1. An elected board member in Cambridge City Schools has a three-pronged message for parents looking toward next school year: Don’t do anything hasty, we don’t know what school will look like, but we still know ours will be the best thing for you. Bobcat Blended Learning Bonanza, anyone? (The Alliance Review, 6/7/20)
    
2. Speaking of computer learning (were we?), Fairborn City Schools is celebrating the donation of three quarters of a million dollars—from an anonymous Fairborn grad—to be used to provide laptops to students. The goal is a laptop for everyone going forward. There’s no mention of any technology fee associated with this, but things can change so quickly these days. Don’t you agree? I’m thinking that Blu Skyhawk’s Cyber Synod might be a good name for an online school. (WDTN-TV, Dayton, 6/5/20)
    
3. State officials can hold their horses too, it seems. Senator Matt Huffman has proposed a bill which would keep him, his colleagues, and all other state officials from calling the shots in school reopening decisions for next school year. Instead, local school leaders – district, charter, STEM, and private schools—would decide when and how to reopen their buildings. If they have buildings, that is. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6/8/20)
   

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The idea that all postsecondary education on average is good is misleading. The truth is, there’s significant variation in which academic degrees bring workers the most value, and why they do.

Research from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce has long supported the idea that more education tends to be a good investment. But what you study and what job you take are of considerable importance in determining how well, financially, you will be once you settle into a career.

A new report from economist John Winters, What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings Across States and Metropolitan Areas, adds important nuance to the body of work showing that education credentials matter. It finds that earnings differ greatly based on local geography, further demonstrating that the value of education stems in part from its relationship to a specific labor market.

Winters calculates the percentage difference in mean earnings between workers with and without a college education, known as the college earnings premium. Specifically, he presents the difference in earnings between bachelor’s degree and associate’s degree holders and between recipients of bachelor’s degrees and high school diplomas. While the college earnings premium is most often taken to mean the earnings difference between the latter, the disparity between bachelor’s and associate’s degrees is his primary focus.

Overall, Winters finds that college on average is quite a good investment, with national mean earnings for bachelor’s degree recipients at $92,608, an 85 percent premium relative to the national mean earnings of $50,051 for high school graduates.

But this is not his real focus. The report examines how these returns vary based on state economies and rural versus urban settings. The bachelor’s-versus-associate’s-degree premium drops as low as 15 percent in North Dakota, while the bachelor’s-to-high-school premium varies from a low of 21 percent in Wyoming to 48 percent in West Virginia to a high of 103 percent in New York. Winters takes this variation, in particular the low end, to suggest that “bachelor’s degrees are likely good investments in big cities but perhaps are less so in smaller metropolitan areas or rural communities. Earning an associate’s degree—or even just a high school diploma—may be a better decision in some places.”

The Center on Education and the Workforce comes to a slightly different conclusion. We hold that the economic value of education lies in work-based productivity, so understanding exactly what kind of education is valuable in the local economy is critical information. It’s not hard to imagine that a bachelor’s degree from the Colorado School of Mines leads to earnings well above average in North Dakota, with its 11,681 fracking wells and significant mining, while a certificate in underwater welding likely doesn’t do as well. The details matter. A lot.

All of us involved in education and workforce development must focus more on the specifics of the local economy and labor demands to identify which markets require more education and training, and what type. There is no doubt that good jobs that don’t require college degrees exist, but they are getting harder to find. In particular, those in natural resource extraction can be especially sensitive to the business cycle and economic shocks of the type we are now experiencing.

So what do we do with this information? First, we should recognize that the era in which the value of college was easily justified by “average” is coming to a close. This mantra worked for a long time, while college premiums greatly increased, doubling in the years following 1983. But now, variations in college returns are high, with earnings differences among various fields often exceeding the differences between two- and four-year degrees.

Second, we must become more knowledgeable about which factors help workers to become more productive if we want to help strike the right balance between more education and more of the right kind of education. For instance, what is it about North Dakota, a state whose economy is built on resource extraction and agriculture, that results in such a low BA:HS premium, while a similar state, West Virginia, demonstrates a healthy premium?

Finally, we must use information to help students and workers be fully informed about what their specific education and training will do for them. “Average” does not counsel students on how local economic-demand factors affect their career opportunities. “Average” does not tell someone who wants to be a school counseling psychologist that, without a graduate degree, there isn’t much chance of attaining a job that pays more than $35,000 a year.

