The Covid-19 pandemic has run roughshod over so much of our education system, closing schools, sending students home to try to learn remotely, and obliterating last year’s summative state tests. One consequence of that cancellation is that, even if students are tested this spring, it will still be impossible to construct typical measures of their learning growth, as most such measures incorporate the previous year’s score. As fanatics for student growth measures—given that they are the fairest and most accurate metrics of schools’ impacts on achievement—those of us at the Fordham Institute wanted to know if some kind of value-added calculations could still be produced despite the testing gap year. Such measures would provide helpful information about which districts, schools, and students have progressed the most and which have experienced the worst Covid-induced learning loss during the pandemic. That would help us identify schools and practices worth emulating, and highlight institutions where students need the most help once the pandemic is behind us.

Fordham’s new report, Bridging the Covid Divide: How States Can Measure Student Achievement Growth in the Absence of 2020 Test Scores, provides the answers. We turned to a team of researchers in the department of economics at the University of Missouri—Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons, and Cheng Qian—who have many years of experience studying how best to measure achievement growth. The team used administrative data from Missouri to simulate the testing gap year that states face as a result of Covid-19, and to generate ideas about how to work through it. Using data from the 2016–17 through 2018–19 school years, they calculated growth over two years to determine how similar gap-year estimates are to the “business-as-usual” condition where testing data are available every year.

Their results speak to the feasibility of estimating two-year growth measures for districts and for schools, including technical suggestions for handling thorny data issues such as student mobility. The researchers also go on to assess the feasibility of growth measures when two years of test scores are missing, simulating the condition if spring 2021 testing is also cancelled.

There’s good news and bad news:

• Happily, both district- and school-level growth estimates based on a single-year gap convey information that’s very similar to growth estimates based on data with no gap year. Rankings of districts and schools only change slightly when a gap year in testing is simulated, and demographic factors such as race and socioeconomic status are not predictive of such changes. This analysis also suggests that such estimates will be valid for large subgroups such as economically disadvantaged students. We can’t say whether that will be the case for smaller subgroups.
• But there’s bad news, too. Just 27 percent of students attend schools that could generate growth measures if two consecutive years of tests are missing. That’s because most students in the standard testing window, grades three through eight, who were tested in 2019—the last time statewide assessments were implemented—will be in different schools by the spring of 2022. For example, third graders in 2019 will be sixth graders in 2022, which in most districts will make them middle schoolers. If we want to have any school-level measures of student progress in the near future, it’s vitally important that states assess students in 2021. (District growth measures will be doable, and relatively accurate, with another year of missing test data.)

In practical terms, what does this mean?

Calculating student growth measures from 2019 to 2021 is eminently feasible, and the results will be quite accurate—so long as states test students this year. Those measures will provide essential information to guide the educational recovery phase.

But if states cancel testing this year, too, it will be extremely difficult to determine how effective individual schools were during this challenging, historic period in American education. And of course, it will further delay the time until we can restart measuring student progress and holding schools accountable again.

To be sure, we understand the challenge of testing students during a pandemic. Though miraculous vaccines are offering light at the end of a long and dark tunnel, it’s hard to predict exactly how the next few months will unfold. Even if teachers are vaccinated and students are welcomed back for in-person learning (a big “if,” especially in big-city school systems), some families will likely want their children to remain home until they are vaccinated, too. And taking precious days out of the instructional calendar for testing this spring—just when schools can finally start to address students’ social and emotional needs, and significant learning losses—is a hard sell, even for testing-and-accountability hawks like us.

So allow me to make a humble suggestion, albeit one not proposed by the study’s authors: States might shift the spring 2021 assessments to fall 2021 when schools reopen—with luck for all students. This would allow states to compute those all-important student growth measures for the 2019–21 period, plus establish a baseline for student progress during the 2021–22 school year. To be sure, some states will be better equipped to manage this move than others, particularly those that don’t now legislatively mandate testing in the spring and that have enough internal capacity to acclimate schools effectively to new fall assessment schedules. And statistical adjustments will need to be made for summer learning loss.

