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  • These Native tribes are working with schools to boost attendance

    These Native tribes are working with schools to boost attendance


    Nationwide, Native students miss school far more frequently than their peers, but not at Watonga High School shown on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Watonga, Oklahoma.

    Credit: Nick Oxford / AP Photo

    As the Watonga school system’s Indian education director, Hollie Youngbear works to help Native American students succeed in the Oklahoma district — a job that begins with getting them to school.

    She makes sure students have clothes and school supplies. She connects them with federal and tribal resources. And when students don’t show up to school, she and a colleague drive out and pick them up.

    Nationwide, Native students miss school far more frequently than their peers, but not at Watonga High School. Youngbear and her colleagues work to connect with families in a way that acknowledges the history and needs of Native communities.

    As she thumbed through binders in her office with records of every Native student in the school, Youngbear said a cycle of skipping school goes back to the abuse generations of Native students suffered at U.S. government boarding schools.

    Indian education director Hollie Youngbear poses for a portrait at Watonga High School on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Watonga, Oklahoma. Youngbear and her colleagues work to connect with families in a way that acknowledges the history and needs of Native communities. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
    Credit: Nick Oxford / AP Photo

    “If grandma didn’t go to school, and her grandma didn’t, and her mother didn’t, it can create a generational cycle,” said Youngbear, a member of the Arapaho tribe who taught the Cheyenne and Arapaho languages at the school for 25 years.

    Watonga schools collaborate with several Cheyenne and Arapaho programs that aim to lower Native student absenteeism. One helps students with school expenses and promotes conferences for tribal youth. Another holds monthly meetings with Watonga’s Native high school students during lunch hours to discourage underage drinking and drug use.

    Oklahoma is home to 38 federally recognized tribes, many with their own education departments — and support from those tribes contributes to students’ success. Of 34 states with data available for the 2022-2023 school year, Oklahoma was the only one where Native students missed school at lower rates than the state average, according to data collected by The Associated Press.

    At Watonga High, fewer than 4% of Native students were chronically absent in 2022-23, in line with the school average, according to state data. Chronically absent students miss 10% or more of the school year, for both excused and unexcused reasons, which sets them behind in learning and heightens their chances of dropping out.

    About 14% of students at the Watonga school on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation are Native American. With black-lettered Bible verses on the walls of its hallways, the high school resembles many others in rural Oklahoma. But student-made Native art decorates the classroom reserved for Eagle Academy, the school’s alternative education program.

    Students are assigned to the program when they struggle to keep up their grades or attendance, and most are Native American, classroom teacher Carrie Compton said. Students are rewarded for attendance with incentives like field trips.

    Compton said she gets results. A Native boy who was absent 38 days one semester spent a short time in Eagle Academy during his second year of high school and went on to graduate last year, she said.

    Alternative education director Carrie Compton poses for a portrait in her classroom at Watonga High School on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Watonga, Oklahoma. When students do not show up for school, Compton and Indian education director Hollie Youngbear take turns visiting their homes. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
    Credit: Nick Oxford / AP Photo

    “He had perfect attendance for the first time ever, and it’s because he felt like he was getting something from school,” Compton said.

    When students do not show up for school, Compton and Youngbear take turns visiting their homes.

    “I can remember one year, I probably picked five kids up every morning because they didn’t have rides,” Compton said. “So at 7 o’clock in the morning, I just start my little route, and make my circle, and once they get into the habit of it, they would come to school.”

    Around the country, Native students often have been enrolled in disproportionately large numbers in alternative education programs, which can worsen segregation. But the embrace of Native students by their Eagle Academy teacher sets a different tone from what some students experience elsewhere in the school.

    Compton said a complaint she hears frequently from Native students in her room is, “The teachers just don’t like me.”

    Bullying of Native students by non-Native students is also a problem, said Watonga senior Happy Belle Shortman, who is Kiowa, Cheyenne and Arapaho. She said Cheyenne students have been teased over aspects of their traditional ceremonies and powwow music.

    Senior Happy Belle Shortman, who is who is Kiowa, Cheyenne and Arapaho, poses for a portrait at Watonga High School on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, in Watonga, Oklahoma. (AP Photo/Nick Oxford)
    Credit: Nick Oxford / AP Photo

    “People here, they’re not very open, and they do have their opinions,” Shortman said. “People who are from a different culture, they don’t understand our culture and everything that we have to do, or that we have a different living than they do.”

    Poverty might play a role in bullying as well, she said. “If you’re not in the latest trends, then you’re kind of just outcasted,” she said.

    Watonga staff credit the work building relationships with students for the low absenteeism rates, despite the challenges.

    “Native students are never going to feel really welcomed unless the non-Native faculty go out of their way to make sure that those Native students feel welcomed,” said Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University’s Center for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

    Associated Press writer Sharon Lurye in New Orleans contributed to this report.





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  • Legislative deal on reading instruction reached in the nick of time

    Legislative deal on reading instruction reached in the nick of time


    Credit: Allison Shelley / American Education

    KEY TAKEAWAYS
    • The new bill will offer state-approved training and textbooks to all TK-5th-grade teachers.
    • State-sanctioned training will be voluntary, part of the compromise.
    • A shift toward in evidence-based strategies, including phonics, moves away from local control.

    Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas has nudged parties at odds on how early literacy should be taught to agree to legislation that could significantly advance reading proficiency in California.

    After weeks of intense talks following months of stalled negotiations, a new bill that Rivas, D-Salinas, will co-author will have a hearing April 30, the deadline for an initial committee vote on new bills. Assembly Bill 1454 will call for providing potentially all transitional kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers with training and textbooks that stress what’s known as structured literacy, starting with phonics in the early grades. (The bill, which will be co-authored by Rivas, Blanca Rubio, D-Baldwin Park, and Al Muratsuchi, D-Torrance, had not yet been published as of Wednesday; it will soon replace the current AB 1854, an unrelated bill.)

    The bill won’t end the resistance of critics who argue that structured literacy, with an emphasis on foundational skills, is too narrow and can set back the progress of English learners who need more vocabulary and oral language strategies.

    But passage of the bill would move California toward a consistent statewide approach to reading instruction. The legislation will also follow the lead of other states whose adoption of evidence-based strategies, known as the science of reading, have contributed to wide gains in proficiency on both state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP in the early grades.

    By contrast, on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, the 41 percentage point gap in proficiency between economically and non-economically disadvantaged students in California was among the widest in the nation, and growing. Only 8% of Black and 23% of Hispanic fourth graders in California were proficient in reading, compared with 56% of white and 67% of Asian students.

    Until now, California had avoided controversy by ceding control over reading instruction to local schools. The state did not collect information from districts on the reading strategies they used and the textbooks they purchased. Newly credentialed elementary grade teachers who were trained in the science of reading could be hired by districts using textbooks that conflicted with what they had just learned in credentialing programs.

    “This legislation is essential, important progress, and it reflects agreement and robust consensus on ways to provide educators the evidence-based tools they need to support California’s diverse students,” said Rivas in a statement. “We must make sure every child, no matter their background, has the opportunity to become a confident and thriving reader.”

