Top Three
More NAEP:
Michael Petrilli: Charter schools complicate the narrative on Covid shutdowns and learning loss.
"But there is one complication to the blame-the-unions narrative that we conservatives should acknowledge: the curious case of urban charter schools. These schools, which boasted a decades-long track record of improving student achievement and other outcomes in the pre-Covid era, were actually more likely to remain completely virtual during the first half of 2020–21 than their urban district counterparts. That was the conclusion of an analysis by Sarah Cohodes and Christine Pitts for the Center on Reinventing Public Education that was published this past January."
"After talking to others in the charter sector, including school leaders, I have several hypotheses. The strongest is simply that these are schools of choice, and many charter parents were afraid to send their children back to school before vaccines were widely available. Keep in mind that charters disproportionately serve large numbers of Black and Hispanic parents, most of them low-income and working class. And as we all know, tragically, these are the very communities that were hit hardest by Covid, especially in the early months of the pandemic."
James Pethokoukis: Why Isn't The Big Plunge in Student Test Scores a National Emergency?
Back in the summer of 2020, I wrote that “keeping kids out of school this year would be ... an economic catastrophe, every bit as serious as the deep recession from which we are currently recovering.” Now, more than two years later, I humbly concede my mistake. Yes, the Great Economic Lockdown that year was incredibly damaging, technically the worst recession on record. But the US economy has since recovered all of the job losses suffered during the pandemic. And the economy is now running above its long-term GDP potential (contributing to hot inflation)."
"So it’s obvious to me, then, that closing schools and shifting to distance learning was a far worse economic catastrophe than the recession."
Rick Hess: "No, it's not going to happen. We have no idea how to catch these kids up. I mean, we've been trying really hard to reform American education, certainly since A Nation At Risk, 39 years ago, and arguably for at least a half-century. Look, it's not like somebody has the right answers, and in some school of education somewhere they've got them locked away in the closet, and now we're finally going to crack them out. The reality is, we don't have any good solutions to help kids catch up."
Allison Rose Socol: NAEP Scores Are Out. Sure, Results Are Bad. But Now’s Not the Time for Handwringing.
"Federal, state, and district leaders must not just wring their hands — or worse — throw up their hands at the dismal numbers we see on paper. Now is the time for greater investments in proven strategies that accelerate students’ learning and that address the persistent inequities underscored in those numbers. Let’s get to work."
Checker Finn: Treating my NAEP hangover
"Second, please notice the NAEP dog that didn’t bark on Monday: the twelfth grade. That’s because when lawmakers mandated NAEP to deliver state-level results in reading and math, they specified only grades four and eight. The fact is that (mandated or not) there is no subject for which NAEP delivers end-of-high-school data at the state (or local) level."
"This is nuts. The end of high school is when state leaders should most want to know how their K–12 students are performing in core subjects. Maybe not reading, but surely math, science, history, and civics! That’s when kids are turning into adults, heading for college, emerging into the world of work. What do they know? What can they do? Who’s not making it? Must we forever settle for SAT and ACT scores, even as those tests fade and mindful that they were never intended for anything except gauging college readiness, often in a self-selected population?"
Brandon Wright: High-achieving middle schoolers have suffered devastating math losses.
"And although those at the bottom end absolutely deserve heaps of extra support now and in the coming years, leaders ought to avoid the mistake of assuming that higher achievers will be fine without help of their own."
"That’s because considerable research suggests that “math skills better predict future earners and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school,” and as the Wall Street Journal reported this week, “math proficiency in eighth grade is one of the most significant predictors of success in high school.” This suggests that the huge drops shown on the Nation’s Report Card over just the past three years could reverberate through the rest of these students' lives, and our country’s future."
Robin Lake: Teachers lack confidence (and vary greatly in confidence level) in addressing skills gaps. From NAEP survey.
Accelerate Announces Tutoring Grantees: Awarded 31 grants totaling over $10 million to a diverse set of grantees, including school systems, tutoring providers, regional nonprofit organizations, and state education agencies. More via Chalkbeat.
Learning Acceleration and Assessment Strategies in 100 Large Urban Districts: Via The 74.
"Last fall, the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that almost all of America’s 100 large and urban districts planned to prioritize at least one learning acceleration strategy, but only 20% intended to offer a comprehensive suite of approaches to help students catch up."
"Our new review of spending plans reveals about 1 in 3 large U.S. districts (34) plan to incorporate all four evidence-based learning acceleration strategies — tutoring supports, extended learning opportunities, small-group instruction and use of data — a sign that more students may be poised to receive such help."
"Nearly 8 in 10 large and urban school districts (78) said they planned to offer tutoring during 2021-22 — 16 more than the year before. Of these, 27 offered tutoring to all students and 35 targeted specific subgroups."
"According to our analysis, 70 districts shared evidence of assessing students’ academic or social needs in fall 2021. Of these, most prioritized academic assessments, but a handful also gauged students’ well-being."
"In a separate analysis we conducted recently of spending plans for districts in New England, only 0.4% of relief funds were planned for data investments. Similarly, a FutureEd national analysis of spending plans found few districts planned to invest in student information systems. Overall, most districts don’t appear to be keeping data and progress monitoring top of mind. This isn’t to say that investments in learning acceleration are not well spent, but these efforts are less meaningful if school systems don’t have a plan to track how these strategies pay off in the long run."