Never has there been more ripe an opportunity to help students understand how education and labor markets interact in real places. The federal government recently released institution-specific earnings on nearly every program-degree combination for more than 4,500 colleges in the country. That’s a fine start. But let’s not stop there.

Editor’s note: This article was first published by The 74.

As unprecedented as our current times may appear to be, large scale disasters and emergencies such as those provoked by the global spread of COVID-19 are not new. Crises as diverse as World War II, the Cultural Revolution in China, and years of political and social unrest in Argentina in the 1990s have been studied extensively in terms of their long-term impact on citizens who experienced them as children or teenagers. All of these events resulted in systemic education disruptions for various lengths of time, and led to persistent earnings declines that often lasted decades. For instance, research suggests that the negative economic impacts of the 1918 influenza pandemic—the closest cousin to today’s—were felt into the 1980s. Predictive research on the topic has been done in recent times as well. Modeling in the U.K. and U.S. found that closing all schools—for any reason—for just four weeks (far shorter than what most countries are currently experiencing) would cost between 0.1 and 0.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) just in the short term.

With these precursors to build from, a new working paper from the policy research arm of the World Bank takes a look at the potential cost of school closures in response to the current pandemic. Lead researcher George Psacharopoulos and his team estimate the GDP losses globally and across countries due to prolonged school closures—four months in the case of this initial formula—as well as assessing the cost to affected students in terms of expected lifetime earnings.

Two variables are key to their formula. The first is the rate of return on education, which research pegs at about 9 percent over an individual’s lifetime. That is, every additional year of schooling equates to about 9 percent in additional future earnings. This varies from country to country, but the outputs of the formula are reported globally and then by three country-income groups (low-, middle-, and high-income countries) to account for this variation. The second variable, however, is the most important. It is a mitigating factor against learning loss generated by distance learning during the period of school closure. More on that in a moment.

The estimated present value loss in lifetime earnings at the individual level is $612 in low-income countries, $4,425 in middle-income countries, and $37,982 in high-income countries. At the global level, the loss is $9,787 per student. Perhaps not a terrible outcome per person, but the global totals—from $78 billion in low-income countries up to $8.8 trillion in high-income countries—are staggering. With 1.5 billion students across the globe experiencing educational disruption of some length this year, projected losses from school closures hover around 15 percent of a given country’s annual GDP, depending on the wealth group of the country.

Not only are these outcomes unsurprising, given the structure of the modeling, but they have also been borne out by history. The Argentinian example is particularly instructive, as the negative financial impacts fell almost entirely upon the lowest income levels of society. In fact, the prolonged nature of the crisis there appeared to allow higher-income families time to adapt to the new reality—finding their own means to continue educating their children in spite of systemic educational disruption.

And this is where the second variable comes in. The researchers categorize their mitigation variable as an “optimistic” one. In it, only 10 percent of students suffer learning loss; the other 90 percent continue to learn at their regular rate due to distance learning opportunities. The research team adopted this mitigation factor—and their putative four-month school closure—based on UNESCO estimates in the early days of the pandemic, but the realities of both are likely far too volatile and fast moving to determine a real picture of closure length or learning loss mitigation now. For every country, state, district, or school doing well generally by its students, there is at least one whose efforts are patchy and another struggling mightily. If in reality there is less mitigation than this optimistic formula presents, the poorer mitigation efforts disproportionally affect low-income students, and the closures continue into next school year, the educational and economic losses from the COVID-19 pandemic will be far worse than even the most clear-eyed analysts are yet predicting.

SOURCE: George Psacharopoulos, et. al., “Lost Wages: The COVID-19 Cost of School Closures,” World Bank Policy Research (May 2020).

Inaugural graduating class

The first class of seniors to graduate from KIPP Columbus were honored with a front page story in the Columbus Dispatch this week, with a great look at the school’s rise from humble beginnings and attention given to several impressive seniors. Congratulations to the students, faculty, staff, families, and supporters of this awesome school!

It stands to reason…

It stands to reason that any school with at least one foot already in the cyber world before the onset of COVID-19 would have been able to more nimbly adapt to the sudden changes the pandemic has wrought. Tillie Elvrum, director of the Colorado Coalition of Cyberschool Families and president of PublicSchoolOptions.org, reiterated that notion, saying that fully online schools were best positioned by virtue of their long experience to lead the way in education now and going forward.

