CURMUDGUCATION: Should Some School Districts Be Broken Up?

CURMUDGUCATION: Should Some School Districts Be Broken Up?

Should Some School Districts Be Broken Up?

New York City's school system is not really an example of anything except itself, despite the many times it's written about and pointed at. This should not be a surprise. We are lousy at history in this country, and so we miss obvious things, like the change in scale. Thomas Jefferson was the President of a country with roughly six million people in it; New York City contains a bit over eight million. 

Our biggest school districts are huge. NYC schools contain almost a million students; the tenth largest school district (Palm Springs) just under 200K. 

So when Howard Husock writing for the reliably right-tilted Fordham Institute thinky tank says that large urban districts should be broken up, he's raising a topic worth talking about. 

Unfortunately, he mostly likes the idea of breaking up large districts because it would break up large unions, which is certainly in keeping with the current narrative that the Biden administration was Very Naughty for talking to teachers unions about re-opening schools. Why is it that when business folks form community groups in order to insert themselves into education policy, that's commendable and swell, but when unions that represent the people who actually work on the ground in education try to speak up, that's considered bad and selfish?

But it's still worth talking about.

The bigger the district, the harder to represent the interests and needs of communities within the larger whole. It's harder for voters to have a voice in the district, harder for teachers to have a CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Should Some School Districts Be Broken Up?

Grumpy Old Teacher – Generations of public investment in a quality public education system should not be thrown away

Grumpy Old Teacher – Generations of public investment in a quality public education system should not be thrown away

Decisions, Decisions–What’s a School District to Do?

Let’s survey the audience.

Even as we close out the Covid school year, districts are wrestling with deciding how to open schools in August. What mitigation measures should they keep in place? What should they drop? What does the community want? Parents? Students? Teachers and staff?

Grumpy Old Teacher’s (GOT) district has put a survey online to gather stakeholder input. (Stakeholder is a fancy word that means anyone whose life is affected by what takes place in the city’s schools. Employees, parents, students, obviously. But it also includes community organizations, local businesses who depend upon the school for customers, people who live around a school, etc.) You can find the survey here.

If you’re expecting a bash post, you will be disappointed. GOT is going to CONTINUE READING: Grumpy Old Teacher – Generations of public investment in a quality public education system should not be thrown away

Impoverished Pennsylvania District About to Be Fully Charterized, Despite Parent Opposition | Diane Ravitch's blog

Impoverished Pennsylvania District About to Be Fully Charterized, Despite Parent Opposition | Diane Ravitch's blog

Impoverished Pennsylvania District About to Be Fully Charterized, Despite Parent Opposition

Chester-Upland school district is one of the poorest in the state. Seventy percent of its students are black. One big charter school, owned and operated by a wealthy Republican lawyer from Philadelphia, already dominates the district with his Chester Community Charter School. The district has been in receivership and under state control for years. Even though CCCS is a low-performing charter, the state’s only idea is to hand over all the schools to charter operators.

This is an important story, well told by this reporter. It follows the template for charterization:  Underfund a predominately African-American school district for years, then have the state take control because of financial issues. Strip the school board of all power and appoint a CONTINUE READING: Impoverished Pennsylvania District About to Be Fully Charterized, Despite Parent Opposition | Diane Ravitch's blog

The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S. – School Finance 101

The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S. – School Finance 101

The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S.

New Project at School Finance Indicators Database

With Matt Di Carlo & Mark Weber

Full research brief

Press release

Dataset

Data visualization

It’s fairly common knowledge that U.S. school districts vary widely in terms of funding. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in an ideal school funding system, we would expect to see differences between districts in their spending levels, even big differences, for the simple reason that the cost of educating students varies a great deal across districts. 

For instance, some districts serve larger shares of high-need students than others, and the former require more resources to achieve a given level of student performance. Similarly, like any employer, districts have to pay competitive wages, and labor costs also vary substantially by location. Teachers in areas with high costs of living, for example, have to be paid more than their colleagues in small rural towns where living is less expensive. 

In short, unequal spending is acceptable and even desirable if it is aligned with unequal costs. The key question is whether districts have the resources to meet their students’ needs. In other words, is school district spending adequate?

This research brief presents key findings from a new public database of funding adequacy for over 12,000 U.S. public school districts. The database (the District Cost Database) allows one to compare each district’s actual per-pupil spending with estimates of adequate per-pupil spending levels—that is, spending levels that would be required to achieve the goal of U.S. average test scores (a common “benchmark” with which the models assess adequacy). The data are for the 2017-18 school year.

