The hope of the “Skills for the Future” collaboration is to make it easy for schools to treat so-called “durable” skills such as critical thinking, teamwork and perseverance the same as traditional subjects like math and English. That includes giving students new tests and a new report card that shows how well they have mastered those other skills as they apply to colleges or jobs.

The collaboration between the Educational Testing Service and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching started last year and added five states this spring — Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. The Mastery Transcript Consortium which has already built a mastery-based report card became part of ETS, the company that runs the SAT and GRE college admissions tests, in May.

The partnership comes as some businesses edge toward skills-based hiring, rather than hiring for having a college degree. The partners also want to increase mastery or competency learning, where students progress at their own speed, rather than in lockstep with a class.

“This whole idea that education could be focused on durable and transferable skills is super exciting to me,” said Scott Looney, founder of the Mastery Transcript Consortium, which just added its innovative report card to the partnership this month. “It’ll make school more engaging, interesting for kids, but also make it more meaningful.”

“I think this is going to give us the ability to take this to millions of kids,” he said.

Carnegie President Tim Knowles said this new effort is a full reversal of what his foundation once promoted. In the early 1900s, the foundation popularized the credit hour or Carnegie Unit concept of measuring learning by hours spent on a subject. 

But Knowles said it is clear now that students learn at different speeds and the measure that share’s his foundation’s name doesn’t work anymore. ETS, Carnegie and others in the mastery movement want students to be rated on progress toward each skill, at whatever speed works for them, regardless of when a grading period ends.

Knowles said he hopes to replace the credit hours model “where bells ring between classes, where it’s time, not competency, that is the rule of the day.”

“Our aim is to build a new architecture that would actually enable competency-based learning to move from the edges of the profession where it’s lived for 100 years to the mainstream,” he said.

The end result, said Laura Slover, managing director of the effort, will hopefully be a way to show students’ character traits that many believe are just as important to success in school, jobs and life as academic knowledge.

“We are convinced that there’s a lack of social and economic mobility in the U.S., and that we’ve moved from a knowledge economy to a skills economy,” said Slover. “We want a portable transcripts or wallet, if you will, that shows where students are in their development, skills and abilities that they can use with employers, they can use to open the doors to college, and that are fair and reliable and meaningful for kids.” 

That shift, though, relies on schools to determine which skills to focus on and how to measure them. While there are many tests on subjects like English and math, there are no standard ways of measuring skills like communication, collaboration or digital literacy that carry across teachers, subjects, schools or states.

This spring, the five states that are dipping their toes into mastery joined Skills for The Future to help develop ways of measuring student progress on these durable skills. 

ETS said first steps included looking at the “Portrait of a Graduate” or “Portrait of a Learner” statements that states have passed — see Nevada’s here or North Carolina’s here  — that list the attributes and values they want students to have. The most common traits that will be the first  priority, said Knowles, are communication, collaboration, persistence, and digital literacy, with critical thinking and creative thinking close behind.

ETS, Carnegie and the states met in California in April to brainstorm approaches, with each state now meeting with teachers, students, colleges and businesses to develop ideas to pilot as early as January, 2025. A few early possibilities include interactive testing that adjusts questions – making them harder or easier or zeroing in on certain topics – based on student answers, as some online tests do now.

Some tests could be game-based, instead of just having students answer questions.

The partners are discussing how to use artificial intelligence and portfolios of student work such as papers, artwork, and projects created for multiple classes, as well as extracurricular or out of school activities to show character and interdisciplinary skills.

Portfolios can post a challenge for schools and for one of the long-range goals of the project – that skills can be reliably measured and believable to business or college admissions departments. Mastery schools use portfolios now, but those are dependent on subjective decisions by schools and teachers and are not verifiable to outsiders.

But Nevada state superintendent Jhone Ebert said Skills For The Future could develop guidelines that could be used in schools everywhere to create more consistency. 

Or some rating decisions may be left to teachers, but a third party may be able to offer a seal to be added to the new transcripts to offer some verification.

Ebert said she wanted Nevada schools, some of which have tested mastery concepts after a 2017 state law change, to have a role in creating new assessments.

“What has not gone well in the past is that someone just makes it a determination that this is the magic wand and how we’re going to measure everything,” she said. “Then it comes down and classroom teachers haven’t been involved, state leaders haven’t been involved. It is just this tool that has been made available and we are all going to adopt.”

“This process is much different,” she said. “We are all working together to co-design what it will look like and provide that feedback and input up front.”

The Mastery Transcript Consortium started in 2017 with private schools who wanted to show student progress from “developing” skills to “mastering” them. It built a transcript model that typically shows about 60 skills, as each school determines, instead of just the half dozen courses a student might take each semester. Some schools have used versions of it in college applications since 2019.

It now has 370 private and public schools or districts as members and says 500 colleges agree to accept students using the transcript.

It also has already built an intermediate report on student progress on durable skills that schools can use as a supplement to traditional academic report cards, if they’re not ready to make a full leap yet.

Though it keeps adding members, director Mike Flanagan said it is still a small group without the clout to take its work to a massive scale.

“For us to reach millions of students across the entire country on our own would have taken an infinite amount of time,” he said. “It’s virtually impossible. But ETS is one of the few organizations in the sector that has the scale and capacity to credibly help us reach millions of learners.”

Flanagan added that having ETS, Carnegie and five states joining the work  “lends enormous credibility to our effort.”

Whether this effort is enough to make mastery and measurement of soft skills take hold nationally remains  to be seen. Attempts to use mastery in states like Maine and New Hampshire never fully caught on and are often viewed as failures.

Among the pitfalls, he noted, are federal testing requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act that don’t allow flexibility when students must learn some academic skills. And schools and parents could balk at a shift, he said, though Skills For the Future might succeed in doing enough advance work that it would be easier for schools and teachers to adopt.

“It’s a real challenge to do it well, but it’s good that somebody with the horsepower that ETS and Carnegie (have) are giving it a shot,” said Scott Marion, executive director of the nonprofit National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment. “Let’s not kid ourselves. If it wasn’t so hard, somebody would have done it.”

Hundreds of education leaders from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., last week for Successful Practices Network’s (SPN) 2024 Future-Focused Schools Conference.

The three-day conference discussed a shifting education landscape, changing student and employer needs, and successful strategies being implemented across the nation — including in North Carolina.

This shifting landscape includes generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), a different generation of students, and the desire for more relevant career planning and postsecondary opportunities, said SPN Founder and Executive Chair Dr. Bill Daggett.

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“How do we truly prepare our students for their future, and not our past?,” Daggett asked during the conference’s opening keynote. “Schools are not structured to prepare for the unknown. Too often they just react after the unknown has happened.”

Daggett said the pandemic exacerbated challenges students and schools faced prior to spring 2020.

In recent years, he said, student social media use has drastically increased.

In North Carolina, the 2023 NC Youth Risk Behavior Survey included questions on social media for the first time. According to survey results, more than 80% of high school students reported using social media at least several times a day, with 37% of those students reporting using it at least once an hour.

At the conference, Daggett’s presentation included studies showing that overexposure to screen-based devices can lead to mental health issues, social deprivation, addiction, attention deficit disorders, and sleep deprivation, among other things.

“Schools, too often we react to the symptoms… rather than the cause,” Daggett said.

At the same time, the prevalence of generative AI technology is presenting schools with another challenge. School leaders are working to update their policies to account for AI, while teachers are trying to teach students how to use AI responsibly.

During his keynote, Daggett said AI also poses great opportunity for schools — if school and district leaders are willing to invest in it. Among other things, the conference highlighted opportunities to use AI for teacher planning, student career planning and personalized learning, and a shift to developing durable skills for students.

Daggett said schools must teach students how to use AI, so that AI isn’t a tool only used by students from the most privileged families.

Schools must “figure out some way to help close that gap,” he said.

As schools adapt to AI and other shifts, Daggett said leaders must “refocus our North Star.” The entire education ecosystem must shift, he said, including reexamining how schools organize curriculum programs and expectations.

Ray McNulty, SPN president, said such refocusing requires that schools embed “foresight thinking” into education systems.

“It’s not about adapting, it’s about anticipating and preparing,” McNulty said. “The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in school, but to help them do well in their lives outside of school… We must make the future more powerful than the past in meeting the needs of all our learners.”

What is a future-focused school?

According to a SPN presentation, a future-focused school system “is one that cultivates and champions:”

• Proactive culture: This includes “inspiring vision,” foresight, digital learning, technology, AI, experimentation, coaching, and adaptability.
• Cognitive skills: Literacy, math, creativity, adaptability, organization, problem-solving, prioritization, planning, critical thinking, and communication.
• Interpersonal skills: Honesty, trust, teamwork, empathy, humility, collaboration, motivation, relationships, and role modeling. (These are also known as durable, or soft, skills.)
• Proactive instruction: Inquiry, project and problem based learning, voice and choice, collaboration, experimentation, risk-taking, and assessment.
• Self-leadership skills: Persistence, integrity, self-control, coping, risk-taking, self-motivation, self-confidence, passion, achievement oriented.

In a 2022 paper, SPN, a nonprofit, said that the following phases “accelerate a district’s success at becoming future-focused:” Portrait of a Graduate, strategic planning, and executive coaching.

At last week’s conference, McNulty and Daggett both highlighted North Carolina’s Portrait of a Graduate efforts. In fall 2022, state Superintendent Catherine Truitt unveiled seven durable skills the N.C. Department of Public Instruction (DPI) hoped public schools across North Carolina would incorporate into day-to-day learning — adaptability, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, empathy, learner’s mindset, and personal responsibility.

As employers turn to AI to automatically complete certain tasks, Daggett said such durable skills are crucial because they are skills employers cannot replace with AI.

“Most people aren’t going to replaced by AI,” Daggett said. “They’re going to be replaced by somebody who has skills that AI does not have.”

During a breakout session, McNulty said that schools working to become more “future-focused” must first start with a clear and focused vision. Next, they must evaluate if their current culture supports that vision.

After completing strategic and action planning, McNulty said districts must start implementation — with frequent evaluation to see if what they are doing is actually working.

“Implementation is critical,” he said. “And implementation is tricky.”

McNulty and Daggett said that moving forward, school systems should invest in AI, durable skills, and career planning to better serve students.

Such practices should be research-based, and implemented systemically, with teacher supports in place.

“This means starting with what you believe, then checking if you have systems in place to do it,” Daggett said. “Then, you might have to take some things off your plate.”

The importance of career exploration

During a breakout session — “High School Reimagined: Why We’ve Been Wrong and How to Get it Right for Every Student” — one superintendent talked about his district’s efforts to embed individualized career exploration into school curriculum.

Dr. Ken Wallace, superintendent Maine Township High School District 207, said that career exploration is “the essence of equity.”

“The idea is if we can get your child into a career path responsibly… that pays a living wage, has growth potential, and is in high demand, it doesn’t only change their life, it changes the lives of their family, their children,” Wallace said.

Wallace noted rising student debt in the United States, along with the rising cost of postsecondary education. At the same time, he said, many students are taking out student loans to study one thing, but then end up shifting paths.

Career exploration after finishing college is expensive for students, he said.

“Our young people — they’re saddled with debt,” Wallace said. “I felt like it was irresponsible to not pay attention to this… where I’ve got a lot of first-generation kids who absolutely need us to get this right.”

Maine Township High School District 207 focuses on individual career planning for students, Wallace said.

The district begins formally preparing students for career exploration in eighth grade, including information about school counselors, the districts’s Career & College Resource Center (CCRC), and postsecondary education opportunities.

In ninth grade, students create a SchoolLinks account, which allows them to take a survey to learn about possible career paths.

Students continue to update their SchoolLinks profile, survey, and career goals throughout the rest of high school, and also receive resources to create a resume and apply for internships and apprenticeships. The district partners more than 1,000 local partners to provide students with career experiences during high school.

Students also work on their career plans and goals during a weekly advisory period that is built into the school day. In addition to their teachers, students can also receive guidance from counselors and career coordinators.

“Students have equal access to rigorous curriculum, helping them have all kinds of possibilities, and pushing them based on what they want to do,” Wallace said. “And all exploration has to pay a living wage.”

Here are a few tips Wallace gave school leaders:

• It’s never too soon to talk about careers.
• Focus on passions and interests, not just making money.
• Explore options with students, and then ask more specific questions when the child enters high school.
• Invest in research and analytics to determine effectiveness of initiatives.
• Create a plan that provides a baseline level of resources for all students, along with specialized layers of support for students that need it.

“What I’ve found with our students is give them capacity, give them space, and they will rise and exceed your expectations,” Wallace said.

North Carolina spotlights

Surry-Yadkin Works

One breakout session of the conference focused on North Carolina’s Surry-Yadkin Works, a work-based learning program created in 2021 to connect high school students in Surry and Yadkin counties with internship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities in local high-demand fields.

The partnership brings together all four public school systems in the counties. As of December 2023, Surry-Yadkin Works has assisted more than 350 students in finding 450 internship and pre-apprenticeship opportunities, according to a playbook from the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research.

Last week, Surry County Schools Superintendent Dr. Travis Reeves and Surry Community College President Dr. David Shockley spoke about the origin and impact of the partnership.

Approximately 65% of the district’s students are economically disadvantaged, Reeves said, and agriculture is the No. 1 industry. That means that many students who are not interested in agriculture end up moving out of the county after graduation.

“We need to showcase the opportunities at home before they leave,” Reeves said.

Both leaders have more than a decade of experience in their current roles.

In 2012, Shockley said he started on a journey to answer one question that kept coming up with community stakeholders: “How do we prepare our students beyond the high school diploma by providing them access to college courses within traditional scheduling?”

Surry-Yadkin Works is part of the answer, Shockley and Reeves said, but the journey started earlier than that — with North Carolina’s investment in dual enrollment in 2011, with the creation of the Career and College Promise (CCP) program.

The program’s design provides structured opportunities for high school students to earn college credits tuition-free that “lead to a certificate, diploma, or degree as well as provide entry-level jobs skills.”

Around this time, Reeves said the school district had to shift the mindset of what traditional high school looks like, in order to take advantage of CCP.

“How do you create this environment where you’re earning more than the high school diploma?” Reeves said. “So you’re earning all these other experiences, so you will be career ready once you leave.”

Surry County Schools also pays for all textbooks and transportation, Shockley said, “so there is truly no cost for students.”

In 2016, Surry Community College enrolled 412 CCP students, Shockley said, with 3,109 college credits earned.

In 2023, the college enrolled 702 students — who earned 4,540 credits.

Shockley and Reeves said Surry-Yadkin Works was meant to capitalize on the gains the region had already seen through dual enrollment.

Reeves said the expected outcomes of the partnership included all students in the program graduating with either a credential and work-based learning opportunity. They also wanted to help create a stronger local workforce pipeline.

“We’ve tried to streamline and align our resources and create the most opportunities for our students in rural North Carolina,” Reeves said.

Here are tips Shockley and Reeves gave session attendees:

• You have to have the relationships to create far-reaching partnerships. Surry-Yadkin Works convenes government, education, and business stakeholders.
• It is important to find sustainable funds to keep program offerings consistent for students. In the case of Surry-Yadkin Works, the partnership found “sustainable money” from local county commissioners, in addition to grant funding.
• Be clear on what the expected Return on Investment (ROI) is of the initiative — and promote this ROI once you have results. “It is critical for you to always show your investors what they are getting for their investment, to keep them sold,” Shockley said.
• Celebrate victories! The partnership hosts job signing event ceremonies for students at local event spaces. “If we don’t take time to celebrate this, no one else is going to,” Reeves said.

Currently, Surry-Yadkin Works includes internship, apprenticeship, and pre-apprenticeship opportunities. In the fall, the partnership plans to launch FLEET — which stands for Fostering Learning Through Education, Employment, and Trades — to further expand its offerings in the manufacturing sector.

“When you create synergy around things that are good, good things happen, especially when you have good people,” Reeves said.