…but we must also heed the data

New research from Brookings released this week reminds us that for many students, a fully online education is not the right fit even in the best of circumstances. It remains to be seen whether COVID-related shifts to online education will be a) longer lasting than just this school year and b) able to produce better outcomes than the data currently show.

Looking ahead to next year

The shape of the next school year in Ohio remains unknown: fully in-person, fully remote, some hybrid version with staggered schedules. Any or all of these could come to be between now and the fall. The General Assembly is working to address these issues and more. Case in point is Senate Bill 319, introduced this week, which tackles issues related to transportation, teacher evaluation, testing, charter sponsor ratings, and more. It will be an important piece of legislation to keep on eye on in coming days.

Also next year

A new charter high school is scheduled to open in Mansfield next school year. This quick profile calls it “non-traditional”, but the details matter. Cypress High School will have a focus on core academics and a goal to make sure all its graduates are job ready when they leave. But the top bullet point defining the school, as stated in its website is “a safe school environment without all the drama”. Seems like that could be a strong selling point for a high school. Here’s hoping that there’s no drama that keeps Cypress from opening its doors.

New rounds of federal grants

The U.S. Department of Education recently announced the opening of applications for new grants in both the Expanding Opportunity Through Quality Charter Schools Program (a.k.a. CSP) and the Grants to Charter School Developers for the Opening of New Charter Schools and for the Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools (a.k.a. Developer Grants). Deadline for application for both programs is June 19.

1. The Dayton Daily News, among other news outlets, has been profiling high school graduates as the school year comes to an end. In this headline, looking at a graduate of the Dayton Regional STEM School, the young man is called the “ideal graduate”. And while that terminology has an explanation, what I see in this story is a kid who was being let down by the education system until he found his “ideal school”. Take a look at his story and see if you agree with me. (Dayton Daily News, 6/3/20)
   

2. And what about next school year? Berea City Schools is sure it will achieve its goal of issuing Chromebooks to 100 percent of their students by the start of next year. The district will also be issuing a bill for a technology fee to 100 percent of its students next year as well. Insurance on the machines will cost extra. Really, guys? (Cleveland.com, 6/5/20) A new charter high school is scheduled to open in Mansfield next school year if everything goes well. The main thrust of this quick profile calls it “non-traditional”, but the details matter. Cypress High School will have a focus on core academics and a goal to make sure all its graduates are job ready when they leave. Personally, I think the top bullet point defining the school, as stated in its website, is far more important than any of that sales BS: “a safe school environment without all the drama”. Sounds like just the ticket to me! (Mansfield News Journal, 6/3/20) Of course there are currently any number of possible dramatic happenings that could cause the best laid plans of any school or district to go astray next year. In Stark County, there seems to be some disconnect between parents’ appetite for fully in-person education and teachers’ comfort level in throwing open their classroom doors in August. (I am available to help districts discover names for whatever putative online schools they might think of creating—in the spirit of competition, dontcha know—but I will give out Canton Computer Collegium for free right here and now.) However, there’s an interesting note tucked at the bottom of the piece that might render all this fretting moot before August. Canton City Schools’ year-round school Accelerating Innovative Minds (or AIM) Academy is already planning to bring all its students back in person on July 21. (Canton Repository, 6/3/20)
    
3. Never fear, y’all, because the General Assembly is working to address all the foregoing school restart issues and more. The latest vehicle (legal term; look it up) is Senate Bill 319, introduced this week. It tackles issues related to transportation, teacher evaluation, testing, charter sponsor ratings, and much much more. Ummm….thanks? (Cleveland.com, 6/4/20) And who can forget about the funding issue? Not Ohio’s school districts, that’s for sure! Reference is made to charter school cuts in this piece, but no details were provided. Surprise. (Cleveland.com, 6/4/20)
    
4. As all my dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers will remember, no one has been a bigger champion of the creation of the Say Yes to Education program in Cleveland than Patrick O’Donnell. And just because he’s writing for someone else based outside of the CLE right now, don’t you even suggest that his enthusiasm has dimmed one bit. New data show that the program has had at least one immediate and obvious benefit – increased FAFSA completion rates for Cleveland Metropolitan School District students at the exact same time that the ‘rona has shrunk FAFSA completion literally everywhere else. Here’s hoping this continues and translates into more college-going among Cleveland’s high school grads…including some charter school students who will be eligible for Say Yes support starting next year. (The 74, 6/3/20)
    
