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1. I know this will not come as a shock to any of my 11 dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers (thanks, everyone, for putting up with my nonsense all these years), but there appears to be no pleasing Ohio’s voucher grouchers. The fact that there clearly was no mass exodus of students from traditional district schools in the first year of near-universal voucher eligibility is somehow a Very Bad Thing, it seems, as I read this coverage. Almost as bad, I reckon, as if the exodus they predicted would actually have come true. But maybe my view on this stuff is just hopelessly skewed. (Cleveland.com, 3/2/24)
   
   

2. You know, after all that, it occurs to me that it’s entirely possible I’m a Bad News Hypocrite. This story—about a nonprofit looking to help low-income students in Dayton City Schools get into college—definitely is couched as a Very Good Thing. But I don’t like it because the group does not work with low-income charter, STEM, or private school students, and probably never will. They have barely started working in Dayton and are already looking to expand their footprint in the area, they say, but only to other traditional districts. Hmmm… (Dayton Daily News, 3/2/24) This, too, is testing me today. The group CityVerse is looking to make poetry cool for high school students in Youngstown, creating a talent contest and perhaps even going so far as naming the winner the Poet Laureate of Y’town. A Very Good Thing…which is unfortunately only open to students in two of the district’s high school buildings and no one else. (Vindy.com, 3/4/24) Relatedly: Remember a few weeks ago (sure you do) when I noted that school districts can occasionally fall afoul of zoning commissions and NIMBYs when trying to build a new facility, just like charter schools in Ohio routinely do? That is still true, especially in Toledo, which is Bad but at least seems equal-opportunity Bad. However, in this piece, we realize that it ain’t equal or fair, because big city school districts have several weapons in their arsenal to fight the zoning blockers that charters simply don’t: Deep pockets of their own to, say, add retention ponds and metered water release features to their site designs to satisfy the “it’s gonna flood my house!” NIMBYs; deep pocketed city government partners to, say, prioritize the location and timing of taxpayer-funded street improvements to satisfy the “it’s gonna add too much traffic!” NIMBYs; and the ability to get, say, the city’s Commissioner of Sewers and Drainage Services and Deputy Mayor to actually show up and promise—in-person and on the record—the municipal moon and stars to every class of NIMBY who bothers to have a concern. What do charters have? Me. Yeah. OK. I’m cured. (Toledo Blade, 3/1/24)
   
   

3. And to further bolster the point, we mustn’t forget that a city government’s support of a district (and any other entity, I reckon) is a two-way street. Case in point, Cleveland Metropolitan School District announced—on the heels of its roasting in City Council last week—that the student-run grant program called “Get More Opportunities” would be reinstated forthwith. This despite the district’s (still-extant and still-giant) post-ESSER budget hole and the fact that new-ish CEO Warren Morgan explained that the program wasn’t exactly the egalitarian wish-granter its supporters believed it to be in its first go-round. But I’m sure none of that really mattered in this situation. (Cleveland.com, 3/1/24)

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Stories featured in Ohio Charter News Weekly may require a paid subscription to read in full.

“They want you to do better. They drive you to do better.”

Here’s a nice profile of Cleveland’s Promise Academy dropout recovery school. Staff, students, and successful grads do a great job explaining how the school’s programs work and how the intangible supports—believing in kids, providing a calm and safe space, connecting with outside adult mentors—make a difference in the trajectory of Promise Academy students.

Charter law revamp in Idaho

Idaho governor Brad Little signed House Bill 422 into law this week. He said that the Accelerating Public Charter Schools Act gives more flexibility for high performing charters and more support to those that are struggling. Idaho Ed News has a detailed look at the bill’s provisions, including a new three-year charter term for new schools to pilot an innovative educational model and the ability for charter holders with multiple schools to become a single local education agency.

The view from Michigan

Michigan lawmakers are considering a bill that would repeal charters schools’ right of first refusal to buy or lease unused district facilities. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy discussed the bill in a blog post this week, along with some startling details on how district leaders have been working to undermine that right for years, including an elected board member who suggested—on the record—that demolishing an empty building in her district was necessary “because we simply cannot afford to have it become a competing school.”

