A Building Boom for Charter Schools Is Coming. Guess Who's Footing the Bill? - Inside Philanthropy - Inside Philanthropy

A Building Boom for Charter Schools Is Coming. Guess Who's Footing the Bill? - Inside Philanthropy - Inside Philanthropy:

A Building Boom for Charter Schools Is Coming. Guess Who's Footing the Bill?

 Everyone knows the Walton Family Foundation backs charter schools, but many people don’t realize just how instrumental its money has been in creating new charters nationwide. The foundation reports that in the past 20 years or so, it has invested “more than $385 million in 2,110 new public charter schools—about a quarter of all charters nationally. This past year, we supported more than one in five of the nearly 500 new charters that opened nationally.” Walton has also given tens of millions to build a teacher pipeline for charters, create a charter-friendly public policy environment, and more.

That’s a huge investment. And significantly, much of it has taken the form of bricks-and-mortar funding, which many other major foundations avoid. Now, even more Walton money is set to flow to charters as it doubles down in this area over the next five years.

On the 25th anniversary of the charter school movement, the Walmart heirs announced a major $250 million dollar initiative to help charter schools in 17 cities expand their facilities (and build new ones) to add another 250,000 seats for children by 2027. The funds provide low-interest loans to charter schools through national and regional non-profit lenders in an effort to finance facilities for new and growing charters. The Building Equity Initiative, as it is called, also fosters a larger network of resources in the form of financiers, real estate experts, and technical assistance providers for charters to leverage as they strive to meet their facilities needs.

With over 600,000 students on waiting lists for seats in charter schools nationally, the goal of the initiative is to take a chunk out of that list by catalyzing a more favorable environment for the expansion of charter schools’ physical spaces. Interestingly, traditional lenders—like many skeptics in the education sector, as it happens—see charter schools as an unproven investment, which means that they struggle to find the private financing that they need to secure, build, or renovate their campuses. The management of the Building Equity Initiative will be led by Civic Builders, a noted nonprofit charter facilities developer based in New York.

The hope is that this philanthropic funding will allow new or expanding charters to overcome the many obstacles to facilities construction. Beyond direct financial help, a key is pushing the government and private lenders to adopt more favorable policies toward charters. This is one of the biggest complaints among charter school supporters: that they are simply not treated like traditional public schools when it comes to the allocation of funds from the state. Only one in three states provide facilities funding for charter schools, leaving most charters to their own devices when it comes to funding for facilities. Supporters see this as a critical part of the playing field that needs to be leveled for charters to compete, though many have state per-pupil funds as well as philanthropic backing and other private financing supports.

Meanwhile, a quarter century into the charter movement, the debate goes on about the effectiveness of these schools. A recent MDRC study of the SEED School in Washington, DC (a unique boarding school-style charter) found that while students in this particular charter earned modest increases in test scores, those improved test-taking abilities did not always translate to improvements in life outcomes like high school graduation rates, college retention, and reductions in risky behaviors.

This isn’t the first time that research has raised real questions about bold claims made by charter leaders and funders about their ability to change the long-term trajectory of students’ lives through more improved academics during the K-12 years.

Speaking of assessment, we should mention that Walton has an eye on tracking the effectiveness of the Building Equity Initiative from its start. They’ll measure its efficacy by looking at the number of students served across the initiative, the quality of those schools, and any increases in accessibility and affordability of capital to finance charter facilities.

Related:

• How Walton is Doubling Down on Charter Schools
• A 900-Pound Gorilla Gets Even Bigger: Walton Ramps Up Its Education Funding

A Building Boom for Charter Schools Is Coming. Guess Who's Footing the Bill? - Inside Philanthropy - Inside Philanthropy:

No Child Left Behind has been unsuccessful, says bipartisan report | Education | The Guardian

No Child Left Behind has been unsuccessful, says bipartisan report | Education | The Guardian:

No Child Left Behind has been unsuccessful, says bipartisan report
Report says US has been outperformed by a majority of advanced industrial nations as well as some less-developed nations since bill was passed in 2001

It’s been almost 15 years since the US Congress passed the much-derided No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education reform bill in an effort to improve American students’ international competitiveness in reading and math, which had been falling for quite some time.

On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of legislators from the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) declared in a new report that the reform efforts of states in the wake of NCLB had been unsuccessful.

“After all of the national, state and district reform efforts during the decade following No Child Left Behind, the US was outperformed not only by a majority of the advanced industrial nations, but by a growing number of less-developed nations as well,” they wrote.