    Also supporting the compromise is Californians Together, a nonprofit organization that advocates for English learners and biliteracy programs. It had opposed the original bill, Assembly Bill 1121, authored by Rubio. But in the statement that Rivas released, Hernandez said, “We appreciate Speaker Rivas’s leadership in bringing this legislation forward, and we remain committed to ensuring that any new literacy policy fully supports English learners.”

    A year ago, amid opposition from the California Teachers Association, the California Association for Bilingual Education (CABE), and Californians Together,  Rivas pulled Rubio’s bill and asked critics and supporters to come back in 2025 with a compromise. When that failed to happen, Rivas got involved and directly pressed for a deal. The opponents met with Rubio and advocacy nonprofits  EdVoice and Families In Schools,  Decoding Dyslexia CA and the California NAACP, the organizations co-sponsoring AB 1121.

    Rubio, who had expressed frustration with the opponents, thanked Rivas for his leadership and called AB 1454 “a significant step toward addressing very real concerns with our student outcomes while supplying teachers with the tools to ensure success in their roles.”

    CTA has not yet decided its position on the new bill, said CTA President David Goldberg, while noting that it “is in a far better place thanks to the leadership of Speaker Rivas and the coalition of educators working on behalf of students to ensure a viable and responsible approach to a truly important issue.”

    Jeffrey Freitas, the president of the smaller California Federation of Teachers, meanwhile, gave the new bill a full endorsement. “CFT members have been calling for more robust and improved literacy training and support to better meet the needs of our students,” he said. “We urge Governor Newsom and the Legislature to fully fund this important legislation, so that California teachers can immediately access the training.”

    What’s in the bill

    Although AB 1454 had not yet been released as of Wednesday morning, a 13-page analysis by staff of the Assembly Education Committee for the hearing had been posted.

    The main elements of Rubio’s bill, calling for a state-vetted choice of teacher training, along with materials aligned with instruction that the State Board of Education will approve, are in AB 1454. However, one key difference is that the teacher instruction, mandated under AB 1121, will be voluntary.

    “It is no longer required, but we feel good about it,” said Marshall Tuck, CEO of EdVoice. “We believe districts will want to take advantage of it and get the professional development they need.”

    Also, language was added that satisfied Californians Together. There is more emphasis on aligning training with the California English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, Hernandez said, and the bill will explicitly call out “linguistically and culturally responsive” strategies. It will also highlight dual language instruction. “That’s a step in the right direction,” Hernandez said.  

    The bill will require the California Department of Education to consult with a range of groups, presumably including the English learner community and advocates for dyslexics, who strongly support phonics-based instruction.

    According to the Assembly analysis, the bill will require:

    • CDE to identify effective professional development in TK to grade 5 by Sept. 1, 2026 and for districts receiving funding for training to report to the state how many teachers received the training by 2029.
    • the State Board of Education to update its list of acceptable English language arts and English language development instructional materials;  
    • the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to update school administrator standards to include training on how to support effective literacy instruction. Muratsuchi, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, had proposed this idea in his own literacy bill this year. He also participated in the negotiations.

    Funding for the training and materials is unresolved, for now. Gov. Newsom proposed $250 million for literacy instruction in his initial 2025-26 budget. Money is expected to be tight, but Rivas, as speaker, will be at the table with Newsom for final budget talks in June.





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  • Musk’s DOGE Protects One (1) Person: Elon Musk

    Musk’s DOGE Protects One (1) Person: Elon Musk


    Before Trump was elected, Elon Musk was being investigated by multiple federal agencies. After Trump’s election, Musk persuaded Trump to put him in charge of a cost-cutting operation called “Department of Government Efficiency,” which was tasked with cutting the budgets or shuttering multiple federal agencies.

    Musk and his team of hackers were ruthless in closing agencies that did not like. They shut down USAID, which provided food and medicine to the world’s neediest families and children.They terminated scientific research on a large number of university campuses and in the NIH, which sponsors critical research into cures for deadly diseases. They defunded large and small.

    But there is one kind of project they not defund: anything that pays federal funds to Elon Musk.

    More than that, Musk had a very lucky break. His good friend Trump, to whom he gave nearly $300 million for the 2024 election, is unlikely to prosecute his pal Elon.

    Lawrence Darmiento of the Los Angeles Times had the story:

    Elon Musk and his companies faced at least $2.37 billion in potential federal fines and penalties the day President Trump took office, according to a congressional report released Monday that highlights the possible conflicts of interest posed by the billionaire’s cost-cutting work in government.

    The 43-page memo by the minority staff of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), is the most exhaustive attempt yet to detail Musk’s alleged conflicts as an advisor to Trump and chief promoter of his team called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
    Based on publicly available documents, media reports and the committee’s own calculations, the memo found that as of Jan. 20, Musk and his companies were “subject to at least 65 actual or potential actions by 11 different federal agencies” and that 40 of those created $2.37 billion in potential liabilities.

    “Mr. Musk has taken a chainsaw to the federal government with no apparent regard for the law or for the people who depend on the programs and agencies he so blithely destroys,” the memo stated. “The through line connecting many of Mr. Musk’s decisions appears to be self-enrichment and avoiding what he perceives as obstacles to advancing his interests.”

    The memo notes that Musk’s companies have received more than $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits going back more than 20 years. And it notes that SpaceX, as of Friday, had $10.1 billion in federal contracts.

    “President Trump could not have chosen a person more prone to conflicts of interest,” states the memo, which calls on the president, executive departments and regulatory agencies to “take coordinated action to address Elon Musk’s threat to the integrity of federal governance.”

    To no one’s surprise, the white Hohse press office indignantly insisted that Musk had no conflicts of interest.

    The committee found that Tesla created most of the potential penalties for Musk — a cumulative $1.89 billion — due to investigations, lawsuits and other issues involving eight agencies.

    The largest single liability was a potential $1.19-billion fine due to a reported criminal investigation opened by the Department of Justice into allegedly false or misleading statements made by Musk and the company about its Autopilot and Full-Self Driving Features since as early as 2016.

    The Times previously reported the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is probing the Full-Self Driving technology after reports of four collisions in low-visibility conditions, including one in which a pedestrian was killed.

    However, doubts have been raised about the Justice Department’s commitment to any prosecution. The memo notes that in February the department dismissed a lawsuit it filed against SpaceX for allegedly discouraging asylum seekers and refugees from applying for jobs or hiring them because of their citizenship status. It calculated the lawsuit could have exposed SpaceX to $46.1 million in liabilities.

    The second single largest liability of $462 million facing Musk also involved Tesla. It arose out of a 2023 lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for the company’s alleged toleration of widespread racial harassment of Black employees at its Fremont, Calif., factory. Tesla has denied the allegations. In January, Trump fired two Democratic commissioners and the agency’s general counsel.

    How likely is it that any of these charges will go to trial?



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  • One-third of Native American students in California were chronically absent last year

    One-third of Native American students in California were chronically absent last year


    With the vast majority of students at Algodones Elementary School in New Mexico residing at San Felipe Pueblo, the school and the Bernalillo school district are making efforts to turn around the high rates of school absenteeism in Native American communities. Pictured are Kanette Yatsattie , 8 , left, and his classmate Jeremy Candelaria, 10, hanging out by a board depicting the race for best attendance at the school on October.

    Credit: Roberto E. Rosales / AP Photo

    As chronic absences have steadily decreased in California schools, the rate among Native American students remains consistently higher.