Covid Research
FDA Urged to Publish Follow-up Studies on Covid-19 Vaccine Safety Signals: Via BMJ.
"The BMJ has also learnt that the FDA has not publicly warned of similar signals detected in a separate observational cohort study it conducted of the third dose (first booster dose) in the elderly, nor has the agency publicly acknowledged other published observational studies or clinical trial reanalyses reporting compatible results. Experts spoke to The BMJ about their concerns about the data and have called on the FDA to notify the public immediately."
“The fact that the FDA found these four safety signals means they should have followed up on the results and I don’t understand why we haven’t had more information since then. It has been over a year,” says Tracy Høeg, epidemiologist and physician currently conducting covid-19 vaccine research with the Florida Department of Health and California’s Marin County Department of Health and Human Services."
Humans Transmit SARS-CoV-2 to Their Pets, Household Study Finds: Bentley asked me to pass this along to you ICYMI.
3 in 4 High Schoolers Faced Potential Trauma During the Pandemic: K12 Dive on CDC report.
"Over half (53%) of the 4,390 high school students studied reported up to two adverse childhood experiences."
"Examples of such experiences could range from food insecurity, bullying and caregiver job loss, to physical and emotional abuse or sexual violence."
State
Alabama: Selma High goes virtual due to rise in illnesses including COVID.
California:
‘Massive decline’ in learning during COVID. Here’s how Bay Area students performed.
Why some schools saw their scores soar despite Covid — and others didn't
"Mountain Valley Unified, a diverse, predominantly low-income K-12 district in the remote mountains of Trinity County, had some of the state’s largest increases: 13 points in reading and 17 points in math, with overall results far above the state average."
"Lost Hills Union Elementary District, amid the pistachio and almond orchards northwest of Bakersfield, saw reading and math scores jump 12 and 17 points, respectively. Eastern Sierra Unified, a K-12 district in Mono County, also saw significant improvements. Math scores rose more than 6 points, with 32% of eighth graders scoring at the highest level."
"All three of these districts reopened for in-person instruction in fall 2020, while most other districts around the state remained closed due to the local spread of Covid."
Colorado: Bus driver shortage leaves Wiggins parents to fend for themselves.
DC: Mr. President and Lady of the United States, are rebuilding their nest at the National Arboretum. And yes, there's a livestream.
Illinois: Illinois uses federal COVID money to expand high-impact tutoring. Will it help students catch up?
International
China: "The Universal Beijing Resort amusement park closed on Wednesday for COVID-19 prevention measures and the cities of Wuhan and Guangzhou locked down some districts, as cases creep higher in China despite its tough anti-virus policy."
UK: Persistent school absence in Wales shows big jump.
"One in five pupils from poorer backgrounds were persistently absent from school last year. Figures show 10% of all pupils were persistently absent during the pandemic - the rate was under 3% before that."
Economic Recovery
GDP: GDP accelerated at 2.6% pace in Q3, better than expected as growth turns positive.
"The growth came in large part due to a narrowing trade deficit, which economists expected and consider to be a one-off occurrence that won’t be repeated in future quarters."
"GDP gains also came from increases in consumer spending, nonresidential fixed investment and government spending. The report reflected an ongoing shift to services spending over goods, with spending on the former increasing 2.8% while goods spending dropped 1.2%."
The 2022 Distressed Communities Index (DCI): Via EIG.
Nearly 48 million Americans reside in economically distressed communities.
Mississippi has the greatest share of its population living in a distressed community, while Utah reports the largest share residing in the top-tier of national well-being.
Prosperous communities are disproportionately home to the country’s highly-educated professional class.
Resources
Those Grade-School Test Scores Are a Really Bad Sign: Via Slate
"Though test scores are simply one predictor of children’s success, they tend to reflect whether a student will finish high school, succeed in college, and earn a good living. At a national level, test scores can predict economic growth, which means learning loss could quickly become a serious problem not only for individual students, but for the future of the country as a whole."
Anya Kamenetz: "The other thing is, there is very little precedent in history for kids to make progress at a rate that will get them to where we want them to be. How do we get these scores to not translate into a generation of kids that continues to have depressed high school graduation rates and depressed college-going rates?"
"I think some of the strongest school districts that I’ve seen have adopted a mentality where they’re focusing on belonging and on school engagement and seeing families as a resource rather than an obstacle to school engagement. So figuring out ways to get the students and their families on board. Another big factor that sometimes gets overlooked in school performance with Black and Hispanic families, in particular, is teachers that look like them."
Schools Are Moving Away From Remedial Summer Learning: Via K12 Dive.
"It’s a disservice to students, especially those who are historically disadvantaged, to center summer programming on remediating skills not learned during the school year, said speakers at a National Summer Learning Association conference session Wednesday."
"Rather, every day students spend in school over the summer months should include high quality instruction that engages students’ and teachers’ passions, aims for accelerating skills, and blends academics and enrichment, the speakers said."
Denise Forte Named Permanent CEO of The Education Trust: Congrats Denise!
The Unique Drumming Talent: Of Timothy Fletcher. Check him out over at Instagram and YouTube.