What We’re Reading: Week of January 17-20, 2023
Happy Friday, everyone! Wrapping up Week 2 with three clips!
Welcome to the second week of What We’re Reading! In case you’re a new subscriber and missed our inaugural edition last week, click HERE to check out last week’s clips! This week, we have a full report by The Heritage Foundation along with articles from Chalkbeat and cleveland.com!
Thank you for stopping by the Partnership Press, and we’ll see you on the 27th!
Please note that inclusion of an article is not an endorsement.
National News
“MOMENTUM FOR STATE-LEVEL REFORM”
Last week, we read a WSJ piece on the one million student drop in public school enrollment, and the conversations continue this week, like in Timothy Daly’s article in The 74. This is an important time for all of us in education — whether we’re in the public, private, or charter sector — to stop and reflect on how we can better serve the students in our schools. Authors at The Heritage Foundation put together a report on some of the ways states can help combat the learning loss we face today, as well lean into parental choice and curriculum transparency. We look forward to the continuation of these conversations, especially with School Choice Week and Catholic Schools Week on the horizon!
SEIZING THE MOMENT: A STATE EDUCATION AGENDA FOR 2023 BY JONATHAN BUTCHER AND LINDSEY BURKE, PH.D.
SUMMARY: “State lawmakers should act quickly to help students to recover from the learning losses they experienced during the pandemic lockdowns. K–12 education is cumulative: Students who fall behind in one school year are less prepared for more technical material in the next year. Learning losses do not happen overnight, and neither does dramatic improvement. The longer that state legislators wait to give families more quality learning options, the more students will be at a disadvantage. This Backgrounder offers state officials proposals to help every child succeed, along with ideas for protecting free speech on college campuses. If implemented, these solutions will help to remake K–12 and higher education into an experience for students that helps them to advance in school and in life.”
New York Minute
Going back to the “Goodbye, Regents?” post released at the beginning of the year, Chalkbeat is back with another article — this time covering the increase in graduation rates with the year off from Regents. While there is still no update on the fate of this exam in years to come, the state’s release of 2021-22 graduation numbers (hopefully soon!) will likely give us a better picture of what will happen.
AFTER COVID PAUSED REGENTS EXAMS, GRADUATION RATES FOR NYC’S ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS BY REEMA AMIN
“Bucking national trends, graduation rates rose across the state in the 2020-21 school year. Even more surprising, the rate catapulted for the city’s English language learners — rising by 14 percentage points to 60%, the largest increase on record for those students and a greater rise than other student groups.
The graduation rate spike seemed counterintuitive given that low-income immigrant communities had been severely affected by the pandemic, and many English learners found it more difficult to learn remotely. (Educators also found it difficult to teach remotely.)”
Cleveland Clip
Many school districts of East Cleveland are struggling on the state tests — per cleveland.com, “In East Cleveland School District, just 2.1% of eighth graders were proficient in math in the most recent report cards released in the fall, Brenner noted.” If Senate Bill 1 is passed, this would transfer the power over educational policy to the governor (versus the State Board of Education, like it is now), amongst other changes.
“HEARINGS BEGAN THIS WEEK ON BILL THAT GUTS OHIO STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, REVAMPS DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION” BY LAURA HANCOCK
“In East Cleveland School District, just 2.1% of eighth graders were proficient in math in the most recent report cards released in the fall, Brenner noted.
Meryl Johnson, a school board member from Cleveland, noted that East Cleveland had been controlled by the state through an academic distress commission due to years of low test scores. Academic distress commissions were created by the legislature. Then in 2018, a CEO took over the district, thanks to legislation passed by the legislature in 2015 and signed by former Gov. John Kasich.
Academic distress commissions and CEOs didn’t improve test scores, so the legislature passed a new law giving power back to local school boards for at least three years, in an attempt to improve test scores.”
Thank you again for checking out our latest installment of the WWR series! We look forward to seeing you next week!