The brief reports some good news. Thousands of districts enjoy funding levels above and beyond estimated adequate levels. You can find these districts in every single U.S. state. In some cases, funding is two or three times higher than the targets. Even in states such as Arizona and New Mexico, where large majorities of students attend schools in underfunded districts, there are numerous districts in which spending exceeds estimated requirements.

Yet these districts co-exist with thousands of other school systems, some located within driving distance or even in the next town over, where investment is so poorly aligned with need that funding levels are a fraction of estimated costs. Districts with negative funding gaps are CONTINUE READING: The Adequacy of School District Spending in the U.S. – School Finance 101

New Attendance Data to Address Chronic Absenteeism - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

New Attendance Data to Address Chronic Absenteeism - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)

California Department of Education Releases New Attendance Data to Help School Districts Address Chronic Absenteeism

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced today that the California Department of Education (CDE) has released, for the first time, statewide absenteeism data that provides information about the types of reasons students are absent. The “absenteeism by reason” (AR) reports available on the CDE Dataquest website offer an extensive statewide view of absenteeism numbers that can assist local educational agencies (LEAs) in their efforts to develop targeted attendance intervention strategies and support.

“Knowing why students are missing school is a crucial step in helping them stay in school,” said Thurmond. “These data add an extra layer of transparency to existing absenteeism information and a level of detail that school districts can utilize as they evaluate the effectiveness of existing attendance plans and compare absenteeism rates with other districts. It also creates an opportunity for school attendance staff throughout the state to collaborate and share best practices on methods to improve attendance, identifying specific actions that can help students and their families overcome attendance barriers.”

The CDE developed the new AR reports based on student absence data submitted and certified by LEAs and independently reporting charter schools through the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS). The catalyst for providing this data came from a recommendation proposed by the State Superintendent’s Improving Data Collection Workgroup that was convened in the summer of 2019. One of the goals for the workgroup was to improve the availability of publicly reported data. Although AR information is annually collected through CALPADS, this critical measure of student attendance has not been reported until now.

The data available in this release include the 2017–18 and 2018–19 academic years. The AR report categories are: excused absences, unexcused absences, absences due to out-of-school suspension, and incomplete independent study absences. Even if a student has excused absences, they are considered chronically absent if they miss 10 percent of the days they were expected to attend school.

The reports provide data disaggregated by race/ethnicity, student groups, grade level, and by academic year. The reports also include filters that allow the data to be viewed along a variety of dimensions, including by school type (charter and non-charter schools), for alternative and traditional schools, for chronically absent and non-chronically absent students, and by gender.

In addition to statewide data, the reports are also available at the district and school levels. Downloadable data files that support many aspects of the new AR reports are also available. To view the AR reports, visit the CDE Dataquest website. Downloadable data files can be found on the CDE Data & Statistics web page.

2018–19 Statewide Absenteeism by Reason Data

Reporting Category	Average Days Absent	Excused Absences	Unexcused Absences	Out-of-School Suspension Absences	Incomplete Independent Study Absences
African American	13.2	38.1%	52.7%	2.6%	6.5%
American Indian or Alaska Native	13.6	45.2%	43.9%	2.0%	8.8%
Asian	6.2	66.3%	31.0%	0.5%	2.2%
Filipino	7.3	64.2%	32.1%	0.6%	3.1%
Hispanic or Latino	10.3	51.1%	42.7%	1.2%	5.0%
Pacific Islander	12.3	49.1%	44.9%	1.2%	4.9%
White	9.1	64.0%	29.4%	1.0%	5.5%
Two or More Races	9.3	58.4%	33.5%	1.3%	6.8%
Not Reported	10.3	50.8%	38.0%	1.2%	9.9%
English Learners	9.7	51.0%	44.0%	1.1%	3.8%
Homeless Youth	14.3	39.8%	50.6%	1.7%	7.9%
Students With Disabilities	12.8	51.9%	41.5%	2.0%	4.6%
Foster Youth	15.3	36.4%	51.0%	4.3%	8.3%
Migrant Youth	8.1	54.3%	41.2%	1.7%	2.8%
Socioeconomically Disadvantaged	10.9	49.1%	43.9%	1.4%	5.6%
Statewide	9.8	54.1%	39.5%	1.2%	5.2%

# # # #

Tony Thurmond — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5602, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

New Attendance Data to Address Chronic Absenteeism - Year 2020 (CA Dept of Education)