Still, if states start now, they’ve got nine months to put revised policies in place. With mere weeks to throw together plans when Covid-19 first descended in March 2020, that should feel like a lifetime to state and local education officials today. And for all of the reasons stated above, it’s well worth the effort.

This post is adapted from an email conversation between Marc Tucker and Fordham’s Michael J. Petrilli, in which Marc was responding to Mike’s recent article, “The case for urban charter schools.” It also appeared in Fordham’s Flypaper newsletter.

I am under no illusions about the quality of traditional public schools in the U.S., and I understand the attraction of offering charter schools as an alternative to people who find they must put up with the worst of them if they want any education for their children. But it infuriates me that one of the richest countries in the world would conclude that the chances of having a world class public education system are so slim that the best we can do is a system that will marginally improve some of the worst of our schools. This country has, time and again, found a way to upend the system when it no longer works. Why can’t we do that now? Why is it impossible for us to decide that we want schools for all our kids that are as good as any in the world?

My perspective is situated in a particular analysis of the place of the United States in the global political economy. I see our country as offering a low-quality work force to the world’s employers but charging a very high price for that labor, at a time when rapidly advancing intelligent technologies are about to decimate the market for people with the low level of knowledge and skills the majority of our high school students now graduate with. Further, I see the way our society now works as locking those with relatively poor educations and their children into a world in which there is less and less hope of success. The lower rungs up the social and economic ladders are fast disappearing.

There is a reason that Donald Trump “loves the uneducated.” With luck, we will escape Trump. But it was the colossal failure of our national education system since the 1970s—a system that has produced no improvement whatsoever in the performance of our high school students in half a century, that has created Trump’s base of frustrated, angry, and humiliated working-class people. Their numbers will only grow as the pace of automation grows. That will only make it more likely that a smarter politician than Trump will succeed where Trump has failed. If the ranks of those who do not have the education needed to do the jobs that will not be automated grow, the trashing of our national Capitol building that took place on January 6 will prove to be only a harbinger of things to come. The White supremacists who were in that crowd were riding a very large and growing wave of economic despair.

Half a century ago, the country made a historic decision to provide broad support to the disadvantaged students in our schools, mainly Black and Hispanic students in our big city schools. They still need our help, as much actually as they ever did, because, at the high school level, hardly any progress has been made at all in half a century. But the world has changed.

We were put on notice eighteen years ago, when, in 2013, Oxford University, reported that 47 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated using equipment that was available at the time. As the cost of automation comes down, more and more of those jobs are being automated. New jobs are being created in their place, but it is very clear that most of those jobs require much more and better education than the people who are losing their jobs have.

The whole process of job automation is being accelerated by Covid-19, as employers replace people—who must be socially-distanced, who can sue their employer for not following CDC guidelines, and who can strike if they feel that they are being endangered or treated unfairly—with machines who think, but do not complain or need to be paid.

The vast majority of charter schools are in our cities, but any education policy that is implicitly based on the assumption that it is mainly our inner-city schools that are in trouble and the rest of our schools are in pretty good shape, is, to my mind, absurd. We live in a country that is painting itself into a corner, a country in which fewer and fewer people will have the knowledge and skills needed to do the kinds of jobs that will be in any sense rewarding or fulfilling. Employers will be able to pay less for the machines and get more for their investment. When masses of people of all colors can’t find decent work, the social fabric will fall apart and we will lose our democracy. Trump was just a shot across the bow.

From my perspective, what is at stake is not just justice and equity for the poor and minority residents of our big cities, important as that is, but the viability of the Republic, and we don’t have much time. I have been looking at the education systems of the countries that have been most successful in educating their students because they have done so much better than we—on average achievement, the achievement of their top performers, and on all the relevant gaps in the performance among their own students. We act in the United States as if it is up to us smart Americans to invent a new and better way to educate our children. Which is exactly what the CDC did when the coronavirus hit. The CDC wasted almost two precious months designing new tests that ultimately did not work when perfectly good tests were available from the Swiss from the start. We get first prize for hubris in all departments.

