a campaign asking for the governor and the legislature to create a task force and evaluate what is the role police should play in schools and how should those police be trained and how can we make sure as a community that we’re not exposing students to trauma over policing, criminalization, or danger.

When it comes to students pursuing college prep academics, we’ve had students in Richmond, California, ask their superintendent and their district and their school board to fill all the teacher vacancies. High schoolers in the city of Richmond turned out to a board meeting and said, “We need instructors so that we can learn this content and apply to college.” Students have been testifying at school board meetings, meeting with the HR leadership in the district, and talking to policy experts who understand the challenges of long-term vacancies, the teacher shortage, and the problem of emergency credentials that allow teachers who aren’t experts in a subject to be teaching.

How do you decide which cities you work in?

When we were growing campus to campus, we were tracking down other students who were really radically optimistic about the idea that our public schools could be much better. We ended up choosing a lot of cities that had elected school boards, and the reason for that was our sister nonprofit, SFER Action Network, enables our members to vet candidates running for school board members in their cities and decide who they believe will best represent their interests and best advance education reform. When our students make endorsements, which has now happened every years since 2013, the way that they show up for those candidates they believe in is through voter contact, door knocking, and phone calls. It’s overwhelmingly students doing it in their own cities, sometimes even down to their own neighborhood where they’re talking to voters. And the impact they’ve been able to make in increasing voter turnout and playing a critical role in these candidates getting elected has been a really empowering way to support better leaders in our cities. That’s possible in cities that have an elected school board.

How do you decide which road to take if group members disagree on what side of an issue they should be advocating for?

Students research what’s going on in their district…How does power work in this district? Who is in charge? Who sits on the school board and what are their goals? What responsibility does the superintendent have? What is changeable and what is not? Our members and staff are learning the answers to those things by setting up meetings with elected officials, attending and studying what goes on at every school board meeting, and meeting with groups that are policy experts.

Students often in a leadership role in each city will bring forward to their peers a recommendation for a campaign based on what issues students are raising. Students will ratify that campaign and start to execute on it. At the end, reflect: What did we learn? Did we achieve our goal? What reactions did we provoke? Did we build our membership base? The process requires strong relationships between our members and among our staff, and it requires research and deliberation where students discuss which of these issues will have a more profound impact on students in schools right now. That process is where a lot of the soul of organizing work lives. It requires grit and real relationships built on a foundation of trust and shared values.

Why are the voices of college students so important when it comes to advocating for education?

College students know how they were prepared to succeed in college and how they weren’t. So their reflections on their district are crucial information for all the educators who are trying to increase access to college.

Is it often hard to get them to care about education?

The students that we connect with, we find that spark of connection because we both care deeply about their city and their experience about going through the K-12 public school system. I think there’s an abundance of students who care about this issue and it doesn’t feel like there’s a limited supply of student activists, especially in 2017, especially after this last presidential election. The work is getting out there to connect with these students. Every day we want to be inviting more students in to understand that they have agency and can reshape these systems that have failed their families and communities.

Do you think adults take student voice seriously, or do students have to prove themselves at a level that’s higher than an adult would in these conversations?

Of course students’ contributions are discounted. And the way that students will assert their power is to work together to demand changes to the direction of the district and to work with the community and voters to hold leaders accountable. As students do these things and show up regularly at every board meeting and show up at every election, it won’t really matter what the leaders of the district think students should say or shouldn’t say. Students will be powerful in the district. For students who feel like they’ve been marginalized or that their voices don’t count, don’t request to be respected; do the work of organizing with a group of people who share the same goal and values, and then decision makers will have no choice except to consult you and care what you think.

For educators or advocates or even decision makers who want to pursue the bold and radical change that kids need, understanding and seeking out the experience students had in your schools and understanding what their dreams are and whether or not your schools supported that, that is critical information.

This story was published in partnership with The74Million.org

California owes the U.S. Department of Education an ESSA plan on Sept. 18, but the current draft doesn’t do enough to identify low-performing students and schools, according to a recent independent review.

Out of nine criteria, Bellwether Education Partners gave the state’s plan for complying with the new federal accountability law six low scores. Proposals for measuring student proficiency and growth and for identifying schools and students most in need of support got scores of 1 on Bellwether’s five-point scale.