    Persistent high chronic absence rates have resulted in schools increasing their focus on addressing students’ basic needs, emphasizing mental health support, and boosting outreach efforts to reconnect with students amid the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, which closed California public schools beginning March 2020 and didn’t reopen until spring 2021.

    Many Native American youth face challenges similar to other marginalized communities — such as poverty, systemic discrimination and poor health — but often with the added barrier of historical mistrust in state school systems due to the lingering impacts of removing Native American youth from their communities and confining them to federal boarding schools.

    “With quite a few of our Native American learners, we’ve recognized that there has been a lot of trauma in the family,” said Heather Golly, superintendent of Bonsall Unified in San Diego County. “It affects everyone in the family when there is trauma.”

    Chronic absence is defined as missing 10% or more of students’ expected attendance, whether for excused or unexcused reasons. For students on a typical 180-day school calendar, this totals to about one month of missed school in a given year. High chronic absentee rates concern educators and researchers alike as they reflect a significant loss of instructional time.

    Chronic absenteeism among Native American students during the 2023-24 school year was much higher, at 33%, than the statewide rate of 20.4%, according to data from the California Department of Education (CDE). The statewide chronic absenteeism rate has been declining for Native American students since 2021-22, when numbers peaked at 43.6%.

    The absentee rate disparity did not start with the Covid pandemic: The pre-pandemic rate of chronic absences was 21.8% for Native American students and 12.1% for all students.

    The state Education Department recently published its annual School Dashboard, which shows lower rates for chronic absenteeism statewide because it includes only grades K-8. The state education data used throughout this story includes all grades, from TK to 12.

    Every Native American student is a direct descendant or relative of someone who attended federal boarding schools from the mid 1800s until the mid 20th century, according to Ashley Rojas, policy director for Indigenous Justice. Native American students forced to attend boarding schools had their language, culture and family stripped from them, and Rojas sees echoes of that in contemporary American public schools.

    Rojas said that every year, she hears from students who are taught the history of California statehood or missions in a way that erases Native American perspectives. She noted there are still many schools with mascots based on stereotypes of Native American people. Even though it is against California law, Native American students tell Rojas about being barred by their school administration from representing their heritage and spirituality during graduation.

    “Every year, we deal with districts trying to remove this right from our young people, trying to tell them, ‘You can’t wear your feathers, you can’t wear your beads. You must fit into our image of a graduate,’” Rojas said. “Given the historical and ongoing traumatization of our students and communities by these systems, we just can’t stand for that.”

    About 26,000 or about 0.4% of the state’s nearly 6 million students enrolled in public K-12 schools, including charter and alternative schools, are Native American. This number is likely an undercount because Native Americans are much more likely than any other group to identify themselves as belonging to two or more races, according to the Brookings Institute. They may be counted alongside other multiracial students with different backgrounds.

    State education law lists several reasons for excusing students, but most excused absences, school officials say, are related to illness and mental health.

    Native American students in California missed an average of 18.5 days of school in 2023-24 — more than any other race or ethnicity. Unlike the average California student, their absences were more likely to be unexcused than excused, according to the CDE, an issue pervasive across the state as noted in a recent PACE report.

    Unexcused absences often mean students lacked documentation such as a note from a doctor or they provided no reason for their absence, or the reason they provided does not qualify as an excusable absence. A student can be labeled truant after more than three unexcused absences in one school year.

    While all absences can hamper students in their academic and personal development given the loss of instructional time, only truancy involves the potential for punitive measures for parents, such as fines and jail time.

    Colonization and repression has meant that many surviving Native American students are disconnected from their heritage and communities, said Rojas. But those who are still engaged with their communities will partake in spiritual ceremonies that include communal dancing, praying and time with elders. These holidays aren’t acknowledged by California school calendars, so students can rack up unexcused absences, putting them at risk of being considered criminally truant.

    “When your school already makes you feel like you don’t belong, and then they’re going to punish you for going to the only places that you do belong, it’s really going to be difficult to convince a young person that it’s important to be there,” Rojas said.

    Absences reflect remnants of traumatic history

    Chronic absences are often the result of systemic challenges, such as inconsistent transportation, food instability, violence in the home, homelessness, undiagnosed disabilities and more. Higher rates of suspensions are also a factor. Out-of-school suspensions for Native American students accounted for 1.5% of absences compared with the state average of 0.9%.

    Some of the highest chronic absence rates for Native American students in the state are along the state’s Northern coast. In Humboldt County, a larger proportion of students are Native American — 8.7% compared to 0.4% statewide — and 55.4% of them were chronically absent last year, compared with 27.3% countywide.

    Failing Grade: The Status of Native American Education in Humboldt County,” a report published by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Northern California and the Northern California Indian Development Council, examined the county’s “egregious” disparities in chronic absenteeism, as well as academic performance and discipline, noting that the troubled and violent history of federal boarding schools has left a lasting imprint on Native American communities in Humboldt.

    The boarding schools, operated nationwide for about 150 years up until at least 1969, had a practice of separating Native American children from their families, cutting them off from their communities and cultures.

    Some of the documented forms of abuse include solitary confinement, withholding of food, prohibiting Indigenous languages and cultural practices, and more. A report from the U.S. Department of the Interior in July found that nationwide, at least 973 Native American students died while at boarding schools, though the number is considered an undercount.

    Federal boarding schools were “specifically designed to erase Native American people and Native American culture,” said Colby Smart, deputy superintendent of the Humboldt County Office of Education. “That doesn’t go away in one year, and it doesn’t go away in one generation.”

    Native American communities today are still facing serious problems — including the legacy of colonization — that can contribute to chronic absentee rates among students. In Humboldt County, 75% of Native American students are socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to the California Department of Education. Smart also pointed to high suicide rates, substance abuse, health problems and poverty in local Native American communities.

    Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified is located in Hoopa, a small town that is the site of the Hoopa Valley Tribe’s federal reservation and the former home to one of a dozen federal boarding schools in California.

    The district has 774 Native American students, which is not just the majority of the district but more Native American students in a district than any other in the state. During the 2023-24 school year, 70% of these students were chronically absent, and Native American students missed an average of 36 days.

    Notably, the most recent data shows that the opposite occurred in Klamath-Trinity Joint Unified, where it increased by 7 percentage points between 2023-24 and the year prior.

    Partnerships with tribes offer solutions

    High chronic absentee rates do not signal that Native American communities don’t value school or education, according to Rojas with Indigenous Justice.

    “Indigenous people are super pro-education, but they just want to be sure that what is being learned is not going to cause further harm,” Rojas said.

    A key factor in ensuring Native American students feel welcome and engaged at school is working in partnership with local Native American communities. There are large Native American communities in the Central Valley and Del Norte where students don’t have access to the same resources as Native American students in Humboldt County, where the Yurok Tribe is more politically engaged.

    The Humboldt County Office of Education aims to help local districts tackle high chronic absentee rates through “pull” factors that engage parents and students, and make them feel welcome, even excited to attend school. For instance, local high schools offer the Indigenous language Yurok as a class that puts students on track for college, while connecting them with their heritage.

    “If students feel like they belong, not only do kids go to school more, but their academic outcomes improve,” Smart said.