5. The Richland Source today republished a Hechinger piece looking at the abysmal graduation statistics for black students at Kent State University at Ashtabula. Zero percent of the school’s black students earned a degree in the last five years. While the university system has some (sorta lame if you ask me) rejoinder, the Hechinger reporters dig deeply to try and find answers. It takes a little while before they land on the idea that the local high schools might not be properly preparing their graduates for college work. They actually quote Lakeside High School’s Prepared for Success report card measure (F) like they really mean it. And the piece includes some important input from a former Lakeside student discussing her time there in order back up that assertion—almost as if Ohio’s state report cards are actually true. It is truly a day for miracles. Can someone please tell the General Assembly. (Richland Source, 6/5/20)
   

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As protests against racism and police brutality erupt across the nation—during a worldwide pandemic, no less—Americans are coming to face the harsh reality that life as they previously knew it is no more. Until there’s a vaccine, the “normal” that was pre-Covid-19 can never be again, and the “normal” that was pre-George Floyd must never be again. To emerge from these trying times as a stronger, more just society, teachers have incredible potential to help uphold our country’s promise of equal opportunity, regardless of race or background. But they might consider going beyond the classroom to have an even larger impact.

Just 13 and 15 percent of today’s teachers believe state chiefs and district superintendents, respectively, make a very big difference in the lives of students. Perhaps because of this, only 5 percent are actually interested in overseeing state and district education systems themselves. These were among the key findings of a new report from Chiefs for Change (CFC), a national network of state and district education leaders. It surveyed current and former teachers and principals to help inform its recommendations on how systems can expand leadership opportunities and development.

A few weeks ago, the Fordham Institute collaborated with CFC to release a special edition of the Education Gadfly Show podcast centered on the poll results—“Teacher to Chief: Pathways to Educational Leadership.” CFC COO Julie Rafal-Baer laid out the problem: Teachers are convinced that top leadership roles have limited capacity to impact teaching and learning due to their political and bureaucratic natures.

To help dispel this misconception, Fordham president, Mike Petrilli, spoke with superintendent of Palm Beach County Donald Fennoy and chancellor of D.C. Public Schools Lewis Ferebee. Both stressed that becoming heads of districts did not mean disconnecting from students, teachers, and the classroom. As Fennoy put it, “As a superintendent, I control the movements of my day and who I meet with. I still do a lot of reading in classrooms. I visit schools every week. So a lot of it is what you choose to prioritize as a leader.” Ferebee added that these conversations and interactions within school buildings significantly inform his policy decision-making.

Founder and CEO of Chalkbeat Elizabeth Green also moderated a panel with former superintendent of Palm Beach County Robert Avossa, chief education officer of Chicago Public Schools Latanya McDade, and chief education officer of Baltimore City Public Schools Sonja Santelises. While no journey to the chief role is the same, each of them spoke of key mentors who encouraged them to step into systems-level leadership (despite initial reluctance or opposition). Avossa said this cycle of tapping and cultivating leadership continues on: “We’re also teaching adults in the sense that we’re leveraging the responsibilities and experiences that we have and teaching people how to navigate to the next job.”

Santelises and McDade additionally talked about the importance of demographic representation in top positions. “I look around, and not a lot of women and not many people of color, but the opportunity to use my capital on behalf of those who, frankly, should be in [those rooms of power] with me—but who can’t—is what makes this job worthwhile,” Santelises said.

Throughout the episode, each chief described the personal rewards as well as challenges that come with the job. McDade finds purpose in the opportunities “to create policy, to have initiatives that are launched in the district for our students who are our most vulnerable…and to support teachers—like me—who come into the classroom without access to the resources they might need.”

Petrilli and CFC CEO Mike Magee highlighted that, although education leaders have in the past typically come from non-teaching backgrounds, there has been a greater appreciation for “deep knowledge and expertise [gained] in the classroom, to the role of leadership in school systems,” as evidenced by all the former educators who are now chiefs featured in the podcast.

Of course, there was also discussion on how Covid-19 has affected chiefs’ current and future work, and how strong, effective leadership is especially needed in these times. In the midst of a national reckoning with racism and police violence, this statement is even truer now.

As schools across Ohio stagger toward the finish line of a bizarre and difficult school year, educators, parents, and state and local leaders are beginning to turn their attention toward the uncertainties of the future. There are plenty of analyses about how schools will attempt to cope with the fallout of coronavirus. The “brutal math of a massive economic downturn” and the possibility of enrollment shifts seem to be top of mind for both the traditional public and charter school sectors.

