اینترنت

برچسب: much

  • California’s missing kids: Much of the loss explained

    California’s missing kids: Much of the loss explained


    The pandemic had a devastating impact on learning, experts say, with lasting ramifications for the world of education at large.

    During the chaotic period when California families were running scared, public schools were shuttered and playgrounds off-limits, an estimated 152,000 California children went missing from classrooms, according to a collaboration between Stanford professor Thomas Dee and The Associated Press.

    Now, after a new analysis of the most recent data, experts say they know what happened to roughly 65,000 of those children, meaning the number of missing kids has shrunk considerably, leaving only an estimated 87,000 children still missing from public school rolls. The mystery of exactly where they went lingers, however.

    This analysis tracked plummeting public school enrollment from 2019-20, when the pandemic first struck, to 2022-23, by the time schools had reopened. During that rocky time, the school-age cohort in California, the nation’s most populous state, plunged by about 188,000, according to census data, while the number of home-schoolers rose by 8,431 and private school enrollment grew by about 28,000, according to the report. 

    Tallying all the known factors accounts for about 65,000 students of the state’s total decline of 152,000. Do the math and that leaves roughly 87,000 students, or 28% of the enrollment decline. Where these students went remains unknown, but experts suggest there are myriad factors to consider.

    “These data are generative of questions that matter for education policy. … I would encourage you to think of it as an important indicator and kind of a canary in a coal mine,” Dee said.

    Data suggests some of the overall decline in enrollment stems from children who have simply aged out of the system at this point. Basically, the school-age population is much smaller than it once was, with 188,000 fewer children in the 7-18 age range in 2022-23. If you were 16 when the pandemic started, you are no longer in this cohort. 

    After all, California, like the rest of the nation, is grappling with the aftershocks of a declining birthrate. The state’s birth rate is at its lowest level in roughly 100 years, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report. The steep cost of child care coupled with the high cost of housing are often cited by experts as among the key reasons for the falling birth rate.

    “Demographic change is continuing to accelerate,” said Dee, “the graying of the country and the continued decline in the number of school-age children.”

    As a whole, there’s been an unprecedented exodus from public schools nationwide that experts say has been worse in states like California that focused on remote learning. This trend initially most deeply impacted the youngest learners, such as kindergartners, who struggled mightily with Zoom school. While many experts expected public school enrollment to bounce back sharply as the pandemic faded from view, that has not been the case.

     “At the time I thought to myself, this is likely to be a temporary phenomenon,” said Dee. “I was expecting them to crowd into kindergarten in fall of 2021 or skip ahead to first grade, having lost a key kind of developmental opportunity by forgoing kindergarten. And was surprised to see that neither occurred.” 

    The continued sustained missingness in places like California and New York raises questions for which we still don’t have answers.

    Thomas Dee, the Stanford education professor who led the analysis

    Many families also fled the Golden State, seeking greener pastures in more affordable spots. That has led to losses in California and gains in Florida, for example.

    “In many places, the demographic trends were accelerated by pandemic mobility,” said Dee, “the fact that families reshuffled around the country and out of states like California and New York.”

    Many children also switched to homeschooling, which held extra appeal for parents amid recurring outbreaks. Private schools, which resumed in-person classes faster than public schools, also got a big boost. 

    Outdoor education and “forest schools” also gained in popularity. Notably, many parents who first tried alternative schooling arrangements during the pandemic have stuck with their choices. 

    “There’s been this resetting of enrollment patterns across public and nonpublic settings that is enduring,” Dee said. “We’re seeing that in terms of the sustained growth in nonpublic schooling. … We’re in this new normal where there’s this stickiness there.”

    The bad news for public schools is that there are still tens of thousands of children who seem to have fallen off the grid. They didn’t leave the state, they didn’t go to private or homeschool. While there’s a chance some children are being homeschooled without filling out the required big pile of paperwork, there may still be a missing cohort out there.