“They are missing some key elements, so I would fully expect that when they submit their plan and get feedback from the department, there’s going to be a number of areas where the department says, ‘Hey, you didn’t provide enough information,’” said Doug Mesecar, adjunct scholar at the Lexington Institute, who is helping to review state ESSA plans for Bellwether.

One issue the review pointed out is student growth measurements. California plans to gauge growth at the school level rather than the student level. For example, tracking school level growth would measure the change in how a school’s third grade performed in 2015 and again in 2016, whereas tracking student level growth would measure how a cohort of students performed in third grade in 2015 and then again in fourth grade in 2016. Measuring at the school level makes it hard to see how programs like a reading intervention affected a specific group of students from year to year, said Mesecar, who compared California’s current method to the No Child Left Behind act.

“If California’s theory of action is this continuous improvement model, then I think that they need to do more work on driving the growth model down to the student level because that’s a really powerful method of continuous improvement,” he said.

The report also says it is unclear how student sub group performance will be factored into school ratings and how schools that are improving can be identified. In this last area, the state has said it will finish its process for identifying low-performing schools in December 2018, when it has new data.

California’s ESSA plan received praise from Bellwether for preparing “students to thrive in a multicultural, multilingual, and connected world.” The plan sets high goals for assessments and standards, reviewers said, and will track disparities in discipline by monitoring suspension rates.

In interviews with the L.A. Times, California education policy makers took issue with some of the review’s criticism, arguing that just because something isn’t specified in the ESSA plan, that doesn’t mean the state isn’t already addressing it.

Still, Mesecar said the ESSA plan is an opportunity for states to make their education visions more accessible for stakeholders who aren’t necessarily policy wonks adept at navigating education laws.

“I think it winds up generating confusion over the long term rather than clarity,” he said. “My plea to every state is you don’t have to submit a 1,000-page response, but making it clearer how the different pieces fit together within the context of the state plan I think will only be helpful to everyone involved.”

This story was published in partnership with The74Million.org.

]]> https://www.laschoolreport.com/new-rankings-most-least-educated-cities-a-tale-of-two-californias/ Tue, 25 Jul 2017 23:21:58 +0000 http://laschoolreport.com/?p=45498 An annual ranking of America’s most and least educated places reveals a true split in California when it comes to educational equity, with six cities scoring in the top 10 and six cities scoring at the very bottom.

San Jose, Sunnyvale, and Santa Clara, taken together, scored third while the area encompassing San Francisco, Oakland, and Hayward ranked as the survey’s eighth most-educated metropolitan area. Taking up five of the seven lowest spots, however, are Salinas, Fresno, Modesto, Bakersfield, Visalia, and Porterville, all cities in California’s Central Valley.

The findings come from WalletHub, the Washington, D.C.-based financial advisory website. Its annual rankings look at the 150 most populated metropolitan areas in the U.S. for the educational attainment of the adults 25 and older living there and the quality of the area’s schooling options. School quality is judged based on data collected from GreatSchools.org, which relies on standardized test scores from K-12 schools. For post-high school quality metrics, the WalletHub survey pulled from U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges” rankings.

Ann Arbor, home to the University of Michigan, scored the top spot, followed at number two by D.C. and its surrounding well-to-do suburbs, including Arlington and Alexandria, Virginia.

The data also shows racial and gender educational achievement gaps. Areas like Oxnard, Thousand Oaks, and Ventura had small racial achievement gaps between the percentage of whites and blacks holding bachelor’s degrees as compared to Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Bloomington, Wisconsin, where WalletHub found wider racial divisions

With gender, Vallejo and Fairfield in California had the smallest educational achievement gaps between men and women holding bachelor’s degrees while Albany, Schenectady, and Troy, New York had the largest.

WalletHub also asked experts how the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to education, including student loans, after-school programs, and teacher training, could affect the education achievement between the cities.

David H. Feldman, professor of economics at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, told WalletHub that the K-12 budget cuts are more likely to hurt the cities with low-income families. But he called higher education proposals a “mixed bag” for disadvantaged students, with year-round Pell Grants helping them to finish college sooner, but a lax approach to holding for-profit colleges accountable hurting them.