But Ohio-specific analyses on how coronavirus might affect private schools are far harder to come by. That’s not surprising, given their small share of the state’s student population. Chartered private schools educate approximately 169,000 students, compared to the 1.5 million children enrolled in traditional public districts, or about 11 percent of the total. Private schools—likely surprising to some—educate a larger share of students than charter schools, which are responsible for educating approximately 103,000 Ohio youngsters. Charter schools tend to draw considerable media and public attention because they are publicly funded and subject to the state’s accountability system, whereas private schools are not. (Their share of enrollment in urban districts is also much higher.) Unless there’s a debate over vouchers, private schools typically fly under the radar.

COVID-19 could change that. Like their traditional district and charter school counterparts, private schools are facing financial stress and enrollment shifts that could alter their operations. But unlike their public peers, private schools aren’t financially backstopped by taxpayer dollars. Instead, most of their funding comes from student tuition, fundraising, and philanthropic support.

In a healthy economy, private schools can more easily rely on tuition and donations. But in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis, this funding model becomes a liability. In a recent survey of private school employees, 44 percent of respondents said they are “very” or “extremely worried” about drops in philanthropic support. Forty-one percent reported similar levels of concern about collecting tuition for the remainder of the year, as well as the possibility that the crisis would extend into next year. Sixty-five percent of respondents are “very” or “extremely worried” about students’ families struggling financially. And 51 percent are worried about losing enrollment next year.

The recently passed CARES Act offers private schools a few forms of financial reprieve, such as allowing them to participate in the Paycheck Protection Program. But those funds won’t be enough in the long run. Over a million Ohioans have filed for unemployment since the pandemic started. Some families that could previously afford tuition are now dealing with job losses and salary cuts. Even if they can get back to work, many of them will have significant financial holes to dig out of and may be forced to withdraw their children from private schools.

Philanthropy and fundraising could also take a hit. Religious schools that depend on weekly donations are likely suffering after months of cancelled services. Spring fundraising events like festivals and alumni gatherings were cancelled by public health orders, and summer camps and programs may not go on as scheduled. These various funding losses could add up. Many of Ohio’s private schools were already operating on razor-thin margins prior to the pandemic. The fallout of COVID-19 could be the final straw that forces them to close their doors.

A spike in such closures would have a rippling impact across Ohio’s education sector. Obviously, private school students and families will bear the most direct impact. Transferring to a new school is stressful and disruptive in normal circumstances, let alone in the midst of a pandemic. It’s also important to recognize that families don’t enroll in private schools by default; they specifically choose their schools for academic, cultural, religious, and other reasons. Being forced out of these chosen schools due to closure or a sudden inability to pay is a serious loss. The staff and teachers at these schools will also be forced to find new jobs, which is no small feat in the midst of an economic downturn where millions of others are also searching for work.

A sudden influx of transfer students will also cause serious problems for districts and the state. In a recent analysis, ExcelinEd points out that even if a small percentage of private school students return to districts, they could be facing millions of dollars in new costs. Based on average per-pupil expenditures, if only 5 percent of Ohio’s private school students return to district schools in the fall, the fiscal cost to public schools could be over $166 million.

In an ideal world, the state would send additional funds to districts to cover the cost of educating transfer students. But Ohio’s current economic circumstances are far from ideal. K–12 public schools are already facing $300 million worth of cuts. Additional cuts are likely next year. Even if state leaders empty the rainy day fund and the economy miraculously rights itself in record time, Ohio’s current funding system wouldn’t drive additional aid to district schools. The budget Governor DeWine signed into law last summer suspended the state’s funding formula, so Ohio is currently funding schools in accordance with what they received last year, rather than their enrollments. Returning students who were using a performance-based voucher will bring those funds back to districts, but voucher dollars are only a small percentage of the total per-pupil educational cost. For the most part, districts that see an influx of private school students won’t see any additional state aid.

The upshot? A sudden spike in private school closures won’t just hurt the students, families, and staff who attend them. Traditional public schools will pay a hefty price too, and so will the state as it tries to play catch up. There are no easy answers for how lawmakers should address these issues. But seriously considering the negative impacts on students and families—and taking steps to mitigate those impacts where possible—would be a good place to start.