    Culturally relevant curriculum can be an important way to engage Native American students, Smart said. The Humboldt County Office of Education is partnering with the San Diego County Office of Education as well as over 100 California tribes, Native American organizations and scholars to develop a state curriculum model for Native American studies. This curriculum is expected to be released next September.

    In this curriculum, kindergartners might count acorns, a dietary staple, while learning the Yurok language; a middle school student can learn about traditional foods of Native Californians, while a high school student may study federal boarding schools.

    In northern San Diego County, Bonsall Unified and the Pala Band of Mission Indians entered a partnership last year to better support Native American students. The agreement allows the district to share attendance information with key tribal leaders and hold joint meetings to discuss potential support for students and their families, all to increase school attendance.

    If a student is missing school due to inconsistent transportation, the tribe might offer to sponsor the students’ bus fee. There is a new position in the works, a Pala attendance support specialist, whose job will include making home visits to chronically absent students and offering solutions based on each student’s needs.

    During 2023-24, Bonsall Unified improved its chronic absence rates among Native American youth across all grades to 41% from a high of 50.9% in 2021-22.

    The improvements have not only come from the agreement, which was spearheaded by district trustee Eric Ortega and Chairman Robert H. Smith of the Pala Band of Mission Indians, but from the groundwork that was laid over the course of several years.

    About eight years ago, Bonsall Unified schools began hosting Pala Valley Day, an annual event for students to learn about local Native American history, with some of the presentations being made by Native American students.

    Efforts since then have continued to foster a sense of belonging among Native American students. Middle and high school students recently took a field trip to visit the American Indian Studies department at Cal State San Marcos, and there is a mural in the works that will feature Native American students.

    “When they belong — when they feel like they belong — they’re more in tune with being happy to be there and wanting to be there,” said Ortega about the district’s Native American students.

    Many Native American students have faced challenges like inconsistent transportation, lack of tutoring and the need for counseling, which most other students statewide have also experienced in recent years.

    In increasing their focus on collaboration with the Pala Band of Mission Indians, Golly and her staff have also found that students and their families are much more receptive to accepting support when offered by their tribal community.

    As chronic absences steadily decrease, Golly attributes much of the success of those partnerships to the support from tribal leaders such as Chair Smith, who she said is “a wonderful partner, and he believes strongly in the power of education.”

    The district also established a Native Learner Advisory Committee that schedules its meetings on the Pala reservation. They coordinated with the Pala learning center and with the tribal council to ensure meetings were scheduled at a time when more people can attend.

    Golly, district superintendent, said it has been important for the district to show it is listening to requests from their Native American families, as well as returning to committee meetings “with something actionable” in response to feedback.

    More recently, at an all-staff meeting, a panel of five Native American students presented to the entire certificated staff, sharing what they want their teachers to know about their culture, when they feel like they belong, and when they feel they don’t belong.

    As Ortega put it, building trust is ongoing work that requires time and collaboration at multiple levels, from school leaders to tribal leaders to parents.

    “We are right on the precipice of what we’re doing, and so anything can make it go wrong. It’s not perfect, but we want this to be our culture, our way of life,” he said about the partnership. “The more and more we do it, the more positive results we have, the better we’re going to be.”

    EdSource data journalist Daniel J. Willis contributed to this report.





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  • Resource officers’ ‘position of trust’ with students sometimes exploited

    Resource officers’ ‘position of trust’ with students sometimes exploited


    Students walk to class during passing periods at Pacifica High School, which is part of the Oxnard Union High School District.

    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    Last year, a Washington Post investigation identified more than 200 school police officers across the country “who were charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022.”

    There are at least two ongoing court cases involving allegations of sexual misconduct against former school resource officers in California. 

    James Louis, who worked as a resource officer at Rodriguez High School in Solano County, was arrested on March 8, 2024, after parents told police that he had texted sexual images and messages to two students. 

    Solano County prosecutors charged Louis with “sending, distributing, or exhibiting harmful or obscene material to a minor,” court records show. Louis is free on bail. His attorney declined to comment. The Fairfield Police Department, which had employed Louis and assigned him to the high school, would not say whether he resigned or was fired after his arrest.

    In Orange County, former deputy sheriff and resource officer Justin Raymond Ramirez pleaded guilty in 2023 to misdemeanor charges that he showed students at Trabuco Hills High School a video of a couple having sex that ended with a woman’s violent death. One of the students and her family are now suing Ramirez, the county, and the county sheriff for extreme emotional distress.  

    The state Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission stripped Ramirez’s policing certification last year, a move that permanently bans him from working as a law enforcement officer in California.

    After Ramirez’s arrest, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer issued a statement saying, “School resource officers are in our children’s schools to ensure a safe learning environment and help build trust between law enforcement and our community. Ramirez had no business being in a position of trust around children, and he abused that position of trust in a truly disgusting way.”

    The county and Sheriff Dan Barnes are also defendants in the lawsuit. Neither responded to requests for comment, and attempts to reach Ramirez were unsuccessful. Court records show he does not have an attorney for the civil case.

    In December, after the Washington Post published its investigation, the U.S. Justice Department revised its recommendations for school resource officer programs and called for schools and law enforcement agencies to “develop clear policies and procedures about interpersonal contacts” between resource officers and students, including about touching, social media contacts, emails, cards and after-school interactions. 

    The Justice Department also recommends that “officers should take extra precautions to avoid any appearance of impropriety.”

    A spokesperson for the National Association of School Resource Officers, which provides training for law enforcement, said that it is updating its recommendations to reflect the Justice Department’s recommendations.





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  • Numerous districts don’t heed federal advice to bar police from enforcing school rules

    Numerous districts don’t heed federal advice to bar police from enforcing school rules


    Policing experts say that discipline is the responsibility of school administrators, not law enforcement.

    Many California school districts’ contracts for policing services do not prohibit officers from involvement in routine student disciplinary matters, despite the federal government’s guidance that administrators are responsible for handling those issues, an EdSource investigation found.

    EdSource obtained 118 contracts between 89 districts across the state and the cities and counties that provide them with school resources officers from local police, sheriff’s and probation departments. More than half either allow police to enforce school rules and code of conduct violations, such as using profanity or wearing inappropriate clothing, or don’t address disciplinary issues.

    The U.S. Department of Justice advises that agreements for what are generally called school resource officers “clearly indicate” that officers will not be responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline problems involving students. That guidance aims to “prevent unnecessary law enforcement involvement in noncriminal student misbehavior.” (A spokesperson for the department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services did not respond to multiple requests to elaborate on the department’s recommendations.) 

    Jyoti Nanda, a professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, said that officers lack the training necessary to respond to behavioral issues that can result in student discipline.

    “Well-trained educators can handle all of the disciplinary issues,” Nanda said. “When police enforce school rules as opposed to criminal law, they are overreaching their footprint” in ways that are “deeply damaging to children.” 

    Many policing contracts also put resource officers in vaguely defined roles. 

    They are to act as “informal counselors,” “mentors,” “role models” and exemplars of “good citizenship.” Some contracts are meant to “promote a positive image of law enforcement.” One agreement refers to them as “youth development officers.” Another says their duties include serving as “a visual deterrent to aberrant behavior.”

    Some give police authority to enforce school rules and code-of-conduct violations, such as using profanity or public displays of affection, that could result in a student being disciplined. 