The NCLB is most infamous for its stringent standardized testing requirements through which schools whose students failed to show progress over two years could face significant sanctions – including state takeovers or being made into private charter schools. It also included provisions requiring that all teachers have a bachelor’s degree in the field they were teaching and a state certification.

But though the law established a federal framework, the implementation of the federal education reform law was largely left to the states, many of whom experimented in different ways. And, though NCLB focused on using student assessments to determine and, hopefully, improve student achievement, the often unpopular testing regimens and continuing dissatisfaction with the public education system led to other reforms in some states, many driven by political or ideological concerns.

None of them, the group found, have worked on a national scale.

“In retrospect, the NCSL study group concludes that states have tried to find individual ‘silver bullets’ without setting decisive goals and creating a thoughtful, systemic approach to building a coherent system with an appropriate timeline for implementation, as did the other high-performing countries,” the authors stated.

The authors include 22 state lawmakers, evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Robert Behning, an Indiana state representative who served on the study group, said the participants were able to set politics aside to agree that they needed to call out the failure of reforms.

“Most people would say that we need to do what we can to take politics out of education,” said Behning, a Republican. “We need to move forward.”

The study’s authors focus on four solutions to the problems: creating comprehensive plans in states to improve education rather than fixing problems one at a time; improving the technical education offerings for students who might not opt for college degrees; improving support for struggling students, particularly those with economic challenges that can affect their ability to learn, and early childhood education programs; and vastly improving the system of recruitment, training and professional development for teachers while increasing their autonomy in the classroom.

The report focuses, at one point, on the American system of educational funding: in many states, driven by property taxes in individual districts, the system of school funding all but ensures that the children of the wealthy have more No Child Left Behind has been unsuccessful, says bipartisan report | Education | The Guardian:

UC Davis chancellor resigns following probe into ethical violations - LA Times

UC Davis chancellor resigns following probe into ethical violations - LA Times:

UC Davis chancellor resigns following probe into ethical violations

To starkly different portrayals of Linda Katehi emerged Tuesday after she resigned her post just moments ahead of the release of a report on an independent investigation into her tenure as UC Davis chancellor.

One – propagated by her attorney, Melinda Guzman – was of a strong and accomplished public servant who was cleared of all charges in a bruising and unfair witch hunt.

“Linda Katehi and her family have been exonerated from baseless accusations of nepotism, conflicts of interest, financial management and personal gain, just as we predicted and as the UC Davis Academic Senate found within days of this leave,” Guzman said.

The other – put forward by UC President Janet Napolitano – was of a deeply flawed administrator who, investigators found, had shown poor judgment, violated multiple university policies and misled, even lied to, her superiors, the public and the media.

“In these circumstances, Chancellor Katehi has now offered to resign, and I have accepted that resignation,” Napolitano wrote Tuesday in a letter to the UC Davis community. “These past three months and the events leading up to them have been an unhappy chapter in the life of UC Davis. I believe it is in the best interest of the campus, the Davis community, and the University of California that we move forward.”

 Napolitano ordered an investigation in April in response to allegations that Katehi had violated conflict-of-interest rules in the hiring and promotion of her son and daughter-in-law at UC Davis. Investigators also looked into whether she had made “material misstatements” to Napolitano in asserting that she had not been involved in hiring social media firms to scrub the Internet of references to campus police pepper-spraying of student protesters in 2011. The three-month probe also examined charges that she misused student fees and used poor judgment regarding outside board memberships.

The 102-page report by independent investigators led by Melinda Haag, a former U.S. attorney, came to mixed conclusions about Katehi’s conduct. 

Investigators did not find evidence that Katehi was involved in employment or compensation decisions about her family members or that she misused student fees. 

But they concluded that her assertions that she played no role in the social media contracts were “misleading at best and untruthful at worst.”

The report painted a picture of a chancellor so obsessed with her public image that she insisted on hiring public relations firms to improve it even after a 2012 UC study found the pepper-spray incident was not harming the campus’ reputation.  

Katehi, the report said, also misinformed Napolitano about her $70,000-a-year board seat with the DeVry Education Group, falsely stating that she had not yet started UC Davis chancellor resigns following probe into ethical violations - LA Times:

The U.S. Education Reform Movement Has Stalled

The U.S. Education Reform Movement Has Stalled:

THE U.S. EDUCATION REFORM MOVEMENT HAS STALLED

Everyone wants to think her job is challenging, but Carmen Fariña’s is close to impossible: She is the chancellor of New York City’s Department of Education. There are 1.1 million students in the five boroughs, which is more than the population of all but nine American cities. There are 1,800 schools in New York; Chicago has 500. Brooklyn Technical High School has more students (5,500) than Princeton does undergraduates (5,200).