My heart has been grieving this week. The murder of George Floyd—and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and more—was evil. I lament their horrific killings. May Jesus keep and hold each of them and their loved ones during this time of great suffering.

Our work at Seton Education Partners starts where justice, education, and faith intersect. Founded a little over a decade ago to work toward justice for children and families in underserved communities—our organization prioritizes a whole-child education that honors each person’s inherent dignity.

Our patron, Elizabeth Ann Seton, founded the first free Catholic school in this country more than 200 years ago—and an army of nuns, brothers, and priests followed suit by launching schools in marginalized communities, so that every child has a real chance at making it in America—and living a life of meaning and purpose.

Because of our Catholic roots, we believe that every life is sacred—every life. At our three (and growing) public charter schools in The Bronx, and in our network of thirteen Catholic schools in nine cities across the country, we serve more than 4,200 children. Nearly all are black and brown.

Our schools work with one child, one family, one community at a time. And we are convinced that each child, each teacher, each caregiver is made in the image and likeness of God. We stand in solidarity with them as our brothers and sisters in Christ. And we work for the day when never again will a man be brutally suffocated by another who doesn’t recognize each person’s inherent dignity. We mourn the loss of every life, now and always—and yes, we demand justice—giving God and others their due.

On Saturday, I watched a priest kneeling in prayer in front of the grocery store where we shop amidst so much anger. A peaceful protest of some 1,000 marchers had been met with tear gas and rubber bullets—and looting, fires, and violence ensued. When he was interviewed by a reporter, this Christian pastor said: “There’s so much welled-up anger. We’re all talking past each other.” When asked, “How do you fix it, father?” his reply was simple and profound: “With love.”

Explaining the anger, despair, and fear of so many to my eight-year-old daughter was challenging—and important. The following day, however, hundreds of people gathered to clean up as a real community—“la comunidad,” as my husband calls it. This allowed us to talk with her about what it really means to love—to will the good of the other—and to hope in goodness and for a country that can one day live up to its ideals.

Last Sunday, Catholics celebrated the Solemnity of Pentecost. My pastor made a connection with the Tower of Babel, when mankind was united against God in pride, and the Lord caused each person suddenly to begin speaking a different language—disrupting their work together. I fear the echoes of the Tower today—a country that is so deeply divided that we cannot fully hear or understand one another, even when we seem to speak the same tongue.

Jesus brought forth, in a new way for mankind, the antithesis of the Tower of Babel—the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. As we listened to the Pentecost hymnal solemnly sung, the lyrics resonated with me more deeply than they ever have before. I copy them below. And I pray: Come, oh Holy Spirit, come!

Pentecost Sequence

Holy Spirit, Lord of light,
From Thy clear celestial height
Thy pure beaming radiance give.

Come, Thou Father of the poor,
Come with treasures which endure,
Come, Thou Light of all that live.

Thou, of all consolers best,
Thou, the soul’s delightsome Guest,
Dost refreshing peace bestow.

Thou in toil art comfort sweet,
Pleasant coolness in the heat,
Solace in the midst of woe.

Light immortal, Light divine,
Visit Thou these hearts of Thine,
And our inmost being fill.

If Thou take Thy grace away,
Nothing pure in man will stay;
All his good is turned to ill.

Heal our wounds; our strength renew;
On our dryness pour Thy dew;
Wash the stains of guilt away.

Bend the stubborn heart and will;
Melt the frozen, warm the chill;
Guide the steps that go astray.

Thou, on those who evermore
Thee confess and Thee adore,
In Thy sevenfold gifts descend:

Give them comfort when they die,
Give them life with Thee on high;
Give them joys that never end.

Photo credit: DonStevie. See his photostream here.

1. In yesterday’s Very Special Episode of Live from the Crypt, Governor DeWine told us that the state’s goal is “to have kids back in the classroom” in the fall. The vital questions of where, when, how many, how often, and for how long all remain to be answered. (WOSU-FM, Columbus, 6/2/20)