“There is a one-to-one relationship between income inequality and education inequality,” said Robert J. Birgeneau, professor of physics, materials science and engineering, and public policy at University of California at Berkeley. “So far, the Trump administration seems to be taking us in exactly the wrong direction.”

In a request for comment, the U.S. Department of Education disagreed that the current budget priorities don’t address inequality.

“The current system is absolutely failing too many students,” department spokeswoman Liz Hill said in an email. “Too often, it’s lower and middle-income students who bear the brunt of the failure.  This administration is committed to leveling the education playing field and ensuring that all children, no matter where they grow up, have equal access to a high quality K-12 education and then multiple pathways to success after high school graduation. The President’s budget request reflects these priorities.”

This article was published in partnership with the74million.org. 

Three charter school advocates — Greg Richmond of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Caprice Young of Magnolia Public Schools, and Malcolm “Mike” Peabody of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools — have been chosen as this year’s inductees to the Charter School Hall of Fame, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools announced Thursday.

The three will join 32 charter school pioneers and innovators who have been honored as Hall of Fame members over the past decade. They will be recognized at the National Charter Schools Conference next month in Washington, D.C.

The announcement comes during Charter Schools Week, celebrating the millions of students in 6,900 charter schools across 43 states and the District of Columbia.

“We are proud to honor these outstanding leaders in the charter public school community because of their significant contributions to the movement and unyielding commitment to ensuring all students have access to an excellent education,” said Nina Rees, alliance president and CEO. “We thank Mike, Greg, and Caprice for their unwavering dedication and their continued leadership in service of the more than 3 million students served by charter public schools every day.”

Caprice Young, CEO and superintendent of Magnolia Public Schools, California

Caprice Young didn’t start her career in education — she initially worked in government finance and technology — but the self-described “PTA mom on steroids” was hooked when she became a Los Angeles school board member. Over the years, she has helped influence and inspire the creation of hundreds of charter schools as the founding CEO of the California Charter Schools Association.

“The thing I’m most proud of is, over the 20 years I’ve been in the movement, I’ve been able to see the schools starting around my kitchen table turn into [charter management organizations] that serve tens of thousands of kids,” she said. “I’m also thankful for my husband for letting me monopolize the kitchen table.”

Young now runs a network of 10 science academy charter schools in California where 65 percent of graduates who attend college are the first in their families to do so. She is most excited about how the charter sector offers another option to a nation with diverse learning needs, as her own children have attended a mix of magnet, public, charter, and private schools. “I believe every single kid should be able to go to whatever school is the right fit for that kid,” Young said.

Malcolm “Mike” Peabody, founder of Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS), Washington, D.C.

When Malcolm “Mike” Peabody talks about his nearly 30-year career advocating for charter schools, he first tells the story of his time working in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1960s. That’s because it showed him the power of giving choice to citizens: He helped develop a program that awarded public housing allowances for people to select the housing they preferred.

“I’m coming from that concept of funding the people that I thought was so germane to progress,” Peabody said. “I’ve followed it since.”

He lobbied for Newt Gingrich’s School Reform Act in 1995, which brought charters into D.C. His proudest accomplishment, he said, was founding Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS) in 1996, an organization that has strongly advocated for charter schools in D.C., fighting for equal funding and building space.

Greg Richmond, president and CEO of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Illinois

Greg Richmond was inspired to dedicate his career to charter schools after working in Chicago Public Schools during the rollout of Illinois’s charter school law and seeing educators and community organizers jump at the opportunity to educate kids in their neighborhoods by opening charter schools.

Since then, Richmond has worked around the country and even with other nations in sharing best standards for high-quality charter schools. At the National Association of Charter School Authorizers, Richmond worked with Louisiana’s state government after Hurricane Katrina to evaluate charter school proposals and decide which should be approved for New Orleans.

“This is not a boutique activity,” Richmond said. “Charter schools can serve all kids.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

U.S. News and World Report has released its 2017 rankings of America’s public high schools, and for the first time ever, the majority of the schools in the top 10 are charters.

