Friday Reading List: The Long-Term Positive Impact of More Black Teachers and What Americans Think About Education Policy

Shantell Jamison of Ebony looks at the impact of teachers of color on student performance:

The study, published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, found that students who have at least one Black teacher in third through fifth grades were less likely to drop out of school. “The Long-run Impact of Same-race Teachers” suggest that by exposing Black girls and boys to at least one Black teacher in grades 3-5 significantly reduced the probability of low-income Black males dropping out of school by 39 percent.

Lauren Camera of U.S. News & World Report has more:

Previous research has shown positive short-term causal impact of black students having black teachers, in which their end-of-year test scores were higher than black students who didn't have a black teacher. But this is the first research showing positive long-term causal impact ... The teaching workforce is overwhelmingly homogenous: Teachers of color represent 18 percent of educators, and black males represent just 2 percent, according to Department of Education statistics. This, while approximately half – 49 percent – of public elementary and secondary school students are children of color.

The mismatch between teacher and student demographics would be discomfiting even without the data linking Black teachers with higher achievement among black students. Moreover, this research is good confirmation that A) improving the quality of teaching and B) diversifying the educator workforce are mutually reinforcing goals, not competitive ones.

In other news, Richard Kahlenberg, writing in The Atlantic, wonders about the fate of school integration initiatives, given that the Trump administration is backing away from a modest federal commitment to the task:

The death of a small federal school-integration initiative is connected to a much larger concern that DeVos’s primary education-reform idea—using public money for private school vouchers—will produce poor academic results for students, and Balkanize students by religion, race, and class. As my Century Foundation colleague Halley Potter noted in a new report, “voucher programs on balance are more likely to increase school segregation than to decrease it or leave it at status quo" ... What options do supporters of diversity have? Could progressives capitalize on DeVos’s rhetoric around school choice—particularly, the compelling need to liberate kids from struggling, high-poverty schools—to encourage choice within the public-school system that is designed to bring children of different backgrounds together? Should progressives pivot from Washington to focus on progressive states and localities? What is the role of foundations? What about state courts?

Kahlenberg makes a compelling case that states can - and perhaps should - take matters into their own hands. It's important to remember that, before 2001, it was rare to have a national conversation about education policy, and that our relatively recent infatuation with accomplishing educational improvement through federal intervention in the operation of schools has little precedent. I happen to believe that the federal government should have a larger role in schooling, but so long as the party that controls the federal pursestrings maintains a nihilistic view of governance, the states seem like a good place to pursue change!

Gerald Dessus, writing at Philly's 7th Ward, explains why he teaches eighth graders a course in social justice:

Teaching social justice provides us with the opportunity to help students explore their own identities and communities but to also challenge them to think about real world issues. One of the greatest gifts we can give our students is the encouragement and empowerment, to not only fulfill their dreams but, to stand up and speak out for what they believe in. Our eighth-grade social justice course is designed to help students think and speak critically about social justice issues through a historical perspective so that they can take effective action in their communities. Essentially, it is a civic engagement course that incorporates case studies from African American and South African history to encourage students to act against injustice in their own communities.

Finally this week, Joshua Starr is in USA Today explaining the disconnect between what Americans want in their schools, on the one hand, and what Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump are proposing to do on education policy, on the other:

Consider school choice, which DeVos has placed at the top of her policy agenda. Our poll reveals that, in general, Americans like the idea of choice in public education. On the specifics, though, DeVos’s positions are out of tune with majority opinion, particularly when it comes to school vouchers. Most respondents tell us that they disapprove of using public funds to support voucher programs ... DeVos is equally tone deaf when it comes to charter schooling, which is her other favored means of promoting choice. While charter schools themselves are quite popular — 64% supporting, 25% opposing in 2015, the last time we asked this question — the secretary’s views on charter school governance (specifically her fierce resistance to any kind of public oversight of these schools) are less mainstream. We asked Americans four times in the early 2000s whether they wanted charter schools to be held accountable to the same standards as traditional public schools and the response was overwhelmingly “yes.”

Read the rest of Starr's piece, and the survey data that inspired it, as I'm sure you'll find at least a few things that challenge your personal conventional wisdom. Have a great weekend!

Thursday Reading List: Pre-K Results in NYC, Diversifying the Equal Pay Coalition, and Tough Talk for White Activists

Christine Veiga of Chalkbeat looks at early results from New York City's expansion of pre-K:

The launch of Pre-K for All led to improved health outcomes for low-income children. That’s according to researchers at New York University who analyzed Medicaid data for New York City children who were eligible to enroll in free pre-K versus those who just missed the cutoff because of their age. In a report released this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research, using data from 2013 through 2016, researchers found that the children eligible for pre-K were more likely than their peers to be diagnosed with asthma or vision problems after the rollout of Pre-K for All. They were also more likely to have received immunizations or be screened for infectious diseases, both of which are requirements for enrolling in the city’s program.