A different view from Florida

Meanwhile, families in Newberry, Florida, are rallying to have the buildings in their district converted into charter schools, the first exercise of a new state law that allows such conversions. The first test will be a vote of each school community, with a specific number of families—and teachers—having to opt for conversion within the next 60 days. Definitely a story to watch.

*****

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There are, generally speaking, two ways to report students’ performance on tests. One is normative, and it compares a student’s performance to his peers. The second is criterion, and it compares a student’s performance to learning standards, indicating grade-level proficiency and is independent of peers’ test performance. American students have, as readers know, suffered from significant learning loss. Since the pandemic, students’ scores on criterion-based assessments like state summative tests and NAEP have dropped broadly across the country. Ironically, this drop in performance has caused norm-based assessments to award higher marks to lower performance, relative to pre-pandemic levels.

This is a problem when normative tests are relied upon to gauge the state of learning today and how much we’ve recovered from that learning loss. This is because norms have no relationship to content, standards, mastery, or proficiency. For example, current norms of a widely used national assessment indicate that, while its norms describe learning trends, “they provide no guidelines about necessary growth or achievement relative to any established academic standards.”[1] Another widely used assessment reinforces the difference between norms and standards: “Test norms are best used when decisions are being made that require you to compare a student’s score to that of other students. When you want to determine if a student is at risk of not meeting standards, [criterion-based] benchmarks should be used.”

Consider Table 1, which shows criterion and normative scores on the Texas’s STAAR in 2019 and 2022, its primary standardized assessment for grades 3–11. The test did not substantively change over those three years, yet a student in 2022 who receives the same criterion score (e.g., Approaches, Meets, or Masters) on the STAAR test as a student in 2019 will receive a higher normative score. For example, in math, a fifth grade student who scored 1625, or the lowest score within the “Meets” category, would receive a normative score of 48th percentile in 2019 but a 61st percentile in 2022. The higher normative score has nothing to do with student learning; it is because students now are under-performing compared to their pre-pandemic peers.

Table 1. Texas STAAR criterion and normative scores in 2019 and 2022[2]

Consider, too, an illustration of how this problem plays out in classrooms today. Imagine it is 2019. “Ben” receives a 58 percent on his math test—an F. Fortunately for Ben, his teacher decides to grade on a curve, a norm-based practice. Ben is relieved when he receives a B+ on his test instead. We can consider Ben’s original grade—an F—to be his “criterion score” because it is based on how many grade-level learning standards he has mastered—learning standards that educators believe will prepare students for success in school and, ultimately, in life.

The grade Ben receives—a B+—is normative because it is determined by comparing how well Ben performed relative to his classmates. Calculating the curved score is entirely unrelated to what one might assume primarily determines grades—knowledge and mastery of math content. Similarly, norms like percentile ranks are calculated with zero information about grade-level standards, expectations, content, proficiency, etc.

Now, imagine it is 2024. “Gail” receives a 58 percent—an F—on the same math test that Ben took in 2019 and with the same teacher. Unfortunately, due to pandemic-related unfinished learning, the rest of Gail’s class is even less prepared than their cohorts prior to the pandemic. As a result, Gail’s classmates score lower than Ben’s class in 2019. The teacher grades on a curve again, and Gail is reassured to receive an A- as her final grade.

So Gail receives a higher normative score than Ben, despite the fact that both Ben and Gail know the exact same amount of information and possess the same skill level regarding the same topics, demonstrated on the same test with matching scores of 58 percent.

There are number of possible implications of using norm-based information, but three are especially noteworthy. The first is that it can lead to the under-identification of intervention needs. Norm-based percentile ranks play a prominent role in identifying students who need additional supports to realize success in school (via MTSS/RTI programs). For example, in many cases, students below the 40thpercentile receive additional instructional supports. For students with the same level of mastery of reading or math (criterion metrics), fewer would be identified as 40th percentile or lower, and fewer students would receive additional supports. This challenge can largely be addressed by ensuring normative scores are not used in isolation but always paired with grade-level or criterion metrics.