BASIS Scottsdale, BASIS Tucson North, and BASIS Oro Valley — all Arizona public charter schools in the BASIS network — placed one, two, and three atop the 2017 list. Rounding out the top tier are Arizona’s BASIS Peoria and BASIS Chandler schools (ranking #5 and #7 respectively) and California’s Pacific Collegiate Charter in Santa Cruz (#10).

This year’s charter breakthrough builds on gains from previous years. In 2016, three charters made the list’s top 10; in 2015, two charters made the cut. Nationwide, there are now around 6,800 charter schools serving nearly 3 million students.

Among the top 10 California high schools, only one was in Los Angeles Unified, the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies (LACES).

Among the top 20 LA Unified high schools on the list, 12 are charters. Six of those are Alliance College-Ready Public Schools, and the No. 2 school on the LA Unified list is Magnolia Science Academy, which ranked 14th statewide.

VIDEO: 74 Explains — What’s a Charter School?

Selective public schools, many of them magnets, continue to dominate the rankings of the 22,000 public high schools from which U.S. News collects data. Of those schools represented in this year’s top 10, three hail from Texas — School for the Talented and Gifted, Carnegie Vanguard High School, and School of Science and Engineering — and one from Virginia: The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

In past years, schools of choice have regularly risen to the top of the magazine’s rankings. These are typically academically rigorous institutions, many of which are highly selective as to whom they let in.

But the rising prominence of charter schools in the rankings comes at a time when Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has publicly promoted the idea of expanding school choice programs nationwide and President Trump has proposed a roughly 50 percent increase in federal spending on charter school program grants.

Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said she hopes the rankings cut through the heated political rhetoric surrounding today’s school choice debate to shine a light on the positive work being done by charter school teachers and network leaders.

“It points to the fact that if you allow educators the autonomy to run their schools and allow families to make selections, those schools perform better academically and meet the needs of their student populations better than if you try to fit families under a one-size-fits-all monopoly,” Rees said Tuesday.

U.S. News and World Report creates its rankings in partnership with the North Carolina-based nonprofit RTI International. Schools are evaluated on how well they serve all students, math and reading scores, graduation rates, and preparation for college-level work. More highlights from this year’s list below, and you can see the full rankings here.

The Top 25 Public High Schools, as Ranked by U.S. News:

1. BASIS Scottsdale (AZ)
2. BASIS Tucson North (AZ)
3. BASIS Oro Valley (AZ)
4. School for the Talented and Gifted (TX)
5. BASIS Peoria (AZ)
6. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (VA)
7. BASIS Chandler (AZ)
8. Carnegie Vanguard High School (TX)
9. School of Science and Engineering (TX)
10. Pacific Collegiate Charter (CA)
11. Academic Magnet High School (SC)
12. Oxford Academy (CA)
13. Pine View School (FL)
14. Whitney High School (CA)
15. University High School (AZ)
16. High Technology High School (NJ)
17. High School of American Studies at Lehman College (NY)
18. DeBakey High School for Health Professions (TX)
19. Maine School of Science and Mathematics (ME)
20. Amistad Academy (CT)
21. University High School, Tolleson (AZ)
22. Design and Architecture Senior High (FL)
23. KIPP San Jose Collegiate (CA)
24. International Studies Charter High School (FL)
25. Manhattan Bridges High School (NY)

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

(Courtesy: AltSchool)

AltSchool, a four-year-old network of independent schools, has a dream of growing so that millions of students nationwide can use its personalized learning technology — and it’s starting by adding five executives from charter schools, public school districts, and the tech sector to its team, it announced Thursday morning.

“This is a big moment for us,” AltSchool COO and President Coddy Johnson said of the new hires. “Four of the five leaders have really been pushing for systemic change in the charter and public environments.”

This is important as AltSchool looks to expand its digital education platform beyond its eight private, pre-K-8 schools (35 to 120 students in each) in New York and California. This fall, AltSchool — which originated in Silicon Valley — will start operating its personalized learning platform in four independent schools in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Florida, and plans to share it with about 10 charter and independent schools the following year. In the 2019-20 school year, a handful of public schools will join in.

It’s a move that’s not about scale just yet, Johnson said, but rather about deep research and development. Unlike classic tech startups that create a tool and scale immediately, AltSchool wants to research how its platform — which helps teachers understand their students and personalize their instruction — works across the education sector first. In seven to 10 years, Johnson hopes to see the product serving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of kids.