The budget for the department Fariña manages is $27.6 billion, which exceeds the gross domestic product of El Salvador. There are 76,000 teachers in New York City, five times as many as in all of Idaho. The quantity of No. 2 pencils used each year is unknown but, most likely, vast enough to fell several forests.

The woman who presides over this pedagogical enormity is a 73-year-old abuela (as The New York Timesonce called her) from Brooklyn who has been in public education for the entirety of her four-decade-long professional life. Nearly three years ago, Fariña was appointed to the chancellorship by the newly elected mayor, Bill de Blasio, a selection that surprised some who had hoped for a more radical break with the past. De Blasio, after all, is a self-styled progressive who promised “transcendent” change, surrounding himself with youthful advisers minted in the Barack Obama mold. Fariña, meanwhile, was coaxed out of retirement.

De Blasio is now more than halfway through his term, as is Fariña. Neither is especially popular. The mayor is facing several investigations into his fundraising activities, which have left him testy and New Yorkers exasperated; only 42 percent of voters in a July poll approved of the job he is doing. Fariña’s approval rating, according to a May poll, is an even-more-dreary 29 percent. Some are wondering if she’s doing enough to improve schools, or if she seeks merely to placate the powerful teachers union while stopping the charter school movement. Others believe the school reform movement has been a disaster that only veterans like Fariña can fix.

Since New York is the national bellwether for education reform, Fariña’s smallest decisions attract scrutiny. Her biggest often invite fury. Some see her as a defender of teachers, others as the pawn of teachers unions. Is she merely a supporter of big public schools, of the sort that used to anchor a neighborhood, or does she harbor a visceral antipathy toward charter schools, which often swoop in when bigger schools fail? Is she resistant to evaluating teachers and testing students or just suspicious of how easily data can be misunderstood and misused?

These are questions that matter not only to P.S. 75 in the Bronx but also to an elementary school in Tulsa and a high school in Seattle. Much like the New York City Police Department, the New York City Department of Education often instructs the rest of the country in how to do things—and, sometimes, how not to do them.

Fariña’s answers to the above questions have been starkly different from those proffered by her predecessor, Joel Klein, a potent symbol of a school reform movement pumped full of money by philanthropic foundations and altruistic hedge-funders. With the blessing of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Klein embraced teacher evaluations and standardized exams, spurned unions and built charter schools. The efforts of Klein and like-minded reformers were chronicled in the 2010 documentary Waiting for Superman, which demonized traditional public schools as snake pits of union cronyism and chronic failure.

Superman never showed up. Federal programs like No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top left plenty of children well below the summit, while teacher evaluations and standardized tests remain fraught, imperfect measures of teaching and learning. “It’s hard to see any good news for reformers,” says Diane Ravitch, a New York University professor who is a vociferous supporter of traditional public schools. As The U.S. Education Reform Movement Has Stalled:

Fethullah Gülen: public intellectual or just another charter school crook?

Fethullah Gülen: public intellectual or public enemy?:

Fethullah Gülen: public intellectual or public enemy?

On July 15, 2016, the Turkish Republic survived an attempted military coup d’état that killed nearly 300 people and cost more than an estimated US$100 billion.

Immediately following the coup, Turkey’s government began a massive purge of state, military, business and civil society institutions in an attempt to remove alleged plotters from the ranks of social power. To date, approximately 75,000 people have been detained or forced to resign.

Human rights groups allege that arbitrary arrest and torture are becoming routine. Turkey’s leaders strongly refute such claims. They argue that security forces are doing what is necessary to protect the nation from a clearly defined enemy. The implications of the failed coup are deeply concerning for Turkey, the region and the world.

Gulen is burned in effigy during a pro-government demonstration in Istanbul, July 18, 2016. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

What unites the purged are alleged connections to Turkey’s most famous religious personality, Fethullah Gülen.

Presented by his followers as a learned scholar and orator, Gülen leads a transnational social and economic network that participants call Hizmet, from the Turkish word for “service,” and outsiders call the Gülen movement. The Turkish government insists Fethullah Gülen orchestrated the coup, and are demanding both domestic and international cooperation to bring him and his alleged co-conspirators to justice.

