Chalkbeat

Apps are helping teachers communicate with families that don’t speak English

2024-03-13T22:36:31+00:00

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Emma Gonzalez Gutierrez has struggled to communicate with the teachers of her five children for years.

She’s tried to stay engaged. She’s attended meetings, gravitated toward Spanish-speaking staff, and relied on translators, including her kids, over the years.

Now, thanks to an app that McElwain Elementary, her Adams 12 school, started using this year, she’s found opportunities to engage in new ways with her youngest child’s education.

Recently, the kindergarten teacher texted her on the app, ReachWell, which allows the teacher to text in English and parents to receive the messages in their own language. The teacher told Gonzalez Gutierrez that her daughter had won a student of the month-type award and invited her to come to the school to surprise her daughter when the award was presented. The small gesture that meant so much to Gonzalez Gutierrez.

“For me it was very exciting,” Gonzalez Gutierrez said. “It was so valuable that she was able to let me know.”

ReachWell and similar translation apps have become more common, and for some teachers, they’ve become crucial as educators work to communicate with the rising number of families that don’t speak English. The apps often allow the communications between parents and teachers to feel personal. Some teachers say it has helped parents open up about issues their child or family is having, which then helps teachers better engage with students.

In addition to seeing text from teachers in their native language on ReachWell, parents can respond in their native language and teachers see the replies in English.

Kayli Brooks, a teacher at Tollgate Elementary in Aurora, uses the app Talking Points, which also allows her to text parents. It also translates texts between parents and educators but does not require families to download an app.

“Families will share that they’re struggling with transportation, or here’s why maybe they’re acting out, or they might text me and say ‘hey this thing happened at home and I think my child is going to be really sad at school today,’” Brooks said. “It’s a huge deal. Families want to be involved in their child’s education no matter where they’re from, no matter what language they speak.”

Brooks said that since her Aurora school began using the app in 2020, she is much more successful at collecting permission forms, for example.

With migrant families who are new to the country and are “kind of overwhelmed,” she said, texting them through the app has also helped them better understand basic information they need to get their children started in school.

Communication that feels personal, through a text, is often more manageable for families than directing parents to online forms and resources, she said.

Sara Olson, principal of McElwain Elementary, said the ReachWell translation app is “a tool that provides equitable access.”

“It’s almost mind boggling to me that some of these folks have maneuvered schools for years not having access,” Olson said. “As a parent I can’t imagine not having access to the information, to the teachers. Every child and family member has a right to have that access.”

Olson said she did not have trouble having all families at her school download the app.

Zuben Bastani created the app ReachWell after he said he saw that some families at his child’s Denver school weren’t getting all the communications. He said he saw children excluded from field trips after arriving at school, unknowingly unprepared — wearing sneakers on the day of a snowshoeing trip, for example — because their families hadn’t understood the school communications.

“It became real apparent, real fast, which families were aware and showed up and which weren’t,” Bastani said.

The app is in use in many schools and districts in the metro area and across the country in places like Pittsburgh. In addition to schools, the company is also partnering with some emergency service agencies to provide emergency notifications — such as shelter-in-place or evacuation orders during natural disasters — that non-English speaking populations can receive in their home language.

Jean Boylan, a community liaison at McMeen Elementary in Denver, also uses ReachWell at her school, but said she also has used Google’s translation app on her phone to greet parents face to face as they pick up students from school. She said staff are all looking for as many ways as possible to communicate.

In her school, concerns about whether new immigrant families have access to the internet, have led staff to start printing materials too. McMeen is one of a couple dozen Denver schools that have enrolled a significant number of new students from Venezuela and elsewhere this year.

But anytime they can communicate with the ReachWell app, it saves time and energy, Boylan said.

The app helps because there are so many languages spoken by families. She said there’s a map in her office with at least 27 countries highlighted, reflecting where the school’s current families come from.

Bastani said ReachWell has found that because parents have to download the app and self-select from more than 130 languages what their preferred language is, many schools find that they’ve been undercounting how many languages their families speak.

On average, they discover 25% more languages after a few months, ReachWell leaders said.

Boylan is now working with Bastani to build out a resource page that ReachWell offers in the app for families. It may include ways for families to access help such as for food or housing.

For parents like Gonzalez Gutierrez, the personal communications they have with teachers are the most critical.

Gonzalez Gutierrez said earlier this year, she realized her kindergartener had become frustrated with an online program the school used for kids to learn math. It was causing the child stress and fear and Gonzalez Gutierrez said she didn’t know how to talk to the teacher about it — until she realized that she could text her.

Letting the teacher know what the problem was allowed them to work together to solve it.

“It’s worth it,” Gonzalez Gutierrez said. “It’s been such a gift for me.”

This story has been updated to reflect that users do not have to download the ReachWell app to get messages through ReachWell, though the downloading the app is an option.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Florida settlement’s limits on ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law may give teachers and students breathing room

2024-03-13T20:50:30+00:00

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Florida teachers can place a photo of their spouse on their desk. School libraries can stock books featuring LGBTQ characters. And anti-bullying efforts can protect LGBTQ students. But restrictions on classroom instruction related to sexuality and gender identity remain.

Those are the terms of a settlement agreement that puts an end to a lawsuit challenging what’s commonly known as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Advocates are hailing the lifting of a “shadow” that had fallen over the state’s schools. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made challenging “woke” ideas in schools a cornerstone of his political brand, also declared victory.

The resolution calls attention to the enormous gray areas created by laws restricting how teachers talk about gender, sexuality, race, and history. These laws simultaneously touch on issues of personal identity where federal law protects students and teachers, and issues of curriculum and instruction where states have broad authority.

Fearful of lawsuits and state investigations, teachers have emptied out classroom libraries, taken down Pride flags, and quit their jobs. A high school class president was told he couldn’t mention being gay in his graduation speech. State officials have blamed local leaders for going beyond the requirements of the law, but never formally clarified what was and wasn’t covered — until the settlement agreement was signed Monday.

Essentially, the agreement means that the law won’t force teachers back into the closet or prevent students from talking about who they are.

Under the agreement, the Florida Department of Education will also disseminate guidance about the law to all 67 school districts.

“The vagueness of this law was intentional,” said Joe Saunders, senior political director at Equality Florida, a statewide LGBTQ rights group and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. “At any point, [state officials] could have offered deeper guidance and didn’t. The only reason they’ve done it now is because we sued them in federal court and forced them to end the most harmful aspects of this law.”

Laws restricting teaching have wide-ranging impacts

As classroom restrictions proliferate, a survey by the research group RAND found that two-thirds of teachers reported self-censoring how they talk about certain social and political issues in the classroom, whether they lived in a state with formal restrictions or not. RAND also found — in a study released this week — that a majority of teachers thought these restrictions harmed learning and made students feel less welcome and less empathetic.

Teachers in Florida were the most likely to be aware of their state’s restrictions, and the most likely to report having changed instruction in response, RAND found. Florida also had more laws restricting instruction than other states.

A recent Washington Post analysis of FBI data found that school-based hate crimes against LGBTQ students quadrupled in states that passed restrictive laws, which include laws governing teaching as well as which bathrooms and sports teams transgender children have access to.

The relationship between state policies and bullying has been in the national spotlight after the death of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary student who died in February after a fight in their Oklahoma high school.

Related: ‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

Some state laws ban discussion of certain topics or require that lessons be “age appropriate” or avoid “divisive” framings, while others require parental notification and the opportunity for parents to opt students out of lessons. Many states leave enforcement to school districts and provide little guidance.

Advocates of these laws say parents have a right to know what their children are being taught, especially on issues that might conflict with their own values, and that schools should focus on core academic subjects.

Students and teachers in states with teaching restrictions told Chalkbeat about LGTBQ student clubs receiving less support, and lessons in literature and history being scaled back to avoid talking about queer references in literature or the movement for gay civil rights.

Legal challenges to these laws are underway in a number of states, but how courts will rule could depend on specifics in individual states. Arizona’s teaching restrictions were struck down, for example, because lawmakers had wedged them into the state budget.

Keira McNett, staff counsel for the National Education Association, said the settlement is important in Florida and “for the national tenor.”

“Many states modeled their law after Florida’s and many are facing lawsuits of their own,” she said. “In many cases, they are overly broad. And when the state is required to actually explain what these vague laws mean, they explain it in a way that is a lot more narrow.”

Settlement provides clarity for classrooms, activities

Roberta Kaplan, the lead attorney for the lawsuit, said the settlement provides immediate relief to Florida students, parents, and teachers who were living under a cloud of uncertainty.

“Every kid should be able to go to public school and have their dignity respected and their family respected,” Kaplan said.

The settlement lays out examples of what’s allowed under Florida law, known formally as the Parental Rights in Education Act:

Teachers can respond to students who choose to discuss their own families or identities and can grade essays that include LGBTQ topics.
Teachers can make reference to LGBTQ people in literature or history.
Student-to-student speech and classroom debates can touch on LGBTQ issues.
Schools can explicitly protect LGBTQ students in anti-bullying efforts, and teachers can have “safe space” stickers in their classroom.
Students of the same gender can dance together at school dances and wear clothing considered inconsistent with their gender assigned at birth.

The settlement clarifies that restrictions on classroom instruction apply “regardless of viewpoint.” In other words, teachers can’t teach a lesson on modern gender theory to elementary students, nor can they teach those students that gender identity is immutable and determined by biological traits.

Kaplan said states have significant authority over curriculum, and that the part of the law specifying such restrictions was unlikely to be overturned on further appeal.

DeSantis’ office in a press release emphasized that the law as written remains intact and “children will be protected from radical gender and sexual ideology in the classroom.”

“We fought hard to ensure this law couldn’t be maligned in court, as it was in the public arena by the media and large corporate actors,” Florida General Counsel Ryan Newman said in the press release. “We are victorious, and Florida’s classrooms will remain a safe place under the Parental Rights in Education Act.”

Settlement ‘allows for a reasonable conversation’ on instruction

Suzanne Eckes, a professor of educational law and policy at the University of Wisconsin, said Florida’s law and others that are vague and broad potentially violate federal laws and protections.

As employees, teachers have limited free speech rights in the classroom, but states cannot discriminate against them on the basis of sex, which forms the basis of many legal protections for LGBTQ people. For example, they can’t penalize a teacher for having a picture of a same-sex spouse on their desk while allowing a colleague to have a picture of her husband. The federal Equal Access Act says that schools can’t limit extracurricular clubs based on their content. Bible study groups, future homemakers, and gay-straight alliance clubs all have the right to meet in school, Eckes said.

Eckes said the settlement suggests the challengers had viable claims on equal protection grounds, even as the state maintains the right to regulate curriculum and prevent teachers from offering personal opinions to a captive audience.

While the settlement creates no legal precedent, it could encourage some school district lawyers, even in other states, to reach less restrictive interpretations of their states’ laws. At the same time, even in Florida, there may be disagreements about what exactly constitutes instruction.

“If a teacher does give an opinion in class, there is this overall idea that teacher speech can be curtailed,” she said. “That is a grayer area than banning the gay-straight alliance or pulling all the books off the shelves due to your own ideology.”

Derek Black, a professor of constitutional law at the University of South Carolina, said the settlement could change the political and cultural calculus around sweeping prohibitions, even though it doesn’t set a precedent for other lawsuits.

“If DeSantis is willing to settle, maybe it’s OK for the governor of Oklahoma to settle,” Black said. “Maybe it denies cultural conservatives the ability to say that some governor or AG in another state is weak.”

The settlement also offers teachers important clarity, Black said: “This type of settlement rebalances things so you don’t have to be so afraid and that allows for a reasonable conversation about what’s instruction and what’s not.”

Michael Woods, a high school teacher in Palm Beach County who leads the Florida Education Association’s LGBTQ caucus, said he’s thrilled with the settlement even as he fears it will take decades to get back to the level of inclusion teachers and students experienced just a few years ago.

His school district’s guide for supporting LGBTQ students shrunk from 140 pages to 14 under Florida’s law, he said. And he stopped leading his school’s GSA club because he would have needed to send permission slips home, which led him to worry about outing students. He’s not sure that’s changed.

Woods also worries about colleagues in smaller, more conservative communities, and about trans educators who often face even more hostility than gay and lesbian teachers.

Still, he hopes teachers in other states feel inspired.

“One of the most hateful states in the nation for LGBTQ rights reached a settlement,” he said. “You have to fight, but it can happen.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Indianapolis Public Schools plans new approach to teaching English learners

2024-03-08T12:00:00+00:00

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At Lew Wallace School 107, principal Arthur Hinton sees students come from all over the world.

The sounds of Spanish, Swahili, Kinyarwanda, and Arabic can fill the halls of the K-6 school on the west side of Indianapolis, near the “international marketplace” neighborhood. In recent years, the school has attracted more students whose families hail from Haiti, speaking French or Creole.

Roughly 70% of the 509 students are classified as English language learners, a population that has only increased since Hinton arrived in 2020.

“Don’t blink again,” he joked. It might grow even more.

Lew Wallace is one of the most racially and ethnically diverse schools in the district. But its growing share of English language learners is emblematic of a trend that’s appearing across Indianapolis Public Schools.

More than a quarter of the district’s students are now classified as English language learners — over 6,700 as of late February, an increase of over 2,000 students since 2017-18. As in many other districts, staffing up for those levels has been a challenge. At the end of February, the district had eight vacancies for English as a New Language teachers, out of 110 positions total. Bilingual assistants can be even harder to come by: The district had 24 vacancies as of that date for its 76 positions.

Amid a larger push for equity in its Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, the district now plans to reimagine how it serves English language learners. Officials say instruction for these students should be more consistent across school buildings, and allow students to learn alongside their native English-speaking peers. Students learning English, they say, should not be restricted from classes such as music or art because they are pulled away for separate English language learner instruction.

The plan includes assigning each school at least one leading English as a New Language “teacher of record,” responsible for overseeing the school’s English language learner program. It also involves more incentives for staff — including a $2,000 stipend for lead teachers and reimbursement for some English as a New Language teachers who also train to become certified to teach English language arts.

The plan is one of the district’s budget priorities for the 2024-25 school year.

“It’s going to be hard, without a doubt,” said Arturo Rodriguez, the district’s director for English as a New Language. “We’re up to the challenge.”

IPS plan encourages more co-teaching, less separation

In a sixth grade classroom at Lew Wallace, Ana Gonzalez sits with a small group of six students, alternating between Spanish and English as she teaches the concept of claims, evidence, and reasoning in language arts.

Just a few feet away, the main classroom teacher is reviewing the same topics with the other students. At Gonzalez’s table, though, the focus is on the English learners.

“You guys in class have been working on claims — finding a claim and finding evidence,” Gonzalez tells her students. “Tener, como, un reclamo y evidencia.”

The school uses a form of co-teaching, where English language learners are in the same classroom as their native-speaking peers, and learning the same things at the same time.

Ana Gonzalez, who teaches English as a new language, sits with sixth-graders in a small group to review the classroom lesson for the day. Gonzalez switches between English and Spanish while teaching amid the larger class of native English speakers.

This is the type of model that the district hopes all schools will embrace.

Right now, instruction for English language learners varies from school to school. Only some IPS elementary schools offer co-teaching, while others don’t have enough staff. Sometimes teachers are used as interventionists — staff who pull students away from class to work directly with them on their specific needs — rather than as co-teachers.

At the middle and high school levels, some English language learners do not have access to electives, because their English as a new language instruction is held during those times.

The district’s plans would mean less separation, and more exposure to the mainstream classroom as students learn English.

The philosophy: Everyone is an English as a New Language teacher.

An English as a New Language teacher “is supposed to help support language development, not necessarily spending their whole day doing intervention,” Rodriguez said. “There are some places where more than 80% of the day, that’s all they’re doing.”

At each school, a lead teacher of record will be responsible for the battery of tests that English language learner students must take to ensure that they pass the language proficiency test known as WIDA ACCESS.

That will free up the school’s other English as a New Language teachers to teach more throughout the day, Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez is also hoping those lead teachers will monitor proficiency on state exams for English learners, which dropped after the pandemic, as it did for other student subgroups.

Last year, 47.9% of these students passed the third-grade IREAD exam, while 3.2% reached proficiency on both English and math sections on the ILEARN in grades 3-8, according to state data. (The figures do not include charter schools in the district’s autonomous Innovation Network.)

The district hopes to train English as a New Language teachers and main classroom teachers on the new changes.

Staffing poses a challenge

At Lew Wallace, Hinton acknowledges that he’s blessed to have five English as a New Language teachers. The school also has four bilingual assistants speaking Spanish and Arabic.

But at other schools in the district, filling those roles may be more challenging.

As of early March, the district anticipated the need to fill about one dozen English as a New Language teaching positions for the next school year.

Bilingual assistants, Rodriguez said, are particularly difficult to find amid stiff competition among districts. The district urgently needs candidates who speak Swahili, Kinyarwanda, French, and Haitian Creole, he said.

IPS hopes a few initiatives can help with the staffing needs.

The district is beginning to reach out to local universities to build a pipeline of bilingual assistants who can eventually transition into certified teaching positions, Rodriguez said.

The latest contract with the teacher’s union approved in November also offers base-pay increases for English as a New Language teachers and other in-demand positions.

And IPS also plans to offer English as a New Language teachers in middle and high school incentives to become dually certified to teach English language arts. That could reduce the number of staff needed to teach both topics.

The district would reimburse teachers for the cost of taking the Praxis certification exam for English language arts, which is over $100.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Should kids learn about LGBTQ issues at school? Many teachers and teens say no, new surveys find.

2024-02-23T21:21:25+00:00

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Should elementary schoolers learn that people of the same gender can love each other? Do teens want to learn about how slavery’s legacy matters today? Should parents be able to opt their kids out of lessons they disagree with?

As Republican-dominated state legislatures limit how teachers talk about race and restrict transgender children’s access to bathrooms and sports, and as school board elections turn on book bans and parents’ rights, three new national studies from the Pew Research Center, the research corporation RAND, and the University of Southern California’s Center for Applied Research in Education shed light on how teachers, parents, and students themselves think about these questions.

For all the attention LGBTQ issues receive in national politics, teachers said topics related to gender identity and sexual orientation rarely come up. And many said they don’t believe these topics should be taught in school.

In fact, large swaths of the public also don’t think gender and sexuality should be discussed in school, the studies found. However, there were wide partisan divides, as well as differences along racial and ethnic lines.

Adults and teens felt more comfortable with teachers teaching about racism than LGBTQ issues. They were also more comfortable with teachers talking about past injustices than present-day inequality, and more comfortable with gay rights than trans rights. And they were more comfortable with any of these topics coming up at the high school level — though many teens reported their own discomfort.

So it is perhaps unsurprising that two-thirds of teachers in one study said they decided on their own to limit how they talked about potentially contentious issues. One reason: They feared confrontations with upset parents.

“The topics of race and LGBTQ issues are often lumped together in discussions about these so-called ‘culture wars’ and how that’s playing out in K-12 education,” said Luona Lin, a research associate at Pew. But teachers and students actually “feel very different about these two topics.”

Here are some of the major takeaways of the three new reports:

Many teachers are censoring themselves

More than a third of American teachers work in states with laws restricting how teachers talk about issues that are considered divisive or controversial. But a study released this month by the research organization RAND found local restrictions and teachers’ own fears are having an effect as well.

In a survey of 1,500 teachers taken last year, two-thirds reported deciding on their own to limit how they talked about social and political issues in the classroom. Meanwhile, about half of teachers told RAND they were subject to either a state or local restriction. These limits could be formal, such as a school board policy, or informal, such as a principal’s comments.

More than 80% of those who were subject to a local restriction said they had made changes to their teaching, regardless of state law. That should not be surprising, said Ashley Woo, an assistant policy researcher at RAND.

“If your principal is telling you to do something, that is the person who is there with you at the school and can see what is happening in your classroom,” she said.

At the same time, more than half of teachers who were not subject to any restrictions said they had limited how they talked about certain topics, with self-censoring more common in conservative communities but still widespread in liberal ones.

A major reason teachers cited for limiting instruction, especially in communities with local restrictions, was a fear of confrontation with upset parents and that their administration would not support them if they faced a challenge.

LGBTQ issues raised less often than racism in classrooms

Though LGBTQ issues are prominent in local and national politics, a report released this week reveals a striking finding: Most teachers say gender identity and sexual orientation hardly get discussed in class — and many teachers say they shouldn’t be.

According to a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of K-12 public school teachers said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity rarely or never came up in their classroom last school year. Around 3 in 10 said the topics came up sometimes or often.

Half of teachers, meanwhile, said they thought students shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school, with an even higher share of elementary school teachers agreeing with that view.

The findings come as anti-trans legislation creates a more hostile environment for gender non-conforming youth in many states.

In contrast, more than half of teachers said they discussed topics related to racism or racial inequality at least sometimes. Around 4 in 10 teachers said the issues rarely or never came up.

Nearly two-thirds of teachers said students should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while just under a quarter said slavery should be taught only as a component of history — without any bearing on the present.

Lin, the Pew report’s lead author, says it’s likely that school board policies, local politics, and state laws are influencing what teachers discuss, though the survey doesn’t measure those factors.

What should young kids learn about gender and sexuality?

In Searching for Common Ground, a study released this week by a team at the University of Southern California, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,900 adults, about half of them parents of school-aged children, and asked them about dozens of scenarios related to race, sexuality, and gender.

Democrats were more comfortable than Republicans with almost every scenario, with independents and others roughly in the middle. But even Democrats were less supportive of discussing gender identity or asking students’ pronouns in elementary school than discussing racism or different family structures.

Nearly half of all respondents thought it was appropriate for an elementary teacher to have a picture of their same-sex spouse on their desk. And almost as many were OK with elementary students reading a book about two male penguins adopting a baby penguin.

But just 30% of respondents and only half of Democrats thought it was appropriate for an elementary classroom to display LGBTQ-friendly decorations, such as a Pride flag.

Democrats were far more likely to want gay or trans children to see themselves reflected at school, while Republicans were far more likely to fear discussing these topics would change children, leading to them thinking they are gay or trans.

“The largest partisan examples seem to have to do with LGBTQ and family issues in elementary school,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor and one of the study’s lead authors. “Democrats think that kids can handle that and Republicans do not.”

The rollout of Advanced Placement African American Studies reflects widespread interest among some students and teachers in learning more diverse history, but some conservatives have targeted the course.

More students feel comfortable discussing racism than LGBTQ issues

Students in grades 8-12 also tend to feel less comfortable discussing LGBTQ issues than issues of race and racism at school, and are more likely to say they shouldn’t be learning about them, the Pew report found.

In a nationally representative survey of 13- to 17-year-olds conducted last fall, around 4 in 10 teens said they felt comfortable when topics related to racism or racial inequality came up in class.

But only around 3 in 10 said the same about topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. And just under half of teens said they shouldn’t learn about gender identity at school. That rate was somewhat higher for teens who identified as Republicans than Democrats.

Only 11% of teens, meanwhile, said they shouldn’t learn about slavery. Around half said they should learn about slavery and how it affects the lives of Black Americans today, while 40% said they should learn about slavery only in a historical context.

Black teens and teens who identify as Democrats were much more likely than white, Hispanic, or Republican teens to say they want to learn about how the legacy of slavery affects Black people today — a finding echoed among Black parents and Black teachers in other surveys.

Bridging these divides is tricky

The University of Southern California study found strong support for public education across the political spectrum.

But there’s a gap of nearly 39 percentage points between Democrats and Republicans on whether public schools should teach children to embrace differences. Nearly three-quarters of Democrats said yes, compared with just over a third of Republicans.

This underlying belief was a strong predictor of responses to specific scenarios. Those who said kids shouldn’t be taught to embrace differences also expressed more discomfort with race, gender, and sexuality being discussed in the classroom.

“Democrats on average think schools are exactly the place to do this — it’s one of the last places where everyone comes together regardless of their differences,” Polikoff said. “And Republicans don’t think that is an appropriate role for schools. And they think that because they perceive, in part correctly, that schools are a liberalizing force.”

There was broad support for parents having the right to opt their child out of certain lessons, but when researchers prompted respondents to consider downsides, such as their child missing out on the opportunity to learn critical thinking skills, support fell.

Understanding the values that drive differences and building on common ground, such as agreement that children should read books by authors of color and learn about historic injustices, could lead to a healthier conversation than what’s happening now.

“We need to have this conversation,” he said. “Instead we have Ron DeSantis saying we’ll ban everything, and Democrats sticking their fingers in their ears and saying you’re all bigots.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court will not hear case involving racial diversity at selective high school

2024-02-20T21:56:42+00:00

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The Supreme Court announced Tuesday that it will not hear a case challenging the constitutionality of a highly selective Virginia high school’s admissions policy on the grounds that it discriminates against Asian American students.

The high court’s decision not to take the case means that last year’s ruling by an appeals court upholding the admissions policy will stand. The case, known as Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, looked at whether the school board was legally allowed to change the entrance criteria for a prestigious magnet high school in Alexandria, Virginia, with the intent of enrolling a more diverse class.

The Supreme Court has long held that school districts can consider race-neutral factors to create more diverse schools. But the plaintiffs in this case alleged the school board used certain criteria as “proxies” for race, with the intent of reducing the share of Asian American students who were admitted to the school.

The case was closely watched because many school districts use similar methods to create diverse student bodies. If the Supreme Court had taken the case, it could have had sweeping consequences for magnet schools and other selective K-12 programs, legal experts say.

Still, observers say it likely won’t be the end of legal challenges to selective K-12 admissions. The same law firm that brought this case, for example, has challenged similar admissions policies for selective schools in Boston, New York City, and New York state.

“I do think given the number of cases that are percolating through different districts and courts of appeals, that it’s probably true that there will be additional attempts to revisit this issue before the Supreme Court,” said Cara McClellan, a practice associate professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania, who has written about legal challenges to race-conscious admissions. “It continues to be a hotly contested issue.”

In a Tuesday statement, the chair of the Fairfax County School Board said the decision put to rest a three-year legal battle over the fairness of the admissions policy change.

“We have long believed that the new admissions process is both constitutional and in the best interest of all of our students,” Karl Frisch said. “It guarantees that all qualified students from all neighborhoods in Fairfax County have a fair shot at attending this exceptional high school.”

In a statement, the Pacific Legal Foundation, the libertarian law firm representing the plaintiffs, said by choosing not to hear the case, “the Supreme Court missed an important opportunity to end race-based discrimination in K-12 admissions.”

Admissions policy changed to include student ‘experience factors’

While the Supreme Court has shown a willingness to overturn years of legal precedent in other cases — notably by prohibiting colleges and universities from considering race as a factor in higher education admissions last year — it was apparently not willing to revisit its earlier decisions here. Notably, the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that school districts can take certain steps to racially diversify their student bodies, so long as they do not explicitly consider the race of individual students.

In this case, the Coalition for TJ alleged that the Fairfax County School Board violated the equal protection clause of the Constitution in 2020 when it changed its policy to get into Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a top high school that draws from five Virginia school districts.

Known as TJ, the high school offers advanced math and science classes that put its graduates on the path for elite colleges and careers. Historically, to get in, applicants needed to do well on a series of standardized tests and essays, and obtain high grades and teacher recommendations. Typically, students from just a few middle schools won most of the slots.

In 2020, shortly after the murder of George Floyd prompted a racial reckoning at many schools, school leaders sought to change the enrollment policy, pointing out that very few Black and Hispanic students gained entrance. During the 2019-20 school year, the school of around 1,800 students was 71% Asian American, 19% white, 5% multiracial, 3% Hispanic, and 2% Black, state data shows.

After months of debate, the Fairfax County School Board approved a new enrollment policy that set aside a certain share of seats at TJ from each middle school in the attendance area.

Students eligible for those seats were evaluated based on their grades, an essay, a description of their skills, and a set of “experience factors,” including whether they came from a low-income family, were an English learner, had a special education plan, or attended a middle school that had historically sent few students to TJ.

In 2021, the Coalition for TJ, which includes parents of students who had applied to TJ or planned to, sued the school board. The group argued that the middle school seat set-aside and experience factors were being used as “proxies” to “racially balance” the school, with the goal of reducing the share of Asian American students.

The appeals court disagreed, and said the school board had used enrollment methods permissible under prior Supreme Court rulings.

According to Fairfax County Public Schools, in the most recent freshman class, which started last fall, Asian American students received 62% of offers to attend TJ, while white students received 19%, Black students received 7% and Hispanic students received 6%. Students from low-income families made up 12% of the incoming class, up from 2% in recent years.

In a dissent issued Tuesday, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said that the Supreme Court should have heard the Coalition for TJ’s case. Letting the appeals court decision stand, he wrote, was akin to agreeing that “intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe.”

“This reasoning is indefensible, and it cries out for correction,” Alito wrote.

Figuring out ‘the goals of public education’

Colleges and universities are still trying to respond to last year’s Supreme Court ruling banning affirmative action in higher education admissions. And K-12 schools are evaluating what they can and should do to address high levels of racial and socioeconomic segregation — on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board decision.

“K-12 and higher ed is trying to figure out what to do,” said Erica Frankenberg, a Penn State education professor who studies school segregation. “There’s all of these things for us to really think about: What are the goals of public education in our society, and what [do] we want to allow school districts to take into account?”

Several other school districts with selective schools have come under scrutiny for admitting few students from low-income families or few Black and Hispanic students in recent years. Some of them changed admissions policies — only to face pushback from some parents and others who say those changes are unfair.

Chicago, for example, considers the demographics of the area where a student lives as part of the city’s selective high school admissions process, and takes steps to ensure high-performing students from both affluent and low-income areas have access. The city has taken steps to revamp that process to make it more fair for low-income students — and has signaled a desire to move away from the current selective schools system.

Philadelphia, similarly, overhauled its selective high school process to provide greater access to the city’s most coveted magnet schools, and moved to a lottery system that boosted the share of Black and Latino students who gained admission.

New York City, meanwhile, has come under fire from integration advocates for its selective high school admissions, particularly for eight prestigious high schools where a test is the sole basis for admissions. Some advocates have long criticized the test as a barrier for Black and Latino students. But other families have fought to keep the status quo, and parents in areas that are more affluent and have higher numbers of Asian American students have mobilized around the issue.

The University of Pennsylvania’s McClellan said the Supreme Court’s decision should encourage school districts that use methods like Fairfax County’s to create diverse schools to stay the course, regardless of future court challenges.

“School districts that are committed to diversity and inclusion shouldn’t become overly cautious,” McClellan said, pointing to examples of how colleges have rolled back diversity efforts that go beyond the text of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling. “Part of the effect of having ongoing challenges to existing precedent is that there feels like there is a lot of uncertainty — even when the law is clear.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

NYC needs fully accessible schools. Families like mine depend on it.

2024-01-26T13:00:00+00:00

Josh and I were excited, planning for a child. I was not a happy pregnant person, but at each appointment, I was assured that the baby was growing well. Each sonogram declared he was “perfect.” After an uneventful full-term birth, our son Abey was born 8 pounds, 8 ounces. Within four months we knew he had challenges. At a year old, Abey did not sit, eat, grab a toy, or look at my face.

We had not planned for Abey’s disabilities, but in the months and years that followed, we became well-versed in therapies, doctor’s appointments, feeding tubes, seizure medications, and wheelchairs. By the time Abey was ready for kindergarten, we realized that our school system had not planned for his disabilities either.

Michelle Noris

Abey was born 13 years to the day after the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, was signed into law. When we started looking at kindergartens, we found that the school across the street was not accessible. Neither were any of the schools within walking distance from our Queens home. He would need to be bused to another neighborhood.

When we looked at schools in other neighborhoods, school staff said things like “You won’t be happy here” and “We can’t handle his needs.” Finally, after the city’s Committee on Special Education agreed that its schools could not provide him an appropriate education, Abey, my 5-year-old who could not speak, ended up on a bus, hours each day, to Nassau County. Between kindergarten and eighth grade, he spent some 3,500 hours commuting.

What did that mean for Abey, other than thousands of hours lost to busing? It meant no after-school activities, since the school bus would not bring him home. It meant very few playdates, since I would need to drive to and from Nassau anytime he was invited anywhere. It meant he didn’t have friends in the community where he lived, since he had no exposure to them in school.

What did that mean for our family? It meant that every parent-teacher conference or school event required that one of his parents miss half a day of work. It meant that a bus strike required us to drive him back and forth to Long Island, which could take hours and meant more time off work. It meant not having my sons, born two years apart, in the same school like all the other moms on my block. We were socially isolated and economically penalized by our school system because Abey was disabled.

Fast forward 15 years, and Abey is a junior at Columbia University, where he enrolled after graduating from Bard High School Early College Queens, a fully accessible high school just 20 minutes from home.

The school across the street where we initially hoped to send Abey to kindergarten still is not accessible, and neither are any of those in walking distance from our home. Another generation of students with physical disabilities is being denied access to their community schools.

When I realized that New York City’s public schools were woefully behind in ADA compliance, I set about understanding why. As with many problems, the root was money. The first time I looked at the accessibility of our schools, back in 2018, only about 18% of city public schools were fully accessible, according to the group Advocates for Children.

The author with her son Abey at a Mets game.

The education department’s 2015-2019 capital budget allocated $100 million to improve accessibility in schools, with an additional $50 million earmarked in 2019. That sounds like a lot of money, but only 14 inaccessible or partially accessible school buildings became fully accessible with those dollars, according to a city report. At another 13 school buildings, building accessibility was improved though not enough to make them fully accessible, the report shows.

At the rate they were going, it would have taken many generations for the education department’s 1,300 school buildings to reach full accessibility.

The solution was, and is, funding. Based on what the education department was able to accomplish with the 2015-2019 capital plan, I projected that the city needed to invest about $1 billion every five years for all schools to become fully accessible within 26 years. During the 2020-24 budget cycle, the city allocated $750 million, and by 2023, 31% of city schools were fully accessible, up 13 percentage points from five years earlier.

To continue toward a school system that is inclusive and compliant with federal law, Advocates for Children asked the city to allocate $1.25 billion for accessibility in the next budget cycle, which runs 2025-29. But this time around, the city has plans to spend only about two-thirds of that, $800 million, for accessibility. It may be tempting to point to New York City’s current financial strains and say, “We cannot afford that now; we will do it later.” I say that it has been more than 33 years since the ADA was passed, and we are catching up on work that should have been completed years ago.

I did not plan in advance for my disabled son. When he arrived, my husband and I put our emotional, mental, and financial resources into making sure he got what he needed. New York City did not know that my son would be disabled, but we all knew, and still know, that disabled children will continue to join our community and need to go to school. They need friends in the neighborhood, rather than being bused to other counties. Families like mine should not shoulder greater logistical and financial burdens than our neighbors with non-disabled children. Our city must plan, budget for, and fast-track accessible schools. Students and families demand it, depend on it, and deserve it.

Michelle Noris is a mom to three children educated through the New York City Public Schools and owner of Norfast Engineering PLLC.

Colorado lawmakers to consider bill that may curb book bans in school libraries and public libraries

2024-02-13T01:48:22+00:00

Some Colorado lawmakers want to make it harder to pull books from the shelves of public libraries and school libraries, especially when the challenges come from people who live outside the community.

Sen. Bill 24-49 would create a standard process through which books or other library materials could be challenged and outlines the makeup of school district committees that would have the authority to remove books from school libraries. The bill also spells out who can submit a book challenge. At a school library, challengers could be an enrolled student or the parent of a student. At a public library, a resident of the local library district could challenge a book.

The bill, which will be heard by the Senate Education Committee on Feb. 22, comes at a time when book bans and challenges are more prevalent than they’ve been in decades. Often, those challenging books raise objections about how subjects like race, racism, or LGBTQ issues are handled. In some cases, dozens of challenges originate with one person.

During a press conference Monday in the State Capitol building, Sen. Lisa Cutter, a Jefferson County Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill, framed the measure as a way to ensure young people in Colorado have the freedom to read, including books that “might challenge preconceived notions or present uncomfortable truths.”

While Cutter and others spoke, supporters of the bill, including from the state teachers union, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the LGBTQ advocacy group One Colorado, held up books that have been banned in the past — titles like, “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Hunger Games,” “The Hate U Give,” and “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.”

Lily Williams, a Colorado teacher and illustrator, also spoke at the press conference, recounting how her graphic novel, “Go With the Flow” was banned in Keller, Texas, in 2022. The book is about “growing up, best friends and getting your first period,” she said.

Williams, who teaches art at Carlson Elementary in Idaho Springs, talked about meeting a middle school girl during the book tour who confessed that she didn’t have anyone to talk to about puberty.

“When adults censor and ban books, important conversations and questions don’t suddenly stop,” she said. “Those conversations and questions and simply move to a less safe space.”

Williams said after the press conference that she hopes the bill will provide checks and balances so that book challenges aren’t quite so “free-form.”

The bill specifies that a committee appointed by the school district superintendent would consider challenges to school library books. The committee would include a district administrator, three teachers, three principals, a parent on the District Accountability Committee, and a student or recent graduate. It also would include three parents whose children are students of color or part of the LGBTQ community. The bill says a book could be removed only if the committee unanimously approves.

Cutter’s bill is a response to the book bans debated recently in Douglas County and nationally.

In August, conservative activist Aaron Wood requested the removal of four books that featured LGBTQ content. The Douglas County library board rejected the appeals by Wood.

Nationally, there’s been a surge in book bans, according to the American Libraries Association. From January to August 2023, Colorado libraries heard eight challenges of 136 titles. And across the nation, there were 531 attempts to ban books with over 3,900 book titles challenged from January to August 2023.

The most sweeping challenges have come from a handful of conservative organizations, including Moms for Liberty, according to the Associated Press. Cutter said she doesn’t want that to happen in Colorado, and the bill outlines the criteria for a challenge.

“You can’t just come from out of state,” she said.

Some Colorado education groups want to see the bill amended.

“Obviously, as school administrators, we support access to materials in school. That’s terrific,” said Bret Miles, executive director of the Colorado Association of School Executives.

But he said the bill should be pared down to allow more flexibility because it’s too prescriptive about how school districts make decisions about library books.

“These are the kinds of decisions that are best left to a local community,” he said.

Michelle Murphy, executive director of the Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, said the bill essentially excludes local school boards from developing their own book challenge policies or deciding the makeup of committees in charge of book removal decisions.

She said the alliance is still hoping to work with the bill’s sponsors to come up with amendments that would make it more palatable.

After the press conference, Cutter said she and other lawmakers are working on amendments to the bill.

“We’re trying to relax the committee structure and the process so that it’s not onerous for school districts and rural schools,” she said. “We started out probably too prescriptive.”

Reporter Jason Gonzales contributed to this report.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

I’ve been code-switching since kindergarten

2023-02-17T13:00:00+00:00

I’ve been code-switching since I was 5. Back in kindergarten, when I wanted something from my teacher — a sticker, say, or an extra prize — I would raise my voice to the highest pitch my vocal cords would allow, tilt my head, and twinkle my eyes. After receiving the sticker or prize, I could relax and talk to my friends with my natural voice, which is lower.

My younger self couldn’t tell you then what code-switching meant, only that I realized that altering my voice and demeanor endeared me to my teacher.

Enoch Naklen

Code-switching, a term coined in the 1950s by the linguist Einar Haugen, refers to the process of moving between languages and dialects. More recently, researchers writing in the Harvard Business Review defined code-switching as changing one’s language, mannerisms, or appearance to “optimize the comfort of others in exchange for fair treatment, quality service, and employment opportunities.”

In the U.S., the onus of code-switching (and making others comfortable) often falls on people in marginalized communities who are expected to talk and act like people in power — very often, white people. Code-switching is just one facet of an uphill battle marginalized communities face trying to survive in a society not made for us. Back in kindergarten, it seemed like a harmless way to get rewards from my teacher; now, as I near adulthood, it feels like a necessary tool just to get by in certain situations, like at school.

I am a senior at The Brooklyn Latin School, one of New York City’s specialized high schools where admission is based on a single test; Black and Hispanic students, who make up about 65% of all city students, are chronically underrepresented at these elite schools. Before high school, I attended schools that enrolled primarily Black and Hispanic students. Even with Latin being among the most diverse of the specialized schools, Black and Latino students still make up 12% and 11% of students, respectively.

When I got to Latin, I subconsciously began to speak in a higher-pitched voice at school and made sure not to let any African American Vernacular English, sometimes called Ebonics, slip into my speech. I began to assume that to get ahead, I needed to “act white” in a society that privileges whiteness.

Code-switching also carried me through my interviews and internships. In professional settings throughout high school, I hewed closely to the mannerisms of the person in charge; more often than not, these people were white. I tried to blend in.

The switch back and forth has become so natural that my friends and I joke about it. After an interaction with school staff, for example, I immediately relax, resting my shoulders and returning to a comfort zone among others who are also familiar with what it’s like to be a Black student at an elite school.

My friend Iyatta described her experience like this: “As soon as I step into the office, I activate my telemarketer voice, refresh my vocabulary, being sure to remind myself of various formalities and await the long day ahead of me.”

She said she experienced “undeniable” benefits of code-switching because others perceive her as professional, but noted, “I will always have to outperform the mediocre majority because of the internal biases that plague our society.”

I know what she means because despite being an exceptional Black scholar who feels comfortable in his own skin, imposter syndrome has festered within me. Sometimes I feel like I have to act a certain way (and not just “be myself”) to be accepted in some settings.

The topic of code-switching brings up a lot of strong and conflicting feelings, like when college football coach Deion Sanders recently called out a Black reporter for code-switching during an interview. Some thought Sanders was out of line, while others saw him as starting a much-needed conversation in the Black community.

I see validity on both sides. I’m well aware of the burden of code-switching and the dexterity it requires, but it also makes me more aware of the identities of the people and places around me. More sympathetic, too. And it’s given me a greater understanding of who I am and my duty as a Black man to be proud of my identity, even in spaces where I’m not in the majority.

Being comfortable with who I am no matter the situation means I’m no longer insecure about pairing “good afternoon” with a firm handshake instead of a head nod and dap. Because now it doesn’t feel like I’m trying to assimilate into an environment I don’t fully resonate with; it feels like leveraging a tool of social success.

Enoch Naklen is a senior at The Brooklyn Latin School and a Chalkbeat Student Voices Fellow. He encourages young adults to have challenging conversations.

Can you take algebra in eighth grade? In many cases, the answer is no, national survey finds

2024-02-07T19:00:00+00:00

If you’re an eighth grader who wants to take algebra, can you even take the class?

The answer to that question, it turns out, depends a lot on two things: how your school identifies students for advanced math, and where you live.

According to a new nationally representative survey released Tuesday, 65% of U.S. principals said their elementary or middle school offered algebra in eighth grade, but only to certain students. Meanwhile, just 20% of principals said their school offered the class in eighth grade and that any student could take it.

But that picture differed by state. In California, nearly half of principals said their school offered algebra only to certain eighth graders. But in Florida, more than 80% of principals said the class was restricted. In both states, 18% of principals said any eighth grader could take the class, similar to the national rate.

The findings, based on surveys conducted last spring by the RAND Corporation, shed light on the uneven access students have to advanced math classes in middle school, which can have lasting effects on their higher education and job prospects.

Algebra is often considered a gateway class. Eighth graders who take the course can more easily reach calculus by 12th grade — which can set students up for challenging math classes in college and career paths in science and engineering fields.

“The kids that aren’t in algebra by eighth grade, they can do that still,” said Julia Kaufman, a senior policy researcher at RAND, and the lead author of the report, “but they would have to do something special to get there,” such as doubling up on math or taking a summer class.

The report also details the extent to which students are separated based on their perceived math abilities, starting as young as elementary school.

More than 40% of elementary school principals told RAND researchers that their school grouped kids based on their math levels, mostly within the classroom. But by middle school, nearly 70% of principals said they grouped students in math. Most commonly, students were put into separate math classes on honors or career prep tracks, the report found.

“The amount of achievement-level grouping — that it does start within classrooms in K-5 schools and that by middle school, students are typically grouped by achievement level more often than they’re not in their math classes — that’s something new,” Kaufman said.

The findings come as parents and school leaders across the country engage in fierce debates over whether students should be able to take algebra before high school, and if so, what support students need to do well in the class.

Notably, San Francisco Unified schools, which attracted national attention for a policy that prevented students from taking algebra until ninth grade, are poised to bring algebra back to middle schools following parent pushback. School officials there put the policy in place 10 years ago to help prepare more Black and Latino students and students from low-income families to pass algebra and access higher-level math classes — a goal that hasn’t panned out.

The new survey data doesn’t look at whether tracking helps or hurts students’ math outcomes.

And there are other factors that could affect whether students can access higher-level math classes, the report notes, such as differing teacher certification rules, school funding levels, and state policies. California’s state math guidelines encourage students to take algebra in ninth grade, for example, while New York schools are supposed to offer high school math to eighth graders who want to take it.

But Kaufman says the report does suggest that schools should be looking at the criteria they use to group students in math, and whether it could be fueling racial or socioeconomic disparities.

“We’re not giving a recommendation that nobody should be tracked,” Kaufman said. “But if you are grouping students, I think this report calls for you to consider whether the way students are grouped, and how, is biased. Are a lot of students of color, for example, in the lower track? What’s happening there?”

Schools try various methods to expand algebra access

Nationally, white and Asian American students are more likely than their Black and Hispanic classmates to enroll in and pass algebra in eighth grade, the latest federal data shows. Historically, students from low-income families have had less access to algebra in eighth grade, too.

In Philadelphia, many students are blocked from the city’s most selective high school because their middle schools don’t offer algebra. Making algebra more accessible is part of the superintendent’s curriculum overhaul.

School districts like Chicago have taken steps to expand access to algebra in eighth grade, such as offering the class online and covering costs for educators to get algebra teaching credentials. Historically, fewer students in the city’s predominantly Black and low-income neighborhoods have been able to take the class before high school.

The RAND survey found that principals of more-affluent schools were much more likely than leaders of higher-poverty schools to say they considered parent or guardian requests to place students into advanced math classes. That could shortchange kids who don’t have a parent who can step in and do that kind of advocacy, Kaufman noted.

The report urges schools to look at multiple data points to place students into higher-level math classes, and to consider experimenting with the cutoff scores used to identify which students can handle the harder math coursework.

In Oklahoma, Union Public Schools is trying that, The Hechinger Report recently reported. The district, which serves parts of Tulsa and the city’s southeast suburbs, used to offer a pre-algebra placement test in fifth grade, just one time.

But after school officials realized that was mostly funneling kids from elementary schools in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods into the advanced middle and high school math classes, they made changes. The district now allows students to take the fifth-grade placement test multiple times, and teachers can recommend promising students regardless of their score. That’s helped diversify advanced math classes, particularly for Hispanic students.

Union Public Schools also added math tutoring starting in third grade — the kind of support that the RAND report says can be crucial for student success, but that many struggling students aren’t getting.

More than three-quarters of middle school principals told the RAND researchers that less than half of their struggling students participated in math support options offered by their school, such as tutoring, double-dose math classes, or a summer math program for rising middle schoolers.

That could point to the need for schools to universally screen kids for extra math help, or do more to make sure students and parents know about what help is offered. Schools may also need to change how the help is offered, such as moving after-school tutoring to during the school day or providing transportation so more kids can attend.

Those are crucial steps, Kaufman said, at a time when many kids are struggling to close math gaps that cropped up when school was remote or disrupted in other ways by the pandemic.

“I know tutoring is happening in a lot of places, it’s one of the priorities of the White House right now,” she said. But if tutoring is mostly offered to kids and parents who volunteer, “then the tutoring is not going to reach the kids who need it the most.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

White students need more information about race and racism, not less

2023-04-10T20:30:36+00:00

As an assistant professor of education at Howard University, I have watched over the past two years as state lawmakers and governors have made it harder to teach public school students about American racial history.

These “anti-CRT” and “divisive concept” laws make teachers afraid to talk openly about the history of race and racism in this country, which will leave gaps to fill in years to come. As many have pointed out, a lack of accurate history harms all students. I want to offer my perspective as a white woman who, like many other white people, grew up without exposure to accurate information about race and American history until later in life. I use it to underscore why white children, in particular, need more information about race and American history, not less.

I went to high school in a blue-collar, midwestern city where the automobile industry fed the local economy. I attended a mostly white high school and had no idea that just a few miles away, the schools were mostly Black. In fact, we lived in one of the most segregated cities in the nation during the 1980s.

In high school, we read Maya Angelou and Mildred Taylor, and learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. But we did not learn how racial segregation laws had shaped the schools we attended, nor how redlining and racial covenants had shaped the surrounding neighborhoods.

We did not learn why it was that our school had so few Black students or so few Black teachers. Each day, the ebb and flow of mostly white students and teachers went unquestioned, leading me, and likely other white students, to assume it was perfectly normal. At home, we did not talk about race, history, or politics. Maybe it was because, like other working-class families, we went to work and did not ask questions. Or maybe it was because, like many white families, talking about race explicitly is taboo.

It wasn’t until graduate school at a predominantly white university at the age of 25 that I began to learn about the history of race in America. And, importantly, it wasn’t by choice. I was not a “race and ethnicity” or “ethnic studies” or “Black studies” major. I was an education major. Making the difference were my professors, who integrated information about race, racism, and the histories and contributions of Asian Americans, Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, and Mexican Americans into the class curriculum.

As a result, my entire understanding of this country changed. And in fact, it improved. I understood more about laws and civics and social movements, and the history of the United States and the colonies. I gained significant respect and reverence for communities of color and a new understanding of my own history as a white person. It opened my worldview and expanded my perspectives and relationships. It made me more committed to our democratic ideals and to building community.

Learning about race and American history fundamentally changed my entire trajectory, and for the better. It shaped each personal and professional decision that I made thereafter.

It wasn’t until graduate school that I began to learn about the history of race in America.

But what if, instead of learning this in my late 20s, I had learned this history as a child? It was only by accident, to some extent, as a first-generation college student, that I attended the graduate program that I did. And it was only through the work of my professors, many of them faculty of color, that I was exposed to anything different. Think of all the other white students in my high school who have proceeded through life, casting votes and making decisions that impact the lives of other people, without an understanding of this nation’s past.

Many white people that I talk to from my own generation, even now, do not know much about America’s racial history. Just this past year, I’ve talked with white people about the ways white lawmakers segregated schools and universities, how Klan members held public offices in the 1920s and 30s, and how Massive Resistance unfolded during desegregation. And it is new to them. When they hear this, it’s like a light bulb goes off. Suddenly, anti-racism and diversity efforts make more sense.

Opponents of addressing this history are afraid that it will make white children feel bad. And yes, I did learn of the brutality and violence of white people. I know that we have the potential to act with malice and disregard for the lives of people of color. But did this make me feel bad? No. It made me feel a healthy sense of responsibility to those different from myself. Teaching our children about the harms white people have perpetrated will not make them feel bad; it will keep them from doing the same thing in the future. And importantly, we must teach them how white people can contribute responsibly and with reverence to the work of racial justice.

White children notice race and internalize prejudice and superiority early on. If we do not inoculate our children from these ideas, we leave them vulnerable to the rising tide of prejudice and race-related hate. Today we are seeing the political impact of my generation, who went through school without enough information about race, racism, and American history to make better decisions in the interest of democracy. We will continue to pay a collective price as a nation if we censor this information in schools.

As white people, we have a lot to learn about the history of race and racism in America. As adults, we have our own gaps, and those of our children, to fill. We need to learn the accurate history of white people, the bad and the good. We need it to better understand ourselves and the world and human dignity. We need it to be better members of our community and to make informed policy decisions and to inoculate our children against racial extremism and xenophobia.

Learning about race, racism, and American history has fundamentally changed my life, and for the better. What I needed as a young white student — what so many of us need still today — was more information about race, racism, and American history, not less.