    It should be noted that possible explanations for these remaining missing kids are both numerous and complex. Some of it may be families keeping kids in preschool instead of enrolling them in kindergarten. Some of it may be high-schoolers getting jobs but not officially dropping out.

    Part of it might be newly homeless families, displaced by the tidal wave of post-pandemic evictions, who can’t get the kids to school amid their other struggles. Part of it could also be the margin of error on the census population estimate. 

    “The factors you mention could be occurring simultaneously,” notes Dee.

    One near certainty is that the ongoing disengagement with the public school system seems to cut deep. That’s one reason chronic absenteeism has also been escalating, experts say. In the 2021-22 school year, a third of students in California’s public schools were chronically absent, an all-time high. That’s more than three times the rate of absenteeism before Covid. 

    This spike also holds nationally. One analysis estimated 14 million chronically absent students during the 2021 school, an increase of nearly 7 million since 2017.

    Going Deeper

    View kindergarten enrollment changes from 2019 to 2021 in California with EdSource’s interactive map.

    Some say it may be indicative of a lack of student and parent engagement.  Some of that dissatisfaction may have been triggered during remote learning at the height of the pandemic, some say, when parents got to experience what their children were learning firsthand. 

    “The pandemic gave parents a rare window into the classroom via Zoom,” said Bill Conrad,  a Bay Area educator for 47 years and author of “The Fog of Education.”  “They were not impressed with the failed teaching practices, especially for reading. Parents elected to provide different learning opportunities for their children. Can you blame them? They are protesting with their feet.”

    This trend is particularly disturbing from an equity lens, some say, because families without resources cannot simply shell out for private schools, work at home to manage homeschooling or hire tutors. That may widen the already unsettling achievement gap, some fear. 

    “The biggest challenge from my point of view is the socioeconomic inequity,” said Jenny Mackenzie, director of the literacy crisis documentary “The Right to Read.” “In other words, families who would like to take a break from the public school system … cannot afford to do that.”

    Some families who lost faith in the ability of schools to meet the needs of students across a wide range of issues, including literacy and numeracy, may need to feel that their voices are being heard. The pandemic was the tipping point, some say, but the issues may go beyond school closures. 

    “Since the pandemic, more parents question whether their child is better off in school,” said Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit organization that runs many Bay Area child care and preschool centers. “This is good news because parents should question everything about California’s education system. Decade after decade, less than half of students are proficient in language and math. Perhaps it is the instructional methods or curriculum that lack proficiency?”

    Forging stronger connections with families who face challenges with school attendance may also be part of the solution. 

    “The reasons behind student absenteeism are incredibly complex, and so the responses have to be complex as well,” said Heather Hough, director of Policy Analysis for California Education, noting that the first step should be asking families what challenges they face coming to school.

    Low-income students and students of color often feel less sense of belonging at school than their peers, research suggests. Strengthening that frayed bond may not be easy, some warn, but it is necessary.

    “School is sometimes a source of trauma, and even intergenerational trauma, disproportionately for historically marginalized groups,” said Shantel Meek,  founding director of the Children’s Equity Project, an advocacy and research organization based at Arizona State University. “We’re all familiar with the data on harsh discipline and how Black children are more harshly disciplined than everybody else, despite not having any worse behavior.”

    Some suggest we may be approaching a watershed moment, a time for education to pivot to better meet changing student needs.

    “Public education has failed to shift post-pandemic to the new way of learning,” said Alex Cherniss, superintendent of Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified. “Now students and families are seeing alternative ways, and often better ways, to learn.  As a result, homeschooling is at an all-time high, remote learning is mainstream, and public school can either evolve or continue to deteriorate.”

    Amid the looming ambiguities, one certainty emerges. Snowballing enrollment declines are poised to undermine the financial stability of the public school system just as pandemic relief funds expire and learning loss deepens. 

    Enrollment has fallen at nearly three-quarters of California school districts over the last five years, according to the Public Policy Institute of California, and these losses are expected to continue, with state officials estimating a drop of over a half million students by 2031–32.