The second is inflated parental perception of student learning. It’s been widely reported that (1) there is something amiss when attendance is down, proficiency is down, and grades are flat, and (2) parents are largely uninformed about the fact that most kids are not operating at grade level. So, if Ben’s or Gail’s parents want to know if they are operating at grade level, where will they turn? Grades may not always be an accurate reflection of grade level mastery. State summative test scores are not available until after the school year ends. So they will likely turn to the most widely used interim assessments nationally: i-Ready, Star, or MAP Growth. Each of these interim assessments produces an abundance of information about scale scores and learning trends, but, in my experience, parents typically only remember the normative percentile rank as the answer to “how is my child doing” and “is my child on grade level”? Why? Because percentile ranks are familiar and easy to understand. That narrow view of student learning creates the illusion that students are outperforming pre-pandemic America—and that is just not true. (Some of pre- versus post-pandemic differences between normative and criterion data are outlined in a recent WestEd publication.) 

Third, if new post-pandemic norms are going to create all these complexities, educators, administrators, and parents find themselves in a challenging catch-22. Pre-pandemic norms are not accurate nor applicable anymore because we are in a “new normal.” The implementation of new norms can create complexity and confusion, and yet new norms do provide the best and clearest picture of where students are. i-Ready will update its norms for fall 2024, and we encourage all other assessment programs to follow suit..

There are, however, a couple ways to mitigate the operational and perceptional challenges. One, normative data need to be paired with criterion data, and the two data points need to be used together to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpreting of where students are. And two, more broadly, data in education should ultimately represent and reinforce the idea that ambition and high expectations are foundational to significant and sustained learning impact. Elevating Gail’s grade because everyone else is doing less well doesn’t support the primacy of ambition and high expectations that we need in American education, both for the sake of each student and for the sake of our communities and country.

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1. We’ll probably be hearing more about this new report from Reason Foundation in the coming weeks, but here’s a nice nutshell intro as to how it will be framed: Per pupil school spending increased nearly 15 percent in Ohio between 2002 and 2020, they say, while enrollment, the number of teachers, and teacher pay dropped over the same period. (Center Square, 2/29/24)
   
   

2. Also declining between 2002 and 2020 in many schools and districts across Ohio was student achievement—but that seems less important than the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Case in point: A state audit indicates that Youngstown City Schools has more central office administrators than other comparable districts. This piece seems to want to frame that staffing situation as a waste of precious resources, even after noting that the majority of those positions are instructional coaches hired while the district was under the aegis of an Academic Distress Commission and intended to, you know, boost teacher effectiveness, improve student outcomes, and end the distress. But we are a loooong way from those hopeful days now. (WFMJ-TV, Youngstown, 2/29/24)
   
   

3. It is a measure of the dearth of education news today that an independent STEM school getting its state STEM designation extended for another five years counts as an important headline. But you know that I am a hopeless devotee when it comes to Ohio’s STEM schools so here it is. Honestly, the science-y aspect of Valley STEM + ME2 Academy in Mahoning County is likely the least remarkable thing about it. The school’s mastery approach to grading; acceleration of high school courses to take up just two years; and provision of two years of career pathway learning opportunities in tech, manufacturing, and entrepreneurship are all more unique and valuable...and probably why the school is so dang popular. (Morning Journal, 3/1/24)

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Recent years have seen a flood of new grading policies that risk lowering academic standards in the name of equity. Though the movement for “equitable” grading initially took root in the 2000s and 2010s, it accelerated during the pandemic. In the face of widespread school shutdowns in the spring of 2020, districts scrambled to respond to students’ unprecedented needs. Amidst an environment of racial reckoning, economic crisis, and a global pandemic, concerns about equity and mental health motivated many educators and policymakers to add to or expand previous grading reforms, whether through pass/fail options, counting “needs improvement” as a final grade, prohibiting grade drops below pre-pandemic levels, or waiving standard graduation requirements.