2. Another question that remains—and that likely will not be answered until after all those other ones listed above are answered—is whether parents will feel comfortable sending their kids back to the classroom in whatever format is ultimately decided upon. Parma City Schools is already ahead of that curve, having surveyed district families and finding at least 100 who are leaning against sending their kids back in the fall. In response, Parma is already deep into the process of creating a district-run virtual school for next year. While this is a prudent and probably pandemically-practical move in itself, the Parma poo-bahs don’t hesitate to dream a bit bigger, noting with some relish (probably just imagined by me, don’t you know?) that if all goes well with this, they might be able to lure back at least 100 resident kids (of the 300 they know of) already attending online school via charters. The spirit of competition is alive and well in Panther country, I guess. Gotta give ‘em props for that. But let’s have a fair fight, okay folks? The stated implication that only Parma Virtual Academy kids can participate in district extracurriculars is false. Most charter school students, including e-school students, are allowed by law to participate in district extracurriculars; they don’t need your benevolence. (Cleveland.com, 6/3/20)

3. Also very interested in its families’ opinions these days is Brunswick City Schools. Specifically, they want to know how sucky local families thought distance learning was over the last couple months of the school year. While there is minimal actual data provided here, it seems that “not really very sucky after all” was the most popular response. And since additional survey data found that 23 percent of families reported not wanting their kids wearing masks to school next year, might I humbly suggest that Blue Devil Digital Academy—as a possible name for a putative district-run online school—has a nice ring to it. In the spirit of competition, you know? (Cleveland.com, 6/1/20)

And just as an aside: Have these districts ever surveyed the families who left them for charters and other options and considered implementing the stuff they wanted?

“I wish I could say this hate began with Donald Trump and will end with him,” former Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday. “It didn’t and it won’t.”

It’s true, of course, that racism and hate are nothing new, and the same surely goes for the partisanship and polarization gripping our nation. The culture wars are generations old, and the current season of attack and outrage opened with the dawn of social media platforms, not in 2016. We all abhor it and yet cannot seem to escape it, except in fleeting moments.

Moments like the early days of the pandemic, when “we’re all in it together” felt like more than an empty slogan, when signs sprouted up and evening applause erupted to thank essential workers—the doctors and nurses, but also the truck drivers and grocery store clerks. And yes, in the aftermath of the awful murder of George Floyd, a black man suffocated to death by an “officer of the peace,” a man whose cries for help went unheeded by four policemen, sickeningly unmoved by his distress.

For maybe a day or two, the nation, consumed with grief and anger, was pulled together by a common understanding that Floyd’s murder was an abomination. That coming on the heels of Amy Cooper, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and in the context of a COVID-19 crisis ravaging the black community, this was no time to revert to our old arguments about race in America. As Trevor Noah said so eloquently, the dominos are falling. Perhaps this is a chance for something new—especially if the inexcusable violence and looting stops and the peaceful protests continue.

—

Back in our little corner of the world, in the domain of education reform, I’ve been thinking a lot about the culture war. Mostly that’s because of the recent publication of How to Educate an American: The Conservative Vision for Tomorrow’s Schools, which I co-edited with my colleague, friend, and mentor Chester E. Finn, Jr. As the subtitle makes clear, it’s not a book about finding common ground but about clarifying ideological divisions. Here’s how Yuval Levin, the editor-in-chief of National Affairs and the Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, explains the rationale in his brilliant chapter:

The era of the reform coalition also exacted some real costs. Above all, it made American education policy awfully clinical and technocratic, at times blinding some of those involved in education debates to the deepest human questions at stake—social, moral, cultural, and political questions that cannot be separated from how we think about teaching and learning. This has meant less of a focus on public schooling as a source of solidarity in American life, which was once a powerful theme on the left in particular. And it has meant less of an emphasis on character formation and civic education, which were once fundamental to the right’s way of thinking about schooling…

Frustrated by the collapse of the reform coalition but also liberated from its constraints, the right and left will probably take somewhat different directions in education-policy thinking in the coming years. For that reason, it remains useful to consider education policy and politics in terms of left and right. In fact, it may be that the deepest differences between the most intellectually coherent forms of the American left and right actually emerge most clearly around questions of education, and not by coincidence. And for each camp, the concerns that were put aside for the sake of working together in the reform coalition seem likely to be those that now come to the fore.

Alas, Levin is not wrong. Yet I find myself more than a little depressed by the idea of shoring up an agenda for conservatives, even in the principled cause of bringing “viewpoint diversity” to our issue, as Princeton professor Robby George puts it in his essay.

Truth to tell, I liked the bipartisan age of welfare reform, balanced budgets, and No Child Left Behind—especially since poor kids and kids of color made so much progress at that time. I am much more comfortable fighting the good fight for charter schools and testing and accountability than slugging it out in the culture wars per se.