Veiga points out that hearing and vision problems can have significant negative effects on academic performance; screening for these issues early is a great way to cultivate stronger schooling performance later in childhood.

Brittany Packnett is in New York, arguing that the fight for equal pay needs to be more expansive:

The most common statistic cited on Equal Pay Day is that women make 80 cents for every man’s dollar. But that’s not true. White women do. Black women make 65 cents. Latina women make 58 cents. And Asian-American, Pacific Islander, and Native women are often not even considered “statistically significant” enough to be calculated. And yet, the fight for equal pay seems most concerned with the women at the top of the pay scale. Every time we perpetuate the myth that all women simply need two more dimes per dollar to win, the message is sent to women of color that we are in the way — and could cause us to lose.

Packnett recounts the uneasy historical relationship between the respective fights for racial justice and women's rights. Contemporary activists often ignore, or outright deny, the lessons to be gleaned from that history. Hastening sweeping change requires the sustenance of a broad coalition, which can only be accomplished, in this case, by making the equal pay coalition more diverse and inclusive. That said, broadening the tent will require listening to the perspectives of a wider range of women, and shifting both strategy and tactics to incorporate those views.

Speaking of activism, DiDi Delgado, writing at Medium, offers a critique of White groups tackling racial justice:

I’ve never told anyone not to collaborate with white-led anti-racism groups. I’ve worked with many, and will probably continue to do so (assuming I don’t alienate them all). I do, however, insist that today’s white anti-racism initiatives stay in their lane, and do not co-opt POC movements or center themselves in any way. This work was being done long before them, and will continue long after they’ve grown tired of dabbling in the waters of thankless atonement. There are no perfect individuals or organizations, and I think SURJ and similar outlets need to acknowledge that from the onset. If they believe there’s a “right” way to perform whiteness within a white supremacy they’re sadly mistaken. You cannot be a member of an oppressive group without inflicting harm on those you oppress. The objective for allies should be to inflict as little harm as possible. And the way to do this is through accountability. But who are white-led anti-racism groups accountable to? And what does that accountability look like?

Delgado makes important points, all of which are good reminders to White people engaged in racial justice work. The point about accountability is critical; while many people who come from privileged backgrounds are biased towards "leadership," racial justice work requires those folks to become followers who are accountable to the communities seeking liberation.

Finally today, Alexandra Petri, writing in The Washington Post, satirizes the "let's track down disappointed Trump voters" genre of think pieces:

In the corner, under a picture of George Washington that is cracked and broken and stained with tobacco juice, lies Herm Slabornik. Herm is encased in a cryogenic tube which will be unplugged if Trump gets his way. According to a note on his cryotube, he knows what Trump said about unplugging tubes but he does not think Trump would unplug him personally. He will vote for Trump again in 2020, provided he is not unplugged. Also, he hates Obamacare.

Have a great day!

Wednesday Reading List: Computational Thinking and When Diversity Becomes Partisan

Laura Pappano of The New York Times looks at schools teaching computational thinking:

It’s obvious that computers have become indispensable problem-solving partners, not to mention personal companions. But it’s suddenly not enough to be a fluent user of software interfaces. Understanding what lies behind the computer’s seeming magic now seems crucial. In particular, “computational thinking” is captivating educators, from kindergarten teachers to college professors, offering a new language and orientation to tackle problems in other areas of life. This promise — as well as a job market hungry for coding — has fed enrollments in classes like the one at Berkeley, taken by 500 students a year. Since 2011, the number of computer science majors has more than doubled, according to the Computing Research Association. At Stanford, Princeton and Tufts, computer science is now the most popular major. More striking, though, is the appeal among nonmajors. Between 2005 and 2015, enrollment of nonmajors in introductory, mid- and upper-level computer science courses grew by 177 percent, 251 percent and 143 percent, respectively.

As the manipulation and representation of data become central to more personal and professional endeavors, computational thinking has moved from a "nice to have" to a "must have." To examine at my own work as an example, I use legitimate math skills once in a blue moon, but I use some element of coding or computational thinking just about every day.

On the not-so-fun side of the educational content spectrum, Linda Wertheimer is in The Atlantic trying to figure out how educators address the rising tide of American White nationalism:

Even during the 2016 campaign, many teachers were afraid of talking about anything related to the election, according to a Southern Poverty Law Center survey, “The Trump Effect, The impact of the presidential campaign on our nation’s schools.” A little more than 40 percent of the roughly 2,000 teachers surveyed said they were hesitant to teach about the election out of concern of backlash from their communities, school administrators, and parents. Those fears have only heightened. In a November survey of 10,000 teachers, also by Teaching Tolerance, the proportion of teachers nervous to teach about the election and the post-election season rose a little higher to 46 percent. “We’re hearing from teachers that they’re afraid to talk in favorable terms about diversity, that they really are afraid of being accused of partisanship now and the line about what is partisan has moved since the election,” said Maureen Costello, the author of the Trump Effect report and director of the Teaching Tolerance project at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The relative newness of the alt-right also makes some teachers leery of teaching about it, Costello and others added.

