What We’re Reading: Week of January 9-13, 2023
The very first newsletter! Welcome to the Partnership Press!
Welcome to the first week of the Partnership Press: What We’re Reading (WWR)!
As an independent school management organization – and the first national network of Catholic elementary schools in the US – our mission is not just to help our own eleven schools thrive, but also support the nationwide effort to save urban Catholic education. While there are many conversations to dive into within the world of education, with this weekly newsletter, we want to highlight some headlines that especially affect us from a Catholic school or national perspective – whether regarding pandemic learning loss, school choice legislation, educational reform, and more.
Each newsletter, we will be pulling three or so clips compiled by our team – one national, one New York-based, and one Ohio-based – for our readers to check out. If you have any articles that catch your eye, we also appreciate any suggestions! This week, we’ve actually pulled together a total of five thought-provoking posts, including ones composed by writers at The Hechinger Report and The 74.
Thank you for stopping by the Partnership Press, and we’ll see you next week!
Please note that inclusion of an article is not an endorsement.
National News
SCHOOL CLOSURES
Catholic schools are no stranger to the threat of school closures, but now, the pandemic has left no school sector — public or private — safe. Last week, authors Chapman and Fuller reported on what this three percent decline could mean for public schools and the current effects it’s having on the educational landscape.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS LOST MORE THAN ONE MILLION STUDENTS DURING PANDEMIC BY BEN CHAPMAN AND ANDREA FULLER
“Public schools in the U.S. have lost more than a million students since the start of the pandemic, prompting some districts across the country to close buildings because they don’t have enough pupils or funding to keep them open.
The school board in Jefferson County, Colo., outside Denver, voted in November to close 16 schools. St. Paul, Minn., last summer closed five schools. The Oakland, Calif., school board last February voted to close seven schools after years of declining enrollment and financial strife.
Declining birthrates, a rise in home schooling and growing competition from private and charter schools are contributing to the decline in traditional public-school enrollment, according to school officials.”
SCHOOL CHOICE
Conversations about school choice can vary state-by-state, but the current situation in Oklahoma could possibly have quite the impact on future legal decisions nationwide. The 74 provides some helpful context: “The Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City plans to apply this month to operate a virtual charter, acting on a recent state legal opinion that says religious organizations shouldn’t be prohibited from doing so.” If the ruling is in the archdiocese’s favor, this would pave the way for the United State’s first religious charter school — but what will that mean in the long run?
OKLAHOMA’S ENDORSEMENT OF RELIGIOUS CHARTER SCHOOLS COULD ALTER LEGAL LANDSCAPE FOR CHOICE BY LINDA JACOBSON
“Oklahoma’s charter association said it is still reviewing the state’s opinion to determine its impact. The national Alliance, meanwhile, has a “legitimate concern” about backlash from blue states, where support for charters is already tenuous, Farley acknowledged. In fact, Black said if courts allow religious charters, states that don’t want them would have no recourse but to eliminate their charter laws.
“You could see states like Massachusetts, California or New York saying, ‘If courts are going to force religious charters on us, we will get rid of them,’ ” he said.”
POST PANDEMIC RECOVERY
Lastly, a piece by The Hechinger Report before the winter break caught our eye and is something we continue to grapple with returning to schools this semester. It’s hard to believe that we’re coming up on three years since the initial COVID shutdowns on March 2020, and we continue to grapple with the effects that it had on students across the nation – particularly in terms of learning loss and the mental health crisis we’re seeing worldwide.
Two striking takeaways from the article: (1) third graders appear to need the most support in the pandemic aftermath, and (2) if we don’t bounce back from the learning loss we’re currently facing, one analysis projects that it could mean a $900 billion loss in overall lifetime earnings for public school students.
PROOF POINTS: THIRD GRADERS STRUGGLING THE MOST TO RECOVER IN READING AFTER THE PANDEMIC BY JILL BARSHAY
“Children in kindergarten when the pandemic broke out in the spring of 2020 are now roughly eight years old and in third grade this 2022-23 school year. A new report by the nonprofit educational assessment maker NWEA documents that third graders are currently suffering the largest pandemic-related learning losses in reading, compared to older students in grades four to eight, and not readily recovering.
Learning to read well in elementary school matters. After children learn to read, they read to learn. Poor reading ability in third grade can hobble their future academic achievement. It also matters to society as a whole. Students who fall behind at school are more likely to be arrested, incarcerated and become teen mothers. A separate December 2022 analysis calculated that if recent academic losses from the pandemic were to become permanent, it would add up to $900 billion in lower lifetime earnings for the 48 million students in public schools.”
New York Minute
Our Partnership students showed great success in the NY Regents this past year — if you saw our first Five Good Things newsletter on Substack, you would have read that “67 Partnership students finished the eighth grade with high school credit-worthy scores on the Algebra 1 Regents exam, mastering the most commonly failed course in high schools and community colleges while still in middle school.” However, will New York actually be letting go of Regents exams after 150 or so years? Chalkbeat reports.
“New York’s high school students have taken Regents exams since the 1870s. But they could become a relic of the past, as state officials start the final leg of a lengthy process to rethink the state’s graduation requirements.
In New York, students are generally required to earn 22 course credits in high school and take five Regents exams, including one each in English, math, science, and social studies. A 64-person commission charged with reviewing those requirements first met in October, and it is expected to present its recommendations to the New York State Board of Regents in the spring or summer of 2024.
The long-simmering discussion often centers on how New York is one of just 11 states that requires high school exit exams and that, despite a rising graduation rate, diploma requirements may be hurting the state’s most disadvantaged students.”
Cleveland Clip
The debate on Ohio’s EdChoice vouchers continues to be a heated conversation. Earlier this week, the Ohio Capital Journal released an article setting the stage for the battle we are likely going to see in the courts, in regard to public school funding and vouchers — something that could influence other school choice decisions around the nation.
PUBLIC SCHOOL FUNDING SET FOR COURT BATTLE IN 2023 BY SUSAN TEBBEN
“While the trial of former Ohio House speaker Larry Householder will hold the attention of many this year, the battle over public school funding will also be subject to court drama.
Public school districts, some individual students in public schools, and the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, spent the last year fighting to keep a lawsuit on the books in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. That lawsuit aims a direct hit at Ohio’s EdChoice private school voucher program, which plaintiffs say takes away needed funding from the public schools attended by a vast majority of Ohio students.
The private school voucher system goes against the Ohio Constitution’s demand for a “thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state,” the schools and their advocates say.”
In another clip we found late last month, Aaron Churchill, the Ohio research director for the Fordham Institute, also delves into the research showing that vouchers are actually proving to elevate the state’s educational ecosystem, encouraging healthy competition and setting a higher standard for all schools – public, private, and charter alike. If you’d like to read more about his findings, his full article is here: OHIO EDCHOICE VOUCHERS AREN’T WHAT’S CAUSING PUBLIC SCHOOL WOES. We look forward to all the conversations to come regarding school choice in this new year!
Thank you again for checking out our first installment of the What We’re Reading (WWR) series! We look forward to seeing you next week, and we hope everyone’s 2023 is off to a great start!