Our whole education system is incoherent and broken. It was designed for another era and needs to be rebuilt. That sounds impossible, but most of the top performers rebuilt their own systems sometime in the last fifty years. They only did it when they faced what they took to be a crisis. The nature of those crises varied, of course. We think there is a crisis, but it is not in the schools that serve our kids, it is in the public schools in the city. We come up with ideas for creating schools there that we would not dream of sending our own kids to. I regard that as totally irrational. Wrong definition of the problem—wrong solution.

I am not opposed to charter schools. Indeed, I served with pride as a founding member of the board of the BASIS Schools charter in Washington, D.C. But, from where I stand, there is no evidence at all that widespread implementation of charter schools will result in the dramatic changes in student performance in the United States that are now required. For me, charter schools are a policy Band-Aid when a heart transplant is needed.

Through my whole professional career, I have been deeply concerned about the lousy education that most Black and Hispanic kids are getting in our inner cities. But my experience in my home state of Maine, which has lost its forest products industry, shoe industry, textile industry and fin fish industry in my lifetime, has made it clear that the same thing can be said of the rural schools I am surrounded by and a growing number of the kids in our low-income suburbs. What is so deeply depressing to me is that I see our politics pitting poorly educated Whites against poorly educated Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. The problem isn’t the “others.” It is the poor education that the majority of young Americans are getting that is robbing them of their future and bidding fair to rob all of us of our country.

That is why I see charters as a side show.

Reducing student absenteeism is a key goal in many schools’ efforts to improve academic outcomes. The reasons that students skip are myriad—indifference to school, illness, jobs, caring for siblings, and more—which means that there is no one solution. Carrots such as rewards for showing up and sticks such as reporting children’s absences to their parents have shown varying levels of success and failure in recent studies. A recent working paper from the Annenberg Institute finds significant attendance benefits in a program designed to tackle absenteeism from a different angle—protecting students during their commute.

The Safe Passage Program (SPP) places unarmed adults employed by neighborhood-based, non-profit organizations to keep watch on specific city blocks around designated public schools. SPP monitors serve as a clear physical presence in neon vests and perform basic surveillance and crime reporting on assigned blocks during student arrival and dismissal times, two to three hours in the morning and two to three hours in the afternoon. They are paid $10 per hour and receive annual training on conflict de-escalation, first aid, CPR, and how to monitor and report criminal activity and communicate with school officials. Monitors generally keep in touch with each other and schools via cell phones or two-way radios.

SPP is active in numerous cities around the country, but the Annenberg analysis looks specifically at its presence in Chicago. It only includes elementary schools, which means K–8 schools in Chicago, due to a lack of complete data available for district high schools. Analysts constructed a panel of elementary schools that were open continuously for at least six years between the 2007–08 and 2015–16 school years. There were 391 untreated control schools and eighty-three eventually-treated SPP schools. The program started with fifty-three elementaries in 2013–14 and expanded in each subsequent year until it reached eighty-three in 2016–17.

Analysts use a difference-in-differences approach that leverages this staggered rollout of SPP and includes school and year fixed effects. In short, the variation in timing of the introduction of SPP across schools captures the extent to which SPP affects school outcomes. They have data not only on the SPP program, but on various school-level data, student behavior, and local crime data.

The topline finding is that SPP resulted in an 11 percent reduction in the school level absence rate. If absences were distributed uniformly across students in the school, this would equate to around 1.4 additional attendance days per student per year. In terms of heterogeneous effects, Hispanic students in particular appear to benefit even more from the program. Compared to all students, impacts do not differ for students from low income backgrounds, Black students, and those with disabilities.

Next they look into potential mechanisms to explain these findings—mainly whether the reductions could stem from outside or inside the school walls. In terms of outside, perhaps student perceptions of safety to and from school help to stem absences. So they look at crime rates within a one-quarter mile radius of schools during school days and hours and find that the introduction of SPP did reduce crime rates near treated schools. For instance, violent crimes were reduced by almost 10 percent and property crimes by nearly 15 percent. In terms of inside the school, maybe community monitors could prevent or deter violent incidents from happening. And they do indeed find reduced incidents of serious student misconduct within treated schools that amount to a 27 percent decline. However, it’s possible that reductions in out-of-school suspensions—which they also found—are due to these decreases in serious misconduct and also could have boosted attendance.