    Some contracts say that officers will teach classes, without specifying the courses or training requirements.

    The Anderson Union High School District’s contract with the Shasta County Probation Department requires resource officers to “provide class instruction as identified by the district and approved by the county.” Superintendent Brian Parker did not respond to questions about that requirement.

    The varying roles officers play can result in legal risks to students, according to University of North Carolina law professor Barbara Fedders, who has argued for removing school resource officers.

    “Relationship forming and being nice and all of that is misleading. Because if you then need to question the kids, you’re going to be able to take advantage of that relationship and use it for law enforcement purposes,” Fedders said in an interview.

    ‘Situations that arise from student conduct’

    Some contracts don’t differentiate between officers’ roles in investigating school rule violations and potential crimes.

    The Fullerton Joint Union High School District, which straddles Los Angeles and Orange counties, has policing contracts totaling more than $800,000 with the cities of Fullerton, La Habra and Buena Park. Each requires resource officers to “investigate situations that arise from student conduct at school.” The agreements also authorize officers to search students if they believe, or have reasonable suspicion, that something illegal occurred, or are “directed to do so by a school administrator.” 

    Fullerton Union High School in Orange County.
    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    Legal experts were critical of those terms.

    The language in the contract “sends the wrong message not only to officers but to students and parents and teachers because it’s so vague,” said retired Superior Court Judge LaDoris Cordell, who also served as San Jose’s independent police auditor from 2015 to 2020.

    “It’s pretty much at the discretion of an administrator, or even the officer, to just decide if there’s something suspicious, or they think may be illegal,” Cordell said. “We’re not talking here about probable cause. Who’s the reasonable person? The officer? The administrator? Who knows?”

    District Superintendent Steven McLaughlin, Assistant Superintendent Ruben Hernandez, school board President Vickie Calhoun, and Dr. Chester Jeng, who was board president when the contracts were ratified on a consent agenda vote, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The city managers of Fullerton, La Habra, and Buena Park also did not reply to messages seeking comment.

    Khadijah Silver, a supervising civil rights attorney for the Washington, D.C.-based Lawyers For Good Government, also criticized Fullerton’s contract language.

    “It’s basically saying, anytime a kid acts up, you’re free to go violate their civil rights and interrogate them off of the school’s premises and all of that,” Silver said. “It’s unconstitutionally overbroad language that fails to define or delineate any bounds of appropriate police behavior whatsoever.”

    ‘What any reasonable adult would do’

    Some legal experts say that by allowing officers to enforce school rules, districts create situations that are confusing and intimidating to students. Nanda said that officers’ involvement in discipline is often “ambiguous.” Students, she added, may not understand why an officer stops them in the hallway: Is it for an alleged crime or a violation of school rules?

    “Are they just walking the child over to the principal’s office, or are they interviewing the child and taking police notes? How does that play out?” she said. The presence of resource officers can result in harsher discipline for students, “particularly for Black students, male students and students with disabilities,” according to a 2023 study by researchers at State University of New York, Albany, “even though officers are typically not trained to, and often do not intend to, become involved in minor disciplinary matters in the school.”

    Although the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers recommends that districts prohibit officers from “becoming involved in formal school discipline situations,” its executive director, Mo Canady, said in an interview that he thinks officers should get involved in situations that could result in discipline. 

    When officers see a young person misbehaving and get involved, they’re doing “what any reasonable adult would do,” Canady said. “Adults should never walk by and ignore a situation like that. I don’t care if we’re at a shopping mall, whatever it is.”

    Asked whether there is a difference between an adult and an armed police officer intervening when a juvenile misbehaves, Canady said: “That’s why one of the issues that we harp on constantly is the importance of good relationships that (officers) build with students.”

    California’s Department of Education does not provide guidance on the use of school resource officers, Elizabeth Sanders, an agency spokesperson, said. 

    The California School Boards Association provides districts with what it calls a “sample policy” on policing contracts, which recommends that the duties of resource officers should “not include the handling of student code of conduct violations or routine disciplinary matters that should be addressed by school administrators or conduct that would be better addressed by mental health professionals.”

    Troy Flint, spokesperson for the association, said district leaders are free to “interpret the sample policy in a way that captures their community’s desired approach to law enforcement on campus. We recognize there’s a diversity of opinion throughout the state about the role security personnel should play on campus or whether they should be there at all.”

    ‘Why are we policing our students?’ 

    The Oxnard Union High School District has contracts with two law enforcement agencies that clearly prohibit resource officers’ involvement in disciplinary matters.

    The district’s $2.33 million contract with the city of Oxnard states that police are to distinguish “between disciplinary misconduct to be handled by school officials from criminal offenses.” The contract also says that officers “are responsible for criminal public order offenses” and “should not get involved in school discipline issues.” A separate contract with the city of Camarillo contains similar language. Both contracts require officers to establish “clear probable cause” before searching a student.

    Oxnard Union High District Superintendent Tom McCoy chats with school resource officers Alexus Santos,left, and Sgt. Hannah Estrada on the campus of Pacifica High School in Oxnard.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    But the district’s contract with Ventura County for one resource officer does not address discipline. Superintendent Tom McCoy said in an interview that it is “well understood and discussed in meetings” that resource officers provided by the county do not enforce discipline. It’s never been an issue. They are very aware of our policies.”

    The district has a policy that is not in its policing contracts and that allows students to request “a person of the same gender or gender identity or a staff member familiar to them to be present” if they are questioned by law enforcement.

    McCoy added that the district requires students who “are questioned or interviewed by police on campus also must be referred for counseling and wellness services on the same day to address any specific needs identified through the interview process.”

    Karen Sher, the school board member whom McCoy credited with helping create the district’s policy, said her experience teaching at a school with resource officers led her to ask herself, “‘Why are we policing our children?’”

    Oxnard Union High School District board member Karen Sher.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    Sher said she believes that officers have a role to play in school safety, but she also worries about how their presence might affect disadvantaged students. About 16% of district students lack stable housing, she said.

    “How on earth does anyone believe those students have not had an interaction, both positive or negative, with police?” Sher asked. “We expect them to come to school, see police cars in front of their school, and expect them to feel good about that? That’s a very entitled perspective.”

    Eric Wiatt, a Ventura County sheriff’s deputy who has worked at Adolfo Camarillo High School for the past three years, said adjusting to being a resource officer took time. 

    “The first year was a learning experience of communicating with (students) and developing a rapport. It wasn’t natural in me. You know, all the different social media platforms that are used and the different slang they use,” Wiatt said in an interview.

    He says he spends a lot of time investigating bullying and threats made on social media.

    School resource officer Eric Wiatt from the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department patrols the campus of Adolfo Camarillo High School in Camarillo.
    Credit: J. Marie / EdSource

    “We actually dig into them. We take every threat very seriously. We do a full investigation,” Wiatt said.

    When he’s not investigating threats, Wiatt walks the campus wearing a bulletproof vest over his uniform and a pistol holstered to his hip. He often eats lunch with students.

    Riley Young, a 16-year-old junior whom school officials selected to be interviewed by EdSource, described Wiatt as calm and helpful.

    “I’d been getting in trouble,” she said. “He helped me realize that being good in school and in life was important.”