    “That’s so important at this moment,” Dee said, “because we’re seeing many school districts struggle with chronic under-enrollment of their schools and having to reckon with the fiscal reality of that at a time when ESSER (emergency school relief) funds are going to sunset.”





    Source link

  • Closing schools: How much money does it save, and is it worth it?

    Closing schools: How much money does it save, and is it worth it?


    Protesters rally against school closures outside the Oakland Unified School District office in September 2019.

    Andrew Reed/EdSource

    It makes intuitive sense: Smaller districts with fewer kids need fewer schools. A district with 40,000 students operates many more school buildings than a district with 20,000, which in turn runs more than a district with 10,000. With widespread enrollment declines (for example, California’s school-age population is forecast to drop by 15% over the next decade), many districts are now grappling with whether to close one or more schools.

    What’s the forcing factor for school closure decisions? Money, of course.

    District revenues, for the most part, are tied to the number of students a district serves. Enrollment has fallen in many districts, but during the last three or four years, federal pandemic dollars more than made up for the reductions in funding associated with those declines. Many districts have had plenty of cash on hand to keep running a fleet of under-enrolled schools. But federal relief dollars will dry up this fall, and it’s increasingly unlikely that the state will fill the gaps. That’s prompting shrinking districts to grapple with whether they can still afford to operate all their schools.

    Mostly what a district saves when closing a school is in staffing costs. Closing three schools can save the costs of three principals, three librarians, three nurses, and so on, and even some teaching positions where students can fill empty seats elsewhere in the district.

    At Edunomics Lab, our rule of thumb is that when a district has under-enrolled schools, closing 1 of every 15 schools saves about 4% of a district’s budget, mostly in labor costs. There may also be nominal savings in facilities, but labor is far and away the largest portion (85-95%) of the budget, and savings there will be more consequential over the long term.

    But not every closure brings layoffs. Where are the savings if the district isn’t issuing pink slips?

    Typically, the savings come from downsizing the district’s overall staffing counts with attrition. Often, the district can move staff from the closing school to fill vacancies emerging in other schools as staff leave on their own (thus avoiding layoffs). When a principal retires in one school, the district may move a principal from the closing school over to fill that spot. The cost reduction comes from not rehiring to fill those vacancies. If the leaders choose instead to keep all schools open, then the district has little choice but to rehire to fill each departing principal, nurse, librarian and so on to keep the larger number of schools running.

    Maintaining under-enrolled schools drains funds from all the district’s schools, not just the under-enrolled ones. Each district operates on a fixed revenue pool. Spending on principals, librarians and nurses in one or more half-empty schools means spending less on something else. It’s like having a fixed amount of frosting while trying to cover too many cupcakes. In the end, all the cupcakes end up with less frosting. For schools, that means they’ll start to see cutbacks to music, electives, AP courses, athletics and other supports as the district uses its limited funds to prop up the under-enrolled campuses.

    Take the Los Angeles Unified School District, for example, where the district spends an average of about $23,000 per elementary student at each of its higher-poverty schools. As the graph below shows, a few of its tiniest schools are drawing down over $34,000 per student from LAUSD’s fixed pool of funds. The higher price tag means less cash available for all the other schools in the district. (This information is available for all districts here.)

    Of course, closure decisions shouldn’t focus on money alone. For instance, districts may consider whether there are other nearby schools for displaced students to attend. Also relevant is whether the school is effective in its core mission. In the graphic above, some of the higher-priced under-enrolled schools are below the average performance line for higher-poverty schools. Not only are these schools expensive, but it also matters if that money isn’t delivering value for students.

    It’s also important to remember that not every small school has an outsize price tag. If a small school is able to operate cost-efficiently (meaning it has the same per-pupil costs as other similar schools), then closing it won’t likely save much at all. For a small school to be cost-efficient, it probably isn’t staffed in the same way as other schools. Maybe the principal also teaches a class, or the counselor is also the Spanish teacher. Or maybe the school uses some online options for electives or it operates as a multi-age Montessori model, or something else. And if it is demonstrating higher results for kids (meaning it is in that upper left quadrant on the graph), there’s even more of a case to leave it alone. What’s relevant here is that the small school isn’t draining funds from other schools, and is providing good value for the dollar.