Some aspects of these findings make intuitive sense: Students who feel unsafe traveling from home to school would be more likely to skip to avoid becoming a victim of violence. Any increase in safety—real or perceived—could result in better attendance. This is analogous to anecdotes about some children reporting more satisfaction with remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic because it allows them to avoid bullies and other hazards.

Let’s not forget that safety is second on the rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—only after our need for air, water, food, sleep, and shelter—so schools would be wise to address it before they double down on math and English language arts instruction.

SOURCE: Robert Gonzalez and Sarah Komisarow, “Can Community Crime Monitoring Reduce Student Absenteeism?,” retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University (September 2020).

Most young children are surrounded by cell phones, tablets, and computers, both for personal use and, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, for school. Studies show that extensive technology use can have negative effects on children’s development and academic achievement, but little research exists to show which children are most likely to become frequent users of technology.

A new study from Penn State University’s Paul L. Morgan, Yangyang Wang, and Adrienne D. Woods examines what factors in U.S. kindergartens are predictive of frequent online use by the time those students are fifth graders. Students representing a variety of socio-demographics, family compositions, and child characteristics were included in the study.

The researchers surveyed parents, teachers, and the students themselves. Parents reported how often they engaged their kindergarteners in literacy and cognitive activities, including reading, storytelling, playing, and singing, as well as how often they went on family outings. They also reported their family TV rules—what shows their children were allowed to watch, for how long, and at what time of day. Teachers reported on the kindergarteners’ self-regulation skills. They also reported whether students externalized behavior problems (e.g., getting in fights) or internalized them (e.g., feeling sad). And finally, once the students reached fifth grade, they self-reported on the frequency of their online usership of messaging including texting and emailing, online gaming, and social networking.

The results from the surveys, all of which were statistically significant, showed that different characteristics were predictive of different frequencies and forms of online technology use. Children from higher income families spent less time on all three forms of technology. Most children who were exposed to more literacy activities were less likely to use messaging and social networking. Children whose families had stricter family TV rules were less likely to be gamers. Those who exhibited external behavior problems were more likely to use all three forms of technology. Boys were more likely to use online games whereas girls were more likely to use messaging or social networks. And finally, children with disabilities were more likely to use online games.

The researchers acknowledge that results from surveys—especially if they’re surrounding a sensitive subject such as parents admitting their child’s screen time—may not be altogether accurate, saying, “Frequent users often under-report time online relative to data obtained through tracking software.”

Nevertheless, the study’s findings show that differences in individual traits (measured in this case by how children behave and self-regulate), as well as contextual factors such as socioeconomic status and at-home practices, can help predict not only frequency of online technology use, but also what form of online technology children are likely to use. And better understanding these predictors could help schools, teachers, and families think about more “developmentally appropriate screen time routines.”

To wholly withhold children from using online technology isn’t prudent. And for most children nowadays, it isn’t practical, either—between online schooling and homework, FaceTiming family members from quarantine, and the myriad other daily uses for online technology. But appropriate screen time practice doesn’t necessarily mean simply cutting screen time. As the researchers point out, it means being sure to also engage children in other activities necessary for development—reading, playing, socializing, and moving—some of which can be done with the aid of a screen. Understanding what factors can predict extensive technology use may help to identify when extensive technology use is replacing other developmentally important activities, and support families in remedying it.

SOURCE: Paul L. Morgan, Yangyang Wang, & Adrienne D. Woods. Risk and Protective Factors for Frequent Electronic Device Use of Online Technologies. Child Development (2020).