UC Guarantee

Another breakout session highlighted UC Guarantee, a partnership between Union County Public Schools, South Piedmont Community College, and Wingate University.

According to Wingate University’s website, the partnership aims “to make sure every student graduating from high school has a clearly defined, affordable, and easily accessible plan that leads to a meaningful career.”

Union County students are notified of the opportunity in ninth grade. Under the partnership, Wingate guarantees eligible students a $100,000 scholarship to attend Wingate.

South Piedmont and Wingate University already offer the Gateway to Wingate scholarship, which allows students who earn an associate degree from South Piedmont to transfer to Wingate to earn a bachelor’s degree for no more than $2,500 per year. The new piece of the partnership will allow Union County students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher to receive at least a $100,000 grant awarded over four years to attend Wingate University.

“We are essentially creating a continuous highway for lifelong learning with on and off ramps to show students they are never limited to one path but can customize their plan so it’s the right fit, at the right time, for them,” said South Piedmont Community College President Dr. Maria Pharr.

During the breakout session, panelists said building strong relationships between stakeholders was crucial to getting the partnerships off the ground.

“We’ve looked at each other as partners in this, not competitors” said Eva Baucom, vice president of enrollment management at Wingate University.

Panelists discussed the value of early college programming for students, and the need to communicate with students early about postsecondary education options.

“As a community college, we deal with a stigma that a community college is a lesser-than educational pathway, when we have a lot of very meaningful programs that lead to high earning careers,” said Kamisha Kirby, South Piedmont Community College’s associate vice president of student success.

Together, each of the partners are working to increase access for all students, while promoting awareness of the programs they offer.

Moving forward, the partners are working toward data-sharing agreements, a formal communication plan, aligned pathways for students, and on-campus student programming.

“We want to continue to grow this,” said Jessica Garner, Union County Public School’s director of College Readiness and Innovation. “And as many things that are future focused, you can’t really imagine what some of the next steps are and we don’t want to hem ourselves in. We just continue to find things we can do for our students.”

You can learn more about the programs within the partnership here.

What’s next?

During the closing keynote, SPN Senior Vice President Dr. Robert Peters spoke about the importance of looking to the future with all students in mind.

He asked attendees to think about the different connotations between the phrase “our kids” and “these kids.”

One phrase, he said, denotes the desire to inspire, protect, and engage. The other often reflects a desire to control.

“As professionals, we have to understand that we are the common denominator,” Peters said. “We are the ones who make these kids, our kids. These are all of our children.”

With that guiding principle in mind, Peters asked: “Are our systems right for all of our children? Are our systems created for success for all students?”

Peters said creating a future-focused system required first aligning your mission and vision around all students. Then, school leaders must build out structures and systems of support for leaders and teachers, followed by instructional support in order to successfully implement new curriculum goals.

As schools and districts implement these ideas, McNulty cautioned that policy is often the last thing to change.

“But I need to have something that I know gets results before I can change policy,” McNulty said. “We can be agents of change.”

You can learn more about SPN on their website.

This article first appeared on EducationNC and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Before Brown, in the 17 states that had segregated school systems, 35% to 50% of the teaching force was Black. Even in the face of systemic inequities, Black teachers held kids to high expectations, and Black communities came together to build schools that helped move young people into greater opportunity. But in the aftermath of the decision, tens of thousands of Black teachers and school leaders lost their jobs or were forced out of the field due to resistance of some white people to integration. This had a profound impact on who was teaching students, and a detrimental economic effect on the tenuous, emerging Black middle class.

For several years after Brown, young Black people who wanted to become educators — including Marc’s mother — were still denied entry into postsecondary teaching programs in the South, solely because they were Black. Sybil Haydel Morial did go on to earn her master’s degree in education, at Boston University in 1955.

It’s long past time to ensure that the nation’s schoolchildren have the chance to learn from diverse, effective educators.

Today, just 22% of teachers and 23% of principals are people of color, and in 23% of public schools, students do not have a single teacher of color. Yet, 55% of students are people of color. Moreover, the proportion of adults aged 25 to 64 who are teachers is nearly three times higher for white adults (3%) than adults of color (1.1%). 

Given the depth of the teacher shortages around the country, it’s just common sense to build stronger pipelines to bring thousands of talented, diverse educators into the classroom.  

But solving teacher shortages is not the only reason that educator diversity matters. Research shows that all students benefit from having educators of color. And children of color, in particular, achieve at higher levels and are less likely to be suspended or drop out of school.  

We know firsthand the powerful effect diverse educators can have on the trajectory of a young person’s life. Tequilla grew up in poverty in rural Arkansas and lived with her grandparents, who were sharecroppers. They didn’t have indoor plumbing until she was 12 years old. She credits early and continued access to effective educators, many of whom looked like her, as a central reason for her climb to Yale and now CEO of TNTP.  

At a time when13-year-olds are recording the lowest math and reading scores seen in decades and racial wealth gaps are widening, the nation needs to leverage as many strategies as possible to get real results for kids. Curriculum matters a great deal to student success, but it takes diverse, skilled educators to bring even the best academic programming to life. 

It’s clear to us both that the traditional pathway to teaching is not meeting the demand. State and education leaders must embrace new and alternate pathways to teaching that are more attractive to the nation’s increasingly diverse talent pool. According to TNTP’s report A Broken Pipeline, traditional teacher preparation programs are far less diverse than the public school student population. In some programs, participants are more than 90% white. 

Encouragingly, many states and districts are starting to adopt alternative certification programs and “grow your own” programs to provide more accessible and affordable pathways into the classroom for diverse teachers, including high school students, classroom assistants and paraprofessionals.  

We know that the best recruitment strategy is a strong retention strategy. To better retain all educators, including teachers of color, the nation must ultimately rethink the industrial-era model that has dominated public education for the last century. 

Seventy years post-Brown, it’s clear that doing nothing is not an option. That’s why we applaud efforts like the One Million Teachers of Color campaign, a coalition of which TNTP is a part, that has an ambitious goal of dramatically expanding and diversifying the educator workforce.   

After all, the nation is at an inflection point. There aren’t enough effective, diverse teachers. But there’s also an incredible opportunity ahead. The nation can draw on evidence-based strategies to diversify the educator workforce. Doing so will benefit students today and have a profound economic impact for families and communities of color in years to come.  

Our hope is that the nation does not waste any more time. Now is the moment to see the full promise and potential of Brown v. Board of Education through the finish line. 

A proposed literacy policy in Maryland could have third-grade students held back for a year if they don’t achieve certain reading scores on state tests, or “demonstrate sufficient reading skills for promotion to grade 4.”

Maryland would join more than half of states that allow third-grade students to be held back if the policy is adopted. The Maryland Department of Education is accepting public comments on the plan until July 19.

It comes as the state Board of Education and the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation board recently voted on aggressive goals to boost student achievement for the state, which ranks 40th in the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known at the Nation’s Report Card. The goal is to put Maryland in the top 10 by 2027.

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“It has been noted in several research studies that literacy is considered one of the key and pivotal priorities in education if we expect our communities, our states to prosper,” Tenette Smith, executive director of literacy programs and initiatives in the state Department of Education, said Tuesday. “We have to make sure that we are addressing kiddos’ needs, as well as their access to high-quality education. It becomes an equity issue.”

The proposed literacy policy would implement a reading intervention program for students in kindergarten through third grade who are identified with a reading deficiency or “need for supplemental instruction in reading.”

Students in those grades would be screened about three times, which includes for dyslexia, throughout the school year. They can also receive before- or after-school tutoring by a person with “specialized training grounded in the science of reading,” which focuses on teaching students based on phonics, comprehension and vocabulary.

The policy will also call for professional development for staff, which they will receive for free as part of the science of reading program.

A parent or guardian would receive written notification if their child exhibits any reading challenges during the school year. Students who are kept back in the third grade would receive more dedicated time “than the previous school year in scientifically research-based reading instruction and intervention,” daily small group instruction and frequent monitoring of the student’s reading skills throughout the school year.

The proposal includes a “good cause exemption” that would let students advance to the fourth grade if they are diagnosed with a disability described in an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). It would also apply to students with a Section 504 plan who are diagnosed with a disability and need “reasonable accommodation” to participate in school and school-related activities.

A good-cause exception could also be made for students who fewer received less than two years of instruction in an English-language development program.

Any student who received such an exception would continue to receive intensive reading intervention and other services.

No student could be retained twice in third grade, according to the policy.

Smith said the policy is similar to one drafted in Mississippa, where she worked with current Maryland State Superintendent Carey Wright. But a few main differences that focus on Maryland include the Ready to Act and state regulations to support students with reading difficulties.

‘Have to be creative’

According to a January report from the Education Commission of the States, about 26 states and Washington, D.C., implemented policies that require retention for third-grade students who are not reading proficiently, or allow those decisions at the local level. That report came out two months before Indiana joined the list, when the legislature in March approved a measure to retain third grade students who don’t pass a statewide assessment test or meet a “good cause” exemption, similar to the proposed Maryland policy.

A 2013 report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation noted that students who don’t read proficiently by the end of the third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma. The gap could increase if a student comes from a low-income family, is Black or Latino, the report said.

Smith said there’s “a slight shift” in expectations when students enter fourth grade, and begin assessing multisyllabic words and doing more independent reading.

“When you are making that shift, you are providing more academic language and asking children to access or bear a heavier cognitive load. Kiddos are asked to do more word work,” Smith said. “As they progress from one grade to the other, third grade becomes that key grade level, that sort of gateway to being a fluent reader with the ability to analyze the text they are reading.”

Maryland State Education Association President Cheryl Bost, who retires from teaching  at the end of the month, said the state needs to assess who would provide the tutoring during the school day and before or after school.

“We are still in a [teacher] shortage. How we can retain staff and bring staff is going to be key to all of this,” she said Monday.

She also said reading intervention during the school day is “more desirable” than making tutoring before or after school the only option.

“When we do that though, we can’t pull kids out of the arts,” Bost said. “We have to be creative in scheduling because those other subject areas are important. Some kids really shine in those areas.… They have to learn reading in other context not just in what might be called a reading class.”

The policy is scheduled to be discussed by the state Board of Education on July 23. For those interested in taking the survey can go here, or send an email to literacy.msde@maryland.gov by July 19.

Maryland Matters is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org. Follow Maryland Matters on Facebook and X.

The AI bot, created by Boston-based AllHere Education, was launched March 20. But just three months later, AllHere posted on its website that a majority of its 50 or so employees had been furloughed due to its “current financial position.” A spokesperson for the Los Angeles district said company founder and CEO Joanna Smith-Griffin was no longer on the job. AllHere was up for sale, the district said, with several businesses interested in acquiring it.

The news was shocking and certainly bleak for the ed tech industry, but several observers say the partnership bit off more than it could chew, tech-wise — and that the ensuing blowup could hurt future AI investments.

Ed was touted as a powerful, easy-to-use online tool for students and parents to supplement classroom instruction, find assistance with kids’ academic struggles and help families navigate attendance, grades, transportation and other key issues, all in 100 languages and on their mobile phones.

But Amanda Bickerstaff, founder and CEO of AI for Education, a consulting and training firm, said that was an overreach.

“What they were trying to do is really not possible with where the technology is today,” she said. ”It’s a very broad application [with] multiple users — teachers, students, leaders and family members — and it pulled in data from multiple systems.”

She noted that even a mega-corporation like McDonald’s had to trim its AI sails. The fast-food giant recently admitted that a small experiment using a chatbot to power drive-thru windows had resulted in a few fraught customer interactions, such as one in which a woman angrily tried to persuade the bot that she wanted a caramel ice cream as it added multiple stacks of butter to her order.

If McDonald’s, worth an estimated $178.6 billion, can’t get 100 drive-thrus to take lunch orders with generative AI, she said, the tech isn’t “where we need it to be.”

If anything, L.A. and AllHere did not seem worried about the project’s scale, even if industry insiders now say it was bound to under-deliver: Last spring, at a series of high-profile ed tech conferences, Smith-Griffin and Superintendent Alberto Carvalho showed off Ed widely, with Carvalho saying it would revolutionize students’ and parents’ relationships to school, “utilizing the data-rich environment that we have for every kid.”

In an interview with The 74 at the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego in April, Carvalho said many students are not connected to school, “therefore they’re lost.” Ed, he promised, would change that, with a “significantly different approach” to communication from the district.

“We are shifting from a system of 540,000 students into 540,000 ‘schools of one,’” with personalization and individualization for each student, he said, and “meaningful connections with parents.”

Better communication with parents, he said, would help improve not just attendance but reading and math proficiency, graduation rates and other outcomes. “The question that needs to be asked is: Why have those resources not meaningfully connected with students and parents, and why have they not resulted in this explosive experience in terms of educational opportunity?”

Carvalho noted Ed’s ability to understand and communicate in about 100 different languages. And, he crowed, it “never goes to sleep” so it can answer questions 24/7. He called it “an entity that learns and relearns all the time and does nothing more, nothing less than adapt itself to you. I think that’s a game changer.” 

But one experienced ed tech insider recalled hearing Carvalho speak about Ed at the conference in April and say it was already solving “all the problems” that big districts face. The insider, who asked not to be identified in order to speak freely about sensitive matters, found the remarks troubling. “The messaging was so wrong that at that point I basically started a stopwatch on how long it would take” for the effort to fail. “And I’m kind of amazed it’s been this long before it all fell apart. I feel badly about it, I really do, but it’s not a surprise.”

‘A high-risk proposition’

In addition to the deal’s dissolution, The 74 reported last week that a former senior director of software engineering at AllHere told district officials, L.A.’s independent inspector general’s office and state education officials that Ed processed student records in ways that likely ran afoul of the district’s own data privacy rules and put sensitive information at risk of being hacked — warnings that he said the agencies ignored. 

AI for Education’s Bickerstaff said developers “have to take caution” when building these systems for schools, especially those like Ed that bring together such large sets of data under one application.

“These tools, we don’t know how they work directly,” she said. “We know they have bias. And we know they’re not reliable. We know they can be leaky. And so we have to be really careful, especially with kids that have protected data.”

Alex Spurrier, an associate partner with the education consulting firm Bellwether Education Partners, said what often happens is that district leaders “try to go really big and move really fast to adopt a new technology,” not fully appreciating that it’s “a really high risk proposition.”

While ed tech is rife with disaster stories of overpromising and disappointing results, Spurrier said, other districts dare to take a different approach, starting small, iterating and scaling up. In those cases, he said, disaster rarely follows.

Richard Culatta, CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), put it more bluntly: “Whenever a district says, ‘Our strategy around AI is to buy a tool,’ that’s a problem. When the district says, ‘For us, AI is a variety of tools and skills that we are working on together,’ that’s when I feel comfortable that we’re moving in the right direction.”

Culatta suggested that since generative AI is developing and changing so rapidly, districts should use the next few months as “a moment of exploration — it’s a moment to bring in teachers and parents and students to give feedback,” he said. “It is not the moment for ribbon cutting.” 

‘It’s about exploring’

Smith-Griffin founded AllHere in 2016 at Harvard University’s Innovation Labs. In an April interview with The 74, she said she originally envisioned it as a way to help school systems reduce chronic absenteeism through better communication with parents. Many interventions that schools rely on, such as phone calls, postcards and home visits, “tend to be heavily reliant on the sheer power of educators to solve system-wide issues,” she said.

A former middle-school math teacher, Smith-Griffin recalled, “I was one of those teachers who was doing phone calls, leaving voicemails, visiting my parents’ homes.” 

AllHere pioneered text messaging “nudges,” electronic versions of postcard reminders to families that, in one key study, improved attendance modestly. 

The company’s successful proposal for L.A., Smith-Griffin said, envisioned extending the attendance strategies while applying them to student learning “in the most disciplined way possible.”

“You nudge a parent around absences and they will tell you things ranging from, ‘My kid needs tutoring, my kid is struggling with math’ [to] ‘I struggle with reading,’” she said. AllHere went one step further, she said, bringing together “the full body of resources” that a school system can offer parents.