    ‘Providing clarity’

    District leaders provided a range of reasons why their policing contracts don’t address whether resource officers can be involved in disciplinary matters.

    The Madera Unified School District’s contract with the city of Madera for resource officers doesn’t address disciplinary issues. Superintendent Todd Lile said the idea that officers would enforce discipline “has never been present and, as a result, has never been explicitly called out in contractual language.” Police are “not thought of or expected to keep control of a campus,” he said.

    The Lucia Mar Unified School District has two contracts for resource officers. Its agreement with the city of Arroyo Grande prohibits officers from enforcing discipline. But its contract with San Luis Obispo County does not address disciplinary matters.

    Amy Jacobs, a district spokesperson, said Lucia Mar has a policy prohibiting law enforcement’s involvement in discipline, but Jacobs didn’t provide an answer when asked why that policy wasn’t written into the contract with the sheriff’s office.

    The Galt Union High School District board in Sacramento County agreed to a three-year contract with the city of Galt for three resource officers in 2023. The agreement did not address police involvement in discipline. But shortly after Anna Trunnell became district superintendent in 2024, the contract was revised. 

    It now states that resource officers “will not be responsible for requests to resolve routine discipline problems involving students. They will not respond to incidents that do not pose any threat of safety or would not be considered crimes if they occurred outside of the school.”

    Trunnell said the new language “assists in providing clarity when responding to student needs.”

    The lack of clarity in many school policing contracts is “profoundly alarming,” said Nanda, the Southwestern law professor.

    “It’s crucial,” she said, “for parents, educators and administrators to pay attention to the who, what and why of officers in our schools.”





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  • John Thompson: Who Caused the Havoc in Tulsa Schools?

    John Thompson: Who Caused the Havoc in Tulsa Schools?


    John Thompson, historians and retired teacher, keeps us informed about the news from Oklahoma. In this post, he looks at the blame game surrounding the Tulsa public schools.

    He writes:

    As the Tulsa World recently explained, State Auditor Cindy Byrd issued a “scathing new forensic audit of Tulsa Public Schools” which “laid the blame on the administration of former Superintendent Deborah Gist, who served as Tulsa superintendent for the audited time of 2015-2023.” Byrd “also said multiple school district administrators ‘created and fostered a culture’ of noncompliance and systemic lack of internal controls that ‘potentially placed millions of taxpayer dollars in jeopardy.’”

    I’m not qualified to comment on the financial side of the audit, but I strongly agree with the World that Byrd has an impeccable record as a financial auditor.

    And as I completed this post, another impeccable institution, The Frontier, discovered, “Deborah Gist and her deputies were quietly arranging an exit plan for the official behind it (Fletcher) — and using secret payments to a private consultant to manage the transition, according to internal district records obtained by The Frontier.” It further explained: 

    The newly obtained documents — including auditors’ notes and memos, internal district emails, and procurement records — shed new light on these gaps. They show that Gist and her deputies began planning Fletcher’s departure as early as December 2021, more than six months before the district reported his scheme to the police. 

    Moreover:

    Gist and former assistant superintendent Paula Shannon hired a New York-based human resources consultant, Talia Shaull, to manage Fletcher’s exit, paying her $175 per hour through the Foundation for Tulsa Schools, emails and contracts show. According to the documents, the arrangement to pay her directly through the foundation was designed “to avoid Board approval, keeping the project confidential” and violated district procurement policy.

    Getting back to the history I witnessed, in 2019, a comment by a Tulsa teacher was posted on the Diane Ravitch blog with the title of Tulsa: Broadie Swarm Alert. It began with the teacher’s statement, “Welcome to my Hell in Tulsa.” The introduction explained that a Broadie “is someone ‘trained’ in the top-down management philosophy of Eli Broad at the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. They are known for setting high goals and meeting none of them.”

    In other words, their methods foreshadowed those of today’s Elon Musk.

    The Broad Center was a “venture philanthropy” committed to everyone being on the same page for test-driven accountability, mass firings of teachers, and charter schools. It had an extensive record of spreading disruption, imposing script-driven instruction, and driving teachers out of the profession, while failing to improve student outcomes.

    Byrd’s audit found that during the Gist administration the TPS “received payments totaling $554,772 from the Broad Center.  It “utilized at least 23 different vendors with Broad Academy connections. The majority of these vendors did not have a relationship with [the] TPS prior to the hiring of the Broad related alumni.” Moreover, the “TPS retained 33% of the employees who received the recruitment or retention bonus payments, 40% of these employees did not continue their employment for more than five years, with 25% remaining for less than two years.”

    The audit and reporting on the Gist administration are consistent with my experience with Broadies, and their questionable approaches to data. During the first meeting I had with a consultant hired to implement their agenda, I showed him scatter-grams from the TPS web site that showed how difficult (or completely impossible) it would be to take into account the effect of the district’s segregation when trying to measure individual secondary school teachers’ effectiveness. He replied in a scientific manner, “Oh Sh__!” I repeatedly spoke with consultants who, like him and like me, could not get Gist or her Broadies to listen to social and cognitive science, or to teachers.

    Similarly, when the OKCPS hired John Q. Porter, a Broadie from an affluent district’s finance department, he would blow off concerns expressed by my students, colleagues, and researchers. He was adamant in demanding frequent surprise visits by administrators and, then, placing a camera in every classroom so he could see if each teacher was teaching the same lessons in the same way according to the same schedule. Porter was forced to resign in less than a year due to seemingly small violations of district policy, but the Washington Post later reported that he had not properly divested from “Spectrum International, the document management company he founded in 1993.”

    Finally, I’m not in a position to comment on the Tulsa World’s concern that Cindy Byrd, who is running for lieutenant governor, was being political when investigating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,  and whether its funds could be “associated with violations of House Bill 1775.” The World acknowledged that Byrd “stops short of saying any law, such as the mean-spirited House Bill 1775 or Gov. Kevin Stitt’s order to report school DEI expenses, was violated.” It properly noted that, “Classifying DEI or HB 1775 programs is subjective, but it’s already being seized upon by anti-TPS and anti-public education critics.”

    And that brings me back to the real harm done to Tulsa by the ideology-driven “Billionaires Boys Club” – not DEI. Back when Deborah Gist and her funders were imposing test-and-punish on schools, I found that many or most conservative legislators who I knew were opposed to the campaign to run schools like venture capitalist institutions. I hope they will remember that the real scandals that fostered a destructive culture that the audit documented were linked to corporate school reformers, not DEI or the efforts to defend meaningful teaching and learning in public schools.  



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  • Conflict over race, LGBTQ issues cost schools more than $3 billion last school year

    Conflict over race, LGBTQ issues cost schools more than $3 billion last school year


    Conservative groups and LGBTQ+ rights supporters protest outside the Glendale Unified School District offices in Glendale on June 6, 2023. Several hundred people gathered at district headquarters, split between those who support or oppose teaching that exposes youngsters to LGBTQ+ issues in schools.

    Credit: Keith Birmingham/The Orange County Register via AP

    Conflicts between parents, teachers and school leaders over parental rights policies focusing on LGBTQ+ students, limitations on teaching about race and racism, and book bans have come with a cost — both socially and financially.