Kathryn Wiley is an assistant professor on educational policy and leadership at Howard University.

With the end of affirmative action as we know it, let’s demand more from our elite universities

2023-06-29T19:08:36+00:00

Following today’s Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action at two of the nation’s top colleges, diversifying student bodies, correcting historical wrongs against communities of color, and advancing equity through college access will require new approaches.

I am a first-generation college graduate whose parents only advanced up to eighth grade. They were restaurant workers, moving our family from town to town across the southern states of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, looking for opportunities. I graduated from a Mississippi public high school in 1999 and moved to Chicago to attend the University of Chicago. Without visiting the campus, I decided where to attend college based on which pathway would cost the least money and get me out of a small town where I felt like I didn’t belong.

Lina Fritz

I am also an Asian American woman. My mother heard a rumor that colleges discriminated against applicants of Asian descent and suggested I leave that off my application. I wanted to be evaluated by the merit of my application, so I followed her advice.

Race-based affirmative action, a policy aimed at increasing representation for students of color at colleges and universities, will leave a complex legacy. For all the good it has accomplished, it has also fueled a scarcity mindset, pitting communities of color against each other. I felt this as a young student applying to college.

In light of today’s Supreme Court ruling, which focused on admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, it’s time to reimagine new ways to pursue equitable distribution of opportunity for all. Some institutions have already focused on new forms of diversity, such as socioeconomic status and geography. We need to do more to expand opportunities for students from the lowest income bracket, recognizing that these initiatives will lead to racial and socioeconomic diversity on our campuses.

According to The New York Times, the median family income of a student at Harvard is $168,000. Of all applicants accepted, 67% come from the top 20% for household income, and about 4.5% come from the bottom 20%. Lower-income students have very little representation. And for those low-income students who are admitted, a lack of preparedness can be an added challenge due to underinvestment in neighborhood public schools and other systemic issues.

My family came from that bottom 20%. My 55-year-old, widowed mother delayed her retirement and worked as a cashier making less than $250 a week to help me pay tuition. Like many students from low-income households, my family could not afford expensive test prep or avoid having me work while attending school. As a college freshman, I juggled work and classes while feeling academically underprepared and wondering if I had been admitted by mistake. Was I welcome here? Could I succeed?

Now, my work focuses on students facing similar challenges and doubts. At OneGoal, where we serve students from mostly low-income communities, students of color, and first-generation college students, high-quality postsecondary advising is key to our mission. We believe every student should have an equitable opportunity to get to and through college — be that community college or a highly selective institution.

Although only a few of the 15,000 or so students taking the OneGoal class around the country are applying to the most competitive colleges, where the Supreme Court ruling is likely to be felt most profoundly, the loss of affirmative action as we know it will have a chilling effect on overall enrollment. That’s because it may create the perception among underrepresented communities that their admission to these institutions is now even more unlikely, and students could be deterred from applying.

At this turning point, can we think more expansively about how our nation’s most elite institutions support the success of students like those we serve at OneGoal? What if highly selective colleges focused on being student-ready instead of placing the burden on students to be college-ready? What risks should we ask those institutions to take — risks that might be uncomfortable because they require reputational and financial sacrifice? Can we, at long last, upend our ranking systems for colleges that are based, in part, on how many students they keep out rather than the quality of the student experience, academic and otherwise?

Studies show that graduating from highly selective institutions like Harvard and the University of Chicago can have a life-changing, income-growing impact on low-income students. In contrast, students from higher-income backgrounds can make similar incomes regardless of the selectivity of their alma mater.

What if highly selective colleges focused on being student-ready instead of placing the burden on students to be college-ready?

It is time for our elite institutions to confront how they have reinforced racial and economic inequality. It’s time for them to design a new system and formula — one that demonstrates their commitment to supporting the success of students of color, those from the bottom 20% of the income bracket, first-generation college students, those who may be pregnant or parenting, and those who don’t qualify for federal aid.

Harvard or Yale could use their respective $50 billion and $40 billion endowments to open up campuses in Detroit or St. Louis and create more admissions seats, even if it means risking a drop in their ratings. Stanford and Princeton could open more seats for students from lower-income families and single-parent households or for those whose ZIP codes are in historically under-invested areas.

I think it’s time we challenge our institutions to invest in the ideals of equality, liberty, and justice for all by leveraging their monumental resources to create more seats at the table.

At this juncture, there are many paths forward, but we need a commitment from our elite colleges and universities — the ones with the resources to light and lead the way — to do better now. This is our moment to ask these institutions to bend the arc of history toward justice.

Lina Jean Fritz is the Regional Vice President of Innovation for OneGoal in Chicago, an advocate for equitable postsecondary access, and lead strategist for Summer Hub Chicago, an online resource developed to help all Chicago high school graduates plan and pay for their college and career paths.

I’m a college access counselor. Here’s how the affirmative action decision could upend the college application process.

2023-06-30T17:24:56+00:00

There is no way to define what is being Latina. For me, it used to be just an identifier, the thing I’d say when somebody asked, “Hey, what are you?” It has been recently in high school, however, that my identity as a Latina has grown to become the backbone of my voice.

These were the opening lines to my own college application essay in 2012.

Affirmative action is in the news again, with the Supreme Court ruling this week that race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. But affirmative action was already a hot topic among my high school classmates over a decade ago.

Carina Cruz

I remember sitting at a large round table, filled with my mostly white and affluent peers, debating, as was the class assignment, whether affirmative action should still be in place. While one side of the room argued that it provided an unfair advantage to certain students, the other pointed out that, given the history of this country, the policy was necessary to make space on college campuses for students of color.

At the time, college was still a couple of years off for me. But I knew then that what we were ‘hypothetically’ discussing impacted me in a very real way.

As a Black and brown girl from Brooklyn attending a small and predominately white private high school, being able to highlight my identity was crucial for me. Most of my friends were fellow students of color who had gotten to our school through neighborhood college access programs. Whether it was putting together the Latino History Month assembly or attending yet another student diversity conference, taking opportunities to express my culture was my entire high school experience.

So, when it came time to apply to college, my identity as a young woman from a very Nuyorican family was at the center of it all. In my college research and campus visits, I sought out affinity groups and faces that looked like mine. My Latina identity appeared in the answers to most of the supplemental essay questions I responded to and as a discussion point in all of my college interviews.

For decades, affirmative action has had its naysayers, some of whom believe that beneficiaries of the policy are unfairly taking spots at highly selective universities. After being accepted to an Ivy League institution myself, I heard comments such as, “She only got in because she’s Hispanic.” This Supreme Court ruling, however, is likely to leave students of color even more vulnerable to being left out and behind in the world of higher education.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, called this carve-out “a false promise to save face.” She wrote: “This supposed recognition that universities can, in some situations, consider race in application essays is nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. The Court’s opinion circumscribes universities’ ability to consider race in any form by meticulously gutting respondents' asserted diversity interests.”

What is at risk here is students being able to include a core part of themselves throughout the application process. For many applicants, particularly students of color, talking about one’s cultural background provides important context. Though the ruling doesn’t ban students from talking about how race impacts them in, say, their essays, it limits how they can discuss it to the boxes the Court deems appropriate. This adds yet another hurdle for Black and Latinx students that white applicants never have to consider.

For many applicants, particularly students of color, talking about one’s cultural background provides important context.

As a college graduate, I got my start in college counseling at the same community-based college access program that guided me. When I sit down with my students as we begin working on their applications, especially their personal statements, I always start with the same questions: What are the things somebody needs to know to truly understand you? What are some defining moments that changed or shaped your perspective?

For my full-paying and private clients, those conversations normally revolve around picking the right extracurricular activities to showcase. For my college access students, more often than not, it’s how to talk about their identity. These stories are woven into the fabric of their being, impacting what they are passionate about and, often, why they want to go to college in the first place.

College admissions offices insist that the application is a space for them to get to know a student. How can that continue to be the case if this ruling forces students to rethink and edit what they can share? What does this say to students who believe their racial identity is a key part of who they are now that they have to question how colleges will review their story?

When I entered the college access field, I only intended to work for a year before heading to grad school. I stayed not only because I saw myself in my students, understanding how critical the right guidance is in this process, but also because I got a front-row seat to the changes that needed to be made.

No, it’s not that colleges and universities need to stop considering race in their admissions decisions. It’s that more efforts need to be put into centering the process around student voice and personal development rather than ambiguous benchmarks. It’s that more resources need to be invested in making the process and campuses themselves more accessible to students of color and those from under-resourced communities.

I have seen institutions lean into these changes, especially after the pandemic. With many schools remaining test optional, admissions representatives continuing to offer virtual events, and more offices accepting video statements from tools like Glimpse, we are seeing colleges acting on their calls for diversity.

While college counselors and admissions representatives alike are concerned about the possible setbacks, the silver lining is that this ruling will shine a light on the campuses that truly strive for diversity rather than the ones that are simply checking a box. As a college access advocate, I’m curious to see which offices are going to take the extra steps to seek out the very students that race-conscious admissions policies are protecting and which ones are going to hide behind the ruling.

I look back at my college essay today with a clear understanding of just how much I beat the odds as a Black Puerto Rican student brought up in under-resourced communities and also how my application would have to be totally reworked under this ruling — my identity being erased for the sake of a false sense of equality.

Carina Cruz is a New York native dedicated to the college access community and supporting students in their pursuit of an education. While still counseling, Cruz is also Director of U.S. Counselor Outreach at InitialView, partnering with community-based organizations and school networks to showcase their students’ voices in their applications.

As school leaders, we need to create opportunities for our teachers as well as our students

2023-08-31T12:00:00+00:00

More than a decade ago, while running a high-performing school that I loved, a small moment forever shifted how I lead. As a Black woman who was a teenage mother and had dropped out of high school, I was proud of my career and taking great care to figure out what was next.

While at lunch with a mentor, a leader of a large charter network, she asked, “Have you ever considered being a CEO?” I remember feeling grateful that she thought so highly of my work.

Garland Thomas-McDavid

“You think I could do that job?” I asked. She said she did and went on to explain that I was already doing a lot of that job; I just didn’t know it yet.

Now, after many years of hard work and mentorship, I’ve successfully served as CEO of three different school networks. I find joy in many parts of my job, but what keeps me devoted to this work is so much larger than leading school networks and all that entails.

Ever since that lunch with my mentor, my work, my calling, has been evolving and expanding. I serve in ways that have allowed my life to come full circle — creating pathways to college for children who might otherwise be counted out. I also work to open pathways for the adults who work at the schools I lead. I want everyone to have the full picture of what they can become.

To be sure, I wouldn’t be where I am today without other leaders guiding me on my journey, especially when I lacked the social capital and background knowledge to make the next right move. From my former principal who helped me secure my first assistant principal job to another mentor who encouraged me to seek out executive coaching, I’ve been lucky to receive sound advice and practical support.

But my commitment to professional growth for educators, particularly those who are women and people of color, is not just a matter of paying it forward. It feels like a necessary investment — and a smart one.

While some of the recent efforts focused on recruiting more teachers of color have paid off, keeping those teachers in our schools and classrooms is an urgent challenge. A 2021 RAND study found that nearly half of Black teachers reported that they were likely to leave their jobs at the end of the school year because of stress and challenging working conditions. What if schools retain and grow these educators? Chances are their perspective and leadership could help improve retention across the board.

The current reality, however, holds back rising educators and potential school leaders as well as students of color. That’s because research has shown that when students of color are exposed to teachers who share their race or ethnicity, they perform better academically and are more likely to stay in school.

Yet, we’ve failed to show many educators of color that teaching and education leadership are viable career paths. That means losing the next generation of educators only a little past the starting line.

So what must we do differently? First, access is a game changer.

In too many schools, the leadership team is small and insular. At our school, we schedule leadership and board meetings in the evenings, when our whole staff can attend. We invite team members to show up, contribute to materials, and present directly to the board. This may seem small, but if you don’t know what it looks like to be a principal, chief of staff, or CEO, how can you aim to become one?

Next, it’s time to build on access with resources, information, and opportunities. When you open doors to what is possible, you have to make space for learning and growth to follow. That looks like taking time to mentor people or setting them up with mentors, and providing professional development stipends in amounts that allow them to pursue further education.

“...we’ve failed to show many educators of color that teaching and school leadership are viable career paths.”

A year ago, I had a new middle school principal and assistant principal who showed great potential and were hungry for development. After a year of intentional support and mentorship, both individuals have been promoted and joined our school’s leadership team. They’ve since been invited to speak at conferences, and their work has been highlighted in the media.

Finally, it’s important to be supportive of the many places this kind of development will lead. When you invest in your staff, you might end up with your next great principal or CEO. You might also send people beyond your school walls to other schools, to advocacy organizations, and to district or state offices. Remember, your investment in talent is not just about growing leaders that benefit your school; it’s about building the next generation of leaders and elevating women and people of color who will shape education in this country.

We want our students to dream big and be prepared to chase whatever future they want. We should want the same for our teachers. Increasing access and opportunities — that’s how we diversify the profession, strengthen our schools, and build the kinds of talented, driven leaders that students at every level need.

Dr. Garland Thomas-McDavid is the CEO of Brooklyn Lab Charter School, a sixth to 12th grade charter school in New York. A Brooklyn native, Dr. Thomas-McDavid returned home last year to run Lab after over two decades leading schools in Chicago.

Will Colorado lawmakers save a team that helps Spanish-speaking child care providers get licensed?

2024-01-25T22:13:26+00:00

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Leer en español.

Nehife Sanchez raised five kids as a stay-at-home mom and always helped her relatives and friends when they needed child care. Her youngest is 15, and the only child she takes care of regularly now is her granddaughter.

So when she was watching Univision with her husband one night in 2022 and saw an ad for a course to get certified in child care, she decided she was ready to take her love of caring for kids to the next level.

“Really, I always wanted to have something like this,” Sanchez said.

After taking the course, she was motivated to apply for a child care license. But Sanchez almost quit several times, not having realized all that it would require — background checks, visits to her local government office, inspections and changes to her home, buying the right materials, and taking more courses. She credits having Spanish-language help from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood with helping her persevere when, for example, she was shunted between county offices amid confusion about which one was responsible for her.

Lawmakers could soon provide more support to people like Sanchez. A bill introduced in the Colorado legislature this session is looking to keep and expand the department’s bilingual support team. The legislation’s sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Junie Joseph, said she hopes it is one small piece of a solution to the larger problem of the shortage of child care.

“We have a large population that could provide that service,” Joseph said. “But we have to make all of our community members feel supported.”

Joseph, who is bilingual herself, is sponsoring House Bill 1009 to make funding for the support permanent. If the bill is passed, the state would give the department an additional $235,000 per fiscal year to pay for the bilingual licensing unit.

Joseph says that the bill is important to her for many reasons, including as a way to increase the number of safe, quality, child care spots available across the state.

“We know this has been an underserved community,” said Carin Rosa, director of the licensing division for the department.

Sanchez said the Spanish-speaking team at the state department always answered her calls, responded to her emails, and helped her find solutions. She calls them her guardian angels.

Helping providers get licensed and avoid scams

In 2022, the early childhood department was able to hire a team of three bilingual staff members who help people through the licensing process to become licensed child care providers. The department used COVID relief money to do it. But that funding won’t be available after September.

Right now, the department says it is actively processing 25 applications for Spanish speakers, and is supporting another 69 who are already licensed but say they prefer their support in Spanish. They expect that number to grow as more people learn about their ability to access licensing.

Part of the reason for the expected increase is that in 2021, Colorado made it legal for people who can’t prove legal residency to pay for and earn certain work licenses including in childcare or education. Word has been slow to spread, and advocates say even local government employees are sometimes unaware of that new access.

Carla Colin, a program manager for the Latino Chamber of Commerce in Boulder, is supporting the bill because she believes it makes sense to help businesses.

“We don’t think language should be a barrier for a business,” Colin said. Supporting people in the language they understand “puts those in home businesses in a better position instead of working in the shadows.”

Joseph and Colin also see the bill’s purpose, and the early childhood department’s outreach to Spanish speakers, as an important part of discouraging scammers and those who overcharge and underdeliver.

Groups have popped up that claim to help Spanish speakers and those without legal status navigate the application process for professional or business licenses. But they often charge thousands of dollars, and sometimes may not actually deliver what they promise.

Colin said people sometimes call her to find out if they’re being lied to. But people often hesitate to report who the bad actors are.

Colin said she hears reports of people paying these groups more than $5,000 for a child care license.

“It’s an outrageous amount of money and especially for someone who might not be working yet,” she said.

Getting accurate information to people and support from the proper authorities is necessary, she said. She wishes the government would work more closely with teams like hers that work directly with the community.

At the early childhood department, much of the bilingual team’s first year after they were hired in 2022 was trying to get the word out. Rosa said the team has connected with some groups that work with the Latino community, translated documents, and created Spanish trainings. But the team is limited and hasn’t always been able to meet the requests for more training in the community.

Building trust and creating awareness takes time, state officials said.

If the bill is passed, one goal for the funding is to have the state’s website translated so people can find more information easily, and to do some other technology upgrades that would allow the team to carry their own caseload instead of just assisting other team members when they’re working with Spanish speakers.

Technology changes would also allow reports to be automatically generated in Spanish for Spanish-speaking providers, such as after an on-site inspection.

Rosa said the department knows Spanish speakers who apply for licenses often have had to use a child or friend who spoke English to interpret for them at on-site inspections or other meetings.

“That never felt right to us,” Rosa said.

“We really want children to have caregivers that reflect their communities, their families,” Rosa added.

Nehife Sanchez got Spanish-language help from the Colorado Department of Early Childhood in her quest to become a licensed child care provider.

And if things go well, the department leaders would like to eventually add support for languages other than Spanish. For now, they’re starting by collecting data on what the preferred language is for each applicant and existing provider.

Because she primarily speaks Spanish, Sanchez was first relying on her husband, who is bilingual, to make calls for her when he was home from work, before they learned about the bilingual licensing team.

After an eight-month process that Sanchez said she was only able to complete with the bilingual team’s hand-holding — and her own persistence — , Sanchez became a licensed home care provider in August.

She’s now in the process of getting the word out and trying to recruit families. She’s hoping to have more than 10 children in her care in the next year, which might eventually allow her husband to quit his day job so they can work together at home. He’s taken the same courses as her, and they plan to keep learning together about how to help children learn.

It’s the dream, she said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

New lawsuit targets program to diversify NY’s college STEM majors

2024-01-17T22:11:19+00:00

A prominent conservative legal foundation is backing a new lawsuit challenging a New York state program that seeks to increase the enrollment of “historically underrepresented” students in college science and technology programs on the grounds that it excludes some white and Asian American students, according to legal filings.

The Pacific Legal Foundation is taking aim at the state’s 39-year-old Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP), which offers eligible students in seventh through 12th grade extra summer courses at local colleges and admissions help.

The lawsuit claims the program violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause by making Black, Hispanic, and Native American students automatically eligible, regardless of their family income, according to the federal suit filed Wednesday in New York’s Northern District. White and Asian American students are only eligible if their families fall below the income threshold.

“All students of all races should have equal rights based on their merit to participate in programs like New York State’s STEP,” said Wai Wah Chin, the president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York and a plaintiff in the case, in a statement.

Plaintiffs and lawyers in the new case say their argument fits squarely with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to strike down race-based admissions at the college level.

The court “reaffirmed that racial discrimination in admissions is unacceptable, and ‘eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,’” added Chin, who is also slated to speak Thursday at a New York City event for Moms for Liberty, a parent group that’s sought to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and block LGBTQ-focused books and curriculum.

The program in the crosshairs of the new lawsuit is a nearly four-decades-old initiative codified in state law to offer extra support to “students who are either economically disadvantaged or minorities historically underrepresented” in the STEM fields. The law leaves it up to the Board of Regents to define which students fit in those categories.

Fifty-six colleges and universities across the state got state money during the 2021-22 school year to offer extra summer courses, counseling, and research and internship experiences to more than 12,000 qualifying middle and high school students. More than 80% of the program’s graduates said they planned to attend college, according to the state Education Department.

The plaintiffs argue that the racial criteria unfairly discriminates against white and Asian American applicants who are above the income threshold.

“The Hispanic child of a multi-millionaire is eligible to apply to STEP, while an Asian American child whose family earns just above the state’s low income threshold is not, solely because of her race or ethnicity,” the suit states.

Yiatin Chu, a parent activist and plaintiff in the suit, said her seventh-grade daughter wants to participate in the NYU STEP program this summer, but is ineligible because she doesn’t meet the race or income criteria, according to the suit.

The state Education Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the lawsuit or how the eligibility criteria was determined.

The state’s definition of “underrepresented” groups in STEM majors and careers appears to align with both state and national data. As of 2015, both Asian American and white workers in New York were overrepresented in STEM jobs relative to their share of the population, while Black, Hispanic, and Native American residents were underrepresented. That pattern also holds true nationally, according to a 2021 report from the National Science Foundation.

The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to block the state from using any “racial classifications or criteria” as a part of the STEP program.

The suit isn’t the Pacific Legal Foundation’s first attempt to block New York’s efforts to diversify selective institutions.

The group previously filed a lawsuit against the Discovery program that offers admission at the city’s specialized high schools to disadvantaged students who scored just below the cutoff on the admissions test and complete a summer course. A federal judge ruled against the plaintiffs in the Discovery suit in 2022.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the name of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

NYC launches ‘campus revival’ program to upgrade neglected school buildings

2024-01-18T21:46:28+00:00

For years, students and staff at Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence in Brooklyn had a recurring complaint about their aging school building: There were no working water fountains.

Staff and students tried in vain to get them fixed, and Principal Enrique Garcia resorted to stockpiling bottled water to hand out to thirsty students. Seventeen-year-old senior Gabrielle Smith felt compelled to act after a friend passed out on a sweltering day because of dehydration.

“That was the turning point for me and my mom. She was like, ‘I need to bring this issue up, I need to do something,’” Smith recalled.

Her mom, Florence Knights, brought the problem to East Brooklyn Congregations, the four-decade-old network of faith-based community organizations that helped found the school. Leaders from that group got the attention of First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg, who came to the school to meet with families and staff in spring 2022.

“The day after he met with us, water and AC units were brought into our school,” Smith recalled.

City officials are now looking at Bushwick Leaders’ partnership with the community organization as a model of how to improve conditions in other schools and districts that have been historically overlooked when it comes to facilities upgrades, schools Chancellor David Banks said Thursday.

That means bringing in community organizations to work with school staff and families to identify the most critical facilities upgrades and setting aside funds in the Education Department’s capital plan for targeted districts. The resulting “campus revival project” began in the 2022-23 school year in Brownsville’s District 23 with $10 million in capital funding, and it will expand next year to District 5 in Harlem, District 7 in the South Bronx, and District 29 in southern Queens.

“When you have a building that is in disrepair it sends a message to kids subliminally about how important we really think you are,” Banks said. He added that he’s noticed that some schools have “out of order” signs hanging on water fountains for a year, while others see the problem fixed in a day.

P.S. 137 in Ocean Hill Brownsville, where Banks spoke Thursday, was one beneficiary of the new initiative. The school got a library redesign after several years during which the space was out of date and unusable, according to the principal.

Shaun Lee, the lead pastor at Mount Lebanon Baptist Church, recalled hearing in a spring 2022 meeting with District 23 families and school staff about “young scholars not going to the restroom because of broken and dilapidated bathrooms. Not being able to hydrate because water fountains were broken. Struggling to concentrate on hot days because there’s no air conditioning.”

The listening sessions surfaced a total of 168 repairs that the Education Department pledged to address. Facilities workers completed 117 of them last year, and expect to finish most of the rest this year. Some of the larger projects, like an upgraded swimming pool, will take longer, a spokesperson said.

Officials said schools in the three districts participating in the expansion of the campus revival initiative next year are currently working with community-based organizations to identify the problems they want fixed. Funding for repairs in those districts will depend on what problems the schools and community groups identify, a department spokesperson said.

Garcia, the principal of Bushwick Leaders, said community organizations were a key ingredient in getting the fixes.

“They connect the dots,” he said. “They have relationships with other organizations, they have relationships with elected officials. They’re able to get everyone into the same room.”

Garcia said he hopes this new focus and approach to targeting facilities in overlooked communities can begin to address the stubborn disparities in school buildings he’s witnessed first hand.

“I went to LaGuardia High School. I had students in my class who were from very affluent families. We had an escalator in the building, the water fountains worked,” he said. “You see the difference when you go to other school communities. It’s an injustice when you go to a school in Bushwick, or in District 23 and it’s not the same.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

$30 million federal grant to create 6 magnet high schools across Manhattan and Bronx

2024-01-12T22:22:23+00:00

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New York City has won $30 million in federal funding to create six magnet high schools across Manhattan and the Bronx, Education Department officials announced Friday.

Over the next five years, the city’s goal is to create an “innovative, theme-based program that provides college access, rigorous instruction, and enrichment activities” at six existing schools in hopes of attracting a more diverse group of students, according to the department’s two grant applications for the U.S. Department of Education’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program.

Three schools in the Bronx — the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, the High School for Teaching and the Professions, and the Bronx High School for the Visual Arts — will be turned into magnet schools and serve about 1,800 students in grades 6-12. The schools are in districts that span the Eastchester, Kingsbridge, Jerome Park, Van Nest, and Hunts Point neighborhoods of the Bronx.

The three Manhattan schools that will become magnet schools are Esperanza Preparatory Academy, City College Academy of the Arts, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis High School. The goal is to eventually attract about 1,725 students in grades 6-12 to the schools, whose districts span the Upper East Side, Chelsea, East Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood.

City officials claim it’s the first time they’ve been awarded such grants for high school.

Both applications say the aim is to reduce “isolation among Hispanic students” by “attracting a more racially diverse population through unique thematic programs which offer early college access coupled with career pathways and a strategic, aggressive, and targeted approach to outreach and recruitment.” At City College Academy of the Arts, for example, 95% of its students are Hispanic, according to public data; at the Laboratory School of Finance and Technology, 81% are.

New York City has previously been awarded federal magnet grants for elementary and middle schools, but the outcomes haven’t always worked out according to plan. Queens parent Amanda Vender wrote about how a federal magnet grant aimed at integrating her son’s Jackson Heights middle school couldn’t contend with various systemic obstacles, including enrollment-related issues capping students who lived outside of its zone.

Sean Corcoran, an education professor at Vanderbilt University who has long studied New York City’s high school admissions, pointed out that as early as 1992, there’s a study that references career magnet high school programs, though it appears the city didn’t call them magnet schools back then.

Regardless, in some ways, many high schools in the city have actually been “magnets” for decades, Corcoran said.

“What differentiates magnet schools nationally is that they are schools of choice and have a specialized curriculum, such as a theme or career focus,” he wrote in an email. “NYC has universal high school choice, and most of its high schools are themed. So, NYC has long been doing what other ‘magnet’ schools around the country were established to do.”

Magnet schools are “diverse by design,” he said, and began to appear in the 1970s and 1980s to curb white flight from large urban school districts.

“The evidence on whether they accomplished this is mixed, but the principle lives on,” he said. “NYC has also been experimenting with diversity in admissions policies which formalize what magnet schools have been doing for years. Taken together, I’m glad to see the city get federal recognition for its efforts to attract and retain a diverse student population in its high schools.”

Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, said her organization was “generally encouraged” to see more funding devoted to encouraging diversity and desegregation.

“Magnet programming is an imperfect tool, and oftentimes its intention to mitigate the causes of segregation are lost to other goals or lack of strategies to further integrated learning environments,” Berg wrote in an email.

That, she said, is why leadership on the issue remains important.

“Many of my concerns lie in that our current leadership may not take this opportunity to truly couple their support for rigorous instruction and enrichment with the need to desegregate its public schools,” she said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Supreme Court affirmative action cases could bolster attacks on school integration

2022-10-28T21:53:35+00:00

Monday could mark the beginning of the end for affirmative action in higher education.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments that day in two cases challenging the use of race in college admissions. The court’s decision earlier this year to hear the cases, which seek to overturn prior rulings that upheld affirmative action, suggests the longstanding policy might be on its way out.

The case doesn’t directly involve schools that educate kindergartners through 12th graders, yet its outcome could alter those students’ post-grad trajectories: If selective universities can no longer consider race in admissions, they are likely to enroll fewer Black and Latino students.

But the higher-ed cases could also portend changes to K-12 schools, where efforts to promote racial diversity already face legal challenges. Advocates fear that if the Supreme Court ends race-conscious admissions in higher education, K-12 integration efforts could be next.

“I think anybody who cares about preserving any semblance of diversity in educational institutions, be they K-12 or higher ed, is paying attention to this case,” said Stefan Lallinger, a desegregation expert who helped form a peer-support network for districts pursuing integration.

As the closely watched case begins, here’s what you need to know:

The ruling shouldn’t immediately affect K-12 schools

The central question before the court is whether colleges and universities should be able to use race as one of many factors in selecting students and pursuing educational diversity.

The cases stem from lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum. The group alleged that the admissions process at Harvard discriminates against Asian American students by holding them to a higher standard than other applicants, and that UNC’s process discriminates against Asian American and white students by giving preference to Black, Latino, and Native American applicants.

The institutions denied the allegations and lower courts ruled in their favor, saying the universities had met the strict standards for race-conscious admissions policies established through four decades of Supreme Court decisions. The plaintiff appealed the rulings to the Supreme Court, which agreed in January to hear the two cases.

Because the cases turn on legal precedents specific to higher education, their outcome should not directly affect K-12 schools with programs meant to increase student diversity, said Genevieve Bonadies Torres, an attorney at the the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is representing some students and alumni in the Supreme Court cases.

However, she warned that opponents of race-conscious admissions might use the higher-ed ruling to attack K-12 integration efforts.

“The ultimate goal of these groups is to scare and chill and litigate against diversity programs,” she said.

Colleges and K-12 schools follow different rules about race

Colleges and universities have more leeway than K-12 schools to use race in pursuit of diversity.

In rulings stretching from 1978 to 2016, the Supreme Court has set a high bar for race-conscious admissions in higher education, or affirmative action. Institutions may not set racial quotas, they must consider race-neutral approaches, and they may only use race as one factor among many in a holistic review of each applicant.

In the majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 case in which the court upheld affirmative action by a 5-4 vote, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cited two reasons for allowing the “narrowly tailored use of race in admissions:” Students benefit from diversity, and courts should defer to universities on academic decisions, including whom to admit.

Because of the “expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with” higher education, O’Connor wrote, “universities occupy a special niche in our constitutional tradition.”

Four years later, the court declined to grant the same leeway to K-12 schools.

In a landmark 2007 ruling, the court ruled 5-4 to strike down two school districts’ voluntary integration plans. The goal of diversity, or “racial balance,” is not a sufficient reason for public school districts to assign students to schools based on their race.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts memorably wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy agreed with the judgment but insisted that districts can take some voluntary steps to combat segregation. Whether by redrawing attendance lines or strategically locating schools, districts can try to promote diversity through race-conscious policies so long as they operate at a general but not individual level, Kennedy wrote. (The ruling did not affect court-ordered desegregation plans.)

But even though Kennedy’s concurrence left room for some voluntary integration, the threat of lawsuits has made most districts wary of walking that line.

There are more than 13,000 districts nationwide, but a 2020 report could identify only 119 districts with active integration plans. (The researchers also found 66 charter school organizations with plans.) The vast majority of the plans consider students’ socioeconomic status but don’t factor in race — even in the general way that Kennedy allowed.

For that reason, even if the Supreme Court one day banned any consideration of race in district diversity plans, relatively few schools would be affected.

“My first instinct is that this decision wouldn’t necessarily change the landscape that much for K-12 school districts,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, who co-authored the 2020 report. “Frankly, there are so few voluntary race-based integration plans in K-12 already.”

The end of affirmative action could lead to K-12 legal challenges

Still, if the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rules against affirmative action, as is widely expected, advocates worry it could invite challenges to the few remaining K-12 integration plans.

The most likely targets are elite public high schools with selective admissions policies. Many such schools have historically admitted few Black or Latino students, prompting some school districts — including Boston, New York City, and San Francisco — to adopt diversity plans.

Critics have attacked the high school diversity plans and affirmative action along similar lines. They say the schools have improperly tried to engineer a “racial balance” of students, failed to consider other ways to pursue diversity, and discriminated against Asian American and white applicants.

The “pernicious practice of racial balancing has spread to K-12 education, where it is now depriving children of spots at some of the best public schools in the nation solely because of their race,” reads a friend of the court brief supporting the challenge to affirmative action. Submitted by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative group that has won more than a dozen Supreme Court cases, the brief argues that race should play no role in either college or K-12 admissions.

Several K-12 education groups filed briefs supporting affirmative action, arguing that students at every level benefit from diversity. One brief urged the court to allow colleges and school districts to continue using race to promote diversity according to the standards set in prior rulings.

“The Court need not, and should not, revisit either longstanding precedent,” said the brief submitted by national associations representing school boards, principals, and counselors.

But even if the court’s affirmative action ruling does not address K-12 schools, future rulings might.

A case currently in federal court challenges the diversity plan at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology, a selective public school in Fairfax County, Virginia. The prestigious school overhauled its admissions policies in 2020 following years of complaints that it enrolled very few Black and Latino students.

Last year, the Pacific Legal Foundation helped Coalition for TJ, a group that includes parents and alumni, file a lawsuit against the district. Similar to the Harvard case, the lawsuit accuses the district of discriminating against Asian Americans, whose enrollment dropped sharply after the admissions change. But unlike Harvard, the high school did not explicitly consider each applicant’s race, instead using other measures — such as admitting the top-performing students from each middle school — to boost diversity.

“That is still every bit as much of a violation of someone’s Equal Protection rights as if you sit in front of an audience and said, ‘I’m discriminating on the basis of race,’” said Erin Wilcox, a lawyer at the Pacific Legal Foundation, who called the school’s diversity plan “proxy discrimination.” (The district says its admission system is based on merit, not race.)

Lallinger, the integration advocate, called the foundation’s argument extreme because it suggests that even the goal of racial diversity is suspect.

“Essentially they’re arguing that any effort to address historical discrimination against Black and Latino students is inherently unconstitutional,” he said, “because, they argue, admissions is a zero-sum game.”

In oral arguments last month, a federal appeals court appeared skeptical of the case against the district.

If the group behind the challenge loses, it could appeal to the Supreme Court. And if the high court rules against affirmative action in higher education, that could bolster the case against diversity efforts in K-12 schools, Wilcox said.

“It will take away this reliance on diversity as a compelling government interest,” she said, adding that in her group’s ongoing legal campaign against school diversity plans, “That will certainly be a supporting precedent that we will use.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Rising tide of censorship and scrutiny has schools scrambling to avoid backlash

2022-09-23T11:00:00+00:00

The culture war engulfing schools has subjected educators like Richard Clifton to unfamiliar scrutiny — including, in his case, a public records request.

In Savannah, Georgia, where Clifton is a longtime English teacher, a group of conservative activists earlier this year began calling for the school board to “purge” books with sexual content from school libraries. After Clifton took a personal stand against book banning, someone submitted a records request to learn what texts he assigns to students.

Around the same time, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed new laws that he said would protect students from what he views as obscene materials and divisive concepts. In response, an official in Clifton’s district advised against using the term “white privilege” in the classroom.

Clifton didn’t change the content of the screenwriting class he’s teaching this school year, his 29th in the district. But as the political combat around education escalates, he is more cautious about the topics he discusses and the language he uses in class.

“I am a little more gun-shy than I might have been in the past,” he said.

The conservative backlash against anti-racism and LGBTQ inclusion in schools has put intense pressure on many educators. And that is causing schools to change, in ways obvious and subtle, as laws like Georgia’s take effect across the country.

Some of the moves are public, as when districts review challenged books or make it easier for parents to lodge complaints. But other shifts are happening behind the scenes — books quietly pulled from shelves, classroom discussions cut short — as teachers and school leaders seek to avoid blowback. Often it is students of color and LGBTQ young people who feel these effects most acutely as signals of inclusivity fade or vanish.

That was the case in an Alabama school district where a superintendent, facing pressure from some parents and a new state law restricting lessons about sexuality, ordered the removal of LGBTQ pride flags from classrooms, according to a teacher who requested anonymity to avoid retaliation. As the teacher took down her flags at the request of her principal, a queer student in the room began to cry.

“Once you ban a symbol that shows you love and support them,” the teacher said, “it looks like you are no longer supporting them.”

Conservative critics view the push to confront racism and champion inclusion in schools as a pretext for exposing students to liberal ideas and inappropriate content. That backlash has fueled efforts to rein in teachers and censor books.

Three-dozen state legislatures have considered bills this year to restrict teaching about contested topics, which six states passed, while schools in nearly 140 districts have removed or limited students’ access to books that parents or community members opposed, according to two recent reports by PEN America, a free-speech advocacy group. Other legislation makes it easier for parents to see what’s taught in school and raise objections.

The combined efforts have had a chilling effect, according to analysts and educators. While there have been a few high-profile instances of districts being penalized or teachers investigated for violating the new rules, just the threat of controversy or punishment has been enough to prompt preemptive changes.

School and district leaders are “taking it upon themselves to do the censors’ work for them,” said Jeremy C. Young, senior manager of free expression and education at PEN America. “In some ways that’s the goal of the legislation: to make everyone afraid of their own shadows so they simply stay away from this material.”

The legislation, almost all of which has been introduced by Republicans, has increasingly included the threat of sanctions ranging from professional discipline to loss of state funding and even criminal charges. Some laws enlist parents as enforcers.

For instance, Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law allows parents to report and potentially sue school districts if they believe a teacher discussed sexuality or gender identity with students in grades K-3.

“The overall feeling that I get is fear,” said Raegan Miller, a parent in St. Petersburg and member of the Florida Freedom to Read Project, which opposes the new restrictions.

The laws have unleashed a flurry of censorship, much of it aimed at books featuring Black or LGBTQ characters and driven by conservative activists. The group has tracked more than 580 titles that faced challenges across Florida over the past year, resulting in dozens of books being removed or made less accessible.

In her own children’s district, Miller has seen schools only allow older students to check out picture books with LGBTQ characters, which she considers an indirect ban. Recently, her son’s fifth-grade teacher sent home a form asking parents to indicate whether their children may use the classroom library.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever gotten a letter like that,” Miller said.

With only limited state guidance, Florida school districts have taken steps to forestall potential violations of the new laws. Some critics say they’ve gone overboard.

The Orange County school district, which educates more than 200,000 students in the Orlando area, forbade schools from adding new library books until media specialists complete a required training next year. The Miami-Dade County school board recently rejected a proposal to recognize October as “LGBTQ History Month.” And the superintendent of the more than 80,000-student Pasco County school district told employees this month to remove “Safe Space” stickers, which are meant to signal support for LGBTQ students.

“People are being very cautious,” said Dr. Sue Woltanski, a retired pediatrician and member of the Monroe County school board in Key West. “My concern is that caution will prevent people from standing up for teachers who are trying to do the right thing in their classrooms.”

Schools in her district are putting their library catalogs online in compliance with the new laws, she added, but are not removing Safe Space stickers.

Many schools’ fear of controversy or censure is surfacing in inconspicuous ways.

In Missouri, where Republican lawmakers proposed more than 20 bills this year seeking to limit what students learn about racism and other “divisive concepts,” Aimee Robertson has noticed her children’s teachers sending home more permission slips. Already this school year, her daughter’s 11th grade AP English teacher has sought parents’ consent before allowing students to choose which memoir to study or showing them a documentary about humanity’s impact on the environment.

“Clearly districts and educators are going above and beyond to cover their butts,” she said.

Students have also noticed teachers’ newfound apprehension.

Kennedy Young is an 11th grader in Georgia, where a new law limits what teachers can say about racism and U.S. history.

During a recent lesson at her school in Cobb County, Kennedy’s English teacher started to share her thoughts about why a Black and a Latina character in “A Streetcar Named Desire” weren’t given names, but she stopped herself. The teacher said students could discuss the topic, but she wasn’t allowed to participate. No one spoke up.

Kennedy, who is Black and has been helping other students talk about race under the new law, said she wanted to bring up how women of color, and Black women in particular, are often marginalized in literature. But it can be isolating for students of color to lead classroom discussions about race without teachers’ support.

“Sometimes I can feel like my voice is quieter, that it doesn’t matter,” she said, “because there isn’t that adult or other people of color to help me and guide the conversation along.”

Back in Richard Clifton’s district, Savannah-Chatham County, officials have taken steps to obey the new laws.

The school board adopted policies allowing parents to object to teaching materials used in their children’s classes, and report teachers who they believe discussed prohibited topics. At a training for administrators, a board attorney urged “caution and discretion” when using the phrase white privilege in classrooms, according to district spokesperson Sheila Blanco.

Despite pressure from activists who urged the board to “protect our children from pornography,” the district has not removed any books from school libraries this year, Blanco said.

For his part, Clifton said he believes parents have a right to know what’s taught in school, and he’s always tried to avoid promoting his personal beliefs in class. He still welcomes robust debate in his classroom, but now if a student were to raise a politically charged topic, he might think twice before engaging.

“I wouldn’t delve into it deeply,” he said, “because of the climate we are in.”

Kalyn Belsha contributed reporting.

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago is seeing an influx of migrant students. Are schools ready to serve them?

2023-08-16T10:00:00+00:00

Leer en español.

¿Mami, estamos en casa?

That’s what Baltazar Enriquez heard last year as he passed out food to migrants at Union Station: The question came from a toddler: “Mommy, are we home?”

“I was about to give her some apples,” he said. “Her question just hit me. It dawned on me — I said the same question to my mom when I arrived.”

The moment of déjà vu brought Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, back to when he was 3 years old and migrating from Mexico to Chicago.

“The answer was the same: ‘Yes, we’re home,’” Enriquez said. “So now that they’re here, they’re making Chicago home, how do we assist them to make sure they understand the system?”

That toddler was just one of thousands of new immigrants arriving in the city. Last August, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started busing migrants to Chicago and other sanctuary cities, a move that some Democrats, including Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, called a political stunt. Since then, more than 12,000 migrants, many of them asylum-seekers, have come to Chicago.

Chicago Public Schools did not say exactly how many migrant students have joined the district. However, CPS saw an increase of just over 5,400 English learners during the course of last school year, according to district enrollment data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Gabriel Paez, who first started working in the district a decade ago, said he’s never seen an influx of students at this level. He currently works as a bilingual coordinator at a Humboldt Park elementary school and is chair of the Chicago Teachers Union Bilingual Education Committee.

“We need to treat it with the urgency that it deserves,” he said. “Teachers who are trying to prepare for the upcoming school year really need to be ready for the onslaught to continue.”

In a statement, a CPS spokesperson said the district works with every student to “identify support needs regardless of country of origin.” But multiple teachers and immigrant advocates say many students are stuck without adequate resources.

Ahead of the coming school year, Chalkbeat Chicago analyzed enrollment and staffing data to examine the learning landscape for these kids. Here are the takeaways.

English learners increased by more than 5,000 students last year

The district determines English learners by screening students who come from non-English-speaking homes for their English proficiency. The increase of English learners bucks the overall trend of declining enrollment in CPS.

Last year’s increase brought the total number of English learners in the district above 77,000 as of June 7, the last day of the 2022-23 school year. Based on that data, English learners are nearly a quarter of the total student population in CPS.

It’s difficult to know how many students are recently-arrived migrants. District officials note that some students may migrate and already speak English; other students may speak a language other than English and are classified as English learners without having recently migrated to Chicago. So the increase of English learners doesn’t necessarily reflect the actual number of migrant students, but it can offer an estimate of the size of that population.

Kids wear backpacks they received at a back-to-school giveaway in 2022. As students enroll, they are screened for whether they speak a language other than English.

Once a school enrolls 20 or more students with the same language background, state law requires the school to implement a Transitional Bilingual Education program. Full-time TBE programs require educators to teach core subjects in both English and the native language of those students. The school must also provide instruction of English as a second language.

The state monitors bilingual programming to determine whether each school meets requirements. A WBEZ analysis in 2020 found over 70% of schools’ bilingual programs fell short based on the district’s own evaluations.

But it’s complicated to square the data on English learner enrollment with the number of staff actually providing bilingual education.

Designated bilingual teachers decline, but bilingual endorsements grow

Paez, the CTU Bilingual Education Committee chair, said schools may have staff that can speak with and support English learners, but that’s not a substitute for a bilingual program. Over the last year, he said, many schools have been operating on an emergency basis to address students’ needs.

“It can help a kid who needs translation or a kid who needs help transitioning from one classroom to the next or learning the school building,” he said. “If we have miscellaneous employees who aren’t certified teachers who are coming into classrooms and expected to be the way that child gets to participate, it doesn’t do right by the child.”

To teach students in their native language in a TBE program, a teacher must have a bilingual endorsement, according to an Illinois State Board of Education spokesperson. Another endorsement – in English as a second language — allows a licensed educator to teach English to non-native speakers, said the spokesperson.

A Transitional Bilingual Education program must do both — teach students in their native language and teach them English.

A review of publicly available and internal staffing data shows a mixed bag in Chicago Public Schools. The number of teachers designated as bilingual teachers has declined since 2015.

But not all educators who provide bilingual instruction are designated as bilingual teachers in CPS staffing data, according to the district. This analysis also doesn’t include charter and contract schools, as the district does not track their full staffing data.

Most of that decrease comes from a drop in the number of part-time bilingual teaching positions, according to a Chalkbeat data analysis.

Meanwhile, more than 6,000 teachers have endorsements in bilingual education or English as a second language (ESL) as of October 2022.

Educators can earn these endorsements through coursework and teaching experience. Bilingual endorsements also require the teacher to earn a degree in a language other than English or pass a language proficiency test.

However, it’s not clear which of these teachers actively use their endorsements in the classroom setting.

The number of teachers with endorsements has been on the rise in recent years. The district partially subsidizes the cost of ESL and bilingual endorsements, which is a provision in the Chicago Teachers Union’s current contract.

Ben Felton, chief talent officer for CPS, said the district aims to continue increasing teachers with endorsements.

CPS also uses its Teacher Residency program to train bilingual teachers over a one-year period, bringing in people changing careers or CPS staff wanting to move into a teaching position.

“Our Teacher Residency program is our most surefire way to invest in bilingual staff to make sure they become bilingual teachers,” Felton said. “We also felt this sense of urgency this year, knowing that there are newcomers that we need bilingual talent and we’re investing in that way.”

There also might be staff at schools who can speak a different language, but have none of these titles or endorsements.

Bilingual services vary by school and language

The most recent wave of people migrating to Chicago primarily come from Venezuela, where an economic and humanitarian crisis has driven millions out of the country. The official language of Venezuela is Spanish — but students are walking into schools with a variety of language and cultural backgrounds.

So even in neighborhoods with more Spanish-language resources and schools with more bilingual staff, there are challenges, said Enriquez, the organizer in Little Village, a predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood.

For example, he said, some recent migrant students speak Kʼicheʼ, a language spoken by some Indigenous people in Guatemala, and must navigate school without much support. Paez also pointed to students coming in speaking Kichwa or Quechua, the most-spoken Indigenous language in the Americas.

The state also requires bilingual programs to teach students about the history and culture of their homelands. That kind of curriculum is crucial, said Andrea Ortiz, director of organizing for Brighton Park Neighborhood Council.

“As a district, we have to figure out ways to invest and listen to our teachers and incorporate them in creating culturally relevant curriculum that speaks to the increase of families that are moving in,” she said. “A lot of the families that are coming are from Venezuela, and there’s huge cultural differences from Venezuelans and other Latinos that are here.”

Translating curriculum can be an issue too. The district’s optional universal curriculum Skyline currently has pre-K-8th grade courses in social science and world history translated into Spanish. CPS plans to roll out math courses in Spanish later this month. This fall, the district said CPS will begin developing Spanish language arts courses.

But that doesn’t address every students’ learning needs, said Kathryn Zamarron, a music teacher in CPS.

“We don’t have it in Urdu, in Arabic, in Amharic, in Vietnamese,” she said. “It’s not even enough in Spanish.”

CPS full-time substitute teacher Rebekah Amaya said bilingual services are needed for children recently arriving, but will also help other students. They work at a school in Brighton Park, a neighborhood that is predominantly Hispanic and Latino on the Southwest Side.

“It’s going to benefit the students that have already been lacking in those resources for a really long time, especially here on the South Side,” they said. “This just creates more of a catalyst for us to work harder to improve and increase our bilingual services.”

Trauma support and mental health services needed

Amaya said schools can be more than a place of learning – they also are a way for students to connect with social support, such as free meals and health services. They volunteer at the 9th district police station, and they said that overwhelmingly, parents are hoping for their children to get mental health care in schools.

But Amaya also said not every school has enough resources to meet that need, so enrollment plans need to be intentional.

“In the long run, it’s going to be more beneficial to the students and their environment and their mental health to send them to schools that can receive them and do have those services for them,” Amaya said.

In the past few years, CPS has doubled the number of social workers and budgeted for over 630 social work positions in the most recent public staffing file. The district also allocated $13 million in new funding for school nurses, social workers, and case managers in its fiscal year 2024 budget.

But according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the list provided by the district showing teachers with endorsements in August, only one social worker has bilingual or ESL endorsements. About 5% of the district’s 800-plus counselors and 28% of roughly 250 case managers have bilingual or ESL endorsements; some may have both.

Migrant students legally entitled to enrollment, but can still face instability

This summer, CPS launched a pilot welcome center at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, open to migrant students living in the West Town and Humboldt Park neighborhoods. Families can get their students enrolled in CPS, as well as connect with medical care, language support, and transportation resources.

That welcome center is a step in the right direction, said Amaya. But they said so many more neighborhoods need those services. They said mobile enrollment teams could be a good solution, especially given the housing and transportation challenges that families face.

“A lot of families have had to travel on like two or three buses – multiple hours – just to get to a job or just to get to a health care location,” they said. “It’s more important to meet families where they’re at and make that a little bit easier for them.”

Mayor Brandon Johnson speaks at a press conference at Roberto Clemente Community Academy before the opening of a Chicago Public Schools pilot welcome center for newly arriving families. The center serves the West Town and Humboldt Park neighborhoods.

CPS works with the Illinois Department of Human Services and the Department of Family and Support Services at shelters to coordinate enrollment for some students in shelters and hotels, according to the district.

But for families sleeping on police station floors and in shelters, unsure of when they might live permanently, enrollment in school can be daunting. A question looms: What happens if they enroll in a school and then move across the city or even out of Chicago?

Under federal law, students in temporary living situations are legally entitled to enroll even if they lack the required paperwork, such as proof of residency or health records.

Once a child is enrolled, they are also entitled to stay enrolled in the same school for the entire school year and receive transportation, even if they move.

But staying in the same school might not be practical for all students. Zamorran, the music teacher in CPS, also volunteers at police districts on the South Side, and she said the constant threat of movement takes a toll on students. The thought of ultimately transferring a child — after the long journey they’ve endured and finally settling them into a school — can be a painful one, she said.

“There’s this great question of: ‘Is this another trauma to my child,’” she said. “To…tell them: ‘This is your community and you belong here,’ and then take them from there?”

There’s a need for education, resources, and housing — but, advocates say, there’s also a need for a home.

Enriquez — the organizer in Little Village — remembers how important that feeling of home was when he moved from Mexico to Chicago as a kid. So Enriquez said he and other organizers will continue putting pressure on the district and the school board to give newcomers enough resources and support.

“We’re gonna fight to make sure we get a quality education, we get equal racial representation,” Enriquez said. “And if we’re not invited to the table, we’re bringing in our folding chairs.”

Max Lubbers is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Las escuelas de Boulder están implantando la co-enseñanza para atender a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés

2023-06-06T16:19:36+00:00

Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación dos veces al mes.