Teachers. Are afraid. That embracing diversity. Is partisan.

I can understand educators' queasiness about discussing the "Alt-Right" White supremacist movement. To some extent, the more coverage and attention that ideology gets, the more its views become legitimized. However, I find it incredibly demoralizing that the right has essentially weaponized the idea of multiculturalism.

In other news, Jackie Mader of The Hechinger Report looks at differential suspension rates in Mississippi:

In Wilkinson County, Hollandale and Tishomingo County, less than 1 percent of students were suspended from school during the 2014-15 school year. Compare that with Moss Point on the coast, where more than 42 percent of students were suspended that year ... So why do these numbers vary so much? The report says several factors can play a role, including whether a district relies on in-school suspension more than out-of-school suspension, and what behavior a district includes in its discipline policy as deserving of a suspension. Some districts, like the Grenada School District, about 110 miles north of Jackson, for example, specifically state in its student handbook that “academic success is directly correlated with instructional time received by the student,” and the district will use “corrective strategies that do not remove children from valuable instructional time.”

One of the most troubling trends in school discipline is the application of "zero tolerance" policies that punish children for subjective behaviors like "insubordination." In schools with higher suspension rates, you can bet that the vast majority of the suspensions are the result of non-violent behaviors that teachers should be capable of handling without excluding children from schooling.

Finally, Denisa Superville of Education Week finds out that a popular principals' licensing exam is not predictive of performance as an administrator:

The study, which looked at principals’ performance on the School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA) and on-the-job evaluations, student achievement, and teacher surveys, over a 10-year period in Tennessee, also found that non-white candidates were about three times less likely than white candidates to pass the exam. The researchers found that candidates with higher passing scores were more likely to be hired as principals. And because Tennessee has the lowest cut score among the states that use the SLLA, disparities in passing rates for white and non-white candidates could be greater in states that set higher cut scores, said Jason A. Grissom, the lead researcher and an associate professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

Studies consistently demonstrate that neither licensure, nor advanced degrees, can predict the school and/or classroom performance of educators. Given the results of this study, though, licensing exams seem not just superfluous, but perhaps harmful to the project of diversifying the education profession.

Tuesday Reading List: Upending Cultural Norms, Elite Colleges, and Rolling Back Police Reform

Barrett Rosser of Philly's 7th Ward talks about how to survive as an educator, in schools where the children are mostly Black and Brown, but the culture is overwhelmingly - well - White:

... I am still trying to figure out how schools, full of thousands of Black and Brown students, feel so White; how schools with so few men feel so male-dominated, overflowing with the stench of patriarchy. And as a woke woman of color, I’ve studied, lectured, ran professional development sessions and joined other opportunities around cultural context and race, identity and gender, and STILL the Whiteness in schools is so pervasive it’s unbearable ... I’m talking about the norms, values and unspoken rules that are set by White men in charge and upheld by everyone (including people of color and women) in order to not disrupt “normality.”

Rosser provides some tips for navigating these situations, which are worth understanding even if you cannot relate to her experience. If you're an educator - White or otherwise - who hasn't considered the extent to which you're propagating an environment that is uncomfortable for adults and children who aren't White, perhaps you can use some of the language from this piece to ask your peers for feedback? Just a thought ...

Derek Thompson of The Atlantic wants to understand the real value of elite colleges:

For most [college] applicants, it simply doesn’t really matter if they don’t get into their top choice, according to a paper by Stacy Dale, a mathematician at Mathematica Policy Research, and Alan Krueger, an economist at Princeton University. These researchers tracked two groups of students—one that attended college in the 1970s and another in the early 1990s. They wanted know: Did students attending the most elite colleges earn more in their 30s, 40s, and 50s than students with similar SAT scores, who were rejected from those elite colleges? The short answer was no. Or, in the author's language, the difference between the students who went to super-selective schools and the students with similar SAT scores who were rejected from those schools and went to less selective institutions was "indistinguishable from zero."

But wait! There's more ...

The researchers found that the most selective schools really do make an extraordinary difference in life earnings for "black and Hispanic students” and "students who had parents with an average of less than 16 years of schooling.” In other words, getting into Princeton if your parents went to Princeton? Fine, although not a game-changer. But getting into Princeton if your parents both left community college after a year? That could be game-changing ... The irony is that elite colleges are disproportionately kind to legacy students and famously struggle to fill their classes with high-achieving minorities and other low-income students from less prestigious high schools.

In other words, while elite colleges could actually be engines of social mobility, they mostly act as propagators of existing pockets of privilege. Sounds familiar.

In other news, Monique Judge of The Root looks at recent actions by the Attorney General:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday ordered Justice Department officials to review reform agreements that are in place with police departments across the country that have been found to have problems with their policing methods, saying the reviews are necessary to ensure the agreements don’t run counter to the Trump administration’s goal of promoting officer safety and morale while fighting violent crime ... This, of course, raises the question of whether or not the agreements, which were a legacy of the Obama administration, will even stay in place.

The context is important here. Some of these agreements were reached as a way to both reconcile conflict and reform policing in places with highly publicized incidents of police violence, like Baltimore and Ferguson. Rolling back these agreements would mean even less accountability for local police.

Finally, Brett Schulte of Slate looks at a town in Arkansas that remains a KKK stronghold:

That Harrison, a town of just 13,000, is 96 percent white and located in the Ozark hills of a former Confederate state might make it an unsurprising breeding ground for white supremacists. But for the last 15 years, civic leaders have battled Robb for the town’s reputation. Organized as the Community Task Force on Race Relations, they have launched their own billboards, media-outreach campaigns, and diversity-themed events. For years, the task force pitted what it thought were mainstream ideals of pluralism against the segregationist goals of the KKK. It enjoys the endorsement of business and city leaders ... But if Harrison is any guide, establishment endorsements and task forces aren’t enough to push back the rising tide of white nationalism. Trump demolished the competition in Boone County, winning 76 percent of the vote—16 points higher than his already-sizable statewide victory.

This piece is a nice example of how White nationalism, racist violence, and the ascendancy of Trump are inextricably connected. You can parse the "economic anxiety" of Trump voters all you want, but the racist attitudes that enabled his rise are in plain sight, and everyone that voted for him made a conscious decision to either embrace, or acquiesce to, those ideas. Have a nice day ...

Monday Reading List: Debating Segregation and the City of Denver vs. DeVos

The editorial page of The Baltimore Sun is following the Maryland state senate, as one legislator raises the issue of schools segregation:

... Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, tried to add an amendment to an education policy bill to address, at least in a small way, the socio-economic and racial segregation that are prevalent in Maryland's schools. It was sometime after 10:30 that night, and senators, who had been in session for hours, were already a little punchy when Mr. Ferguson began talking about the massive barrier such segregation poses to the state's efforts to ensure a good public education for all children ... In fact, he hadn't even gotten through presenting his idea when Sen. Robert A. Zirkin, a Baltimore County Democrat, interjected to ask a question: "Ah, this would create Baltimore City-Baltimore County school districts?" Mr. Ferguson didn't get far in explaining that no, that wasn't exactly what he was talking about before Sen. James Brochin, another Baltimore County Democrat, rose to oppose him, arguing that Baltimore County schools are already overrun by city kids sneaking in.

The discussion went "downhill" from there, according to the editors. The tension captured in the coverage of this debate is a primer in how privilege and power collude to keep schools segregated. Wealthier communities behave as if public schools are tantamount to their personal property; moreover, they think that sharing their schools will inevitably diminish the value of those institutions.

Elsewhere last week, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos gave a speech at The Brookings Institution, during which she criticized the Denver Public Schools. Sarah Darville has the story in The Denver Post:

... DeVos called out Denver as an example of a district that appears to be choice-friendly — but actually lacks sufficient options for families. A new Brookings report gave the city the top score for school choice, citing the unified application process that allows families to consider charter and district-run schools at the same time. But DeVos implied that without vouchers to pay for private schools (something Colorado’s state Supreme Court has twice ruled unconstitutional) and a sufficient supply of charter schools, Denver’s application process amounts to an optical illusion.

Tom Boasberg, the Denver superintendent, fired back:

"We respectfully disagree with Secretary DeVos. We do not support private school vouchers. We believe that public dollars should be used for public schools that are open to all kids, whether they are district-run or charter ... A core principle in Denver and one of the main reasons we rank no. 1 nationally in school choice is that we ensure equitable systems of enrollment among district-run and charter schools, where all schools play by the same enrollment rules and all schools are subject to the same rigorous accountability system. We do not support choice without accountability."

Then U.S. Senator Michael Bennet piled on to the Secretary:

The Democrat took to Twitter to challenge DeVos’s implication that choices in Denver are lacking because students may not use private school vouchers or don’t have enough charter schools from which to choose. Bennet was superintendent of DPS before being appointed to the Senate in 2009. Under his leadership, the urban school district launched a series of school reforms that remain in place today. More than a quarter of the district’s schools are charter schools, which receive public tax dollars but are run independently of the school district.

The broader story here is the growing rift among education policymakers around school choice. Those who support choice for ideological reasons (accountability be damned!) are in the DeVos camp, cheering on the voucher plan. Bennet, Boasberg, and others support public schooling options that offer innovation and diversity for families, but their support is tethered to the condition that those options produce - you know - results.