What do we know about this man and his movement?

The Gülen movement

Anchored in private education, the GM began in the late 1960s. That’s when Gülen established a following of mostly young men attracted to his emotional call for religious Turks to participate in secular education and the market economy.

Gülen discouraged participation in Turkey’s primary Islamic political movement. Instead, he encouraged a patient and calculated accumulation of economic and institutional influence. As a form of “market Islam,” members of the GM moved beyond education to succeed in news and entertainment media, information technologies, manufacturing, finance and other sectors. By the early 2000s, the GM operated schools and businesses in well over 100 countries.

I first met associates of the Gülen movement in 2005 in the United States. At the time, I was aware that Gülen lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, and I knew of several interfaith institutions that designated Gülen as their honorary president. I chose to do my dissertation research on the GM. I was intrigued by his brand of Islamic activist thinking, and by his followers' focus on participation over confrontation, and on market competition Fethullah Gülen: public intellectual or public enemy?:

 

Big Education Ape: US to discuss Gulen extradition in Turkey next week | TRT World - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/08/us-to-discuss-gulen-extradition-in.html

Diane Ravitch: Worldwide, Public Education Is Up for Sale | Best Countries | US News

Worldwide, Public Education Is Up for Sale | Best Countries | US News:

Worldwide, Public Education Is Up for Sale
From the U.K. to Liberia, the school privatization movement gathers steam.

For the past three decades, critics of public education in the United States have assailed it and used its flaws to promote publicly funded privatization. Corporate and political interests have attacked the very concept of public education, claiming that the private sector is invariably superior to the public sector.

These developments are by no means limited to the U.S.; the same movement to privatize public schools is occurring in the United Kingdom, Africa and other regions – with troubling implications

---

In the U.K., the Conservative Party government wants to turn all public schools into private academies, funded by taxpayers. The British multinational corporation Pearson has ambitions to open for-profit schools using its products in many nations across the world. In Africa, a corporation called Bridge International Academies (BIA) is opening for-profit schools in poor countries that cost $1 a week. Liberia is considering outsourcing its entire elementary program to BIA, which is funded by American billionaires Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and others from Wall Street.

The Economist magazine wrote a glowing article about BIA's plan to make low-cost schooling available in Africa, because existing public schools are so poorly resourced. The potential market of hundreds of millions of children is alluring and sure to be profitable. Teachers in the Bridge schools are uncertified; They teach a scripted curriculum from a notebook computer. Many families cannot afford even $1 a week, especially if they have more than one child. Meanwhile, the state is relieved of responsibility to supply what is being outsourced to private enterprise.

Many of the plans to privatize education globally can trace their beginnings back to ideas and funding that started in the United States.

In the U.S., the attack on public education can be traced to a 1983 report by a commission appointed by the Reagan administration. Titled "A Nation at Risk," it warned that the public schools were so mediocre that the future prosperity of the nation was endangered by them. Advocates of privatization saw an opportunity to advance their cause and joined in the Worldwide, Public Education Is Up for Sale | Best Countries | US News:

Obama administration accused of trying to dictate education policy to states — again - The Washington Post

Obama administration accused of trying to dictate education policy to states — again - The Washington Post:

Obama administration accused of trying to dictate education policy to states — again

 The U.S. Education Department solicited public comment on draft regulations it has created for states to implement the school “accountability” and data reporting provisions of the new Every Student Succeeds Act — and, boy, did it get feedback, some of it scathing.

When Education Secretary John B. King Jr. announced the proposed rules in May, he said they were designed to “give states the opportunity to work all of their stakeholders … to protect all students’ right to a high-quality education,” and that they “give educators room to reclaim for all of their students the joy and promise of a well-rounded educational experience.”

King was referring to the mess created by No Child Left Behind, the K-12 education law that ESSA was passed last December to replace. NCLB, with accountability goals literally impossible to meet, had led to a severe narrowing of the curriculum and an over-emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing. Congress finally replaced No Child Left Behind — eight years late — because of NCLB’s flaws and because of criticism from across the political spectrum that the Obama administration had become too prescriptive and heavy-handed in education policy

Now, the deadline for public comment of the proposed regulations has just passed, and education officials in some states as well as teachers, superintendents and others have told the Obama administration that it is still overreaching with its proposed ESSA regulations — and in at least one instance, went further and blasted the Education Department. Here’s a taste of a letter from the Vermont Board of Education, signed by chairman Stephan A. Morse (and you Obama administration accused of trying to dictate education policy to states — again - The Washington Post:

BACK TO SCHOOL: A parent’s guide to K-12 school success

A parent’s guide to K-12 school success

RECOGNIZE THAT ALL PARENTS, REGARDLESS OF INCOME, EDUCATION OR CULTURAL BACKGROUND, ARE INVOLVED IN THEIR CHILDREN'S LEARNING AND WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO DO WELL. 