• Black families have valid reasons to distrust authorities, and that may be one reason they are skeptical about sending their children back to school during the pandemic. —The New Yorker
• With vaccinations a few weeks away for Chicago teachers, administrative leaders and the local union remain in negotiations over the long-term planning for school reopening. —Chicago Sun Times
• Secretary of Education nominee Miguel Cardona encourages low-stakes testing in the spring, arguing that they “provide a crucial tool by shining a spotlight on problems.” —Washington Post
• University of Michigan students offer free virtual tutoring across the Detroit metro area. —MLive
• “Teachers unions are positioning to negotiate how and when schools will reopen. Money, not safety, will decide.” —The 74
• San Antonio, one of the largest school districts, and others in Georgia and North Carolina, make significant investments to dramatically expand hybrid learning options with an eye towards a new future of learning. —Education Week
• A new report from the Clayton Christensen Institute finds that teacher workloads have increased dramatically in the remote world, with almost 50 percent of teachers primarily developing their own curricular materials. —Education Week
•  Democrats in Congress may now use the Congressional Review Act to overturn certain regulations with a simple majority vote, raising questions around regulations on faith-based discrimination and sexual assault on college campuses. —Wall Street Journal

Rhode Islanders just saw their governor, Gina Raimondo, tapped to become President-elect Biden’s Secretary of Commerce. If confirmed, her appointment means that the state’s next governor will be Lieutenant Governor Dan McKee, a former mayor whose legislative efforts helped create the Rhode Island Mayoral Academies, the highest performing charter schools in the state. Unlike the typical politician who speaks in platitudes about the “importance of education,” McKee has been a principled disruptor with a laser focus on student outcomes.

Prior to his career in local and state politics, McKee was a small business owner and an AAU basketball coach. When asked about his commitment to leveling the playing field of education and opening up opportunities for kids, he invariably recalls his years as a coach. He shares memories of traveling up and down the east coast with boys whose future opportunities were wildly disparate for one reason: their schooling experiences. Despite the basketball talent they shared, their educational foundations were worlds apart. Some had attended good schools and were supported in the process of applying to college. Others were years behind academically and lacked even the most basic understanding of what college was, let alone how to apply. What he saw up close was the injustice of an education system that chains children and families to their zip code and creates educational haves and have-nots.

When he became mayor of his hometown of Cumberland, which is where I have lived since 2005, he founded the Office of Children, Youth and Learning (OCYL). This municipal office was born out of McKee’s fervent belief that we do children a massive disservice when we limit their learning to the confines of the school day. He had a vision of keeping children learning when they weren’t in school, regardless of their family income.

I personally took advantage of this program when my oldest son was in kindergarten. At the time, our town only had a half day program, so I signed him up for a literacy class that met twice a week in the morning. I paid full freight, which was extremely reasonable, but they charged on a sliding scale, and children who qualified for free or reduced-price lunch could attend for free.

OCYL proved to be a great alternative option for parents who did not have their children enrolled in a typical, often high-cost pre-school. But McKee’s vision was not just for young children. It also permits older kids to take art, music, chess, math, and SAT prep classes.

McKee has long believed that we should be asking how we can use the tools that already exist, like mayors’ offices, to increase learning opportunities for kids. Given the current crisis and its impact on learning, now might be a great time for strategies like OCYL to become part of a post-Covid system that helps us begin the very hard work of getting students back on track. Out-of-school learning has an important role to play, and a proven blueprint for it already exists.

Dan McKee was also a proponent of the importance of socioeconomic and racial integration long before it became the hot bandwagon that everyone has decided to jump aboard. Largely informed by his experience as a basketball coach, McKee set out to open a school that would provide an opportunity for children to learn across lines of difference—lines of race, income, and zip code. He wanted to build a school from scratch. And the end result, with help from countless people, became Blackstone Valley Prep (BVP), a school that would serve two urban and two suburban districts. This new charter school would level the field of opportunity so that zip code school assignment would not be an impediment to getting to and through college.

I was blessed for my own children to attend BVP through fifth grade. And I worked part-time at the school for a bit, as well. (This is also where I had the pleasure of meeting Fordham’s president, Michael Petrilli!) The school has changed the trajectory of many lives and given families hope for a future that they had only imagined before. McKee knew that if his basketball players had been able to attend school together, the lives of those who needed and deserved a different ending would have gotten one. The additional Mayoral Academies that came after BVP are Achievement First and Rise Prep.