Read in English.

El año pasado, en la clase de primer grado Susan Tran en el Distrito Escolar de Boulder Valley, ella y otra maestra trabajaron en equipo, ayudando a los estudiantes a enfocarse en el lenguaje de las matemáticas, descifrando problemas matemáticos y usando palabras para comparar, contrastar y describir formas diferentes.

La labor de estas dos maestras es parte de los cambios que el distrito escolar de Boulder está haciendo en la manera en que los estudiantes identificados como aprendices de inglés reciben servicios en las escuelas primarias.

En lugar de sacar a los estudiantes de su salón de clases diariamente por aproximadamente 45 minutos para que aprendan inglés, el distrito está adoptando un modelo de enseñanza conjunta, en el que un maestro especialista visita los salones de clase regulares para ayudar a dirigir una lección para todos los estudiantes junto con el maestro de ese salón.

“Cada vez que ves a un maestro nuevo, aprendes algo nuevo”, dijo Tran. Aproximadamente la mitad de los estudiantes de su clase están aprendiendo inglés.

“Noté que los estudiantes estaban hablando con un vocabulario académico más sólido y con frases más completas”, dijo Rachelle Weigold, una de las maestras de inglés que trabajó con Tran. “Creo que han sido avances realmente fantásticos”.

Es un cambio que algunos padres hispanos habían pedido hace años y que el distrito ya había probado antes, pero sin tener éxito.

En la escuela primaria Alicia Sánchez en Lafayette, donde trabajan Tran y Weigold, casi un 36% de los estudiantes están aprendiendo inglés (en algunos salones, hasta la mitad), o sea, son estudiantes que hablan principalmente otro idioma que no es inglés. Por eso, la escuela ya llevaba tiempo probando la co-enseñanza. Sin embargo, este año hubo un nuevo enfoque en la planificación intencional antes de probar con lecciones enseñadas por dos maestros. La co-enseñanza durante la clase de matemáticas también fue algo nuevo.

Este próximo otoño, otras ocho escuelas se unirán a las cuatro que empezaron a usar el modelo este año. Los planes son que la mayoría de las escuelas primarias de Boulder hagan el cambio en los próximos años. Cada escuela decide qué asignatura combinar con las lecciones de inglés, pero muchas se están enfocando en la clase de matemática.

Según las leyes federales de derechos civiles, los distritos escolares tienen que proporcionarles servicios a los estudiantes identificados como aprendices de inglés para que aprendan el idioma y puedan tener acceso a una educación.

En Boulder, donde alrededor de un 7% de los estudiantes están en el programa para aprender inglés, esos servicios se habían prestado principalmente a través de un modelo en el que los niños salían de su salón para recibir lecciones de inglés con maestros especialistas y luego regresaban a tomar el resto de sus clases.

Es raro que los distritos escolares cambien su forma de ofrecer servicios.

Pero por mucho tiempo, los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en el Distrito Escolar de Boulder Valley han tenido grandes diferencias de puntuación en los exámenes estatales en comparación con los estudiantes cuyo primer idioma es inglés.

Los resultados más recientes de las pruebas estatales mostraron una brecha de 54.7 puntos de porcentaje, una de las diferencias más amplias del estado. En 2022, un 9.1% de los estudiantes que estaban aprendiendo inglés en el distrito de Boulder obtuvieron una puntuación de dominio del idioma o más en los exámenes estatales, en comparación con un 7.9% del mismo grupo de estudiantes que obtuvieron puntuaciones de dominio o más a nivel estatal. Por otro lado, un 63.8% de estudiantes de Boulder cuyo primer idioma es inglés obtuvieron o superaron las puntuaciones esperadas.

Los líderes del distrito han dicho que una de sus metas a largo plazo es mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y cerrar esa brecha. A corto plazo, las metas giran en torno a mejorar la capacidad de los maestros para apoyar a los estudiantes durante todo el día y darles un mejor acceso a su educación.

Una de las metas más importantes “es no separar a los estudiantes de sus compañeros de grado y que no se sientan diferentes”, dijo Kristin Nelson-Stein, directora de educación cultural y lingüísticamente diversa del Distrito Escolar de Boulder Valley.

Los líderes del distrito dijeron que ya habían probado la co-enseñanza, pero que no había funcionado del todo.

“La verdad es que no funcionó”, dijo Meghan MCracken, coordinadora de educación cultural y lingüísticamente diversa del distrito de Boulder Valley. “Realmente no teníamos apoyo al más alto nivel para cambiar el programa”

Randy Barber, portavoz del distrito, dijo que la prioridad ha sido mejorar los sistemas de enseñanza para los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés, pero que toma tiempo escuchar a los padres y conseguir que todos estén de acuerdo en cómo deben cambiar las cosas.

En esta ocasión, parte de lo que ayudó para que todos estuvieran de acuerdo fue visitar el Distrito Escolar de Cherry Creek para observar cómo ellos usan los modelos de co-enseñanza para desarrollar el inglés.

Los padres preocupados fueron una fuerza de impulso

Los padres latinos habían pedido estos cambios hace años. Muchos pensaron que sus recomendaciones habían caído en el olvido.

Ana Lilia Luján fue una de las líderes de padres que hizo esa recomendación. Su hijo, que acaba de graduarse del distrito este año, tuvo problemas con el inglés la mayor parte de su tiempo en la escuela. Cuando empezó la escuela intermedia y todavía no progresaba en su aprendizaje del inglés, Lujan decidió sacarlo del programa.

“Yo tenía mucho miedo de quitarle esas clases, pero dije, no ya eran muchos años”, dijo Luján. “Lo quité y lo pusieron en clases regulares. Eso le ayudó grandemente. Su autoestima cambió. Su inglés mejoró porque estaba escuchando a niños que sabían más”.

Luján, que pasó años tratando de entender cómo se identifican y atienden los estudiantes que necesitan aprender inglés, dijo que ha llegado a creer que los métodos de sacarlos del salón de clases no son eficaces.

“Eso de sacar a los niños no funciona”, dijo Luján. “Llega un punto en que si no te gradúas de los servicios, nunca te vas a igualar con los demás. Y ellos piensan que no son inteligentes. Es como el sistema los está tratando”.

Ella dijo que quiere que los distritos reconozcan que los estudiantes son inteligentes, a pesar de las dificultades que puedan tener en los exámenes estatales.

“No confundamos el no saber un lenguaje con falta de capacidad intelectual”, dijo Luján.

A Luján también le preocupa que no haya suficientes padres que tengan el tiempo que ella tuvo para informarse sobre el complicado sistema o para aprender que otros modelos podrían funcionar mejor. Eso significa que son menos los que pueden abogar por cambios, lo que reduce la presión sobre los distritos para que sean creativos a la hora de buscar soluciones para mejorar el aprendizaje, dijo.

Los investigadores que estudian el desarrollo del idioma inglés dicen que el modelo de separar a los estudiantes tiene ventajas, pero que no suele ser el más eficaz. No obstante, cambiar a la co-enseñanza no es automáticamente mejor, dicen.

“A veces sacar a los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés del salón hace que los niños se sientan estigmatizados o no tan inteligentes como los demás niños de la clase normal”, dijo Kathy Escamilla, investigadora y antigua directora del BUENO Center for Multicultural Education en el campus de la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder. “Por otro lado, la co-enseñanza podría funcionar bien en matemáticas. Podría ayudar a los niños, pero eso depende de las estrategias usadas”.

Ester J. de Jong, profesora de educación cultural y lingüísticamente diversa en la Universidad de Colorado-Denver, dijo que los modelos de separación de los estudiantes pueden ofrecer entornos de aprendizaje seguros y funcionan mejor cuando ayudan a los estudiantes a aprovechar lo que aprenden en sus salón de clases regulares el resto del día.

Una vez que los estudiantes llegan a cierto punto en su aprendizaje de un idioma nuevo, no hay razón para sacarlos de un salón de clases de inglés sólo para que reciban más enseñanza en inglés, dijo de Jong. “Pero eso no significa que los estudiantes no tengan necesidades que no hay que cubrir”.

Los grupos aislados pueden ser especialmente útiles para estudiantes inmigrantes nuevos, que posiblemente tienen necesidades más específicas.

Los líderes del distrito dijeron que los estudiantes recién llegados todavía pueden ser sacados del salón para recibir apoyo durante los primeros meses en el distrito escolar, hasta que estén listos para recibir ayuda en el salón de clase regular.

Según los investigadores, ambos modelos requieren que los maestros estén bien preparados y tengan tiempo para coordinar.

Los maestros de la primaria Sánchez dicen que el cambio a la co-enseñanza ha sido un trabajo duro, pero que su estructura les ha permitido planificar bien, coordinar bien, y aprender los unos de los otros.

La planificación les ayuda a ajustar las clases para los estudiantes con capacidades diferentes, dijeron los maestros, pero nunca segregan a los estudiantes en el salón de clases simplemente por el hecho de que estén aprendiendo inglés.

Elizabeth Dawson, otra maestra de la primaria Sánchez, dice que los estudiantes pueden tener necesidades diferentes por traumas pasados, niveles de pobreza u otros factores externos.

“Hay muchas razones por las que los estudiantes podrían necesitar apoyo con el idioma”, dijo Dawson.

Luján, la madre del distrito de Boulder, es optimista, pero dijo que seguirá atenta para ver si el cambio contribuye a mejorar los resultados de los estudiantes latinos del distrito.

“Esa va a ser la pregunta”, dijo Luján. “El que estén haciendo este cambio pues ya es ganancia. Pero todavía hay que ver qué resultados da. Ese siempre fue mi punto”.

Yesenia Robles es reportera de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre temas sobre los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Programas bilingües de Denver enfrentan problemas por muy pocos estudiantes y amenaza de cierres

2022-07-12T11:55:00+00:00

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El primer día de la escuela de verano en Denver, seis niños que empezarán el primer grado tomaron un examen de deletreo. Usando lápices con gomas de borrar nuevas, deletrearon palabras como noche, jugo, pequeño y vecino.

“Número tres es la palabra — es un poco larga — ‘pequeño,’” dijo la maestra.

Una niña con espejuelos y un lazo grande color rosa miró el papel que tenía en frente y trató de hacer los sonidos.

“P–p-p-pequeño,” susurró en voz baja mientras escribía una “p” al lado del número 3.

Estos niños de 6 y 7 años están matriculados en el programa de educación bilingüe de las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, y por eso aprenden deletreo, lectura y matemáticas en español. Mientras van adquiriendo más destrezas académicas básicas, también aprenden inglés, y con el tiempo hacen la transición a una enseñanza que se da cada vez menos en español.

Los padres y educadores de Denver lucharon por este tipo de programa bilingüe — conocido como enseñanza de transición en el idioma nativo, o TNLI (transitional native language instruction) — y una orden de un tribunal federal requiere que el distrito lo ofrezca en cada escuela que tenga un mínimo de 60 estudiantes que hablan español y están aprendiendo inglés.

Sin embargo, los programas bilingües de Denver están enfrentando una gran amenaza: cada vez hay más escuelas con muy pocos estudiantes.

Los altos costos de vivienda y reducciones en las tasas de natalidad están reduciendo la matrícula en las escuelas públicas, y en especial en las comunidades históricamente latinas de Denver. Ha sido difícil llenar los salones de clase bilingües en las escuelas primarias, y los métodos alternativos, como combinar dos grados en un salón, no sirven bien los alumnos. El distrito ya había decidido cerrar cuatro programas pequeños TNLI — pronunciado “tin-li” — a principios de este año, pero después cambió de parecer.

El distrito también está considerando cerrar algunas escuelas completamente. Más de la mitad de las escuelas que cumplen los criterios recomendados para un posible cierre tienen programas TNLI. Esas 15 escuelas representan casi una cuarta parte de las 65 escuelas del distrito que tienen salones de clase bilingües.

Consolidar escuelas podría permitir programas más robustos, pero eso conlleva su propio costo.

“Esta escuela es parta de nuestra comunidad,” dijo Yuridia Rebolledo-Durán, madre de dos estudiantes de la Escuela Primaria Colfax, en una manifestación frente a la escuela el pasado mes de abril. “Es muy importante para nosotros como padres que nuestros hijos puedan hablar dos idiomas.”

Padres y maestros pelearon por educación bilingüe

Las investigaciones apoyan generalmente la eficacia de una educación bilingüe. En Denver, los estudiantes que aprenden inglés y adquieren dominio de ese idioma históricamente han tenido buenas puntuaciones en los exámenes estandarizados del estado. Los administradores de alto rango de las escuelas de Denver también apoyan esa idea.

“Nos entristece mucho el hecho de que la reducción en matrícula esté impactando nuestras escuelas bilingües,” dijo Nadia Madan Morrow, antigua maestra bilingüe que dirigió el programa de educación multilingüe del distrito hasta que fue recientemente promovida a Jefe de Asuntos Académicos, (CAO). “Estamos esforzándonos para determinar cómo ofrecer enseñanza en idioma nativo en las escuelas que están continuamente volviéndose más pequeñas.”

Las madres de los estudiantes de la Colfax Elementary School en Denver en la manifestación en abril en contra del cierre de Colfax por las Escuelas Públicas de Denver a causa de la reducción en matrícula.

No obstante, ese no siempre ha sido el caso.

Algunos educadores castigaban a los estudiantes que hablaban español en clase, una práctica que terminó en feroces protestas. En 1980, un grupo local llamado Congress of Hispanic Educators demandó al distrito por violar los derechos de los estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés.

La determinación del juez federal en ese caso fue en contra del distrito. En 1984, Denver entabló su primer decreto de consentimiento, un acuerdo legal de brindar educación bilingüe. Ese decreto se ha modificado dos veces.

La versión más reciente, en vigencia desde 2013, dice que el distrito tiene que ofrecer programas TNLI en las escuelas que tengan más de 60 estudiantes de habla hispana que estén aprendiendo inglés, emplear maestros bilingües calificados, y usar currículos y exámenes de alta calidad en español.

“Nuestros padres bilingües quieren que sus hijos sean bilingües,” dijo Kathy Escamilla, miembro del Congress of Hispanic Educators y profesora jubilada de la Universidad de Colorado de bilingüismo y alfabetización bilingüe, lo cual significa poder hablar, leer y escribir en dos idiomas. “Ellos quieren la oportunidad para que su cultura y su historia estén representadas.”

El decreto de consentimiento se aplica únicamente a los estudiantes que hablan español, y que representan la porción más grande de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en Denver. Los demás estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés reciben enseñanza totalmente en inglés, a veces con la ayuda de maestros o tutores que hablan su idioma. El árabe y el vietnamita son el segundo y el tercer idioma nativo más común.

La cantidad de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés en Denver ha subido y bajado durante una década, y lo mismo ha ocurrido con la cantidad de estudiantes inscritos en programas TNLI y el número de escuelas que los ofrecen.

En el pasado, el distrito revocaba el programa TNLI de cualquier escuela que tuviera menos de 60 estudiantes de habla hispana que estuvieran aprendiendo inglés, dijo Madan Morrow. Pero cuando el distrito trató de hacer esto el invierno pasado en cuatro escuelas primarias — Colfax, Cheltenham, Traylor y Schmitt — los miembros del Congress of Hispanic Educators pusieron resistencia.

Se acercan posibles cierres de escuelas

Tres de las cuatro escuelas han perdido tantos estudiantes, que están en riesgo de ser cerradas en el futuro cercano. Esto aumentó la preocupación de la comunidad de perder el TNLI.

Hace un año, la junta escolar electa en Denver aprobó una resolución que dice que los padres, maestros y otras personas deben ayudar a desarrollar un plan para consolidar las escuelas pequeñas. Las escuelas de Denver reciben fondos por cada estudiante, y las escuelas pequeñas batallan para poder pagar cosas como clases electivas y personal de salud mental.

El distrito hizo una lista de 19 escuelas que participarían en el proceso. La meta era que las comunidades en esas escuelas sugirieran ideas de cómo consolidar las escuelas.

Pero la lista causó pánico, y el Superintendente Alex Marrero la eliminó.

Cambiando la estrategia, el distrito este año seleccionó un comité asesor de la reducción en matrícula y le asignó definir los criterios para cerrar una escuela con poca matrícula.

El comité reveló los criterios propuestos el mes pasado: Se deben considerar para consolidación las escuelas primarias e intermedias con menos de 215 estudiantes el próximo año, así como las escuelas con menos de 275 estudiantes que anticipen perder entre un 8% y 10% de los estudiantes en los próximos años; de igual manera se deben considerar las escuelas chárter independientes que estén teniendo dificultades financieras.

Veintisiete escuelas operadas por el distrito tuvieron menos de 275 estudiantes este pasado año. Como las 19 escuelas en la lista original, la mayoría de las 27 escuelas atienden a poblaciones estudiantiles con más de 90% estudiantes de minorías raciales, y más de un 90% provenientes de hogares de pocos ingresos.

Quince de las 27 escuelas tienen programas TNLI, incluida la Colfax Elementary, donde los padres y defensores tuvieron en abril una manifestación en contra del cierre de la escuela. Varias madres dijeron que viven cerca y caminan con sus hijos a la escuela porque no pueden manejar.

“Me preocupa, porque ¿cómo voy a llevar a mis hijos a otras escuelas?” Esto nos dijo Cecilia Sánchez Pérez, madre de dos estudiantes de Colfax.

Escamilla, del Congress of Hispanic Educators, también asistió a la manifestación.

La Escuela Primaria Colfax es una de cuatro escuelas de Denver que casi perdió su designación para ofrecer “instrucción transicional en idioma nativo” en este pasado año escolar debido a la reducción en matrícula.

“Entendemos que DPS está enfrentando decisiones difíciles con respecto a presupuesto y a la reducción en matrícula,” dijo. Sin embargo, agregó: “con demasiada frecuencia estos cambios afectan de manera desproporcionada a las comunidades de raza negra, latina y pobres.”

Si el distrito les quita la designación TNLI a la Colfax y las otras tres escuelas, los defensores temen que los estudiantes se van a quedar sin programas bilingües. Aún con autobuses gratis a una escuela TNLI cercana, las familias van a dudar en dejar las escuelas que conocen y aman.

El Congress of Hispanic Educators también cuestiona las proyecciones de matrícula del distrito y le preocupa que los padres no han sido consultados, dijo Escamilla.

Debido a la resistencia de los padres, Denver acordó mantener la designación TNLI en Colfax, Cheltenham, Traylor y Schmitt. Pero Madan Morrow dijo que la reducción en estudiantes de habla hispana significa que los programas podrían no ser tan robustos.

Menos estudiantes significa cambios en el salón de clase

Muchas de las escuelas TNLI de Denver todavía tienen una matrícula saludable. Pero en las escuelas que no tienen suficientes estudiantes que hablan español en cada grado, el TNLI se ve diferente.

A menudo, dijeron los educadores, las escuelas mezclan dos grados en el mismo salón, algo que no es académicamente ideal ni popular con los padres. O las escuelas combinan estudiantes que hablan español nativo con estudiantes que hablan inglés nativo, una asignación difícil hasta para los maestros de más experiencia.

Kim Ursetta, que enseña preescolar bilingüe en la Traylor, tuvo este pasado año una combinación de estudiantes de inglés nativo y de español nativo por segunda vez en sus 28 años de carrera.

“Es difícil,” dijo ella. “Uno está constantemente saltando de un idioma a otro, y no importa lo que hagas, solamente les podrás enseñar la mitad del tiempo que normalmente tendrías.”

Si combinar estudiantes no es posible, a veces las escuelas ponen estudiantes que hablan español en salones que solo enseñan en inglés y envía a otro salón para aprender ciertas materias en español. Eso puede hacer que los estudiantes se sientan marginados o que se pierdan algunas actividades electivas divertidas.

Esto es algo que Carrie Olson, miembro de la junta escolar que fue maestra bilingüe en Denver por 33 años antes de su elección, vio con sus propios ojos. A Olson le preocupa cómo la reducción en matrícula está afectando los programas TNLI y le ha pedido repetidamente a la junta que hablen del tema.

Madan Morrow dijo que los directores y el personal del distrito están trabajando en planes para el próximo año escolar.

“Sabemos que cualquier cantidad de enseñanza en el idioma nativo es mejor que nada,” dijo ella. “Lo que estamos tratando de determinar en estas cuatro escuelas es, ‘¿qué cantidad es perfecta? ¿Cuánto les podemos dar para que sea beneficioso sin que tengan que estar en un sistema así todo el día?’”

Melanie Asmar es reportera senior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, escríbele a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Los mejores planes: Años de planificación no han librado a Aurora de la angustia por el cierre de escuelas

2022-03-09T11:55:00+00:00

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Por el movimiento de estudiantes de un lado de Aurora al lado opuesto de la ciudad, el distrito escolar de Aurora necesitaba un plan nuevo para reorganizar el espacio en los salones de clase. Por eso, hace cinco años empezó a colectar opiniones públicas y a elaborar un plan a largo plazo.

Sin embargo, ahora muchos padres están molestos y los miembros del consejo escolar están divididos en cuanto al próximo paso: cerrar dos escuelas primarias.

En una caótica reunión de la junta el mes pasado que se alargó casi hasta la medianoche, los miembros de la junta interrogaron a la administración sobre sus planes, propusieron el cierre de diferentes escuelas y dijeron que era injusto que se les pidiera ofrecer alternativas si rechazaban la propuesta del superintendente. Al final, retrasaron la votación y decidieron retomar la propuesta de cierre a finales de este mes.

Los expertos y los educadores dicen que por mucho trabajo y tiempo que dedique el distrito, cerrar una escuela nunca será una tarea agradable.

El objetivo, dicen los investigadores, es permitir que las comunidades se sientan empoderadas para encontrar soluciones y que sientan que su voz ha sido escuchada. Aunque Aurora intentó hacerlo, algunos padres consideran que no se les consultó con suficiente antelación, ni se les informó sobre los posibles cierres de escuelas.

Al reorganizar los campus, los funcionarios de Aurora dijeron que no pueden mantener todas las escuelas abiertas y seguir ofreciendo un programa académico amplio y de alta calidad ni programas de enriquecimiento en todos lados.

“Las escuelas pequeñas son una estrategia legítima, pero entonces hay que diseñar todo el sistema para apoyar eso”, dijo el superintendente Rico Munn. “Es un cambio filosófico drástico.”

En este momento, administrar escuelas pequeñas está impidiendo que el distrito invierta en otros programas.

“Si seguimos invirtiendo en edificios medio vacíos, no estamos invirtiendo en recursos ni en personas”, dijo Munn.

Pero la junta escolar, que incluye a tres miembros que se unieron en noviembre (mucho después de que el distrito elaborara el plan de instalaciones conocido como Blueprint APS), podría no estar de acuerdo.

Muchos distritos del área metropolitana están perdiendo matrícula y anticipan el cierre de escuelas pequeñas. En Jeffco, que cerró una escuela el año pasado y podría cerrar otra sin ningún proceso de cierre a largo plazo, los miembros de la junta sugirieron que se consideren las escuelas como parte de sus comunidades, como lo hizo Aurora, en lugar de cerrar cualquier escuela que tenga poca matrícula. Denver también está considerando una estrategia regional.

Sin embargo, la experiencia de Aurora demuestra que la planificación a largo plazo no necesariamente facilita el proceso.

Aurora está perdiendo la mayoría de los estudiantes en el área de bajos ingresos al oeste, cerca de Denver, y los está ganando en las nuevas subdivisiones de ingresos medios cerca de los planos.

Este año escolar, un comité asesor y Munn recomendaron cerrar dos escuelas primarias pequeñas en el noroeste, Sable y Paris, al final del próximo año escolar. El año pasado el distrito también cerró otras escuelas, y es probable que la administración recomiende más cierres en los próximos años.

Como suele ocurrir en otros lugares, el cierre de escuelas en Aurora golpea con más fuerza a la comunidad de inmigrantes con bajos ingresos.

“Es un instrumento contundente y lamentablemente esas comunidades no se quedan con buenas opciones”, dijo Sally Nuamah, de la Northwestern University. “Ellos saben que al cerrar esas escuelas no se les darán otros recursos públicos, y por eso sienten que tienen que proteger los recursos públicos que tienen”

Cuando un distrito busca la opinión del público antes de cerrar escuelas, debe hacer que la comunidad se sienta empoderada, dijo. Eso significa involucrar a la gente antes de proponer una solución, dijo Nuamah, profesora asistente de desarrollo humano y política social.

Munn dijo que Aurora trató de hacer esto en los últimos años con grupos de discusión, encuestas, grupos de diseño regional, y otras cosas.

“Realmente intentamos ser considerados. Realmente tratamos que la comunidad nos dijera su visión para el futuro y ahora estamos en la parte difícil”, dijo Munn. “Creo que donde la gente cae desprevenida es cuando el asunto se hace real.”

Es posible que Aurora no haya enfatizado bien las implicaciones del plan. Al principio, el distrito se enfocó en preguntar los deseos de la comunidad para sus escuelas, y mencionó que los campus serían reutilizados en lugar de cerrarlos.

Justo antes de las vacaciones de invierno, los padres de la primaria Sable se enteraron de que su escuela podría cerrar. Ellos dicen que no entienden por qué su escuela se ha elegido.

“Siento que no han sido honestos”, dijo la madre Brenda Pineda, agregando que no se enteró del programa Blueprint hasta este año. “Me hubiera gustado que explicaran todo desde el principio en lugar de decir diferentes razones en cada reunión. Esto nos hace pensar que tiene que haber algo más.”

Pineda, madre de un estudiante de tercer grado en Sable, dijo que el distrito dijo todo es por la reducción en la matrícula, pero ella no ha notado menos niños en su escuela. Luego escuchó que todo era a causa del presupuesto, pero también que las escuelas recibieron más dinero como ayuda por la pandemia. Ahora escuchó que la ubicación del edificio es atractiva para otros usos.

La primaria Sable (que tiene 370 estudiantes) y la primaria Paris (con 250) no son las dos escuelas más pequeñas de su área, en la que cada escuela ha visto una reducción en matrícula de entre un 26% y 45%.

Munn dijo que como la baja en matrícula afecta a la mayoría de las escuelas del distrito, no es un factor que por sí solo causaría un cierre. En cambio, el planteamiento de Munn tiene en cuenta las comunidades como un todo y también se fija, entre otras cosas, en las condiciones del edificio, la capacidad de las escuelas cercanas y si el campus podría utilizarse para otros fines.

El 22 de marzo la junta podría optar por dejar las primarias Sable y Paris abiertas. Si lo hace, Munn pidió a los miembros que estuvieran preparados para darle alternativas, como por ejemplo reglas nuevas para elegir qué escuela debe cerrarse o pedirle a él que mantenga las escuelas pequeñas.

“Necesitaríamos aclaración en cuanto a cuál es la dirección porque los problemas siguen ahí. Todavía existen”, dijo Munn.

Aparte de ser un plan para cerrar escuelas en comunidades con poca matrícula y planificar nuevas escuelas en áreas nuevas, Blueprint también fue un plan diseñado para incorporar cambios educativos.

El distrito está abriendo escuelas magnet con diferentes temas en cada una de sus siete regiones, y esto incluye una escuela magnet de artes que se abrirá en otoño y remodelar para crear más programas K-8.

Munn dice que le ha dado prioridad a la equidad. También le dijo a la junta que las inversiones ascienden a unos $90 millones para las escuelas del lado este y $87 millones para las del lado oeste.

Los planes a largo plazo servirán de beneficio para Aurora a medida que su demográfica siga cambiando, dijo Parker Baxter, de la Universidad de Colorado-Denver.

“Aquí es donde le doy mérito a Aurora por abordar intencionadamente este asunto durante un proceso a largo plazo, ya que va a ser difícil”, dijo Baxter, director del Center for Education Policy Analysis de la universidad. Él ha evaluado el elemento de participación comunitaria del plan Blueprint del distrito.

Pero la equidad a gran escala no se traduce necesariamente en la satisfacción de las familias, que podrían perder la escuela de su comunidad.

Lucero González no quiere que Valentina, su hija de tercer grado de 9 años, se enfrente a más años de cambios.

“Ella quiere que salvemos su escuela y yo quiero que sienta nuestro amor y apoyo para que sepa que intentamos todo lo posible”, dijo González.

Si la junta aprueba los planes del distrito para cerrar la primaria Sable, Valentina y sus compañeros de tercer grado terminarían el cuarto grado allí pero luego se trasladarían a una escuela nueva para el quinto grado, y luego a otra para la escuela intermedia.

Y todo esto es después de que la pandemia haya interrumpido su aprendizaje desde el primer grado.

“Son muchos cambios para los niños”, dijo González.

Para la propia González, Sable se ha convertido en su familia. Ella aprendió un poco de inglés a través de uno de sus programas, y ahora está trabajando en su GED.

Ha hecho amistad con otras madres inmigrantes, que como ella, no tienen familia aquí y dependen de otras madres para socializar. Como hablan diferentes idiomas, se comunican en el inglés que aprendieron en Sable.

El Comité Asesor de Instalaciones a Largo Plazo del distrito consideró inicialmente cerrar la Escuela Primaria Park Lane, pero luego recomendó cerrar Sable y buscar otros usos para el espacio debido a su gran estacionamiento y ubicación. También les preocupaba que si Park Lane cerraba, Sable no pudiera recibir a los estudiantes desplazados.

Ese cambio tardío de planes significó que los padres de la primaria Sable no se enteraron del posible cierre de su escuela hasta después de que el comité emitiera sus recomendaciones. En el aviso anterior del distrito, Sable no estaba en la lista inicial de posibles cierres. Ahora las familias dudan que su comunidad se beneficie de la venta o el uso nuevo del edificio.

González teme que si su escuela cierra, la comunidad de madres se dividirá. Muchas no tienen auto y no pueden ir a pie a otra escuela.

“Los amigos son la familia que elegimos”, dijo González. “Es muy triste pensar que no volveremos a ver a las personas con las que compartimos nuestras vidas.”

Martha Urioste, la ‘Madrina de Montessori’ en Denver, luchó por la educación bilingüe

2022-12-28T18:24:37+00:00

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Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación.

Cuando Martha Urioste visitaba las escuelas de Denver como defensora de la educación bilingüe, con frecuencia se acercaba a los estudiantes para decirles algo que su abuela le dijo a ella.

“No dejes tu español”.

Sus esfuerzos con el Congreso de Educadores Hispanos de Denver ayudaron a establecer programas bilingües que, con el paso de las décadas, beneficiaron a miles de niños en Denver. Urioste, que fue maestra y luego directora, también trajo la educación Montessori a las escuelas públicas de Denver, empezando en una comunidad en la que la mayoría de los estudiantes eran de familias negras y latinas de pocos ingresos.

Urioste falleció el 8 de diciembre, a la edad de 85 años, y siempre estaba pensando en la educación. Su amiga y colega Kathy Escamilla la visitó en el hospital un par de días antes, y dice que Urioste le pidió que le contara las últimas novedades en las escuelas de Denver.

“Se la pasaba instigando cosas buenas”, dijo Darlene LeDoux, educadora latina desde hace mucho tiempo que ahora trabaja en la oficina del ombudsman de las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, y que conoció a Urioste por décadas. “Siempre estaba asegurando que siempre fuéramos más lejos, hiciéramos más y nos esforzáramos más por los niños.”

Según su obituario y las personas que hablaron en su servicio de recordación esta semana, Urioste nació en Nuevo México y se mudó a Denver cuando era adolescente. Después de graduarse de universidad en 1958, inició una carrera como maestra de primer grado en la Escuela Primaria Gilpin, que ya está cerrada. Urioste fue maestra de primaria y de intermedia, y hasta dio clases de español para el distrito en la televisión pública.

Obtuvo dos maestrías y un doctorado, y con el tiempo llegó a ser directora asistente en la Escuela Secundaria North y luego directora de la Escuela Primeria Mitchel en el noreste de Denver a mediados de la década de 1980. Un tribunal federal ordenó que el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver dejara de segregar sus escuelas, pero la migración de estudiantes blancos a los suburbios y a las escuelas privadas hizo más difícil que la Mitchell y un par de escuelas más pudieran cumplir la cuota de estudiantes blancos ordenada por el tribunal.

En un breve documental producido por la ciudad como parte de la serie “I Am Denver”, Urioste contó: “Nos dijeron, ‘¿Qué van a hacer para asegurar que niños blancos y niños de clase media se suban a un autobús y vayan al noreste de Denver?’”

Urioste eligió la educación Montessori, que en ese momento no estaba disponible en ninguna de las escuelas públicas de Colorado. Fue a Roma a estudiar el currículo, que alienta a los niños a trabajar de manera independiente en tareas prácticas y aprender de los demás en salones de clase con niños de múltiples edades.

En su velorio, su amiga Erlinda Archuleta recordó cómo la maleta de Urioste se abrió cuando salía del vuelo de regreso a Denver.

En vez de recoger su ropa, Urioste le dijo a su hermano (que había ido al aeropuerto a buscarla): “‘¡Encontré la solución! ¡Montessori!’”, contó Archuleta. “Lo menos que le importaba era su ropa.”

La hija mayor de Honey Niehaus estaba en Kinder el primer año que se ofreció Montessori en la Mitchell. El programa era maravilloso, dijo ella. No obstante, Urioste y otros notaron que los estudiantes blancos estaban progresando más rápido que los de minorías, dijo Niehaus — una desigualdad que Urioste quería eliminar estableciendo un programa Montessori para bebés y niños pequeños.

Un edificio abandonado al frente de la escuela Mitchell fue la oportunidad. Niehaus miró adentro un día y le preocupó lo que vio. Dice que corrió a la oficina de Urioste y le preguntó a la directora qué iba a hacer con respecto a las actividades de drogas al otro lado de la calle.

“Ella me miró y dijo, ‘Cariño, ¿qué vas a hacer tú al respecto?’”, nos contó Niehaus. “Dondequiera que iba, conseguía más personas para el sistema. Siempre que conocía gente que auténticamente se preocupaba por los niños y la educación, ella los apoyaba”.

Con ayuda de los líderes de la comunidad, políticos y voluntarios, Urioste y otros compraron el edificio y lo transformaron en Family Star, una escuela Montessori de niñez temprana que abrió sus puertas en 1991. La escuela capacitó a las mujeres de la comunidad para ser las primeras maestras. Más tarde, Niehaus fue la directora ejecutiva.

Más de 30 años después, Family Star tiene dos escuelas en Denver y las Escuelas Públicas de Denver cuentan con cinco escuelas Montessori. A Urioste se le conoce como “La Madrina de Montessori”. El programa original de la escuela Mitchell ahora está en la Denison.

Además de ser la pionera de Montessori, Urioste fue miembro del Congreso de Educadores Hispanos (CHE), que demandó a las Escuelas Públicas de Denver por su tratamiento de los estudiantes que hablan español. La demanda resultó en el decreto modificado actual de consentimiento, que requiere que el distrito proporcione educación bilingüe para los estudiantes cuyo primer idioma es el español.

Urioste fue miembro del CHE por 50 años. Escamilla, que se unió al grupo en la década de 1990, dijo que aparte de por su defensa de la educación bilingüe, Urioste también será recordada por ser mentora de los maestros más jóvenes, a quienes alentaba a obtener diplomas de educación avanzada y ser líderes.

Carrie Olson, miembro del Consejo Escolar, fue contratada por Urioste como maestra bilingüe de primer año en la Mitchell en 1985. Olson recuerda cómo Urioste la encontró llorando un día en su salón de clases.

“Entró, me tomó de las manos y dijo, ‘Carrie, vas a ser una maestra excelente. No te puedes dar por vencida. No puedes dejar de ayudar a estos niños’”, dijo Olson en el evento de recordación.

Otros dijeron que Urioste tenía un excelente sentido del humor. Era bien fanática de los Denver Broncos, le encantaba jugar en las máquinas tragamonedas, y era una “bonafide groupie de Cher” que solía viajar a Las Vegas con su hermano Richard para ver a la cantante en concierto, dijo Archuleta.

Craig Peña, cuyo padre Robert trabajó junto a Urioste en el CHE, dijo que la recordaba como “una mujer increíblemente capaz, increíblemente atenta, sumamente amable y bien cariñosa.

“Pero tampoco era alguien que se dejara manipular”, dijo. “No se puede confundir la amabilidad y gentileza por debilidad”.

Melanie Asmar es reportera sénior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre historias sobre las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, envíale un mensaje a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Cómo una escuela en Colorado aumentó la diversidad de estudiantes en sus clases avanzadas

2023-08-30T15:55:00+00:00

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Algo cambió cuando Sierra High School empezó a inscribir automáticamente a más estudiantes en sus clases de colocación avanzada (AP, por sus siglas en inglés).

Esta high school diversa en el distrito de Harrison en Colorado Springs observó cómo las características demográficas de sus clases avanzadas cambiaron para concordar mejor con la escuela. Los estudiantes que fueron inscritos con base en sus calificaciones anteriores tuvieron resultados promedio más altos en su examen de AP que sus compañeros que se habían inscrito por su cuenta en los cursos más exigentes.

También cambió la forma en que los estudiantes se veían a sí mismos.

El director de la escuela Connor Beudoin dijo que ha escuchado a estudiantes y padres decir cosas como: “No sabía que debía estar en esta clase” o “Nunca pensé que mi hijo fuera a estar en esta clase y aquí está, prosperando”.

“Realmente está cambiando esa manera de pensar para los estudiantes en relación con [sus] capacidades”, Beudoin dijo.

Sierra High en Colorado Springs es una de las escuelas beneficiarias de un subsidio de Colorado que empezó en 2019 y se diseñó para animar a más escuelas y distritos para que inscribieran automáticamente a los estudiantes en cursos avanzados, como las clases de colocación avanzada, para aumentar la diversidad y mejorar el acceso. El subsidio también se puede usar para que las escuelas o los distritos inscriban a más estudiantes en cursos de honores u otros tipos de clases avanzadas, no solo las de colocación avanzada.

Sierra High recibió el subsidio en la segunda ronda de distribuciones y usó el dinero en el año escolar 2022-23. En la escuela, la cantidad de clases de colocación avanzada que se ofrecían aumentó de 15 a 17 con el subsidio, e incluyeron clases como química, psicología y ciencias de la computación.

Beudoin dijo que el trabajo tuvo que ver con establecer los cimientos para que la escuela pudiera inscribir a todos los estudiantes en cursos de colocación preavanzada. Se tuvo que capacitar al personal, identificar a los estudiantes que se podían inscribir automáticamente en los cursos, organizar sesiones de tutoría y tener cenas celebratorias trimestrales.

Los resultados en la high school de Harrison fueron exactamente los que quienes apoyaban el subsidio querían. Pero no queda claro si los resultados fueron los mismos en otras escuelas participantes alrededor del estado.

Colorado distribuyó los subsidios por primera vez en el año escolar 2019-20 justo antes que la pandemia de COVID interrumpiera la educación. El siguiente año, el subsidio se pausó, y aunque se reinició en el año escolar 2021-22, el Departamento de Educación de Colorado no obliga a los distritos para que presenten informes sobre cómo usaron el dinero ni lo que cambió entre los estudiantes. En algunos distritos, el reemplazo del personal significa que no queda nadie que trabajó en el programa, y por lo menos una escuela que recibió dinero terminó cerrando después.

Cuatro escuelas y un distrito escolar recibieron $187,659 en total el primer año, dos escuelas y dos distritos recibieron $161,703.89 en la segunda ronda, y una escuela y cuatro distritos recibieron fondos en mayo para gastarlos durante el año escolar 2023-24. Para recibir el subsidio, las escuelas o los distritos solo tuvieron que solicitar el dinero. Solo se rechazó a un solicitante en las tres rondas debido a una solicitud incompleta.

Que el subsidio se siga ofreciendo o no depende de si los legisladores continuarán destinando dinero para financiarlo.

Tres escuelas en el distrito escolar de Denver — George Washington, Kennedy y Northfield — recibieron el subsidio el primer año, y Kennedy recibió fondos por segunda vez, pero los representantes del distrito dijeron que las personas involucradas en el subsidio original “ya no están con el distrito”. Dijeron que nadie en el distrito podía hablar sobre ese trabajo.

Otros distritos que recibieron fondos no respondieron a solicitudes para obtener sus comentarios.

Este verano, las escuelas que recibieron fondos en la segunda ronda supuestamente iban a presentar un informe sobre cómo usaron el dinero y su influencia, pero solo una de ellas lo ha hecho.

El Consejo de Servicios Educativos Cooperativos (BOCES, por sus siglas en inglés) del Nordeste es un grupo regional que incluye 12 distritos escolares. El grupo buscó que todos los distritos adoptaran políticas y pautas relacionadas con cómo acelerar a estudiantes que quizás estén listos para entrar a clases avanzadas. Seis de los 12 distritos lo hicieron. En el informe, BOCES del Nordeste identificó algunos desafíos en sus escuelas rurales, pero dijo que el subsidio les permitió iniciar una expansión de las clases avanzadas y continuar fortaleciendo la iniciativa a lo largo de los próximos años.

Uno de los principales desafíos fue poder ofrecer continuamente cursos avanzados. Otro desafío fue la actitud de los maestros.

Los maestros “creían que los estudiantes no estaban listos para la enseñanza acelerada en el siguiente nivel de grado a pesar de datos sólidos debido a su madurez, necesidades SEL [aprendizaje socioemocional] o tener logros ‘solo’ en el percentil 88 en lugar del percentil 95”, su informe dice. “Esto realmente destaca la necesidad que tenemos en nuestro BOCES de implementar desarrollo profesional en todo BOCES sobre la educación avanzada y las necesidades de los estudiantes. Repetimos, esto es el inicio de una conversación—pero se necesitará tiempo para reiterar la información basada en estudios y ofrecer ese tipo de capacitación”.

Alena Barczak, la administradora del programa estatal y de apoyo para la equivalencia en high schools, dijo que las escuelas participantes de BOCES aumentaron la cantidad de estudiantes en clases avanzadas y el porcentaje de estudiantes de color que participaron.

Mencionó que la representación de estudiantes hispanos en clases avanzadas en las escuelas de BOCES aumentó del 7 al 10 por ciento después de recibir el subsidio. El porcentaje de estudiantes en los cursos avanzados que cumplían requisitos para recibir almuerzos gratis y a precio reducido aumentó del 8 al 20 por ciento. La población estudiantil hispana en los distritos de BOCES varía del 6 al 53 por ciento.

“Este es realmente el único programa de subsidios que tenemos que verdaderamente se enfoca en el acceso de los estudiantes a cursos avanzados”, Barczak dijo. “Realmente es clave. Me ha dado mucha alegría ver que la legislatura lo siga financiando. Es el único programa en su tipo”.

La senadora estatal de Colorado Janet Buckner, una demócrata de Aurora y patrocinadora de la ley para crear los subsidios, dijo que ha escuchado que el programa está funcionando. “He hablado con muchos estudiantes en los últimos años que se beneficiaron de este importante programa”, dijo en un mensaje por correo electrónico.

A nivel estatal, Colorado no da seguimiento a los datos demográficos de los estudiantes inscritos en clases de colocación avanzada. Solía hacerlo con algunos datos—pero solo de distritos que compartían la información voluntariamente. El estado está preparándose para incluir algunos datos sobre cursos avanzados en las calificaciones de desempeño de las escuelas, pero no está listo todavía.

Los datos que se está preparando para incluir en informes únicamente informativos no se dividirán por grupos de estudiantes.

El Consejo Universitario, la organización que administra los cursos, sí da seguimiento a los datos demográficos de estudiantes que se inscriben a nivel distrito, pero se rehusó a compartir los datos públicamente. Compartió algunos datos estatales.

Según los datos demográficos de estudiantes que tomaron el examen de colocación avanzada en 2022, los estudiantes negros en Colorado tuvieron una participación más alta en comparación con estudiantes negros a nivel nacional, pero los estudiantes hispanos en Colorado tuvieron una participación más baja que sus compañeros a nivel nacional. La brecha de Colorado entre la tasa de participación de los estudiantes blancos y los estudiantes hispanos es más grande que el promedio nacional.

La cantidad de estudiantes latinos que participaron en clases avanzadas a nivel nacional aumentó en un 83 por ciento entre 2012 y 2022, según los informes del Consejo Universitario. Como resultado, el 16 por ciento de estudiantes latinos en 10º, 11º y 12º grado participaron en clases de coloración avanzada en 2022. En Colorado, solo el 13 por ciento de los estudiantes latinos participaron en clases de colocación avanzada en 2022.

Según datos proporcionados por las Escuelas Públicas de Denver, las tres escuelas que recibieron fondos a través del subsidio, tenían una representación más baja de estudiantes hispanos y negros en cursos de colocación avanzada cuando recibieron el subsidio en 2019-20. Los estudiantes negros representaban el 10 por ciento de los estudiantes en clases de colocación avanzada en las tres escuelas, mientras que representaban el 15.8 por ciento de la población estudiantil general. Los estudiantes hispanos constituían el 35.8 por ciento de los estudiantes en clases avanzadas en las tres escuelas de Denver, mientras que constituían el 46 por ciento de todos los estudiantes en las escuelas.

Hasta en Sierra High School, después de que el dinero del subsidio ayudó a aumentar la representación de los estudiantes que estaban tomando clases de colocación avanzada, los estudiantes hispanos siguieron teniendo una representación más baja.

En 2022-23, cerca del 52.9 por ciento de los estudiantes en los cursos eran hispanos, un aumento en comparación con el 49.6 por ciento el año anterior. Más del 54 por ciento de los estudiantes de la escuela se identificaban como hispanos. El mismo año, la representacion de los estudiantes negros aumentó al 22.9 por ciento, comparado con el 19.7 por ciento de los estudiantes que se identificaban como negros.

Beudoin, el director de Sierra High, dijo que el trabajo tomará tiempo, pero que espera que todos los estudiantes terminen tomando clases desafiantes, y que resulte en mayores logros académicos en los exámenes estatales y otros resultados.

Dijo: “no es solo poner a los estudiantes en estas clases y decir, ‘buena suerte’”.

Yesenia Robles es una reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado, cubriendo distritos escolares de kindergarten a 12º grado y la educación multilingüe. Comunícate con Yesenia por correo electrónico a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Después de superar obstáculos, esta universitaria está luchando por la reforma migratoria

2023-03-02T23:03:30+00:00

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Edna Chávez sabe lo que es escapar sola de su país como adolescente. Sabe lo que es hacer el arriesgado y solitario viaje hacia el norte, cruzar ilegalmente la frontera y ser retenida como menor no acompañada en albergues y centros de detención.

Pero esta estudiante de 21 años se considera una de las pocas afortunadas, porque más tarde fue adoptada.

Ese apoyo le permitió continuar sus estudios y la encaminó hacia la residencia legal permanente.

Chávez ha conocido a muchos estudiantes con historias similares, pero que no tienen ninguna vía de acceso a la ciudadanía, con educación y oportunidades laborales limitadas, y que han tenido que soportar discriminación. Chávez quiere hacer algo al respecto.

“Tenemos que hacer un cambio radical en nuestra comunidad, no podemos seguir escondiéndonos”, dijo Chávez. “Es momento que alguien haga algo. Ese alguien tiene que ser yo.”

Chávez está planeando una manifestación el 11 de marzo en el Capitolio del estado, y la ha llamado Estudiantes Por Una Reforma Migratoria.

La manifestación fue idea suya, pero ha conseguido el apoyo de grupos de defensa de los inmigrantes que le están ayudando a coordinarla. Si suficientes estudiantes necesitan transporte al Capitolio, ella buscará la manera de proporcionarlo.

También está pidiendo que los estudiantes escriban cartas y firmen una petición pidiéndole al Congreso que renueve las disposiciones de la Ley de Inmigración de 1929. El propósito de esta ley era ofrecer una vía para obtener estatus legal para los inmigrantes que han estado muchos años en el país. Sin embargo, las fechas de entrada al país requeridas no se han actualizado recientemente, por lo que la mayoría de los inmigrantes ya no califican. En actualizaciones anteriores, la ley les otorgo amnistía a algunos inmigrantes durante la administración del presidente Reagan.

Actualizar la ley les daría a muchos más inmigrantes una vía para obtener estatus legal y a muchos más jóvenes un camino para continuar su educación.

“Lo que realmente quiero es que todos los estudiantes lleguen a demostrar que unidos somos mejores”, dijo Chávez. “La unión hace la fuerza”.

Chávez está llena de esperanza porque ya ha superado muchas barreras.

Chávez dice que en su país natal, Guatemala, estaba luchando contra hombres que intentaban obligarla a prostituirse. Se sentía en peligro, y a los 17 años decidió un día huir a Estados Unidos sin decírselo a sus padres.

Temía que su papá, que la maltrataba, no la iba a ayudar. De hecho, todavía su relación con él es tensa en la actualidad.

Después de un largo y peligroso viaje, Chávez estuvo confinada durante meses en centros de detención y luego en un albergue para menores no acompañados. Cuando cumplió 18 años, la sacaron del albergue para jóvenes y la enviaron de nuevo a un centro de detención. Luego, un defensor de inmigrantes encontró una familia que estaba dispuesta a apadrinarla. Después de mudarse con ellos, la adoptaron formalmente.

Cuando Chávez se mudó a Denver a los 18 años, se matriculó en GALS, una escuela chárter en la ciudad.

En Guatemala la habían obligado a abandonar la escuela después de segundo grado. Cuando empezó la escuela en Estados Unidos, no hablaba inglés. Un año después de matricularse en la secundaria, las escuelas cerraron debido a la pandemia. Eso significó que, encime de todo lo demás, también tuvo que aprender tecnología para poder continuar estudiando en línea a fin de obtener su diploma.

Consiguió graduarse la pasada primavera, antes de lo previsto.

“Básicamente no sabía nada,” dijo Chávez. “Tuve un montón de retos, se puede decir así, pero nada me impidió lograr lo que yo me había propuesto lograr.”

Chávez solicitó admisión en varias universidades y fue aceptada en todas menos una. El único rechazo no la desanimó porque, después de visitar el campus de la Colorado State University en Fort Collins, supo que allí quería ir.

“Me sentí que era de ese lugar”, dijo ella.

Empezó la universidad con algunos créditos que había obtenido en la secundaria. Ahora está estudiando matemáticas con especialización en ciencias actuariales.

Para ella, tener éxito significa tener una buena educación y luego poder aportar a su comunidad.

Pero ella no está esperando para aportar. Dice que ha descubierto una pasión por ayudar a los demás. Su mamá en Guatemala le dice que es como si fuera una persona nueva.

Chávez le dice que es cierto, porque así es. Tener tiempo para estudiar, en vez de trabajar todo el día, le ha permitido ver el mundo con otros ojos, dijo ella.

“Me he sentido más segura. Me he sentido más valiosa como mujer. Me he sentido realmente afortunada de estar en un país que me ofrece seguridad”, dijo Chávez.

Y para ella es importante ayudar a los demás a disfrutar al máximo el lugar donde se sienten protegidos.

“Lo estoy haciendo por el amor que le tengo a la comunidad”, dijo Chávez. “Lo hago de todo corazón.”

Yesenia Robles es reportera de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre asuntos relacionados con los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Pensó que la universidad estaba fuera de su alcance. Aquí te contamos cómo lo logró.

2023-02-14T17:00:00+00:00

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La madre de Sabastian Ortega lloró cuando él le dijo que había sido aceptado en la Colorado School of Mines. Él pensó, mientras hablaban por teléfono, que ella estaba llorando de alegría. No lo estaba.

En cambio, a su mamá le preocupaba que la familia pudiera pagar sus estudios: sin ayuda económica del estado, solo la inscripción es $20,600 anuales para estudiantes residentes. Y vivir en el campus puede costar unos $40,000.