The push to “give students grace” was understandable in that moment. Out-of-school inequities played a larger-than-ever role in students’ academic lives, with many students sharing devices with siblings, lacking quiet places to study, and struggling to access the internet to join class. Yet the return to traditional, in-person instruction did not bring a return to traditional grading policies. To the contrary, more districts than ever put into place grading policies that many district leaders believed were better for “equity” or, more precisely, for leveling the playing field for disadvantaged students. These policies include minimum grading (e.g., giving students no less than 50 percent of possible points), prohibiting grading penalties for late work and even for cheating, and promoting alternatives to the traditional 0–100 scale, revising it to a 0–4 scale, for example.

These changes in grading practices deserve greater scrutiny. Indeed, they risk removing both discretion from teachers and crucial incentives for students to study hard and cooperate with teachers and peers. Although some grading reforms may benefit students, those that water down expectations ultimately harm the students they are meant to help—thereby risking long-term damage to the educational equity their advocates purport to advance.

Consider the fact that many grading reforms, from requiring at least half-credit on all student assignments to eliminating penalties for late work, can easily lead to reduced academic expectations for students. While there is no rigorous research showing that eliminating penalties for students helps them learn more, a growing literature on grading practices strongly suggests that students learn more when teachers hold them more strictly accountable for their performance in class. For example, a 2004 study by professors David Figlio and Maurice Lucas analyzed the academic performance of elementary school students based on their teachers’ grading practices. Students assigned to teachers who graded more strictly went on to experience greater test-score growth in both reading and math. And in a similar 2020 study, American University’s Seth Gershenson found that high school students assigned to a tougher-grading teacher scored higher in math, both in that teacher’s class and in subsequent math courses, a finding that held true for all students, regardless of gender, race, or prior academic performance.

The rationale behind rigorous teacher grading standards is straightforward: Being exposed to a higher standard prompts many students to try harder, and this increased effort leads to more learning. In a study of college students, economist Phillip Babcock found that students who expected a “C” in their class studied about 50 percent more than students who expected an “A.”

The risks of lowering expectations through misguided grading reforms lead us to three main implications for policymakers and educators.

First, policymakers and educators should be wary of lowering standards through lenient grading policies. Those include “no-zero” mandates, bans on grading homework, and prohibitions on penalties for late work and cheating. Such policies tend to reduce expectations and accountability for students, hamstring teachers’ ability to manage their classrooms and motivate students, and confuse parents and other stakeholders who do not understand what grades have come to signify. All this makes addressing recent learning loss even harder.

Second, district leaders and state education agencies should support teachers in maintaining high expectations and holding the line on grade inflation. Educators need to know what high expectations look like. State and district leaders can present them with research on the connection between tough grading standards and student learning, as well as provide feedback data about their grading standards relative to their peers.

Third, teachers should try to take the best parts from both traditional and equity-oriented grading approaches. Many traditional practices have persisted for good reason, but a few equity-motivated grading reforms deserve to be adopted more widely. Specifically, there are good reasons for policymakers and educators to consider eliminating most extra credit assignments and implementing rigorous grading rubrics and “blind” scoring practices. These specific reforms do not lower academic standards, but they can strengthen academics and combat bias.

The push for more “equitable” grading policies has exacerbated grade inflation and yielded scant evidence of greater learning. Some aspects of traditional grading can indeed perpetuate inequities, but top-down policies that make grading more lenient are not the answer, especially as schools grapple with the academic and behavioral challenges of the post-pandemic era.

Rick Hess and Mike McShane have provided the education world with a thoughtful, accessible, perceptive, and—in its way—persuasive book on improving education. Though sub-titled (and marketed as) “a conservative vision,” it’s both more and less than that. More insofar as it reads as a wise counselor’s guide and contains much of value for readers of whatever philosophical orientation—but also less in that it’s light years away from what passes for conservatism in the public square today, at least when education arises in the legislative chambers of red states, in school board squabbles, or in Fox News harangues.