The Every Student Succeeds Act will help this plan to expand, Johnson said, as the legislation gives states greater control over education and fosters innovation.

“We think about ESSA in the broader context of the education system today, which is the growing recognition (of) providing not just personalization, but student agency,” he said. “As we think of that year that we move to public environments, we think ESSA can be a helpful force in that.”

The five new executives were picked to help build relationships across education sectors during this research process:

• Devin Vodicka, who will serve as chief impact officer, is the current superintendent of Vista Unified School District and a California Superintendent of the Year who has worked on national efforts with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Education Technology and with Digital Promise’s League of Innovative Schools.
• Sam Franklin, who will serve as vice president of schools, was a district leader in Pittsburgh Public Schools, where he helped design the Pittsburgh Science & Technology Academy magnet school.
• Ben Kornell, VP of growth, has worked as the COO of Envision Charter Schools and the executive director of Envision Learning Partners.
• Colleen Broderick, the new VP of pedagogy, was chief learning designer for ReSchool in Colorado and worked at Expeditionary Learning.
• Laura Hughes Modi, VP of operations and services, comes from the tech sector rather than education: She worked at AirBnB as director of hospitality. She is tasked with facilitating a smooth transition between AltSchool’s digital environment and the physical schools.

Johnson said AltSchool hasn’t figured out how much to charge for the product yet, though schools could pay different rates depending on their need and the sector they come from. He declined to say how much the first four schools will be charged.

AltSchool was founded by former Google head of personalization Max Ventilla, providing a digital platform that helps teachers track their students’ interests and social emotional learning through a “portrait,” and design a “playlist” of remixed curriculum based on that. Students can select projects through the playlist and send the teacher pictures of their work through the platform for feedback — but unlike many personalized learning platforms, AltSchool isn’t simply about putting students in front of computers.

AltSchool’s approach has earned hundreds of millions of dollars in support from Silicon Valley donors including Mark Zuckerberg.

To implement the platform, schools must already be committed to personalized learning, Johnson said. AltSchool team members and engineers will be on site to work closely with their new school partners to monitor how the product is working with their students.

“There’s no research support for, nor do I think will emerge, that an entirely screen-based learning system provides a rich environment for whole child learning that would really accelerate those academic and life outcomes,” Johnson said. “So we are building something for real-world classrooms that is as much offline as online.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

Pro-union protesters rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court during a Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association hearing. (Photo: Getty Images)

The lawyers who challenged union fees in the high-stakes Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case have filed a new lawsuit in hopes of achieving a decisive Supreme Court victory — a result denied to them last year when a tie vote left mandatory dues in place.

The Center for Individual Rights filed Yohn v. California Teachers Association on Monday. The case argues against compulsory public employee union dues on behalf of eight educators and the nonunion Association of American Educators.

“The case is really identical in most respects to Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that the Center for Individual Rights brought before the Supreme Court just a little over a year ago,” Terry Pell, the center’s president, told reporters during a conference call Tuesday. “The legal claims are the same; the litigation strategy is the same. The principal difference is that we are representing new clients.”

(The 74: Teachers Unions at the Supreme Court: 9 Things You Need to Know About the Friedrichs Case)

The case makes the same argument as Friedrichs: that mandatory union dues — or so-called agency fees — violate teachers’ First Amendment right to withhold support from political causes and activities that conflict with their beliefs. About half the states, including California, require union-covered employees to pay at least some fees on the grounds that they benefit from union activities. The other half are right-to-work states, which do not.

Teachers pay the union about $1,000 a year in agency fees. They can opt out of the 30 percent that goes toward expenses unrelated to collective bargaining, or what the suit calls “political and ideological activities.”

But the plaintiffs argue that the union frequently stakes out political positions during collective bargaining, which all teachers are still required to pay for. “One example, when the union negotiates over salary and pension benefits, it’s essentially negotiating with local elected officials over the best use of tax dollars,” Pell said.

The suit also argues that having to send a formal opt-out notice every year is an “unnecessarily burdensome” process that infringes on First Amendment rights.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Friedrichs case in 2016, just a month before Justice Antonin Scalia died. When the eight remaining justices voted, they deadlocked 4–4, leaving the current rules intact.