    School closure decisions are never easy for any community, regardless of what the numbers say. But it’s the leaders’ responsibility to be good stewards of funds and ensure all students are served well. Assessing which schools are most able to leverage their money to maximize student outcomes can help leaders bring transparency to that difficult process.

    •••

    Marguerite Roza is director of Edunomics Lab and research professor at Georgetown University.
    Aashish Dhammani is a research fellow at Edunomics Lab.

    (For more on per-pupil spending and outcomes by school in California districts, explore Edunomics’ interactive data here.)

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





    Source link

  • Too much downtime, too little learning in special day classes

    Too much downtime, too little learning in special day classes


    A special education teacher walks down a hallway with her student in a Northern California school.

    Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

    A growing concern has emerged in California regarding the educational rights of students with extensive support needs.

    These students, who often require ongoing assistance in physical, communication, or social support, may not be receiving the mandated instructional minutes set by the California Department of Education. Further, recent studies suggest that special education teachers spend only 20% of their daily time on actual teaching, with students receiving most of their instruction from paraeducators and other service providers. These findings point to wide-ranging implications for how the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) is really implemented in schools.

    When one of us, Sara Caniglia-Schulte from San Jose State University, observed one such class as part of her supervisory responsibilities, I returned feeling disappointed by how much free time the students were given in class: Four paraprofessionals were sitting along the perimeter of the classroom, two students were on a computer, one was lying over a large exercise ball, one was holding his visual schedule, asking the adults in the room, “What’s next?” and the other students were pacing around the classroom.

    Although separate special education classes for students with extensive support needs have long been viewed as critical for providing intensive individualized support and education, researchers have noted that these students may spend substantial portions of their school day engaged in noninstructional activities such as extended periods of games, choice or play time, movie viewing, or other activities unrelated to academic instruction. 

    To be sure, students with extensive support needs may have diverse cognitive, sensory, physical and communication needs that necessitate frequent breaks and more flexibility in the classroom. However, the question arises: How much is too much? Instructional time is equally vital in special education classes, enabling students to learn and acquire new skills.

    Having been a teacher in a special day class for students with extensive support needs for over 18 years, I (Sudha Krishnan) am painfully aware of the number of times classroom instruction has stalled. In a special day class environment, numerous distractions from instruction exist naturally as a part of the classroom setup. These may include disruptive student behaviors such as interruptions, loud sounds, screaming and interpersonal interactions that divert attention from instruction. At times, extreme behaviors may require evacuating the classroom to ensure everyone’s safety. Additionally, when paraeducators need to take breaks as per their contract, free or choice time may be allocated so that the few remaining staff need only supervise without providing instruction. Moreover, there are regular classroom interruptions by service providers like speech therapists, psychologists, occupational therapists or physical therapists — whether they do the therapy in class or pull students out for sessions in their offices. Bus delays at the start of the school day or early dismissals to accommodate bus schedules (to avoid disrupting pick-ups/drop-offs at other schools) may also reduce instructional time. Research suggests that such interruptions and distractions significantly disengage students and decrease instructional time in the classroom.

    Further, excessive unstructured time can pose unique challenges for students with significant disabilities. Overall, students benefit academically and behaviorally when meaningfully engaged in learning. Students may engage in unproductive or potentially harmful behaviors without proper guidance and supervision. Prolonged periods of free time without meaningful choices or structured activities may lead to boredom, frustration and disengagement, ultimately hindering overall development and progress. Finally, limited access to structured learning activities may impede academic progress and skill development, perpetuating educational disparities and hindering students’ ability to reach their full potential.

    There are many strategies that teachers can employ to provide breaks for students while engaging them productively. Structuring the free time to include peer models to play games or other activities could improve interactive play skills. Preferred activities that require fine or gross motor skills to get kids moving could increase engagement, and simply allowing the students to move outside could improve student performance throughout the day.  Providing simple visual schedules and structured activities may provide students with options to use their free-choice time meaningfully.