This wide-ranging volume covers considerably more ground than I realized when reviewing a derivative Hess-McShane essay that I was asked to comment on (and that we Fordhamites recirculated in last week’s Gadfly). It goes from home and family to preschool, to K–12, then to higher ed and beyond, including a side-trip into (mostly-recent) history and a welcome discussion of “core values.” That’s where the authors attempt to define conservatism in education: “a disposition and a series of commitments,” leading to eight “beliefs” that ring true for me, though they don’t easily compress into an elevator version.

Understand that this is no policy manual or programmatic cookbook, and the authors admit that it’s hard to apply their beliefs to on-the-ground policy choices. Tensions and conflicts are inevitable. For me, the gnarliest tension turns on the fact—Rick and Mike agree—that education is both a private and a public good, hence responsibility and authority are necessarily shared between individual and family (and perhaps employer) on the one hand and community/government/society on the other. Any attempt to allocate those “shares” is guaranteed to provoke discord.

Because the authors’ style is conversational, not policy-wonk—hence no need to prescribe allocations—they deal comfortably with such complexities in various policy realms, often by saying to resist sweeping, one-size-fits-all strategies and instead decentralize many decisions to parents, local communities, diverse schools, and other “little platoons.”

That’s easy to buy into—and I mostly do—but I’m also mindful that readers unable to suppress their wonkish leanings will fret that such counsel isn’t too helpful to lawmakers working on, say, preschool policy or crafting an ESA or voucher program for their state. While Rick and Mike can avoid—for example—formulating the balance between parental freedom and results-based-accountability, lawmakers must grapple. Similarly, when turning to pre-K, they write that “Academic preparation is important, but it has to be balanced against the need for little folks to, you know, play.” Absolutely, positively. But if one has those little folks in their center or school for X hours a day, where is that balance located? And if one is a policy type, do you focus your program on kindergarten readiness—maybe even hold providers accountable—or more generically on “child development” and softball the curricular stuff? (That’s long been the core Head Start debate.)

Yet serving up practical answers to wonks and operators would be a different book. What Rick and Mike wrote instead begs the wonk to pause and think about underlying purposes, values, and tradeoffs. A good thing, yes, because folks tend to do too little of that today before drafting bills, crafting amendments, and promulgating regulations. This book is more akin to a “principles of economics” discussion, maybe even The Wealth of Nations, than a guide to starting a business and maximizing its profits. 

On reflection, the only part that leaves me a little grumpy is its ten-page “bit of history,” just because I read some of that history differently. For example, the authors seem critical of southern governors of the 1980’s because their ed-reform proposals didn’t differ much from Democrat to Republican, from which Rick and Mike conclude that “the right didn’t have much to offer.” In the 90’s and early 2000’s, they again fault conservatives for sharing much of their K–12 agendas with liberals, deferring to liberals, sometimes joining forces with them, rather than advancing a distinctive conservative agenda.

That’s not my recollection. Mine is that two of the seminal ed-reform strategies of the era—standards-driven accountability and school choice—emerged from and were primarily advanced by conservatives, and that the surest way to get anywhere with those strategies across much of the land was to work in bipartisan fashion. Conservatives were leaders more than followers, initiators more than copycats, doers more than critics.

But I’m old, maybe too preoccupied with “back then,” which occupies a scant ten pages out of 140. The remainder found me mostly agreeing, loving their anecdotes and examples, often drawn from unexpected places, and welcoming some great big points that you won’t find in other books. Consider the authors’ important distinction between “formative” and “performative” education. I’d heard Rick deprecate the “performative” without quite grasping his meaning until I grappled with this version—and if it’s not yet obvious to you, that would be reason enough to grapple.

Liberals need to, for sure, but it’d be nice if a lot of conservatives did some grappling with these pages, as well, for too many of both casts are performing—and telling us to applaud—rather than focusing on the formation of children into competent adults.

So go and grapple.

My friend Michael Petrilli just wrote a great essay about the “homework gap.” He sets aside the upper-class question (stressed out kids with too much of it) and steers readers to the gap (some kids do what’s assigned, some kids copy and cheat, and some kids skip it).