The district had high hopes for the chatbot, requiring it to focus on “eliminating opportunity gaps, promoting whole-child well-being, building stronger relationships with students and families, and providing accessible information,” according to the proposal.

In April, it was still in early implementation at 100 of the district’s lowest performing “priority” schools, serving about 55,000 students. LAUSD planned to roll out Ed for all families this fall. The district “unplugged” the chatbot on June 14, the Los Angeles Times reported last week, but a district spokesperson said L.A. “will continue making Ed available as a tool to its students and families and is closely monitoring the potential acquisition of AllHere.” The company did not immediately responded to queries about the chatbot or its future.

As for the apparent collapse of AllHere, speculation in the ed tech world is rampant.

In the podcast he co-hosts, education entrepreneur Ben Kornell said late last month, “My spidey sense basically goes to ‘Something’s not adding up here and there’s more to the story.’” He theorized a “critical failure point” that’s yet to emerge “because you don’t see things like this fall apart this quickly, this immediately” for such a small company, especially in the middle of a $6 million contract.

Kornell said the possibilities fall into just a few categories: an accounting or financial misstep, a breakdown among AllHere’s staff, board and funders or “major customer payment issues.” 

The district also may have withheld payment for undelivered products, but he said the sudden collapse of the company seemed unusual. “If you are headed towards a cash crisis, the normal thing to do would be: Go to your board, go to your funders, and get a bridge to get you through that period and land the plane.”

Bellwether’s Spurrier said L.A. deserves a measure of credit “for being willing to lean into AI technology and think about ways that it could work.” But he wonders whether the best use of generative AI at this moment will be found not in “revolutionizing instruction,” as L.A. has pursued, but elsewhere. 

“There’s plenty of opportunities to think about how AI might help on the administrative side of things, or help folks that are kind of outside the classroom walls,” rather than focusing on changing how schools deliver instruction. “I think that’s the wrong place to start.”

ISTE’s Culatta noted that just down the road from Los Angeles, in Santa Ana, California, district officials there responded to the dawn of tools like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini by creating evening classes for adults. “The parents come in and they talk about what AI is, how they should be thinking about it,” he said. “It’s about exploring. It’s about helping people build their skills.” 

‘How are your financials?’

The fate of AllHere’s attendance work in districts nationwide isn’t clear at the moment. In one large district, the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Public Schools, near Washington, D.C., teachers piloted AllHere with 32 schools as far back as January 2020, spokeswoman Meghan Thornton said. The district added two more schools to the pilot in 2022, but AllHere notified the district on June 18 that, effective immediately, it wouldn’t be able to continue its services due to “unforeseen financial circumstances.” 

District officials are now looking for another messaging system to replace AllHere “should it no longer be available,” Thornton said.

Bickerstaff said the field more broadly suffers from “a major, major overestimation of the capabilities of the technology to date.” L.A., she noted, is the nation’s second-largest school district, so even the pilot stage likely saw “very high” usage, raising its costs. She predicted a fast acquisition of AllHere, noting that they’d been looking for outside investment for several months.

As founder of the startup Magic School AI, which offers teachers tools to streamline their workload, Adeel Khan is no stranger to hustling for funding — and to competitors running out of money. But he said the news about AllHere and Ed was bad for the industry more broadly, leaving districts with questions about whether to partner with newer, untested companies.

“I see it as something that is certainly not great for the startup ecosystem,” he said.

Even before the news about AllHere broke last month, Khan attended ISTE’s big national conference in Denver last month, where he talked to school district officials about prospective partnerships. “More than one time I was asked directly, ‘How are your financials?’” he recalled. 

Usually technology directors ask about features and what a product can do for students, he said. But they’re beginning to realize that a failed product doesn’t just waste time and money. It damages reputations as well. “That is on the mind of buyers,” he said. 

When school districts invest in new tech, he said, they’re not just committing to funding it for months or even years, but also to training teachers and others, so they want responsible growth.

“There’s a lot of disruption to K-12 when a product goes out of business,” Khan said. “So people remember this. They remember, ‘Hey, we committed to this product. We discovered it at ISTE two years ago and we loved it. It was great — and it’s not here anymore. And we don’t want to go through that again.’ ”

The number of Hoosier families using an Indiana Education Scholarship Account (ESA) — meant to help students who require special education services — is up 200% for the upcoming school year, the Indiana Treasurer of State announced Monday.

The agency said more than 50% of the $10 million appropriated for ESAs in the 2024-25 academic year has already been committed to eligible students. The program application deadline is till two months away, on Sept. 1.

The office said that between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, the number of K-12 students with disabilities who applied for and received ESA dollars increased by more than 200%.

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Provider participation also increased by more than 130% for that same time period – with more joining “each week,” according to the treasurer’s office.

Additionally, nonpublic schools educating ESA students increased by more than 350% between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 terms.

“These numbers are proof positive that this program is hitting the mark with parents and nonpublic schools, and our provider pool is growing across the state,” said Tina Kaetzel, executive director of the ESA program within the state treasurer’s office. “That provider data point is crucial, because providers are significantly instrumental to both parents and nonpublic schools in providing support and services to customize education for our special-needs kids.”

Kaetzel said the ESA program is continuing to grow, noting that 20% more providers are registered with the program for the 2024-25 school year compared to the year prior. The number of non-public schools participating in the program has additionally grown by 50%, compared to the 2023-24 school year.

“We’re seeing strong activity, with more applications coming each day — so parents will have their best chance of funding availability if they apply now,” Kaetzel said.

To be eligible for an ESA, school-aged Hoosiers must have an active service plan, Individualized Education Plan or Choice Special Education Plan (CSEP). They must also have an income below 400% of the Federal Free or Reduced School Meals limit, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

Accounts set up by the state treasurer’s office provide each qualifying student with thousands of dollars for private school tuition and various other educational services from providers outside of their school district.

Other expenses can include transportation, examinations and assessments, occupational therapy, paraprofessional or education aides, training programs and more.

The ESA program was created by the General Assembly in 2021 despite pushback from public education advocates who argued that the program lacks oversight and takes money away from traditional public schools.

During the 2024 legislative session, a top state Republican lawmaker floated a bill to eliminate the ESA program — in favor of a new grant program that would allow all Hoosier families, regardless of income, to choose where their students get educated.

The proposal did not advance, but discussion around the measure previewed possible legislative momentum in 2025.

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and X.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma reached a new milestone on Monday with a new superintendent taking office in Oklahoma City Public Schools.

For the first time, Black women are simultaneously leading the state’s two largest school districts, OKCPS and Tulsa Public Schools.

Jamie Polk stepped into the OKCPS superintendent role on Monday, succeeding Sean McDaniel.

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Ebony Johnson became the first Black woman to lead the Tulsa district, the state’s largest by enrollment, when she was picked to be interim superintendent in September and hired permanently in December.

Polk said she looks forward to working with Johnson to enrich students’ educational experiences and opportunities.

“It is our shared belief that every child should see themselves represented in the educators and leaders who guide them in their educational journey,” Polk said.

Tulsa schools did not return a request for comment from Johnson.

When Johnson was promoted in TPS, Oklahoma had only one other Black female superintendent working in the state at the time — Cecilia Robinson-Woods at Millwood Public Schools.

Robinson-Woods said she sees Johnson’s and Polk’s hiring as a “big step” for women, especially Black women, to be given the confidence and trust to lead a school district.

It’s also a boost in representation of groups that aren’t always well served, she said.

“It is not a secret that minority children, especially Black children, have the lowest test scores in everything,” Robinson-Woods said. “It’s not to say just because you have someone of color that things are going to change for those learners, but it does at least give you an insight, and it does at least broaden the conversation about what kids need.”

Research has shown a positive impact on minority students’ test scores and long-term outcomes when they have a teacher of their same race.

But the demographics of educators and school leaders in Oklahoma public schools are vastly different from that of the students they serve, according to state data from the 2022-23 school year. While 77% of public educators in the state are white, more than half of all students are racial or ethnic minorities.

Having diverse leadership is important in districts that want to prioritize equity, said Karlos Hill, regents’ associate professor of African and African American studies at the University of Oklahoma.

“We care about equity both in terms of making sure our kids are fairly educated, but we also should care about the people who are educating them,” Hill said, “and making sure that there’s a diverse group of, not only teachers, but diverse leadership to make sure that the policies (and) the procedures of the school are not just reflective of one group, but of the community.”

Hiring Black female superintendents is significant in the context of the state’s “long and deep history of exclusion” for people of color, said Hill, who is also the OU president’s adviser for community engagement.

That history, he said, is the reason Oklahoma didn’t reach this milestone decades ago.

“If we care about equity, we will care about that history of exclusion and the ways in which it shows up today,” Hill said.

Unlike in Tulsa, there are Black female predecessors in the Oklahoma City superintendent’s office. The first was Betty Mason in 1992, who also was the first woman and the first African American superintendent to lead OKCPS.

“We all owe her a debt of gratitude for setting the stage for the historic moment we find ourselves in today,” Polk said.

The new superintendent said her district will continue to recruit diverse teachers through its “Grow Our Own” program. The initiative, founded in 2016 at the OKCPS Foundation, covers the cost of a teaching degree for paraprofessionals working in the district.

Twenty-five teachers, most of whom are bilingual or racially diverse, have earned a bachelor’s degree through the program so far, and another 81 are on track to graduate this summer. The OKCPS Foundation launched a similar program to support aspiring school administrators who want to earn a master’s degree.

Sen. George Young, D-Oklahoma City, said he hopes Polk will continue to emphasize the teacher pipeline program and overall teacher pay. Young has represented the historically Black area of northeast Oklahoma City in the state Legislature for 10 years and is a pastor in the community.

“When you’ve got folks who look like you standing in front of you, it does make a difference,” Young said. “It doesn’t make all the difference, but it sure does make a difference. And so I hope that she will remember that and see the things that made a difference in her life. And I think that’ll make a difference in the life of our school district.”

An Iowa native, Polk spent 25 years as a teacher, principal and district administrator in Lawton Public Schools, where she moved because of her husband’s military career. McDaniel, the outgoing OKCPS superintendent, hired her in 2019 to oversee the district’s elementary schools.

Leading the neighboring district of Millwood, Robinson-Woods said she’s gotten to know Polk as a “very personable” leader and a data-driven problem solver.

Similar descriptions have been applied to Johnson, who is trying to engineer an academic turnaround amid heavy pressure from the Oklahoma State Department of Education. Johnson was raised in Tulsa and spent her entire career in the district when the local school board promoted her from chief academic officer to superintendent.

Like Johnson, this is Polk’s first superintendent job, one she said she’s “deeply honored” to accept.

“Moving forward, OKCPS will remain steadfast in our dedication to cultivating leadership that reflects the vibrant tapestry of the communities we serve,” Polk said.

Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on Facebook and X.

Philanthropic investors can shift this paradigm by demanding that nonprofits partner with employers to make written commitments to underserved youth to provide full-time employment based on objective criteria, such as satisfactory completion of training milestones or other proof of mastery of necessary skills. Too often, employer partnerships — particularly involving young people who are out of work or not enrolled in school — carry minimal expectations for significant employer investment or involvement, allowing companies to benefit from training programs that do the heavy work of talent acquisition and development without having to make tangible contributions to those efforts. Funders must require more than superficial employer partnerships that offer little beyond internships and minimal direct involvement.

Heckscher Foundation for Children led such a paradigm shift with financial support for a first-of-its-kind workforce program using two-year grants to increase employer investment and commitment in talent development. Through the Heckscher Foundation Challenge, New York state and city colleges and nonprofit community-based organizations were invited to submit proposals, with employer partners, for meeting workforce needs in the state and boosting employment and earnings outcomes for young adults under 25 years of age.The application process required employer partners to commit to hiring, in writing.

The call for proposals in June 2023 was a resounding success; nearly 100 were received from across the state, culminating in a total of $7.6 million in support to 20 grantees and their employer partners. These ranged from community-based organizations such as Commonpoint Queens, The Door, East Side House, Henry Street Settlement, JCC of Staten Island and Say Yes Buffalo to established workforce programs like NPower, St. Nicks Alliance and Wildcat Services and specific industry training programs like Covenant House, Drive Change, Hot Bread Kitchen and Reel Works. The roster also counts three City University of New York colleges, three SUNY State University of New York colleges and one high school dedicated to career and technical education.

Along with the nearly 100 proposals came 234 employers that submitted letters committing to guarantee hires. They are geographically diverse, representing the entire state of New York, from New York City to rural locations. Employers were also diverse across industries and business sizes, ranging from companies with 10 or fewer employees to multinational corporations with over 90,000 workers. However, not all industries were represented, or on the leading edge of talent development, and there was limited involvement from several prominent New York industries, such as financial institutions. While the employer response to the Heckscher Foundation Challenge is to be commended, it should serve as a call to action for employers and industries that have yet to shift their partnership paradigm to a more direct and active role. 

Industries encompassing applicants to the Heckscher Foundation Challenge:

The foundation required all grantees’ applications to detail short- and long-term outcomes that the youth would accomplish to show how those goals would be carefully tracked and reported on through quarterly status calls. As of June 2024, the one-year anniversary of the grants, the majority of participants are on target to meet their training and hiring commitments. While some of the programs are still ongoing, with young people continuing to sign up or still working to complete their training, several have already seen multiple cohorts finish. Thus far, over 180 young people have completed training, with 98% earning industry-relevant certifications/credentials or passing required licensure exams. In addition, 98% of them secured full-time jobs with employer partners, with an 80% preliminary three-month retention rate  in jobs that traditionally experience high turnover, such as food services.

To view the grantees and their employer partners, please visit the Heckscher Foundation Challenge training partners and employer partner webpages.

By funding programs that do not include job commitments from employers, philanthropic investors miss a critical opportunity to catalyze deeper, transformative change within organizations and the broader community. Without these higher standards, philanthropic funds are underutilized, perpetuating cycles of inequity, underemployment and minimal impact rather than fostering genuine, lasting progress in employment practices and community empowerment.

Disclosure: The Heckscher Foundation provides financial support to The 74.

She’s called on a Massachusetts-based consulting firm, SchoolWorks, to lead an independent review of the system. Based on the deplorable condition of many schools and the “exceptionally low bar” for instruction found by Johns Hopkins University researchers in 2019, the district needed extensive work. But it has made some positive strides, slowed somewhat by the pandemic.

“What we don’t want is some of the progress that has been made to slide backwards,” she told The 74.

Providence has also seen a sharp decline in enrollment since the state took over — an almost 17% drop, according to a December report from a state policy organization.

Like most communities, Providence faces resistance to closing or consolidating schools. Its school board opposed Infante-Green’s move to merge 360 High School with another school on the same site. Opened in 2015 with help from a $3 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, 360 High offers students a smaller, more personalized learning environment. Families sued over the closure, saying it would violate the right to language services of the many English learners who attend. 

But Infante-Green, herself an English learner who began her career as a bilingual educator in New York City, said students at the school are missing out on critical programs that can prepare them for college.

“This school did not give kids AP courses. It’s not accredited,” she said. After the merger, they’ll have access to honors classes and the opportunity to take college courses.

The state of the district is one of numerous issues Infante-Green is navigating at home as she takes on a more prominent role nationally. In October, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona appointed her to the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the collection of tests known as the Nation’s Report Card,

Scott Marion, another member of the board and director of the nonprofit Center for Assessment, said state and local education leaders bring a practical outlook that researchers and testing experts sometimes lack.

“We absolutely need chiefs like Angélica on NAGB,” he said. “In many ways, they’re one of the prime audiences we hope use NAEP results.”

Infante-Green sought help from Marion’s center in 2021 to better understand the extent of pandemic learning loss. Her department spent relief funds on mid-year tests at a time when statewide assessments were canceled. Those snapshots of students’ learning allowed  researchers to map how long it might take students to get back on grade level.

“We had that data in real time,” she told The 74, “and we were able to figure out what kind of support we needed to put in place.” 