“Me afectó mucho”, dijo Ortega. “Acabé llorando cuando colgué la llamada, porque me preguntaba: “¿Cómo voy a pagar por esto?” Se preguntaba después de la llamada: “¿Qué voy a hacer?”

Gracias a un consejero de la secundaria, Ortega solicitó numerosas becas y finalmente consiguió una beca completa para asistir a la Colorado School of Mines, una escuela de ciencias e ingeniería ubicada en Golden. Pero Ortega, de 21 años y ahora estudiante de tercer año, es uno de los pocos habitantes de Colorado con bajos ingresos que ha podido asistir a la universidad pública más selectiva de Colorado.

Entre las universidades públicas, la Mines tiene la sexta tasa de inscripción más baja de estudiantes con beca Pell del país según un análisis de Education Reform Now. En 2020, más de una cuarta parte de todos los estudiantes universitarios de primer año de Colorado recibieron becas Pell, pero en la Mines, solamente un 13.4% tenía esas becas.

Para calificar para una beca Pell, los estudiantes tienen que demostrar necesidad financiera. Entre los beneficiarios del programa Pell, los datos federales muestran que cerca de un 93% son de familias que ganan $60,000 o menos al año.

La proporción de estudiantes que reciben becas Pell en una universidad se ha convertido en un indicador indirecto de cuántos estudiantes de bajos ingresos asisten a una institución. La cantidad de estudiantes con becas Pell es importante porque muestra el grado en que esa institución está ayudando a estudiantes de todas las clases sociales a encontrar oportunidades.

Cómo pagar por la universidad

¿Necesitas más información sobre ayuda financiera? La Solicitud Gratuita de Ayuda Federal para Estudiantes, conocida como FAFSA por su nombre en inglés, ayuda a los estudiantes a obtener dinero gratis para pagar la universidad. La FAFSA te dirá si tienes derecho a una beca Pell, por ejemplo.

Aquí te mostramos por qué debes llenar la FAFSA — aunque todavía no sepas con certeza si vas a ir a la universidad.

Para obtener más información sobre la ayuda financiera en la Colorado School of Mines, los estudiantes o los padres pueden llamar a la oficina de ayuda financiera al 303-273-3301 o al número sin cargos 1-888-446-9489. También puedes enviar un correo electrónico a finaid@mines.edu.

Y habla con tu consejero de universidad en la secundaria. Él o ella te puede ayudar a encontrar más apoyo y a entender cuáles son tus opciones.

Los líderes de la universidad quieren que la Mines sea más representativa de la composición económica y demográfica del estado. Muchos de sus esfuerzos para conseguirlo — por ejemplo, presionando para que las escuelas K-12 ofrezcan más clases avanzadas de matemáticas y ciencias, estableciendo un programa federal para ayudar a los estudiantes a asistir a la Mines y animando a los estudiantes de pocos ingresos a unirse como comunidad — están todavía en sus inicios. Los administradores dijeron que hubo conversaciones durante años sobre lo que había que hacer, pero que fueron lentos en actuar.

Una lista de metas que la universidad espera lograr en 2024 y más allá incluye llegar a ser “accesible y atractiva para estudiantes calificados de todos los orígenes.” La cantidad de becas Pell ilustra lo lejos que está la escuela de lograr esa meta, y los administradores reconocen que hay trabajo por hacer para conectar a los estudiantes de bajos ingresos con una educación que ofrece una de las inversiones con más retorno económico del país.

El presidente Paul Johnson, que ha dirigido la universidad desde 2015, ha enviado un mensaje a los administradores para “redoblar los esfuerzos para resolver esto”, dijo Sheena Martínez, vicepresidenta adjunta de vida estudiantil para equidad y participación. El puesto de Martínez es nuevo y tiene por objeto elaborar estrategias para ayudar a los estudiantes de minorías raciales y a los que de bajos ingresos. Ella dijo que universidad la escuela está construyendo los cimientos que ayudarán a los estudiantes en los años venideros.

“Estamos trabajando para ser de elite, pero no elitistas”, dijo Martínez. “Y si hablas con estudiantes que provienen de áreas poco representadas, te dirán que históricamente no han visto a la Mines como un lugar disponible para ellos”.

Sabastian Ortega ganó una beca completa para asistir a Colorado School of Mines.

La preparación para una escuela como la Mines empieza desde temprano

Ortega empezó a interesarse por la ciencia, la tecnología, la ingeniería y las matemáticas (STEM) en la escuela intermedia. La secundaria Odyssey Early College and Career Options de Colorado Springs le preparó bien, dice. Cuando se graduó, ya tenía suficientes créditos para un título asociado de universidad.

Su experiencia en la secundaria no es la que tienen todos los estudiantes, dijo.

“La cuestión es que, si no tomas ninguna clase universitaria durante la secundaria, ya estás atrasado”, dijo Ortega.

Los líderes de la Mines saben que esto es un problema. La Mines requiere que los estudiantes tengan conocimientos previos en clases avanzadas como trigonometría, precálculo y química.

Muchos estudiantes de Colorado nunca toman esas clases, y los administradores de la Mines se están comunicando cada vez más con las escuelas secundarias para animarlas a incluir clases rigurosas y que otorguen créditos universitarios en matemáticas o ciencias, dijo Lori Kester, vicerrectora asociada de manejo de inscripción.

“Estamos tratando de comunicarnos con los orientadores de las escuelas secundarias y asegurar que encaminen bien a los estudiantes desde temprano para que puedan ser admitidos en la Mines”, dijo Kester. “Eso es realmente crítico para nuestro éxito”.

Los líderes de la Mines han creado algunas oportunidades para preparar a los estudiantes de pocos ingresos y lograr que se interesen por la universidad. Pero tienen limitaciones.

Programas como The Challenge Program preparan a los futuros estudiantes con clases de matemáticas y ciencias y seminarios sobre el manejo del tiempo y el estrés. La universidad ofrece programas de tutoría en la escuela intermedia DSST: College View Middle School, en el suroeste de Denver y donde casi todos los estudiantes proceden de familias de minorías raciales, y envía a estudiantes de la Mines a trabajar como voluntarios en escuelas de todo el estado.

La universidad también cuenta con un programa de verano que les permite a estudiantes de undécimo y duodécimo grado de minorías raciales, de primera generación o de bajos ingresos vivir y aprender en el campus.

Las iniciativas más recientes incluyen el programa Upward Bound Math Science Program en la escuela Alameda International Jr./Sr. High School. Se trata de un programa financiado con fondos federales en el que muchas universidades de todo el país han participado por décadas para ayudar a los estudiantes en desventaja.

Incluso cuando las escuelas empujan a los estudiantes hacia los programas STEM, es difícil conseguir que ellos persistan en ese campo, dijo Analise González-Fine, directora de iniciativas universitarias de la red de escuelas chárter DSST. La escuela se enfoca en desarrollar las destrezas en el campo STEM, pero muchos estudiantes quizás nunca terminen en una universidad como la Mines, dijo ella.

Alrededor de un 55% de la clase graduanda de 2022 de la escuela tenía intenciones de ir a una universidad STEM. Y un 25% de los estudiantes de familias de pocos ingresos dijeron que irían a una universidad STEM, dijo González-Fine.

Sabastian Ortega trabaja durante una clase sobre los procedimientos estándar de operación para los parámetros de calidad del agua. Él sabía que quería estudiar en la Colorado School of Mines y convertirse en ingeniero medioambiental, pero el alto costo de asistir a la universidad era un problema.

Ortega estuvo a punto de tomar un camino diferente — como tantos otros

Cuando llegó el momento de solicitar admisión a las universidades, Ortega no tenía otra opción — solamente solicitó admisión a la Colorado School of Mines. Él sabía que quería ser ingeniero medioambiental especializado en recursos de agua.

Participó en los programas de la Mines, por ejemplo, el Challenge. No obstante, las finanzas no funcionaron. Consideró unirse a la Guardia Nacional o dejar la universidad por un año para trabajar y ahorrar.

“Sentía que era la única forma de pagar la universidad”, dijo Ortega.

El costo de asistir a la Mines es sin duda el mayor factor decisivo para los estudiantes que quieren asistir a esa universidad, dijo Ortega.

Jill Robertson, directora de ayuda financiera, dijo que la universidad tiene programas de grants para los residentes de Colorado basadas en mérito (no en necesidad económica). La institución también ha redoblado sus esfuerzos para encontrar donantes que ofrezcan becas y ayudas para esos estudiantes.

La universidad también se ha asociado con las universidades comunitarias del estado, donde los estudiantes pueden obtener créditos para un diploma de la Mines pero sin tener que pagar la matrícula de la Mines.

Robertson dijo que la universidad ha tratado de limitar los aumentos en la matrícula anual para que coincidan con la tasa de inflación. Sin embargo, el estado gastado menos en educación superior en las últimas tres décadas, y por lo tanto todas las universidades del estado han aumentado sus precios de matrícula.

Hace diez años la universidad les cobraba alrededor de un cuarto menos por semestre a los residentes del estado. Los aumentos han perjudicado aún más a los estudiantes de bajos ingresos del estado, especialmente cuando las becas Pell solamente pagan hasta unos $6,900 al año, mucho menos que el costo anual para asistir. Por otro lado, las ayudas estatales solamente cubren una parte del costo para los residentes.

“Realmente tratamos de mantener el costo en un nivel razonable”, dijo Robertson. “Pero educar ingenieros realmente buenos es caro.”

Sabastian Ortega hace una pregunta durante una clase de ingeniería civil y medioambiental en la Colorado School of Mines. Él ha visto cómo sus amigos de orígenes similares a los suyos abandonaron la universidad en mayor proporción que sus otros compañeros.

No basta con admitir estudiantes. También necesitan apoyo.

La mayoría de los estudiantes de la Mines se gradúan en seis años, alrededor de un 83%, según datos federales. Pero en ese mismo plazo, la cifra de estudiantes de bajos ingresos que se gradúan de la Mines es menos, cerca de un 75%. Y la Mines no es la única universidad en la que eso ocurre. Las tasas de graduación de los estudiantes con becas Pell son más bajas en las universidades de todo el estado.

Ortega dijo que vio cómo amigos con antecedentes similares abandonaban los estudios en mayor proporción que sus amigos con mejor nivel económico. Muchos no podían equilibrar sus trabajos con la pesada carga de estudios, dijo. Los estudiantes de minorías raciales que quedan son mayormente estudiantes internacionales.

“Uno de mis amigos, su papá es dueño de una empresa petrolera”, dijo Ortega. “Por eso es difícil establecer una conexión cuando se trata de esa parte de su vida”.

La universidad ha empezado a reunir a estudiantes de primer año de orígenes similares para que puedan formar una comunidad que entienda sus luchas, dijo Martínez. La esperanza es que los estudiantes tengan un grupo de compañeros que les ayude en el camino.

Ortega dijo que ha visto que la escuela también se enfoca más en su Programa Multicultural de Ingeniería, que comenzó en 1989. Desde que él empezó en la Mines, ha visto más eventos y más administradores que aparecen para hablar de servicios financieros, de tutoría o de consejería, dijo.

“Creo que por fin se han dado cuenta de que tienen realmente que ayudar a estos estudiantes”, dijo Ortega. “Creo que se han dado cuenta de que para ayudar de verdad a estos estudiantes, tienen que lograr que ellos por fin sientan que pertenecen aquí”.

Ortega también intenta poner de su parte. Trabaja en la oficina de ayuda financiera varias veces a la semana. Su objetivo es que los futuros estudiantes de entornos como el suyo sepan que tienen un sitio en la Mines.

No quiere que ninguna mamá se preocupe o llore por el costo de la universidad, porque hay opciones. También intenta decirles a los estudiantes y padres que Mines ayudará a los estudiantes a conseguir trabajos que les darán dinero y contribuirán a cambiar el mundo.

“Es algo que me hubiera gustado que mi mamá tuviera”, dijo Ortega, “que alguien le dijera ‘todo va a salir bien’”.

Jason Gonzales es reportero que cubre temas de educación superior y la legislatura de Colorado. Chalkbeat Colorado colabora con Open Campus en periodismo sobre el tema de educación superior. Para comunicarte con Jason, escríbele a jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Éxito y sacrificio: una década de grandes avances en las tasas de graduación de estudiantes hispanos en Colorado

2022-06-02T09:58:00+00:00

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Cuando Rosa Beltran estaba en high school a finales de los años 1990 en un pequeño poblado en el sur de Colorado, nunca pensó que se graduaría.

“Mis padres estaban muy preocupados por trabajar y poner comida sobre la mesa. Creo que tampoco tuve ese apoyo en la escuela”, Beltran dijo sobre su high school en Center, una comunidad agrícola mayormente hispana en el valle de San Luis.

Beltran dejó de ir a la escuela y se convirtió en madre adolescente. Pero decidió que sus hijos terminarían la escuela.

“Siempre me lo inculcaron; voy a graduarme, voy a ir a la universidad”, dijo Marisa, su hija mayor ahora de 25 años. “Nada de peros.”

Antes del noveno grado, Marisa descubrió que podía tomar clases universitarias como estudiante de high school. La escuela la transportaba en autobús a y desde el campus universitario.

“Era una escuela muy pequeña y alentadora”, dijo.

Marisa Beltran se graduó de Pueblo en 2015, durante una década en la que la tasa de graduación hispana en Colorado aumentó casi 20 puntos porcentuales, el doble de lo que aumentó la tasa entre todos los estudiantes, y más rápido que entre cualquier otro grupo demográfico.

Las tasas de graduación hispana aumentaron radicalmente por múltiples razones, incluidas nuevas estrategias escolares, mejores condiciones económicas y la intensa determinación de las familias. Sin embargo, las tasas de graduación de high school y universitaria entre los hispanos siguen siendo más bajas que las de los estudiantes blancos. Y con la pandemia generando un alto costo en el bienestar de las familias hispanas, muchos se preocupan de que también reduzca gradualmente los recientes avances en educación.

Chalkbeat examinó las tasas de graduación de high school como parte de “Buscando Avances”, un proyecto de Colorado News Collaborative sobre la equidad social, económica y en salud de los coloradenses negros e hispanos. Graduarse de high school es clave para continuar con una educación superior, obtener mejores trabajos y ganar mayores salarios.

Entre 2010 y 2020, las tasas de graduación de high school entre los estudiantes hispanos, quienes ahora constituyen más de un tercio de todos los estudiantes de kindergarten a 12º grado en Colorado, subieron del 55.5 al 75.4 por ciento, un marcado aumento.

“Definitivamente debieron haber subido; había mucha oportunidad para que aumentaran”, dijo Jim Chavez, director ejecutivo de la Latin American Educational Foundation.

Otra señal del progreso alcanzado fue que la tasa de estudiantes hispanos que abandonaron sus estudios se redujo casi por la mitad, al 2.8 por ciento, y la tasa de estudiantes universitarios hispanos que necesitaron clases compensatorias disminuyó.

Pero sigue siendo menos probable que los estudiantes hispanos asistan a la universidad, y dos veces más probable que necesiten clases compensatorias, en comparación con los estudiantes blancos.

Por lo tanto, aun cuando los estudiantes se gradúan de high school, con frecuencia enfrentan una difícil trayectoria, Chavez dijo.

Y la pandemia amenaza una década de avances, ya que las familias hispanas se han visto muy afectadas por la pérdida de trabajo, muerte y enfermedad grave debido a COVID, y por interrupciones en el aprendizaje. La tasa de graduación hispana disminuyó 1.2 por ciento el año pasado, mientras que la tasa entre estudiantes blancos aumentó. Las pérdidas podrían continuar conforme los estudiantes más pequeños, quienes se vieron más afectados durante la pandemia, se abren camino hacia high school.

Para entender los cambios, Chalkbeat habló con más de una docena de educadores, activistas, padres y estudiantes y analizó datos de los distritos escolares para encontrar a aquellos distritos en los que los estudiantes hispanos ahora tienen una tasa de graduación más alta que el promedio estatal para ese grupo. La tasa de graduación hispana disminuyó en solo un distrito grande entre 2010 y 2020, el Distrito 49. Este distrito no le dio una entrevista a Chalkbeat.

Políticas estatales y federales impulsaron las tasas de graduación

Para identificar las causas de estos recientes avances, algunos atribuyen políticas establecidas hace más de una década en Colorado. Cuando el exgobernador Bill Ritter fue elegido en 2006, estableció una meta de reducir la tasa del abandono escolar por la mitad en 10 años. Luego, en 2008, legisladores en Colorado establecieron nuevas metas para la educación pública y en 2009 empezaron a evaluar cada high school en parte según su tasa de graduación.

Eso puso presión en los distritos escolares para que aumentaran sus logros y tasas de graduación, y generó un sistema de organizaciones no lucrativas y consultores para proporcionar ayuda.

Factores sociales también contribuyeron. Por ejemplo, en la década que terminó en 2020, la tasa de embarazos entre adolescentes hispanas de 15 a 19 años en Colorado disminuyó radicalmente, de 66.8 por cada 100,000 adolescentes a 24.4 por cada 100,000, lo cual ayudó a que más adolescentes continuaran sus estudios.

Las familias hispanas obtuvieron avances económicos en la última década que quizás hayan disminuido la presión de trabajar y estudiar al mismo tiempo entre los adolescentes. Los ingresos medios por hogar entre las personas latinas, según datos del Censo, fueron de $57,790 en 2020, un aumento del 26 por ciento cuando se ajusta según la inflación.

Además, un aplazamiento federal contra la amenaza de deportación quizás haya aumentado el valor de la educación entre los estudiantes indocumentados. En diciembre, Colorado tenía 13,720 beneficiarios de lo que se conoce como el programa DACA, según el Migration Policy Institute.

En la familia Beltran, mamá Rosa ha notado que las escuelas de sus hijos son más alentadoras que cuando ella fue a la escuela. Ha visto a sus hijos hablar con reclutadores universitarios y tener múltiples oportunidades para pensar sobre un futuro después de high school.

Sin embargo, su hija Marisa dijo que ella y su hermano necesitaron más ayuda.

“Tuvimos que encontrar [servicios de] tutoría, ayudarnos entre nosotros y pedir ayuda externa”, Beltran dijo. “La encontramos, pero tuvimos que descifrarlo nosotros solos”.

“Siempre me lo inculcaron; voy a graduarme, voy a ir a la universidad”, dijo Marisa Beltran, quien se graduó de la Universidad de Grand Canyon y ahora está estudiando una maestría.

El noveno grado es un año crucial

Steve Dobo, fundador y director ejecutivo de Zero Dropouts, atribuye los avances en las tasas de graduación a la habilidad de las escuelas para analizar minuciosamente los datos, lo cual antes no era una práctica común.

Dijo que las organizaciones no lucrativas ayudaron a los distritos a separar subgrupos de estudiantes con dificultades, según su grupo racial, género, nivel de grado u otros factores, para diseñar soluciones específicas.

“Los distritos con los que trabajamos verdaderamente empezaron a entender que realmente necesitas mejorar en el noveno grado”, Dobo dijo.

Varios distritos se enfocaron en estudiantes que entraban a high school. Después de que el superintendente Rico Munn llegó a Aurora en 2013, encontró que muchos estudiantes de noveno grado no estaban recibiendo horarios completos con clases obligatorias.

“Si empiezas a desviarte del camino en el noveno grado, eso es un problema”, Munn dijo.

El distrito examinó datos para identificar problemas y a los estudiantes que necesitaban ayuda, y luego trabajó para cambiar sistemas y la cultura escolar, Munn dijo. Aurora también abrió un centro de orientación universitaria y vocacional en cada high school. Los más nuevos se inauguraron el otoño pasado.

En 2010, Aurora tenía una tasa de graduación hispana de solo 34.2 por ciento, pero la tasa casi se duplicó, el mayor aumento entre los distritos más grandes de Colorado, a 76.4 por ciento en 2020, antes de bajar un poco el año pasado.

El distrito de las Escuelas Pública de Aurora abrió centros universitarios y vocacionales en cada high school como parte de una estrategia para mejorar la tasa de graduación y los resultados de la educación postsecundaria.

Las intervenciones con frecuencia tienen que ver con “enseñarles cómo ser un estudiante de high school”, mantenerse organizados y pedir ayuda a sus maestros, dijo Susannah Halbrook, una intervencionista de noveno grado con Zero Dropouts.

En Greeley, la intervención temprana significa dar seguimiento a los estudiantes de noveno grado para crear planes individuales que los ayuden a evitar el fracaso.

“Hace años, la mayoría de nuestros recursos se invertían en estudiantes que ya tenían tres o cuatro efes en su expediente académico”, dijo Deirdre Pilch, superintendenta de las escuelas de Greeley-Evans en el Distrito 6.

Ahora, dijo, “tan pronto una calificación empieza a bajar a D, intervenimos”.

Ayuda cuando se necesita

Andy Tucker, director de preparación postsecundaria y laboral en el departamento estatal de educación, dijo que ha visto a distritos ser “mucho más intencionados” en el trabajo de equidad, “en incluir a aquellos estudiantes que quizás caigan en esas brechas”.

Greeley, por ejemplo, promueve su programa de verano enfocado en niños hispanos, el subgrupo con menos probabilidad de graduarse.

A Saul Sanchez, de 18 años, lo invitaron a unirse después de que reprobara algunas clases su primer año de high school. Dudaba que terminaría la escuela.

“No me gustaba la escuela para nada”, dijo Sanchez, quien se acaba de graduar de Northridge High School en Greeley. “Odiaba el hecho de tener tarea”.

Consejeros y otras personas intentaban preguntarle cómo andaban las cosas cuando no le iba bien, pero Sanchez no creía que les importara.

Pero el Programa de Recuperación para Estudiantes le abrió los ojos. Recibió ayuda para ponerse al día con sus créditos. Los consejeros dieron seguimiento a su progreso.

“Siempre estaban encima de mí”, dijo. Le preguntaban si se había acordado de entregar sus tareas o estudiar para exámenes. “En ese entonces pensaba que era una molestia que siguieran insistiendo”.

Pero en algún momento durante su experiencia escolar, Sanchez se dio cuenta de que era todo para su beneficio. Y se hizo amigo de los otros estudiantes, quienes se ayudaban entre ellos. Sanchez se convirtió en el estudiante a quienes todos acudían para pedir ayuda con matemáticas. La ayuda mutua rindió frutos. Casi todos los estudiantes de último año en el programa se graduaron.

Preparándose para el futuro

Otro factor quizás sea que más estudiantes están tomando cursos que ofrecen créditos tanto de high school como universitarios. Los cursos pueden ofrecerse en un colegio comunitario o universidad, o en una high school. Los distritos escolares cubren los costos.

Conocido como matriculación simultánea, este programa reemplazó opciones más limitadas en 2009. Datos demuestran que más estudiantes de todos los grupos están tomando cursos de matriculación simultánea, pero es menos probable que los estudiantes hispanos aprovechen el programa en comparación con los estudiantes blancos.

Alexandra Reyes Amaya, quien se graduó de Hinkley High School en Aurora en 2020, dijo que el programa le dio la seguridad de que estaba preparada para la universidad. Pero solo se enteró del programa a través del hermano mayor de una amiga, apenas con suficiente tiempo en su último año de high school. Tomó clases por la noche para incluir más en su horario.

Ahora, ya en la universidad, está en camino a graduarse un año antes.

Pero la universidad solo es una vía hacia el éxito, y los distritos deseosos de mantener a los estudiantes interesados en regresar a la escuela también están ampliando oportunidades para cursar estudios vocacionales y técnicos.

Chavez de la fundación de becas advirtió que los mensajes que dicen que la universidad no es para todos están limitando el progreso de los estudiantes latinos.

“Se han enfocado y escuchado muy desproporcionadamente entre los adolescentes negros y latinos”, Chavez dijo. “Quizás ganen un buen salario, pero los están limitando de una carrera con mayores ingresos potenciales. Realmente los están limitando de un puesto donde tomen decisiones, un puesto de liderazgo”.

Cambiando las definiciones del éxito

El aumento en las tasas de graduación también refleja una reevaluación de cómo las escuelas definen el éxito. Varios distritos escolares han estado considerando nuevamente lo que se necesita para aprobar una clase. Conocidas en conjunto como la calificación basada en estándares, nuevas pautas animan a los maestros a que tomen en cuenta toda evidencia del aprendizaje de un estudiante.

Mark Cousins, un director regional con Zero Dropouts y exdirector de una high school en Greeley, dijo que con frecuencia habla con maestros que no otorgan ningún crédito por tarea que reciben tarde. Cree que dar un crédito parcial disminuye la probabilidad de que el estudiante fracase.

“¿Me estás diciendo que una tarea no vale nada?” Cousins dijo.

Algunos distritos han creado opciones que establecen una meta diferente, a veces menos alta, para que los estudiantes se gradúen. Colorado no requiere que los estudiantes tomen un examen para graduarse, como lo hacen otros estados. En lugar de eso, cada distrito puede establecer sus propios requisitos de graduación.

Para la generación que se graduó en 2022, el estado amplió la meta al requerir que los distritos demuestren que sus estudiantes dominan el inglés y las matemáticas. Como evidencia, los distritos pueden usar múltiples factores, como los resultados del SAT, la aprobación de un curso universitario o un proyecto estudiantil.

Thompson y Pueblo crearon nuevas opciones para que sus estudiantes obtengan su diploma de high school. Desde el año pasado, Thompson ha estado permitiendo que sus estudiantes se gradúen con menos créditos optativos si ya aprobaron los requisitos principales, como inglés, matemáticas y ciencias.

“Igual sabemos que estamos proporcionando un diploma sólido”, dijo Theo Robison, director de estudios secundarios en Thompson.

Los diplomas de Pueblo requieren la misma cantidad de créditos, pero diferentes clases, como un curso técnico de matemáticas, para ciertas carreras profesionales.

“Solo son diferentes vías que llevan al mismo camino”, dijo Charlotte Macaluso, superintendenta del distrito escolar de Pueblo.

Sin embargo, a algunas personas les preocupa que las escuelas estén aprobando a los estudiantes sin educarlos bien, solo para mejorar las tasas de graduación.

“Reducir los estándares es algo que se ha hecho a lo largo del tiempo”, dijo Joe Molina, un defensor latino en el norte de Colorado. Dice que cuando se graduó en 1992, solo podía leer a nivel de tercer grado, y luego aprendió más por sí solo. “¿Realmente estamos proporcionando más oportunidades?”

Un factor que los líderes escolares toman en cuenta para asegurar que sus avances sean reales son las tasas de estudiantes que toman clases compensatorias. En Colorado la tasa de estudiantes universitarios hispanos que necesitaron clases compensatorias disminuyó 16 puntos porcentuales al 43.8 por ciento.

Permitir que los estudiantes visualicen varias posibilidades para su futuro los ayuda a seguir participando y en camino a graduarse, dijo Jordan Bills, una consejera en los centros vocacionales de Aurora. Bills ha llevado a estudiantes para que visiten universidades y los ha conectado con profesionales o con reclutadores militares. También ha ayudado a las familias para que sepan sobre las diversas formas de pagar por la universidad.

“Nuestro trabajo es reducir la brecha de los conocimientos”, Bills dijo. “Tiene que haber un poco de autonomía y opciones, darles más, la autonomía de ser quienes conducen su vida”.

Jordan Bills, la consejera en William Smith High School en Aurora, habla con Eli Garcia, de 17 años, centro, y Jeffrey Forbis, de 18, derecha, mientras los dos estudiantes se preparan para asistir a la Universidad de Colorado el próximo otoño.

La pandemia presenta nuevos desafíos

Con vistas al futuro, lo que más les preocupa a los líderes de los distritos son los estudiantes ausentes y desinteresados.

“El principal factor que ahora estamos tratando de entender familia por familia es por qué un estudiante se ausenta continuamente”, dijo Munn, el superintendente de Aurora. “Estamos escuchando más y más que ‘están trabajando’, o que están cuidando a alguien mientras sus parientes trabajan”.

Charlotte Ciancio, superintendenta del distrito escolar de Mapleton, está pensando en ofrecer aprendizaje virtual o híbrido para estudiantes que ya no consideran valioso pasar todo el día sentados en un salón de clases.

“¿Es un día escolar la cantidad adecuada de horas?” Ciancio dijo.

En Pueblo, la superintendenta Macaluso dijo que los estudiantes que estaban viviendo en la pobreza ahora también deben lidiar con el aislamiento, el trauma, el dolor y la pérdida.

“Cuando ya estás enfrentando dificultades, esas cosas tienen un gran impacto”, dijo.

“Todos se han visto afectados, de una u otra forma”, Molina dijo, lo cual afecta la forma como los estudiantes participan en su educación. “Hay mucha gente sin esperanza y solo tratando de vivir en el momento”.

Marisa Beltran se benefició al estudiar en un ambiente escolar más alentador que el de sus padres, pero igual tuvo que buscar oportunidades por sí misma.

Avanzando

En medio de ese desafío diario, el avance académico continuo en general es difícil de apreciar. Pero es evidente en historias individuales.

Rosa Beltran dijo que está orgullosa de sus tres hijos, incluidos dos que fueron a la universidad.

“Mi mamá fue la que presionó a mi papá para que viniera a los Estados Unidos, ese fue su sacrificio por nosotros”, Beltran dijo. “Yo sacrifiqué mucho al no poder estar tanto con mis hijos porque tuve que trabajar”.

“Ahora es solo este orgullo que llevas contigo. Mis esperanzas para ellos son que tengan una carrera para que puedan mantener a sus familias y no tengan que preocuparse”, dijo. “Que tengan un trabajo estable y [que] tengan seguro. Mis padres siempre se tuvieron que preocupar. Mi esposo y yo siempre nos tuvimos que preocupar”.

Esos sacrificios y esperanzas son el motor que impulsan lo que los estudiantes llaman “ganas”: su fuerza de voluntad.

“Si no fuera por los sacrificios de mis padres, no estaría aquí”, Marisa Beltran dijo. “Por eso me aseguraré de que todo su trabajo no haya sido en vano”.

Yesenia Robles es una reportera de Chalkbeat Colorado dedicada a cubrir temas sobre los distritos K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Comunícate con Yesenia enviándole un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

La tasa de graduación entre los varones hispanos de Colorado no compara con la de sus compañeros. Las universidades de Colorado pueden hacer más para sacarlos adelante.

2021-12-13T15:01:00+00:00

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Las diferencias son sorprendentes.

Cada año, por ejemplo, miles de estudiantes de la Universidad de Colorado en Boulder inician el camino para obtener un diploma universitario de cuatro años. Seis años después, cerca del 69% lo ha conseguido.

¿Pero qué tal con los varones hispanos? Solo el 58% se graduó.

La historia es la misma en la universidad Colorado State, donde se gradúa el 70% de todos los estudiantes, pero solamente un 58% de los varones hispanos.

Y en la Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver), las cifras son devastadoras. De cada cinco varones hispanos que empezaron sus estudios universitarios en 2013, solamente uno obtuvo un diploma de cuatro años.

Las cifras en bruto nos muestran la realidad. En 2013, 249 varones hispanos se matricularon en MSU Denver con la meta de obtener un diploma de cuatro años. Para el 2019, solo 46 de ellos lo lograron. Y 203 de ellos no.

La gran diferencia en la obtención de diplomas de universidades en Colorado por parte de los varones hispanos no ha mejorado mucho en la última década, incluso con el aumento en la matrícula de estudiantes hispanos en las universidades.

El porcentaje de varones hispanos que van a la universidad es el más bajo de todos los grupos de estudiantes en Colorado, y todos los factores que hacen más difícil llegar al campus — falta de presupuesto, obligaciones familiares, rutas poco definidas y falta de mentores — les persiguen en la universidad.

“Estamos en un punto en el que una parte valiosa de nuestra comunidad está en un agujero negro”, dijo Nathan Cadena, director de operaciones de la Denver Scholarship Foundation, una organización que ayuda a los estudiantes de Denver a matricularse y graduarse de la universidad. “Y da miedo. Tenemos que hacer algo al respecto”.

La falta de acción amenaza los sueños de los estudiantes jóvenes — y la prosperidad económica del estado. Los líderes de Colorado quieren que un 66% de los residentes tengan un diploma de universidad o un certificado universitario para 2025. Pero a pesar de ser la segunda población más grande del estado, solamente una cuarta parte de los hispanos tiene más que un diploma de secundaria. Los varones hispanos, incluso más que las mujeres hispanas, enfrentan mayores barreras para obtener una educación.

Estos resultados no son inevitables. Alrededor del país, algunas instituciones han eliminado estas brechas casi por completo desarrollando sistemas que ayudan a los estudiantes antes de que tropiecen, recompensando a los profesores por hacer más para conectarse con los estudiantes y creando comunidades que acogen a los estudiantes en el campus. Los esfuerzos comienzan con un mensaje claro de los líderes: que este trabajo es una prioridad y no una idea que se les ocurrió después.

5:51 a.m: Luis Hernández, a la derecha, mira las noticias mientras su mamá, Mariela Hernández, limpia la cocina antes de que ambos se vayan a trabajar a una fábrica de cartuchos de tinta y tóner. Su mamá y Luis trabajan en el primer turno del día para que él pueda ir a la Universidad Estatal Metropolitana de Denver.

Las instituciones University of Colorado-Denver, MSU Denver, Adams State University, y Colorado State University of Pueblo han sido designadas como instituciones de servicio a los hispanos, lo cual significa que al menos una cuarta parte del estudiantado está compuesta por estudiantes hispanos.

Sin embargo, Wil Del Pilar, vicepresidente de política universitaria en The Education Trust, dijo que el hecho de matricular más estudiantes hispanos no significa que las universidades estén haciendo lo correcto con ellos, especialmente cuando son tan pocos los que llegan a graduarse.

“Yo diría que la mayoría de las instituciones, incluso en Colorado, no están sirviendo a los hispanos, sino que están matriculando a los hispanos”, dijo Pilar. “No están atendiendo las necesidades de esos estudiantes porque no están invirtiendo en los servicios necesarios para asegurar que lleguen a graduarse”

Los estudiantes hispanos se pasan por alto

Tras dos años terribles en la Colorado State University, Carlos Fernández-Pérez estaba dispuesto a tirar la toalla y abandonar Fort Collins antes de su tercer año. La universidad había sido un reto duro a pesar de que él había obtenido buenas notas en la secundaria. Luego, el cambio a clases virtuales del año pasado por la pandemia de COVID estuvo a punto de descarrilarlo.

Se mudó a su casa en Denver y se las arregló para tomar clases en línea, trabajar a tiempo parcial en DoorDash y cuidar a su hermanita menor de 4 años. Fue demasiado, y pensó que tendría que dejar la universidad.

“Iba a tomarme un descanso”, dijo Fernández-Pérez.

Los estudiantes que hacen una pausa en sus estudios universitarios a menudo no regresan. Por eso, cuando Fernández-Pérez no volvió a solicitar su beca de la Latin American Educational Foundation, Jim Chávez, director ejecutivo de la organización, se preocupó. Se puso al teléfono y convenció a Fernández-Pérez de que siguiera estudiando.

Nadie en CSU le tendió la mano como lo hizo Chávez, dijo Fernández-Pérez.

Fernández-Pérez dejó sus estudios en CSU y entonces se matriculó en MSU Denver. Eso le permitió lograr un mejor balance entre los estudios y la familia. La matrícula también era menos costosa.

El apoyo de Chávez y de la fundación de becas le ayudó a superar una época difícil y de transición.

“Es importante que los estudiantes sepan que alguien realmente se preocupa”, dijo Chávez, “alguien que dedica tiempo y quiere que el estudiante tenga éxito y está ayudando a asegurar que persiste y continúa estudiando.”

El porcentaje bajo de graduación entre varones hispanos es un problema de todo el estado

En MSU Denver, Fernández-Pérez siente que ha encontrado un mejor espacio para él. La institución es un 30% hispana — el doble de la proporción de Colorado State o University of Colorado Boulder — y se enorgullece de atender a estudiantes no tradicionales cuyas vidas son a veces complicadas.

Aun así, las opciones de los estudiantes en las instituciones son un tema importante. Fernández-Pérez dejó una universidad que tiene una de las tasas de graduación más altas para los varones hispanos y se matriculó en la institución que tiene uno de los porcentajes más bajos. En 2019, un 58% de los varones hispanos en Colorado State se graduaron en seis años, en comparación con solo el 18% en Metro.

Estadísticamente, ese traslado pudo haber puesto en riesgo la educación de Fernández-Pérez.

En ambas instituciones — y en casi todas las universidades de cuatro años de Colorado, grandes o pequeñas, selectivas o de acceso abierto — existe una brecha de aproximadamente 10 puntos en la tasa de graduación de los varones hispanos y la tasa de todos los estudiantes.

Los líderes de educación superior dicen que están trabajando para reducir la brecha. Colorado State ha aumentado sus servicios de apoyo y alcance a los estudiantes de secundaria en un intento por convertirse en la próxima Institución de Servicio a los Hispanos en el estado, lo cual significa que está matriculando al menos un 25% de estudiantes hispanos.

La universidad ha empezado a pensar más en cómo conseguir que los estudiantes se gradúen, dijo Mary Pedersen, directora académica de la universidad.

Los funcionarios de la universidad ofrecen servicios de tutoría adicional y apoyo diario, como por ejemplo comidas y ayuda financiera.

CSU Pueblo, Colorado Mesa University y Adams State University también tienen programas que ayudan a los estudiantes.

CSU Pueblo recientemente abrió un centro para conectar a los estudiantes con recursos. La universidad capacita a los profesores sobre cómo ayudar a los estudiantes y ofrece programas de mentoría por profesores y estudiantes.

MSU Denver ha ampliado sus iniciativas y ofrece ayuda financiera, orientación académica y mentorías. Las tasas de graduación de todos los estudiantes aumentaron y se duplicaron para los varones hispanos en una década, del 9% al 18%. Pero la tasa sigue estando muy por debajo de la de otras universidades.

Luis es un estudiante de primer año en MSU Denver, y espera convertirse en dentista después de graduarse de universidad. Trabaja tres días a la semana mientras asiste a clases a tiempo completo.

Reconociendo la función que desempeñan los campus como MSU en la educación de los estudiantes en desventaja, Colorado ha modificado la forma de enviarles dinero a esas instituciones. Pero dado que Colorado financia la educación superior con una de las tasas más bajas de la nación, ese cambio aún no cubre las necesidades (dicen los funcionarios de la universidad), especialmente en las instituciones más pequeñas que reciben menos fondos por estudiante que CU Boulder y CSU.

Los programas limitados generalmente atienden a cientos de estudiantes, no a las decenas de miles que podrían beneficiarse.

¿Qué pasaría si el tipo de apoyo individual que ayudó a Fernández-Pérez a recuperar el rumbo existiera para todos los estudiantes? ¿Y si estuviese disponible dentro de la universidad? Fuera de Colorado, algunas instituciones han demostrado que pueden cambiar la trayectoria de los estudiantes muchísimo prestándole atención a los pequeños detalles.

Georgia State lleva cuenta del éxito de los estudiantes

Al igual que MSU Denver, Georgia State es una universidad urbana — en Atlanta — que atiende en su mayoría a estudiantes de color, entre los cuales muchos son los primeros de sus familias en ir a la universidad y corren el riesgo de no graduarse nunca.

Para llegar a un mayor número de estudiantes que necesitan apoyo, la escuela usa un sistema de análisis predictivo para determinar si un estudiante podría estar enfrentando problemas y ha ampliado drásticamente la cantidad de reuniones de orientación con los estudiantes. La escuela gradúa cerca de la mitad de sus estudiantes, y durante una década ha reducido la brecha en las tasas entre los grupos raciales.

Georgia State invierte unos $2.5 millones anualmente en este esfuerzo, pero los funcionarios han encontrado que la universidad gana mucho más en matrículas reteniendo a los estudiantes que de otro modo hubiesen abandonado los estudios.

El personal universitario se comunica con los estudiantes cuando sus sistemas tecnológicos muestran que podrían estar teniendo problemas, ya sea porque las calificaciones están bajando o si no se han inscrito en una clase, dijo Timothy Renick, director del National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State.

La universidad también brinda apoyo financiero de manera proactiva, dijo Renick. Antes de que ocurra una dificultad económica, la escuela depositará dinero en la cuenta del estudiante para que no se preocupe por las finanzas, dijo.

“Nuestra filosofía es que el apoyo a los estudiantes sea la norma y no la excepción”, dijo Renick.

UC Riverside desafía el status quo

En las principales universidades públicas de Colorado, Colorado State University y University of Colorado Boulder, las tasas de graduación son más altas para todos los estudiantes que en las instituciones menos selectivas, incluso para los varones hispanos. Los estudiantes de todos los orígenes llegan más preparados y a menudo tienen menos obligaciones familiares y más estabilidad financiera. Las universidades también gastan más por estudiante en su educación.

Un conjunto de investigaciones también sugiere que asistir a una universidad más competitiva está asociado con una mayor probabilidad de graduarse.

Pero a diferencia de en algunas de las universidades públicas menos competitivas del estado, en CU Boulder y Colorado State las tasas de graduación de los varones hispanos se han mantenido estables durante la última década, aunque han aumentado levemente para los demás estudiantes.

Las universidades con admisión selectiva, como University of California, Riverside, son un ejemplo de cómo mejorar las tasas de graduación.

Sus funcionarios trataron de cambiar la cultura del campus para ayudar a todos los estudiantes a sentirse más conectados con la universidad. Kim Wilcox, Presidente de UC Riverside, dijo que la primera prioridad de todo el personal debe ser ayudar a los estudiantes.

“Una universidad está formada por personas con mucho talento, pero muy competitivas”, dijo Wilcox. “Si se destaca a alguien que hizo algo realmente bueno, todos los demás querrán hacer lo mismo para obtener el mismo reconocimiento.

“Como líder, hay que destacar el éxito. Y cuando los tienes, tienes que amplificarlos.”

La universidad gradúa un 77% de sus estudiantes y solamente tiene pequeñas brechas en las tasas de graduación entre ciertos grupos, como los estudiantes hispanos.

Wilcox dijo que los estudiantes de primer año a menudo toman clases en su primer año con los mejores profesores de la institución. La universidad también ofrece muchos clubes y actividades extracurriculares en las que los estudiantes pueden encontrar pequeñas comunidades que los harán sentir bienvenidos y cómodos.

Wilcox dijo que los programas pequeños por sí solos no pueden aumentar el éxito de los estudiantes.

“Hay que trabajar según la escala”, dijo. “La escala en una universidad pública grande no tiene nada que ver con ningún programa. Casi la mitad de la institución somos latinos — eso es 13,000 estudiantes — ¿cómo vas a crear un programa para 13,000 estudiantes?

“Se llama universidad.”

Los mentores hispanos lideran el camino

Muchos de los que están presionando para aumentar las tasas de graduación son hombres hispanos. Inevitablemente, el trabajo se siente personal. Sin embargo, son muy pocos. Es una de las razones por las que los retos que enfrentan los varones hispanos en los campus siguen siendo tan amplios y persistentes, dijo Pilar, de The Education Trust.

“Es difícil crear el ímpetu necesario para que la gente quiera enfocarse en esta población porque estamos muy poco representados”, dijo Pilar.

Ante la escasez de financiamiento y la inercia institucional, los hispanos que se han graduado de universidad han desarrollado redes a fin de abrirles puertas a los estudiantes de hoy y ayudarlos cuando tengan dificultades. Ellos aconsejan a los estudiantes sobre retos, como por ejemplo irse lejos de casa, lograr un equilibrio entre trabajo y estudios, o cómo encontrar una comunidad de amigos.

Alonso Chávez Gasca, de 24 años, dijo que al principio se sintió desconectado cuando se matriculó en Colorado State University. Pero rápidamente se unió a una fraternidad latina, encontró mentores, trabajó en el campus ayudando a otros estudiantes, y después de graduarse se convirtió en mentor con INSPiRE, una organización con sede en Denver que ayuda a los estudiantes a realizar sus sueños de ir a la universidad.

“Para mí, los mentores hacen que la graduación se sienta asequible y alcanzable”, dijo Chávez Gasca. “Y soy mentor porque me veo a mí mismo en esos muchachos. Sus historias son mi historia. Ayudarles a ellos me ayuda a reabastecer a mi comunidad, y les da a los estudiantes la inspiración de que gente como yo se puede graduarse y tener éxito”

Criterios para cierre de escuelas presentados a la junta escolar de Denver

2022-06-07T15:00:00+00:00

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Aunque el cierre debería ser la última opción, el distrito escolar de Denver debe considerar cerrar o consolidar las escuelas con menos cantidad de estudiantes, según las recomendaciones del comité presentadas el jueves ante la junta escolar.

Las escuelas primarias e intermedias con “matrícula críticamente baja” (menos de 215 estudiantes matriculados para el próximo año) y las escuelas con menos de 275 estudiantes que esperan perder entre un 8% y 10% del estudiantado en los próximos años deben ser consideradas para consolidación, dicen las recomendaciones. Estos números no se aplican a las escuelas secundarias.

No todas las escuelas identificadas para consideración terminarán realmente cerradas. El distrito debe trabajar de cerca con la comunidad y aplicar una serie de “protectores de equidad”, considerando qué tan lejos tendrían que viajar los estudiantes a la escuela y cuáles escuelas tienen programas especializados, sobre todo para estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y para estudiantes discapacitados, dicen las recomendaciones.

Los miembros del comité dijeron que no se fijaron intencionalmente en qué escuelas estarían afectadas en el límite de matrícula, y por eso no podían decirles a los miembros de la junta exactamente cuántas escuelas serían.

“No se están considerando escuelas específicas”, dijo el Superintendente Alex Marrero. “No hay una lista.”

Las primeras escuelas se identificarían el próximo año escolar, basándose en los datos de ese año, y excepto en circunstancias sumamente extremas, ninguna escuela va a cerrar antes de que termine el año escolar 2023-24.

Los datos de matrícula del estado muestran que este año en Denver hay 27 escuelas primarias e intermedias con menos de 275 estudiantes. De esas, 19 atienden a poblaciones estudiantiles que son más de un 90% estudiantes de minorías raciales o más de un 90% estudiantes de hogares con pocos ingresos, o ambos. Solamente tres de las escuelas tienen un estudiantado mayormente de raza blanca.

La junta escolar no necesita aprobar la política, dijo un portavoz del distrito, pero sí tendrá que aprobar cualquier cierre escolar futuro. En la reunión del jueves, los miembros hicieron preguntas insistentemente, sugiriendo que no están del todo de acuerdo en seguir las recomendaciones del comité.

El vicepresidente Tay Anderson dijo que él no quiere cerrar escuelas en las que los estudiantes de minorías raciales estén progresando académicamente. El comité no recomendó fijarse en el aspecto académico ni en si las escuelas han podido mantener sus programas académicos a pesar de los límites de presupuesto.

Carrie Olson, miembro de la junta y ex educadora bilingüe, dijo que le preocupa cerrar escuelas que ofrecen el tipo de programas bilingües requerido bajo un decreto federal que rige a los distritos. Aunque exista un programa similar a un par de millas de distancia, dijo ella, algunas familias podrían sacar a sus hijos de los programas bilingües en vez de agregar otro viaje en auto o caminata a sus ya complicadas vidas.

Michelle Quattlebaum, miembro de la junta, preguntó si la matrícula del distrito se está estabilizando y señaló que Denver abrió muchas escuelas nuevas durante un periodo en el que — según resulta — la matrícula de las escuelas primarias ya había alcanzado la cifra máxima.

Marrero dijo que iba a buscar retroalimentación de la comunidad en cuanto a los criterios y a programar más discusiones de la junta antes de finalizar cualquier plan.

Denver no es la única ciudad que está teniendo dificultad para responder a bajas en la matrícula, y las decisiones pueden a menudo ser desgarradoras. El Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Aurora pasó por un proceso de cinco años de planificación basado en complicados criterios regionales para identificar qué escuelas se cerrarían, pero aún así los miembros de la junta dudaron cuando los padres lucharon por salvar sus escuelas. Primero votaron por mantener dos escuelas primarias abiertas pero cambiaron de parecer dos meses más tarde.

El Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Jeffco cerró dos escuelas en dos años sin mucho aviso antes de empezar un proceso de planificación esta primavera.

Como las escuelas de Denver son financiadas según la cantidad de estudiantes matriculados, las escuelas pequeñas batallan para poder ofrecer experiencias educativas completas. Es posible que los estudiantes no puedan tomar cursos electivos o que hasta no reciban servicios vitales, y los maestros casi no dan abasto cubriendo múltiples grados. Pero muchas familias aprecian sentirse parte de una comunidad en la que todos los adultos conocen a sus hijos.

Denver usó $6.7 millones en fondos de alivio federales este año para respaldar los presupuestos de las escuelas pequeñas y espera gastar otros $9.8 millones el próximo año.

Denver primero identificó 19 escuelas para posible cierre el año pasado basándose en las reducciones de matrícula proyectadas. Como Marrero recién empezaba su rol y la comunidad estaba revuelta, el distrito hizo pausa en ese proceso y comenzó el otro proceso, difícil al principio, que resultó en estas nuevas recomendaciones. Cinco escuelas en la lista del año pasado ahora tienen una matrícula que supera el límite creado por el comité nuevo, y por lo tanto ya no se considerarían.

Un grupo de escuelas chárter de Denver tampoco cumplen el límite de matrícula. Las leyes estatales no permiten que el distrito unilateralmente cierre escuelas chárter con poca matrícula. El comité recomendó usar la viabilidad financiera para identificar las escuelas que deben considerarse para cierre, y luego incorporar esos criterios en el proceso de contrato y renovación. Algunas escuelas chárter han cerrado voluntariamente debido a poca matrícula.

Las recomendaciones usan la palabra “consolidación” en todo el documento en vez de decir “cierre”, que es mucho más fuerte. “No recomendamos cerrar, sino que siempre se considere consolidar las escuelas” escribió el comité.

Chalkbeat le preguntó al Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver cuál es la diferencia entre consolidación y cierre. La diferencia, dijo el portavoz Scott Pribble, es mantener la mayor continuidad posible en programas, normas y valores.

“Si una escuela es identificada en este proceso, pero tiene un excelente programa de arte o una celebración anual valiosa, es posible que se puedan preservar esos aspectos de la escuela durante el proceso de consolidación”, escribió en un email.

Las normas de implantación dicen que todos los estudiantes de una escuela cerrada deben poder asistir a la misma escuela nueva a menos que opten por ir a otra. A todo el personal de la escuela cerrada se le debe garantizar puestos en esa misma escuela nueva. Los programas especializados, como los de dos idiomas, Montessori, o un enfoque en ciencia y tecnología, deben pasar de la escuela cerrada a su escuela de reemplazo designada.

Las recomendaciones también exhortan a las primarias e intermedias a considerar unirse para formar escuelas de Kinder a 8vo grado, o que las intermedias pequeñas se unan a una secundaria para crear una escuela de 6to a 12mo grado.

Este año, el distrito tuvo 90,200 estudiantes desde preescolar hasta el 12mo grado, en comparación con 93,800 en 2019. Sin embargo, la matrícula en las escuelas primarias del distrito tuvo su nivel máximo en 2014, y la de las escuelas intermedias en el 2018.

En Denver, más de un 85% de los niños de edad escolar asisten a las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Más o menos un 6.6% asiste a escuelas privadas y otro 8% van a escuelas de otro distrito cercano.

Aunque algunas familias buscaron otras opciones debido a la frustración con el aprendizaje remoto durante la pandemia, los funcionarios de Denver dicen que la razón principal de la reducción en la cantidad de familias ha sido una baja en las tasas de nacimiento y el aumento en precios de vivienda. La población de menores de 18 años se redujo drásticamente en la última década en las comunidades gentrificadas del suroeste de Denver, el norte, y Elyria-Swansea, pero aumentó en el sureste de Denver.

Erica Meltzer, Jefa de Redacción, cubre temas de educación y política y además supervisa la cobertura sobre educación de Chalkbeat Colorado. Para comunicarte con Erica, escríbele a emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Las escuelas más pequeñas de Denver

Estas escuelas primarias e intermedias de Denver no cumplen el límite de matrícula recomendado y podrían considerarse para cierre. No todas las escuelas consideradas se cerrarían, y los criterios todavía no se han finalizado.

Escuelas con menos de 215 estudiantes este año:

Denver Discovery School

International Academy of Denver at Harrington

Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy

Fairview Elementary School

Schmitt Elementary School

Columbian Elementary School

Kaiser Elementary School

Hallett Academy

Whittier ECE-8 School

McKinley-Thatcher Elementary School

Palmer Elementary School

Colfax Elementary School

Escuelas que tienen entre 216 y 274 estudiantes este año:

Columbine Elementary School

Beach Court Elementary School

Cheltenham Elementary School

Eagleton Elementary School

Center for Talent Development at Greenlee

Valverde Elementary School

Ashley Elementary School

Oakland Elementary School

Cowell Elementary School

Lincoln Elementary School

Cole Arts & Science Academy

Godsman Elementary School

McAuliffe Manual Middle School

College View Elementary School

Newlon Elementary School

Fuente: Departamento de Educación de Colorado

Estos datos ayudarán a la junta escolar de Jeffco a decidir cuáles escuelas cerrar

2022-07-22T16:36:18+00:00

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Más de la mitad de las escuelas primarias de Jeffco están perdiendo estudiantes, un cambio que está aumentando el costo para educar a los que quedan, y obligando a las escuelas a combinar salones de clase y optar por otras estrategias.

Esto es de acuerdo con los datos a nivel de escuela publicados por las Escuelas Públicas de Jeffco mientras los miembros de la junta inician la conversación sobre una de las decisiones más difíciles que enfrentan: cuáles escuelas cerrar o consolidar.

Jeffco ha estado lidiando con una baja en matrícula por años, y como muchos otros distritos de áreas metropolitanas, estará cerrando las escuelas pequeñas. Citando una emergencia causada por una matrícula críticamente baja, el distrito cerró dos escuelas en los últimos dos años sin darle mucho aviso a los padres. Ahora Jeffco está tratando de pensar más a futuro.

La junta escolar les pidió a los administradores que reunieran estadísticas sobre todas las escuelas primarias para poder fijarse en factores aparte del tamaño de la escuela. Los miembros de la junta tienen planificado discutir ese informe el martes.

Hasta ahora, los líderes del distrito han dicho que planifican fijarse en la matrícula y en el uso del edificio (cuánto espacio se está usando activamente) como los factores principales para decidir qué escuelas cerrar.

Los miembros de la junta han pensado en considerar otros factores como demográfica de los estudiantes, si la escuela tiene salones de clase combinados o con varios grados, o si el edificio es usado con frecuencia por la comunidad o para otros propósitos.

Se espera que la superintendente Tracy Dorland le presente recomendaciones sobre los cierres a la junta al final de agosto.

Chalkbeat analizó los datos que el distrito publicó en línea el mes pasado para cada una de las 84 escuelas primarias operadas por el distrito.

Estos son algunos datos clave.

1. Más de una docena de las escuelas usan menos de un 60% del edificio, y también anticipan tener menos de 250 estudiantes el próximo año.

De 84 escuelas primarias, se proyecta que 30 tendrán menos de 250 estudiantes este próximo otoño. De esas, 16 ya usan menos de un 60% de la capacidad del edificio.

El distrito incluye a los estudiantes de preescolar al calcular cuánto se está usando de un edificio, pero no los incluye en las cifras de matrícula. El número de estudiantes matriculados se basa solamente en los estudiantes mayores. Los distritos reciben una cantidad diferente de fondos para los estudiantes de primaria y de preescolar.

Las 16 escuelas que tienen poco uso están mayormente concentradas en las comunidades del distrito más cercanas a Denver. Seis de las escuelas están en Arvada, donde Jeffco ya cerró dos escuelas recientemente. Otras cuatro están en Lakewood, y tres tienen una dirección en Westminster.

Los líderes del distrito no han decidido qué cantidad de estudiantes o cuál nivel de uso se considerará como demasiado bajo para que el distrito lo pueda sostener.

Al analizar cuántas escuelas esperan tener menos de 200 estudiantes el próximo año, encontramos que son 11, lo cual incluye ocho que están usando menos de un 60% de su campus: Slater, Campbell, Thomson, Colorow, Glennon Heights, Peck, Molholm y New Classical en Vivian.

Es probable que las escuelas que están exhibiendo estos factores enfrenten un mayor riesgo de cierre. No obstante, los líderes del distrito también han dicho que, para apoyar a las familias que cambiarán a escuelas nuevas, el distrito tendrá que limitar la cantidad de escuelas cerradas en 2023.

2. Las escuelas con poca matrícula y poco uso también tienen más probabilidad de tener una alta concentración de estudiantes en pobreza.

Aparte de estar mayormente aglomeradas en tres ciudades cerca de Denver, otro factor que define a estas escuelas con poca matrícula y poco uso es que una mayor porción de sus estudiantes es de hogares en pobreza. En las 16 escuelas con poco uso del edificio, un promedio de 50% de sus estudiantes provienen de familias de pocos ingresos, lo cual se define porque califican para comidas gratuitas o a precio reducido. En las escuelas con más matrícula y uso, el promedio del estudiantado que califica como de bajos ingresos es solo un 23%.

3. Más escuelas primarias de Jeffco perderán estudiantes que las que los ganarán.

En términos generales, Jeffco espera que la matrícula en las escuelas primarias se mantenga estable en el otoño, ya que solamente se ha matriculado un estudiante adicional. Sin embargo, el cambio varía entre las escuelas.

De hecho, se proyecta que la matrícula está bajando en 43 de las 84 escuelas. De esas escuelas, se espera que más de dos terceras partes pierdan más de 10 estudiantes.

Mientras tanto, se espera que la matrícula aumente en 38 escuelas, y aproximadamente dos terceras partes de ellas recibirán más de 10 estudiantes nuevos.

Ganar o perder estudiantes, aunque sean pocos, puede afectar grandemente los presupuestos de las escuelas pequeñas. Perder estudiantes puede hacer más difícil contratar suficiente personal, manejar el tamaño de los salones, y ofrecer programas especializados, todos factores que afectan la calidad de la educación.

4. 37 escuelas primarias tienen un costo por estudiante más alto que el promedio.

Los costos del distrito por cada estudiante de primaria varían entre $13,870 en la Primaria Kyffin, que tuvo 441 menos estudiantes el último año, hasta $19,197 en la Primaria Thompson, que tuvo 194 estudiantes.

El distrito les otorga dinero a las escuelas según la matrícula y otros factores, entre ellos cuántos estudiantes califican para obtener comida gratis o a precio reducido. Las escuelas que tienen muy pocos estudiantes no pueden cubrir sus gastos y requieren dinero adicional del distrito.

Los líderes de Jeffco han dicho que los cierres de escuelas no se tratan solamente de ahorrar dinero, sino también de ofrecer una educación equitativa y robusta en cada escuela.

Es menos sustentable tener escuelas que cuestan más y de todos modos carecen de los programas disponibles en las demás escuelas. El distrito contrató este año a un consultor para auditar cómo el distrito asigna el dinero a las escuelas para reevaluar los presupuestos que se basan en la cantidad de estudiantes.

5. Se proyecta que 16 escuelas tendrán más salones combinados el próximo año.

Al hablar sobre cómo entienden que la educación ha sufrido en las escuelas que cerraron en los últimos dos años por tener demasiado pocos estudiantes, los líderes de Jeffco señalaron que había salones que combinaban dos grados.

Eso representaba una carga adicional para los maestros y redujo el aprendizaje, dijeron, en parte porque los maestros no tenían colegas del mismo grado para planificar la enseñanza, recibir la capacitación, o discutir asuntos.

El año pasado el distrito tuvo 53 salones de clase que combinaban múltiples grados. El próximo año el distrito anticipa tener 72 salones combinados. Solamente cuatro de las escuelas que tuvieron salones combinados en 2021-22 esperan poder eliminarlos en el otoño.

Hay 16 escuelas primarias que anticipan un aumento en los salones de este tipo, lo cual incluye seis escuelas en las que no se usaron el año anterior.

Yesenia Robles es reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre asuntos relacionados con los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

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¿Qué impide que los varones hispanos vayan a la universidad?

2022-05-06T20:00:44+00:00

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¿Qué barreras enfrentan los varones hispanos al entrar a la universidad y graduarse?

Esa es la pregunta que los líderes de la Denver Scholarship Foundation le hicieron a varones hispanos. Ellos contestaron con una lista que incluye falta de fondos, información, apoyo y atención individual, además de responsabilidades familiares.

Nada de esto fue sorprendente. Sin embargo, a los líderes de la fundación les llamó la atención el fuerte sentido de obligación que los estudiantes sienten por su comunidad y familia, y cómo éste bloquea la ambición individual.

“No es fácil para los jóvenes latinos,” dijo Nate Cadena Jefe de Operaciones de la fundación. “Hay ciertos roles, ciertas expectativas, ciertas normas culturales... que no necesariamente invitan al individualismo, especialmente si eso los aleja de su familia extendida o comunidad. Hay un lenguaje no hablado de su cultura — su comunidad — que no necesariamente alienta el individualismo ni la exploración.”

La fundación, que ayuda a os estudiantes del área de Denver a navegar la universidad, ha enviado aproximadamente un 82% de sus becados a la universidad. Por otro lado, aumentar los porcentajes de asistencia a la universidad y graduación de los varones hispanos ha demostrado ser difícil. Por ejemplo, el porcentaje de mujeres hispanas que han recibido ayuda de la fundación y llegado a la universidad es el doble de los varones.

Para entender mejor el problema, los líderes de la Denver Scholarship Foundation encuestaron a hombres hispanos con una variedad de experiencias en tema de universidad. La fundación habló con gente que nunca ha asistido a la universidad, con quienes dejaron de asistir, y con los que se graduaron.

“Ellos mencionaron que es importante sentir que les están hablando de manera individual,” dijo Cadena, “De sus respuestas se puede extraer muchísima información. Pero gran parte reforzó lo que ya pensábamos y sabíamos”.

La lucha por lograr que los varones hispanos vayan a la universidad es un importante tema para el estado.

Aproximadamente dos de cada cinco varones hispanos que se gradúan de una secundaria de Colorado irán a la universidad. Una vez en la universidad, la mayoría no se gradúa. En las universidades públicas de Colorado con programas de cuatro años, solo se gradúa un 41% de los hombres hispanos. En las universidades comunitarias más pequeñas, se gradúa menos de una tercera parte.

Estas cifras determinan las grandes brechas en Colorado de quién tiene una educación universitaria y quién no. Aproximadamente un 61% de todos los residentes de Colorado tienen una credencial universitaria, en comparación con solo una cuarta parte de los residentes hispanos.

Cadena dijo que es necesario resolver ese problema, especialmente porque 1 de cada 5 residentes de Colorado se identifica como hispano.

Cadena agregó que lograr que más varones hispanos vayan a la universidad es un asunto de oportunidad y libertad para ellos individualmente y para sus familias. Esto rompe los ciclos de pobreza generacional. Se han hecho estudios que demuestran que las personas con educación universitaria tienen mejor acceso a atención médica. Los residentes que tienen un grado universitario también tienen un mayor potencial de ingresos y más habilidad para hacer lo que quieren en su vida.

“Si permitimos que esto continúe, es como si nos resignáramos a ello. Estamos diciendo que eso está bien”, dijo Cadena. “Eso es inaceptable”.

La fundación encontró que los estudiantes que nunca fueron a la universidad escucharon en algún momento de su niñez que no tendrían dinero suficiente para eso. Nadie les dijo que un buen desempeño académico les podía ayudar. El informe compilado por la fundación dijo que muchos de los encuestados sintieron que ir a la universidad no era algo que ellos podían lograr.

Los que nunca terminaron su carrera con frecuencia tomaron decisiones basadas en malos consejos recibidos desde la niñez, según el informe. Algunos fueron a universidades lejos del hogar, nunca se conectaron a la comunidad universitaria, y no recibieron la información, o los servicios de salud mental necesarios para terminar la carrera.

Los varones hispanos que sí se graduaron reportaron haber contado con apoyo de la familia. O que decidieron continuar la universidad a pesar de los costos, y tuvieron profesores o mentores que vieron su potencial. Esos estudiantes tuvieron el beneficio de haber sido alentados desde temprana edad.

Cadena dijo que los encuestados sabían que la universidad les daría acceso a una mejor vida.

Los que fueron a la universidad hablaron de expandir su red de colaboración y sus prospectos de empleo. Los que nunca asistieron a la universidad dijeron que harán lo posible para que sus hijos vayan para así tener más oportunidades. Ese grupo predominantemente se convirtió en empresarios con trabajos de esfuerzo intenso, pero a un costo para su salud y su tiempo.

Cadena dijo que el hecho de que todos los grupos reconocen el valor de una educación universitaria amerita que se les ofrezca ayuda personalizada a los estudiantes. También dijo que la encuesta indicó la posibilidad de sacar a las personas de sus normas.

“Hubo un reconocimiento de que la universidad rompe ciclos,” dijo Cadena, “y rompe ciclos generacionales.”

Centro en el distrito Adams 12 atiende a estudiantes recién llegados al país

2023-10-19T19:03:55+00:00

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Un reciente viernes por la tarde, alrededor de 23 estudiantes de diferentes grados estaban tomando un examen de matemáticas sobre exponentes en el centro para recién llegados de Thornton High School.

Se oía un zumbido en el salón de clases. Los estudiantes se estaban ayudando entre sí.

“Si no estamos seguros, está bien”, les aseguró la maestra Adria Padilla Chavez a sus estudiantes. “Retrocedemos y volvemos a aprender”. Luego repitió sus instrucciones en español.

Padilla Chavez y otros integrantes del personal escolar en el centro para recién llegados ayudan a los estudiantes que acaban de llegar al país a adaptarse a la vida en una high school estadounidense. Mientras el programa va creciendo, los estudiantes están recibiendo mucho más que lecciones de inglés. Están formando amistades con personas de todo el mundo, participando en su aprendizaje y abriéndose camino hacia la graduación. El programa está ayudándolos a soñar en un futuro que quizás nunca habían imaginado.

“Nos gusta darles la bienvenida a nuestros estudiantes a una comunidad en la que sientan que pertenecen”, dijo Frida Rodriguez, una promotora de jóvenes y familias en el centro. “Es muy importante tener un lugar donde sabes que perteneces. Conectan con el personal que les proporciona un sentimiento de ayuda y apoyo y cariño. Sentirse realmente queridos es muy importante”.

Joan Madrigal Delgado, de 17 años, ha sido estudiante en el centro para recién llegados por un mes, su primera experiencia en una escuela de Estados Unidos. Ya siente que su vida está cambiando.

Le impresiona ver cómo lo ayudan los maestros, y cómo le piden que piense y participe en las conversaciones.

“Realmente no tenía ninguna posibilidad en mi país”, dijo Madrigal Delgado, quien vino de Cuba. “Se siente bien. Ahora aspiro a todo”.

Está comenzando a pensar sobre la universidad y en dedicarse a una carrera en medicina veterinaria.

El centro para estudiantes recién llegados, el primero en las Escuelas Five Star de Adams 12, se inauguró en agosto con 30 estudiantes. Ahora, un par de meses después del inicio del año escolar, el centro cuenta con más de 90 estudiantes, con nuevos estudiantes inscritos cada semana y familias que corren la voz en la comunidad.

Los estudiantes vienen de muchos países, pero uno de los factores principales que resultaron en la creación del centro fue la llegada de refugiados de Afganistán hace casi dos años. Muchos viven en el área de Thornton alrededor de la high school.

Adams 12 fue uno de cuatro distritos que recibieron un subsidio de la Fundación Comunitaria Rose este año para ayudarlos a apoyar la educación de estudiantes recién llegados, especialmente aquellos de Afganistán.

La fundación trabajó con el Programa de Servicios para Refugiados de Colorado—una unidad que forma parte del Departamento de Servicios Humanos de Colorado—para establecer el Fondo de Integración de Refugiados, el cual distribuyó subsidios.

El distrito usó esos fondos, junto con algunos fondos federales de asistencia por COVID, y sacó $868,000 de su fondo general para establecer el centro y pagar por el personal. El centro tiene su propia secretaria de admisiones, quien llama a las familias que otras escuelas identifican y las invita para que vayan al centro.

El distrito está ofreciendo transporte. Cerca de 45 de los estudiantes que asisten al centro llegan en autobús a la high school. Y las promotoras como Rodriguez, quien habla español, y Imran Khan, quien habla pashai y darí, también ayudan a las familias para que encuentren recursos en la comunidad.

Una característica singular del centro, dice la directora Manissa Featherstone, es que tiene a su propio consejero que ayuda a los estudiantes para que establezcan su trayectoria hacia la graduación. Featherstone dijo que muchos centros para recién llegados se enfocan en enseñarles ingles a los estudiantes, y que a veces eso significa que se retrasan en las clases que los ayudan a acumular los créditos necesarios para graduarse.

En el programa de Thornton High School, los estudiantes toman todas las clases principales en el centro, pero toman sus clases electivas con el resto de los estudiantes, o cuando necesitan una clase más avanzada. Un asesor de enseñanza que trabaja para el centro ayuda a personalizar la ayuda de los estudiantes.

“Podemos proporcionar esas clases”, Featherstone dijo. “Solo depende de las necesidades individuales del estudiante y de qué tipo de estudios escolares ha cursado”.

Aria Padilla Chavez (arriba al centro), maestra en el centro para estudiantes recién llegados, trabaja en un examen de matemáticas con sus estudiantes.

Los estudiantes también participan en actividades extraescolares, clubes y deportes en la escuela.

El programa puede recibir hasta 150 estudiantes, Featherstone dijo. Está diseñado para que los estudiantes pasen un año ahí después de llegar a Estados Unidos y luego se cambien al programa regular de la escuela.

Mohammad Ali Dost, de 14 años, llegó de Afganistán hace un par de años, e inicialmente estudió en una escuela media del distrito que no tenía un programa específico para estudiantes recién llegados. Ahora en el centro de Thornton High School, dijo que está contento pues le está ayudando a mejorar su inglés.

Dost dijo que les dice a otros estudiantes: “Si quieres mejorar tu inglés rápidamente, ven al centro para recién llegados”.

Dost también ayuda a los estudiantes que hablan su misma lengua materna, pashai, con el tipo de aprendizaje e interacción entre pares que el personal del centro celebra.

Featherstone dijo que los estudiantes actuales con frecuencia se ofrecen como voluntarios para liderar visitas guiadas con estudiantes nuevos y ayudarlos a que se familiaricen con su nueva escuela.

“Observamos a estudiantes que se [ofrecen inmediatamente] y dicen: ‘Yo los llevo””, Featherstone dijo. “Están muy emocionados cuando un estudiante llega”.

Las promotoras primero les enseñan las cosas básicas a los estudiantes nuevos, por ejemplo cómo usar su casillero. Recientemente estudiantes también aprendieron sobre el homecoming y la semana del espíritu.

“Muchos estudiantes no tenían idea alguna de lo que era. ¿Por qué es gran cosa el partido de fútbol [americano]?” Rodriguez dijo. “Les mostramos videos. Estaban emocionados de tener esa experiencia. Seguían diciendo: ‘Voy a poder ir a un baile’”.

Algunos estudiantes también dicen que están impresionados con la seguridad de las escuelas en Estados Unidos, después de venir de otros lugares donde no siempre se sentían seguros.

“Están muy preparados”, Madrigal Delgado dijo.

Ismael Piscoya, de 17 años y proveniente de Perú, dijo que está impresionado con la cantidad de tecnología disponible. Todos los estudiantes en el distrito, no solo el centro, reciben un Chromebook.

No tardas nada en encontrar información, Piscoya dijo.

Maria Fernanda Guillen, de 18 años y originaria de México, dijo que se siente empoderada en su aprendizaje.

“En México, no teníamos una voz en la escuela”, Guillen dijo. Ahora está pensando en un futuro en biotecnología y emocionada por el comienzo que está obteniendo en el centro.

“Es lindo tener amigos de otros países”, dijo.

Mamás latinas en Boulder abogan a favor de la equidad en clases avanzadas

2023-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat Colorado es un noticiero local sin fines de lucro que informa sobre las escuelas públicas en Denver y otros distritos. Suscríbete a nuestro boletín gratis por email en español para recibir lo último en noticias sobre educación dos veces al mes.

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Cuando Adriana Paola y su familia llegaron a Boulder en 2017, a su hijo, quien estaba iniciado sus estudios de high school, le encantaban las matemáticas.

Poco a poco, Paola vio cómo la pasión de su hijo por la materia fue desapareciendo, y se dio cuenta de que su clase de matemáticas era demasiado fácil. Así que fue con su hijo a la oficina del consejero escolar y le pidió que lo inscribiera en una clase más avanzada.

Recuerda que el consejero cuestionó su solicitud, diciendo que su clase era “la clase donde van los latinos”. Tuvieron que hablar con el director de la escuela para que les aprobaran su pedido. Cuando empezó a tomar la clase avanzada de matemáticas, su hijo notó que era uno de solo dos estudiantes latinos.

Paola recuerda la experiencia como un shock para ella y su familia.

“Allí fue como nuestra primera alerta de decir que el sistema está mal”, dijo. “Veíamos que no había equidad”.

Esfuerzos para inscribir a más estudiantes de color en Colorado en cursos avanzados a veces se enfocan en animar a los estudiantes para que vean su propio potencial. Las experiencias de estas mamás de Boulder muestran cómo el prejuicio de los educadores puede moldear las oportunidades de los estudiantes.

Un informe reciente de un grupo de distritos escolares del nordeste de Colorado que recibió un subsidio estatal para aumentar la diversidad de las clases avanzadas encontró de manera similar que muchos de los maestros subestiman las habilidades de los estudiantes.

Además, obtener acceso a cursos avanzados en high school puede ser un factor importante para entrar a la universidad, estar preparados para ella, y hacer que los estudiantes se sientan seguros de que pueden triunfar.

Los padres señalan problemas sistémicos

En años recientes, Paola ha conectado con otras mamás hispanas cuyos hijos han tenido experiencias similares en múltiples high schools en el distrito.

La hija de Noemi Lastiri llegó a su clase avanzada de ciencias el primer día del año escolar pasado y el maestro le preguntó si estaba en la clase equivocada. En otra clase, a su hija la sentaron junto a los pocos estudiantes latinos que había, y le dijo a su mamá que cuando levantaban la mano nunca los elegían para hablar.

Las cosas cambiaron cuando otra compañera latina se salió de la clase, frustrada, y fue directamente a la oficina de la escuela para quejarse.

Algunas mamás dicen que maestros o administradores escolares les han dicho que sus hijos con autismo o TDAH (trastorno por déficit de atención e hiperactividad) que necesitan apoyo no pueden recibir ayuda en clases avanzadas. Si los padres creen que sus hijos necesitan ayuda adicional, les han dicho que pueden obtener tutores privados fuera de la escuela o poner a sus hijos en clases de educación general.

Recientemente, han estado compartiendo sus experiencias públicamente, y quieren que el distrito haga cambios.

“No es que unos niños puedan y otros estudiantes no puedan”, Paola dijo. “Cualquiera podría usar esas clases si realmente se les motivara y tuvieran un acompañamiento, que realmente hubiera una estructura de apoyo, especialmente para los estudiantes que menos han podido acceder estas clases”.

Los representantes del Distrito Escolar del Valle de Boulder dicen que, mientras que no pueden responder a casos individuales, empezaron a escuchar historias similares recientemente y están haciendo cambios.

“Es absolutamente doloroso. Es absolutamente inaceptable que estudiantes estén teniendo estas experiencias”, dijo Lora de la Cruz, superintendenta adjunta de asuntos académicos para el distrito de Boulder. “Lo que estamos observando aquí no concuerda con nuestros valores como distrito, nuestros valores como una comunidad”.

De la Cruz dijo que después de escuchar sobre los problemas que los estudiantes latinos han tenido para entrar a clases avanzadas, o para obtener apoyo cuando ya están inscritos en ellas, los líderes del distrito están implementando una nueva iniciativa de capacitación para los maestros.

Los maestros de Boulder usualmente cuentan con muchas oportunidades de capacitación para elegir, incluidas clases sobre prácticas culturalmente sensibles, pero este otoño fue la primera vez que los maestros estarán obligados a aprender cómo crear entornos inclusivos en sus salones para que todos los estudiantes sientan que pertenecen.

“Conforme nos vamos enfocando en nuestro trabajo sobre lo que vamos a cambiar, sobre lo que vamos a ir desarrollando en nuestra enseñanza [para] fortalecer un ambiente y una cultura positiva en nuestros salones y escuelas, decidimos que queríamos enfocarnos aún más en el aprendizaje profesional”, de la Cruz dijo.

A los padres les alegra que el distrito esté enfocándose en todos los maestros. A muchos les preocupa que los problemas que sus hijos han vivido empiecen desde la edad temprana.

“Los alumnos van recibiendo mensajes. Desde que ingresan en el kínder, van recibiendo esos mensajes de lo que pueden hacer y lo que no pueden hacer”, Anna Segur dijo. Su hijo, quien está en high school, ya no está interesado en tomar clases avanzadas, a pesar de que ella lo anima, debido a una mala experiencia que tuvo en años anteriores. “No es problema de inteligencia”.

El plan estratégico del distrito destaca la necesidad de equidad

De la Cruz señala el plan estratégico actual del distrito, el cual hace un llamado a implementar varios esfuerzos para cerrar la brecha del logro entre los estudiantes blancos y los estudiantes de color. Debido a esos objetivos, el distrito cuenta con un sitio web público que da seguimiento a los datos sobre brechas educativas. Uno de esos es cuántos estudiantes están inscritos en cursos avanzados, combinando cifras de clases como las de honores, colocación avanzada, inscripción simultanea y otras. Los cursos de inscripción simultánea les dan a los estudiantes créditos universitarios a la vez que cuentan para los requisitos de graduación de high school.

Actualmente, el tablero informativo muestra que el 14.7 por ciento de los estudiantes inscritos en cursos avanzados son hispanos, mientras que constituyen el 20 por ciento de la población estudiantil total del distrito. Los estudiantes negros también se ven subrepresentados, mientras que los estudiantes blancos y asiáticos se ven sobrerrepresentados.

Datos adicionales proporcionados por el distrito muestran que del año escolar 2021-22 al año escolar 2022-23, el porcentaje de estudiantes hispanos en clases de colocación avanzada (AP, por sus siglas en inglés) o bachillerato internacional (IB, por sus siglas en inglés) en realidad ha disminuido. Pero al mismo tiempo, muchos más estudiantes hispanos tomaron clases de inscripción simultánea u otras clases avanzadas, compensando por la reducción en clases de AP y IB.

La cantidad de estudiantes que tomaron clases de inscripción simultánea fue 1,143 en 2022-23, casi el doble de la cantidad en 2021-22. El porcentaje de estudiantes hispanos que participan en esas clases aumentó del 10.9 al 11.8 por ciento el año escolar pasado.

El distrito promociona esas mejoras como resultados iniciales de un nuevo proyecto enfocado en que todos los estudiantes tengan algo que acompañe su diploma de high school. Ese algo puede ser un crédito universitario, experiencia laboral, certificados de industrias o un sello de bilingüismo.

“Sabemos que todos nuestros estudiantes son brillantes y muy capaces y tienen el potencial de alcanzar sus objetivos”, dijo Bianca Gallegos, directora ejecutiva de colaboraciones estratégicas para el distrito del Valle de Boulder. “Estamos muy emocionados de poder abrir vías y oportunidades para todos los estudiantes con un enfoque específico en asegurar que estemos abriendo vías, oportunidades para estudiantes latinx, hispanos, latinos y estudiantes que cumplan requisitos para [recibir] almuerzos gratis y a [precio] reducido”.

El distrito quiere tener más estudiantes que participen en el programa estatal de quinto año de high school, llamado ASCENT, el cual permite que los estudiantes obtengan un título asociado junto con su diploma. Otro objetivo del proyecto es que el 35 por ciento de los estudiantes de high school tomen un curso de inscripción simultánea este año y que las características demográficas de esas clases sean más parecidas a las del distrito.

Lastiri dijo que estaba contenta de escuchar que el distrito esté haciendo cambios y esforzándose por mejorar las cosas. Su hija, quien es una estudiante de segundo año que se cambió de high school en el distrito, está teniendo una mejor experiencia hasta ahora este año escolar.

Está tomando dos clases avanzadas este semestre.

Con respecto a los cambios, dijo: “nunca es tarde”.

DACA abrió puertas de educación para algunos, pero muchos estudiantes todavía enfrentan obstáculos

2022-08-08T11:02:00+00:00

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Cuando Flor Camarena estaba a punto de graduarse de secundaria en Denver, hubo un momento en que no sabía si podría ir a la universidad.

Sin embargo, sus orientadores académicos (a quienes les había confiado que no era residente legal) la ayudaron a encontrar universidades que la apoyaran y programas que le dieran esperanza de conseguir asistencia financiera.

Este otoño comenzará a estudiar en Metropolitan State University of Denver. Como ya tiene algunos créditos universitarios, empezará el programa como estudiante de segundo año. No tener residencia legal en este país, en el que ha vivido desde que era bebé, está teniendo un impacto en sus opciones y prospectos educativos.

Camarena ha solicitado ser parte del programa DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), que la protegería de ser deportada y le daría permiso para trabajar y solicitar ayuda financiera, pero ella no sabe si su solicitud va a ser procesada.

En vez de estudiar justicia criminal para ser detective, como siempre quiso, Camarena tendrá que estudiar una carrera en administración de empresas.

“Empecé a pensar en que DACA quizás se elimine, y a considerar cuál sería el efecto”, dijo. “Si estudio, tendré mi diploma y certificado, pero luego no voy a poder trabajar en el ámbito policial. No voy a conseguir un buen empleo debido a mi estatus legal. Aunque me den el programa DACA, de todos modos no voy a ser residente legal y eso me impedirá trabajar como detective. No veo la manera de que eso sea posible.”

No obstante, ella está aprovechando la oportunidad al máximo. Espera que con un diploma en administración de empresas pueda ayudar a sus padres a hacer crecer su restaurante.

“Al principio estaba bien decepcionada”, dijo Camarena. “Empecé a pensar que si tuviese un estatus legal distinto, podría ser alguien mucho más importante — quizás hasta tener una mejor profesión.”

Flor Camarena ha solicitado ser parte del programa DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), que la protegería de ser deportada y le daría permiso para trabajar y solicitar ayuda financiera.

Su mamá estaba triste. Su papá estaba orgulloso de que ella pensara en el negocio familiar y que estuviera siendo práctica.

FWD.us, un grupo político que defiende a los inmigrantes, calcula que en las escuelas K-12 de Estados Unidos hay unos 600,000 estudiantes sin estatus legal, como Camarena, y eso incluye unos 8,000 en Colorado.

Este pasado junio, los defensores celebraron el 10mo aniversario de la creación de DACA y el impacto que ha tenido para muchos. DACA es un programa que ofrece permisos de trabajo y alivio temporero del riesgo de deportación para personas que llegaron ilegalmente al país cuando eran menores de edad.

Antes de la creación de DACA, los menores de edad sin estatus legal describen haber enfrentado barreras desmoralizantes en la escuela secundaria. Los estudiantes perdían motivación al darse cuenta de que nunca podrían ir a la universidad por no tener acceso a ayuda financiara y no calificar para pagar matrícula como residente. Otras oportunidades, entre ellas internados y oficios que requieren certificaciones profesionales, también estaban fuera de su alcance.

Cuando los esfuerzos de la legislatura para ayudar a estos estudiantes no estaban progresando, el presidente Barack Obama creó el programa DACA mediante una orden ejecutiva.

Algunos de los beneficiados en ese momento ahora son padres. El impacto del estatus migratorio va más allá de los que los que se benefician del programa DACA. Se calcula que en Colorado hay unos 20,000 ciudadanos estadounidenses que viven con recipientes del programa DACA.

Tanto maestros como defensores de estos estudiantes tienen anécdotas de cómo la creación de DACA ayudó a motivar a algunos estudiantes, a darles esperanza por el futuro, y a optar por estudiar. Uno de los requisitos para solicitar es estar estudiando o tener un diploma de secundaria o GED.

Los investigadores publicaron un estudio en 2019 basado en los hallazgos del National UnDACAmented Research Project de la Universidad de Harvard, un proyecto que llevó cuenta por muchos años del impacto del programa DACA en cientos de estudiantes. El estudio encontró que, entre los estudiantes que habían abandonado la secundaria, recibir el estatus DACA fue motivación para reanudar sus estudios. Muchos otros completaron estudios universitarios y comenzaron carreras profesionales.

Marissa Molina, directora en Colorado de la organización FWD.us, fue una vez recipiente del programa DACA. Estaba en la universidad (y sus padres pagaban la matrícula a precio de alguien que no es residente del estado) justo antes de que DACA comenzara.

“Como sentía el peso de esa matrícula tan cara, estaba pensando abandonar la universidad”, dijo Molina. “No le veía sentido a continuar porque no había manera de poder usar lo que estaba aprendiendo. En mi caso, DACA fue realmente transformador”.

FWD, un grupo político que defiende a los inmigrantes, calcula que en las escuelas K-12 de Estados Unidos hay unos 600,000 estudiantes sin estatus legal.

A diferencia de la mayoría, Molina pudo encontrar otra manera de ajustar su estatus legal.

DACA les da estatus temporero a los estudiantes cada dos años, pero no ofrece una manera para conseguir residencia permanente o ciudadanía.

Desde que el entonces presidente Trump intentara eliminar DACA por primera vez en 2017, el gobierno solamente ha procesado solicitudes nuevas durante ventanas limitadas de tiempo. Camarena solicitó durante una de esas oportunidades el año pasado, pero su solicitud todavía no ha sido procesada.

Aunque la decisión del Tribunal Supremo fue en contra de Trump en 2020 y restauró el programa DACA, otro caso legal nuevamente detuvo el procesamiento de solicitudes nuevas.

Esta ocasión, un grupo de estados dirigido por Texas alega que DACA tenía deficiencias desde que empezó, que fue creado sin pasar por los debidos procedimientos legales y administrativos, y que les está haciendo daño a sus estados. Un juez federal estuvo de acuerdo. La administración del presidente Biden ha apelado el caso y los argumentos ya se escucharon el mes pasado.

Se espera que el tribunal tome la decisión este otoño, pero los defensores no tienen mucha esperanza. Por eso, como alternativa están presionando al Congreso para que apruebe leyes que amplíen y establezcan una ruta nueva a conseguir estatus legal para quienes vinieron al país como niños.

Como las reglas originales de DACA no han cambiado — incluida la de haber llegado a Estados Unidos antes del 2007 — la organización FWD.us calcula que la mayoría de los estudiantes indocumentados en las escuelas de Estados Unidos ahora no serían elegibles para el programa DACA aunque se estuviesen procesando solicitudes nuevas. Este año, los estudiantes de duodécimo grado nacieron entre 2004 y 2005, y si la elegibilidad no se extiende, muy pronto ningún estudiante de secundaria podrá calificar.

Aunque el programa está en riesgo, Molina cree que los estudiantes, aunque no tengan estatus legal, ahora tienen más expectativas que ella cuando estaba creciendo.

“Ahora hay estudiantes que no conocen un mundo sin DACA”, dijo Molina. “Nosotros vivimos en un mundo diferente. Particularmente en Colorado. Nuestro estado realmente ha entendido este problema y ha tratado de hacerlo mejor y apoyar a los estudiantes. Tenemos acceso a ayuda financiera como residentes del estado. Hemos continuado escuchando mensajes positivos y a nuestro gobernador hablando acerca de DACA. Quizás sea más difícil que un estudiante se imagine un mundo sin eso”.

Los maestros y orientadores también han aprendido mucho en la última década, dijo Molina, y tienen más acceso a recursos para ayudar a los estudiantes.

“Tu estatus legal no impide que te gradúes”, dijo Camarena. “Mis orientadores se aseguraron de que yo supiera que era posible. Siempre me hicieron sentir protegida”.

Cuando Camarena no estaba segura de poder ir a la universidad y pagar por la matrícula, sus orientadores también fueron los que la ayudaron a encontrar una manera de hacerlo.

“También pienso que, como hay más historias de gente que se graduó y ha emprendido carreras, la comunidad está enterada de la situación”, dijo Molina. “Hoy en día es mucho más difícil que te digan que no puedes ir a la universidad”.

Todo lo que quiere Flor Camarena es tener las mismas oportunidades que tienen sus compañeros — la habilidad de hacer internados, prácticas, y programas de estudio y trabajo.

Aunque Camarena ha tenido algunas decepciones, poder obtener una educación es una expectativa y por eso ella continúa siendo optimista. Sin embargo, eso no significa que los obstáculos hayan desaparecido.

Este verano ella tuvo la oportunidad de hacer servicio a la comunidad con el programa Immigrant Services Program de la Metropolitan State University en Denver. Aunque no califica para programas de estudio y trabajo, sí va a recibir un estipendio a través de otro programa de asistencia. Y si el programa DACA no la ayuda, no está segura de poder continuar teniendo suficientes alternativas de ayuda financiara para completar sus estudios universitarios.

Dice que todo lo que quiere es tener las mismas oportunidades que tienen sus compañeros — la habilidad de hacer internados, prácticas, y programas de estudio y trabajo.

De todos modos, nos dijo que por ahora decidió enfocarse en lo que puede hacer: comenzar el semestre de otoño y continuar sus planes de trabajar con el restaurante de sus padres.

“He hablado con gente que me ha inspirado a querer trabajar por mi cuenta, no para otros”, Camarena dijo. “En este punto, lo he puesto todo a un lado y decidí trabajar en lo que tengo”.

Yesenia Robles es reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre asuntos relacionados con los distritos escolares K-12 y la educación multilingüe. Para comunicarte con Yesenia, envíale un mensaje a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

4 estudiantes de la Secundaria North dicen por qué Denver necesita más maestros de color

2022-05-23T18:53:47+00:00

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Martin Castañon, estudiante de duodécimo grado de la Secundaria North, creció en una comunidad en la que la mayoría de la gente se veía como él. Pero ahora, dice, los nuevos residentes blancos se muestran irritados con él, cuando ellos fueron los que “se mudaron a mi comunidad y me arrancaron la cultura.”

La decisión de la Secundaria North de no renovarle el contrato a Tim Hernández, maestro de inglés, Literatura Latinx y una clase de Liderazgo Latinx, y que también dirigía un club de estudiantes, todavía se siente como otro golpe para el estudiantado (en su mayoría de origen Latino) de una escuela situada en una de las comunidades más gentrificadas de Denver.

“Es triste. Es deprimente,” dijo Martin. “Fue como cambiar de muchos colores y alegría a un ambiente de depresión y oscuridad. Es terrible que le quiten eso a uno.”

Hernández creció en el Norte de Denver y comenzó a enseñar en la Secundaria North el pasado año escolar. Fue contratado nuevamente este año con un contrato de un año. Cuando solicitó seguir enseñando en North el próximo año, Hernández dijo que no le renovaron el contrato.

En una declaración, el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver no dijo por qué no se le renovó el contrato a Hernández. La declaración decía que el distrito está comprometido con reclutar y retener maestros de color calificados, y que la decisión de a quién contratar está de parte del comité de personal de la escuela (que en la Secundaria North incluye al director, Scott Wolf). Si el comité no puede llegar a un consenso, el director tiene la última palabra de conformidad con el contrato del sindicato de maestros.

Los estudiantes de Hernández dicen que ha sido devastador perder al maestro que les enseñó sobre el movimiento Chicano, sobre estudiantes activistas de Colorado como Los Seis de Boulder, y las marchas en la West High en 1969, cuando los estudiantes de Denver protestaron contra el racismo y la discriminación. Hernández mantuvo un refrigerador que los estudiantes del Club llenaban de despensa para distribuir gratuitamente. Su salón de clases estaba decorado con banderas y un cartel pintado a mano con la frase “casa de la cultura.”

“Sabemos que nuestra cultura no está destacada en ninguna otra de las paredes de nuestro edificio,” dijo Hernández, “pero sí en mi salón de clases.”

El maestro Tim Hernández posa cerca de la Secundaria North a principios de este mes.

Los datos del distrito y el estado muestran que un 75% de los estudiantes de Denver son minorías raciales. Sin embargo, solo un 29% de los maestros son personas de color. Los estudiantes hispanos o latinos representan un 52% del distrito, pero solo un 19% de los maestros de Denver son hispanos o latinos.

“Esto es y siempre ha sido algo más grande que el caso del Sr. Hernández,” dijo Nayeli López, estudiante de noveno grado de la Secundaria North, y que es miembro del club llamado SOMOS MECHA. “La razón por la que hablamos tanto sobre él es que era uno de los pocos maestros de color en la escuela. Retener maestros de color es más que solo ofrecerles empleo, es hacer que la escuela sea un lugar seguro para ellos.”

Durante las últimas semanas, los estudiantes de la Secundaria North han tenido una sentada y dos abandonos del edificio para exigir que la escuela vuelva a contratar a Hernández. El jueves, unos 50 estudiantes y apoyadores marcharon hasta las oficinas centrales del distrito para decir a voces, “¿A quién queremos? ¡Al Sr. Hernández! ¿Dónde? ¡En la Secundaria North!” Aproximadamente 20 personas se apuntaron en una lista para hablar sobre Hernández y la Secundaria North en la reunión de la Junta Escolar el jueves por la noche.

Al terminar la reunión, la junta votó unánimemente que Hernández fuese eliminado de la lista de maestros “sin renovación de contrato.” El superintendente Alex Marrero dijo que aunque eso no significa que Hernández regresará a la Secundaria North, sí significa que “lo apoyaremos en su camino a encontrar otro puesto dentro de DPS el año próximo.”

Chalkbeat habló con cuatro estudiantes — Nayeli, Martin, la estudiante de duodécimo grado Daniela Urbina-Valle y la estudiante de undécimo grado Viridiana Sanchéz — sobre Hernández y la necesidad de que el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver contrate y retenga más maestros de raza negra, indígenas, y de otras minorías raciales (categoría conocida como BIPOC, Black, Indigenous and People of Color). Esto es lo que nos dijeron.

Estudiantes de la Secundaria North protestan frente a las oficinas centrales del Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver el 19 de mayo.

¿Cuál ha sido su experiencia en cuanto a tener maestros BIPOC en la escuela?

Martin: En total he tenido dos maestros de color. … el Sr. Hernández fue uno de los únicos maestros que realmente mostraba orgullo por su raza y cultura. Es lamentable que no podamos aprender sobre nuestra cultura de los maestros. … Contratar maestros de color nos ayudaría mucho. Nunca sabremos quiénes somos en verdad si no aprendemos de dónde venimos.

Viridiana: Finalmente tener un maestro que habla exactamente como tú, que viene de un trasfondo exactamente como el tuyo... fue revelador. Fue algo refrescante.

Nayeli: Yo crecí en una comunidad de personas que fueron parte del movimiento Chicano. Así me crie, pero nunca había escuchado sobre eso en la escuela.

Daniela: Aunque tengamos maestros que se ven como nosotros, la expectativa es que se conformen a un sistema creado por hombres blancos… Muchas veces el hombre blanco piensa que la educación se trata de control, y el Sr. Hernández nos enseñó que eso no es cierto.

¿Qué aprendieron en las clases del Sr. Hernández? ¿Y cómo se sintieron?

Martin: Aprendí quién soy. Aprendí lo que significa ser Chicano. Por ser hijo de padres mexicanos, la palabra Chicano tiene bastante peso. La definición de ellos es completamente diferente a la verdadera. Para ellos, Chicano significa haragán; alguien que vive del sistema. Pero ese no fue el significado original. Chicano se trata del poder latino.

Las primeras semanas del año escolar, [el Sr. Hernández] nos llevó a la reunión de la West [Secundaria]. Y no era solo una reunión, fue una celebración de las protestas de la West. Lo primero que aprendí del Sr. Hernández sobre la raza latina fue eso.

Nayeli: Yo conocí al Sr. Hernández en la actividad de la Secundaria West. Mi papá [Paul López, Denver City Clerk y exmiembro del consejo de la ciudad] es exalumno de la Secundaria West y era uno de los oradores. Yo era la única estudiante pensando, “Uf, soy de la Secundaria North y aquí estoy, en la escuela rival.”

Fue entonces que vi un grupo grande de estudiantes marchando con un letrero que decía “From North to West, Chicano Power.” Entonces pensé, “Oh wow, ¡qué cool!” Nunca había escuchado la frase “Chicano Power” fuera de mi casa.

Daniela: Mi mamá nació en México y mi papá en Nicaragua, así que soy la primera generación nacida aquí. … no era normal que yo dijera que soy Chicana porque para ellos, es un término negativo. … [Hernández] nos enseñó a sentirnos orgullosos mostrándonos la historia. … no se trata únicamente de César Chávez. No se trata solamente de Dolores Huerta. Es mucho más que esas personas.

Viridiana: Yo conocí al Sr. Hernández cuando comenzó el año. … recuerdo que le dije lo mucho que odiaba estar en la clase de Lenguaje AP porque no sentía conexión con el currículo. Todos en la clase eran blancos. Solo éramos tres estudiantes de color, contándome a mí, y me sentía horrible. Me sentía sumamente aislada.

Entonces él me dijo que era el maestro de Literatura Latinx y que la clase era divertida. … tan pronto llegué, me sentí bienvenida, sentí comunidad, y él únicamente quería que uno se mostrara de manera auténtica.

La Secundaria North.

¿Qué les gustaría que los adultos a cargo del Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver sepan?

Nayeli: Queremos que nuestro maestro regrese. ... para nosotros no es un simple maestro. Es alguien que nos hace sentir seguros. … Él, siendo uno de los únicos Chicanos en la Secundaria North, era un excelente sistema de apoyo.

Martin: No solo queremos que nuestro maestro regrese, también queremos más maestros que se vean como él, que representen su cultura. No queremos gente que se vea como nosotros pero que no nos represente.

Daniela: Ser inclusivos y diversos es más que celebrar el Mes de la Historia LGBTQ+ o el Mes de la Historia Negra. … la North piensa que esa es la manera inclusiva de apoyarnos. Pero de ninguna manera lo es.

Martin: Es como que somos una inconveniencia para ellos.

Nayeli: Es como que nos anotan en un cuaderno pero luego nos desechan.

Daniela: Sé de personas que han dicho que les han dicho a los orientadores o maestros de AP que se van a inscribir en clases de estudios étnicos y les han dicho, “Eso no se verá bien en tu transcripción de créditos.” No creo que aprender y actuar de conformidad con quienes somos sea algo que nos haga menos atractivos para las universidades. Los maestros no deberían decirnos eso.

Viridiana: Nos han llamado “problemáticos.” O que los maestros saben cómo manejar a “estudiantes como nosotros” porque han trabajado en otras escuelas donde la mayoría del estudiantado es “como nosotros.”

Martin: Siempre usan frases como “you people” (la gente como ustedes).

Viridiana: Lo hemos reportado, pero no hacen nada.

Nayeli: Los mismos estudiantes que los maestros y muchos administradores tildan de “problemáticos” son los que maestros como el Sr. Hernández ven como chicos que van a lograr algo en la vida.

Melanie Asmar es reportera senior de Chalkbeat Colorado y cubre historias sobre el Distrito de Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, escríbele a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Cierre de escuelas: Cómo Denver, Jeffco y Aurora están abordando la decisión

2022-11-10T13:54:01+00:00

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Tres de los distritos escolares más grandes de Colorado — Denver, Jeffco y Aurora — están enfrentando el mismo problema: reducción en el número de estudiantes. Pero cada uno está manejando las decisiones de cuáles escuelas cerrar de manera diferente.

El distrito de Aurora ya ha cerrado ocho escuelas en los últimos dos años, y algunas todavía están en proceso de cierre. Los miembros de la junta escolar han luchado con las decisiones, votando inicialmente en contra de dos recomendaciones de cierre este año antes de cambiar su voto.

Ahora el distrito está iniciando un proceso para averiguar qué hacer con los edificios vacíos, incluso cuando es posible que haya más cierres.

En Jeffco, después de cerrar dos escuelas abruptamente en los últimos dos años, una nueva administración recomendó cerrar 16 escuelas primarias todas a la vez al final de este año escolar. La junta escolar de Jeffco tiene prevista una votación sobre esta recomendación el jueves. Es probable que el distrito también recomiende el cierre de escuelas intermedias o secundarias el próximo año.

Denver ha iniciado, pausado y reiniciado un proceso de cierre de escuelas en los últimos dos años. Finalmente, el superintendente recomendó cerrar 10 escuelas primarias y secundarias al final de este año escolar. La junta escolar de Denver tiene previsto votar el 17 de noviembre.

Los padres tienen muchas preguntas sobre estas decisiones: ¿Cómo se selecciona cuál escuela cerrar? ¿Por qué algunos distritos están cerrando tantas escuelas a la vez? ¿Por qué los distritos escolares no tienen en cuenta los aspectos académicos o el papel que desempeñan las escuelas en sus comunidades?

A continuación, contestamos algunas de las preguntas más comunes y explicamos las diferencias de enfoque entre los tres distritos.

¿Qué factores tuvieron en cuenta los distritos a la hora de seleccionar las escuelas que iban a cerrar?

Denver y Jeffco basaron su decisión mayormente en el número de estudiantes, mientras que Aurora tuvo en cuenta una serie de factores, entre ellos de qué manera se podrían reutilizar los edificios escolares.

En Denver y Jeffco, se consideraron para cierre las escuelas con muy pocos estudiantes: menos de 215 en Denver y menos de 220 en Jeffco.

Los líderes de ambos distritos también consideraron si otra escuela o escuelas situadas a pocas millas de distancia podrían acoger a los estudiantes de la escuela cerrada. Por ejemplo, Denver decidió no cerrar cuatro escuelas pequeñas porque los funcionarios dijeron que no hay ninguna escuela en un radio de 2 millas que pueda recibir a sus estudiantes.

También se consideraron otros factores. En Denver, los administradores querían asegurar que los estudiantes que hablan español pudieran continuar su educación bilingüe o en dos idiomas. Y en Jeffco, los administradores también tuvieron en cuenta la cantidad de espacio del edificio que se está utilizando.

Aurora, que inició su proceso de cierre de escuelas en 2018, adoptó un enfoque diferente. El distrito creó siete regiones y se fijó en las tendencias de matrícula en cada zona, cuántos edificios el distrito podría necesitar, y qué edificios podrían albergar nuevos programas magnet o utilizarse para otros fines.

Una de las razones por las que la comunidad y la junta escolar ayudaron a Aurora a seleccionar este método es porque el distrito está perdiendo estudiantes en algunas regiones, mientras que está añadiendo nuevas subdivisiones en el este de la ciudad. Los líderes vieron una oportunidad de combinar el cierre de escuelas con un plan estratégico más amplio.

¿Por qué Denver y Jeffco están cerrando tantas escuelas a la vez?

La baja en matrícula no es un problema nuevo. Los líderes de Denver y Jeffco dicen que retrasar las decisiones en el pasado ha llevado a las escuelas a carecer de los recursos necesarios para atender bien a los estudiantes, a pesar de contar con subsidios presupuestarios substanciales. Jeffco también quiere evitar decisiones de emergencia que dejen a las familias en apuros, como ocurrió en las escuelas primarias Allendale y Fitzmorris.