    The conflicts are disrupting school districts, negatively impacting schools and classrooms, and costing districts money that could be used to better serve students, according to “The Costs of Conflict, The Fiscal Impact of Culturally Divisive Conflicts on Public Schools in the United States,” released last month.

    Researchers from UCLA, the University of Texas at Austin, American University and UC Riverside conducted a national survey of K-12 public school superintendents from 46 states — 467 in all — and found that these conflicts are prevalent.   

    Since the 2020-21 school year, uncivil discourse and hostile political rhetoric at school board meetings and on school campuses has been an ongoing problem. Two-thirds of the school superintendents surveyed for the study said they have experienced moderate to high levels of culturally divisive conflict in their districts, including misinformation campaigns, violent rhetoric and threats.

    Cultural conflicts cost U.S. school districts about $3.2 billion last school year, according to the study. Researchers estimate that districts with high levels of conflict spent about $80 per student. Districts with moderate levels of conflict spent $50 per student, and districts with low conflict spent $25 per student.

    “This is costing us general fund dollars,” said a superintendent from a midsize school district in a Western state. “In the 2023-24 school year, the district spent an additional $100,000 on security, hiring armed plainclothes off-duty officers … because people coming to the board meetings are unpredictable and sometimes violent.” 

    Researchers allowed superintendents to remain anonymous in the report.

    The superintendent also said the district spent more than $500,000 in legal fees on lawsuits associated with a board member and a campaign against the LGBTQ+ community, and lost $250,000 in outside funding from social services organizations because of the dispute. It also spent $80,000 on recruiting and training new staff to replace teachers, counselors and administrators who left because they did not want to work in such a divisive setting. 

    “Culturally divisive conflicts have substantial costs to the public and to our capacity as a state to mount quality learning experiences for all students,” said John Rogers, director of the UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access and lead researcher on the report. “It has a fiscal cost that we’ve tried to lay out with some specificity, and it has broader social costs as well — there’s an undermining of social trust, there’s a deepening sense of stress and all of this is hugely consequential for how educators experience public schools and how young people are experiencing public schools.”

    Costs of conflict can’t always be counted in dollars

    Average-sized school districts of about 10,000 students spent about $811,000 each last school year to cope with cultural division, according to the study. The money was spent on legal fees, added security, additional staff time and on community, school board and government relations. Districts also incurred indirect costs because of staff turnover related to the conflict and because staff had to take time away from their other duties to deal with discord.

    According to the survey, the largest expense for districts with cultural conflict came from staff turnover, with districts of about 10,000 students spending between $148,000 and $461,000, depending on the level of conflict. 

    One superintendent said that cultural conflict has caused “incredible stress on leaders and teachers as they navigate imaginary slights and online drama in the community.” A Pennsylvania superintendent called the emotional stress and anxiety “nearly crippling.”

    “This research makes clear that culturally divisive conflicts in the nation’s schools are generating fear, stress and anxiety that is disrupting school districts and taking a personal toll on the educators and staff members who work in them,” Rogers said. 

    The stress has also led to increased staff absenteeism at schools, even in districts with lower levels of conflict, according to the report.

    Half of the superintendents surveyed said they had been personally harassed at least once during the school year. Ten percent reported being threatened with violence, and 11% had their property vandalized.

    As a result, superintendent turnover has also increased — from 14.2% to 17.1% — over the past four years. More than 40% of the superintendents who left their jobs in the last year said their decision was related to conflict, stress and politics, according to the report.

    “The relentless demands of leading a district can easily overshadow their own well-being, which, if neglected, not only affects their personal health but also the health and stability of students, educators, and families they serve,” said Rachel S. White of the University of Texas at Austin in a statement. “Reducing the extent to which superintendents experience unwarranted divisiveness is an important step to change the trajectory of increasing superintendent churn.”  

    Superintendents who were surveyed expressed concern that the time they spent managing cultural conflict, including responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, and unsubstantiated rumors and misinformation, is keeping them from focusing on improving instruction.

    California not immune to divisive conflict

    Rogers said that while cultural conflict wasn’t as common in California as in other parts of the country in 2021-22, it has grown over the last few years.

    Donald Trump’s election is likely to bring more cultural division to school campuses, Rogers said.

    “I think that a Trump victory will lead some on the right to take a message that these sorts of cultural attacks, that have been playing out across the United States and across California in the last couple of years, are an effective strategy for mobilizing the base and for energizing the electorate,” said Rogers, in an interview the day before the election.

     “A Trump victory will mean that Donald Trump will have more of a presence in our public life in the months to come. And so, that too will mean that he will be using language and framing that will further activate attacks on public schools around these culturally divisive issues.”





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  • Better writing instruction comes from studying student work more closely

    Better writing instruction comes from studying student work more closely


    Credit: Katie Schneider Gumiran and Rosa Gaia for Conway Elementary

    An instructional leader in a Bay Area school district told me last week that while they are a bright spot in improving reading for the last three years, they still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels. “Our biggest pain point is writing. Our gaps start in ELA, but we see them in science and social studies too.”

    This district isn’t alone; schools throughout California are struggling to improve writing across the curriculum. What might we do differently?

    In their new book, Learning Together, Elham Kazemi and colleagues suggest school leaders work with teachers to analyze student writing more regularly. Reviewing a set of informational essays, or an extended project in biology, could be the center of more grade-level planning meetings or districtwide professional learning days.

    The pioneer in this approach has been Ron Berger, one of the co-founders of EL Education, a national non-profit that partners with K-12 educators to transform their schools. Berger has been a mainstay of High Tech High’s Deeper Learning conferences in San Diego and has taught more than 300 workshops around the country, all of them closely examining examples of student work.

    In Leaders of Their Own Learning, the instructional guide he co-authored, Berger tells the story of coaching a high school physics teacher who says, “The students’ lab reports are terribly written and it’s driving me crazy.”

    Ron asks if she’s ever shown her students a model of a good lab report and she replies that she has not.

    When given the chance to closely study an exemplary lab report, her students are surprised at the vocabulary and level of precision in it. A number laughed at how low their own standards had been.

    “For all the correcting we do, directions we give, and rubrics we create about what good work looks like,” writes Berger, “students are often unclear about what they are aiming for until they actually see and analyze strong models.”

    Ron Berger used to lug around a giant black bag of student essays, labs, and video presentations to discuss at workshops. Eventually, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, and collaborating with Steve Seidel at Harvard University, Berger built an online museum for displaying student work.

    Models of Excellence showcases 500 examples of great student writing and other projects from around the U.S. and the world. California students have contributed sixty pieces, including a Kids Guide to California National Parks created by 2nd graders from Big Pine, and an analysis by 6th graders on the water quality of Lake Merritt in Oakland. 

    Here are three ways districts and schools across California can improve writing by studying their own student work:

    First, form a study group. In grade-level meetings or working across the district, teachers and a coach can assemble their own models of excellent student writing. The group can link the models to criteria which guide students’ efforts; the more concrete, the better. The study group can use the rubrics and student checklists developed by the Vermont Writing Collaborative for all genres of writing at all grade levels.

    After teaching a lesson where third graders critiqued a fantasy story, Berger reflects, “It’s much more powerful to bring in models of great work. Then have the kids be detectives and have the excitement of discovering and naming the qualities of great writing — humor, powerful words, well-drawn character — in their own words.”