DESIGN PROGRAMS THAT WILL SUPPORT FAMILIES TO GUIDE THEIR CHILDREN'S LEARNING, FROM PRESCHOOL THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL. 

DEVELOP THE CAPACITY OF SCHOOL STAFF AND FAMILIES TO WORK TOGETHER. 

LINK ACTIVITIES AND PROGRAMS FOR FAMILIES TO IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNING. 

FOCUS ON DEVELOPING TRUSTING AND RESPECTFUL RELATIONSHIPS AMONG STAFF AND FAMILIES.  

BUILD FAMILIES' SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONNECTIONS.

  

EMBRACE A PHILOSOPHY OF PARTNERSHIP AND BE WILLING TO SHARE POWER. 

MAKE SURE THAT PARENTS, SCHOOL STAFF, AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS UNDERSTAND THAT THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHILDREN'S EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT IS A COLLABORATIVE ENTERPRISE. 

BUILD STRONG CONNECTIONS BETWEEN SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS. 

INCLUDE FAMILIES IN ALL STRATEGIES TO REDUCE THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP BETWEEN 

 WHITE, MIDDLE-CLASS STUDENTS AND LOW-INCOME STUDENTS AND STUDENTS OF COLOR. 

The teacher pay gap is wider than ever: Teachers’ pay continues to fall further behind pay of comparable workers | Economic Policy Institute

The teacher pay gap is wider than ever: Teachers’ pay continues to fall further behind pay of comparable workers | Economic Policy Institute:

The teacher pay gap is wider than ever

Teachers’ pay continues to fall further behind pay of comparable workers

Summary

What this report finds: The teacher pay penalty is bigger than ever. In 2015, public school teachers’ weekly wages were 17.0 percent lower than those of comparable workers—compared with just 1.8 percent lower in 1994. This erosion of relative teacher wages has fallen more heavily on experienced teachers than on entry-level teachers. Importantly, collective bargaining can help to abate this teacher wage penalty. Some of the increase in the teacher wage penalty may be attributed to a trade-off between wages and benefits. Even so, teachers’ compensation (wages plus benefits) was 11.1 percent lower than that of comparable workers in 2015.

Why this matters: An effective teacher is the most important school-based determinant of education outcomes. It is therefore crucial that school districts recruit and retain high-quality teachers. This is particularly difficult at a time when the supply of teachers is constrained by high turnover rates, annual retirements of longtime teachers, and a decline in students opting for a teaching career—and when demand for teachers is rising due to rigorous national student performance standards and many locales’ mandates to shrink class sizes. In light of these challenges, providing adequate wages and benefits is a crucial tool for attracting and keeping the teachers America’s children need.

Introduction and key findings

An effective teacher is the most important school-based determinant of education outcomes.1 Therefore it is crucial that school districts recruit and retain high-quality teachers. This is increasingly challenging given that the supply of teachers has been greatly affected by high early to mid-career turnover rates, annual retirements of longtime teachers, and a decline in students opting for a teaching career.2 At the same time, many factors are increasing the demand for teachers, including shrinking class sizes, the desire to improve diversity, and the need to meet high standards. In short, the demand for teachers is escalating, while simultaneously the supply of teachers is faltering.

The supply of teachers is diminishing at every stage of the career ladder. On the front end, fewer students are entering the profession. Generally speaking, the small fraction of the most cognitively skilled college students who elect to become teachers has declined for decades (Corcoran, Evans, and Schwab 2004). Several factors have helped to drive this trend. Over the long run, employment opportunities for women have greatly expanded, and thus the teaching profession can no longer rely on what was a somewhat captive labor pool. At the same time, teachers are less satisfied and more stressed as standardized testing has been elevated as a tool for student, school, and teacher evaluations.3

On the back end, teachers are aging and retiring along with the workforce The teacher pay gap is wider than ever: Teachers’ pay continues to fall further behind pay of comparable workers | Economic Policy Institute:

SECTIONS

1. Summary
2. Introduction and key findings
3. Data sources
4. Recent trends in relative weekly wages
5. Relative teacher wages
6. State wage analysis: Ratios overall and by state
7. Adding benefits to thepicture
8. ConclusionThe teacher pay gap is wider than ever: Teachers’ pay continues to fall further behind pay of comparable workers | Economic Policy Institute:

Cost of lead poisoning in Flint: $458 million - The Atlantic

Cost of lead poisoning in Flint: $458 million - The Atlantic:

Cost of Lead Poisoning in Flint Now Estimated at $458 Million

A case for investing in human health rather than paying for the consequences of inaction

 Switching to the Flint River as the city’s primary water source was an attempt to save around $5 million over the course of two years in Flint, Michigan.