“Our goal when it comes to homework,” Petrilli writes, “should be to get more students to do more of it—at least the valuable, productive kind...and that means addressing the barriers that some low-income students face.” Obstacles include fully-functioning laptops, quiet places at home, and help when you’re stuck. I agree.

My take is that, in addition to Petrilli’s points, the key to addressing the homework gap is to find and examine “outlier teachers”—those inside any high school who generate unusually large amounts of productive homework completion, compared to other teachers in the same school.

These outlier teachers are able to change the behavior of students, the same kids who—for other teachers—tend to skip assignments or just copy from friends (or AI). But somehow, in these outlier classrooms, the exact same students show up with work they actually did on their own, despite the same noisy home with crappy Wi-Fi and no parent push.

What do kids say when they describe such teachers? I’ve learned three common themes from students, from my time operating and observing schools.

1. The teacher nails the homework basics, meaning assignments are clear, reasonably useful, and graded fairly and quickly. Moreover, these outlier teachers “patrol” for kids who might cheat, perhaps using pop quizzes where students must answer “live” the exact same questions they supposedly did ten hours before.

2. The homework task is “plausible”—meaning that most students exit today’s class actually able to do tonight’s homework when they get home (assuming they deign to try). This outcome is not easy to achieve. Broadly speaking, it means “better teaching,” specifically legitimate “checks for understanding” and adapting on the fly—including sometimes changing the assignment five minutes before the bell rings. 

What happens instead? Imagine a weaker teacher who nominally taught kids today about the quadratic equation. By nominally, I mean presented the topic, but it’s clear that the median student didn’t grasp it. Now the teacher faces a tough choice. Should she assign typical quadratic equation homework? If she doesn’t, then someone could say she lowered expectations. Or should she assign really Mickey Mouse–type problems, easy ones that her median student can do but that fail the “reasonably useful” aspect of theme 1 above. Doing those easy problems doesn’t mean a kid has even moderate understanding of quadratic equation.

3. Finally, when students describe these outlier teachers, the ones they “try harder” for, often they describe the relationships. The same kid who is inclined to skip homework for most of her teachers wants to try for the outlier teachers because she feels known and cared about and doesn’t want to disappoint them.

Note that these are three separate ways to win. A teacher doesn’t have to be amazing at all of them to generate more productive homework completion—and more learning—compared to other teachers in the same school. The combinations vary. A struggling student who adores his English teacher? Perhaps he produces a weak essay rather than no essay at all; this gives the teacher a starting point for feedback. A moderately motivated student who feels accountable to an “old school” science teacher might write her science lab report and skip the social studies essay because that teacher never checks to see if work is done. 

Math, to be sure, is different than the other subjects. Particularly with literature and history homework, a good faith effort often satisfies both student and teacher. In math, a struggler can make a good faith effort but get absolutely “stuck” on a question and have no path forward. Hence the quadratic equation example above rather than, say, the causes of the Civil War. Maybe he gets help from a friend or teacher for a single question but is then is absolutely “stuck” on several more, unable to proceed. 

I think that’s why affluent parents purchase math tutoring for their kids way more than they do for all other subjects combined. I say that as someone who would like to democratize access to (human) math tutoring. Even the best math teachers—those who outperform their colleagues in motivating students—can’t always be “on call” for long periods to help kids who are “trying but stuck.” And these less motivated kids are, so far, resistant to math AI tools; there’s no evidence that AI is shrinking the homework gap.

Like so much in education, how well and how much kids learn from homework depends on the strategies and skills of their instructors. The good news for individual teachers is they have much within their control. 

Districts have used almost $190 billion in ESSER funds to help students recover from pandemic learning loss by implementing a wide variety of initiatives, including summer and after-school programing, tutoring, hiring school psychologists and social workers, and extending the school day. As the federal funds that helped to make these programs possible are set to run out in September, a new study by Erin Fahle, Thomas Kane, Sean Reardon, and Douglas Staiger examines how much districts have recovered from pandemic-era learning loss and what they can do as ESSER funding expires.