    Second, get the feedback right. Dylan William writes in Embedded Formative Assessment that most feedback in schools is accurate, but falls short of showing the learner how to move forward. He tells of a science student who reads he needs to be more systematic. “If I knew how,” the student tells his teacher, “I would have done it the first time.”

    Students can resist revising their work, so Berger suggests teachers and peers follow this mantra about feedback: “Be Kind, Be Specific, Be Helpful.” Keeping this in mind, writing three or four drafts of an essay becomes a part of the school culture.  

    Finally, make the writing visible. Tina Meglich, principal of Conway Elementary in Escondido, transformed her school by displaying curated student work throughout the library and hallways. “Kids will ask, ‘Who wrote that essay on Esperanza Rising?’ They’re fascinated by each other’s work, and they inspire one another to do better because of it.”

    Analyzing student writing in this way not only raises the quality of the work, but it also instills in students a vision of what’s possible.  “I believe that work of excellence is transformational,” Berger writes. “After students have had a taste of excellence, they’re never satisfied with less; they’re always hungry.”

    •••

    David Scarlett Wakelyn is a consultant at Upswing Labs, a nonprofit that works with school districts and charter schools to improve instruction. He previously was on the team at the National Governors Association that developed Common Core State Standards

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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  • Trump’s Insane War on Science

    Trump’s Insane War on Science


    Since Trump invited Elon Musk and his DOGE team to cut the federal budget, the federal government has been subject to a bloodbath of firings, layoffs, and closed agencies. Some of the most shocking budget cuts have focused on scientific research. Reckless cuts have been imposed on the National Science Foundation and on every part of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the Secretary–conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.–is crushing genuine research and prioritizing his obsession with vaccines as the cause of autism, which has been debunked.

    Trump has blocked the payment of millions of dollars to universities that fund basic science research. He is using those blocks to force universities to stop DEI programs.

    We can understand why Kennedy wants to destroy science: it has an annoying tendency to undercut his pet conspiracy theories. No matter what science says, he will continue to warn the public that vaccines are dangerous, that fluoridating water is dangerous, and anything that contradicts his ideology is fake, regardless of how many scientists disagree. WHO you gonna believe? The addled RFK Jr. or the world’s top scientists? Or Ghostbusters?

    But we do not know why Trump put the nation’s public health agencies into the hands of a man who does not respect science.

    Why does Trump want more children to die of measles? Why does he allow Elon Musk to shut down agencies like USAID that have saved millions of lives? Why he is cancelling grants to universities for basic scientific research? Why does he want to stop the work of scientists who are seeking cures for cancer, tuberculosis, AIDS, and other lethal diseases? I don’t know.

    Frankly, the cuts are coming so fast that I can’t keep track of them all. I hope soon to find a comprehensive summary of the destruction of federally-funded scientific research.

    In the meanwhile, this is the best overview I have seen.

    Alan Burdick of the New York Times wrote this story about Trump’s rampage against scientific research:

    Late yesterday, Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom President Trump hired to run the National Science Foundation five years ago, quit. He didn’t say why, but it was clear enough: Last weekend, Trump cut more than 400 active research awards from the N.S.F., and he is pressing Congress to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget.

    The Trump administration has targeted the American scientific enterprise, an engine of research and innovation that has thrummed for decades. It has slashed or frozen budgets at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NASA. It has fired or defunded thousands of researchers.

    The chaos is confusing: Isn’t science a force for good? Hasn’t it contained disease? Won’t it help us in the competition with China? Doesn’t it attract the kind of immigrants the president says he wants? In this edition of the newsletter, we break out our macroscope to make sense of the turmoil.

    American research thrives under a patronage system that funnels congressionally approved dollars to universities, national labs and institutes. This knowledge factory employs tens of thousands of researchers, draws talent from around the world and generates scientific breakthroughs and Nobel Prizes.

    It’s a slow-moving system, because science moves slowly. Discoveries are often indirect and iterative, involving collaboration among researchers who need years of subsidized education to become expert. Startups and corporations, which need quick returns on their investment, typically can’t wait as long or risk as much money.

    Science is capital. By some measures, every dollar spent on research returns at least $5 to the economy.

    President Trump is less patient. He has defunded university studies on AIDS, pediatric cancer and solar physics. (Two prominent researchers are compiling lists of lost N.I.H. grants and N.S.F. awards.) The administration has also laid off thousands of federal scientists, including meteorologists at the National Weather Service; pandemic-preparedness experts at the C.D.C.; black-lung researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A next-generation space observatory, already built with $3.5 billion over a decade, awaits a launch that now may never happen.

    Administration officials offer various reasons for the crackdown: cost-cutting, government efficiency, “defending women from gender ideology extremism.” Many grants were eliminated because they contain words, including climate, diversity, disability, trans or women. Some drew the administration’s ire because the applications included D.E.I. statements required by the previous administration.

    It doesn’t take a telescope to see where this leads. American leaders have historically seen science as an investment in the future. Will this administration foreclose it? One-third of America’s Nobel Prize winners have been foreign-born, but an immigration crackdown has swept up scientists like Kseniia Petrova, a Russian who studied aging at Harvard and now sits in a Louisiana detention center. Australian academics have stopped attending conferences in the U.S. for fear of being detained, The Guardian has reported.

    Now some American scientists are looking for the exits. France, Canada and other countries are courting our researchers. In a recent poll by the journal Nature, more than 1,200 American scientists said they were considering working abroad. The journal’s job-search platform saw 32 percent more applications for positions overseas between January and March 2025 than during the same period a year earlier.

    These are mechanical threats to science — who gets money, what they work on. But there is a more existential worry. The Trump administration is trying to change what counts as science.

    One effort aims at what science should show — and at achieving results agreeable to the administration. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wants to reopen research into a long-debunked link between vaccines and autism. He doesn’t want to study vaccine hesitancy. The National Science Foundation says it will no longer fund “research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.” A Justice Department official has accused prominent medical journals of political bias for not airing “competing viewpoints.”

    Another gambit is to suppress or avoid politically off-message results, even if the message isn’t yet clear. The government has expunged public data sets on air quality, earthquake intensity and seabed geology. Why cut the budget by erasing records? Perhaps the data would point toward efforts (pollution reduction? seabed mining limits?) that officials might one day need to undertake. We pursue knowledge in order to act: to prevent things, to improve things. But action is expensive, at a moment when the Trump administration wants the government to do as little as possible. Perhaps it’s best to not even know.

    One sure way to shut down knowledge is to question who can gather it. The administration is painting scientists with the same liberal brush it has applied to academics more broadly — what Project 2025 describes as “the ‘enlightened,’ highly educated managerial elite.” The N.I.H. is controlled by “a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders,” the Project 2025 authors write. The regulatory work of the Environmental Protection Agency “should embrace so-called citizen science” and be left “for the public to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.”

    In science, as in a democracy, there’s plenty of room for skepticism and debate. That’s what makes it work. But at some point, calls for “further research” become disingenuous efforts to obscure inconvenient facts. It’s an old playbook, exploited in the 1960s by the tobacco industry and more recently by fossil-fuel companies.

    Now it’s being weaponized by the government against science generally. Facts are elite, facts are fungible, facts are false. And once nothing is true, anything can be true.



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