Instead it has cost $458 million.

That’s according to calculations from analyst Peter Muennig at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Only $58 million of that is expenditure by the state on medical care and unleaded water. The bulk of the number includes the social costs: Exposures leaking IQ points from children and disposing them to aggression and violence later in life, which leads to lower economic productivity, greater dependence on welfare programs, and greater costs to the criminal justice system.

The lifelong bill for each case of low-level lead poisoning is about $50,000 and 0.2 years of perfect health, based on CDC data. Flint has already seen more than 8,000 documented exposures, while each year there are some 90,000 across the country. When it comes to low-level exposure, Muenning and many others believe that drinking-water is the most common source. Chewing on paint tends to cause higher lead levels.

Muenning explained to me that while the chain of events may not be immediately evident, it’s important to follow backward as a matter of avoiding a common fallacy: considering the costs of action (primarily in economic and financial terms) while ignoring the costs of inaction. Those costs can be rendered in the interest of maximizing human well-being or simply protecting a municipal bottom line, depending on one’s priorities.

Either way, confronting the cost up-front—for public-health measures as for so many things in life—tends to be difficult. It also tends to divide people along political lines.

“Hopefully these numbers generate some feedback and controversy,” he laughs.

I wondered if there were something controversial about his calculations that I was overlooking.

“No,” he explained, “I just think it’ll be controversial because people feel weird Cost of lead poisoning in Flint: $458 million - The Atlantic:

Big Education Ape: Flint Water Crisis: Mr. Shuette I Am Shocked - http://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/08/mr.html

Wendy Lecker: Policy can foster positive relationships for kids - StamfordAdvocate

Wendy Lecker: Policy can foster positive relationships for kids - StamfordAdvocate:

Wendy Lecker: Policy can foster positive relationships for kids

Current education policy focuses on a failed strategy of school and district “turnarounds;” characterized by staff shake-ups and pedagogical practices that focus narrowly on raising test scores. This reform has been the Malloy Administration’s approach to school “improvement” since 2012. The evidence demonstrates that turnarounds produce at best temporary small increases in test scores, but at the high cost of destabilizing schools and communities in the long run.

While policymakers stubbornly pursue this dead end, they ignore evidence from science and educational practice pointing to methods that result in long-lasting improvements in both academic and life outcomes, especially for at-risk children.

A recent article in the science magazine, Mosaic, described a longitudinal study of children in Hawaii that examined why some at-risk children develop significant problems while others do not. The researchers found that for the one-third of at-risk children who did not develop problems, positive relationships, whether in the context of a community or one adult, were key. Even those who engaged in risky behavior as teens were able to turn their lives around with the help of a personal connection.

One of the researchers observed that resilience, often described as a trait, is instead an adaptive process; one that is helped by relationships.

Education reformers misread resilience as a trait they like to call “grit,” and consequently develop misguided policies such as the recent announcement by the federal government that the National Assessment of Educational Progress will create a standardized test to determine whether children have “grit.”

Understanding resilience the way these scientists have come to understand it would lead to a focus on more successful educational policies. Consistent with what science has discovered, it turns out that school programs and policies that promote the development of relationships are the ones that provide long-term educational and life benefits, especially to disadvantaged children.

It stands to reason that school mechanisms promoting a personal connection improve learning as well as social development. Neuroscientists have found that the brain does not recognize a sharp distinction between cognitive, social and motor functions. Consequently, research has shown that feelings of social isolation impair key cognitive abilities involved in learning.

Though they require substantial initial investments, educational policies that foster relationships save money in the long run.

Developmentally-appropriate preschool, with an emphasis on play, enables children to acquire the skills necessary to form healthy relationships. There is near universal consensus that quality preschool benefits children, increasing the chance of Wendy Lecker: Policy can foster positive relationships for kids - StamfordAdvocate: