How School Vouchers will Bring Decades Old Segregation Back into Schools Today

Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA), ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Education and the Workforce and a panel of distinguished guests: Daniel A. Domenech, executive director, American Association of School Administrators Richard D. Kahlenberg, senior fellow, The Century Foundation Catherine E. Lhamon, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Justin Reid, director, African American Programs, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities spoke on the the racist origins of private school vouchers. 

In 1959, five years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing segregation in schools, Prince Edward County, Virginia, officials chose to close all of the county’s public schools rather than desegregate them. When they were forced by court mandate to make all schools available to black and white students, county officials turned to “tuition grants”—a private school voucher system—to further avoid integration. 

At this event, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), representing Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District and the panelists discussed “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,” which looked at the segregationist policies and actions that led to the implementation of one of the first voucher systems in the country. The panelist also addressed current voucher programs that have led to inequities along racial and socioeconomic lines, as well as various voucher schemes proposed by President Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.

The Importance of Early Childhood Education on Health and Well-Being

The Urban Institute, in collaboration with Policies for Action (P4A), recently delivered an empowering research forum on P4A’s latest findings on early education’s lasting impacts on health and well-being from policymakers designing and implementing programs at the city and state levels.  This forum sparked a positive dialogue on the importance of health in early childhood investments and identified avenues for cross-disciplinary engagement and research around early childhood education and health.

The preschool years are a critically important time to provide special education services to children with developmental delays or disabilities. At this early age, children’s brains are going through their most important period of development, so this is the time when services can make the biggest impact.  New York City’s Universal Prekindergarten Program provides preschool special education services if a student shows a significant delay in any of the five areas of development: cognitive (thinking and learning); communication (understanding and using language); physical/motor (vision, hearing, and movement); social/emotional (getting along with other people); and adaptive/self-help (independent living skills, such as toileting, eating, and dressing). 

Notable scholar, Dr. Sherry Glied, Dean and professor of public service at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service discussed her current research, “Seeing and Hearing: The Impacts of New York’s City’s Universal Prekindergarten Program on the Health of Low-Income Children.”  

Social Emotional Learning is Necessary for Students' Success

Teaching Ahead: A Roundtable reported an article in Education Week and suggested emotional and social learning can take on various forms in the classroom, especially for teachers of color. It can be a regular morning meeting, where students review and discuss their perspectives on school culture and current events. It can be an analysis of a conflict of a novel and a discussion about different paths the characters might have taken. It can be a simple moment that provides a student the space to think and reflect without the threat of punishment, rather than react automatically, and often aggressively, to distress. It can be a situation in which a teacher of color shares an experience about how to handle encounters of racism or other injustices related to identity. It can be a scenario that pushes students to generate various solutions for coding problems in a computer science class.

Implementing more emotional and social learning will require a new movement in American education. It is not enough to train and develop the brains of our children, while leaving their hearts empty or unloved. In order to make our children more prepared for the real world, teachers must look beyond grit and structure. We must teach our children to feel, to adjust, and to thrive in the face of any adversity they may encounter.

GOP Healthcare Bill Could Strip Public Schools of Billions for Special Education

According to a report by Emma Brown from Education, The Republican health-care legislation would curtail billions of dollars in annual funding they count on to help students with disabilities and poor children.

For the past 30 years, Medicaid has helped pay for services and equipment that schools provide to special-education students, as well as school-based health screening and treatment for children from low-income families. That money pays for nurses, social workers, physical, occupational and speech therapists and medical equipment such as walkers and wheelchairs. It also pays for preventive and comprehensive health services for poor children, including immunizations, screening for hearing and vision problems and management of chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes.

Schools have been able to register as Medicaid providers and seek reimbursement, as doctors and hospitals do, since 1988. Two-thirds of districts that bill Medicaid use the money to pay the salaries of employees who work directly with children, such as school nurses and therapists, according to a January survey by the School Superintendents Association (AASA).

But the Republican push to overhaul health care would implement a new “per capita cap” system for Medicaid: Instead of matching whatever states spend on Medicaid, the federal government would instead give them a fixed amount for each Medicaid enrollee.

Under the House GOP bill, which passed last month, that change would reduce federal spending about $880 billion over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The Senate GOP version would cut about $772 billion over the same time period.
The Senate bill is being revised after pushback from several key Republicans — including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who has raised concerns about the impact of Medicaid cuts on special education. Details may change as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) seeks to negotiate a deal that can pass.

Schools receive less than 1 percent of federal Medicaid spending, according to the National Alliance for Medicaid in Schools. But federal Medicaid reimbursements constitute the third-largest federal funding stream to public schools, behind $15 billion they receive each year for educating poor children and $13 billion they receive to educate students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA).

New York City Schools that Serves Mostly Homeless Students

NEW YORK CITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL INITIATIVE
Community Schools are neighborhood hubs where students receive high-quality academic instruction, families can access social services, and communities congregate to share resources and address their common challenges. Community Schools prioritizes student wellness, readiness to learn, personalized instruction, community partnerships and family engagement as key strategies to leverage better academic outcomes among high-need students.

Community Schools recognize that students who are hungry, can’t see the blackboard, or are missing school regularly face critical obstacles to learning in the classroom. By providing an extra meal, connecting a parent to job training, or enrolling a student in an afterschool program, they can lower barriers to learning and help kids succeed.

Read Mayor de Blasio's strategy to launch and sustain a system of over 100 Community Schools across NYC by 2017.

States Seek New "Ambitious" ESSA Goals

The NCLB law set a 12-year deadline for states to achieve universal proficiency, with progress measured by the adequate yearly progress, or AYP, and benchmarks.  In contrast to the NCLB law, ESSA requires only that states set "ambitious" academic achievement, graduation rate, and English-language proficiency goals without setting specific deadlines.  According to Burnette's article in Education Week, many states are coming up with the “ambitious ... long-term goals” required in the accountability plans they must submit to the federal government later this year under the Every Student Succeeds Act.  For example:

• Delaware: Proposes to increase its graduation rate from 84 to 92 percent by 2030; also wants to boost the proportion of students passing its English/language arts exam from 50 percent to 70 percent and raise the proportion of those passing the math exam from 36 to 70 percent by that same year.

• Hawaii: Has more than 14 goals that include reducing chronic absenteeism by 6 percent, increasing 3rd-grade literacy by 11 percent, and increasing its graduation rate by 4 percent by 2020.

• Illinois: Is proposing that 90 percent of its 3rd graders will read at or above grade level by 2032; that 90 percent of 5th graders will meet or exceed math expectations by that year; and that 90 percent of students will graduate from high school college- or career-ready by then.

• Louisiana: Proposes to “raise the ambition of its long-term goals for students to levels exceeding the national average in every measure.” For example, receiving an A on the state report card, would require that high schools graduate more than 90 percent of their students, that high school students receive at least a 21 on the ACT college-readiness test, which is used as the statewide exam (up from the 18 score currently required), and that the majority of the students receive a “mastery” rating on the state’s standardized test rather than “basic.

• Maryland: Is “proposing to implement an ambitious and rigorous long-term goal of reducing nonproficient students by one-half by the year 2030.” The state wants to cut in half its achievement gap within six years.

• Montana: In its final plan, Montana sets a 2020 target date, but no uniform goals for districts. “Local school districts should take the lead on setting goals for their community schools. Measurement of quality at the state level must be rigorous, yet flexible,” the plan states.

• Oklahoma: Without giving specifics, says it “is a priority ... that the long-term goals are lofty but achievable” and that the state “is committed to providing [local districts], schools and students the supports necessary to achieve these goals.”

• Tennessee: Has proposed, among other things, that the state will rank in the top half of states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress by 2019, that 75 percent of its 3rd graders will be proficient in reading by 2025, and that the average ACT composite score in Tennessee will be a 21 by 2020.

• Washington: Wants to have all of its students “on track” to meeting statewide standards in 20 years.