Secretary DeVos has made vouchers a central part of her rhetoric about how states should use federal dollars. Does she have the authority to require that, though? Alyson Klein at Education Week says "no":

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos told an audience at the Brookings Institution Wednesday that she wouldn't necessarily approve every state's plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act right off the bat.  And at the same event, she continued to push her favorite policy: school choice ... the juxtaposition still had some folks nervous, including Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who told Politico that she hopes DeVos "clarifies her comments and makes it clear that she does not plan to threaten states or hold their proposals hostage unless they conform to her privatization agenda" ... Could DeVos legally reject a state's plan because it didn't include choice, even if she wanted to? ... Both Democrats and Republicans who worked on ESSA say doing that would violate the long, long list of prohibitions on the Education Department's authority in the law, one of which says the secretary can't tell states what kinds of interventions they can or can't use with their lowest-performing schools.

When the Obama administration imposed stricter conditions on federal funding, some republicans cried foul. Now that the Trump administration is flirting with similar restrictions - but with a different ideological bent - democrats are predictably rebelling. This episode is a good reminder that, whenever you deviate from an institutional norm, you should consider the fact that your biggest political opponent is now liberated to violate that same norm with impunity. Have a great week!

Friday Reading List: Supporting Undocumented Students, Gentrification & Political Power, and "Stealing" Schools

Timothy Pratt of The Hechinger Report looks at how some colleges are supporting undocumented students:

... while the fate of undocumented students is still up in the air, and the effectiveness of promises at other universities to provide them sanctuary still untested, the attention to the issue in Utah and elsewhere has resulted in something much less widely noticed that could also have a big impact: Long-sought additional support is finally being added on campuses to help these students succeed in college. The University of Utah has quietly agreed to create a resource center for undocumented students, and has hired a coordinator to run it. Similar supports have been put in place by [other schools] ... Observers of the protests, and of the new support services for undocumented students, say pressure and attention from the first have led to the second.

It's an ironic twist that it required an existential threat to undocumented students for schools to respond to their needs. Despite rampant disagreement about federal immigration policy, surely even the most conservative among us shouldn't want to deport and exclude immigrant students who are already in college, pursuing the textbook version of the American dream. Right?

Michael Harriot of The Root looks at how gentrification affects political power among black communities:

Remember Chocolate City? A majority of D.C.’s City Council is now white. Most of Brooklyn, N.Y.’s state and local officials are, too, and only three of Oakland’s eight City Council members are African American. Nationally, the 115th Congress is the most diverse ever, but it is still dominated by lawmakers who are largely white and Republican. Only 8.9 percent of Congress is black, compared with 13 percent of the population, and while every statistic shows that the country’s demographic makeup favors the Democratic Party, the Republican Party’s advantage keeps growing. State legislatures are no different. In fact, 80 percent of America’s population lives in states controlled at least partially by Republicans. Blacks make up less than 9 percent of state legislatures and hold a whopping zero percentage of governorships.

Harriot has a list of action steps to beat back the consequences of gentrification, including a call to fight gerrymandering that further diminishes electoral power in black communities. As a white person who lives in a diverse neighborhood, I struggle with the tension inherent in trying to live in an integrated community, while not weakening political power among nonwhite people. One of my friends offered me a simple rule - "Don't be a dick" - and that seems to be a good rubric for interpersonal interactions. It's insufficient for considering the political ramifications, though.

In other news, Grace Tatter of Chalkbeat looks at the tension between school choice and accountability in Tennessee:

Some of the 24 Catholic schools in Memphis might not accept school vouchers if their students have to take Tennessee’s state tests, a lobbyist told lawmakers on Wednesday ... How to hold private schools accountable if they accept public funds has been central to the voucher debate in Tennessee and nationwide.

Accountability is not just about how students perform on tests, even though that's part of the calculus here. Accountability also is about upholding federal civil rights law, special education regulations, and nondiscrimination policies. Without safeguards, private schools might enact discriminatory admissions and employment practices, while taking public money.

Finally, Megan DeSombre at Education Connecticut reports on a mother who went to jail for sending her child to a school outside of her district:

It’s been five years since Tanya McDowell made national headlines after she was charged with larceny for “stealing an education” for her son ... While, in 2013, the state decriminalized “stealing an education,” this issue is by no means settled. The Norwalk Public Schools still haven’t stopped hiring private investigators to check up on homeless students ... While it’s understandable for a city and it’s residents to be upset when resources are used on students who reside out-of-the-district, that’s precisely the problem. Connecticut’s Education system relies too heavily on property taxes. Connecticut’s education funding system is inequitable  — so inequitable, that’s it’s driven some parents to enroll their children in schools outside their district in order to give them a fair shot.

Connecticut has some communities with the highest concentrations of wealth in America, which are adjacent to cities with high concentrations of poverty. These wealth disparities are unconscionable on their own, but the state doubles-down on the inequity by maintaining a school funding system that relies heavily on property taxes to finance public schooling. Institutional racism and the use of property taxes to fund public schooling are the dual original sins of American public schooling; and they are mutually reinforcing. In the long term, no technocratic reforms will be successful on their own without addressing these two foundational problems.

Have a nice weekend.