After oral arguments, there had been much speculation on which way Scalia would vote. He often supported maintaining precedents, and the current system is based on the 1970s Abood case that allows public employees to opt out of political but not collective bargaining dues. However, during oral arguments, Scalia stated that collective bargaining is a political act.

(The 74: Inside the Supreme Court: Scalia, Once Seen as Key Friedrichs Swing Vote, Turns on Teachers Unions)

President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, has been described as similar to Scalia. However, Pell said that nothing from Gorsuch’s record indicates how he might rule in this case, if confirmed.

“Justice Scalia is a clear example of someone whose vote you couldn’t take for granted, and we certainly wouldn’t take, if he’s confirmed, Justice Gorsuch’s vote for granted either,” he said.

CIR filed the new case in the same district court as Friedrichs, with the strategy of getting the case before judges who are familiar with the arguments and will render a decision quickly, so that the case can move on to the next court, Pell said.

If the courts rule in favor of the plaintiffs, teachers will have to opt into, rather than opt out, of union fees.

“So instead of the teachers having to chase the union around to get a refund, the unions would have to approach the teachers to get them to affirmatively agree to pay any portion of the political dues,” Pell said.

Right now, he said, about 10 percent of the union’s teachers opt out of fees unrelated to collective bargaining. “A loss of 10 percent of the members is significant, but it’s not going to change the ability of the California Teachers Association to represent teachers,” he said. The case, he added, is neither pro- nor anti-union.

The union did not respond to a request for comment, but spokeswoman Claudia Briggs told The Orange County Register that the lawsuit could hurt union membership.

“Unions are made up of teachers, firefighters and other working people,” Briggs said. “Whatever happens to us happens to everybody else.”

Pell expects the case to land before the Supreme Court in the fall, with a decision in June 2018.

The latest fight over the constitutionality of charter schools in Washington state may not be resolved until 2018, meaning the parents, advocates and educators fighting to save the schools and the teachers union and other groups suing to close them could face a long year of legal wrangling.

There have already been some skirmishes — rulings on motions about whether the fate of charter schools should be tied to a perennial debate about Washington’s poorly funded public schools and who has standing to be part of the litigation — but the real first round will take place January 27, when the two familiar sides face each other in a courtroom once again.

On that date, a county Superior Court judge will hold a hearing to decide whether there are enough questions of fact about the legality of Washington’s charter schools that a trial is needed to resolve them.

Attorneys for both sides said the case will ultimately be appealed to the state Supreme Court, the same body that ruled Washington’s nine charter schools to be unconstitutional shortly after the schools opened their doors for the first time in Seattle, Tacoma and Spokane in 2015.

“What we are after is the public oversight of the money being used for educational purposes,” said Ann Murphy, president of the League of Women Voters of Washington, one of the groups that successfully challenged the schools the first time and is making many of the same arguments again about how charters are run.

Parent Shirline Wilson, whose son Miles attends Rainier Prep in Seattle, calls the latest litigation “nothing more than a threat and a political ploy” obscuring the real issue: her right to choose the best school for her son.

“Shouldn’t I as a private citizen be able to say, ‘Enough, I’m done. I need to find something more and something better, and my child is worth it’?” she said.

(VIDEO: Watch “Rescuing Washington’s Charter Schools: A 74 Special Report,” on the parent campaign to preserve their children’s schools)

After the January court hearing, the judge will have 30 days to make a ruling. Attorneys say they expect an appeal to land before the Supreme Court sometime between spring and autumn of 2017. Last time, the state’s high court waited more than a year after receiving the charter school case before coming to a decision. Because of the case’s history, both sides speculate the response time will be different, with a ruling arriving in late 2017 or early 2018.

Each wants the decision to come soon, especially for the students unsure of their educational futures.

“It’s important for kids in charter schools to understand what the situation is,” said Paul Lawrence, the plaintiffs’ attorney. “I think the Supreme Court is sensitive to that.”

Charter school parent Jessica Garcia said she is worried that if the Supreme Court rules against charter schools a second time, it will be their end in Washington state.

(Photo by Kate Stringer)

“Even [charter school funders] with the best intentions, I don’t know if they’d be willing to stay,” Garcia said. “Here we are after two and a half years fighting for this. How much longer do we want to invest money into something that keeps getting shot down?”

The court ruled in 2015 that Washington’s charter schools did not meet the state constitution’s definition of common schools because they were not overseen by a locally elected school board and so could not be funded from the same revenue source as traditional public schools.

That set off months of emotional appearances and hearings at the state capitol by charter school parents, students and educators, lobbying Washington lawmakers for a legislative fix. Legislators did that in March when they narrowly passed a bill funding charter schools with lottery revenue.

(The 74: In Washington State, Both Senate and House Approve Last-Minute Bill to Save Charter Schools)

That prompted the League of Women Voters, the Washington Teachers Association (the state’s biggest union) and El Centro de la Raza, among others, to file the second lawsuit. In late November, a King County Superior Court judge granted a few wins for charter supporters by dismissing two of their arguments.

“It’s obviously really good news that the judge knocked out [two arguments],” said Rob McKenna, an attorney for the defendants. “That means we already have one judge agreeing with us.”

One of the arguments thrown out faulted the way charter schools were spared from closure in 2015 by temporarily becoming what’s known in Washington as Alternative Learning Experience schools. The other, more critical argument said charter schools interfere with fully funding all public education.

Charter school opponents used this same line of thinking during the 2016 legislative session. At that time, the state Supreme Court was fining the legislature $100,000 a day for failing to adequately fund education — and still is. Some lawmakers argued that the state should be addressing the funding crisis for Washington’s 1 million traditional public school students rather than its 1,000 charter school students.

(The 74: Washington State’s Schools Chief Is So Fed Up About Underfunded Schools He Might Run for Governor)

The judge disagreed with linking the two, saying the plaintiffs’ argument that funding charter schools would harm the ample funding of district schools was speculation. The plaintiffs have filed a motion asking that the judge reconsider and allow the larger funding question back into the case.

When it comes to money for schools, charter parents say they are just as invested in pushing the state to fully fund public education. In 2017, some charter school parents plan to meet with legislators, who are working on fully funding education, in order to make sure charter schools have a consistent voice at the table, said Jessica Garcia.

“We need to stop fighting over bread crumbs,” Garcia said. “There are a hundred other common school programs that are fully funded, and charter schools would be one more piece of the puzzle.”

In the November ruling, the judge also partially granted the defendant’s request to dismiss some plaintiffs, including the League of Women Voters and El Centro de la Raza. However, the judge allowed the lawyer to reargue their standing.

“We’ve fixed the issue, they’re back in the case, and on we go,” said Lawrence, the plaintiffs’ attorney.

Regardless of some point dismissals, the plaintiffs say their core argument is still moving forward.

“The main constitutional argument that charter schools are not common schools under our state constitution still stands,” the 85,000-member Washington Education Association said in a statement.

That question goes back to how charter schools are governed. Charter schools report to a state charter school commission rather than a locally elected school board. Charter supporters maintain that this freedom from bureaucracy allows for more innovation and flexibility and actually comes with greater accountability.

(The 74: Robin Lake: Shameful Claim to Fame — Will Washington Become First State to Shutter Successful Schools?)

Washington’s charter school law just received a perfect score from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers. The organization gives points for charter laws that prioritize accountability, replicate high-performing schools and require annual performance reports. Of the 44 states with charter laws, only three received a perfect score.

The Gen Next Foundation supported The 74’s coverage of Washington state charters and the production of the video.

This article was published in partnership with The 74.

For the four months or so between confirming college acceptance and arriving on campus for the first semester, these teenagers are confronted with an increasingly complicated set of tasks that they must complete in order to enroll as college freshmen. There is complex paperwork to fill out. There are numbers to crunch. Many students find themselves realizing, for the first time, just how much getting their degree is going to cost.

And since most of this happens during summer vacation, the teachers and guidance counselors who coached them all through the college admissions process are no longer available to help. Their entire lives are about to change, and they find themselves without the support network that backed them up all through high school.

It’s enough to break 10 percent to 40 percent of students, according to a study from Harvard University. Rather than fighting through it, they give up. They melt away.