While the Democratic party both nationally and locally has become increasingly hostile to charter schools, Dan McKee stands firm in his belief that these schools of choice are one crucial lever in getting more children into schools with high expectations that will actually prepare them for the future. Over the years, he has built a diverse coalition of mayors, community leaders, and parents who know that the status quo is a path to nowhere for far too many children in the Ocean State. I’m hopeful that his experience coupled with this new platform can be a catalyst to nudge his party back toward the educational justice that comes with giving families options.

The federal government continues its spending spree aimed at ameliorating the effects of the pandemic. At the end of December, Congress passed and President Trump signed a $900 billion package that made headlines for sending eligible Americans direct payments of $600. Perhaps less known is that the legislation also includes $54.3 billion for K–12 education, a sum that more than quadruples the $13.2 billion earmarked for primary and secondary education in last March’s CARES Act.

In general, the new relief package works similarly to the CARES Act funding. States will receive money based on the allocation rules in the federal education law known as ESSA. Ohio is expected to receive just shy of $2.0 billion in relief aid, or approximately $1,100 per pupil. Ninety percent of this funding—known as the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER II)–will be allocated to Ohio districts and public charter schools via Title I formulas, which generally steer more dollars to high-poverty systems. For instance, according to estimates from Whiteboard Advisors, Cleveland Metropolitan School District will receive about $3,000 per pupil in ESSER II aid versus $238 per pupil for the wealthier suburban district of Rocky River. Districts and charters will have broad spending flexibilities and until September 2023 to use the federal funds.

Just like the earlier CARES Act package, ESSER II also allows state education agencies to set aside 10 percent of the overall allocation for discretionary purposes. Thus, the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) will soon receive a sizeable chunk of money—about $200 million—to use as it sees fit. It’s not yet clear how the department will spend these funds, but it has plenty of options (though the uses are subject to state controlling board approval). They could pursue centralized initiatives like the remote-learning support system launched with CARES Act dollars, provide “direct student supports” (e.g., paying for AP courses and exams or high-quality tutoring), subsidize Internet access, create need- or competitive-based grant programs, or simply send the money to districts and charters via formula.

Also akin to the CARES Act, the new relief package includes a much smaller Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund (GEER II). Nationally, the legislation provides $4.1 billion in GEER II funds, of which $2.75 billion has been set aside for nonpublic schools, as they don’t receive support through ESSER II.[1] In Ohio, nonpublic schools will receive $155 million in federal relief aid through the governor’s fund. An additional $46 million will be sent to the Ohio governor’s office to use at its discretion on early childhood, K–12, or higher education.

What all does this mean for Ohio education? Three thoughts:

1. Ohio schools will need to figure out how to spend more money, rather than prepare for budget cuts. To be sure, the $2 billion in federal relief aid represents just a fraction of the $25 billion per year spent on K –12 education in Ohio. But the amount is nothing to scoff at. For many districts, it’ll mean millions more in their coffers. Moreover, with recent state tax revenues higher than expected despite the pandemic, the extra boost in federal aid may not be needed to offset state budget cuts. Despite what some had feared, it’s altogether possible that Ohio schools will soon be deciding how to spend an influx of new money rather than working to slim down their budgets.

2. How these relief funds are spent will matter immensely. As noted above, Ohio schools will have flexibility in how they spend the ESSER II funds. But will they squander these valuable resources on unnecessary or ineffectual initiatives? Or will they use them to provide extra support to students who have been knocked off-track? Over on Twitter, Vlad Kogan, a political science professor at The Ohio State University wrote:

If your district spends its new federal funds on anything other than (1) extending learning time or (2) intensive tutoring for the most at-risk kids, they are committing educational malpractice. Vote the board out as soon as you can.

Amen to that. Research and common sense suggest that in-person expanded learning time and high-dosage tutoring would probably give students the best chance of catching up. Programs such as intensive tutoring or summer school also make sense given the temporary nature of these funds and the hopefully short-term need for remediation. Districts, however, should be wary of more permanent expenditures such as across-the-board pay raises or hiring additional full-time staff, which could be difficult to sustain when the emergency dollars dry up.