Tanto en Denver como en Jeffco, los superintendentes le han pedido a la junta escolar que haga una votación de las recomendaciones de cierre como un paquete: todas las escuelas o ninguna.

“Creemos que resolver esto rápidamente apoyará a nuestra comunidad escolar para que haga algo realmente difícil y luego siga adelante para crear experiencias más prósperas para nuestros estudiantes”, dijo la Superintendente de Jeffco, Tracy Dorland.

Los líderes de Jeffco también dijeron que querían evitar tomar decisiones de cierre cada año, dejando a las familias preocupadas durante mucho tiempo. En Aurora, un proceso más largo con años de participación de la comunidad todavía dejó a las familias frustradas y sorprendidas por las recomendaciones de cierre.

Sin embargo, el superintendente de Aurora, Rico Munn, dijo que trabajar en fases permite que el distrito lleve cuenta del impacto.

“Es un campo muy dinámico en el que estamos hablando sobre matrícula y cambios demográficos, en particular después de la pandemia”, dijo Munn. “Queríamos detenernos y reflexionar durante el proceso”.

Este otoño, el distrito reabrió dos escuelas como escuelas magnet y está comenzando a llevar cuenta de cómo el interés en esas escuelas podría afectar la matrícula en toda la región y el distrito. Pero es demasiado pronto para saberlo, dijo Munn.

¿Por qué no se ha tenido en cuenta el aspecto académico?

El cierre de escuelas basado en los resultados académicos y de los exámenes ya no cuenta con el visto bueno político, y ninguno de los distritos tuvo en cuenta el desempeño para decidir qué escuelas cerrar y cuáles salvar.

En Aurora, el superintendente Munn dijo que el estado ya tiene un sistema de rendición de cuentas que registra el desempeño académico de las escuelas y puede emitir órdenes, entre ellas el cierre, como consecuencia cuando una escuela no mejora. “Pero no había interés en crear un segundo sistema”, dijo.

Sin embargo, eso ha hecho que los padres y la comunidad tengan preguntas: ¿Por qué cerrar escuelas que están funcionando para los estudiantes?

¿Qué pueden hacer las comunidades escolares para frenar los cierres?

No mucho, parece.

En los tres distritos, los administradores han tratado de evitar situaciones en las que los padres, los maestros y los miembros de la comunidad se unan para salvar sus escuelas.

En Aurora, los miembros de la junta escolar cedieron ante la presión pública y rechazaron dos recomendaciones de cierre, aunque cambiaron de parecer dos meses después.

Los miembros de la junta, cuya mayoría aún no habían sido elegidos cuando se puso en marcha el plan Blueprint de Aurora, se preguntaron por qué el distrito no tenía en cuenta la participación de los padres en su escuela o cómo una escuela encajaba en su comunidad al momento de hacer recomendaciones de cierre.

Munn dijo que no sería justo considerar la participación de la comunidad. Los padres que tienen varios trabajos pueden amar su escuela, pero no pueden asistir a las reuniones. Las escuelas más grandes pueden lograr que más padres luchen contra el cierre.

“Todos queríamos evitar que las comunidades escolares pelearan entre sí”, dijo Munn. “No conviene crear una competencia de popularidad”

Denver y Jeffco han seguido en gran medida el ejemplo de Aurora en este sentido, y es una de las razones por las a los miembros de la junta se les está pidiendo que aprueben los cierres como un paquete de escuelas, en vez de una por una.

Dorland, superintendente de Jeffco, llegó a decir que la participación de la comunidad no cambiará el resultado. En Denver, sin embargo, algunos miembros de la junta escolar parecieron sentirse preocupados por la falta de oportunidades para que las comunidades se involucraran en las decisiones para cerrar una escuela individual.

¿Cómo ha influido la comunidad en la toma de decisiones?

De los tres distritos, Aurora tuvo el proceso de participación comunitaria más amplio. Pero en los tres, los administradores tuvieron la última decisión de qué escuelas recomendar para el cierre.

Ahora los líderes de Denver y Jeffco están pidiendo la opinión de los padres y maestros sobre cómo ayudar a que la transición ocurra sin problemas, un enfoque que ha causado ira y frustración.

Aurora inició en 2018 la planificación de lo que se convirtió en Blueprint con consultores que ayudaron con encuestas, grupos de discusión y reuniones en la comunidad. El distrito concluyó que las familias querían más opciones escolares, pero que esas opciones debían ser escuelas del distrito, no escuelas chárter.

El distrito creó regiones con especializaciones únicas y está desarrollando nuevas escuelas magnet que se ajusten a esos temas. La necesidad de cerrar escuelas (o de usarlas con otros fines) estuvo presente en este proceso desde el principio, aunque no todos los miembros de la comunidad lo entendieron así. El distrito no tuvo mucha resistencia en las primeras rondas de cierres de escuelas. Este año los padres resistieron, pero finalmente no tuvieron éxito.

Denver convocó a grupos comunitarios a partir de 2017. El Strengthening Neighborhoods Committee se reunió con la meta de combatir la segregación en las escuelas y abordar los efectos de la gentrificación. Una de sus recomendaciones fue tener un “proceso transparente de consolidación de escuelas” que les permitiera a las comunidades “reimaginar” sus propias escuelas.

Un segundo comité formado este año, llamado Declining Enrollment Advisory Committe, estableció criterios de cierre de escuelas que fueron aplicados a la recomendación más reciente. Pero los miembros del comité estaban divididos porque muchos querían hablar de evitar la necesidad de cerrar escuelas, un tema que los administradores del distrito dijeron que no estaba sobre la mesa.

Ahora la participación de la comunidad de Denver se ha transferido a las escuelas individuales. Cada director de escuela está explicándole la recomendación a su comunidad escolar y haciendo todo lo posible por contestar las preguntas, una estrategia que el Superintendente Alex Marrero describió como “íntima e intensa”

“Creo que la gente que conocen, quieren y adoran, y que siguen, es la que puede decirles: ‘Ok, este es el plan y se necesita por esta razón”, dijo Marrero.

La junta escolar de Denver también organizará una sesión de comentarios públicos el 14 de noviembre.

En Jeffco, Dorland dejó claro que los comentarios de la comunidad no cambiarán las recomendaciones. El propósito de la participación de la comunidad era para determinar qué necesitan las familias para superar la transición.

De todos modos, cada escuela que se va a cerrar ha tenido una sesión de comentarios públicos de una hora con la junta escolar, lo cual es un total de por lo menos 16 horas de comentarios públicos.

Pero en un informe del grupo de consultores que dirige ese trabajo, quedó claro que las familias no estaban contentas. Muchos todavía querían hablar de las recomendaciones y obtener más respuestas a sus preguntas, y el Keystone Policy Center dijo que habían encontrado mucha desinformación y falta de confianza en el proceso.

¿Cómo decidieron los distritos el plazo para informar a los padres?

De los tres distritos, el proceso de Denver es el más breve, con poco más de tres semanas entre el anuncio de la recomendación el 25 de octubre y la votación programada para el 17 de noviembre. Si la junta vota que sí, las 10 escuelas cerrarían al final de este año escolar.

Pero Marrero, superintendente de Denver, argumentó que el proceso en realidad comenzó en junio de 2021 cuando la junta escolar aprobó una resolución que le ordena al superintendente consolidar las escuelas pequeñas.

La junta necesita votar este mes para que haya tiempo suficiente para poner en marcha el plan del próximo otoño, dijo Marrero. También dijo que detener el proceso haría que los estudiantes y el personal huyeran de las escuelas recomendadas para el cierre, empeorando la pérdida de matrícula.

En Jeffco, las familias tendrán más tiempo que en cierres de emergencia anteriores.

Por ejemplo, cuando el distrito cerró Allendale y Fitzmorris, las familias se les informó a las familias en la primavera, cuando faltaban pocas semanas para que terminara el año escolar y la escuela cerrara.

Las familias se perdieron la primera ronda para inscribirse en la escuela de su preferencia, y el distrito trabajó individualmente con las familias para asignar a los estudiantes a otra escuela para el próximo año escolar. Esta vez, la votación de la junta el 10 de noviembre está programada antes de que el distrito empiece su proceso del año para matricularse en la escuela de preferencia. Si las familias quieren elegir una escuela diferente a la que recomienda el distrito, pueden hacerlo.

Aurora también ha aumentado el plazo entre las recomendaciones y los cierres.

En la primera ronda de cierres que se decidió por votación en enero de 2021, la primera escuela cerró en junio de 2021 y las demás se irán eliminando poco a poco. En la segunda ronda de cierres, la junta votó en la primavera de 2022 y las escuelas cerrarán al final del año escolar 2022-23.

¿Los distritos han tenido en cuenta cuántos estudiantes podrían tener en el futuro?

Sí. Los tres distritos usaron un análisis que incluye factores como tasas de natalidad, desarrollo de vivienda y movilidad para pronosticar las tendencias en la población en edad escolar.

En Denver, el análisis más reciente, hecho esta última primavera, muestra que la ciudad tiene menos niños ahora que hace una década. La tasa de nacimientos está bajando más rápido entre las familias hispanas, y el distrito pronostica que eso “tendrá un impacto negativo significativo” en la matrícula. Actualmente, un poco más de la mitad de los casi 90,000 estudiantes de las escuelas públicas de Denver son hispanos.

El análisis también señala que la mayoría de las viviendas planificadas o permitidas son condominios, apartamentos y townhomes, que históricamente representan menos estudiantes que las casas de familia. Sin embargo, algunos miembros de la comunidad y hasta organizaciones como la casi municipal Autoridad de la Vivienda de Denver están cuestionando las proyecciones de Denver.

En Jeffco, un análisis similar presentado ante la junta escolar el miércoles demostró que los estudiantes que proceden de familias en pobreza están abandonando el distrito en mayor proporción que los estudiantes más acomodados. Los dos códigos de salida más comunes que registra el distrito muestran que los estudiantes se están mudando a otros distritos o a otro estado. Los líderes del distrito dijeron que sospechan que la falta de vivienda asequible está expulsando a las familias.

En Aurora, se proyecta que la cantidad de estudiantes crecerá de nuevo, pero no necesariamente en las mismas comunidades que antes.

En el este del distrito están surgiendo nuevas áreas de vivienda, que podrían requerir nuevas escuelas. Las escuelas en el oeste del distrito, más cerca de Denver, siguen experimentando un fuerte descenso porque el alto costo de la vivienda hace que las familias se vayan.

Originalmente, los líderes de Aurora esperaban que la matrícula comenzara a aumentar en 2021, pero el superintendente Munn dijo que la pandemia aceleró las bajas en el oeste, cambiando la expectativa. Todavía se espera un crecimiento, pero el distrito está observando de cerca los datos para analizar cuándo podría ocurrir.

Melanie Asmar es reportera senior de Chalkbeat Colorado, y cubre las Escuelas Públicas de Denver. Para comunicarte con Melanie, escríbele a masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Dos hermanos hispanos querían ir a la universidad en Colorado. Aquí te contamos por qué solamente uno lo logró.

2021-12-02T23:47:15+00:00

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La alarma de Jimy y Luis Hernández los despierta antes de que salga el sol.

Los hermanos intentan moverse en silencio por la casa de sus padres en el noreste de Denver para no molestar a sus hermanos.

Luis, de 18 años, podría ver las noticias o ayudar a su mamá a preparar el almuerzo antes de salir hermano a la fábrica de cartuchos de tóner donde trabaja a tiempo parcial para ayudar a pagar la universidad. Está matriculado en la Metropolitan State University (MSU) en Denver.

Jimy, de 21 años, suele no pasar por la cocina porque se apresura a prepararse para su trabajo a tiempo completo pavimentando asfalto en una empresa de construcción. Él quería ir a la universidad, pero no pudo encontrar la manera de lograrlo.

Las rutas opuestas de los hermanos destacan los retos que enfrentan los varones hispanos para poder entrar a la universidad... y también para graduarse.

En Colorado, la mayoría de los graduados de secundaria hispanos siguen un camino más parecido al de Jimy. Menos de la mitad va a la universidad - una tasa inferior a la de los varones negros y las mujeres hispanas.

Jimy Hernández, en el medio, camina por la cocina de su casa de Denver mientras su mamá, Mariela Hernández, prepara burritos de chicharrón para la familia antes de que todos salgan a trabajar.

Pero incluso cuando entran a la universidad, como Luis, las probabilidades siguen estando en su contra. Solamente un 41% de los hombres hispanos que asisten a las universidades públicas de cuatro años de Colorado consiguen graduarse, según datos federales recientes. En los colegios comunitarios, menos de un tercio se gradúa.

Y todo esto resulta en enormes disparidades. Entre los estados, Colorado tiene una de las poblaciones más educadas, pero solo una cuarta parte de los residentes hispanos tiene una credencial universitaria, la cifra más baja de todos los grupos. Esto es en comparación con un 61% de todos los residentes de Colorado.

Esta diferencia supone un alto costo para las finanzas de las familias en un estado en el que 1 de cada 5 personas se identifica como de origen hispano. Además, tiene implicaciones para la prosperidad del estado. Para que Colorado cumpla su propia meta de que un 66% de sus residentes tengan una credencial universitaria, es esencial conseguir que más varones hispanos se matriculen y terminen la universidad.

En Colorado y en todo el país, sin embargo, los varones hispanos uniformemente se han pasado por alto en lo que respecta a la educación superior, dijo Wil Del Pilar, vicepresidente de política de educación superior de Education Trust.

“No creo que se hayan enfocado en eso”, dijo Pilar. “Si uno no está representado en la mesa o no empuja a la gente a pensar en esta población de estudiantes, creo que a menudo se les olvida que existen.”

Obstáculos a la educación superior

Múltiples razones llevan a que los varones hispanos a menudo no puedan recibir una educación universitaria.

Una de las barreras es el dinero. En Colorado, las familias hispanas tienden a tener ingresos menores al promedio del estado. Muchos varones hispanos quizás son los primeros de su familia en ir a la universidad. Ellos no pueden dejarse llevar por la familia para saber cuándo empezar a prepararse, dónde solicitar o cómo conseguir ayuda financiera.

Y a esto se le añaden las expectativas de algunas familias de que ayuden a sostener el hogar o a cuidar de los hermanos.

Si llegan al campus, los varones hispanos podrían descubrir que no hay mucha gente que comparte sus experiencias y entiende sus retos. Menos de uno de cada 10 profesores son hispanos, algo importante para que los estudiantes se sientan bienvenidos y para ayudarles a conectar con mentores que puedan guiarles.

Un camino nuevo hacia la universidad

Desde que eran niños, los hermanos Hernández entendieron que la universidad era una expectativa.

Como inmigrantes del estado mexicano de Zacatecas, sus padres Mariela y Jaime les recalcaron que hay que aprovechar todas las oportunidades en Estados Unidos. La universidad les abriría nuevas carreras en campos que estarían bien pagados y les aseguraría que iban a trabajar duro con sus mentes y no con sus espaldas.

“Mi sueño siempre ha sido que mis hijos tengan una vida mejor que la que yo tuve”, dijo Mariela Hernández. “Quiero que crezcan y hagan lo que les gusta, que no tengan que trabajar tanto como yo. Quiero que tengan una vida bonita.”

Pero la trayectoria de los hermanos Hernández resalta cómo el sistema universitario de Colorado (y del país) produce resultados desiguales, incluso dentro de la misma familia.

Luis ayuda a su mamá, Mariela, a trabajar en una fábrica de cartuchos de tinta y tóner. Ella le ayudó a conseguir el trabajo para pagar sus estudios en la Universidad Estatal Metropolitana de Denver.

Tres años después de graduarse del Denver Center for International Studies en Montbello, Jimy Hernández tiene una rutina diaria que no había anticipado. En la secundaria, Jimy era un estudiante con desempeño mediano pero se esforzaba y disfrutaba de la escuela. Él sentía que la universidad podía estar en su futuro. Consideró entrar en un programa de soldadura o en especializarse en artes culinarias o en convertirse en barbero.

Sus padres estaban involucrados en su educación. Ellos iban a todas las reuniones de padres y maestros y le animaron a triunfar.

Jimy trató de mantenerse involucrado en la escuela y en las actividades extracurriculares. Tomó el examen ACT y completó los cursos usuales de secundaria. Le gustaba especialmente la historia.

Los maestros y los orientadores académicos sugirieron que solicitara admisión a las universidades. Pero esa sugerencia no vino acompañada de asesoramiento práctico individual. Al no tener ayuda, no sabía por dónde empezar.

“Para ser honesto, los orientadores académicos realmente ayudaron más como los estudiantes de honor y todo eso”, dijo Jimy.

Jesse Ramírez, cuya Organización INSPiRE brinda mentoría para ayudar a estudiantes a entrar a la universidad, dijo que ha encontrado que muchos varones hispanos como Jimy simplemente son pasados por alto. Quizás alguien les hable de la universidad, pero rara vez se les proporciona ayuda práctica, dijo Ramírez.

La clave, dijo, es trabajar con los estudiantes y recordarles la universidad como opción constantemente para que no se desanimen. “Nosotros podemos mostrarles que, sea cual sea su pasión, una educación universitaria puede resaltarla”, dijo Ramírez.

Él ha encontrado que también ayuda tener hombres hispanos exitosos como mentores.

Sin nada de eso, Jimy nunca completó la Solicitud Gratuita de Ayuda Federal para Estudiantes (FAFSA), que abre las puertas a becas, y también a préstamos y grants del gobierno federal. Él solicitó algunas becas y recibió $1,000, pero no pudo decidir a qué universidad ir.

No sabía que las universidades comunitarias ofrecen muchos de los programas que le interesaban por una fracción del costo de las instituciones privadas con fines de lucro. Tampoco sabía por qué era importante llenar la FAFSA.

Lincoln College of Technology, la única universidad que trató de reclutarlo (privada y con fines de lucro), estaba económicamente fuera de su alcance. Un asesor le dijo a Jimy que graduarse con un diploma de soldadura le costaría unos $60,000. Esa cantidad de dinero era abrumadora.

Jimy sabía que ir a la universidad le permitiría ganar más dinero más adelante. Los datos federales muestran que los hombres con diploma universitario de cuatro años ganan en promedio casi $1 millón más durante toda su vida laboral que los que solamente se graduaron de secundaria. Y los graduados de una universidad comunitaria también ganan más.

Los hermanos Jimy y Luis se relajan en la mesa después de un largo día de trabajo y estudios.

Pero la realidad de renunciar a un sueldo fijo y asumir una deuda mayor le llevó a optar por trabajar. Fue cambiando de trabajo y finalmente aterrizó en la empresa de pavimentación de asfalto, que le ofrecía un sueldo de $21 por hora con beneficios y la oportunidad de progresar. Y su mamá dijo que está orgullosa de él — y de todos sus hijos — por lo mucho que trabaja.

Jimy se siente orgulloso de que su hermano pequeño esté logrando sus objetivos y sigue alimentando sus propios sueños universitarios. Pero Jimy no sabe por dónde empezar para volver a estudiar o quién podría ayudarle a saber cómo hacerlo.

Él recuerda cuando tuvo que decirles a sus papás que no iba a ir a la universidad. Podía sentir la decepción de ellos.

“Mis papás realmente no podían ayudarme”, dijo. “Luego, mi mamá entendió.”

Cómo Luis encontró un camino

Entonces, ¿cómo Luis consiguió entrar a la universidad, especialmente cuando se encontró con muchas de las mismas barreras que su hermano?

Luis también trabajó duro y trató de mantenerse activo. Fue parte del grupo que preparó el anuario de la escuela y tomó clases de inglés AP, geografía AP, y otras clases de nivel avanzado y universitario.

Fue uno de los pocos afortunados de su secundaria, predominantemente hispana, en ir a la universidad. En el año escolar 2019-20, aproximadamente una cuarta parte de los estudiantes de DCIS Montbello decidió obtener una educación postsecundaria, en comparación con casi la mitad de los graduados de las escuelas públicas de Denver.

Luis, a la derecha, toma notas en su clase de la tarde sobre atención informada por el trauma, donde el tema de la lección del día era la resiliencia. Él ha obtenido apoyo a través del programa Pathways to Possible para estudiantes desfavorecidos. No cree que hubiera podido asistir a la universidad si no fuera por el programa.

Aunque Luis apenas sabía por dónde empezar, el personal del Programa Pathways to Possible de MSU Denver se comunicó con él y le orientó sobre dónde ir, cómo pagar por la universidad, cómo elegir las clases y cómo matricularse en ellas.

Eso marcó la diferencia.

Mariela y Jaime celebraron el día en que Luis empezó la universidad llevando a la familia a cenar a un restaurante mexicano. Mariela sigue hablando de lo orgullosa que está de Luis.

“Es una bendición”, dijo Mariela. “Estoy agradecida con Dios, con mi esposo y conmigo misma por todo el trabajo que hemos hecho para que esté ahí.”

La graduación no es una garantía

Antes de la pandemia, solamente 1 de cada 5 varones hispanos terminaba una carrera universitaria de cuatro años en MSU Denver.

En su defensa, los funcionarios de la MSU de Denver dicen que sus estudiantes empiezan la universidad con más responsabilidades y retos en el trabajo, la escuela, la familia y la vida, y todo eso pueden dificultar el camino hacia la graduación. Dicen que la universidad también recibe en general menos dinero del estado para educar a cada estudiante que otras escuelas.

Michael Benitez, que dirige la oficina de Diversidad, Equidad e Inclusión de MSU Denver, dijo que el precio de la matrícula universitaria siendo menor que el de muchas otras universidades estatales. Eso ayuda a reducir la deuda y la carga de trabajo de los estudiantes, dijo. La universidad también programa las clases para acomodar a los estudiantes que trabajan, dijo Benítez.

Aun así, los varones hispanos se gradúan en tasas más bajas que cualquier grupo, excepto los varones negros, a pesar de que muchos estudiantes se enfrentan a circunstancias de vida similares.

Para impulsar las tasas de graduación y reducir las barreras, la universidad ha creado programas como Pathways. El programa Pathways, financiado con los fondos federales para el alivio del coronavirus, conecta a los estudiantes con orientadores académicos, ofrece orientaciones para estudiantes de primer año y proporciona ayuda financiera.

Luis dijo que el programa marcó una gran diferencia con solo ayudarle a entrar por la puerta. Pero el programa es minúsculo, con solamente 125 estudiantes, su demanda es potencialmente enorme. Es injusto, dijo Luis, que haya tan pocas oportunidades como Pathways, un programa que podría haber ayudado a su hermano.

“Pienso mucho en ello”, dijo. “Es triste que no haya podido ir a la universidad, porque realmente quería ir.”

Luis es un estudiante de primer año en MSU Denver, y espera convertirse en dentista después de graduarse de universidad. Trabaja tres días a la semana mientras asiste a clases a tiempo completo.

Luis se matriculó en otoño en MSU Denver como estudiante de primer año para hacer un sueño realidad: ser dentista. Siempre le gustó que le limpiaran los dientes cuando era niño y cómo se sentía después. Está tomando clases relacionadas con la medicina y espera ir luego a la escuela de odontología. Las clases son duras, dijo, pero su preparación en la secundaria le ayudó.

Para continuar en la universidad, Luis trabaja tres días a la semana. Eso hace que los días sean largos, lo que complica su meta más inmediata: graduarse. Estadísticamente, se enfrenta a un riesgo.

Los varones hispanos de las universidades de Colorado se gradúan a niveles muy inferiores a los de sus compañeros. Entre las universidades estatales de cuatro años, la MSU de Denver tiene la tasa de graduación más baja para los varones hispanos.

Un éxito en Georgia

Una escuela que ha estado a la vanguardia graduando estudiantes de primera generación es la Georgia State University. Esta institución educa mayormente a estudiantes de color que son los primeros de su familia en ir a la universidad o que tienen bajos ingresos. Sus estudiantes hispanos y negros se gradúan al mismo ritmo que los blancos.

Timothy Renick, que dirige el National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State, dijo que la universidad lleva cuenta electrónicamente de los factores de riesgo que cada estudiente enfrenta a diario, y esto incluye no cumplir los plazos de entrega escolares o tener problemas financieros. La universidad toma en cuenta 800 posibles riesgos. Eso significa que si una crisis laboral o de vida interfiere con los estudios, la universidad puede tratar de intervenir.

“En vez de esperar que los estudiantes en cada uno de esos casos diagnostiquen el problema y acudan a nosotros en busca de ayuda, nosotros nos estamos comunicando proactivamente con ellos en un plazo de 24 o 48 horas después de detectar uno de esos problemas”, dijo Renick.

En Colorado, ninguna universidad lleva notas tan detalladas sobre los estudiantes.

Los días de trabajo, Luis y su madre entran a trabajar en la fábrica a las 6:30 am. Él usualmente trabaja hasta la hora de almuerzo y luego se dirige a la casa para hacer la tarea o toma el tren para ir a sus clases. Su gerente le da flexibilidad para trabajar de acuerdo con su horario de clases.

Luis se levanta a las 7 de la mañana hasta los días en que no trabaja.

Luis se pregunta si podrá mantener el intenso horario de trabajo y de estudios a tiempo completo, pero dice que se siente equipado para hacerlo.

Él trata de ayudar en la casa o pasar tiempo con sus hermanos menores. En los raros días que tiene tiempo para sí mismo, dice que le gusta “disfrutar un poco de la vida.” Usualmente eso incluye ver un programa de televisión.

Dice que rara vez se siente demasiado cansado. Se apoya en la fuerza de su familia y en su orientador del programa Pathways. Tomó un seminario de manejo del tiempo, y por eso se siente preparado para controlar su agenda.

Sin embargo, le preocupa si podrá mantener el programa a largo plazo y qué retos podrían desviarle del camino.

Modelo de conducta para una familia extendida

Después de un largo día, los hermanos Hernández a veces pasan el rato juntos en el sofá. Luis suele hacer tarea en su computadora portátil. Jimy podría estar viendo las noticias o navegando en su teléfono.

También pasan tiempo con sus dos hermanos menores, Alejandro, de 13 años, y Brian, de 14. Los hermanos Hernández mayores tienen las mismas expectativas universitarias de sus padres para sus hermanos menores.

“Siempre les digo que se queden en la escuela y que hagan algo por sí mismos”, dijo Jimy.

Y Luis espera poder ser un ejemplo a seguir para sus hermanos, así como para otros varones hispanos que aspiran a obtener algún día un título universitario.

“Tengo mucha presión por ser el primero en ir a la universidad”, dijo. “Pero mis primos y hermanos me admiran y ven lo que estoy haciendo. Quiero ser una inspiración para ellos.”

Un defensor de los estudiantes latinos, este adolescente está siendo honrado como un líder por el gobernador

2023-12-22T00:00:17+00:00

Read in English.

Cuando Osvaldo Garcia Barron empezó sus estudios de high school, con frecuencia era el único estudiante de color en sus clases avanzadas. Tenía dificultades para expresar sus opiniones y se preguntaba si tenía algo que contribuir.

El inicio de la pandemia interrumpió su primer año de high school.

Pero en lugar de salir de ella sintiéndose aislado, Garcia Barron regresó a la escuela con determinación. Siguió el ejemplo de su hermana mayor, Paola, y decidió participar en algunos programas de liderazgo y seguir tomando clases avanzadas.

Cuando siguió teniendo dificultades para sentir que pertenecía, se dio cuenta de que probablemente no era el único.

Garcia Barron reinició la Organización de Estudiantes Latinos en Boulder High School, de la cual terminó por convertirse en presidente. Y empezó a involucrarse en muchos otros programas en su escuela, distrito y ciudad, incluyendo como integrante del Consejo de Equidad Juvenil del Distrito Escolar del Valle de Boulder y como mentor en el programa AVID de su escuela. AVID ayuda a preparar para la universidad a estudiantes históricamente subrepresentados en la educación superior.

Ahora le están reconociendo sus contribuciones con la Medalla Ciudadana para Líderes Comunitarios Emergentes. El premio está cumpliendo su noveno aniversario y será entregado por el Gobernador Jared Polis y CiviCo, una organización sin fines de lucro dedicada al desarrollo de líderes.

Garcia Barron fue nominado por uno de sus mentores, quien dijo que es una inspiración para otros.

“Osvaldo tiene el tipo de personalidad que realmente puede cambiar vidas”, escribió Jasmine Johnson, la mentora que lo nominó, en su carta de nominación. “Con frecuencia, Osvaldo actúa más como un consejero que un estudiante. Me emociona ver todo el crecimiento y cambio que Osvaldo producirá inevitablemente en sí mismo, sus compañeros y la comunidad en general”.

Garcia Barron no sabía ni que lo estaban considerando para la medalla hasta que recibió una llamada de Polis.

“El momento en que contesté la llamada fue como una serie de emociones. Primero que nada estuve como en shock”, Garcia Barron dijo. “Hablando con un gobernador, no supe cómo procesar esa emoción. Sí sentí un sentimiento de gratitud. Honestamente me sentí muy honrado y [lleno de humildad]”.

Garcia Barron, quien está cursando su primer año de universidad en Pitzer College en California, llamó a su mamá justo después.

Dijo que el reconocimiento inesperado ayudó a reafirmar que su trabajo importa.

Al pedirle que eligiera el trabajo que ha hecho del cual está más orgulloso, no pudo elegir solo una cosa.

Cuando era integrante del Consejo Asesor de Oportunidades Juveniles en Boulder, ayudó a entrevistar a niños sobre cómo hacer que la ciudad fuera más acogedora para los niños. Investigó cómo la Ciudad de Boulder podía crear un fondo de defensa para inmigrantes, quizás usando a otras ciudades como ejemplo. Ayudó a organizar sesiones informativas para inmigrantes cuando interactuó con la Oficina de Equidad y Pertenencia de la ciudad.

Ya que se crio con padres inmigrantes en una ciudad con una población principalmente blanca, Garcia Barron dijo que vio a su familia enfrentar muchos desafíos. Su papá trabaja varios trabajos, y su mamá se queda en casa con sus tres hermanas menores. Sus padres apoyan sus estudios y su trabajo, pero no tienen mucho tiempo para participar ellos mismos. Pero dijo que sus padres siempre le inculcaron esperanza, a pesar de sus desafíos.

“Échale ganas, mijo”, es un dicho que sus padres le dicen y que lleva consigo.

Johnson, quien nominó a Garcia Barron para el premio, es una consejera con Access Opportunity, una organización sin fines de lucro que selecciona a estudiantes para ayudarlos a prepararse para la universidad, con habilidades de liderazgo y explorando carreras profesionales.

Fue de compras con Garcia Barron cuando el estudiante se estaba preparando para irse a la universidad.

“Solo salir en Boulder con él, nos pararon como siete a 10 veces”, Johnson dijo. “La gente que solo quería decir hola. Aquellos que se han visto influidos por él y su familia. Fue bello observar eso”.

Su grupo de estudiantes se reúne una vez al mes, y cuando Garcia Barron no puede participar, otros estudiantes siempre preguntan: “¿Dónde está Osvaldo? ¿Se va a aparecer?” Le dicen: “Realmente me siento inspirado por Osvaldo cuando está aquí. Cuando él habla, es algo con lo que me puedo identificar”.

Garrett Mayberry, el gerente de programas para la Fundación Boettcher y quien ayudó a presidir el comité de selección que redujo la lista de personas nominadas para el premio, dijo que la solicitud de Garcia Barron sobresalió en un grupo competitivo por cómo usó su experiencia para ayudar a la comunidad latina.

“Pareció como que creó oportunidades para que otros formaran parte de la [conversación]”, Mayberry dijo.

Aunque es su primer año en la universidad, Garcia Barron ya está participando en varios grupos. Es el representante de primer año en el Sindicato de Estudiantes Latinos y forma parte del Club de Primera Generación. Es tutor de clases de conversación en español y está recibiendo capacitación para convertirse en un Affinity Fellow, lo cual significa representar a organizaciones latinas en el campus y facilitar su comunicación con los otros departamentos de la universidad.

Reconoce que son muchas responsabilidades, pero dijo que no es difícil porque lo apasiona todo lo relacionado con ese trabajo. Está explorando una carrera en sociología o estudios políticos, con una posible carrera en estudios chicanos. Quizás algún día se dedique a la política, dijo. O le gustaría ayudar a escribir políticas en una organización sin fines de lucro. Más que nada, quiere ayudar a elevar las voces de la gente joven.

“Es realmente importante confiar en el proceso y continuar abogando cuando se pone difícil”, Garcia Barron dijo. “Solo espero que el trabajo en el que estoy participando esté inspirando a otros para que participen”.

Traducido por Alejandra X. Castañeda

An advocate for Latino students, this teen is being honored as an emerging leader in Colorado

2023-12-22T00:00:33+00:00

Leer en español.

When Osvaldo Garcia Barron started high school, he was often the only student of color in his advanced classes. He struggled to speak up and wondered if he had anything to contribute.

The start of the pandemic interrupted his freshman year of high school.

But instead of coming out of it feeling isolated, Garcia Barron came back to school determined. He followed his older sister Paola’s lead in participating in some leadership programs and continued taking advanced classes.

When he still struggled to feel a sense of belonging, he realized he probably wasn’t the only one.

Garcia Barron restarted the Boulder High School Latino Student Organization where he eventually became president. And he started getting involved in lots of other programs in his school, district, and city, including serving as a board member for the Boulder Valley School District Youth Equity Council and being a mentor in the school’s AVID program, which helps prepare students who are historically underrepresented in higher education for college.

Now he is being recognized as this year’s recipient of the Emerging Community Leader Citizenship Medal. The awards are in their ninth year and are given by Gov. Jared Polis and CiviCo, a nonprofit leadership development organization.

Garcia Barron was nominated by one of his mentors who said that he’s an inspiration to others.

“Osvaldo has the type of personality that can truly change lives,” Jasmine Johnson, the mentor who nominated him, wrote in the nomination letter. “Oftentimes, Osvaldo seems more like a counselor himself than a student. I am excited to see all the growth and change Osvaldo will inevitably bring to himself, his peers, and the wider community.

Garcia Barron didn’t know he was even being considered until he got a call from Polis.

“The moment I answered that call it was like a series of emotions, first of all I was like in shock,” Garcia Barron said. “Talking to a governor, I didn’t know how to process that emotion. I did feel a sense of gratitude. I was honestly really honored and humbled.”

Garcia Barron, who is in his first year of college at Pitzer College in California, called his mom right after.

He said the unexpected recognition helped reinforce that his work does matter.

Asked to pick the work he’s done that he’s most proud of, he can’t pick just one thing.

When he was a member of Boulder’s Youth Opportunities Advisory Board, he helped interview children about how to make the city more kid-friendly. He researched how the City of Boulder could create an immigrant defense fund, perhaps modeled after other cities. He helped host information sessions for immigrants when he was involved with the city’s Office of Equity and Belonging.

Growing up with immigrant parents in a city that is predominantly white, Garcia Barron said he saw his family go through many struggles. His dad works multiple jobs, and his mom stays home with his three younger sisters. They support his education and his work, but don’t have a lot of time to be involved themselves. But he said his parents always instilled hope in him, despite their challenges.

“Echale ganas, mijo,” is one saying his parents tell him that he hangs on to. Roughly translated it means, “Give it your all, son.”

Johnson, who nominated Garcia Barron for the award, is a counselor for Access Opportunity, a nonprofit that selects students to help them with college prep, leadership skills, and career exploration.

She went shopping with Garcia Barron when he was preparing to leave for college.

“Just being out in Boulder with him, we were stopped seven to 10 times,” Johnson said. “People who just wanted to say hello. Those that have been impacted by him and his family. It was beautiful to see that.”

Her group of students meets once a month, and when Garcia Barron can’t be there, other students always ask: “Where’s Osvaldo? Is he going to show up?” They tell her, “I just really feel inspired by Osvaldo when he’s here. When he speaks, it’s something I can relate to.”

Garrett Mayberry, the program manager for the Boettcher Foundation who helped chair the selection committee to narrow down the nominees for the award, said that Garcia Barron’s application stood out in a competitive group because of how he used his experience to help the Latino community.

“It seemed like he created opportunities for others to be at the table,” Mayberry said.

Even though it’s his first semester of college, Garcia Barron is already involved in several groups. He’s the first-year representative for the Latino Student Union, and he’s a part of the First Generation Club. He’s a Spanish conversation tutor, and he’s being trained to become an Affinity Fellow, which will mean representing Latino organizations on campus and facilitating their communication with the university’s other departments.

It’s a lot to manage, he acknowledged, but he said it’s not difficult because he’s passionate about all of the work. He’s exploring a major in either sociology or political studies, with a possible major in Chicano studies. He may one day go into politics, he said. Or he would like to help write policy with a nonprofit organization. Most of all, he wants to help lift the voice of young people.

“It’s really important to trust the process and continue advocating when it gets difficult,” Garcia Barron said. “I just hope the work I’m engaging in is inspiring others to get involved.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Some social studies teachers wary as national conference meets in increasingly censored Tennessee

2023-11-30T22:54:25+00:00

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About 3,500 social studies teachers converge on Nashville this weekend for their annual national conference, but not without some pushback for meeting in a state with multiple laws aimed at classroom censorship and restrictions related to discussing race and gender.

“Some of our members have worried that this could be a hostile environment for them,” said Wesley Hedgepeth, a social studies teacher in Henrico County, Virginia, and this year’s president of the National Council for the Social Studies.

Even so, attendance is set to surpass last year’s convention in Philadelphia, the group’s first in-person gathering since the pandemic. The last pre-COVID conference, in 2019, drew about 4,000 participants to Austin, Texas.

“There have been concerns about Tennessee’s divisive-concepts law and perceived censorship by the government, as well as the suppression of certain identities,” Hedgepeth said on Thursday, the eve of the three-day conference.

“We’ve been working tirelessly to make sure this is an inclusive conference and remind people that Nashville is a welcoming place,” he said.

Gov. Bill Lee, flanked by GOP legislative leaders, speaks during a press conference at the close of the 2021 session of the Tennessee General Assembly.

Under the leadership of Republican Gov. Bill Lee and the GOP-dominated legislature, Tennessee was one of the first states to impose legal limits on classroom discussions about racism and white privilege. It gave a state commission new authority to ban certain library books statewide. It also enacted restrictions on the rights of transgender students in school. One new law ensures that school and university employees can opt out of implicit-bias training.

And earlier this year, the predominantly white and older House of Representatives ousted two young Black Democratic members for the way they protested the body’s failure to pursue significant gun reforms after a shooter killed three children and three adults at a Nashville school.

Related: The ‘Tennessee 3′ made history. Will their story be taught?

Add in a 2023 state law restricting drag shows — which has since been overturned by a federal judge — and some social studies teachers from elsewhere in the nation were balking at coming to the Volunteer State.

That spurred the council, which is the nation’s premier professional organization for social studies, to issue a three-page statement this spring titled “Why Nashville?”

The paper noted that, in addition to its renowned music scene, Tennessee’s capital city is home to key moments and movements in U.S. history.

On Aug. 18, 1920, Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, giving women across America the right to vote.

And in 1960, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a group of college students including Diane Nash formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Nashville. The chairman was a young John Lewis, a student at Nashville’s Fisk University, who went on to become a civil rights icon and longtime congressman from Georgia before his death in 2020.

“We remain committed to providing a safe and welcoming environment for all social studies educators to come and learn with us in Nashville,” the organization’s statement said.

The last time the group held its national conference in Tennessee was in 1993. The state’s affiliate organization submitted a 2017 pitch for a return to Nashville, and organizers soon signed contracts with local hotels and convention facilities. That was before the national racial reckoning spurred by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and a conservative backlash to subsequent anti-racism protests. Tennessee has been at the forefront of culture wars ever since.

Related: How the age-appropriate debate is altering curriculum

This spring, after the legislature expelled the two young Black Democratic members, the National Council for the Social Studies issued a four-page rebuke of the Tennessee House of Representatives. The statement called the ouster an attack on the foundational principles of democratic and republican norms and said that, intentionally or not, the state was sending its students a message that the rights to free speech, peaceful protest, and holding their elected officials accountable are “reserved for those who have a specific view or perspective.” (The two lawmakers were later reelected by their local constituents.)

Rep. Justin Pearson raises his newly signed oath of office after being reinstated to the Tennessee General Assembly on April 13, 2023, days after the Republican-controlled legislature ousted him and another Democratic lawmaker over the way they protested the state’s lax gun laws.

The vagueness of Tennessee’s censorship laws also is having a chilling effect in classrooms and school libraries. In Memphis this fall, for instance, the co-authors of a Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Floyd were told not to talk about systemic racism during an appearance at Whitehaven High School.

“It’s like walking on eggshells,” said Laura Simmons, an eighth-grade U.S. history teacher from Bedford County, south of Nashville. “We want to give our students the information they need, including multiple viewpoints and narratives. At this point, I think most social studies teachers are just feeling out the climate of their school, their parents, and their administration.”

As president of the Tennessee Council for the Social Studies, Simmons is co-chair of this year’s national conference and helped to plan it, along with Hedgepeth, the national president. Attendees represent all 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and nine other countries. About 10% are faculty at colleges and universities.

The 2023 conference theme is “Social Studies: Working in Harmony for a Better Tomorrow,” with sub-themes about inclusivity, elevating local narratives, and seeking partnerships beyond physical and political borders.

Featured speakers include Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Caste” and “The Warmth of Other Suns,” and Albert Bender, a Cherokee activist, historian, political columnist, and freelance journalist. Jelani Memory, author of the bestselling “A Kids Book About Racism,” will talk about tackling difficult topics with young learners.

“We are not shying away from controversial issues,” said Simmons, a 22-year teacher in Tennessee. “Our philosophy is to make sure we’re giving our educators the things they need to best help their students.”

Ultimately, said Hedgepeth, the conference is focused on the future of social studies, which research shows is systematically marginalized in the U.S. education system, from kindergarten to college.

“This is a critical time right now, with the war in Israel and Palestine, the upcoming presidential election, and how politics have divided our country after COVID and other traumatic events,” he said. “I think we are seeing the consequences of a lack of social studies education echoing across our country — from how we relate to others to how we digest media to how we discern between what is true and false.”

“If you don’t teach social studies,” Hedgepeth said, “you don’t get those skills. It’s as simple as that.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Not every Chicago school offers algebra in middle school. CPS is working to change that.

2023-11-30T19:15:00+00:00

Every school day at 10:30 a.m., two dozen middle schoolers shuffle into a classroom at Warren Elementary on Chicago’s far south side. One by one, they boot up a Chromebook at their desks.

Fourteen miles north, another nine students log in from their classroom at STEM Magnet Academy just west of downtown.

They are all taking the same course: Middle School Algebra with Raluca Borbath, who teaches virtually.

On a recent November morning, Borbath shared her screen to begin Lesson 13: Introduction to Two-Variable Inequalities. The students, who log in through Google Meet, dove into a problem about making bracelets with two different kinds of beads — one kind cost $1 and the other cost $2.

The class spent the next hour solving and graphing: 2x+y ≥ 10.

Classes like Borbath’s, in which middle school students learn algebra partly online, have been critical to Chicago Public Schools’ efforts to reduce long-standing inequities in access to the course, which is seen as a gateway to better high schools, better colleges, and ultimately, better careers.

Put simply: Mastering algebra in middle school can give kids an advantage for the rest of their educational trajectory. But in Chicago, access to the course before high school has long been inequitable.

Schools without algebra in the middle grades have been largely located in predominantly Black and lower income neighborhoods on the south and west sides. For students who do take algebra in eighth grade, state data shows white and Asian American students in Chicago Public Schools are more than twice as likely to pass than Black and Latino students.

But the district says it is trying to address the inequity and has found some success.

In addition to the Virtual Academy, which was created during the COVID-19 pandemic and has offered middle school algebra for the past two years, the district also partners with three local universities to get more middle school teachers certified to teach the course.

Data obtained by Chalkbeat shows:

Over the last decade, the number of CPS elementary and middle schools offering algebra grew from 209 to 366.
The number of middle grade teachers with algebra credentials increased in the past two years from 428 to 489.
A decade ago, roughly 10% of the city’s eighth graders took the district’s Algebra Exit Exam. Last May, nearly 25% did.
There are still 85 district-run schools and 35 charters where no students took the Algebra Exit Exam last year.

Other cities have tried expanding middle school algebra with varying success. In New York City, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio promised in 2015 to get algebra in every middle school and saw rates of students taking and passing the course go up. But that district’s focus has shifted back to improving freshmen algebra. Similarly, the state of California recently considered recommending all eighth graders take algebra, but decided to leave the decision to local school districts.

Corey Morrison, director of mathematics at Chicago Public Schools, said the district is focused on equity, not a one-size-fits-all approach.

“It’s algebra choice for all,” Morrison said. “We want to get to a place where every eighth grader has a choice and can choose – as much as an eighth grader can without their parents making them.”

Algebra skills ‘build from the bottom up’

Algebra has long been a core requirement for high school freshmen in Chicago and the rest of the country. But for decades, it’s also been offered to advanced middle school students. Those who took it early would be on a fast track to taking calculus senior year, giving them a leg up on college applications and a strong foundation once enrolled in university.

“If you’re spending three years on your mandatory classes, you only have one more year to look for AP classes, or dual credit classes, or anything else that you want to do,” said Borbath, the teacher of the hybrid class. By taking algebra early, students are able to free up their high school schedules.

But in Chicago, data shows stark disparities in who has historically had access to algebra in middle school. Chalkbeat Chicago obtained and analyzed the number of students who took and passed the district’s Algebra Exit Exam. The two-hour test, taken at the end of each school year, consists of 34 multiple choice questions and six short answer problems. Students who pass can move on to geometry.

Ten years ago, roughly 200 of the district’s 500-plus schools serving middle schoolers had students who took the exam. Now, more than 350 do.

At Warren, no students took the district’s Algebra Exit Exam in 2018, data shows.

The small school sits in the heart of Chicago’s Pill Hill neighborhood, a South Side enclave once home to many doctors and pharmacists who lived in the spacious homes down the street from the nearby hospital. It serves 271 students; 99% are Black and 80% come from low-income families.

STEM Magnet Academy, which shares a section of Borbath’s algebra class with Warren, is in the city’s more affluent West Loop and serves 403 students; 38% are Black, 34% are Asian American, 18% are Latino, and 6% are white. About 43% come from low-income families. In 2018, 14 students at STEM Magnet took the Algebra Exit Exam and 7 passed. But no students have taken it since then.

Borbath also teaches a morning section of algebra to middle school students at three other predominantly Black south and west side schools — Daley, Sumner, and Brown — all of which had no students taking the Algebra Exit Exam as recently as 2019, according to data obtained by Chalkbeat.

Morrison said the pandemic was terrible in a lot of ways, but the way the district is using the Virtual Academy to close gaps in access to algebra is a “silver lining.”

Students at Brentano Elementary in Logan Square work on graphing equations during an algebra class.

At Brentano Elementary in Logan Square, no students were taking the Algebra Exit Exam in 2018, district data show. Seth Lavin became principal nine years ago and said adding the course took time and planning.

“The wrong way to do this is just to change your eighth grade course and say, ‘Now we do algebra,’” Lavin said. “The right way to do it is to build from the bottom up so that the kids can be ready for it.”

Lavin said Brentano teachers led the effort to rework how math was taught in order to offer the course.

“This required, for us, changing what sixth graders were doing, and then changing what seventh graders were doing before, eventually, we could change what eighth graders were doing,” Lavin said.

Now, all eighth graders take algebra in school, Lavin said. And starting last year, Brentano started offering a before-school algebra course to any interested seventh grader.

Lavin said he’s able to pay one of Brentano’s teachers to teach the early morning algebra using federal COVID recovery money. Once that money runs out, the offering could be at risk.

Staffing middle school algebra can be a complicated equation

There are logistical and budget hurdles to overcome in order to offer algebra to middle schoolers, Lavin said.

“A teacher in your building has to have an algebra certification, or a high school math endorsement,” he said. “That requires some groundwork.”

Teacher Martin Lenthe teaches algebra to seventh grade students at Brentano Elementary before the regular school day begins.

Chicago Public Schools launched an effort 20 years ago, known as the Chicago Algebra Initiative, to boost the number of middle school students taking algebra. In partnership with three local universities, the school board pays tuition for up to 90 middle school teachers to earn a credential to teach algebra each year.

Morrison, with the district, said the goal is to eventually have at least one certified teacher in every school, but the math hasn’t always worked out.

“How do you pull a handful of kids out to give them a robust algebra course when there’s only one eighth grade teacher?” Morrison said.

For the past couple of years, the Virtual Academy has been able to step in to serve those schools.

Last school year, 777 middle schoolers across 120 schools took the virtual course and this school year, the number climbed to 1,140 middle school students across 142 schools, according to the district. Roughly 300 take the class during the school day and 800 take it before or after school.

Morrison said the virtual courses are also showing teachers and administrators that offering in-person algebra is possible.

“It changes the mindset of teachers and administrators,” he said. “There are enough students in your school, in your community, where we can work towards putting an in-person course in your building, because that’s the ultimate goal.”

District data obtained by Chalkbeat shows that 489 teachers working at 287 schools have an active credential to teach algebra to middle school students. That’s up slightly from 2020 when 428 teachers at 248 schools had them. A district spokesperson said data on algebra credentials was not available prior to 2020.

Warren is hoping to offer in-person algebra next school year. Veteran teacher Tracey Kidd is working toward getting credentialed through the University of Chicago as part of the Chicago Algebra Initiative. Last school year, she was the teacher in the room where middle schoolers logged into virtual algebra.

“It’s kind of hard to do (algebra) virtually sometimes, because kids, they wander off a little,” she said. “But if you’re in the room with them, then they’re gonna focus more, and they get that one on one attention from you.”

Kidd currently teaches intermediate math and knows many students are ready to handle the rigor of algebra.

Younger students get a jump start in algebra

In Sandra Shorter’s classroom at Warren, a group of sixth grade students are starting pre-algebra with the goal of taking algebra next school year as seventh graders.

“We’re doing ratios, unit rates, and then we’re gonna graph them and write them as equations,” Shorter explained.

A classroom wall at Warren Elementary helps middle schoolers at all levels prepare for success in algebra.

Morrison, with the district, said algebra is not just for certain students who want to be scientists or engineers. It teaches important skills such as problem-solving and critical thinking.

“Math is for everybody. But do you need to get on the accelerated track in eighth grade? Not necessarily,” Morrison said. “Do you still need to learn algebra? Yes.”

Algebra is a graduation requirement in CPS, but the stakes for taking it before high school can feel high.

Last week, 13- and 14-year-olds across Chicago found out their scores on the district’s High School Admissions Test — a one-hour exam that partly determines whether they can go to the city’s top high schools. Though the content of the test is not public, many parents and students say taking algebra in middle school gives students a leg up.

“It will help us with a test to get into high school,” said Brentano student Liam Dolik. “That is something that’s so huge in eighth graders’ life, especially in Chicago. It’s not the best but we have to do it so we might as well prepare for it.”

Teacher Martin Lenthe helps a seventh grade student with algebra at Brentano Elementary before the regular school day begins.

Dolik is one of nearly 30 seventh graders who come to school at 7:45 a.m. every weekday to take algebra. They spread out across nine tables as the morning sun streams through the towering windows in classroom 306.

Lavin said all seventh graders were offered the option to take algebra before school, and about half of them decided to do it. But Lavin wrestles with whether the morning section for seventh graders is creating a new inequity.

“Sometimes there’s this temptation to go ahead instead of going deeper,” Lavin said. “At the same time, our kids are in the CPS reality where everybody’s trying to figure out how to get as high a score as they can in the high school admissions test.”

At the end of the day, Brentano is still a neighborhood public school in a diverse neighborhood, offering advanced math to everybody, Lavin said. “That’s increasing equity in the district.”