The research team measured pandemic-related losses by comparing student achievement on standardized tests from thirty states from the spring of 2019 to the springs of 2022 and 2023. They linked state scores to the NAEP test scale in order to compare scores across states, years, and grade levels. Between 2019 and 2022, the average student lost the equivalent of half a grade level in math achievement and nearly a third of a grade level in reading achievement. While few places had returned to pre-pandemic levels of achievement, by spring 2023, students recovered approximately 0.17 grade levels in math and 0.08 grade levels in reading.

Importantly, patterns of recovery varied by race and socioeconomic status within and among states and districts. Based on data from the twenty states that reported data by race, Black students (who experienced the most learning loss) recovered slightly more than White and Hispanic students. However, despite this recovery, the White-Black and White-Hispanic achievement gaps were both wider in 2023 than they were in 2019 due to pre-existing pre-pandemic racial achievement gaps. Similarly, differences in nonpoor and poor students (who also experienced greater learning loss) ultimately resulted in a widening between the poor-nonpoor achievement gap, despite varying across districts.

Some variations are tantalizing. In Alabama and Georgia, for instance, high-poverty districts experienced more learning loss than higher income districts during the pandemic but also recovered faster. In contrast, wealthier districts in Massachusetts and Connecticut recovered more quickly, while students in high-poverty districts actually declined from pre-pandemic levels of achievement. But overall, because poor districts had lost more ground during the pandemic, their progress was not enough to catch up to wealthier ones, resulting in a wider poor-nonpoor achievement gap. The researchers found similar trends among students within districts. In fifteen states that had available data, children from both poor and rich backgrounds in the same district may have had similar levels of learning loss, but children from wealthier backgrounds recovered more quickly.

Ultimately—and worryingly—the findings indicate that many students and districts are not on pace to recover before the expiration of ESSER funding in September. The researchers do, however, offer four promising recommendations for how to mitigate the consequences of the end in funding. They assert that: (1) schools should be required to inform parents if their child is below grade level in order to give parents time to enroll in summer learning before the end of federal relief; (2) schools should expand summer learning seats; (3) districts can extend recovery efforts by establishing tutoring and after-school programming before September; and (4) local government, the community, and employers should help schools reduce absenteeism. While the end of funding is a motivating factor behind the researchers’ recommendations, and hopefully a motivating factor for school leaders to implement them, it’s good advice regardless of the situation.

Missing from the recommendations, however, is that policymakers should consider making these programs opt-out instead of opt-in. Students who need to catch-up should be automatically enrolled. Research has found that those who would benefit the most are often least likely to enroll—and because of the fast-approaching funding cliff, these students can’t afford more of the status quo.

Source: Erin Fahle, Thomas Kane, Sean Reardon, and Douglas Staiger, “The First Year of Pandemic Recovery: A District-Level Analysis.” Education Recovery Scorecard: Center for Education Policy Research, Harvard University (January 2024).

Cheers

• Next year’s NAEP will include a more nuanced measure of students’ socioeconomic status. —Education Week
• “‘College for all’ doesn't work for everyone. There must be many roads to meaningful and prosperous careers.” —Bruno V. Manno, The 74
• More teachers, researchers, and administrators are coming to realize the importance of science and social studies in elementary school. —Education Week

Jeers

• Despite fewer high school graduates meeting college-readiness benchmarks, the majority of seniors believe they’re prepared for university education. —Education Week
• Chicago’s Board of Education voted unanimously to remove police officers from school buildings, whether local communities want them or not. —Chicago Sun Times
• The focus and prioritization of mental health and SEL in classrooms may actually be making students more anxious and depressed. —Abigail Shrier, The Free Press

• Approximately half of college graduates work jobs that don’t use the skills and knowledge from their degree. —Wall Street Journal
• A recent Supreme Court action allows schools to consider socioeconomic status, but not race, in admissions decisions. —Washington Post
• Determined to remain open, some Ukrainian cities have built entire schools underground—NPR
• New budget requirements are creating fiscal turmoil in Maryland schools. —Baltimore Banner
• “Traditional grading may not be as straightforward as it seems.” —Rick Hess & Joe Feldman, Education Week