It’s worth noting that ODE and the governor’s office will also be facing decisions about how to spend roughly a quarter billion in federal relief aid. Much like Ohio’s districts and charters, they’ll need to consider how best to leverage these dollars to meet the needs of students (a topic we’ll tackle in future blogs).

3. To guide spending decisions, Ohio needs up-to-date information about where students stand. At this point, no one really knows the extent of the pandemic’s effects on students. State assessments were cancelled last spring, so no system-wide data on the academic toll exist. There is also a dearth of information about how many Ohio students have gone missing from school. To target these emergency funds toward students most at-risk of falling through the cracks, state and local leaders need information ASAP. State authorities, for instance, could use attendance data to help schools identify and re-engage students who have fallen off the radar, something that Arkansas and New Mexico are doing. Local educational leaders could rely on spring 2021 state assessment data to encourage off-track students to take advantage of the extra supports afforded by the relief aid.

* * * * *

With a seemingly unlimited willingness to enlarge the national debt, the federal government has bolstered school finances through the CARES Act and the ESSER/GEER II funding. It’s possible that the incoming Biden administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress will keep the gravy train going. But the largesse doesn’t mean that schools can spend haphazardly, without giving much thought to the needs of students or the consequences of today’s decisions on tomorrow’s budgets. Rather, Ohio’s educational leaders will need to put these dollars to good use. With many students struggling to keep pace, every penny will count.

1. Elected school boards across Ohio are holding their organizational meetings in the early part of January, with varying levels of drama emanating from them and into the pages of the local news. We have discussed Youngstown City Schools (the Board that Should Not Even Exist) and Akron City Schools (“We just got a letter. We just got a letter...”) and now we have Sylvania City Schools. A long-serving elected board member dropped the mic her keys, resigned on the spot, and left the building just as the “organizing” portion of the meeting began. You’ll have to read Facebook the piece to learn about her reason for doing so, but I’ll bet you can guess it had nothing to do with students, curriculum, learning, or anything like that. It didn’t. ‘Tis the season, I guess. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 1/11/21)
    
2. Here is an interesting look at the future of school funding legislation in the new year. There are some interesting, moderated voices in here, including from legislators on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps this year could end up being an improvement on the last one. (Fulton County Expositor, 1/12/21)
   
   

3. One big thing that may influence the funding legislation process differently this time around: truckloads of money coming to school districts in the form of more federal Covid relief. Akron City Schools is a case in point. Elected school board members there (hopefully all “rowing in the same direction”, per instructions) told the ABJ that they are expecting at least 40 million in unexpected dollars imminently. Because of this, they seem ready to scrap previous plans to put a levy on the May ballot and instead start figuring out how to spend down their “windfall”. (Akron Beacon Journal, 1/13/21)
    
4. Snap! Columbus City Schools’ superintendent announced yesterday that the district would disregard local health guidance and restart winter sports practices this Friday. They have been on hold since mid-November (No word on the restart of in-person schooling, which has been on hold since March 2020, as the piece notes.) Competitions are slated to begin on January 24, the very day that a statewide curfew and a local stay-at-home advisory are currently set to expire. With some caveats, as you might imagine. You would think that having just 40 kids protesting the other day would not have been enough to change the supe’s mind (never mind the elected school board, members of which were not involved in the decision and just might have something to say on the issue down the line), but it turns out that there are only around 1,000 winter sports athletes in the state’s largest district. Seems kinda small to me. But obviously mighty. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/12/21)
   
   

5. Finally today: It’s history, man! The creation of the Cleveland Scholarship Program way back in the 90s is cited in a Forbes piece as a bipartisan success story from the state of Ohio. “We were losing 50 % of our end product and it was time to stop the hemorrhaging,” said former Cleveland City Councilwoman Fannie Lewis (a Democrat) of her mindset at the time. “And when I read an article about choice it was the thing I made up my mind to become a part of.” She partnered with Republican Governor George Voinovich to create the first voucher program in the state. Easy peasy! The piece goes on to say that we need more of this across-the-divide magic in the modern day. As you might imagine. (Forbes, 1/12/21)

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