In a wide-ranging interview with The 74, Infante-Green also discussed the state’s efforts to wean districts off federal relief funds and measure the additional money’s impact.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re among the state superintendents who began their tenure before the pandemic. What kind of perspective does that give you on recovery? 

The leaders that were here before the pandemic, during the pandemic and are still here — and there aren’t too many of us — we do see a couple of things. One is the way that we were able to pivot and do things in such short fashion. That tells us the possibility of what we can do moving forward. I think that is really exciting. We have also seen how tired people are. I have to think about how we support people, how we do our work differently, how we innovate.

With relief funds, we were able to pay for interim assessments so we could have data at the state level. We met with superintendents, and we talked about the areas that we really needed to focus on. Everybody thought it was going to be the older grades, but it was really the younger kids that were impacted, and we had that data in real time.

Speaking of data, the Education Recovery Scorecard from Harvard and Stanford universities gives us a district-level view of how students are doing that we don’t get from the National Assessment of Educational Progress or from the Trial Urban District Assessment, which has only 27 districts. Do you see more collaboration between NAEP and researchers in the future to do that work?

I do see more opportunities. We’re all in a place where we think that the things that we’ve done have made an impact, but we haven’t really done the research nationwide to pinpoint that exactly. We know that tutoring has helped. 

We see the benefit of kids having more hours. In Providence in particular, we negotiated with the teachers union to get an extra 30 minutes a day, which is an extra 15 days a year. Gov. Dan McKee also has this program called Learn 365, where mayors open centers so kids can go there after school, Saturdays, even Sundays. We’re not even calling it remedial. It’s about really doubling down on the things that they need. 

I wanted to shift to one of the biggest topics on everyone’s mind, the expiration of federal relief funds and the so-called fiscal cliff. Do you expect to apply for an extension? 

I don’t foresee us applying for it. Our districts have been doing a good job of getting the kids the support that they need. But I am going to be the number one advocate for continued funding. I know that there’s no appetite for it in Washington, but there has to be. 

Inline pullquote: “I am going to be the number one advocate for continued funding. I know that there’s no appetite for it in Washington.”

Our math scores are back to where they were pre-pandemic, but we don’t think that’s where we should be. We should be moving forward. We want to continue to make progress. It almost seems unfair that now we’re just going to say, “OK we see these things work, we’ve seen results and now we’re just gonna take it away.” 

How is Rhode Island preparing, and what concerns you? 

The birth rate is down. We knew that was coming. Across the nation, they’re closing school buildings, laying off employees. We held districts harmless for two years with their enrollment loss. And this is the first year that they’re going to get 40% of funding for each student they lost. Then the second year they’re going to get 25% of that funding so there isn’t just a cliff.

Where’s that money going to come from? 

It’s coming from the state, and I hope it continues. There is this desire to have a gradual decline as opposed to the money just going away. It’s not just the expiration of relief funds. It’s also the decline in population. 

How much of a cushion is that for districts? 

It’s not going to be much, unfortunately. They are going to have to get rid of staff. Many of them have coaches that will probably be gone. I think the mental health positions are going to be gone, which is really worrisome. These positions really helped kids transition back into school.

Inline pullquote: “They are going to have to get rid of staff. Many of them have coaches that will probably be gone. I think the mental health positions are going to be gone, which is really worrisome.”

We’ll lose not just positions, but support. Tutoring after school is going to be very difficult to do. For Providence, those extra 30 minutes are going to go away. All the districts are going to have a deficit.

What has the state done to try to measure the impact of those funds? 

We know how much districts received, how they spent their money and if they had tutoring. We try to tie the tutoring to actual results. For example, Providence ran spring academies last year and this year — at a time when schools are usually closed in February and in April. And let me tell you, the kids showed up. They still need the support, academically. We have something called the Right to Read Act [which requires teachers to be trained in the science of reading]. By 2025, our K-8 teachers will all be trained, but we’re at about 75 percent. Some are in their second year. We can track the kids that have been with them to see what’s worked.

We’re going to have limited funds. What are we going to invest in? What are we going to really keep our eye on?

You mentioned some specific efforts in Providence, and I know a lot of families there are anxious for different reasons. Families worry about school closures. Others are trying to get into charters, but there isn’t enough space.  What do you say to families in traditional schools as well as those on waiting lists for charters?  

I believe in families having the ability to be in the best school for their kid, whether that be our traditional schools or our charters. I’ve been pretty clear on that. What’s interesting about Providence is that about 19,000 children apply to charter schools and there are only 22,000 students in the district. So they want charter schools. But my role in this intervention is also to ensure that the existing schools are high-quality. That may feel uncomfortable for certain people. 

Inline pullquote: “What’s interesting about Providence is that about 19,000 children apply to charter schools and there are only 22,000 students in the district. So they want charter schools.”

Last year, we closed down two schools [Lauro and Feinstein elementary schools]. With Feinstein, we fixed the roof three times and it continued to leak. And there was a sewer leak in the basement. It was awful. Nobody should have been in that building. The other building, it kept raining inside. Teachers had buckets by the windows to collect rain. It costs a lot of money to heat and run those schools. We have to start making decisions for the district that are fiscally and educationally sound.

Nobody really likes change, but we have to think about the district as a whole. It’s happening nationwide. 

At the same time, you have to think about the demand for seats in charter schools. Stop the Wait RI, a charter advocacy group, says there were 31,000 applications for charter schools for next school year, an increase over 2023-24 of more than 3,000.

These schools that we’ve closed down, we don’t own the buildings. The mayor owns the buildings. Charters are welcome to apply for buildings that have been taken offline.

Charter schools go through a rigorous application process. We had expansions, so the numbers will be growing, but it will be the same providers at this point.

Finally, what needs to happen for Providence schools to return to local control?

We said that in 2024, we’d look at how much progress has been made. But when that was decided in 2019, nobody anticipated a pandemic. There are things that have to be true — whether it’s structurally sound, whether the board is ready to take it back, whether the city is fiscally able to support the district. 

What we don’t want is some of the progress that has been made to slide backwards.

However, what would it look like to create a partnership across state lines that is grounded in a community’s history and needs while also incorporating knowledge and support from another region?

That partnership now exists between two organizations – one based in Connecticut and the other in Indiana – to drive an important goal: growing the number of high-quality public charter schools for Connecticut students and families. 

This goal isn’t new for Connecticut. In fact, the state’s charter school law is nearly three decades old, and there are a number of dedicated advocates and organizations who work hard to grow and strengthen public school options for Connecticut families. 

This new partnership, between Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity (LEAD) from Connecticut and The Mind Trust from Indianapolis, was created to add to the growing coalition of community members and leaders who want to see more high-quality public school options in the Constitution State.

LEAD’s work is focused on programs that empower the community, like English as a Second Language classes, youth services, health and financial literacy programs, and more. Its team is passionate about meeting families where they are to give them the resources they need to create a bright future, and LEAD was founded in part to support grassroots advocacy efforts in expanding charter school options — something its leaders continue to hear is needed from the families they work with. 

There is no time to waste in moving the needle on expanding access to high-quality schools. According to a report from the Connecticut Charter Schools Association, during the 2023-2024 school year, more than 5,000 Connecticut students were waiting to enroll in a charter school. Additionally, in the 2022-2023 school year, 95% of all charter schools out-performed schools that serve the same student population in English Language Arts (ELA) and math on the SBAC, Connecticut’s annual state standardized assessment. 

The need and desire for change is growing each year. When LEAD looked at how other states have expanded access, its leaders saw how innovation and strategic investment in proven models and leaders could work. That led the organization to Indiana and The Mind Trust. 

The Mind Trust believes there are three essential elements to a great school: autonomy, accountability, and a leader with the talent to bring a vision of educational excellence to life. Since 2006, the organization has supported the launch of 15 education nonprofit organizations and more than 50 public charter and innovation network schools in Indianapolis that will serve more than 21,000 students when they are at full scale. 

When it first started its charter school growth work in Indianapolis, The Mind Trust set out with the belief that to increase the number of public charter schools in the city it should both build up existing local talent and attract new talent to the city from other regions. Over the years, the resulting initiatives have received over 4,000 applications from education entrepreneurs across 48 states and 36 countries. 

Indianapolis is now proudly home to locally grown networks that have been founded by some of the most qualified and effective school leaders in the country. As a result, researchers from Stanford University, the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Washington have all found that Indianapolis charter schools lead their students to significantly more academic progress than local traditional public schools.

In 2022, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) found that Indianapolis charter school students achieved 64 more days of learning in reading and 116 days in math, compared to their district school peers. Black students at Indianapolis charter schools had even more significant gains, with 86 more days of learning reading and 144 days in math relative to their district peers. 

In 2023, the University of Arkansas found that Indianapolis, by far, is home to the most cost-effective charter sector in the country for both reading and math. Indianapolis’ charter sector has the largest ROI advantage out of any city in the study. For every dollar invested in Indy charter students’ education, they can expect to earn an average of $4.75 more than their traditional public school peers throughout their lifetime.

Through the new partnership, LEAD and The Mind Trust will work together to create a new locally designed fellowship that will give experienced school leaders the time and resources needed to launch new public charter schools in Connecticut. 

The development of this fellowship must be done alongside families, educators, advocates and community members who have a shared vision for better public education in Connecticut. Leaders at both organizations are committed to listening to and working closely with the community to design this initiative, select fellows, and ensure its outcomes are in line with what is best for Connecticut students and families. 

LEAD and The Mind Trust look forward to collaborating with the vibrant education community in Connecticut. Working together, we can all reimagine what is possible through partnership, innovation, and an unstoppable drive to do what is best for students and families. 

Brandon Brown is CEO of The Mind Trust, an education nonprofit focused on transforming K-12 education in Indianapolis and beyond. 

Lucas Pimentel is the CEO of Latinos for Educational Advocacy and Diversity (LEAD), a nonprofit that works to expand educational options and civic engagement in the state of Connecticut. 

Disclosure: The Mind Trust provides financial support to The 74.

The bowls of Caesar salad, spaghetti and chicken piccata are all made with fresh ingredients. And each bowl has tongs for the half dozen students and a teacher at each table to serve themselves as they rotate the wheel. 

Two students at the Ohio school step to the front of the cafeteria to present what the school’s founding principal A.J. Stich calls the school’s “grace” — its goals for each student when they become adults.

One of the two students reads each line aloud, then pauses for the 102 kindergarten through fourth grade students in the cafeteria to repeat it: 

Each day, I will work to achieve our Age 27 goals:

Being physically and mentally healthy,

Demonstrating character and integrity,

Preparing for a career and for financial independence,

And living my own definition of success.

May this food help our bodies;

We are thankful for the hands that made it and for the friends we share it with.

Family-style meals and the daily repetition of goals for their adult lives are one of several ways the Greater Dayton School sets itself apart from a typical school. 

A private school that only accepts low income students, Greater Dayton is designed to help them with more than academics. Its goal is to let students set their own course in life and be financially independent and healthy as adults, not just graduate from high school or go to college. 

Launched in the fall of 2022, the Greater Dayton School has income limits for all students, other than children of staff who may also attend. The school has a health clinic for students, extended school days until 5 p.m, two teachers in every classroom, individualized learning plans, and even schoolwide toothbrushing times.

Initially housed in a former Salvation Army administration building, the school hopes to grow to about 400 students from preschool to eighth grade. It’s still an experiment that’s too young to show a track record of success, but it already has a buzz around the city and drew Ohio’s Lt. governor to the grand opening of its new, much larger $50 million building this spring

“It’s really about the whole child, not just about academics,” said Larry Connor, a Dayton real estate developer whose company and foundation is funding most of the school. “Make no mistake, academics is important. But their physical health and their mental health is integral in obtaining good academic outcomes.”

Though the school is partially funded by state tuition vouchers of $6,165 per student, Greater Dayton spends $30,000 a year or more per student, with Connor and his company’s foundation covering the gap.

“Our objective is to build a model that can be replicated in cities throughout the United States,” Connor said. “We’re trying to take a really long term view, because every community in America has this type of need.”

Stich and other school leaders consulted successful schools across the country such as Meeting Street Academy in Charleston, S.C., Christina Seix Academy in Trenton, N.J., and the Waterside School in Stamford, Conn. as they built their plan to offer all the supports research says low-income kids need.

The school creates personal education plans for each student and lets them set much of their plan for each day — what the school calls their playlist — to give them ownership of their learning. 

It limits classes to 20 students, then places two full-time teachers in each class. Students do much of their work online at their own pace, using programs from Zearn or Lexia while the teachers work with students individually or in small groups. 

Students are grouped with a few grades in each classroom to intentionally mix ages. Eventually, after it adds grades, the school will group students in classrooms of Prek, K-2, 3-5 and 6-8.

“From an academic standpoint, I think it’s wonderful,” said Brittany Wylie, who teaches grades 2-4 as the school grows. “And it’s effective. In years past, if I had a fifth grade classroom, the actual academic level of those students could range anywhere from kindergarten through sixth grade, but I was expected to teach them all just fifth grade curriculum, whether they actually grasp it or not. Here, I feel like I’m actually seeing students understand and digest and then be able to move on.”

Greater Dayton also supports students and families with after school activities until 5 p.m. The extra time solves child care needs of working parents, while also helping close the gap between what suburban and affluent students receive in enrichment activities and what lower income families can afford.

While some students build models of rockets or the Taj Mahal with Legos, others run a store where others buy items with “money” they earn by meeting school goals. Mark Kreider, the school’s financial literacy teacher, oversees the store after spending the day teaching even the youngest students the basics of business and savings.

“There’s no such thing as too early,” Kreider said. “I really think that this idea of building wealth, versus just surviving is such a critical concept for our kids,” said Kreider. “We talk about financial independence…because if you’re in this cycle of paycheck to paycheck, drowning in debt, your options are just incredibly narrow.”

“I don’t know what our kids are going to do when they get older,” he added. “But I just want them to have options. Will they all own a small business? Probably not. But they should at least know how and know how to think about it. It’s almost like a worldview, a perspective. Hey, that’s the dream.”

Students also earn freedom with good behavior, earning the right to work outside the classroom, often on the giant open staircase and terrace with couches that overlook the cafeteria.

Student health is a major part of the school’s mission. Students have more than an hour of physical education each day. Meals are at least 80 percent whole foods, with minimal processing or sugar, other than a dessert only on Fridays.

The school also has created a medical and dental office in the school, run by Dayton Children’s Hospital, so students can receive care as part of the school day, without parents having to take them out of school. Because Medicaid eligibility is a requirement for most students to enroll, the care is already covered.

“When it’s time for kids to go to the doctor, go to the dentist, they walk downstairs, and then they go back to class,” Stitch said.

The school even makes brushing teeth a daily habit by having all students head to the bathrooms at scheduled times to brush, as teachers watch to be sure they do it right.

Mental health is also a priority, particularly since students can come from families facing financial and other challenges. The school has a mental health counselor now for its 102 students and plans to add another as the school grows. 

How much impact the school is having is still unclear. Like other Ohio private schools, its students don’t take Ohio’s state tests. Using NWEA diagnostic test scores and NWEA’s own model for comparing scores to Ohio state tests, the school estimates that students are gaining academically faster than state averages and that 72 percent of its students score as proficient, compared to 45 percent of low-income students in Dayton’s county.

Wylie, who previously taught in the high-poverty Youngstown schools, said the school setting high standards and then rewarding students who meet them creates an atmosphere of accountability and trust that shows students how to thrive.

“We really believe that they can do anything they set their mind to, that they will be successful, and that they are valuable,” she said. “My personal belief is that students from any background, if they haven’t had an example modeled for them, they don’t know any better. They just need the opportunity to be shown.”

Two recent reports from Education Reform Now highlight strategies that high-poverty schools across Massachusetts and Colorado are implementing to drive higher academic achievement. 

We focused on the 25% of schools with the highest percentages of students from low-income families. Proficiency rates for math and English range from 0% to about 60%, signaling that school-based policies and practices can have a marked impact on student achievement. In all, we identified 64 high-poverty “spotlight schools” across the two states that achieved either above-average proficiency rates or upward of 4 percentage points of growth since 2019 in math or English Language Arts.

The leaders of these schools completed surveys and participated in interviews to explain what’s behind their successes. It’s notable that these schools represent traditional public, charter and innovation schools across rural, suburban and urban areas in two very different states, yet there was resounding consensus on what’s behind their achievements. Here are the top 4 strategies they highlighted: 

Data-driven decision-making

High-performing schools use data as a guiding light to drive, monitor, and improve not just student achievement but every aspect of their operations. 

According to Executive Director Bill Spirer of Springfield Preparatory Charter School, a K-8 school in Springfield, Massachusetts, this “obsession with data” is absolutely essential: “[It’s] not in the spirit of turning our students into data points, but in terms of understanding where we can improve and evolve. … We … use data for really everything, whether it’s for finances, for student attendance or for student behavior issues.”

Other schools leverage this across-the-board utilization of data for various purposes: eight Massachusetts schools use Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports systems, and two Colorado schools that implemented the Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BASC-3 BESS) to quantify and address behavioral difficulties and mental health challenges.

Tiered academic interventions

Most spotlight schools use personalized supports to drive academic excellence through Response-to-Intervention (RTI) or Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports (MTSS), which serve as frameworks to provide strong curricula and evidence-based practices during core instruction, supplemented by targeted interventions for students who need additional support. 

Executive Director Nicole Mack of Conservatory Lab Charter, a pre-K-8 charter school in Boston, uses five data cycles throughout the year to monitor student progress and adjust interventions when necessary. Several schools also implemented WIN — “What I Need” — time,an intervention block where all students receive small-group instruction.

Spotlight schools also made creative adjustments in staffing and scheduling. For example, Principal Rafaela Spence of Taylor Elementary in New Bedford, Massachusetts, leads data meetings every six weeks to group and match students with educators who can best meet their needs during daily WIN time, including their classroom teachers, interventionists, special education teachers, and English as a Second Language teachers. Principal Christopher Freisen of Beachmont Veterans Memorial School, a pre-K-5 school in Revere, Massachusetts, hired two English learner teachers and three interventionists to better target students’ unique needs and provide daily small group instruction.

Professional development, high-quality instructional materials and coaching

Ongoing professional development and coaching for teachers is another common thread in the success of these schools. For example, Spence hired teaching and learning specialists who observe and give feedback during instruction, as well as provide model lessons so educators who need additional support can see what exemplary teaching looks like. 

Providing high-quality instructional materials is also important. “Anybody who thinks their teachers can write good lesson plans, they’re wrong,” says Principal Declan O’Connor of Chestnut Accelerated Middle School in Springfield. “They’re not vetted, they’re not scrutinized, they’re not aligned. … Those days for me are long over.”

Family engagement

Spotlight schools across both states have implemented strong family engagement programs. For example, Rocky Mountain Prep charter schools have found great success with “attendance hotlines,” in which designated staffers spend the first hour of each morning calling the families of every student who is absent. Over the past year, Rocky Mountain Prep Fletcher, a pre-K-5 school in Aurora, Colorado, has cut its chronic absenteeism rate in half and now has one of the highest attendance rates in the district. 

Many schools hold family engagement events to build relationships before absenteeism and other problems escalate. For example, Principal Robert Juhrs-Savage of Kemp Elementary School in Commerce City, Colorado, hosts community days where parents participate in SEL-based projects with their children, and Assistant Principal Morgan King of Vanguard Classical School West, a K-8 school in Denver, invites families into the classroom to help with reading groups. This inclusive approach encourages families to be active participants in their children’s education.

Demography need not be destiny. The success stories from Colorado and Massachusetts demonstrate that significant improvements are possible even in the face of adversity. The resounding agreement among school leaders of such a diverse set of high-poverty schools across two very different states confirms that there are common practices that can really make a difference for kids.

The vision was a school focused on a classical educational philosophy, embracing the traditional liberal arts, within a Catholic religious worldview that would be both joyful and affordable.

What began as a tiny school with only 10 students now enrolls more than 150 high schoolers. That flagship school is one of more than 70 independently operated high schools within the fast-growing Chesterton Schools Network, educating more than 2,000 students.

Wildflower Montessori Microschools

Joy and access were two of the guiding principles that spurred Veronica Vital into teaching. Growing up in Mexico, Vital had seen teachers hit their students in class and employ other harsh practices. She decided early on that she wanted to be a teacher who would respect and honor children with kindness. After college, Vital moved to the United States and began working as a teaching assistant in a Montessori preschool where she fell in love with the Montessori philosophy and its child-centered approach to education. She became certified in Montessori education, teaching in both private and public charter Montessori schools in Minneapolis, but she kept feeling the tug toward education entrepreneurship.

“I always wanted to have my own school,” Vital told me. She got that opportunity in 2018 when she launched Cosmos Montessori, a bilingual preschool and elementary public charter school in South Minneapolis. Cosmos is part of the national Wildflower Montessori microschool network that began in 2014 to support smaller, community-embedded, more accessible Montessori schools. Wildflower helps teacher-entrepreneurs like Vital who want to launch their own schools. The network now has more than 60 microschools across the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Most are private schools, but Wildflower public charter schools operate in Colorado, Minneapolis, New York City and Washington, D.C. Today, Vital is leading another Wildflower microschool, Greenbrier, also in South Minneapolis.

Skola Microschool

Just outside of the city, in Roseville, another longtime educator, Kristin Fink, launched Skola Microschool in 2022. A classroom teacher in a conventional private school for 16 years, Fink was growing increasingly frustrated by the standardization and rigidity of traditional schooling. When Covid hit in the spring of 2020 and her school went remote, Fink, like so many parents across the U.S., created an informal “pandemic pod” for her two young children and a couple of neighbors.

“That sparked everything I knew to be true,” said Fink about the learning pod. “Kids want to learn, and if you fuel their fire, they’ll go much further than you could ever take them.” When she returned to in-person teaching in the fall of 2021, Fink was hopeful that there could be meaningful changes in how schooling was done. She was disappointed.

“Everyone was just trying to get back to the way it was,” said Fink, understanding the eagerness for a return to normalcy. “But I thought that this was our chance to build something new. I felt so philosophically alone in my workplace. Why would anyone ever want to go back to the way it was?”

The next fall, Fink and her longtime colleague Ginger Montezon, opened Skola as a faith-based K-8 microschool. All students are recognized homeschoolers who attend the program up to five days a week at an annual cost of $6,250. With about 25 mixed-aged learners, Skola is as big as Fink wants it to get. “I want to be kid-facing not admin-facing,” said Fink, explaining that if she grew bigger or scaled to new locations she may lose the time to teach, which is her driving passion.

Retaining the intentionally small, individualized atmosphere of Skola is a key priority, but Fink is supporting the growth of more schools like hers in other ways. “We’ve hosted 12 current educators in our space and four of them have launched or are planning to launch their own microschools,” she said, adding that she will be welcoming five public school teachers from southern Minnesota later this month who are also interested in opening their own school.

Homeschooling Collaboratives

Fink’s full-time microschool for homeschoolers is representative of many of today’s emerging educational models. Parents and teachers alike crave more educational autonomy and flexibility and are seeking and starting alternatives to conventional schooling.

This is particularly true for parents of children with special learning needs. In Stillwater, Amy Marotz launched a full-time homeschooling collaborative, Awakening Spirit, to serve the distinct needs of gifted and neurodiverse learners. After earning an education degree and teaching at a Minneapolis charter school early in her career, Marotz began homeschooling her own children and saw a need for a dedicated program to address neurodiversity within a holistic, nurturing environment. She now runs the program from her home with about a dozen learners and, like Fink, is helping other aspiring founders to create their own microschools, homeschooling collaboratives, and similar learning models.

Veteran homeschooling parents have known for years how homeschooling and its various iterations can support customized, creative education. Some of them, such as Rebecca Hope, are helping a new generation of parents navigate alternative education options. After homeschooling her five children through high school, Hope launched Mid-Metro Academy in 2020 as a twice-weekly, faith-based homeschooling program offering a la carte classes to local middle school and high school homeschooled students. Located in Roseville, Hope’s program now serves more than 200 homeschoolers and continues to grow.

This small sampling of innovative schools and spaces in and around the Twin Cities demonstrates the variety and breadth of emerging learning models I am seeing across the U.S. From faith-based programs to secular options, Montessori models to classical, home-based and storefront, school, homeschool or something in between—entrepreneurial parents and teachers are creating a medley of more personalized, low-cost learning options for families.

As Awakening Spirit’s Marotz told me: “When I started in 2017, no one had heard of a microschool. Now, there are so many options. That is what we need.”

Dozens of seats remained empty when classrooms fully reopened in the 2021-22 school year. Approaches to absenteeism in the 22,000-student district were failing, and administrators were forced to rethink how they could bring children back to school. 

The job was assigned to Shadae Harris, the district’s chief engagement officer. Harris and other staff decided to prioritize family engagement instead of using punitive measures — such as referrals to the juvenile justice system — to increase attendance.

“In order to really improve student attendance, we had to make sure that we were designing a system of engagement that really put families at the center,” Harris said.

Lack of family engagement is a national issue, as nearly 1 in 4 students are chronically absent. A recently released national poll found that many parents don’t think chronic absenteeism is a problem and are unaware of how often their child misses class.

The poll, released in May by the National Parents Union, surveyed roughly 1,500 public school parents around the U.S.

“They haven’t been told [chronic absenteeism] is a problem,” said Keri Rodrigues, the organization’s co-founder. “They haven’t really defined what it is for them, so they’re not seeing that this is a major issue.”

The poll, which was distributed to parents in March, showed that 16% of respondents had a child who missed six to 10 days of school during the 2023-24 school year. Another 4% said their child missed 10 to 15 days, and 3% said their child missed more than 15 days.

Still, 82% of parents said they were unsure about whether chronic absenteeism existed at their child’s school or didn’t think it was widespread.

Students are considered chronically absent when they miss at least 10% of school, or roughly 18 days in most districts, according to Attendance Works, a national nonprofit. These students are more at risk for struggling academically, falling into poverty or dropping out of high school.

Only 8% of parents surveyed said they thought their child was absent more often than most students. Harris said the Richmond district found out through its own research and discussions with families that not only were parents unaware of what chronic absenteeism was, they didn’t think their children were skipping class as much as they actually were.

“You may have a family who thinks they’ve only missed three days, but it’s actually 13,” Harris said.

In response, Harris helped launch several family engagement initiatives in the 2021-22 school year. The district created an attendance dashboard on its website, and teachers began to make home visits to families who had absent children. So far, the district has completed more than 40,000 home visits.

Through “that building of trust, that prioritizing of relationships, we were finding out what the root causes were,” Harris said. “There were issues around health, medical needs, transportation and housing

When Richmond staff found that several families were living in motels because they couldn’t afford rental deposits, they secured grant funding to help those students get stable housing. More than 130 families have been moved to better accommodations through this program, Harris said.

The district deployed school officials to work with parents distrustful of the school system, calling them family liaisons instead of attendance officers, which implied discipline instead of cooperation. Harris created a “We Love You Here” campaign to help families feel supported instead of judged for their children’s absences. 

If the district did need to get law enforcement involved because a student’s attendance failed to improve, court hearings were held in one of Richmond’s middle schools instead of at the courthouse. 

Harris said the middle school’s gym would be filled with booths, each one offering a community resource or service.

“Instead of ordering [the families] to do something more punitive, [the judge] orders them to see every single service,” Harris said. “So they have a little card and they visit the service. Then the judge will give them a certain amount of days to improve attendance.”

The most common reason for absences in the parents’ union poll was physical illness, followed by medical or dental appointments, weather, family emergencies and vacation. When asked why they think students are chronically absent, nearly 30% of respondents said it’s because they don’t want to attend school. About 26% attributed absences to illness and 21% to parents who don’t care.

More than half of respondents — 56% — said parents should face legal consequences if their child misses too much school without an approved reason. But Rodrigues said people need to focus more on why students don’t want to come to school.

“The only thing that’s going to solve their problem in a meaningful way is getting to the reason why kids don’t want to be in the classroom,” she said. “Part of that is because of the mental health crisis and social anxiety. The other piece is that we don’t present compelling reasons for them to actually want to be there and create that [fear] that they’re going to miss something if they don’t show up every single day.”

In the poll, 11% of parents said making school more engaging or fun would improve attendance, while 8% said children should be given incentives for showing up and 6% said schools need to engage with parents more.

Harris said she feels family engagement was the biggest reason why Richmond Public Schools has improved its chronic absenteeism rate, which was at 25% during the 2022-23 school year and at the end of 2023-24 had dropped to 19%.

“If you prioritize your relationships with families and students, you’ll actually get the information you need to find out, like, what are the things that motivate them? What are the things that give them joy?” Harris said. “Families actually already know. We just have to be quiet and listen to them and help shift some of the power to them. Because they’re the experts of their children.”

Your children could be some of a growing number of California kids having their writing graded by software instead of a teacher.

California school districts are signing more contracts for artificial intelligence tools, from automated grading in San Diego to chatbots in central California, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. 

English teachers say AI tools can help them grade papers faster, get students more feedback, and improve their learning experience. But guidelines are vague and adoption by teachers and districts is spotty. 

The California Department of Education can’t tell you which schools use AI or how much they pay for it. The state doesn’t track AI use by school districts, said Katherine Goyette, computer science coordinator for the California Department of Education. 

While Goyette said chatbots are the most common form of AI she’s encountered in schools, more and more California teachers are using AI tools to help grade student work. That’s consistent with surveys that have found teachers use AI as often if not more than students, news that contrasts sharply with headlines about fears of students cheating with AI.  

Teachers use AI to do things like personalize reading material, create lesson plans, and other tasks in order to save time and reduce burnout. A report issued last fall in response to an AI executive order by Gov. Gavin Newsom mentions opportunities to use AI for tutoring, summarization, and personalized content generation, but also labels education a risky use case. Generative AI tools have been known to create convincing but inaccurate answers to questions, and use toxic language or imagery laden with racism or sexism.

California issued guidance for how educators should use the technology last fall, one of seven states to do so. It encourages critical analysis of text and imagery created by AI models and conversations between teachers and students about what amounts to ethical or appropriate use of AI in the classroom.

But no specific mention is made of how teachers should treat AI that grades assignments. Additionally, the California education code states that guidance from the state is “merely exemplary, and that compliance with the guidelines is not mandatory.”

Goyette said she’s waiting to see if the California Legislature passes Senate Bill 1288, which would require state Superintendent Tony Thurmond to create an AI working group to issue further guidance to local school districts on how to safely use AI. Cosponsored by Thurmond, the bill also calls for an assessment of the current state of AI in education and for the identification of forms of AI that can harm students and educators by 2026.

Nobody tracks what AI tools school districts are adopting or the policy they use to enforce standards, said Alix Gallagher, head of strategic partnerships at the Policy Analysis for California Education center at Stanford University. Since the state does not track curriculum that school districts adopt or software in use, it would be highly unusual for them to track AI contracts, she said.

Amid AI hype, Gallagher thinks people can lose sight of the fact that the technology is just a tool and it will only be as good or problematic as the decisions of the humans using that tool, which is why she repeatedly urges investments in helping teachers understand AI tools and how to be thoughtful about their use and making space for communities are given voice about how to best meet their kid’s needs.

“Some people will probably make some pretty bad decisions that are not in the best interests of kids, and some other people might find ways to use maybe even the same tools to enrich student experiences,” she said.

Teachers use AI to grade English papers

Last summer, Jen Roberts, an English teacher at Point Loma High School in San Diego, went to a training session to learn how to use Writable, an AI tool that automates grading writing assignments and gives students feedback powered by OpenAI. For the past school year, Roberts used Writable and other AI tools in the classroom, and she said it’s been the best year yet of nearly three decades of teaching. Roberts said it has made her students better writers, not because AI did the writing for them, but because automated feedback can tell her students faster than she can how to improve, which in turn allows her to hand out more writing assignments.  