    There is also an urgent need for more research into and scrutiny of the amount of instructional time spent in special day classrooms for students with extensive support needs and the level of student engagement during this time. If parents can demonstrate that the school district failed to provide the instructional minutes stated in the individualized education plan, they may be provided compensatory education funded by the district, which can prove costly. Current research in this area has raised stark equity questions and challenged the fundamental design of special education.

    It’s time to confront these realities head-on and question whether special education has been designed in a way that leaves some students behind.

    •••

    Sudha Krishnan, Ed.D, is an assistant professor of special education at San Jose State University‘s Connie L. Lurie College of Education, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.

    Sara Caniglia-Schulte, Ed.D, is a lecturer at San Jose State University.

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





    Source link

  • Adult education on K-12 campuses is so much more than you might guess

    Adult education on K-12 campuses is so much more than you might guess


    Adult education students at Huntington Beach Adult School in the Huntington Beach Union School District

    Credit: Jorge Van Dyck / Huntington Beach Adult School

    There’s an incredibly important program that takes place in the back lots of a number of K-12 school sites.

    Adult Education serves students aged 18 and over in English as a second language (ESL), citizenship, adult basic education/adult secondary education (diploma and GED), and short-term career technical Education (CTE).

    But their services to the schools they are housed in and the surrounding community are so much more. In fact, adult education staff and supporters have been espousing the benefits associated with Community Schools before the term became popular. They are that link schools don’t know they have to make sure parents know about and attend their District English Language Advisory Committee to help plan how funds will be used to support English learners, and they are often the link to immigration attorneys, financial literacy programs and a bridge to the training that so many parents of K-12 students end up needing.

    Adult education also benefits students in the K-12 system. To put it simply, our immigrant students have immigrant parents, and assisting parents in learning the language and the school system’s processes in an English learner class is bound to pay off for the child as well. Also, offering short-term career technical education classes for those same parents to transition into once they have a grasp of the language (like in this medical assistant IET – integrated education and training program) is ultimately going to provide a more financially stable family structure that, again, benefits the child attending our K-12 schools. Finally, no matter how many redundant systems we put into K-12, students do drop out, and adult schools provide a place for that student to come back and finish their diploma or high school equivalency.

    Yes, these folks are flexible, and their services complement the goals of our K-12 districts, which is likely why a decision was made a long time ago to house adult education within these institutions.

    Unfortunately, flexibility is also a sore spot for adult educators. When the state budget gets pinched, adult education feels it first. In 2008-09, that meant cuts of 15% and 20%, and when the state government allowed for categorical programs — which previously could only be used for specific purposes — to be used flexibly, adult education funds were used to keep K-12 programs going, and many adult programs were decreased or even lost. By 2013-14, the Legislature introduced a package to eliminate school district categorical programs that targeted funding for adult education but salvage the adult education system by requiring districts to move into consortia beginning in 2015-16, joining community colleges and K-12 adult schools together in offering non-credit adult education. Schools moving to this system were asked to maintain 2011-12 levels of spending on adult education, which by then was at about 50% of 2008-09 levels.

    So, it is understandable when an adult educator winces at the word “flexibility” and would rather it not even be mentioned in these bleak financial times. But the good news for California, its schools, and communities around those schools, is that California still supports its adult education system like no other state. The budget for adult education has actually grown in recent years. And, despite a recent Legislative Analyst Office report second guessing the funding structure it helped to create, adult educators feel the more they let folks know about the incredible wraparound services they provide for adults and children in the K-12 districts that are lucky enough to house them, then the more likely it will be for that elusive respect to be gained and programs sustained into the distant future.

    The fundamental tasks of adult education are widely agreed upon and supported, even if many K-12 educators don’t know exactly what happens in those beige portables at the edge of their campus.

