Enrollment Is Dropping In Public Schools Around the Country | 89.3 KPCC

 Enrollment Is Dropping In Public Schools Around the Country | 89.3 KPCC

Enrollment Is Dropping In Public Schools Around the Country

Orange County, Fla., has 18,000 missing students. The Miami-Dade County public schools have 16,000 fewer than last year. Los Angeles Unified — the nation's second-largest school system — is down nearly 11,000. Charlotte-Mecklenburg in North Carolina has 5,000 missing. Utah, Virginia, and Washington are reporting declines statewide.

Comprehensive national data aren't available yet, but reporting by NPR and our member stations, along with media reports from around the country, shows enrollment declines in dozens of school districts across 20 states. Large and small, rich and poor, urban and rural — in most of these districts the decline is a departure from recent trends. Over the past 15 years, data from the U.S. Education Department show that small and steady annual increases in public school enrollment have been the rule.

Six months after schools around the country shut their doors amid coronavirus lockdowns, these fall enrollment declines come as schools have been scrambling to improve remote learning offerings, and to adopt safety procedures to allow buildings to open for in-person classes, sometimes just a few days a week. In many parts of the country the start of the year has been marked by multiple changes in plans, widespread confusion among teachers and families, deep concerns about safety, and worries about unequal access to technology.

"We are not alone in this," Chris Reykdal, Washington State's Superintendent of CONTINUE READING:  Enrollment Is Dropping In Public Schools Around the Country | 89.3 KPCC

CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Back in April, NWEA (the MAP test folks) issued a "report" about what we've taken to calling the Covid Slide, which is sadly not a cool new line dance, but is instead an important tool for people in education-flavored businesses who want to try to panic school districts and bureaucrats. Now Stanford University's Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) yesterday threw their weight behind this piece of scholastic chicken littling.

Let me remind you why you can still afford to be unimpressed.

First, even if you do not have first hand experience with NWEA's MAP test (I do--it's a lousy computer-delivered multiple choice test), you should always remember that one of their attempts to make some edu-bucks centers around their program that they promised can read minds by measuring how long it takes students to pick a multiple choice answer.

Second, you know that this "report" is baloney because it leans on that great imaginary measure, the "days of learning." Students during the pandemic will "lose" X number of days of learning. "Days of learning" is actually a measure that CREDO made up themselves, based on some "research" in a 2012 paper by Erik Hanushek, Paul Peterson, and Ludger Woessmann. And if "days of learning" seems like a bizarro world way to measure of education (Which days? Days in September? Days in March? Tuesdays? Instructional days, or testing days, or that day we spent the afternoon in a boring assembly? And how does one measure the amount of learning in a day, anyway?)-- well, here's the technical explanation from that paper:

To create this benchmark, CREDO adopted the assumption put forth by Hanushek, Peterson, and CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Covid Slide Panic Is Still Baloney

Will the students who didn’t show up for online class this spring go missing forever?

No participation in online learning could be detrimental

Will the students who didn’t show up for online class this spring go missing forever?

Districts are scrambling to locate the ‘lost’ kids of Covid and reengage them in school this fall

Monica Williams remembers the late May day she and first grade teacher Lizette Gutierrez reconnected with the four young siblings from Cable Elementary. No teachers from the San Antonio elementary had heard from the children since schools closed abruptly in March due to the pandemic.

When teachers at Cable Elementary in San Antonio couldn’t reach four siblings who attended the school this spring, Monica Williams of Communities in Schools was able to arrange a meeting with them at their grandmother’s house. Credit: Monica Williams

Williams is a former social worker who serves as a site coordinator for Communities in Schools of San Antonio, a support program for low-income families operating in more than 100 schools in Bexar County, including the city of San Antonio. She and her colleagues have had to intercede in evictions, deliver supplies and report children in dire circumstances to child protective services since the start of the pandemic. This time, she knew the family. She’d become acquainted with the children before the pandemic because of their academic struggles. After making some phone calls, she located them at a hotel, where the family had moved after wearing out their welcome with relatives. Williams arranged to meet the children at their grandmother’s.

Gutierrez and Williams spent 90 minutes standing on the sidewalk outside the house in the Texas sun, at arm’s length from the students, showing them how to sign into Google Classroom on their school-provided Chromebooks and helping their father figure out passwords.

The siblings logged on for the remainder of the school year. But then they went missing again, failing to show up for the district’s summer school program, which teachers had recommended for each of them. Now Williams and school staff are heading back out into the field, trying to relocate the siblings and other children who’ve gone missing and reengage them in learning this fall. With the siblings, they finally had some luck: The children showed up for school on September 29, the second day  CONTINUE READING: No participation in online learning could be detrimental