Thursday Reading List: Racial Earnings Gaps and Betsy DeVos's Infatuation With Terrible Policy

GIllian White of The Atlantic looks at racial earnings gaps in America:

In both 1979 and 2015, poor black Americans worked more hours than poor white Americans. The poorest black workers have increased their annual hours of work to 1,524, a gain of 22 percent from 1979, compared to the 1,445 hours and 17 percent gain of white workers, according to EPI. Unsurprisingly, in both groups, women had the largest gains when it comes to the number of hours worked, in part because more women entered the workforce. But low-wage black women in particular have seen the largest increase in the amount they work each year of any racial, gender, or income- group combination, logging 30 percent more time on the job since 1979. With the increased hours of labor and climbing education levels, it would stand to reason that black workers in 2015 were in a better economic position than they were in 1979—but that’s not really true. Black-white wage gaps are actually larger now than they were in 1979.

She continues:

The racial wealth gap has also widened since the Great Recession, according to Pew Research. In 2004, white families held about seven times as much wealth as black families; by 2013, that ratio had grown to 13. And economic downturns such as the Great Recession have long hit black families harder than white ones; the Economic Policy Institute observed similar effects after both the 2001 and 1990 recessions. Over time, these differences only grow ...

Read the whole article, as there are other stunning details like the ones above. To tie this back to education, this information is the reason that nobody should believe that improving educational outcomes alone will cure racial disparities. Institutional racism also is baked into the public and private systems that dominate the American workforce. People of color often get a great education, then work EVEN HARDER than their white counterparts, only to make less money and accrue less familial wealth. That's 👏🏻 not 👏🏻 okay.

In other news, Erica Green of The New York Times covers Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos's first major policy speech since her confirmation:

The Trump administration’s budget proposal includes $168 million in spending on charter schools and $250 million for providing families with vouchers to use at private schools ... Ms. DeVos offered no more details about how the new program would be structured, the size of individual vouchers or the families that would be eligible ... The administration’s plans have been derided by critics as potentially devastating for traditional public schools, which would lose students and money. The choice plan has especially drawn the ire of congressional Democrats, as well as Republicans who represent rural areas where alternatives to local schools are limited and where voters favor improvements to local public schools.

I've mentioned that last part before: while Republicans in Washington love the idea of vouchers, because of their ideological commitment to the free market, the idea is WAY less popular among rank-and-file party officials, particularly those from communities where the school district is not just the only school option, but also tends to be the biggest employer.

Sarah Darville of Chalkbeat has more on the DeVos address, which she delivered at The Brookings Institution yesterday:

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos isn’t concerned that a push for more school choice could inadvertently harm America’s schools, she said Wednesday — because she believes the nation’s achievement is already too abysmal for that to be possible ... The comments reveal an unflinchingly negative guiding premise for the nation’s top education official: With nowhere to go but up, any disruption of the current system is, by definition, going in the right direction. (She pushed that idea further by invoking the fight between Uber and taxi companies as a parallel for the push for school choice.)

Madison Gray, writing at Education Post, had something to say about that particular analogy:

... the argument that data transparency, like Uber reviews and ratings, is enough to hold schools, districts and states accountable is laughable. Not only does it shift the burden of action entirely on parents and the public to interpret the data, it also doesn’t repair the underlying issues with the institution itself. There’s no app that apologizes for your 1-star-rating and then just voluntarily offers you a different school to make up for your bad experience. This transparency is just not sufficient enough to ensure minimal student outcomes and protections for vulnerable students who may have disabilities, are learning English or are from low-income families and/or minority backgrounds.

Vouchers are just a bad policy idea. I have a number of colleagues who support them, because they provide a safety valve for families who have no other option besides persistently struggling traditional public schools. That safety valve, though, is an illusion. Students who use vouchers usually attend schools that are as weak, if not worse, than their neighborhood schools. Couple that data with the fact that private schools that receive vouchers are not accountable to the public, and you have a recipe for the worst policy idea of all time.

Have a great day!

Wednesday Reading List: Charter Leaders Reject Trump's Budget and No Toys for You!

The leaders of some of the country's largest charter school organizations - Dacia Toll, Brett Peiser, and Richard Barth - published an opinion piece in USA Today, responding to the Trump administration's budget proposal:

... we cannot support the president’s budget as currently proposed and we are determined to do everything in our power to work with Congress and the administration to protect the programs that are essential to the broader needs of our students, families and communities. Budgets are statements of priorities, and this one sends a clear message that public education is not a top priority ... We see charters as an important part of a much broader effort to revitalize public education in America.

This statement is important, because plenty of people, both inside and outside of the charter world, will quibble with that last sentence. In opposing this budget - even though it has a big increase in funding for charter schools - these particular leaders are putting their values in front of their organization's self-interests. Keep your eye on this situation.