    As alluded to at the start, those classes for adults are often tucked away in corners of larger campuses that are hard to find, and some forget they are there, and that’s generally OK with those who work there, since adult school employees know the value of their work is about so much more than that; they are flexible. They know that being right there on the campus where adult school parents’ kids attend is a great start.

    Going back and forth between different sets and shades of beige portables on the four different campuses where Huntington Beach Adult School provides ESL classes, I have an appreciation for the often slighted portable and feel compelled to steal from William Carlos Williams to bring an end to this musing on the value of adult education.

    So much depends upon

    the beige portables

    at the edge of campus

    glazed in floodlights

    filled with adult students

    Credit: Jorge Van Dyck / Huntington Beach Adult School

    •••

    Philip Villamor is an assistant principal at Huntington Beach Adult School, which is a part of the Huntington Beach Union High School District.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





    Source link

  • Too much test prep? Inside Compton Unified’s frequent assessments 

    Too much test prep? Inside Compton Unified’s frequent assessments 


    A tutor helps students at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton last week.

    Credit: AP Photo/Eric Thayer

    On paper, the Compton Unified School District has soared in its academic performance in the last decade. 

    District Superintendent Darin Brawley has, in part, attributed the upswing to regular assessments and the use of standardized test scores to help determine academic strategies at individual school sites. 

    But some teachers question whether the improved scores should be celebrated — and have claimed that the scores are higher because the district puts all of its emphasis on preparing students for tests, rather than educating them completely, a tactic they claim impedes rather than helps students. 

    “We’re testing in September, October, November, December, January, February, March — like we’re testing every month, so that the district has the numbers,” said Kristen Luevanos, the president of the Compton Education Association, the district’s teacher’s union. 

    “But as a classroom teacher, you know how to assess your kids as you go. We don’t need these huge standardized tests once a month. And so we’re wasting precious instructional time.”

    According to the Nation’s Recovery Scorecard, the district’s performance in math has risen in the past decade from 2.54 grades below the national average to only -0.86 behind — a difference of 1.68. And in reading, Compton increased scrores by 1.37 to 1.04 grades below the national average. 

    Brawley maintains that assessing students’ progress is critical to the district’s progress.

    “Our testing is aligned to state standards that determine whether or not kids have mastered the information. And for a teacher or anyone, an administrator, a politician, to say that you are prepping kids for a test, I think it’s laughable,” Brawley said in an interview with EdSource. 

    “Because those same people: What did they do for the SAT? What did they do for the GRE? What did they do for the LSAT? What did they do for their driver’s test?”

    The role of test prep

    In a given semester, teachers in Compton Unified are expected to administer dozens of exams. 

    Credit: Kristen Luevanos

    “You’re going to look at these lists and go, ‘When does education happen?’ And that’s the exact question that teachers are having,” Luevanos, who said she recognizes the importance of some test preparation.

    “[The district will] say, we’re using it to teach,” she said. “Anyone who’s ever been in education and has taken courses knows that’s not how it works. You don’t use the end goal to help. You start with scaffolding. You start where the kids are at. You start with the basics. You start with the vocabulary. You work your way up.”

    Going Deeper

    On top of indicating students’ progress, assessments can be a critical tool for teachers to reflect on their own quality of instruction, according to Julie Slayton, a professor of clinical education at the University of Southern California. 

    “If a student didn’t perform on an assessment, or depending on how a student performed on an assessment, or a class performed on an assessment, we can use that information to ask ourselves: What did I do that set the kids up for the outcome that they experienced?” Slayton said. “That would be good. That would be what we would want.” 

    She added that assessment should also be used by students to help gauge their own progress, which would improve student learning — and by extension, student outcomes. 

    Drilling students on what an exam will assess, on the other hand, “is not meaningful in terms of actually acquiring the knowledge and skills,” she said. 

    Slayton said “having a test prep orientation is more the norm than it is exception” — and that it comes as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, where more schools have incorporated more test preparation to boost performance and minimize punishments for failing to do so. 