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Philip’s Academy Charter receives award for teacher diversity. Here’s how the Newark school did it.

2023-09-26T20:41:09+00:00

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Ashley Daniels knew she liked kids and had enjoyed working as a camp counselor. But, before applying for a job at Philip’s Academy Charter School, she had never worked in education.

So when she got the position as a student aide, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She was pleasantly surprised.

After about an hour at the Newark school, Daniels thought: This is it.

“Even though I didn’t know what a career as a teacher would look like for me, I just knew I wanted to stay here,” she said.

Daniels, who is Black, is one of dozens of teachers Philip’s has hired since launching a strategic effort to diversify its staff about five years ago.

Since 2018, the percentage of Philip’s teachers who are Black or Latino has climbed from 53% to 81%.

In early September, Philip’s efforts were recognized when the school received a New Jersey Department of Education Lighthouse Award for diversifying the teacher workforce, an area in which Newark schools are generally struggling.

According to recent data, 90% of Newark’s traditional public school student population is Black or Latino, but just over 50% of Newark’s teachers identify the same way.

At Philip’s, 98% of students are Black or Latino.

Studies have shown that diversity within teaching staff, among other factors, is critical to the success of students. A lack of teachers of color can negatively impact attendance rates, test scores, and suspension rates.

Philip’s is seeking to change that reality for its students. Its doors opened just over 30 years ago and the school now serves around 600 students, from pre-K through eighth grade. The private-turned-charter school previously applied to expand to serve grades 9-12, but the state education department blocked that request last year.

One step the school is taking to diversify its faculty is investing in young, less-experienced teachers like Daniels. Since being hired in 2018, she has worked as a student aide, teacher associate, and now as a full-time teacher while she earns a master’s in education.

“People saw this in me and encouraged me to grow as an educator,” said Daniels. “Now I say the only way I’d leave this job is if I leave the state.”

About three years ago, Philip’s principal Yasmeen Sampson sought to expand efforts to diversify the school’s staff. At the time, work with an outside consultant was already underway, the primary goal being to survey current faculty about their long-term needs.

In light of the survey’s responses, Sampson launched a “recruit and retain” initiative, a multi-step plan to hire new faculty who align with the school’s mission and to keep the teachers they already have.

Sampson has incorporated more professional development, hired a faculty life coach who comes to campus twice a week, and offered free courses on financial literacy.

“We made our teachers the ambassadors for Philip’s, and it just kind of took off really nicely,” she said. “Now it’s like clockwork. We always have teachers saying ‘Hey, I know this person. Do we have a vacancy?’”

Finances have also played a significant role in Sampson’s ability to carry out her ideas.

“Philip’s has been blessed with a lot of financial support. We apply for any and every grant. Anything that can remotely bring in support, we’re going for it,” said Sampson. “The charter platform allows us to keep bringing in resources.”

Richard Alua, Philip’s dean of culture, said the way faculty view their jobs is also crucial in keeping them long term. Teachers are encouraged to take a holistic approach to students’ success beyond test scores, which he said makes both kids and faculty happier.

“That is the reason we have kids literally running to our school. We stand outside and tell them to slow down with a smile and a hug,” said Alua.

That holistic approach also means ensuring that students have dependable role models at school, particularly role models that look like them. Alua said that, as a Black man, he is aware of this responsibility, and does not take it lightly.

“I became the person I was searching for as a kid,” he said. “I have to put my cape on each morning, and I love it.”

Last year, Philip’s hired seven male teachers. For students like fourth grader Samuel Coleman, seeing teachers they identify with has made a difference.

“When I first met Mr. Vasquez in second grade I was surprised because not a lot of students get male teachers. A lot of students talked about how smart he is in math. Now that I’m in fourth grade I get to have him and it’s pretty fun,” said Samuel Coleman. “I really like to learn about math now.”

Samuel’s mother, Nicole Coleman, said she’s shocked that her son often wants to come home and play math games.

“I think it says a lot about the education he’s receiving and how excited he is about school,” said Nicole Coleman.

After enrolling her son in pre-K at Philip’s, Nicole Coleman was so impressed by his experience that she left her job at a Newark public school to teach drama at the charter school.

“I realized I wanted to be a part of the environment here,” she said. “This was an opportunity for me to be a part of an educational system that was actually thriving.”

As a member of Philip’s recruit and retain committee, Nicole Coleman brought in her son’s English teacher, Kalika Glover. According to Samuel Coleman, it’s been a success.

“When she teaches me something she makes it fun. I get excited to answer questions,” he said.

Nicole Coleman said she’s still grateful each day that they found Philip’s.

“I think that representation matters, as a parent and as a teacher. Our teaching faculty reflects our students and they’re able to connect with that,” she said. “We tell our students that they should be celebrating who they are every day. It starts at home and in the education system.”

Samantha Lauten is a fall reporting intern for Chalkbeat Newark covering public education in the city. Get in touch with Samantha at slauten@chalkbeat.org or reach the bureau newsroom at newark.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Denver Public Schools bars administrator over McAuliffe from district facilities amid investigation

2023-11-15T02:16:52+00:00

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As part of the ongoing fallout from an investigation into the use of a seclusion room at Denver’s McAuliffe International School, the school district has barred an administrator responsible for overseeing the school from all district facilities and information systems.

The administrator is Colleen O’Brien, the executive director of the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone. She oversees three semi-autonomous Denver schools, including McAuliffe, a popular middle school that has been involved in several high-profile controversies this year.

Families and educators at McAuliffe have been on edge for months and staged a “walk in” Tuesday morning to protest what they see as Denver Public Schools’ attempts to dismantle their school. Principal Kurt Dennis was fired in July after he spoke up about gun violence and safety concerns, and the district opened an investigation into the improper use of seclusion rooms at McAuliffe in August. McAuliffe’s innovation status — which allows the school extra flexibility in scheduling and programming — is also up in the air right now.

The actions against O’Brien appear to be further fallout from the seclusion room investigation.

“After a thorough and careful review of the outcomes from the ongoing investigation, it has become clear that the actions and oversight under Dr. Colleen O’Brien have been in direct conflict with district policy and the values and standards we uphold in Denver Public Schools,” the district said in a statement Tuesday.

O’Brien did not respond Tuesday to phone calls and messages seeking comment.

Anne Rowe, the chairperson of the innovation zone’s board and a former president of the DPS school board, said in an interview that a district administrator informed O’Brien of the ban at a DPS school board meeting Monday. O’Brien was at the meeting to give public comment.

“What they’ve done has made it impossible for Colleen to do the work that she does really well to support our schools, our educators, and our kids,” Rowe said, “and we’re working really hard as a board to ensure that support continues until we find a resolution to this.”

It’s not clear which policies were the basis for the district’s action against O’Brien. O’Brien is an employee of the zone, not of DPS. Even if the district concludes that she violated DPS policy, she would not be subject to firing the same way as Dennis, the former principal.

“However,” the district said in its statement, “the schools within NDIZ are filled with DPS employees and students. Given the gravity of these findings, it was necessary to take appropriate action to limit Dr. O’Brien’s access to students and staff, as well as student information.”

Last year, DPS banned vocal district critic and school founder Brandon Pryor from DPS property, but a federal judge overturned that ban in January.

At the school board meeting Monday, O’Brien expressed concerns that McAuliffe educators were worried, wondering when the internal investigation would end. She also asked that DPS hire a third party instead to conduct an investigation.

Rowe said the zone board wants the same thing and “is in the process of engaging with an independent investigator” to look into the use of the seclusion rooms.

Rowe said DPS recently gave her and another zone board member a 2½-page summary of the investigation, which DPS says is ongoing. The summary said that the use of the seclusion rooms had violated district policy, Rowe said. She said it was clear that DPS wanted the zone board to take action regarding O’Brien based on the summary.

“We said, ‘Well, as a governing board, we would like to see the evidence and the facts that underlie this summary of findings from your internal investigation,’” Rowe said.

But ultimately, Rowe said DPS denied that request.

In its statement, DPS said its ban of O’Brien “does not reflect DPS’ view of (the zone) as a whole, but is a direct response to the actions and decisions of the individual in question.

“We remain committed to the principles of innovation and excellence in education and believe that this decision is a step towards upholding these ideals,” the statement said. “We look forward to future collaborations that align with our shared goals for educational excellence.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois becomes magnet for transgender students seeking protections in school, health care

2023-08-29T15:13:41+00:00

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Back in the spring, Kimberly Reynolds stared at a map of the U.S. Each state was filled in with a color gradient: red for those with the strictest active anti-transgender laws, bright blue for those with the most protections for trans people.

Her state, Florida, was awash in a sea of red. The closest state in blue? Illinois.

Reynolds took a breath. And some time to panic.

She had started researching a new place to live after legislators in Florida introduced a slew of anti-trans bills, many targeting transgender youth — including her 11-year-old son.

“Something inside me just broke,” she said. “I’ve dealt with a lot of policies in Florida that are not okay. But now they’re coming after my child. So that’s why we’re done. We’re getting out, one way or another.”

Reynolds asked her son: How do you feel about moving?

“I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s move. Let’s get out of this place. Let’s get out of this climate,’” Joseph Reynolds recalled thinking. “‘Let’s get out of this house. Get away from these people.’”

After Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed several of the anti-trans bills into law in May, Reynolds again checked the map. This time, her state had a new, special designation, marked in black stripes:

Do Not Travel.

Three months later, the new school year has started, and the Reynolds family remains stuck in Florida. The laws are already deeply impacting her child, Reynolds said. She’s hoping to get her family to Illinois as soon as she can.

Florida is not the only state that has passed or is considering anti-trans legislation. This year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of data from the American Civil Liberties Union, at least 14 states passed laws regulating bathroom access, sports participation, or pronoun and name changes specifically in K-12 schools. Additionally, at least 18 states passed laws restricting gender-affirming health care, primarily — though not exclusively — for minors.

For many families looking to protect their trans children in school and to preserve control over their medical decisions, moving seems like the only option — and Illinois a safe landing spot.

Bills impact school policies, sense of safety for trans students

Illinois is a sharp contrast to many states across the nation, where anti-trans policies are playing out in schools. Here, state law protects students from discrimination on the basis of their gender identities. Students must be permitted access to bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams aligning with their identities, according to state guidance.

Changes to education policy are a big part of why the Reynolds want to move.

Florida’s board of education prohibits public schools from teaching students about sexual orientation or gender identity. School staff are also not allowed to ask students for their pronouns — or be required to use them — under state law. Another law forces K-12 schools and postsecondary institutions to discipline students who use a restroom that doesn’t align with their assigned sex at birth.

Such laws threaten to disrupt the lives of thousands of young people in Florida — and across the country. About 1.4% of the U.S. population between 13 and 17 identify as trans, according to the Williams Institute’s 2022 estimates, which are based on analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention youth surveys.

Even before the laws were passed, Joseph had run into discrimination at school. One time, he said, a kid in his class made a cross and screamed “die” while shoving it into his face. Still, he said his elementary school had largely been accepting, and he had a strong circle of friends.

But as Joseph watched the Florida laws come into effect over the summer, he said the idea of starting school there became more and more scary. Ahead of his first day of middle school this month, he had one word for how he was feeling: “horrible.”

At school, he introduced himself as Joseph to his classmates. He said they’ve mostly been respectful. But teachers have been calling him by his legal name, which he no longer uses, and using she/her pronouns to refer to him.

Under Florida law, teachers must use a child’s legal name unless a parent gives consent. After talking to multiple employees at her son’s school just to get a consent form, Kimberly Reynolds said, she’s not convinced that teachers will follow it.

Ultimately, she just wishes her son could have the chance to be a kid.

“He shouldn’t have to even know that there’s so many people against him and out to get him,” she said.

But Reynolds said it feels like there’s not much she can do right now. The timeline for their move is up in the air, since it’s been a struggle to get enough money to leave Florida. A few days after the laws were signed, she set up a GoFundMe to help with moving costs, but donations have slowed down. And Reynolds is concerned about having to leave most of her family behind in Florida, especially because she recently had a new baby.

Though her original plans have been delayed — and these challenges loom — she said she’s still prepared to move as soon as possible. They’ve even already started packing.

As for Joseph? “I just hope that it will be a lot more calm and peaceful than my life here.”

The Reynolds are hoping that the more accepting place could be Carbondale, a town in southern Illinois with a strong LGBTQ+ community, and where residents recently elected the first transgender person to a city council in Illinois.

In the center of town, a rainbow awning hangs above the doors of Carbondale’s LGBTQ+ community center, Rainbow Café. The executive director of the café, Carrie Vine, said that when anti-trans legislation began to increase across the country, a group of advocates got together and decided they should get the word out: Come to Carbondale.

They set up “Rainbow Refuge,” mainly run through a local group, the Carbondale Assembly for Radical Equity. People reach out over social media, and advocates direct them to accepting areas and schools, including Carbondale.

Vine has previously worked to help people in bordering states access abortion care. But she said supporting trans people through moving involves more long-term support.

“They’re not just coming here for one service and going home,” she said. “You’re talking about lifelong support — bloodwork, labs, doctor’s visits. So we decided we needed to make something that would be more sustainable.”

When families make that move, Vine said, it’s important to get them to a safe place for trans people. Though Illinois has statewide legal protections, she said, not everywhere is accepting.

Despite protections, not everywhere in Illinois feels safe

Jay Smith, a trans man living in a small town in rural Illinois, knows that struggle. For him, being openly trans isn’t a safe option.

Shortly after he finished his undergraduate degree, he got a job where his co-workers were openly discriminatory, using anti-LGBTQ+ slurs. To avoid harassment, he decided to keep his trans identity quiet and allow people to perceive him as a cisgender man. Smith is using a pseudonym for his safety in this story.

“I can’t really just exist a lot of the time,” Smith said. “At the same time, it’s nice to not have people policing me.”

Smith is only out to particular people that he’s close with, such as his girlfriend and friends from high school. He used to live in Chicago, where he was openly trans and connected with a LGBTQ+ community. Now, he said, he sometimes feels isolated.

Smith is becoming increasingly anxious about what might happen if he were to be outed — and he and his girlfriend are thinking about moving towns within Illinois or even leaving the country.

He’s not alone. Over half of trans and non-binary adults said they’d move — or already have moved — from a state with a gender-affirming medical care ban, according to a Human Rights Campaign survey.

As an adult, Smith can make that choice on his own. But he said he’s concerned about youth, who must rely on their parents to leave.

For him, he said, school acted as a place of escape against a lack of support he faced at home.

He attended Chicago Public Schools, where current district guidelines state that staff should use the names and pronouns that align with students’ identities. Students can request a support plan between administration and trusted adults — which doesn’t necessarily have to include parents.

That’s a divergence from bills that could “out” students as trans to their parents.

Smith graduated from CPS in 2017. When he came out as trans in high school, he said he simply emailed his teachers about his pronoun change. For the most part, he said, his school gave him a reprieve.

“It was nice to have that space from home, and know: My parents may not be able to treat me this way, but when I get here, I have that respect, that space, and that support that I just can’t get from home,” Smith said.

But Smith is scared for the kids who don’t have the same opportunity to escape transphobia, whether in school or out of school.

Families seek states that protect access to gender-affirming care

Packing up and leaving isn’t realistic for everyone. For many families, the options are limited to wherever is closest.

That’s the case for Carly West, who lives in St. Louis, Missouri. She is trying to move right across the border to Illinois, she said, in order to protect her trans child, Lisa.

“Sometimes I think that I’m overreacting, because it’s not like they’re banging down the door and pulling her out of my arms,” West said of the anti-trans push in Missouri. “But the reality is that she does need to be safe, and it’s not safe here.”

So much could change for Lisa with a short drive across state lines, West said.

In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker has spoken out in support of trans children and established a task force to create more inclusive school policy. In Missouri, the governor has signed bills to ban gender-affirming health care for minors and prohibit trans girls from playing on women’s sports teams.

When Lisa heard about the laws, she said she thought to herself: Why? I’m not hurting anybody.

Lisa came out at 6 years old. Now 11 and attending middle school, West uses she/her and they/them pronouns, alternating back and forth between the two. They wear rainbow glasses and like watching dessert decorating videos.

After moving, West said, the family plans to keep Lisa enrolled in the same school district, since Lisa spends half their time with their mom and the other half with their dad, who is staying in Missouri. But if school policies change, Carly West said Lisa may transfer.

The biggest threat right now is to Lisa’s gender-affirming medical care. For young people, such medical care might include puberty blockers — which can delay puberty-related changes such as facial hair growth — or hormone replacement therapy.

A transgender teen holds a bottle of testosterone, which is used for hormone replacement therapy that can align people’s bodies with their sense of gender.

In Missouri, minors who were prescribed puberty blockers or hormones before Aug. 28 will be allowed to continue treatment, but health care providers cannot prescribe treatments to new patients.

Opponents of gender-affirming care say children are too young to make transition decisions and claim medical interventions are not safe. But more than a dozen top medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, support gender-affirming care as evidence-based and medically appropriate and have opposed laws restricting such care.

At least 33 states have proposed bills to limit gender-affirming care, according to a Chalkbeat data analysis of the ACLU’s 2023 anti-LGBTQ bills tracker. About a fifth of bills considered during the 2023 session would restrict gender-affirming medical care for adults, according to a Reuters analysis that identified additional bills not captured in the ACLU tracker. But most policies would specifically restrict children’s medical care.

In Illinois, state law protects health care providers and patients from being targeted by states that have banned gender-affirming care.

Before the cutoff date in Missouri, Lisa had a consultation to start gender-affirming care.

“I’m feeling great about it,” Lisa said, at the time. “It’s making me feel more like who I am.”

Then the ban went into effect Monday — and Lisa wasn’t able to be prescribed treatment.

Trans students carve out space in new Illinois towns, schools

On Feb. 28, the Nightengale family sat around the dining table in their Iowa home, making pins that read: “We say gay” and “Protect queer youth.” They stayed up late that night, preparing for a school walkout in protest of pending anti-trans laws in their state.

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, pinned the new additions to a vest, not too far from a demiboy pin. Shigeru mostly likes using it/its pronouns — sometimes he/him — because it feels void of gender but male-adjacent. Shigeru’s parent, Sami Nightengale, has a matching pin, for their own identity: genderqueer.

Shigeru Nightengale has covered its vest in pins, including ones protesting anti-trans legislation in Iowa. Shigeru passed out extra pins during the day of a March 1 walkout in Iowa.

The next day, approximately 50 students walked out of Shigeru’s high school as part of a statewide protest against anti-trans legislation. Across the state, 27 schools participated in the March 1 walkout, the Quad-City Times reported.

But a bill banning gender-affirming medical care for minors passed the Iowa legislature and headed to the governor’s desk by March 8 — the day before Shigeru was due to receive its first testosterone shot.

Shigeru had been going to a clinic in Iowa City for over a year. Sami Nightengale first remembers Shigeru expressing thoughts about gender as a young child.

“When he was 7, he started to talk a lot about not feeling right in his own body and it would be better if he was just dead. As a parent, that’s not something you want to hear from a little kid,” they said. “Then we went through this whole process, seeing family doctors and therapists and psychologists and finally he figured out what was going on.”

All those appointments led up to the moment of Shigeru getting on hormones. But as the Nightengales made the trip to Iowa City, they had no idea whether the governor would sign the bill into law before Shigeru could get the shot.

“I was so scared that I was going to just touch it and then have it completely taken away,” Shigeru said.

That day, Shigeru got its first T shot, and doctors taught the Nightengales how to administer subsequent doses at home, a standard practice for hormone replacement therapy. What was not so standard: With the legislation on the governor’s desk, Shigeru didn’t know whether future hormone prescriptions would be possible.

The next day, the Nightengales started searching for new clinics in different states. But some places didn’t have availability, and others didn’t know whether they could take on Iowa patients.

Iowa’s governor officially signed the gender-affirming care ban into law on March 22, less than two weeks after Shigeru’s first shot.

“There was just too much going on — the terror of, ‘Oh, God. All of these people hate us, because we are a queer family,’ and also the joy of having my T,” Shigeru said. “It was all so much that I went kind of numb.”

When politicians first started discussing anti-trans legislation, the Nightengale family had loosely talked about moving. But they thought they’d have more time — to save money, to pay off debt, to search for the best home.

Over the course of March, the window to wait seemed to close more and more.

In early April, the family found an Illinois clinic that would take Shigeru. And against the odds, Sami Nightengale said, they were able to move before the start of the school year.

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, at his Illinois home.

A badge with they/them pronouns

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, and its mom, Sami. Shigeru uses it/its pronouns and Sami uses they/them pronouns. A portrait for a specific story — don’t repeat unless we are covering the same family.

A school speed limit sign

Shigeru Nightengale, 15, at his Illinois home.

Now that Shigeru has settled in — and has reliable care — it said it can’t describe the joy it feels.

“It has been a struggle with ups and downs,” Shigeru said. “But I have been way happier than I have been pretty much my entire life.”

Having been on testosterone for a few months, Shigeru said this is its first time going into school “mostly sorted out.” Shigeru had previously come out as trans at school in Iowa, but felt people didn’t take it seriously because it still looked feminine.

So far, Shigeru said it has run into some discrimination at school, but that students and teachers have been fairly accepting. Looking ahead, Shigeru is staying hopeful — and carving out a space in Illinois.

Shigeru Nightengale’s desk is cluttered with its collections — including a bunch of rocks. Shigeru often picks up new stones to add to the pile.

On Shigeru’s bedroom desk are signposts of a new life: its first bottle of testosterone. A scattered rock collection. And, on top of one stone, a Band-Aid — narwhal-themed — from an appointment at the Illinois clinic.

Little things marking a big move.

Max Lubbers is a reporting intern for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Max at mlubbers@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Contact Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools graduation rates hit record high, data show

2023-10-31T19:01:51+00:00

A greater share of Chicago Public Schools students graduated last school year than in 2022, reaching a new record, officials announced Tuesday.

The graduation rate of 84% — representing students who graduated in four years — was 1.1 percentage points higher than the graduation rate for the Class of 2022, when 82.9% of high school students graduated on time. The dropout rate for the Class of 2023 was slightly higher at 9.4% than it was for the Class of 2022, which saw 8.9% of students drop out between freshman year and graduation.

Chicago Public Schools’ five-year graduation rate for the Class of 2022 — which includes students who take extra time to finish their diploma either at a traditional or alternative school — was 85.6%, 1.6 percentage points higher than for the class of 2021 when it was 84%.

District officials announced the numbers with fanfare at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts, with CPS CEO Pedro Martinez flanked by Mayor Brandon Johnson and joined virtually by U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona.

Martinez said the rising graduation rate was a sign that the district is continuing to recover from the pandemic, reminding the audience that the students in the Class of 2023 were freshmen as the pandemic started in 2020, followed by two school years of remote and hybrid learning.

“When you think about their last year, their senior year, was probably their most normal year, I want you to take these results and put them in that context,” Martinez said.

Cardona described the graduation rates as “promising signs for the future of education in Chicago.” He highlighted the district’s use of federal COVID relief dollars, which CPS has put toward several purposes, including covering teacher salaries and hiring more instructional staff.

The announcement came one day after Illinois state education officials released statewide data, including graduation rates that had also increased across Illinois. (The state and Chicago Public Schools calculate graduation rates differently, so Chalkbeat is unable to provide direct comparisons.)

Chicago’s graduation rate has steadily increased over time, hitting a record high in 2022 even as students have faced academic challenges connected to the pandemic. Tuesday’s announcement comes on the heels of another report that found a rising share of CPS students are enrolling in college.

Racial disparities among graduates still remain, though they are narrowing. Graduation rates increased for Black, Hispanic and Asian American students, while dropping slightly for white students — by .4 percentage points — compared to the Class of 2022. Rates also dropped for multiracial students by 5.7 percentage points.

Nearly 75% of Black boys graduated in four years, up from roughly 65% five years ago, according to district data.

Despite higher graduation rates, SAT scores dipped for the Class of 2023, to an average composite score of 914. The average score for the Class of 2022 was 927, according to district data. Separately, the district also saw slightly fewer ninth graders — 88.7% — who were on track to graduate by 2026. That’s compared to 88.8% of the class that’s one year older than them.

As the pandemic set in, the district relaxed some grading policies, as did other school systems across the nation — raising questions about how such policies may have contributed to CPS’s rising graduation rates. Martinez argued that an increase in students completing college-level credits was a sign students were held to a high standard. Just under half of the Class of 2023 earned early college credits, a 5% increase from 2022, according to the district.

One of those students is Zaid Orduño, who said at Tuesday’s press conference that he took college-level courses at Daley College during his time at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy, through the district’s Early College Program. His classes at Daley included English, math, sociology, and psychology, and he ultimately earned an associate’s degree alongside his high school diploma.

Taking those classes, he said, inspired him to pass up his original plan of joining his family’s construction business and instead pursue a civil engineering degree at Illinois Tech, he said.

A wall at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts is dedicated to remembering a hunger strike held in 2015 to demand for the reopening of Dyett, which was closed at the time.

Dyett, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side, saw its graduation rate tick up by more than 3 percentage points, to 86%. Johnson noted how far the school had come since he and other community members participated in a highly publicized hunger strike in 2015 to demand that Dyett, then shuttered, reopen. He also recognized fellow hunger striker Ald. Jeanette Taylor, who now represents the neighborhood nearby in City Council and serves as the chair of the Committee on Education and Child Development.

“A hunger striker can turn into a mayor and an alderman, and more importantly, a hunger strike can lead to the success that we are experiencing with our students right here at Dyett High School,” Johnson said.

He also used the moment to once again advocate for expanding the Sustainable Community Schools Initiative that Dyett and 19 other schools are a part of. The program partners schools with a nonprofit that provides wraparound services for students and families.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Newark students, educators discuss N.J. school segregation as legal battle carries on

2023-10-27T22:18:22+00:00

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Chalkbeat Newark, alongside WNYC and NJ Spotlight News, welcomed community members and students to a panel discussion Thursday on school segregation in New Jersey, an issue spotlighted by a recent state Superior Court opinion in the Latino Action Network’s lawsuit against the state.

New Jersey ranks sixth nationwide in highest levels of school segregation, according to the UCLA Civil Rights Project. Part of Thursday’s panel explored that data and more recent research that draws from state school performance reports to examine the learning environments of segregated schools in the state.

But the larger focus of the panel centered on how the issue affects education in Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, where 90% of students in the public school system are Black or Latino.

Panelist Charles Payne, a Rutgers professor of African American studies and director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research, explained how demographic changes at the local level can accelerate segregation in the schools.

“The data looks like once a school becomes 50% nonwhite, it’s going to become 90%. It’s going to move real fast,” said Payne to the audience of about 65 people who gathered at the Newark Public Library’s main branch.

Payne also highlighted the need for added resources in Newark’s schools, so that its students aren’t consigned to “second class citizenship.”

“Segregation makes it easier to cheat children,” Payne said.

Christian Martinez, a graduate of Barringer High School and now a freshman at Kean University, said he was disappointed by his experience in Newark Public Schools because of a lack of attention to buildings and student resources.

“We’ve been handed used, busted up books and told to make the best of it,” Martinez said. “We are absolutely deserving of more.”

Earlier this month, a judge issued a pre-trial opinion in a five-year-old legal battle that New Jersey has failed to remedy the racial segregation evident in numerous school districts throughout the state.

The case was filed by several families and advocates who argued that the racial isolation experienced by thousands of Black and Latino students violates the state constitution, which explicitly bans school segregation.

Charles Payne, director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research, and Colleen O’Dea, senior writer at NJ Spotlight News, spoke about school segregation data.

David Allen, a senior at University High School and a Chalkbeat Student Voices fellow, spoke at Thursday’s forum about his prior experience at the Newark School of Global Studies.

News of various incidents involving racial, religious, and cultural harassment at Global Studies surfaced throughout the year, beginning when he and other students spoke out at a Newark school board meeting last November.

At Global Studies, Allen started a Black student union in an effort to bring a voice to Black students.

“When we’re looking at racism as a system, there’s always someone who needs to have the power. And it’s never the Black students that have the power,” said Allen.

He added:

“It’s an especially cruel thing to be surrounded by people in power who look like you but have no compassion for things you’re going through and the experiences they claim to have lived.”

Yvette Jordan, history teacher and chairperson of the Newark Education Workers Caucus, and Mark Comesañas, executive director of My Brother’s Keeper Newark, spoke about the challenges they’ve faced as educators in Newark when confronted with issues of racism and racial segregation.

Jordan and Comesañas underscored the importance of creating space for Black students in the classroom, both through support and curriculum.

“Overhauling the curriculum is vital, mandating certain things in African American history for all students,” said Jordan.

Comesañas echoed Jordan’s comments, highlighting how crucial it is for all students to read Black authors.

During the question-and-answer period, audience members raised a variety of concerns, including allocation of funding.

“We need to change the language that we don’t have the resources,” said Denise Cole, a community advocate who attended the forum. “We are not poor. We are disadvantaged, but not poor.”

Watch a recording of last night’s event livestream below.

Amid Chicago’s migrant influx, one school is trying to help newcomer students navigate trauma

2023-10-27T19:24:21+00:00

An hour before dismissal on a recent Friday afternoon, eight Brighton Park Elementary School students huddled in a classroom with Jennifer Moorhouse, a teacher who works with English language learners.

They were there for a voluntary, biweekly support group run by Moorhouse and Stephanie Carrillo, a school counselor, for students grappling with the upheaval of immigration and the adjustment to a new country, new city, and new school.

She asked the children — a mix of sixth through eighth graders who had recently arrived in Chicago as part of an influx of migrant families — to share the best and worst part of their week.

One boy said the best thing was that his family had moved to a new house. Another child looked up, her hair slightly covering her face. She shrugged her shoulders and struggled to come up with a worst moment.

That’s OK, Moorhouse said in Spanish, she doesn’t have to have a low point.

The girl then added, “No mejor,” meaning there was no high point either. After a moment of silence, the whole group burst into laughter.

These students, who arrived in Chicago between last year and this year, are among the more than 20,000 newly arrived migrants in Chicago since last August, with many fleeing from Central, South American and African countries experiencing political and economic turmoil, according to city officials.

Chicago Public Schools does not track immigration status and has not shared how many migrant students have enrolled in schools. But the district has pointed to clues of an increase, including 7,800 more English learners enrolled this school year, compared to an annual average increase of 3,000 such students.

As of mid-September, 2,250 migrant children were housed in the city’s shelters, according to records from the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications that were obtained by Chalkbeat.

Educators have raised concerns that many Chicago schools don’t have the resources, such as staff, to provide new migrants with the right language instruction, recently pleading with the state to send more help.

But there are also questions about whether newcomers have the social-emotional support they need at school. These students have potentially endured dangerous journeys to the United States, on top of the stress of leaving their homes behind for shelters or other temporary living arrangements in a foreign place.

That latter concern led Moorhouse to launch the support group at Brighton Park last year after she met a migrant student who was showing signs of trauma. The student, whom Moorhouse met in January, didn’t want to be in school and sometimes, the student’s body would shake uncontrollably, she said.

At one of the sessions Moorhouse held, the student shared a personal story about his journey to the United States. Afterward, Moorhouse recalled, the student said: “My chest isn’t hurting. I can breathe.” Moorhouse felt it was a sign of healing.

In some ways, Brighton Park is well-positioned to host this support group. As a community school, it partners with a nonprofit organization to provide wraparound services for its students. Carrillo, the school counselor who helps Moorhouse with the support group, works with the school on behalf of its partner nonprofit, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council. Brighton Park Elementary’s community schools funding also helped to pay for the training on the model that the support group is based on, according to Cecilia Mendoza, the school’s assistant principal.

The model is known as STRONG, or Supporting Transition Resilience of Newcomer Groups, which focuses on teaching children how to understand and cope with their stress before they’re invited to share more personal details about their journey to the United States, if they choose.

It’s unclear how many schools have specific support groups for migrant students like the one at Brighton Park. About $35 million of the district’s budget this year was allocated for social-emotional curriculum, behavioral health supports for students, and additional social workers and counselors, according to a district spokesperson.

This year, Moorhouse and Carrillo are starting with the basics.

On that recent Friday afternoon, in the classroom where Moorhouse gathered with eight of her students, bright orange and blue strips of paper on the dry erase board described concepts of melting and freezing in English and Spanish: “Que le pasa al chocolate que se deja al sol?” (What happens to chocolate left in the sun?).

A plastic cupboard sat against the wall, filled with shoes, socks, and clothing donations Moorhouse had collected through her Amazon Wishlist. Sheets of paper taped to the wall have words of affirmation in both languages: “Tus emociones son validas.” (Your feelings are valid.)

A classroom for English learners at Brighton Park Elementary School has brightly colored phrases translated in English and Spanish on the dry erase board.

After their icebreaker, Moorhouse passed around crayons and a worksheet with the outline of a human body. She explained that stress can cause physical pain and asked her students to color in the part of their bodies that hurt when they are stressed.

“Entonces para mi, cuando yo estoy estresado, mi estómago me duele,” she told the students, explaining that her stomach hurts when she’s stressed.

One girl, wearing a pair of sneakers donated through the Amazon wishlist, used a green crayon to fill in the top of the head. She colored the shoulders with a green-yellow.

When Moorhouse asked students to share, one boy said stress gives him a headache, and then he feels like throwing up. A low “hmm” spread through the group, as if others recognized the boy’s feeling.

At 2:35 p.m., about halfway through the session, the students received a new worksheet. This one had a large triangle on it, and each point represented something different: pensamientos, sentimientos, y acciones. Thoughts, emotions, and actions. Moorhouse wanted the students to reflect on how a thought may lead to a feeling, which ultimately leads to an action.

After a couple minutes jotting down their thoughts, the students shared their responses. One boy smiled as he described an example: When he’s talking to other students and they suddenly begin speaking in English, he feels as if he’s been removed from the conversation.

“How does that make you feel?” Moorhouse asked him in Spanish.

“Bad,” he replied.

“What’s your action?” Moorhouse responded.

“I walk away,” he said.

That day, Mendoza, the assistant principal, was peeking in.

“I don’t think students or people in general sometimes realize the effect that has on others who only speak one language,” Mendoza said later. “So that really stuck with me, and I thought about how we could have that conversation, perhaps, with the students … because they might not be aware that they’re doing that.”

Moorhouse then presented a challenge for the students: How can they change their thinking about a situation, in order to elicit better action? One boy gave the example of taking a hard math test that he doesn’t know the answers to, so instead, he asks to go to the bathroom.

He was stumped when Moorhouse asked him to think of a better action. She opened the floor to the group, but no one came up with an answer good enough for Moorhouse. When she pressed them to think harder, they hit on a solution: He could ask the teacher for help — for understanding the exam, or perhaps even asking to take it another day.

With about 15 minutes left, Moorhouse and Carillo passed around stress balls shaped like bee hives. They asked the students to squeeze hard and pretend that they were squeezing out the juice.

A couple of kids laughed as they squeezed their fists and then released pressure.

Around 2:55 p.m. Moorhouse handed out a blank calendar worksheet. For the following week, students would be expected to log how they’ve practiced relaxation strategies, such as grabbing an ice pack from the nurse or using a stress ball, when feeling stressed. One student shared that drawing helps.

It was time for dismissal. The students didn’t run out the door. They stayed back to chat with each other. A few grabbed extra bags of Skinny Pop.

As the weeks go on, Moorhouse and Carrillo will meet individually with each student to assess whether they want to talk more about their personal experiences of coming to the U.S. and what would be appropriate to share with the other students.

In those conversations, students may show signs of needing more individual counseling provided by the school, such as bursting into tears while recounting a story, Carrillo said.

Some students take a while to open up, so it’s unclear how much they’ll participate going forward, Moorhouse said. One of those quieter students is the child who had shared that there was no highlight or lowlight of her week. During the hourlong session, this student gradually opened up a little more.

And when most of the other children left at the end of the day, that student stayed behind. She wanted to talk some more one-on-one with Moorhouse.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

How to navigate IPS’ school reorganization and new enrollment policies for 2024-25

2023-10-25T21:24:16+00:00

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Thousands of Indianapolis Public Schools students will see big changes next year when the district splits up more than a dozen schools, gives families a wider choice of schools, and expands the reach of its specialized academic programs.

The changes are the second part of the district’s massive Rebuilding Stronger reorganization, which seeks to bring more diverse academic programming and extracurricular activities to more students in a push for equity. The plan also seeks to stabilize enrollment amid growing competition from charter schools.

The plan could have a big impact on where families choose to enroll.

Starting in 2024-25, the district will break up 17 K-8 schools into 16 standalone elementary schools and one middle school. Other schools will switch from serving grades K-6 to K-5, and from 7-8 to 6-8.

The district is organizing its schools into four new enrollment zones encompassing different educational options. Families can apply for a spot at any of the schools located in their zone, rather than being restricted to their neighborhood school or to old school-choice boundaries.

Each zone has a mix of schools that specialize in different subjects or programs, such as arts, STEM, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, dual language, high ability, or the Reggio-Emilia approach. Some schools that do not have these specific programs are “exploratory” schools. The plan also assigns new feeder schools for these specialized schools, guiding students from elementary to middle school.

Some schools serve multiple zones.

High schools will serve all zones and will still be open to all students in the district, no matter where they live.

The first enrollment period for 2024-25 runs from Nov. 1, 2023, to Jan. 24, 2024, with results of the lottery released on Feb. 22. The second enrollment period runs from Jan. 25 through April 19, with results released on May 16.

The district has held school tours and open houses every weekday for the past month, and plans a showcase event Nov. 1 from 4 to 8 p.m. in which every school will be open for families to visit.

Here are answers to some of the big questions inspired by Chalkbeat Indiana readers about the upcoming enrollment process:

What is the easiest way for me to enroll?

The district encourages families to enroll online through Enroll Indy, which runs the lottery for IPS. Families who visit a school to enroll will still use Enroll Indy’s online application.

Will my child get transportation to any school in our zone?

Yes, families who choose a school in the zone where they live will receive transportation to and from that school. However, families who live close enough to the school to be classified as a “walker” will not receive transportation. See if you qualify as a “walker” here.

Families can apply to a school outside their zone, but IPS gives preference to students who live in the zone. Families must also provide their own transportation to a school outside of their zone beyond the 2024-25 school year.

Schools in the IPS Innovation Network may not offer transportation through IPS, and may require families to contact the school directly for transportation.

The proposed new enrollment policy talks about ‘priority groups.’ What are those, and how will they affect my chances of getting into the school I want?

The lottery gives certain groups of students preferences that can increase their chances of getting a spot in the school they want. Priority is given, in this order, to:

Students living in the IPS district
Siblings of a current student at the school
Families who live in the same zone as the school
Students who attended a closing school
Students with a guardian who is an IPS employee

My child is attending a school that will be in our zone next year. Do I need to do anything to reenroll them?

If families are happy in their current school and plan to stay there for the 2024-25 school year, they do not need to reapply or reenroll, according to the district.

What happens if the school I want in my zone is at capacity?

Families can select another school in their zone, according to the district.

When IPS unveiled the plan last year, Evan Hawkins, school board president at the time, said the district has not historically seen families crowd any one school.

My child’s new zone is different from the one in which their current school is located. Can they stay at that school next year?

Yes, families can remain at their current school until the student graduates from the school’s highest grade, according to the district.

If families are eligible for transportation at the school this year, they will be offered transportation in 2024-25, but not after that.

What happens if I want or need to transfer to another IPS school midyear?

Families who move in the middle of the school year to a different zone can apply for a seat at a school in their new zone through Enroll Indy, according to the district. Or the student can stay at their current school, provided they have their own transportation.

But students won’t be permitted to switch schools midyear for a personal preference. They would need to wait until the next enrollment period to apply to a different school.

There are exceptions, though, for students who:

Need special medical services offered by the desired school
Experience bullying at their current school
Are in physical danger due to documented issues with other students at the current school
Have a sibling who attends a special education program in the desired school

How can I easily compare school options?

IPS advises visiting Enroll Indy to preview school options.

Have a question about IPS enrollment that’s not answered? Email us at in.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Corrections and clarifications: This article has been updated to correctly note transportation options and clarify that some schools serve multiple zones. The accompanying map has also been updated to correct information on schools and add schools that were omitted.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Lawrence Township schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 12’s first newcomer center offers students support and a path to graduation

2023-10-19T19:04:03+00:00

Leer en español.

About 23 students from mixed grades were taking a math quiz on exponents at the newcomer center at Thornton High School one recent Friday afternoon.

The class was buzzing. Students were helping each other.

“If we’re not sure, it’s OK,” teacher Adria Padilla Chavez assured her students. “We go back and relearn.” Then she repeated her instructions in Spanish.

Padilla Chavez and other staffers at the newcomer center work to help students who are new to the country adjust to life in an American high school. As the program grows, students are gaining much more than English lessons. They’re making friends from around the world, engaging in their learning, and getting on a path to graduation. It’s helping them dream of futures they might not have imagined before.

“We like to welcome our students into a community where they feel like they belong,” said Frida Rodriguez, a youth and family advocate at the center. “It’s so important to have a place where you know you belong. They connect with staff that provide them a sense of help and support and love. Truly feeling loved is really important.”

Seventeen-year-old Joan Madrigal Delgado has been a student at the newcomer center for a month, his first experience in a U.S. school. He already feels his life changing.

He’s impressed by how teachers help him, and ask him to think and participate in discussions.

“I really didn’t have any possibilities in my country,” said Madrigal Delgado, who came from Cuba. “It feels good. Now I aspire to everything.”

He’s starting to think about college and considering a career as a veterinarian.

The newcomer center, the first in Adams 12 Five Star Schools, opened in August with 30 students. Now, a couple months into the school year, the center has more than 90 students, with new students enrolling every week and families spreading the word in the community.

The students come from many countries, but one of the main drivers for the development of the center was the influx of refugees arriving from Afghanistan around two years ago. Many live in the Thornton area around the high school.

Adams 12 was one of four school districts to receive a grant from the Rose Community Foundation this year to help support education for newcomers, particularly from Afghanistan.

The foundation worked with the Colorado Refugee Services Program — a unit within the Colorado Department of Human Services — to set up the Refugee Integration Fund, which gave away the grants.

The district used that money, along with some federal COVID relief money, and pulled $868,000 from the general fund to start up the center and pay for staff. The center has its own registrar, who calls families flagged to her by other schools and invites them to attend.

The district is offering transportation. About 45 of the newcomer center students get bused to the high school. And advocates like Rodriguez, who speaks Spanish, and Imran Khan, who speaks Pashai and Dari, also help families find resources in the community.

One unique feature of the center, says director Manissa Featherstone, is that it has its own counselor to help students map their way to graduation. She said many newcomer centers focus on teaching students English, and sometimes that means delaying classes that would earn them the credits required to get on track to graduate.

At the Thornton High program, students take all their core classes within the center, but are integrated into the mainstream high school for elective classes, or when they need a more advanced class. An instructional coach who works for the center helps customize the help for students.

“We’re able to provide those classes,” Featherstone said. “It just depends on the individual student’s needs and what schooling they’ve had.”

Newcomer Center teacher Aria Padilla Chavez, top center, works on a math quiz with her students.

Students also participate in extracurricular activities, clubs, and sports at the high school.

The program can accommodate up to 150 students, Featherstone said. It’s designed so that students spend a year there after they first arrive in the U.S., and then move on to regular high school programming.

Mohammad Ali Dost, 14, arrived from Afghanistan a couple of years ago, and was initially attending a middle school in the district without a dedicated newcomer program. Now at the center, he said he’s happy it’s helped him improve his English.

Dost said he tells other students: “If you want to improve your English quickly, come to the newcomer center.”

Dost also helps students who speak his home language of Pashai, the kind of peer-to-peer learning and interaction that staffers celebrate.

Featherstone said current students often volunteer to give new students tours and to help familiarize them with their new school.

“We see students jumping in and saying. ‘I’ll take them,’” Featherstone said. “They’re really excited when a student arrives.”

The advocates teach students the basics at first, like how to use a locker. Recently students also enjoyed learning about homecoming and spirit week.

“A lot of students had no idea what it was. What was the big deal about the football game?” Rodriguez said. “We showed them videos. They were just excited to have that experience. They kept saying, ‘I get to go to a dance.’”

Some students also say they’re impressed by the security of schools in the U.S., having come from other environments where they didn’t always feel safe.

“They’re very prepared,” Madrigal Delgado said.

Ismael Piscoya, 17, from Peru, said he’s amazed at the amount of technology available. All students in the district, not just the center, get a Chromebook.

It takes no time to look up information, Piscoya said.

Maria Fernanda Guillen, 18, from Mexico, said she feels empowered in her education.

“In Mexico, we didn’t have a voice in school,” Guillen said. Now thinking about a future in biotechnology, she’s excited about the start she’s getting at the center.

“It’s nice to have friends from other countries,” she said.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools reschedules High School Admissions Test

2023-10-18T21:27:08+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and statewide education policy.

Chicago Public Schools announced a new testing schedule Wednesday for the High School Admissions Test, which was canceled last week after technical problems.

District students will take the test next week, on either Oct. 24 or Oct. 25. The district will assign one of those dates to each eighth grader’s school, according to a CPS letter to families. Students taking the exam in Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Urdu, or simplified Chinese will test on Nov. 1.

Non-CPS students — whose testing window last weekend was canceled — can take the exam on Oct. 28, Oct. 29, or Nov. 5 at Lane Tech or Lindblom high schools, the district said. These students must sign up for an exam date in GoCPS, the city’s admissions application system, by 9 a.m. Oct. 23.

The exam will not be the same one as was planned for last week, and students who were able to access the test will not see the same questions, officials said.

Students who were able to complete the exam will be allowed to retake the test, and their new score will be used for admissions even if it’s the lower of both tests, officials said. Students who don’t want to retake the exam must opt out by filing out this form and returning it to their school by Oct. 23. However, due to last week’s glitches, district officials “strongly recommend that students take advantage of this opportunity” to retake the exam, they said in the letter to families.

CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were set to take the HSAT in school on Oct. 11. The exam is part of admissions requirements for selective enrollment high schools and for enrollment at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries.

But on test day, a technical problem broke out with the testing vendor, Riverside Associates, LLC, officials said. The company later discovered that backlogged servers caused the problem, according to an FAQ on the district’s website. Students were unable to log into the testing platform, and the company’s help desk could not be reached, educators told Chalkbeat. District officials instructed principals to stop exam administration for students who were unable to log in.

The district later canceled the exam for non-CPS students, who were scheduled to take it Oct. 14 and 15.

The company fixed the problem by “adding server capacity” and testing the system to ensure that it works, the FAQ said.

Students’ HSAT scores help determine which selective high schools they might be admitted. This year, students must submit their top choices in the district’s admissions system — GoCPS — by Nov. 9, a month earlier than usual. Students were originally allowed to re-rank their choices by Nov. 22, but given the rescheduled HSAT, district officials have extended the re-rank deadline to Dec. 1.

After last week’s glitches, the district plans to be “very cautious” about the new testing plan and is “putting some strategies in place” to eliminate potential issues, said CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova during a Wednesday Board of Education meeting to review the agenda for an upcoming full board meeting. Neither she nor district officials immediately elaborated on what extra steps they’ve taken to ensure the test will resume smoothly.

In the online FAQ, the district said that its team has “reviewed results of vendor testing to confirm preparedness for resuming the HS Admissions Test program.”

During the board meeting Wednesday, Chkoumbova apologized to families for the glitches and said she was “a little bit disappointed” by the problems, given that the district’s aim was to reduce anxiety for students. The district had shortened the test length this year to an hour, from a previous 2 ½ hours, and had offered it for the first time in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

“Our team went into the testing session with a lot of assurances,” Chkoumbova said. “We did triple check everything, but the platform failed.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Dyslexia support proposals are back in the Michigan Legislature

2023-10-18T15:17:20+00:00

Four bills introduced in the Michigan Legislature this month would aim to better identify and teach students with dyslexia, and jumpstart reform initiatives that have stalled in the past.

The new legislation comes with bipartisan support and follows years of failed efforts to better address dyslexia in school — most recently last year, when a package of bills calling for better screening of students for dyslexia languished in the Legislature.

Dyslexia is a hereditary reading disability that affects an estimated 5% to 20% of people. Students with dyslexia who go undiagnosed and don’t receive interventions are more likely to struggle in school, and studies show most people with the learning disability who get high-quality instruction early on will become average readers.

“We have to do something about it now,” said Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, a Republican from Jackson who introduced one of the bills. “When we know how to fix something and we’re not doing it, that’s on us, and our children shouldn’t have to suffer because we can’t get it together.”

The legislation includes two bills in the House and two in the Senate. All four were referred to their respective education committees. Here’s what they would do:

A bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, would tighten the state standards for the literacy screeners schools use to ensure that they can identify a student who has dyslexia or has difficulty decoding language. The bill also aims to provide evidence-based support early on for students who are identified as having a reading disability.
Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat who represents parts of Canton and Livonia, introduced a bill that would set standards for teacher education programs to ensure future educators have the tools to help students with dyslexia.
In the House, Rep. Carol Glanville, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, introduced legislation that would create a dyslexia resource guide and advisory committee in the Michigan Department of Education.
Schmaltz’ House bill would require school districts to have at least one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham, a multisensory teaching methodology that research suggests helps students with dyslexia.

Rep. Mike McFall, co-sponsor of Schmaltz’ bill, said the additional resources will give teachers “more tools to ensure positive student outcomes and educational growth.”

Lawmakers who back the bill say the measures would help students who have difficulty reading and processing language due to dyslexia. But some advocates disagree, citing Michigan’s restrictive parameters for determining whether schoolchildren are eligible for special education.

The percentage of students in the state identified as having a specific learning disability, which includes students who schools identify as having dyslexia, decreased from 35% in 2013-14 to 25.9% in 2022-23, according to data from the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information. Nationally, the number went up during the same time period, aside from a dip during COVID.

“It is meaningless if they don’t incorporate changes to the criteria for determining specific learning disabilities,” said Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate.

Lipsitt also said requiring schools to have one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham methodology presents its own challenges.

“To say you’re training Orton-Gillingham, does that mean the teacher does four hours of training and then they are considered the Orton-Gillingham teacher?” she said.

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Denver is creating a Black Student Success team to spread effective strategies to its schools

2023-10-17T23:02:48+00:00

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To boost the academic success of Black students, Denver Public Schools is creating a new team of administrators to find the strategies and teaching practices that are working best for Black students and spread them throughout the district.

Tuesday’s announcement of the new initiative, called the Black Student Success team, comes 4½ years after the Denver school board passed a Black Excellence Resolution. The resolution required each DPS school to develop a plan to boost Black student success, but some schools have struggled to put those plans into place.

“This is building upon the Black Excellence Resolution,” Joe Amundsen, the executive director of universal school support for DPS, said in an interview. “The Black Student Success team is going to take that planning and really highlight what’s working across those schools to elevate practices districtwide that are leading to results.”

The team will be led by Michael Atkins, who is currently principal of Stedman Elementary School in Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood. Atkins was a DPS student during the era of busing to integrate Denver’s schools. He said he remembers how he was treated differently as a Black student, including the time a teacher muttered, “Here come the bus kids.”

“When I truly began to understand that I was treated differently than the neighborhood kids, I grew to hate school,” Atkins said in an interview.

“And my whole push, whether it’s leading Stedman Elementary or whether its leading this team of Black Student Success, is to ensure that the babies that look like me that enter into our school system, that I’m doing my part to change the system in a way that is going to illuminate their identities and dreams,” he said.

About 14% of Denver’s 89,000 students are Black, and data shows the district is not serving them as well as it’s serving white students. For example, 73% of white students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations on state literacy tests this past spring, compared with 27% of Black students, according to state data. That’s a 46-percentage-point gap.