Educators call this phenomenon “summer melt,” when students who have committed to attending a college suddenly change their minds. It is most prevalent among students who planned to attend community college, and the majority are from low-income families, according to the Harvard study.

It’s not that these students lack ambition for higher education. It’s that the preparation is simply overwhelming.

The paperwork is monumental, especially for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). It requires tax and financial information that many students have never dealt with before, and those who are the first in their families to be accepted to college don’t have their parents’ experience to fall back on. Some students come from families who are undocumented and don’t have tax forms. Some don’t realize the differences between loans, grants, and scholarships until they’re presented with a bill over the summer. Some work full-time jobs and don’t have time for setting up email accounts, dorm assignments, food plans and class registrations.

“It speaks to this gap in institutional support transferring from high school to college,” said Joel Snyder, a social studies teacher at Green Dot Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School in South LA. “You could have a guidance counselor in high school, but even the most amazing ones can’t track all those students as they go on to college.”

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that each year some 2 million students typically enroll in college immediately following their high school graduation. This means hundreds of thousands of students are likely melting away over the summer. And the problem may soon get even worse, as the NCES projects that college enrollment is set to spike 14 percent over the next decade.

Supporting all those soon-to-be freshmen will be extremely challenging—but the Harvard study reported that interventions at the institutional level “can have a significant impact on alleviating the summer melt phenomenon and increasing college enrollment rates.”

That’s why Snyder has helped develop intervention plans with other California Green Dot charters to address their schools’ melt rate, which hovers around 20 percent. One of these interventions is a launch-to-college event in April that brings alumni, college representatives and financial aid officers together to meet and encourage supportive transitions from high school to college. Snyder is also developing three alumni events throughout the school year to bring high school grads back and connect them with internship opportunities.

At KIPP Houston—which currently sees a 5 percent to 10 percent summer melt rate—a seven-member alumni team assists recent graduates of its charter high schools. KIPP Through College Director Bryan Contreras said each team member has a cohort of high school grads; they text, call and email their advisees at least once a week over the summer to make sure they’re submitting forms and to see if they have any questions about the process. The team also holds summer bridge activities that get advisers and students together to navigate health forms, financial aid awards and other paperwork.

Contreras said one student unexpectedly told him this summer that he was switching from a college in Pennsylvania to one in Minnesota because he was worried he couldn’t afford the tuition. This last-minute, $65,000 decision, as Contreras put it, was made without the student talking to an adviser. Contreras encouraged the student to meet with his team so they could work on finding the best financial package together.

“We see this as a baton race,” Contreras said. “This is the final leg. Students are fearful of change, so we hope to coach them through that.”

In New York City, the public school system recruits college students to work with recent graduates of 100 city high schools throughout the summer, mentoring them and encouraging persistence toward matriculation. Other intervention efforts involve additional preparation for school counselors and outreach to families. Some 1,700 high school counselors have gone through summer melt training, the NYC Department of Education reported. The department also tries to instill a college-going mindset in parents and students early, with informational college nights starting in middle school.

While alumni are often the touchpoints for students, teachers sometimes take on that responsibility. Halley Curtis, an English teacher at Hudson High School of Learning Technologies in Manhattan, advises a group of six seniors in her homeroom throughout the school year. Curtis has sat with students on speakerphone with the IRS trying to untangle tax information for FAFSA. She’s taken students on college campus tours, visited their homes to help with paperwork and texted them to remind them about deadlines.

Curtis says she wishes she’d earned an accounting degree in addition to her master’s in education. She’s only half-joking.

Her six advisees all applied to college, and four will be attending this fall. The two who won’t got stuck on FAFSA forms, she said, but she’s still helping them aim for a January starting date.

For all the work Curtis sees her fellow teachers and school counselors put in, she said, she gets frustrated that it’s not enough.

“It’s not a good enough answer to have a teacher advocate because it takes so much from the teacher, and I don’t think teachers can do that sort of thing long term when teaching,” she said.

It’s a constant anxiety in teachers’ minds that no matter how much they try to help their students make the leap, sometimes it just isn’t enough.

“I would be fearful every time an [alum] would come back to visit because they might say they weren’t in college,” Snyder said.

This story was published in partnership with The74Million.org.