Still, given the political leanings of most teachers, administrators, and education officials, if conservatives don’t engage in debates about how to handle these issues right, we will cede our public schools to the left just as we have ceded our elite universities to the left. That’s akin to ceding our nation’s future as well.

So it’s essential for conservatives to offer answers to cultural questions. Eliot Cohen, Dean of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, advocates an approach to teaching American history that is both “patriotic” and “critical"—a sharp distinction from the approach of Howard Zinn or the 1619 Project. Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) and contributor to The Atlantic and The New York Times, calls for a renewal of character education, one that is not afraid of “inculcating virtue in the young through moral precept, through example and habit, through rewards and punishment, through conversations and stories.” Mona Charen, a syndicated columnist and also a senior fellow at EPPC, urges schools to teach teenagers that their decisions around parenting and marriage will have at least as much consequence for their lives as whether they choose to go to college.

The goal of these arguments isn’t so much to envision a school system imbued with conservative values, but instead to help pull our public schools back to the center.

Which brings me back to today’s crisis.

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While Joe Biden continues to be a gaffe-machine, including on the sensitive issue of race, America’s schools could learn a lot from his speech about how to handle two hot-button issues: the teaching of American history, and the development of “social and emotional” skills, or what we conservatives more comfortably call “character.” He carved a middle path between right and left that is anything but the mushy middle (despite what the Wall Street Journal might say).

First, history. As several of us discussed at an AEI event last week, nobody should want a Blue American History for kids in Blue America, and a Red American History for kids in Red America. We should all strive for a Purple History, one that doesn’t whitewash the many times our nation has failed to live up to its ideals, especially with respect to the treatment of African Americans, but also doesn’t leave out the many inspiring times that it did. Biden shows how it’s done:

The history of this nation teaches us that it’s in some of our darkest moments of despair that we’ve made some of our greatest progress.

The Thirteenth and Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments followed the Civil War. The greatest economy in the history of the world grew out of the Great Depression. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 came in the tracks of Bull Connor’s vicious dogs.

And:

It’s been reported that on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, little Yolanda King came home from school in Atlanta and jumped in her father’s arms.

“Oh, Daddy,” she said, “now we will never get our freedom.”

Her daddy was reassuring, strong, and brave.

“Now don’t you worry, baby,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. “It’s going to be all right.”

Amid violence and fear, Dr. King persevered.

He was driven by his dream of a nation where “justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Then, in 1968, hate would cut him down in Memphis.

A few days before Dr. King was murdered, he gave a final Sunday sermon in Washington.

He told us that though the arc of a moral universe is long, it bends toward justice.

And we know we can bend it—because we have. We have to believe that still. That is our purpose. It’s been our purpose from the beginning.

To become the nation where all men and women are not only created equal—but treated equally.

To become the nation defined—in Dr. King’s words—not only by the absence of tension, but by the presence of justice.

And:

American history isn’t a fairytale with a guaranteed happy ending.

The battle for the soul of this nation has been a constant push-and-pull for more than 240 years.

A tug of war between the American ideal that we are all created equal and the harsh reality that racism has long torn us apart. The honest truth is both elements are part of the American character.

At our best, the American ideal wins out.

It’s never a rout. It’s always a fight. And the battle is never finally won.

So, too, when it comes to the mission of schools beyond the academic, vocational, and civic. In the Venn diagram displaying the overlap between “SEL” and “character education,” surely there is space for empathy, one of the loftiest of virtues, particularly essential at a time like this. And Biden models it beautifully:

I know so many Americans are suffering. Suffering the loss of a loved one. Suffering economic hardships. Suffering under the weight of generation after generation after generation of hurt inflicted on people of color—and on black and Native communities in particular.

I know what it means to grieve. My losses are not the same as the losses felt by so many. But I know what it is to feel like you cannot go on.

I know what it means to have a black hole of grief sucking at your chest.

Just a few days ago marked the fifth anniversary of my son Beau’s passing from cancer. There are still moments when the pain is so great it feels no different from the day he died. But I also know that the best way to bear loss and pain is to turn all that anger and anguish to purpose.

All of this gives me hope. If someone running for president can find a way to reach out to black and white, to left, right, and center, and can address our history, our values, and our complicated relationship with race in a way that promotes unity rather than division, so can our schools. And maybe that will help our moments of common cause, of civic friendship, last more than a day or two at a time.