    “If we start with what do we want a kid to learn within five months or two weeks, or whatever the time period is, and how does that align with what the teacher is doing, we have a nice relationship,” she said. “And testing would just be an extension of a regular, appropriate assessment process that was embedded in a learning process.” 

    Despite the hard work of staff and students alike, Luevanos said the standardized test results aren’t revealing students’ academic struggles — from fourth graders who are struggling to read to eighth graders who haven’t yet mastered their multiplication tables. 

    But Brawley believes that preparations for standardized tests are supposed to help students better understand the language they might encounter on the exams — and that there are also equity concerns involved. 

    “Every kid whose parents has the means, they participate in that, they have tutors, they have specialized courses that they take that preps them for the assessments to get into college and everything else,” Brawley said. “So, why is it bad for Black kids, Latino kids, English language learners, to learn the academic vocabulary that’s necessary for them to do well?”

    Kendra Hatchett, a literacy specialist at McKinley Elementary School in Compton, agreed that getting students used to the language that appears on exams is critical. 

    “I have been in the classroom and have refused to do test prep years ago as a brand-new first year teacher because I thought, ‘Oh, it’s against my philosophy. We shouldn’t do test prep.’ But then, the kids didn’t pass a test, and it wasn’t because they didn’t have the information,’” Hatchett said. 

    “I may have taught them that five plus 10 equals 15,” she said. “That’s straightforward. We’ve got it. We’ve nailed it. But I didn’t teach them: 15 minus happy face equals five. So, that threw them off. I had to rethink my strategy, and that’s when I decided I’ve got to find a way to weave in test prep while still doing hands-on activities.” 

    Broader impacts 

    Luevanos said pressures to do well on exams have led some teachers to stop teaching novels and prioritize excerpts and short stories, which are more likely to appear on tests instead. Novels also aren’t listed on pacing guides reviewed by EdSource for eighth or eleventh grade. 

    The district said in an email to EdSource that it has not issued any directives to limit the teaching of novels. 

    Teaching students novels “takes you on a journey,” Luevanos emphasized, noting that certain standards — whether indirect characterization or motivation — cannot be taught just through excerpts. 

    “The kids are amazing,” she said. “They deserve to be able to read novels. They deserve to be able to play math games. They deserve to be able to just struggle with the work and create.” 

    Luevanos said that because students are spending more time on test prep and less on regular materials, they are not as interested in what they’re learning — and she has noticed more challenges with student discipline over time. 

    “They’re not learning how to think critically, how to be rational, how to be lifelong learners,” Luevanos said. “They’re learning how to read and answer questions.” 

    She also said she has heard about instances of alleged cheating. 

    Helida Corona, a district parent, said she had approached one of her children’s schools every year to express concerns about them being behind, beginning in second grade. 

    She was surprised, years later, when her child received an award for her performance in mathematics in the sixth grade. Corona said she “found it kind of odd,” especially as her child still struggles with regular addition.  

    The next year, Corona’s child got the award again, yet the child still struggled with everyday math, such as accurately adding up the value of money using simple single digits.

    Suspecting that her child might have been involved in some cheating, Corona said she learned more when she spoke with her child about the multiple-choice test. 

    “‘Our teacher sometimes helps us,’” Corona’s child told her, explaining that students would first guess — and if wrong, be instructed to try again, until they landed on the right answer. 

    “It’s terrible because it does not help you. They use those tests [to] place you in a class that’s appropriate for you,” Corona said. “If you continue this way, you’re going to end up going to high school, and they’re going to put you in a higher level math class, and you’re going to go in there blindsided.”

    The district, however, said they do not have knowledge of instances where students have received assistance on standardized tests. 

    Although Hatchett now believes in the importance of preparing students for tests, she also believes in having a balance — and says that the district could be more balanced in its approach as a whole.  

    “I know everybody’s struggle is different, and their perspective of what that should look like is different,” Hatchett said. “Each person should try their best to try to mix it up. You can’t just be all or nothing, all one direction or the other direction.” 





    Source link