“At this point last year, a lot of students were still struggling to write a paragraph, let alone an essay with evidence and claims and reasoning and explanation and elaboration and all of that,” Roberts said. “This year, they’re just getting there faster.”

Roberts feels Writable is “very accurate” when grading her students of average aptitude. But, she said, there’s a downside: It sometimes assigns high-performing students lower grades than merited and struggling students higher grades. She said she routinely checks answers when the AI grades assignments, but only checks the feedback it gives students occasionally. 

“In actual practicality, I do not look at the feedback it gives every single student,” she said. “That’s just not a great use of my time. But I do a lot of spot checking and I see what’s going on and if I see a student that I’m worried about get feedback, (I’m like) ‘Let me go look at what his feedback is and then go talk to him about that.’”

Alex Rainey teaches English to fourth graders at Chico Country Day School in northern California. She used GPT-4, a language model made by OpenAI which costs $20 a month, to grade papers and provide feedback. After uploading her grading rubric and examples of her written feedback, she used AI to grade assignments about animal defense mechanisms, allowing GPT-4 to analyze students’ grammar and sentence structure while she focused on assessing creativity.

“I feel like the feedback it gave was very similar to how I grade my kids, like my brain was tapped into it,” she said.

Like Roberts she found that it saves time, transforming work that took hours into less than an hour, but also found that sometimes GPT-4 is a tougher grader than she is. She agrees that quicker feedback and the ability to dole out more writing assignments produces better writers. A teacher can assign more writing before delivering feedback but “then kids have nothing to grow from.”

Rainey said her experience grading with GPT-4 left her in agreement with Roberts, that more feedback and writing more often produces better writers. She feels strongly that teachers still need to oversee grading and feedback by AI, “but I think it’s amazing. I couldn’t go backwards now.”

The cost of using AI in the classroom

Contracts involving artificial intelligence can be lucrative. 

To launch a chatbot named Ed, Los Angeles Unified School District signed a $6.2 million contract for two years with the option of renewing for three additional years. Magic School AI is used by educators in Los Angeles and costs $100 per teacher per year. 

Despite repeated calls and emails over the span of roughly a month, Writable and the San Diego Unified School District declined to share pricing details with CalMatters. A district spokesperson said teachers got access to Writeable through a contract with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for English language learners. 

Quill is an AI-powered writing tool for students in grades 4-12 made by the company Quill. Quill says its tool is currently used at 1,000 schools in California and has more than 13,000 student and educator users in San Diego alone. An annual Quill Premium subscription costs $80 per teacher or $1800 per school.

Quill does not generate writing for students like ChatGPT or grade writing assignments, but gives students feedback on their writing. Quill is a nonprofit that’s raised $20 million from groups like Google’s charitable foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over the past 10 years.

Even if a teacher or district wants to shell out for an AI tool, guidance for safe and responsible use is still getting worked out. 

Governments are placing high-risk labels on forms of AI with the power to make critical decisions about whether a person gets a job or rents an apartment or receives government benefits. California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said he hasn’t considered whether AI for grading is moderate or high risk, but “it definitely is a risk to use for grading.”

The California Federation of Teachers is a union with 120,000 members. Freitas told CalMatters he’s concerned about AI having a number of consequences in the classroom. He’s worried administrators may use it to justify increasing classroom sizes or adding to teacher workloads; he’s worried about climate change and the amount of energy needed to train and deploy AI models’ he’s worried about protecting students’ privacy, and he’s worried about automation bias.

Regulators around the world wrestling with AI praise approaches where it is used to augmenthuman decisionmaking instead of replacing it. But it’s difficult for laws to account for automation bias and humans becoming placing too much trust in machines.

The American Federation of Teachers created an AI working group in October 2023 to propose guidance on how educators should use the technology or talk about it in collective bargaining contract negotiations. Freitas said those guidelines are due out in the coming weeks.

“We’re trying to provide guidelines for educators to not solely rely on (AI), he said. “It should be used as a tool, and you should not lose your critical analysis of what it’s producing for you.” 

State AI guidelines for teachers

Goyette, the computer science coordinator for the education department, helped create state AI guidelines and speaks to county offices of education for in-person training on AI for educators. She also helped create an online AI training series for educators. She said the most popular online course is about workflow and efficiency, which shows teachers how to automate lesson planning and grading.

“Teachers have an incredibly important and tough job, and what’s most important is that they’re building relationships with their students,” she said. “There’s decades of research that speaks to the power of that, so if they can save time on mundane tasks so that they can spend more time with their students, that’s a win.”

Alex Kotran, chief executive of an education nonprofit that’s supported by Google and OpenAI, said they found that it’s hard to design a language model to predictably match how a teacher grades papers.

He spoke with teachers willing to accept a model that’s accurate 80% of the time in order to reap the reward of time saved, but he thinks it’s probably safe to say that a student or parent would want to make sure an AI model used for grading is even more accurate.

Kotran of the AI Education Project thinks it makes sense for school districts to adopt a policy that says teachers should be wary any time they use AI tools that can have disparate effects on student’s lives. 

Even with such a policy, teachers can still fall victim to trusting AI without question. And even if the state kept track of AI used by school districts, there’s still the possibility that teachers will purchase technology for use on their personal computers.

Kotran said he routinely speaks with educators across the U.S. and is not aware of any systematic studies to verify the effectiveness and consistency of AI for grading English papers.

When teachers can’t tell if they’re cheating

Roberts, the Point Loma High School teacher,  describes herself as pro technology. 

She regularly writes and speaks about AI.  Her experiences have led her to the opinion that grading with AI is what’s best for her students, but she didn’t arrive at that conclusion easily. 

At first she questioned whether using AI for grading and feedback could hurt her understanding of her students. Today she views using AI like the cross-country coach who rides alongside student athletes in a golf cart, like an aid that helps her assist her students better.

Roberts says the average high school English teacher in her district has roughly 180 students. Grading and feedback can take between five to 10 minutes per assignment she says, so between teaching, meetings, and other duties, it can take two to three weeks to get feedback back into the hands of students unless a teacher decides to give up large chunks of their weekends. With AI, it takes Roberts a day or two.

Ultimately she concluded that “if my students are growing as writers, then I don’t think I’m cheating.” She says AI reduces her fatigue, giving her more time to focus on struggling students and giving them more detailed feedback.

“My job is to make sure you grow, and that you’re a healthy, happy, literate adult by the time you graduate from high school, and I will use any tool that helps me do that, and I’m not going to get hung up on the moral aspects of that,” she said. “My job is not to spend every Saturday reading essays. Way too many English teachers work way too many hours a week because they are grading students the old-fashioned way.”

Roberts also thinks AI might be a less biased grader in some instances than human teachers who can adjust their grading for students sometimes to give them the benefit of the doubt or be punitive if they were particularly annoying in class recently.

She isn’t worried about students cheating with AI, a concern she characterizes as a moral panic. She points to a Stanford University study released last fall which found that students cheated just as much before the advent of ChatGPT as they did a year after the release of the AI. 

Goyette said she understands why students question whether some AI use by teachers is like cheating. Education department AI guidelines encourage teachers and students to use the technology more. What’s essential, Goyette said, is that teachers discuss what ethical use of AI looks like in their classroom, and convey that — like using a calculator in math class — using AI is accepted or encouraged for some assignments and not others. 

For the last assignment of the year, Robers has one final experiment to run: Edit an essay written entirely by AI. But they must change at least 50% of the text, make it 25% longer, write their own thesis, and add quotes from classroom reading material. The idea, she said, is to prepare them for a future where AI writes the first draft and humans edit the results to fit their needs. 

“It used to be you weren’t allowed to bring a calculator into the SATs and now you’re supposed to bring your calculator so things change,” she said. “It’s just moral panic. Things change and people freak out and that’s what’s happening.”

For the record: An earlier version of this story misnamed the AI tool made by the company Quill. Quill is both the name of the company and the tool. 

A new state-by-state report shows Indiana’s child well-being ranking has dropped — in part due to Hoosier kids’ dismal math and reading scores, as well as increased rates of youth deaths.

Although Indiana continues to rank in the bottom half of states for its rates of teen births and children living in high-poverty or in single-parent households, those numbers are showing improvement.

The 2024 KIDS COUNT Data Book ranked Indiana 27th among states, three places lower than last year. It’s still a slight improvement, however, compared to 2022 and 2021, when the state ranked 28th and 29th, respectively.

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In specific categories covered in the latest report, Indiana came in 15th for economic well-being, 17th in education, 31st in family and community, and 32nd in health.

“Indiana has significant opportunities and challenges ahead in supporting the well-being of our children,” said Tami Silverman, president and CEO of the Indiana Youth Institute.

“We should celebrate the progress we’ve made, especially in economic well-being areas such as parental employment rates and housing affordability; and we must acknowledge the disparities that persist for our kids,” Silverman continued. “Every child in Indiana should have access to quality education, regardless of their background or circumstances. By addressing these disparities head-on, we not only invest in the future of our children but also in the economic prosperity of our state.”

The report is prepared by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in conjunction with organizations across the county, including the Indiana Youth Institute. It rates states in 16 wide-ranging areas, which are lumped together under the categories of health, education, economic well-being, and family and community support.

Gaps in reading and math

The education portion of the latest edition — focused on student achievement — reiterates low numbers familiar to Hoosier education officials.

Just 32% of fourth graders nationally were at or above proficiency in reading in 2022, the latest year for which numbers were available. That was down from the 34% who were proficient in 2019, before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scores were even worse for eighth grade math. Nationwide, only 26% of eighth graders were at or above proficiency in math two years ago, down from 33% in 2019.

In Indiana, one-third of fourth graders performed at or above proficiency in reading — a four percentage-point decrease from the 2019 rate of 37%, the report showed.

Further, only 30% of Indiana eighth grade students performed at or above proficiency in math, marking an 11% decrease from 2019, ranking the state 11th nationally.

Among Indiana fourth graders in 2022, Black students had an average reading score that was 23 points lower than that of white students. Students eligible for the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) had an average reading score 18 points lower than those not eligible for NSLP, according to the KIDS COUNT report.

Meanwhile, eighth grade Black students in Indiana had an average math score that was 31 points lower than white students. Hispanic students in the same grade had an average math score that was 19 points lower than their white peers.

The Casey Foundation report contends that the pandemic is not the sole cause of lower test scores, though. Rather, the foundation says educators, researchers, policymakers and employers who track students’ academic readiness have been ringing alarm bells “for a long time.”

U.S. scores in reading and math have barely budged in decades. In Indiana, state education officials have repeatedly pointed out that Hoosier literacy exam scores have been on the decline since 2015.

During the 2024 legislative session, state lawmakers took decisive action as part of an ongoing push to improve literacy and K-12 student performance.

Paramount among the new laws passed was one to require reading-deficient third graders to be held back a year in school.

Stats on youth health and family life

Health-focused portions of the report show that — after peaking in 2021 — the national child and teen death rate stabilized at 30 deaths per 100,000 children and youth ages 1 to 19.

But in Indiana, the death rate has continued to rise. While 29 deaths per 100,000 Hoosier children and youth were recorded in 2019, the rate increased to 36 deaths in 2022, per the report.

The Indiana Youth Institute (IYI) has already drawn attention, for example, to higher rates of mental health crises such as depression and suicidal ideation among the state’s youth. According to IYI data, one out of every three students from 7th to 12th grade reported experiencing persistent sadness and hopelessness. One out of seven students made a plan to commit suicide.

The most recent data available additionally show that nationwide and in Indiana, the child poverty rate improved and economic security of parents increased back to pre-pandemic levels.

Between 2018 and 2022, roughly 113,000 — or 7% — of Hoosier children were reportedly living in high-poverty areas. That’s a drop from 10% between 2013 and 2017, according to the report.

From 2019 to 2022, teen births per 1,000 declined from 21 to 17, and the percentage of children in single-parent families also dropped from 35% to 32%.

Still, some gains

Advocates pointed to “some bright spots” for Hoosier kids and their families in this year’s national report, as well:

Between 2019 and 2022, more parents (75%) had full-time secure employment in Indiana — which surpassed both the national average and that of the four neighboring states: Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Ohio.

In 2022, fewer children (22%) lived in households that faced a high housing cost burden, spending 30% of their income solely on housing expenses, in comparison to the national average (30%).
In 2022, more Hoosier teens (95%) between the ages 16 and 19 were either enrolled in school or employed, an improvement from 93% in 2019.
Far fewer children under 19 (5%) were also uninsured. Indiana saw the fifth-highest decrease nationally in uninsured children between 2019 and 2022 — a 29% improvement.

The report offers several recommendations for policymakers, school leaders and educators that include chronicling absenteeism data by grade, establishing a culture to pursue evidence-based solutions and incorporating intensive, in-person tutoring to align with the school curriculum.

“Kids of all ages and grades must have what they need to learn each day, such as enough food and sleep and a safe way to get to school, as well as the additional resources they might need to perform at their highest potential and thrive, like tutoring and mental health services,” said Lisa Hamilton, president and CEO of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Our policies and priorities have not focused on these factors in preparing young people for the economy, short-changing a whole generation.”

Indiana Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Twitter.

With one legislative session finished and the next about eight months away, Alabama legislators will spend the time in-between deciding whether to develop an entirely new school funding formula.

The House and Senate committees that oversee the Education Trust Fund (ETF), the state’s education budget, held a joint meeting Tuesday to begin discussions about potential changes to the current public K-12 education funding formula.

“It has been 30 years since we changed our funding formula for education, and a lot has changed in the past 30 years,” said Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville, the chair of the House Ways and Means Education Committee, in an interview after the meeting. “We are one of six states out of 50 that continues to fund the way we are funding, on a resource-model basis, so we are looking at what other options we have that would be better suited to that.”

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It is the first in a series of meetings aimed at providing members an education on the workings of Alabama’s Foundation Program, the $4.6 billion program in the ETF which provides funding for schools around the state.

Many states fund their schools using a student-based model, one that takes into greater account not only the number of students within a given school system, but also the students’ composition, such as whether they are English Language learners or someone with special needs.

Under Alabama’s current formula, in place since 1995, the number of students creates a certain number of teacher units. That number of teacher units then becomes the basis of much of the funding.

At a recent State Board of Education work session, State Superintendent Eric Mackey had defined the school as a “hybrid program” rather than a true foundation program because those units are the basis of funding.

“You get what you get based on the number of units,” he said.

According to Allovue, Connecticut, Kansas, California, Tennessee, Maryland and Texas have all moved to a weighted student funding formula in the last decade.

Members discussed not only the funding formula, but also underfunding of schools in lower-income communities with significant minority populations; the role of economic development incentives and their effect on school funding, and the lack of funding for special needs students.

Kirk Fulford, deputy director of the Legislative Services Agency, provided lawmakers with an overview of the Foundation Program.

The amount that schools receive is based on a unit count. The state takes the average number of students enrolled in the school or school system for the 20 days following Labor Day. The number is then divided by the divisor, set by the Legislature for the number of students within a set of grade levels.

If a school has 100 students, and the divisor for K-3 grades is 14.25, the school or school district has a unit count for K-3 grade teachers of 7.01. That is then converted to dollars based on the salary schedule that is set.

The number of principals, assistant principals and counselors for a school is also calculated based on units, and the amount of Foundation Program funding for the school is converted by multiplying that unit count by the money per unit decided by legislators.

Other types of funding are added to the Foundation Program allocation for schools, from transportation expenses to additional money specifically for math and science teachers along with special education.

Money to fund the cost determined for each district is shared between municipalities and the state. The formula is designed so that more affluent locations pay a greater share of the cost than those whose residents are lower income.

Local governments must set property taxes at a minimum of 10 mills in order to receive money from the Foundation Program.

For the coming year, the state portion of the ETF for K-12 schools, including the Foundation Program; transportation, and programs run through the Alabama State Department of Education, is about $5.5 billion. The local fund portion is about $831.5 million.

The amount in local property taxes collected for the school system will vary by the assessed value of the properties within the school system’s boundaries. Poorer areas will generate less tax revenues than more prosperous ones.

Lowndes County, for example, an area with a significantly lower-income population, paid roughly $1.3 million into the Foundation program. Mountain Brook, a wealthy suburb of Birmingham, paid about $7.3 million to the Foundation Program.

School districts with wealthier populations tend to record higher scores on standardized tests, according to an analysis based on FY21-22 spending and School Year 2022-23 scores from the Edunomics Lab based at Georgetown.

The local allocation has irritated some lawmakers who work to increase their economic development to increase school funding, only to have their state allocation reduced, leaving them net neutral.

“We always were under the impression that, ‘Wow, we bring in industry, and they pay $200,000 of property taxes to our schools,’” said Rep. Troy Stubbs, R-Wetumpka, who used to be on the Elmore County Commission. “We felt like we were improving our local schools because we were bringing in more money. However, Elmore County is only a participant in our Foundation Program with our 10 mills. We do not have any local funding. Because of that, all we were really doing was lowering the amount that the state contributed to Elmore County.”

In Tennessee, which moved to a weighted student funding formula in recent years, school districts were required to keep funding at previous levels, according to the Commercial Appeal. The state provided overall more funding to the education budget so that districts received more money by numbers, even if the share they received from the state lowered.

Garrett previously told the Reflector that the Educational Opportunities Reserve Fund, created in the 2022 regular legislative session, could be used in shifting the funding formula.

Schools receive additional funding for specific students, such as those with special needs, from the Foundation Program. The formula automatically factors in the number of students who have special needs at 5%. The unit count is then weighted up to 2.5 for those students to give schools additional dollars for more resources.

Currently, the sole adaptation in the formula is headcount, and doesn’t incorporate the specific needs of some in schools, one that is based on each student, might.

“We know the cost to educate a special needs child is, far and away, more than the average child,” said Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chair of the Senate’s education budget committee. “The cost to educate an English Language Learner is much more than an average Alabama child. Following the trend, or at least looking at the other states who have gone down this road, seeing if we want to consider changing our funding model, how we fund based on a type of student instead of just a student.”

The committees plan to resume the discussions at an August meeting.

Reporter Jemma Stephenson contributed to this story.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and X.

The Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) on Friday approved a new graduate program on artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine at The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

The proposed degree, a Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, would be implemented by January 2027. The program will be the first in the state to specialize in the use of AI for medical purposes and aims to meet the needs of the health care industry in Birmingham and throughout Alabama.

“This program does really seem to be at the leading edge of what’s going on across the country and therefore it’s very exciting,” said Robin McGill, deputy director for academic affairs at ACHE.

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The program aims to train students for AI-focused medical roles. The health care industry is increasingly using AI as the global AI health care market is projected to grow to $12.2 billion by 2030, according to the proposal. The program will train health care professionals in AI applications in medicine, including skills in deep learning, computer vision, and large language modeling for healthcare data.

Rubin Pillay, chief innovation officer at the UAB Heersink School of Medicine, said to the commission that by 2025, when the program is expected to begin, the university system “would have the most comprehensive AI in medicine and healthcare training programs globally.”

“UAB will not only be the only institution in Alabama offering this comprehensive suite of AI training. They will be the only one nationally and globally as well,” Pillay said.

Stephanie C. Dolan, associate director of planning and policy, gave the commission an informational presentation on AI prior to UAB’s degree presentation. In it, she said that training people on AI will be fundamental for the future workplace, especially with an estimated 12 million people needing to change jobs due to AI.

“This means [employees] have to be upskilled and reskilled now, not later,” Dolan said.

The proposal estimates that $4.5 million in new funds will be needed for the program over the first seven years. During this period, the program is projected to generate $6,246,000 in tuition revenue and is expected to be self-sustaining from the first year.

Interested applicants need a four-year US bachelor’s degree equivalent in computer science, data science, statistics, AI, biomedical, electrical or related engineering fields, as well as a 3.0 minimum GPA and a strong background in calculus, statistics, and linear algebra.

Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on Facebook and X.

As the Wyoming Department of Education prepares to roll out a new education savings account program, school-choice advocates are again asking lawmakers to expand the non-public-school assistance program to more families. 

That comes among warnings that expansion could jeopardize its already challenged constitutionality.

It’s the latest twist for a measure that was transformed, killed, revived, amended scores of times, passed by the Legislature, then partially vetoed by Gov. Mark Gordon in March before finally becoming law. The tug-of-war reflected the different outcomes advocates hoped the bill would achieve: early childhood education for some, universal access to non-public-school choice for others.

As it stands, the law creates a program to give income-qualified families state funds to offset private, pre-K tuition and homeschool education costs. Families who earn up to 150% of the federal poverty level — $48,800 for a family of four — can qualify for up to $6,000 to pay for school expenses for a child aged 4 up to 12th grade. Allowed uses include school supplies, tuition or tutors.

Gordon narrowed the income eligibility standards by removing families on the wealthier end of the spectrum when he vetoed parts of the bill before allowing it to pass into law. Gordon’s changes were motivated by constitutional concerns, he noted, pointing explicitly to the Wyoming Constitution’s prohibition on the state giving money to individuals “except for the necessary support of the poor.” 

His vetoed version might not mark the end of the saga; school-choice advocates voiced interest during a Wednesday Joint Education Committee meeting in tweaking the bill again to broaden eligibility. 

“Should we tweak this legislation in the next session?” Sen. Cheri Steinmetz (R-Lingle) asked. “Because we clearly had a different idea of what we were trying to do with this bill then maybe the governor’s veto reflects.”

A rocky path 

The education savings account law has roots in a pair of bills introduced during the 2023 legislature session. They would have given families $6,000 per K-12 student for tuition at any non-governmental school or related educational expenses. Those measures failed, but a new proposal that would also extend the money to early childhood education costs emerged between the 2023 and 2024 sessions. Speaker of the House Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale), who helped block one of those 2023 bills, touted the legislation as a compromise for those clamoring for more early childhood funding and those who want to support parental choice for options like private school or homeschooling.

Questions of constitutionality have swirled around the measure since those interim discussions. Along with the “support of the poor” concern, critics have pushed back on the legitimacy of effectively transferring state funds to religious schools.

The measure traveled a rocky path through the session before arriving at Gordon’s desk. After passing the House relatively unscathed, Senate lawmakers stripped it of income qualifications and pre-K eligibility. The House declined to accept that version, sending the legislation into a negotiation process that resulted in the final iteration.  

The version that landed on Gordon’s desk had a tiered income-qualification system based on the percentage of the federal income poverty level — $6,000 for families earning 150% or below; $4,800 for families earning 150%-200%; $3,600 for families earning 200%-250%; all the way down to $400 for families earning 450%-500%. For a family of four, 500% of the federal poverty level is an annual income of $156,000. 

Gordon eliminated eligibility for all but families at or below 150%. “While the intent to support education and parent choice is commendable, my analysis revealed practical and constitutional complications within the bill’s provisions,” the governor wrote in a letter explaining his vetoes.

Building the program

Wyoming allocated $20 million to seed the account, along with nearly $1 million for contracting and administration costs. Two positions will be created to help administer the ESA program. In anticipation of the Jan. 1 program launch, the education department has established an online information hub to prepare the public for the application process. 

“We know we’ve got to get a lot done prior to [Jan. 1],” Wyoming Department of Education Chief of Staff Dicky Shanor told the committee. A big task is staffing the positions: an educational expert to oversee the academic requirements of the program and a financial expert to manage the financial requirements. The department will also put out a request for proposals for a vendor to partner on setting up some kind of online marketplace, he said. 

In addition, the department also needs to draft and finalize rules for administering the program, which will entail public comment, according to the education department. Those rules will dictate what kind of expenses are allowed, among other things. 

Rep. Ken Clouston (R-Gillette), who co-sponsored the education savings account bill that became law, asked Shanor about state programs that give money to people who earn up to 250% of the federal poverty level. Steinmetz followed with her question about tweaking the act and if that would affect the Jan. 1 rollout. 

Shanor didn’t know exactly how it would affect the timelines, “But I can say that Superintendent [of Public Instruction Megan] Degenfelder has supported the concept of this being as universally available as possible.”

Court test?

“One of the purposes of this bill is to have the opportunity for a court test and contest over what we really can do … in the K-12 system for private and other non-public schools,” Sen. Charles Scott (R-Casper) said to Tania Hytrek of the Legislative Service Office Wednesday. “Even with the veto, this bill provides the opportunity for that kind of a court test … does it not?”

Hytrek confirmed that. “To my knowledge a challenge to the bill has not been filed. But certainly the issues that were pointed out last year a number of times through LSO memos still exist even with the governor’s veto.”

Scott wondered if the program would have to get up and running before a court challenge would come. Hytrek said a court challenge could come either way, but noted that “it would take someone, an interested party, filing a challenge to the legislation which has not happened to date.”

The one individual to give public comment, former representative and current state director of Americans for Prosperity Tyler Lindholm, said his organization supports an effort to restore broader eligibility.

“I hope that you’ll move forward with legislation this year” and rework the process, Lindholm said. “I think the message that was sent by the Legislature with the passage of this legislation is that school choice and parents’ decisions matter. And I think the message sent from the governor’s office was somewhere along the lines of ‘you’re not necessarily poor enough.’ And that’s a rough message.”

For the third year in a row, New Mexico is last in the nation for child welfare, according to the 2024 KIDS Count Data Book released this week.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation prepares the report for all 50 states. Its mission to track child well being in the country focuses on compiling federal data on four factors: family and community, education performance, overall health and economic reality.

New Mexico historically falls at the bottom of this report. Its best placement was in 2021 when the state climbed to 49th in the rankings.

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The 2024 report shows Arizona (42nd) and Texas (43rd) as states with similar issues to New Mexico’s. Colorado (17th) and Utah (3rd) are neighboring states leading on child welfare, the report shows.

Utah was also listed as number one in the nation for the Family and Community indicator that measures teen pregnancies, the number of children in single parent households, living in poverty and the education outcomes in their households.

New Mexico sits near the bottom of the list for that indicator but it is also the one where the state has shown the most improvement since 2019 with more kids living in economically stable homes with better educated parents. Teen births are also down in New Mexico since 2019.

On the other hand, education outcomes in New Mexico and across the country saw declines in three of the four indicators, specifically in reading and math proficiency.

Deficiencies in education

New Mexico’s education performance tracked with the rest of the nation while starting with a notably higher rate of children not proficient in fourth grade reading (79% up from 76% in 2019) and eighth grade math (87% up from 79% in 2019).

“New Mexico’s ranking in the education domain is heavily impacted by national standardized test scores, including fourth grade reading proficiency,” Emily Wildau, KIDS COUNT coordinator at New Mexico Voices for Children, said in a news release. “These scores do not reflect the ability of our children, but rather an education system that is not designed with our multicultural, multilingual students in mind.”

The state’s K-12 Plus Program is mentioned in the report as an example of a state “bolstering services and resources that equip kids to learn.” The program was created by a new state law passed during the 2023 regular legislative session and signed by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

House Bill 130 changed part of the Public School Code to extend instructional time requirements for elementary and secondary education. It also allows for an increase in funding from the state if local school districts and charter schools extend the learning calendar past 180 days, or 155 days for districts with four-day school weeks.

However, the decision to extend the school year is a topic lawmakers, schools boards, educators, students and parents have had differing opinions on. The law setting school calendars based on hours, not days, is currently held up in court and might not be in effect before the new school year begins.

Health indicators help then hurt New Mexico’s score

Health indicators over the last decade have helped improve the state’s scores, but improvements appear to have stagnated over the last couple of years.

The number of New Mexico children without health insurance improved between 2019 and 2022, according to the data book. But the state also reported an increase in babies born at a low birth weight and an increase in deaths of children and teens.

In 2022, New Mexico experienced 40 child or teen deaths per 100,00 compared to the national average of 30 deaths per 100,000. And nearly 10% of babies born in New Mexico were born at low birth weight.

Meanwhile, the state also reported some improvement in the family and community sector, including a decrease in teen births.

Solutions for addressing overall child well being

The KIDS COUNT report offered several solutions for states to consider when addressing overall child well being, including the implementation of more community schools throughout the school districts in the states.

Community schools are public schools that work to meet the needs of children outside of traditional education. This includes providing regular meals to children and families, mental health services and connections to other areas of support.

According to the New Mexico Public Education Department, there were 150 community schools in the state as of September 2023, with 91 schools receiving state grant funding through the department.

The wraparound services provided through community schools were highlighted in the databook as beneficial for addressing factors in children’s home life that might make it a struggle for them to learn in school.

Source New Mexico is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Source New Mexico maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Shaun Griswold for questions: info@sourcenm.com. Follow Source New Mexico on Facebook and X.

Editor’s note: Americans may think they know a lot about the Declaration of Independence, but many of those ideas are elitist and wrong, as historian Woody Holton explains.

His 2021 book “Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution” shows how independence and the Revolutionary War were influenced by women, Indigenous and enslaved people, religious dissenters and other once-overlooked Americans.

In celebration of the United States’ birthday, Holton offers six surprising facts about the nation’s founding document – including that it failed to achieve its most immediate goal and that its meaning has changed from the founding to today.

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Ordinary Americans played a big role

The Declaration of Independence was written by wealthy white men, but the impetus for independence came from ordinary Americans. Historian Pauline Maier discovered that by July 2, 1776, when the Continental Congress voted to separate from Britain, 90 provincial and local bodies – conventions, town meetings and even grand juries – had already issued their own declarations or instructed Congress to.

In Maryland, county conventions demanded that the provincial convention tell Maryland’s congressmen to support independence. Pennsylvania assemblymen required their congressional delegates to oppose independence – until Philadelphians gathered outside the State House, later named Independence Hall, and threatened to overthrow the legislature, which then dropped this instruction.

American independence is due in part to African Americans

Like the U.S. Constitution, the final version of the Declaration never uses the word “slave.” But African Americans loomed large in the first draft, written by Thomas Jefferson.

In that early draft, Jefferson’s single biggest grievance was that the mother country had first foisted enslaved Africans on white Americans and then attempted to incite them against their patriot owners. In an objection to which he gave 168 words – three times as many as any other complaint – Jefferson said George III had encouraged enslaved Americans “to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them.”

Numerous other white Southerners joined Jefferson in venting their rage at the mother country for, as one put it, “pointing a dagger to their Throats, thru the hands of their Slaves.”

Britain really had forged an informal alliance with African Americans – but it was the slaves who initiated it. In November 1774, James Madison became the first white American to report that slaves were plotting to take advantage of divisions between the colonies and the mother country to rebel and obtain their own freedom. Initially the British turned down African Americans’ offer to fight for their king, but the slaves kept coming, and on November 15, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia, finally published an emancipation proclamation. It freed all rebel- (patriot-) owned slaves who could reach his lines and would fight to suppress the patriot rebellion.

The Second Continental Congress was talking about Dunmore and other British officials when it claimed, in the final draft of the Declaration, that George III had “excited domestic insurrection amongst us.” That brief euphemism was all that remained of Jefferson’s 168-word diatribe against the British for sending Africans to America and then inciting them to kill their owners. But no one missed its meaning.

The complaints weren’t actually about the king

Britain’s king is the subject of 33 verbs in a declaration that never once says “Parliament.” But nine of Congress’ most pressing grievances actually were about parliamentary statutes. And even British officials like those who cracked down on Colonial smuggling worked not for George III but for his Cabinet, which was in effect a creature of Parliament.

By targeting only the king – who played a purely symbolic role in the Declaration of Independence, akin to modern America’s Uncle Sam – Congress reinforced its novel argument that Americans did not need to cut ties to Parliament, since they had never had any.

The Declaration of Independence does not actually denounce monarchy

As Julian P. Boyd, the founding editor of “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson,” pointed out, the Declaration of Independence “bore no necessary antagonism to the idea of kingship in general.”

Indeed, several members of Congress, including John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, openly admired limited monarchy. Their beef was not with all kings and queens but with King George III – and him only as the front man for Parliament.

The Declaration of Independence fell short of its most pressing purpose

In June 1776, delegates who supported independence suggested that if Congress declared it soon, France might immediately accept its invitation to an alliance. Then the French Navy could start intercepting British supply ships bound for America that very summer.

But in reality it took French King Louis XVI a long 18 months to agree to a formal alliance, and the first French ships and soldiers did not enter the war until June 1778.

Abolitionists and feminists shifted the Declaration of Independence’s focus to human rights

In keeping with the Declaration of Independence’s largely diplomatic purpose, hardly any of its white contemporaries quoted its now-famous phrases about equality and rights. Instead, as the literary scholar Eric Slauter discovered, they spotlighted its clauses justifying one nation or state in breaking up with another.

But before the year 1776 was out, as Slauter also notes, Lemuel Haynes, a free African American soldier serving in the Continental Army, had drafted an essay called “Liberty Further Extended.” He opened by quoting Jefferson’s truisms “that all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

By highlighting these claims, Haynes began the process of shifting the focus and meaning of the Declaration of Independence from Congress’ ordinance of secession to a universal declaration of human rights. That effort was later carried forward by other abolitionists, Black and white, by women’s rights activists and by other seekers of social justice, including Abraham Lincoln.

In time, abolitionists and feminists transformed Congress’ failed bid for an immediate French alliance into arguably the most consequential freedom document ever composed.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In December, a mom on Long Island, New York, watched her young daughter get onto a school bus, then had to jump out of the way when a car came speeding past on the shoulder. That same month in Minnesota, a child leaving his school bus had to run to avoid being hit by a pickup truck.

Drivers nationwide continue to barrel illegally past stopped school buses, endangering children and caregivers — and sometimes worse. But some states have found it hard to enforce relatively new laws allowing on-board bus camera systems that record the violations.

Recent deaths during school bus stops include those of a parent and student in separate Texas crashes last year and of a high school student in Pennsylvania in 2022. They highlight continued careless driving around school buses despite flashing stop signs and obvious camera lenses. The recklessness may be part of a pattern of more aggressive driving noted by authorities that has caused more traffic deaths despite fewer miles driven overall since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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A survey of school bus drivers last year, conducted by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services, estimated 242,000 vehicles illegally passed school buses in a single day. That was up from the 232,000 estimate for 2019. That year, seven states passed laws to allow automatic camera surveillance to catch suspected violators.

Almost half of states have such laws now. Massachusetts and Oregon considered, but didn’t pass, similar legislation last year. A school bus camera program in Bridgeport, Connecticut, was held up last year amid debates in the state legislature over the size of fines and their impact on low-income communities.

But there are several reasons why enforcement might not have been as effective as intended.

Some safety authorities object to new camera laws that reduced fines and excluded license points and other more punitive actions allowed when the same violations are caught in person by law enforcement. Legislatures may have softened school bus penalties to gain consensus among skeptical lawmakers, authorities say.

Some states also are struggling with the limitations of cameras when it comes to enforcing laws requiring evidence police officers can see in person but cameras might not catch. The cameras might not show school bus markings mentioned in the law or whether students are actively getting on or off buses. Another technical issue: School bus cameras have flagged cars on different streets or in lanes separated by medians, where they’re not legally required to stop.

How it works

Typically, the automatic cameras are engaged when a bus driver turns on a flashing stop sign, triggering a computer program that detects violations and sends them to reviewers to check before mailing a violation notice. But the cameras can’t capture everything.

On New York’s Long Island, a state appeals court threw out a $250 ticket in November, saying evidence from bus cameras isn’t enough to prove a violation. Judges on the court said the camera did not establish that the school bus had correct markings or that it was actively picking up or dropping off passengers at the time of the ticket. That decision could endanger $25 million in annual fines from one county alone if other tickets are struck down.

In Pittsburgh, a district court judge told Stateline he dismisses most cases based on school bus cameras for insufficient evidence from the cameras.

Judge James Motznik said he also objects to the way Pennsylvania’s law, like most state laws allowing automatic camera evidence to identify bus-passing violations, undermines a traffic law that’s more punitive. The camera violations are issued as “civil complaints” with a lower fine and no loss of license points as required by the original traffic law against passing a stopped school bus.

“It was sold as a deterrent to enhance public safety,” Motznik said. “But it’s actually less of a deterrent. If a police officer witnessed this, there’d be a $500 fine, a license suspension, points toward losing your license. A camera sees the same thing, it’s $300 and goodbye.”

State legislatures sometimes have used less-punitive fines, without license points or suspensions, as a bargaining chip to reach agreement on camera enforcement such as school bus cameras, said Russ Martin, senior director of policy and government relations for the Governors Highway Safety Association.

“The thought was like, ‘We can make this more accepted by the public.’” Martin said. “But there’s another side to it. In some ways the points are more important than the fines for the worst violators — it means you can’t just pay your way out.”

Pennsylvania’s law on school bus cameras was updated last year partly to allow a lower-cost way for motorists to contest tickets, using a state hearing officer in a free process instead of a court that requires filing fees, said Jennifer Kuntch, a spokesperson for the state transportation department. Pittsburgh schools recorded more than 9,000 violations since the bus camera program began in July, the district announced last month.

The appeals court ruling was vexing for local governments, said Paul Sabatino, an attorney and former Suffolk County legislative counsel. Cameras are a necessary part of enforcing the law against passing stopped school buses, he said.

“You can’t allow people to endanger children like that, and you can’t call out the National Guard to watch every school bus at every stop,” Sabatino said.

Many school districts use contractors such as Virginia-based BusPatrol, which claims 90% of the market for school bus cameras, with some competition from others such as RedSpeed USA and American Bus Video. The companies may include school bus stop-arm cameras within a package of other automated traffic enforcement.

Justin Meyers, president of BusPatrol, said the company already has addressed evidence questions in New York state by adding to its “evidence packets” the school bus markings and maps showing the bus is on an established route. Suffolk County is the company’s biggest customer, and BusPatrol has made a $40 million investment in equipping school buses there, Meyers said in an interview. It also operates in Pittsburgh.

The company uses computer algorithms and artificial intelligence to detect violations, which are then screened for accuracy by a BusPatrol employee before going to local law enforcement for a final decision on whether to issue a violation notice, Meyers said.

Few statistics available

There are few statistics on the extent of deaths and injuries from passing stopped school buses. Pennsylvania reviewed crash records at Stateline’s request and said 12 such crashes occurred in 2022 and 13 in 2021, with one death in each year — one a student, one a parent — and 23 injuries across both years. Those figures include a crash that killed a 16-year-old high school student in November 2022 as she was trying to board a school bus in York County.

Across the country, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found 53 fatalities, half of them school-age children, between 2000 and 2021 in accidents involving illegal passing of a school bus, according to an analysis requested by Stateline.

In Minnesota, school districts can apply for state funds to install school bus cameras. The Edina school district sought money last year after an “alarming” increase in bus-passing violations reported by bus drivers, along with two injuries to students, according to a press account in the local Sun Current newspaper. The district won $105,000 for cameras, a cost of about $4,000 per bus, and in January reported drivers had been ticketed for 70% of passing violations noticed by bus drivers, up from 5% without cameras.

In one of the Texas fatalities last year, a woman helping her child onto a bus in Upshur County was killed by a vehicle passing the bus, Sgt. Adam Albritton, a spokesperson for the state Department of Public Safety, told Stateline. The crash was reported, a driver was charged with manslaughter, and police are reviewing footage from a video camera on the bus for evidence, Albritton said.

Texas was an early adopter of video cameras to catch school bus passing violations, commissioning a 2008 study on such cameras. The state did not include school bus cameras in its ban on automated traffic enforcement in 2019. Not all school districts participate, but Austin, Dallas and San Antonio are among those that do.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

Cindy Lane takes it personally that Kansas needed a Kansas Blueprint for Literacy initiative to improve preparation of educators to teach reading and funnel more literate students into colleges and the workplace.

Lane, retired special education teacher and former superintendent of Kansas City, Kansas, schools, will soon step down from the Kansas Board of Regents to become administrative director of Blueprint for Literacy. The Kansas Legislature adopted and Gov. Laura Kelly signed into law a bill mandating the state’s education system engrain in current and future teachers evidence-based reading science strategies.

A bipartisan coalition of state legislators earmarked $10 million to implement the blueprint and work to change the lives of 40% of Kansas public school students not proficient at reading.

“Frankly, this is personal,” Lane said. “I was a kid who my favorite subject was recess. It really was. The way that reading was approached at that time didn’t connect with how I think and grow and I really didn’t learn to read until I was in junior high. And, I can’t imagine being a person who never had a teacher that figured out what’s the code for that kid to be able to learn to read. I can’t imagine what their life must be like today.”

Lane, who plans to resign from the state Board of Regents on June 24, will collaborate with universities and school districts to reform instruction of college students studying to become teachers and to provide existing teachers with new literacy tools. The law also required creation of an oversight commission, the establishment of university centers of excellence and regular accountability reports to the Legislature.

“There is an imperative here to make sure that all of our students are highly literate,” Lane said on the Kansas Reflector podcast. “They have to be able to read and write well to be successful today. So, for me, this is dream making. You have a dream. I want to help you get there.”

‘Get off the sidelines’

Blake Flanders, president of the Kansas Board of Regents, said the law could be viewed as the largest workforce development project in state history in terms of targeted training and retraining within the education field.

The Board of Regents, which has jurisdiction over the six state universities, will have a prominent role due to the number of school of education students in the pipeline who must enroll in a pair of three-credit-hour courses offering hands-on experience in teaching reading to children.

Under Senate Bill 438, the state universities must begin offering the two new literacy courses this fall or be sanctioned. Kansas State University and the two other larger universities would lose $1 million if they procrastinated, while Fort Hays State University and the two other regional universities would lose $500,000 if they balked.

“We don’t have enough students reading at grade level,” said Flanders, who argued 40% proficiency among students should be viewed as a crisis. “We’ve got to get off the sidelines. We’re the ones charged with educating the educators. Right? So we’re stepping into the arena to not say we have all the answers, but to open open the tent to everybody.”

The Kansas State Board of Education will be part of the mix given the plan to retrain thousands of licensed Kansas educators in reading instruction, Flanders said. Both boards will be expected to collaborate with the new Literacy Advisory Committee.

Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican and chair of the Senate Education Committee, worked on creating the framework for an inclusive approach to elevating reading instruction with higher education institution, education advocates, school districts and parents. It will add to the state’s deliberate work to improve early literacy success of young children.

“For many years,” she said, “the Kansas Legislature has recognized the solid science behind early literacy success in children. It requires early screening of children, solid teacher training and classroom materials that support evidence-base practices.”

Advisory panel key

The advisory committee established by the law must be in place by Jan. 1 with representatives from universities, community colleges, technical colleges, the state Board of Education, the state Board of Regents and the Legislature.

“This group is essential,” Lane said. “We need all the minds at the table. It’s a big tent kind of mentality. My role is almost like the general manager of a baseball team. And, this advisory committee is on the field in the positions and they will be called on based on their individual knowledge at times, but they also may be called on to go somewhere else on the field and perform.”

Likewise, the advisory panel would develop a plan by Jan. 1 to establish the centers of excellence in reading that would provide assessment and diagnosis of reading difficulties, train educators in simulation labs and support other professional learning opportunities. The intent of the law would be for all elementary school teachers in Kansas to earn a reading instruction credential by 2030.

The law set goals for student achievement. Half of students in third to eighth grades would be expected to achieve Level 3 in standardized testing in reading by 2033, which would mean they understood skills and knowledge needed to be college or career ready. Also, the 2033 target would be for 90% of these 3rd to 8th grade students would read at Level 2, which is viewed as equal to their grade level in school.

Flanders said one estimate indicated the state’s economy would create 56,000 new jobs by 2030. Eighty percent of those would require a baccalaureate degree and the current rate of achievement in reading in Kansas public schools wouldn’t fill that workforce gap, he said.

The state university system would be “committing malpractice” to acknowledge students and teachers were struggling with reading instruction but choose not to be part of the solution, Lane said.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

AI – or artificial intelligence – is often used as a way to summarize data and improve writing. But AI tools also represent a powerful and efficient way to analyze large amounts of text to search for patterns. In addition, AI tools can assist with developing research products that can be shared widely. 

It’s with that in mind that we, as researchers in social science, developed a new database of AI tools for the field. In the database, we compiled information about each tool and documented whether it was useful for literature reviews, data collection and analyses, or research dissemination. We also provided information on the costs, logins and plug-in extensions available for each tool.

When asked about their perceptions of AI, many social scientists express caution or apprehension. In a sample of faculty and students from over 600 institutions, only 22% of university faculty reported that they regularly used AI tools.

From combing through lengthy transcripts or text-based data to writing literature reviews and sharing results, we believe AI can help social science researchers – such as those in psychology, sociology and communication – as well as others get the most out of their data and present it to a wider audience.

Analyze text using AI

Qualitative research often involves poring over transcripts or written language to identify themes and patterns. While this kind of research is powerful, it is also labor-intensive. The power of AI platforms to sift through large datasets not only saves researchers time, but it can also help them analyze data that couldn’t have been analyzed previously because of the size of the dataset.

Specifically, AI can assist social scientists by identifying potential themes or common topics in large, text-based data that scientists can interrogate using qualitative research methods. For example, AI can analyze 15 million social media posts to identify themes in how people coped with COVID-19. These themes can then give researchers insight into larger trends in the data, allowing us to refine criteria for a more in-depth, qualitative analysis.

AI tools can also be used to adapt language and scientists’ word choice in research designs. In particular, AI can reduce bias by improving the wording of questions in surveys or refining keywords used in social media data collection. 

Identify gaps in knowledge

Another key task in research is to scan the field for previous work to identify gaps in knowledge. AI applications are built on systems that can synthesize text. This makes literature reviews – the section of a research paper that summarizes other research on the same topic – and writing processes more efficient.

Research shows that human feedback to AI, such as providing examples of simple logic, can significantly improve the tools’ ability to perform complex reasoning. With this in mind, we can continually revise our instructions to AI and refine its ability to pull relevant literature.

However, social scientists must be wary of fake sources – a big concern with generative AI. It is essential to verify any sources AI tools provide to ensure they come from peer-reviewed journals.

Share research findings

AI tools can quickly summarize research findings in a reader-friendly way by assisting with writing blogs, creating infographics and producing presentation slides and even images.

Our database contains AI tools that can also help scientists present their findings on social media. One tool worth highlighting is BlogTweet. This free AI tool allows users to copy and paste text from an article like this one to generate tweet threads and start conversations. 

Be aware of the cost of AI tools

Two-thirds of the tools in the database cost money. While our primary objective was to identify the most useful tools for social scientists, we also sought to identify open-source tools and curated a list of 85 free tools that can support literature reviews, writing, data collection, analysis and visualization efforts.

In our analysis of the cost of AI tools, we also found that many offer “freemium” access to tools. This means you can explore a free version of the product. More advanced versions of the tool are available through the purchase of tokens or subscription plans. 

For some tools, costs can be somewhat hidden or unexpected. For instance, a tool that seems open source on the surface may actually have rate limits, and users may find that they’ve run out of free questions to ask the AI. 

The future of the database

Since the release of the Artificial Intelligence Applications for Social Science Research Database on Oct. 5, 2023, it has been downloaded over 400 times across 49 countries. In the database, we found 131 AI tools useful for literature reviews, summaries or writing. As many as 146 AI tools are useful for data collection or analysis, and 108 are useful for research dissemination.

We continue to update the database and hope that it can aid academic communities in their exploration of AI and generate new conversations. The more that social scientists use the database, the more they can work toward consensus of adopting ethical approaches to using AI in research and analysis.