Catherine Gewertz of Education Week spent time examining how one school in Illinois is tackling racial disparities:

In a high school that's one of America's best, according to national magazines, but where students from the humble brick apartment buildings south of the railroad tracks often feel out of place in advanced classes. A school where the nearly all-white teaching staff politely sidesteps conversations about racial equity, even as they try to build an academic playing field where all students can win. The patterns here aren't easy to budge. Some are published, for all to see, in school report cards. Black, Hispanic and low-income students score much lower on state tests here, as they do in schools nationwide. More than a quarter of Wheaton North students take AP classes—an accomplishment that puts the school in rarefied air nationally. But only 16 percent of those seats hold minority students, even though nonwhites make up 31 percent of the student body.

Gewertz's piece provides a lot of texture around that data. What's critical to understand, though, is that the opportunity gap can be an intra-school phenomenon. We know that de facto school segregation is still rampant, and that housing patterns often lock families into school districts that are divided by income levels. That said, even in schools that are racially and socioeconomically integrated, we can observe disparities that are linked directly to race and class.

Speaking of race and class, Tamar Davis at Blavity looks at recent discussions about race and ethnicity within the black community:

According to a 2015 report released by the Pew Research Center examining the rising population of foreign-born Blacks, the Black Immigrant population in America has nearly quadrupled since 1980. Even between the years of 2000 and 2013, the Black immigrant population (comprised of immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America) rose from 6.7% to 8.7%. Studies conducted throughout the 90s have highlighted the tensions between various Black ethnic groups within the States particularly those between Black Americans and first generation- Black immigrants. Researchers have suggested that the driving force behind these tensions is the concept of segmented assimilation, which posits that since Black Americans have historically been oppressed in the US, it would be strategically disadvantageous for Black immigrants to fully assimilate into the Black American community.

It is well beyond my expertise to provide commentary on this article, but I think it's important for white folks to understand more about the heterogeneity of communities that aren't their own.

Finally today, German schools are considering taking away their children's toys, as a way to curb adult addiction behaviors. Sarah Zaske of The Atlantic has the story:

The toy-free kindergarten is not a new idea in Germany. It grew out of an addiction study group in the Bavarian district of Weilheim-Schongau that started meeting in the 1980s. The group included people who had worked directly with adult addicts and determined that, for many, habit-forming behavior had roots in childhood. To prevent these potential seeds of addiction from ever being planted, the researchers ultimately decided to create a project for kitas and kindergartens, which in Germany typically serve children ages 3 to 6, and remove the things children sometimes use to distract themselves from their negative feelings: toys.

Kidding aside, this story highlights the extent to which different countries have radically different philosophies undergirding their approaches to public education. It's a facile shortcut to label these things as "cultural differences," because the differences are an agglomeration of actual policy decisions, not the manifestation of ephemeral, abstract qualities inherent to a group of people. Have a great day!

Tuesday Reading List: Partisan Politics in College Regulation, College for All (Sort Of), and Daily Inspiration

David Whitman of The Atlantic takes a historical look at partisan response to for-profit colleges:

In Congress, on the presidential campaign trail, and in the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal, Republicans have been unified in the belief that the Obama administration badly overreached in its attempts to regulate for-profit career colleges that leave graduates unable to pay off student debt with income from the jobs for which they were trained ... What’s surprising about this GOP consensus is that it is deeply at odds with conservative practice: Republican administrations, dating back to President Eisenhower, have traditionally pressed for tighter regulation of for-profit colleges, often over the objections of Democratic lawmakers ... The answer is simple. Far from being free-market paragons, accredited for-profit schools typically depend on federal student-aid programs for 75 percent or more of their revenues.

Whitman juggles both policy and history here, and it's fascinating to see how the perspectives of the parties have evolved on this issue over the years. In particular, Democrats seem to have embraced the expansion of access to higher education with the use of public funds, even though that access was provided by the private sector. While I'm sure that folks will bend over backwards to use this history to shame contemporary Democrats who reject K-12 voucher schemes, that comparison is a false one ... we already have universal access in K-12. The problem is quality and equity, neither of which markets alone are capable of solving.

In other news, Laura Faith Kebede of Chalkbeat looks at the fine print for Tennessee charter school management organizations that participated in that state's Achievement School District:

When two charter school operators announced plans to leave Tennessee’s turnaround district this spring, many people were surprised that they could break their 10-year agreements ... But in Memphis and across the nation, there’s nothing to stop charter operators from leaving, even when they promise to be there for a long time. Contracts signed by both Gestalt Community Schools and KIPP contain no penalties for exiting the Achievement School District before agreements run out, according to documents obtained by Chalkbeat.

Kebede talks to lawyers and policymakers to determine whether there ought to be penalties - or at least deterrents - for charter operators who exit in this manner. Legalese aside, It seems pretty lousy to leave in the middle of an organization's commitment to the community. I'd love to hear more from local students and families about this ... are they devastated, happy, blasé, or somewhere in between?

Sarah Garland of The Hechinger Report looks at New York's plan to make college tuition free:

A few months ago, young people rallied around Bernie Sanders in large part because of his proposal to provide free tuition at public colleges and universities. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has taken up the cause, vowing to make college tuition-free at state schools in New York for students whose families earn less than $125,000. If approved by the Legislature, his Excelsior Scholarship plan would cost an estimated $163 million annually by 2019, when it fully phases in, and go further than any other state plan in making college more affordable. But some higher education experts say the proposal misses the point. They argue his plan will mostly help middle-income students who are already likely to attend and then graduate from college, not those least likely to go and most in danger of dropping out once they get there.

Garland points out that the most vulnerable children and families - including the one she profiles in this article - will not be eligible for the program, because they're not already full-time students. There are huge college completion inequities in this country, across lines of both class and race; those disparities will not be solved with financial assistance alone.

Finally, the team at Blavity shares an uplifting story from Boston:

Lovely Hoffman, a teacher at Boston’s Helen Y. Davis Leadership Academy, noticed comments about their looks were beginning to take a negative toll on the young girls she teaches ... Determined to do all she could to ensure her students weren’t racked by the same self-doubt she had been, Hoffman took her talents and wrote a song called “My Black Is Beautiful” to encourage them. The song features Hoffman’s students, and is full of body positivity, celebrating the full spectrum of black appearance. 

Have a great day!

Monday Reading List: District-Charter Collaboration, Writing Habits, and School Closures in NYC

Lindsa McIntyre and Shannah Varon are school principals in Boston. They co-authored a piece at The Hechinger Report about collaborating across neighborhoods and sectors:

Since 2011, our schools – one charter, one district – have participated in a partnership that demonstrates that when schools step out of their comfort zones they not only can improve student outcomes, but can effect positive change across entire teaching communities. Charter schools were established, in part, as laboratories of innovation to help support district improvement. But when schools compete for children and revenue, the relationship can become strained, making it politically difficult to share strategies and results with traditional districts ... In 2014, the Burke became the first school in Massachusetts to shed its turnaround status;  it achieved a 12-point gain in English proficiency and a 26-point increase in math proficiency on state tests.

McIntyre and Varon explain how they managed their relationship, despite differences and challenges. It's an important story to tell, as so much of the rhetoric around district and charter schools - particularly in Boston - has gravitated to "us vs. them" narratives.

One of the areas of collaboration for McIntyre and Varon was college readiness. Anemona Hartocollis of The New York Times looks at why that work is so complex:

For young people with college-educated parents, the path to higher education may be stressful, but there is a road map. If their standardized test scores are too low, they can pay for a prep course; if their essay is lackluster, they can hire a writing coach. No one will be the wiser. If they can’t decide which college is the “best fit,” they can visit. When they are tempted to give up, their parents will push them on. But for many working-class students ... there is no money for test prep or essay help. The alternatives to higher education — joining the military, working for $13 an hour at the local factory or getting a cheaper, faster trade-school certificate — are alluring. The cost of college may seem formidable. At a basic level, many of these students simply lack the knowledge of how to manage the increasingly complex college applications process.

Hartocollis profiles students from a range of demographic, geographic, and academic backgrounds, while describing their respective processes of pursuing higher education. Money is a big part of the problem, but many students arrive at college completely unprepared for the level of rigor, due to lackluster preparation in high school.

This is a bit meta, but Damon Young at VSB has some tips for people who want to write publicly, including:

4. Know that if you want to get better you have to get used to being lonely. Because it’s going to take thousands and thousands of lonely hours reading and writing (mostly reading) for you to do that. Actually, getting used to being lonely isn’t enough. You have to enjoy loneliness. Prefer it to (most) people, even.
5. Also, become well-acquainted with doubt, anxiety, sleeplessness, fatigue, jealousy, jitters, the tenuousness of mettle and confidence, angst, disappointment, vacillation, worry, and, occasionally, panic. These will be your new best friends.

Young isn't wrong. I will add, though, that writing doesn't have to be "your job" in order for you to do it with regularity. Like other creative pursuits, it's rare to be able to engage in creative writing as a career unto itself. I can speak from experience: even if your day job is something else, that shouldn't stop you from writing!

Finally today, Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat writes about school closings in New York City:

After outcry from some school communities, and near silence from others, the city’s plan to close five schools in its signature turnaround program was approved Wednesday night. The vote from the Panel for Educational Policy, which must sign off on school closures, came after nearly four hours of angry comments from parents, educators, and elected officials, many of whom said the city had gone back on its promise of giving their schools time to improve ... All five schools are part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Renewal initiative, a program designed to flood them with additional academic resources and social services to help sow improvements rather than closing them outright — the approach favored by the Bloomberg administration.

Closing schools can be devastating to communities that already lack access to both public and private resources. It's telling that the DiBlasio administration continues to pursue school closures, despite the mayor having run on a platform of sharp departure from his predecessor's - Mike Bloomberg - approach to reform, which notoriously included closures. My broader point here is that even the most vocally progressive politicians succumb to the fiscal, and technical, pressures of governance. Have a great week!