The graduation rate for Black students in the DPS class of 2022 was 73%, compared with 86% for white students, a 13-point gap, state data shows.

“We know that our Black students can and do achieve at high levels, especially when they have the opportunities and support needed to excel,” DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero said in a press release. “After taking a deep dive into the most recent state test scores, we determined that we need to improve our systems of instruction and support in order to accelerate the trajectory of success for our Black students.”

Amundsen said DPS has been working with a team of researchers at the University of Denver, who have already completed the first phase of their research: identifying district-level practices to accelerate the academic trajectory for Black students, such as ensuring that students have access to rigorous courses and are being taught by experienced teachers.

For the next phase, DU researchers will go into DPS classrooms where Black students are making progress faster than their peers around the state, as measured by standardized test scores, to figure out what specific actions those teachers are taking, Amundsen said.

Meanwhile, Atkins said he and his team will be working with a small cohort of six to 10 DPS schools with a “focus on bringing academics alive for our Black students in those schools.”

Atkins will leave Stedman Elementary to assume his new role in January. The district said it is planning later this year to create a similar student success team for Latino and Hispanic students, who make up about 52% of DPS students.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Author: Black teachers’ resistance to segregation 60 years ago holds lessons for teachers today

2023-10-16T21:41:34+00:00

As a Birmingham, Alabama, native, Tondra Loder-Jackson was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. She was especially inspired by the 1,000-plus Black children who walked out of school in Birmingham on May 2, 1963, to protest Jim Crow segregation in what would be known as the Children’s Crusade.

Still, one question lingered for Loder-Jackson. Where, she wondered, were the Black teachers?

Now a professor of educational foundations at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Loder-Jackson sought the answer to that question — and wound up debunking a narrative that Black teachers either shied away from the movement or were hostile to it.

In her 2016 book, “Schoolhouse Activists: African American Educators and the Long Birmingham Civil Rights Movement,” and in a 2023 book she co-edited, “Schooling the Movement: The Activism of Southern Black Educators from Reconstruction Through the Civil Rights Era,” Loder-Jackson details how many Black teachers, at the risk of losing their jobs and, in some cases, their lives, organized quietly and supported the movement through their scholarship and their teaching, and through associations with outside groups.

Loder-Jackson recently talked to Chalkbeat about her work and the lessons teachers in states like Alabama, Tennessee, Florida and others where teaching about race is being restricted, can learn from those 1960s schoolhouse activists on how to resist new state-sanctioned attempts to whitewash Black history.

This interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

Why did you want to explore the role of Black educators in the Civil Rights Movement?

This seemed to be a relatively untold story, although some scholars began to unearth some archival data and tell new stories decades ago. But no one that I knew of in Birmingham was focused on educators, and really, on the contrary, I discovered there was a false narrative in Birmingham that Black teachers and principals were categorically tepid about getting involved in the movement. In fact, there’s one narrative about a Black principal who stood in the schoolhouse door to prevent his students from skipping school during the Children’s Crusade in 1963.

Why is it important to correct this narrative — that Black teachers weren’t involved in the movement — at this time?

The false narrative that Black teachers in Birmingham, and in the southern region, were not active in the Civil Rights Movement leaves our teachers today with a lost memory of the kind of activism that teachers were involved in. There was an active network of below-the-radar teachers and administrators who contributed to the Alabama movement in various ways that were typically aligned with their professional practices. They formed Black teachers associations … . There is clear evidence, in national and local archives, that Black Alabama teachers joined ranks with the Alabama State Teachers Association. They were involved with them, they were involved in the NAACP, they were involved in the Alabama Christian Association, they were involved in all the civil rights organizations. It’s important for all educators to know, irrespective of race or ethnicity or nationality, the role that educators played in voting rights and in all aspects of the movement.

What was your most surprising discovery?

I was surprised by this underground railroad of Black educators and how they came together as a collective to fight for civil rights. They were instrumental in putting together reports to document racial discrimination, they fought for voting rights, they sponsored Black history programs, and they were involved in strategizing the Montgomery Bus Boycott. They came together as a collective to fight for civil rights.

It was true that some didn’t feel comfortable protesting, but many blended in with crowds during the mass meetings, which was one of the core activities of the movement. I have interviewed teachers who said they have attended every one of those meetings.

Did you think that in 2023, 60 years after the Children’s Crusade, that states like Tennessee and Florida would adopt laws that make it hard for teachers to teach about that crusade and, by extension, the role that Black teachers played in it?

Everything goes around in circles. We had a backlash against multiculturalism in the 1980s, but then things died down a bit. The backlash today, however, seems especially vitriolic. I have to consider the role that the first Black president elected two times, and a pandemic that opened up classrooms virtually with some students’ parents looking over their shoulders, and the George Floyd protests may have played in this.

What is especially troubling about these laws and their potential consequences?

The attacks on civic education are disconcerting to me. That is the space in public schools where students learn how a democracy should work. One teacher I interviewed told me one important lesson she taught during the movement was to help students understand why they were going out to march in the streets, and she would use her civics lesson to make a connection between their actions and what they were doing. So teachers play an important role in laying the intellectual foundation for any social movement, and teachers, and Black teachers in the South particularly, played that role.

What can educators in states where teaching about race is restricted learn from Black teachers in Birmingham who found ways to resist unjust laws that wouldn’t cause them to lose their jobs or lives?

Today, we definitely don’t want to have situations where we have educational gaps and orders keeping teachers from teaching social studies authentically and with fidelity.

So I would say that the lessons that teachers of today can learn from teachers of the past is to find ways to organize at their schools on a local, state, and even a national and international level. Beyond unions, there are a lot of professional associations and informal coalitions that are emerging.

In Birmingham, I’ve become part of a group called Coalition for True History. It’s an emergent grass roots organization that is made up of educators, civic leaders, and community members. We are advocating rigorous, authentic, and critical approaches to teaching history. We’ve had the NAACP and other groups to help interpret legal leeways (around laws that restrict lessons on race).

So, (teachers) are going to have to work in solidarity. Based on my scholarship and research, that is the model that we have from the past.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

At one magnet school, Chicago’s bus crisis has parents grasping for options — or leaving

2023-10-13T18:14:26+00:00

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Mónica Meléndez spent the first half of the last school year driving her three kids at least an hour each way to Inter-American Magnet School in Lake View.

She felt she had no choice after the district said it would not provide transportation at the beginning of the year for two of her children.

By the time all her kids got bus service in the second semester, Meléndez was exhausted — especially on days she spent another hour driving to work.

So shortly after Chicago Public Schools announced this summer that it wouldn’t provide busing to about 5,500 eligible general education students, largely those in gifted and magnet programs, Meléndez and her husband pulled their two youngest children out of the school. It was a wrenching decision: The Spanish dual language school felt perfect for the couple, who are originally from Puerto Rico and want their children to be bilingual.

Meléndez recalls telling her husband: “Sweetie, I can’t do this anymore.” Their oldest, a seventh grader, now takes a CTA bus two hours each way.

The family’s decision illustrates one way Chicago’s school bus crisis could impact enrollment and the socioeconomic and racial diversity of the city’s magnet and gifted programs. Many of these schools were created under a federal desegregation consent decree, but have been criticized for lacking diversity and enrolling larger shares of white and Asian American students since federal oversight ended in 2009. As working-class families find it difficult or impossible to take their children far distances to school, the absence of a transportation option could segregate the schools even more.

Parents at Inter-American are looking for solutions, as other gifted and magnet programs have also sought their own alternatives to the lack of busing.

Inter-American is already seeing the impact and some families have left.

“I would be really worried about what this change would mean for the demographics for these schools and for the goals of magnet schools in Chicago more generally,” said Halley Potter, an expert on school integration policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

Parents share transportation challenges

Citing a severe driver shortage, Chicago Public Schools announced in late July that it would limit bus transportation this year to students with disabilities and those who are homeless, both groups which are legally required to receive transportation. The district is currently under state watch to make sure it’s meeting those legal requirements.

The district said it has pursued several solutions to hire more drivers, including boosting driver pay rates by $2 – to $22 to $27 an hour – and hosting hiring fairs. But as of late last month, the district still had only half the number of drivers on hand and announced that busing would not be extended to more families for the rest of the semester. The district offered CTA cards to the 5,500 children who lost busing, but as of late last month, just about 1,600 took that option.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Samantha Hart said the district is “acutely aware” of the challenges families are facing with longer commutes.

“We are committed to continuing to work with our vendors, City partners and our families to identify solutions and ensure every eligible student has safe, secure, and reliable transportation to and from school,” Hart said.

The transportation crisis has already had a small impact on enrollment at Inter-American, where nearly half of the school’s 641 students come from low-income families. Fifty-three families were eligible for transportation at the school. As of Oct. 2, six children have transferred out of the school due to the lack of transportation, according to the district.

At least two more children transferred out after Oct. 2 because of transportation issues, said Maria Ugarte, chair of Inter-American’s Local School Council. Ugarte has also heard from many parents who are considering leaving, and she wonders how lack of busing will impact next year’s enrollment.

At a meeting last month with the school’s principal, one parent said he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep up the commute to school. A mother shared that her commute involves taking the CTA with her three children, including a 2-year-old, every morning and evening— and doing that daily is becoming stressful.

Alexis Luna, who lives in Belmont Cragin, splits dropoff and pickup responsibilities for her third grade daughter with the girl’s father. But her daughter may have to miss school on days that the girl’s father is out of town for work, since Luna’s work schedule is inflexible and she can’t take days off.

Luna “lost everything” when her business closed during the pandemic, so she cannot afford to miss work or quit. She said she is struggling to pay for the increased gas costs.

For Rocio Meza, the lack of transportation means she can’t search for a job this year as she handles the hourlong pickup and dropoff each way at Inter-American for her 12-year-old daughter. She’s also responsible for driving her older son with disabilities to doctor’s appointments on some mornings, which sometimes makes one of the children late.

She and her husband have discussed transferring their daughter out of Inter-American – two other schools are within a few blocks of their house – but the family loves the school.

”Do I really want to do this and give up the education and experience she’s getting at Inter-American to go to another school?” Meza said.

Some attempts to find solutions at the school level haven’t come to fruition.

The school’s principal, Juan Carlos Zayas, launched a voluntary task force with parents to look for ways to ease the transportation issue. Ideas included a rideshare app and hiring a bus company on their own, according to recordings of the meetings. Both options would likely be too costly for parents, task force members said. For example, one parent found a company that would charge $158 per child this month — if the bus was full with just a couple of stops.

The district granted the school $157,000 in funding to host before- and after-school programs to accommodate more flexible pickup and dropoff times. The principal recently surveyed families for their interest and expects programming to start Oct. 23, a district spokesperson said.

Last month, Luna tried to distribute a survey to arrange carpooling for interested parents. The survey asked for information such as where their child’s old bus stop was and how many children they had. Zayas emailed Luna and several other parents that the “attempt to collect personal information” was a “clear violation” of district policy and that it was circulated to teachers without his knowledge.

District officials pointed to a CPS policy that prevents anyone from circulating ads, subscription lists, meeting invitations, books, maps, articles, or other political or commercial materials among school employees or students without approval from the principal or other district officials.

Still, some parents are trying to figure out carpool arrangements, Luna said.

Transportation woes could decrease diversity in magnet programs

During CPS board meetings, parents at magnet and gifted programs have said they are worried that the lack of transportation will most greatly impact children whose parents don’t have flexible work schedules to take young children on lengthy transit commutes or the money and time to drive them. That could force less-resourced families to transfer out of magnet programs or gifted programs or choose not to apply for them for next school year.

Once seen as a solution to the city’s segregated schools, the city’s magnet, gifted, and selective enrollment programs have been criticized for failing to achieve their diversity goals. A 2019 WBEZ analysis found that just 20% of these schools met the definition of racial diversity embedded in a now-lifted court order for Chicago to integrate its schools.

CPS uses a lottery for enrollment in magnet programs like Inter-American. Seats are offered based on the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood a student lives in. Sometimes priority is given to siblings or to students living close to the school.

Inter-American lacks racial diversity — 85% of its students this year are Hispanic, and 10% are white, according to district data. However, the school is more socioeconomically diverse, with 47% of its students coming from low-income families, still far below the district’s average of about 71%.

During one of the task force meetings, one parent expressed concern that working-class families would leave, and more local families from the surrounding affluent Lake View neighborhood would get seats — changing the face of the school.

At the same time, less transportation for magnet and gifted families could mean more students enrolling in their neighborhood schools. Bolstering neighborhood schools is a priority for Mayor Brandon Johnson.

After pulling her daughter and son out of Inter-American, Meléndez enrolled them in her local neighborhood school, Canty Elementary. There, about half of the students are Hispanic, 44% are white, and about 2% are each Black and Asian American. Just over 43% come from low-income households.

Her daughters like the school so far, Meléndez said. Canty, which is not a dual-language school like Inter-American, is just a five-minute drive away from home. But the outcome of their story is likely not the norm: In a city as segregated as Chicago, more integrated neighborhood schools like Canty are a rarity.

Potter, from The Century Foundation, said Chicago Public Schools has done “really important work” in finding ways to spur diversity in selective and magnet schools. The district’s lotteries that try to enroll students from different socioeconomic backgrounds often result in more racial diversity, too, she said.

But, Potter said, “without transportation support, a lot of that can fall apart.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Event: Learn more about the state of segregation in New Jersey schools

2023-10-12T21:05:01+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Newark’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system.

Join us on Thursday, Oct. 26 at the Newark Public Library main branch for “The State of Segregation,” a discussion about the pervasiveness of segregation in New Jersey’s schools and what can be done to tackle the problem.

This event is open to the Newark community and families from across the state and is designed to bring residents, journalists, and experts together to address this issue across New Jersey. Each panelist and speaker in this event brings a unique perspective and expertise to the discussion, making it a must-attend event for those interested in education and social justice in the state.

Doors open at 5:15 p.m. for a meet and mingle with journalists from Chalkbeat Newark, NJ Spotlight News, and New York Public Radio (WNYC + Gothamist).

The program officially begins at 6 p.m. with a panel discussion featuring Michael Hill, host of WNYC’s Morning Edition, Colleen O’Dea, data reporter at NJ Spotlight News, and Dr. Charles Payne, director of the Joseph Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Research and co-author of “Segregated Schooling in New Jersey.” They will discuss why New Jersey schools are among the nation’s most segregated.

A second panel discussion, moderated by Jessie Gomez, a reporter with Chalkbeat Newark, begins at 6:30 p.m. and features Newark students and community members who will share their experiences in the city’s schools. We will also discuss the ways in which city and school leaders can promote opportunities for students of color to share their experiences. This panel concludes at 7:30 p.m. and attendees will have a chance to continue the conversation with journalists and experts until 8 p.m.

Your attendance can serve as a vital contribution to the ongoing statewide conversation on school segregation and help inform our reporting in Newark and beyond. The event is free with an RSVP through our Eventbrite page.

Nearly 70 years since the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, New Jersey continues to grapple with a segregated school system. In Newark and other cities in the state, teaching staff and school leadership do not always reflect diverse student bodies. Newark Public Schools is made up of roughly 90% Black and Latino students, while teachers from those backgrounds make up just over half of the teaching staff.

Most recently, state Superior Court Judge Robert Lougy issued a decision on a segregation lawsuit that acknowledges New Jersey public schools are segregated by race but says plaintiffs failed to prove the “entire” school system is segregated “across all districts.” The state has the

constitutional power to take action but New Jersey should not be held responsible for the “unlawful, persistent, and pervasive” segregation in its educational system, the decision read.

This event is hosted by newsrooms in the “Segregated NJ” reporting collaboration, which includes Chalkbeat Newark, New York Public Radio, and NJ Spotlight News. The Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University is providing support for this event.

Rising share of Chicago Public Schools graduates are pursuing college, study finds

2023-10-12T18:25:42+00:00

A rising share of Chicago Public Schools students enrolled in college in recent years, and far more are earning degrees or certificates at two-year colleges.

That’s according to a study released Thursday by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To & Through Project, which tracks college enrollment. Additionally, the study found that more Chicago students than ever are projected to pursue and complete college over the next decade.

The study’s findings run counter to national trends of sagging college enrollment during the pandemic; nationwide enrollment in two- and four-year colleges fell by .6% from 2021 to 2022, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Many young people across the nation are questioning whether higher education is worth the cost, said Jenny Nagaoka, one of the study’s authors and deputy director of the Consortium on School Research.

Higher education is “tremendously expensive, student debt is a huge issue [and] ultimately for a lot of students they’re unclear if the payoffs will be there,” Nagaoka said. “But CPS students are still going to college. They’re still seeing there’s value in it.”

Research shows that a college education can lead to better salary-earning potential, provide better access to high-quality housing, and contribute to better overall health, according to a review of literature by Healthy People 2030, a federal government-led project that tracks health data.

“We are hearing so much discouraging news about achievement in our schools right now, and this is not to say that’s not real, but I think it’s really important to note that at the same time, we’re actually also seeing increases in attainment,” Nagaoka said.

The study used a measure called the Post-Secondary Attainment Index, or PAI, to project college enrollment and completion based on current high school graduation and college enrollment and completion rates. Researchers calculated graduation rates slightly differently from the district, which is why they’ve come up with an 84-percent graduation rate for 2022 versus 82.9% reported by CPS. (The authors emphasized that the index is not meant to be a prediction; rather, it is a “starting place” to understand how to improve current patterns.)

This year the index is 30%, meaning that if CPS graduation and college enrollment and completion rates remained the same over the next decade, 30 out of 100 current ninth graders would earn a college credential by the time they are 25, researchers project. That is a 2.4 percentage point increase over last year and the highest rate on record since researchers began calculating this index in 2013. At that time, the index was 23%.

This year’s ninth graders were in middle school when the pandemic shuttered school buildings.

Nagaoka said they’re “cautiously optimistic” that these trends won’t reverse in the future, since this year’s record-setting data reflects students who were in high school and college during the pandemic.

But the study also found significant racial disparities within the data. For example, 66% percent of Asian American women would earn a college credential over the next decade according to the PAI, but just 13.6% of Black men would do the same.

During an event Thursday announcing the study’s findings, CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova acknowledged that the district has more to do to close racial disparities.

“With these groups, especially at the high school level, we’ve learned that one of the most impactful ways we can provide support is by establishing partnerships that will provide mentorship and guidance to the students throughout their high school experience,” she said.

The researchers also studied college enrollment data from 2022 and college completion data from 2021, based on data that was available. Some highlights included:

60.8% of CPS students who graduated in 2022 immediately enrolled in two-year or four-year colleges, 1.5 percentage points higher than the class of 2021.
There are stark racial disparities in who pursued college upon graduation in 2022. For example, nearly 80% of white women immediately enrolled in college upon graduation, while just 45% of Black male students did the same.
Just over 53% of English learners immediately pursued college after graduating last year, compared with 68% of former English learners.
For the class of 2015, nearly 56% of students who immediately enrolled in a four-year college and roughly one-third of students who immediately enrolled in a two-year college eventually earned a bachelor’s or associate degree, or earned a certificate by 2021.
For those who did not immediately enroll in college in 2015, roughly 3% earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. Another 5% completed an associate degree or certificate. While those rates are on the rise, they are 1.7 percentage points smaller than similar completion rates for the class of 2009.
The percentage of students who earned some sort of college credential after enrolling in four-year schools dipped by .6% between the graduating classes of 2014 and 2015.

Chkoumbova attributed the gains to various efforts across district schools to keep students interested in school and prepared for the future, including more career and technical education and dual-credit programs. She also pointed to the district’s work on how it disciplines students. Rather than suspending students, schools are using restorative practices to keep them connected and in class.

A district spokesperson pointed to a host of other programs, such as a new pilot initiative that aims to re-engage young people who are no longer in school or working. The spokesperson also pointed to efforts to get students interested in college and staying there. That includes the Direct Admissions Initiative, which tells seniors whether they can get into a select list of colleges, and another program that provides students with support and mentorship in the two years after they graduate from high school.

Nagaoka also highlighted the increase of 5.6 percentage points in the two-year college completion rate for class of 2015 graduates, the largest increase by far over at least the past six years.

That increase, researchers and Chkoumbova noted, coincides with the onset of Chicago’s STAR Scholarship, which former Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced in the fall of 2014 and offers free tuition to City Colleges for any CPS student with at least a 3.0 grade point average by high school graduation.

Chicago’s college enrollment rates beat national figures for high-poverty schools by about 11 percentage points, researchers found. Nagaoka attributed this in part to efforts by counselors, nonprofits, and others who work in schools to ensure students know about their college options.

More specifically, CPS requires students to create a post-secondary plan, or “evidence of a plan for life beyond high school,” in order to graduate from high school. That requirement forces students to have a conversation about what’s next, she said.

Ninety-seven percent of seniors in the class of 2022 submitted a post-secondary plan, a district spokesperson said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools pauses High School Admissions Test amid technical problems

2023-10-11T21:43:28+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools paused the High School Admissions Test that was underway Wednesday morning due to technical problems on the testing platform, officials told principals.

“For any students currently testing successfully, they can continue and complete,” Peter Leonard, executive director of student assessment for CPS, wrote in an email to principals. “In any other case, schools should stop testing today.”

Students take the HSAT as part of admissions requirements for the city’s selective-enrollment high schools and to enroll at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries. On Wednesday all eighth graders were set to take the exam on computers in school. This year’s exam was set to last an hour instead of the previous 2½ hours. CPS made the change in order to “reduce anxiety for students” and increase accessibility, a spokesperson said last month.

In his note, Leonard said students who finish the test today can use their scores as they apply for high schools in GoCPS. For students who couldn’t finish, the district will share alternative testing dates “as soon as possible,” Leonard wrote.

District spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement that the district is working with the testing vendor to resolve the technical problems. They don’t expect any changes to this weekend’s scheduled HSAT testing for non-CPS students, Hart said.

“We recognize the stress many students and families experience when it comes to admissions testing,” Hart wrote.

The district authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract over the summer with Riverside Assessments LLC to provide test materials for high school admissions and other placements, including gifted programs.

At one North Side school, students received error messages as they tried to log in to the testing platform, even after refreshing the page, according to an administrator at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The school’s testing coordinator tried to call a help desk for the testing vendor but got a busy signal.

Similar problems cropped up at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy in Logan Square, said the school’s principal, Seth Lavin.

“They came in anxious and focused, and then they sat down, and for about an hour and a half, proctors tried to log kids into the test and they could not — and nobody knew what was going on,” Lavin said.

By the time CPS notified schools at 10:30 a.m. that it would pause the test, a handful of students were able to complete the exam at both Brentano and the North Side school.

Other students at the North Side school were finally able to log in by that time, the administrator said. But there were other issues. Some students saw words in Spanish pop up and had to ask teachers to translate, the administrator said. This is the first year the test is being offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

The North Side administrator called the glitches a “gross oversight” by the district, and said that it should have ensured that the system could handle tens of thousands of students taking the exam on the same day. CPS enrolled nearly 24,000 eighth graders this year, district data shows.

The administrator said all students — not just those who weren’t able to complete the exam — should be allowed to retake the test, since the process was so stressful. Students were already “very anxious” about the HSAT, this person said.

Asked about the testing issues at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the public school system should “not reject the hopes and aspirations and desires” of families — Black families, in particular.

“The ultimate desire is to actually build a school system that no matter where you are in the city of Chicago, that you have access to a high quality education,” he said. “I’m committed to doing just that.”

Lavin, who has criticized the district’s selective-enrollment system for being inequitable, said Wednesday’s problems underscore that the admissions system “is so fragile and arbitrary.” The exam accounts for 50% of the admissions rubric for selective-enrollment high schools.

“Kids who are 13 years old should not have a 60-minute experience that decides so much about the next four years of their life,” Lavin said.

He added, “If we are going to let some kids into some high schools and not let some kids into some high schools, we have to find a better way to do it than this.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Tenn. study on rejecting federal education funds has ‘no predetermined outcome,’ leader says

2023-10-05T14:50:17+00:00

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A leader of the group of lawmakers exploring whether Tennessee can feasibly reject nearly $1.9 billion in federal education funding says that the panel’s work will begin in early November, and that its findings — not politics — will guide its recommendations.

“There is no predetermined outcome for this working group, or for what the information we gather is going to show,” Sen. Jon Lundberg, a co-chair of the panel, said Wednesday.

“We want to look at what federal education money we get, where it goes, what we’re required to do to get those funds, and ultimately what’s the return on the investment,” the Bristol Republican told Chalkbeat. “I think this will give us a good overview.”

Lundberg, who also chairs the Senate Education Committee, was responding to criticism from Democrats that Republicans are seeking to undermine public education, cater to charter and private school interests, and advance the political aspirations of House Speaker Cameron Sexton, a Crossville Republican and likely candidate for governor in 2026.

In February, Sexton said Tennessee should consider forgoing U.S. education dollars to free schools from federal rules and regulations, and should make up the difference with state funding. On Sept. 22, he and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, an Oak Ridge Republican, appointed eight Republicans and two Democrats to the working group to look into the idea and report back by Jan. 9, when the General Assembly convenes a new session.

Most of the federal money the state receives supports low-income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities. Tennessee school districts that are most reliant on U.S. dollars tend to be rural, and have more low-income and disabled students, less capacity for local revenue, and lower test scores in English language arts, according to a recent report from the Sycamore Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

Sen. Jon Lundberg

On Thursday, Lundberg and co-chair Debra Moody, a Covington Republican who chairs a House education committee, released the panel’s schedule showing five days of meetings in November, with the kickoff meeting on Nov. 6.

If the committee finds ways for the state to feasibly wean itself from federal education money that Tennesseans help generate through their taxes, Lundberg expects legislation to come out of its work. But he acknowledged that state revenue collections have lagged in recent months, potentially making it harder to cut the cord.

“Revenues are a valid concern, but that’s not our charge at this point,” he said. “We just want to do a deep dive on where we stand.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bo Watson warned lawmakers in August that Tennessee likely will need to begin curbing state spending. But on Wednesday, he endorsed the panel’s task.

“I think it’s premature to say whether there will be budget constraints,” said the Hixson Republican. “Evaluating our programs and our funding is always a healthy exercise.”

Even if officials decide the state can afford to pass on federal funds, JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, questions whether it could effectively manage resources designed to support underserved communities and ensure equal access to education.

He cites the Achievement School District as one example of poor oversight for a state-run program intended to serve students attending low-performing schools. The turnaround district took over dozens of neighborhood schools beginning in 2012, mostly in Memphis, and turned many of them over to charter operators. But it has had few successes to show for its decade of work.

Lundberg said that example shouldn’t stop the state from investigating the possibility.

“Do I trust the state more than the federal government? Absolutely,” Lundberg said. “I think that government that operates closest to the people is the best government.”

Gov. Bill Lee has said he’s open to the idea and denounced what he called “excessive overreach” by the federal government. However, he didn’t give specific examples on education when answering questions from reporters last week.

Advocates for historically underserved student populations say federal oversight is needed to ensure that the state and local districts adequately provide for every student and school.

Meanwhile, Senate Democrats pointed out that the federal government provided nearly $30 million last year to public schools in Cumberland County, which Sexton represents. That’s 44% of the East Tennessee district’s budget. Three school districts in Anderson County, where McNally lives, received $31 million in U.S. funds, which covered 32% of their budgets.

You can look up exactly how much federal education funding is on the line for every Tennessee county.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with information about the panel’s meeting schedule.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

At six Illinois college campuses, advocates seek to create ‘comfort’ for foster care peers

2023-10-02T10:00:00+00:00

Grace Ward spent four years in foster care before enrolling at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2021. On campus, 200 miles south of her hometown of Rockford, she felt alone.

Before Ward entered care, she had missed three years of school and had briefly lived in homeless shelters with her mother. In her foster home, she was expected to prioritize chores over homework, babysit younger children, and call the police if a child was having a mental breakdown, she said.

A few months before coming to the university, she had a violent disagreement that involved her foster parent, leading Ward to end that relationship and head to school without knowing anyone well on campus.

“You kind of have to figure out and navigate for yourself now,” Ward said. “How do you find comfort in your life?”

Now a junior studying animal sciences, Ward has taken up a new role: peer advocate for youth on campus who have experienced foster care. The new gig, she hopes, will create the support system for others that she craved as a freshman.

Ward has joined the state’s new Youth in Care - College Advocate Program, or Y-CAP, which pairs peer advocates like Ward with other college students who have experienced foster care. The goal is for the advocates to check-in regularly with their mentees, help them navigate college life, and ultimately create a support system they’re missing.

A 2021 study found that of Illinois youth in foster care who turned 17 between 2012 and 2018, 86% enrolled in community college. Of those, just 8% graduated, according to the study conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Students told researchers that they felt alone, largely weren’t aware of financial aid options, and that they needed more specialized attention.

As for what would help them, some interviewees said they wanted someone to help monitor their academic progress. Others said they wanted a support group, the study said.

“Young people with a background in foster care on college campuses are not getting the supports they need to be successful,” said Amy Dworsky, a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall at University of Chicago who co-authored the study and helped the state create the advocate program.

The state’s Department of Children and Family Services, or DCFS, launched the $200,000 program this year after its youth advisory board signaled that college-bound foster youth needed more support on campus, said Chevelle Bailey, deputy director of DCFS’s office of education and transition services. Some colleges have similar mentorship programs, but “there’s no consistency” across all Illinois campuses, Bailey said.

The program has launched one year after a new state law went into effect requiring each Illinois college to have a liaison that is charged with connecting students who are in foster care or are homeless with resources and assistance.

Department officials want colleges to be more “foster-friendly,” Bailey said, noting that foster youth need extra support in a new environment like college. These youth are at higher risk of dropping out of school, according to the U.S. Department of Education. In Chicago, which houses the most foster youth of any jurisdiction, 40% graduated on time from the city’s public schools last year, compared with 83% of all CPS students, according to the Illinois State Board of Education.

DCFS contracted with Foster Progress — an advocacy organization for foster youth that runs its own high school mentorship program — to oversee YCAP on six college campuses this year. That includes University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Illinois at Chicago, Northern Illinois University, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, Harold Washington College, and Kishwaukee College.

“One reason we started small is to make sure we do this right and not take on too much we can’t handle,” Kim Peck, DCFS’ downstate education and transition services administrator.

Nearly 20,000 Illinois children were in foster care as of last month, according to DCFS data. These youth have likely experienced abuse or neglect that led them into the system, and often cycle through multiple foster homes before they age out of care at 21.

So far, Foster Progress has hired three advocates on Ward’s campus, and they’ve identified four mentees, said LT Officer-McIntosh, program manager for Foster Progress. She’s expecting to hire a total of 10 peer advocates, who are paid $15 an hour, to support up to 100 mentees across all the campuses.

There are three parts to the mentor-mentee relationship, Officer-McIntosh said.

Advocates are supposed to hold regular check-ins, where they’ll track goals for what the mentee would like out of the experience and will also navigate college questions and deadlines, such as for financial aid.

Peer advocates and mentees will also pick a short group training they want, such as on resume building, and volunteer together so that they feel more rooted in the surrounding community.

Beyond this framework, program leaders want peer advocates and their mentees to figure out a support system that works best for them.

“Our goal with YCAP is to not tell them, ‘This is how you build community from our perspective,’” Officer-McIntosh said. “It needs to be rooted in the things that they identify, that they want out of a campus community and the experience in YCAP.”

Ward wants to help mentees with whatever they need to grow, whether that means being “a shoulder to lean on” or just instructions for how to do laundry.

Sometimes when she walks around campus, Ward thinks about how different her life is now. She wants her mentees to similarly feel like they have a “safe space” that doesn’t involve talking about required paperwork or upcoming court dates, if they don’t want to.

“It’s not something to be like, ‘You’re a foster youth,’ Ward said. “It is something to be like, ‘You have gone through challenges in your life; this is a time to ease those challenges, so you don’t constantly struggle and feel like you’re struggling.’”

Correction: Oct. 2, 2023: A previous version of this story said a 2021 study was conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago. The study was conducted by researchers at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Denver teachers scramble to help as migrant students face loss of housing

2023-09-29T20:50:43+00:00

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Editor’s note: On Monday, Denver Human Services extended the time that families can stay in city-provided shelter to 37 days, a week longer than previously. The change applies to people who arrive on or after Oct. 4. However, due to the large number of people arriving daily, individuals without children will get to stay in city-provided shelter for just 14 days, a week less than before.

As the number of migrants arriving daily in Denver rises, schools are starting to see a significant number of new students. And educators are worried about how to help them as migrant families encounter the limits of official support.

At Denver’s Bryant Webster Dual Language School, some teachers report classes of 38 students — a lot higher than last year. A teacher who screens students for whom English is not their home language has had to screen 60 students this year — up from a handful in typical years. And they’re trying to help students as they’re dealing with trauma, learning how to navigate a new country and a new school system.

“You work the whole day and you just want to make sure you do the best with the resources you have and so you build relationships with kids, and you have the connection to them,” said Alex Nelson, a fourth grade teacher at Bryant Webster. “Then you find out their story.”

Students who arrived near the start of the school year and were starting to settle in are facing a new challenge and a new trauma. Families get just 30 days in either a hotel or shelter paid for by the city. But then they have to find another place to live. In a city with soaring rents where many longtime residents also struggle to find housing, new arrivals sometimes find themselves with nowhere to go.

The first time a migrant family with children at Bryant Webster ran out of time on its housing voucher, teachers and a school intern spent hours calling shelters and everyone they could think of to try to find a place for the family to stay. They encountered waitlists and a lot of dead ends.

“We didn’t know what happened after the voucher expired until one of the new families said ‘our stay is up, and we don’t know where to go tonight,’” Nelson said. “We’ve never been prepared so we didn’t know how to handle it.”

The family ended up leaving to spend the night in a car, though Nelson said district officials were able to connect with them later that evening. Still, Nelson said it was really hard on the entire school to end the day that way.

Like in New York City schools and other districts nationwide, Denver school officials are on the frontline receiving requests from migrant families for help. In Denver, some teachers are just starting to connect their efforts with nonprofits, through the teachers union, and with other organizations, but coordination is still sporadic.

And even when working together, there are daunting obstacles. After the limited duration of city vouchers for migrants, the different social services available have different rules that can create confusion about what might jeopardize migrants’ legal standing. And the potential overlap between help for migrants and support for the city’s homeless population is something Denver officials are trying to avoid.

After helping the first Bryant Webster family, teachers heard from more families in the same situation. Some organizations are helping, but each time a new family comes forward, teachers worry if they’ll be able to find them assistance. At least three more are slated to lose their shelter this weekend.

“You can just feel the kids are stressed. It disrupts everything,” said Cecilia Quintanilla, an early childhood teacher at the school.

Denver has seen up to 250 migrants arriving per day this week, but it’s unclear how many are children.

Schools join Denver effort to help migrants find stability

Right now, it’s hard to track how widespread the surge of migrants in schools really is.

District officials in Denver did not respond to requests for comment. Teachers at Bryant Webster believe they’ve had around 60 newcomers arrive after the first day of school and counting. Other school districts in the state are also reporting surges of newcomers, the term schools use to refer to students arriving from outside the U.S., in the last few months.

The Colorado Department of Education doesn’t track those numbers and officials said they have not been asked to provide support to schools dealing with these surges.

Denver officials said that as of last week the city was currently sheltering 456 children under age 16. The city has seen up to 250 new individuals arriving per day this week, but numbers for children aren’t available for this week.

At another Denver school, Escuela Valdez, teacher Jessica Dominguez estimates they’ve received about 20 newcomer students this year. This week, they learned about a family that had already been sleeping outdoors after losing their shelter. Educators stayed up late into the night trying to find them a place to stay and ultimately were successful. But that may not always be the case.

“Kids are being involved now,” she said. “That puts a different face to what we might think is homelessness.”

Dominguez isn’t the only person who feels that way. Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a former educator, said at a press conference Thursday that he has seen kids sleeping under blankets with families outside the city’s Wellington Webb building as they wait for staff to show up so they can ask for help.

“No kid should be in that context,” Johnston said.

Early that same day, at a migrant reception center in northeast Denver, a steady stream of men, women, and children arrived for processing. The official hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., but staff often start earlier and stay until everyone has somewhere to go.

Some arrivals have family in the Denver area and ask to come here or even make their own way. Others get on buses in El Paso regardless of destination and then need to make a plan.

They’ve already made a hazardous journey and overcome many obstacles to leave behind dangerous situations in their home countries.

Jon Ewing, a spokesman for Denver Human Services, said the arrivals are smart, resourceful, and well-organized.

City workers collect basic information about the new arrivals, provide contact information for relevant social services and direct them to shelter. Individuals are eligible for 21 days of free shelter and families are eligible for 30 days. The city isn’t tracking what happens after that.

“Thirty days is not a long time to sort out your life, and we get that,” Ewing said. “But we have to move people through. There is a limit to what we are able to do.”

Ewing said city staff are working to coordinate as best they can between nonprofits, city services, and the school district — there are large group chats buzzing all day.

Ewing said the city tries to make sure people understand how expensive Denver is so they can make informed decisions. But they may have good reasons for wanting to stay here.

Ewing said the migrant and homeless populations are very different and face different challenges. New arrivals are never directed to homeless shelters, and many services are provided through different channels in order to be responsive to each group’s needs.

There are also different funding sources with different rules, when it comes to providing services for U.S. citizens and residents experiencing homelessness, versus migrants seeking asylum or another protected status.

Then there are legal concerns. Cathy Alderman, chief communications and public policy officer for the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said that organizations like hers are also concerned about inadvertently providing resources that would then make people ineligible for earning legal status — a common worry they hear from migrants, and one that Alderman and her team don’t have enough expertise to help navigate.

Still, she said that some of the migrant families might qualify for housing assistance from the coalition, but qualifying takes time.

“The problem is we have so many in the system right now waiting for housing,” Alderman said. “That system makes housing matches based on vulnerabilities. It’s a process. It certainly doesn’t move fast.”

She said that another problem for families is finding affordable housing with multiple bedrooms. Longer term vouchers, such as Section 8 vouchers, often don’t cover a large portion of the rents people might encounter in Denver.

“In Denver specifically we have a very, very, very minimal stock of really affordable housing,” she said. “We have a lot of market rate and luxury units that are sitting empty.”

With all the challenges migrant students and their families are confronting, teachers say they appreciate that so many are working to help. But they also wish they were more prepared to help students and families who come to them with such big worries.

“We don’t have what we need to welcome these families to the better life that they were searching for,” said Nelson, the teacher at Bryant Webster. “It’s just really hard to see the consequences of that.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools says $3.1 billion for ‘critical’ building repairs needed

2023-09-29T02:30:03+00:00

Chicago Public Schools facilities need $3.1 billion in “critical” repairs that must be addressed in the next five years, according to a district plan released Thursday.

The cost is part of a total of $14.4 billion in updates that the district identified in its Facilities Master Plan, which CPS is required by state law to produce every five years.

“In a district as large as ours, and with a building portfolio as old as ours, this is the investment it would take to repair and modernize each and every one of our current facilities and give our students the learning environment we know they deserve,” CEO Pedro Martinez wrote in the plan’s introduction.

The $3.1 billion in costs identified as the most urgent work includes repairs to windows, roofs, masonry, and heating and cooling systems. Another $5.5 billion would go toward repairs in the next six to 10 years, according to the facilities plan. Beyond that, the district wants money to build labs “to support STEM education,” accommodations for students with disabilities, new auditoriums, new fields for sports, and classrooms “outfitted” for career and technical education — programming that Martinez wants to expand, according to the plan.

The district released the plan during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting, which was held in the auditorium of Austin Career and College Academy High School on the West Side and drew at least 200 observers. The changed location was the board’s attempt to address the longstanding criticism that the meetings, which are typically held during the day downtown, are inaccessible for many families and teachers who work during the day. (The last meeting held outside of district headquarters was in 2019, according to a district spokesperson.)

District officials said this summer that they had budgeted $155 million for facilities projects this fiscal year — roughly $600 million less than the previous year — and planned to ask for more capital funding this year.

Martinez used the plan to make another plea for more funding and “partnerships” from the city, state, and federal government. Martinez plans to press the state for more money as a way to address costs once COVID relief dollars run out in 2024.

“This plan will take coalitions and partnerships with our fellow officials at the city, state, and federal levels,” he wrote in his introduction to the plan. “It will take administrators, teachers, parents, students, and advocates pushing for the changes we need.”

Martinez said the facilities plan is a “critical” early part of its process to create a five-year strategic plan for CPS. That plan — which will build on Martinez’s three-year blueprint released last year to help the district recover from the pandemic — will be finalized next summer.

The district will also launch an advisory team that would make recommendations to Martinez on how to narrow academic disparities of Black students compared to their peers. Those recommendations would also inform a “Black Student Success Plan” and be part of the strategic plan, according to CPS.

Some advocates, however, immediately rejected that idea Thursday night. They had previously pressed officials to create a Board of Education committee that focused on Black student achievement.

“To have a strategic plan is not enough to say, ‘Oh, we hear you,’” said Valerie Leonard, a longtime West Side education advocate and the co-founder of Illinois African Americans For Equitable Redistricting. “I want to know that you see me; I want to know there is some action. At what point will Black children be prioritized?”

District officials are asking for community feedback as they develop the strategic plan. The public meetings to gather that input will be on:

6-7:30 p.m. October 17 at Kelvyn Park High School, 4343 W. Wrightwood Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. October 18 at Westinghouse College Prep, 3223 W. Franklin Blvd.
10 a.m. - noon October 21, virtual meeting
6 - 7 p.m. October 23, Little Village high school campus, 3120 S. Kostner Ave.
6 - 7:30 p.m. Julian High School, 10330 S. Elizabeth St.

Those wishing to attend should register here.

The facilities plan includes information like enrollment trends to highlight the district’s needs. District officials offered more analysis Thursday of enrollment this year.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment grows by nearly 1,200

Preliminary data on the 20th day of school — when district officials tally up students for the year — indicated that enrollment, at just over 322,500 students, is essentially flat compared to last year, Chalkbeat reported last week. On Thursday, officials revealed that 323,291 students were enrolled, or nearly 1,200 more students than last year.

It’s the first time since 2011 that the district’s enrollment has not dipped. Since that year, enrollment declines were driven by several factors, including population changes and dipping birth rates. Last year’s decline cost CPS’ title as the nation’s third largest school district.

The small enrollment bump was due to fewer students leaving and more new students, including a 7% increase in preschool students, officials said. Additionally, the number of students living in temporary housing increased by 47%, which could be one sign of an increase in migrant students who are living in shelters or other temporary circumstances.

The district does not track students’ immigration status. But another sign that the population of newly enrolled migrant students is growing is the increasing number of English language learners. About 7,800 more English learners enrolled this year than last year, officials said. CPS typically enrolls an average of 3,000 new English learners a year.

English language learners now make up nearly a quarter of the district’s students, up from 22% last year, according to Chalkbeat’s analysis.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Homeless and suspended in California

2023-09-27T09:00:00+00:00

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates inequality.

Federal education law explicitly seeks to help homeless children and youth stay in school, in the hopes academic opportunity will allow them to break the cycle of housing instability.

Taking them out of class could worsen their chances of success.

But an analysis of data in California shows the state’s homeless students are suspended at higher rates than their peers.

California schools suspended more than 12,000 students who were identified as homeless in the 2021-2022 school year, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of the most recent data available. That means nearly 6% of all homeless students were suspended compared to roughly 3% of all other students.

And in about 20% of school districts across the state, homeless students were suspended at rates at least double the district baseline in recent school years — in some cases, far higher. The disparity persisted in some districts as overall suspension rates rebounded after school closures earlier in the pandemic.

The McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act — the federal law promising equal access to education for homeless students — requires schools to remove obstacles to those students’ education, whether by arranging transportation to school or waiving normally required paperwork.

There’s no ban on suspensions — but they’re hardly in keeping with the spirit of the law.

“The whole point of the McKinney-Vento Act was to ensure that students that are experiencing homelessness are in school,” said Lynda Thistle Elliott, a former state homeless education coordinator in New Hampshire. “It’s really important to look at in what instances do we actually remove students from school, which is the one thing they really, really need to make a difference.”

And the figures in California may only scratch the surface, since many homeless youth aren’t identified as such by their school system and struggle without federally required help.

Earl Edwards, an assistant professor at Boston College, said that when he interviewed students experiencing homelessness, he found that the threat of school discipline often discouraged them from telling teachers or other staff about their housing status.

“They would say, ‘I didn’t tell the school anything about what was going on, because every time I got to school, they was yelling at me for being late,’” he said. “[Discipline] actually deteriorates the trust that those kids have, when they’re being punished, a lot of times, for being impoverished.”

California educators said their school systems have already implemented disciplinary reforms that emphasize reconciling students with their classmates and teachers while preventing behaviors that could result in punishment. Still, many noted that nothing in state law mandates school officials to adjust how or whether to discipline a student based on their homeless status.

“There’s no requirement for educators currently to, per se, consider housing,” said Jennifer Kottke, who helps to train districts on homeless education law through the Los Angeles County Office of Education. But she added that educators ought to consult colleagues who work with homeless youth to weigh “what’s happening in the lives of the students” when deciding how to respond to behavior.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which tracks school discipline data nationwide, does not break it out by housing status.

But California, which has the third-highest rate of student homelessness in the country, is not the only state where available data suggests children and youth without stable housing are more likely to experience discipline, too.

Students experiencing homelessness in Washington were suspended and expelled at almost three times the rate of their housed peers, The Seattle Times reported in a 2022 article produced as part of a collaboration between the Center for Public Integrity and the Times, Street Sense Media, and WAMU/DCist. And studies in Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Texas and Washington found similar results.

Homeless students, high-stakes suspension

A student who qualifies under the U.S. Department of Education’s definition of homelessness — which includes children forced to share housing because they lost their own — may be suspended more frequently than their stably housed peers for a number of reasons.

Homeless students may change schools, disrupting opportunities to build meaningful relationships with adults or fellow students. They may miss school days, causing them to fall behind academically and socially. They may experience other trauma related to losing their housing, whether it be a sudden eviction or domestic violence.

Racial discrimination could also play a role. African American students in California are disproportionately suspended from schools — and are overrepresented among homeless students, too.

Accessibility is another potential factor. Students receiving services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act are both more likely to receive a suspension than peers and are more likely to experience homelessness.

As a result of those disparities, guidance under California law encourages educators to consider students’ disabilities before disciplining them.

Educators interviewed for this story said they cannot divert a homeless child to an alternative other than a suspension where the law requires one.

Still, nothing prevents schools from examining the broader picture of students’ lives in situations where suspension is not mandatory. Cynthia Rice, legal director at the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, said current California law already guides school administrators to consider contextual factors like a child’s home life before issuing a suspension.

“Whether or not you would suspend a kid for getting into a verbal altercation, you would look at whether or not the nature of that altercation had something to do with his or her homeless status,” said Rice, previously with California Rural Legal Assistance, a nonprofit law firm that has represented students in litigation challenging school discipline policies. “To just kind of separate those two things completely? That doesn’t make any sense.”

Rice said she would argue that school districts receiving McKinney-Vento funds must take into account the housing status of students when deciding whether and how to discipline them. But most school districts do not have a formal policy to that effect, she said.

Federal law recognizes that students experiencing homelessness often must overcome formidable obstacles to attending class. For example, children without stable housing may find it difficult to catch a ride to school. That’s why federal law guarantees them such transportation, including to the school they attended when they lost housing.

School discipline can jeopardize that right.

Thistle Elliott, who now works as an advocate for homeless youth, said some New Hampshire districts revoked students’ transportation temporarily because of behavioral issues.

“A district could say, ‘Well, this isn’t working out, because we’ve got behavior issues. Maybe the child or youth needs to attend school where they’re temporarily residing and not their school of origin,’” she said. “But remember that, in making those decisions about the best placement for attending school, it’s the placement that is in the child’s best interest, not in the school’s best interest.”

And that’s assuming educators know a child is without stable housing. A 2022 investigation by Public Integrity estimated that hundreds of thousands of children who are eligible for assistance because of their housing instability may go unidentified in schools around the country. That means schools may also suspend students without knowing they qualify as homeless under federal law.

A disconnect between homeless support staff and school discipline could be costly. Numerous researchers have linked school suspensions to long-term negative consequences.

One recent study found that students in schools with higher suspension rates were more likely to be arrested and incarcerated as adults. Another concluded that receiving more severe exclusionary discipline decreased the likelihood of graduation. Yet another found that just one in-school suspension predicted a significant risk of failing a standardized test.

Districts, data, and discipline

One immediate consequence of California’s emphasis on reforming school discipline is that district administrators know that anyone, including parents or the press, can see their suspension statistics online.

The state has put suspension rates on an easy-to-search website – and put schools on notice that high rates will trigger “differentiated assistance,” an accountability plan designed to improve that metric.

“Our suspension rates are high on the California School Dashboard – full transparency,” said Chuck Palmer, the senior director of student services and innovation at El Dorado Union High School District in Placerville, where homeless youth in recent years have been suspended at rates roughly four to six times those of students presumed to be housed. “We’re going to see ourselves in the red in a lot of our schools, and that’s not acceptable.”

But district administrators interviewed for this story were quick to argue their discipline data was incomplete or misleading, failing to capture subtleties in how many homeless students they suspend and why.

For example, Fresno Unified in California’s Central Valley suspended 109 homeless students in the 2021-2022 school year, a frequency twice the rate of suspension for all other students.

Caine Christensen, who was the district’s director of student support services when interviewed by Public Integrity this spring, said homeless students only appear to be disciplined disproportionately because the district has so few of them. (Christensen has since left the district.)

That assertion is not backed up by the district’s statistics. Public Integrity’s analysis found that Fresno’s tendency to suspend homeless students more than housed peers is not a fluke of small cohort size. A statistical test that takes into account the total number of homeless students showed a significant difference between suspension rates for housed and unhoused students in the 2021-2022 school year.

Other school administrators said that steps they took before resorting to suspension aren’t evident from top-line statistics, nor are their efforts to return children to the classroom quickly.

The Placer Union High School District northeast of Sacramento suspended 14% of the 112 homeless students enrolled in the 2021-2022 school year — almost three times the rate for all other students in the school system. Trent Wilson, who serves as the district’s executive director of educational services, noted that virtually all those suspensions were shortened, served at least partially on school property or preceded by suspension alternatives such as meetings with counselors.

Another district said relatively high suspension rates for homeless students reflect the rigor with which their staffers serve that population and record state-mandated data.

San Juan Unified in Sacramento County suspended homeless students for defiance-only behaviors — a broad category that covers actions that “disrupted school activities or otherwise willfully defied” a teacher or other school authority — at three times the rate for all other students in the 2021-2022 school year.

Dominic Covello, the district’s director of student support services, said San Juan Unified may appear to suspend homeless students more than other districts because personnel trained to follow federal law are identifying homeless students more effectively than other districts’ staff. He said the data also doesn’t capture a district-wide shift toward more in-school suspensions and fewer out-of-school suspensions. And he suggested that San Juan Unified is more faithful to the Education Code definition of willful defiance than other districts.

“I’ll just say that you can take any incident of defiance and disruption, and you can suspend that student for something else under the Ed Code,” he said.

The California Department of Education has acknowledged that some school district officials may seek to manipulate their discipline statistics so that rates of suspension and expulsion appear lower. In February, the state launched a tip line for those wishing to report school districts they suspect are masking how frequently students are disciplined.

Recognizing trauma, seeking alternatives

At Elk Grove Unified southeast of Sacramento, nearly 13% of homeless students were suspended in the 2021-2022 school year compared to about 4% of the remaining student body.

“You’re dealing with families who are unhoused — a level of trauma and instability in their lives that can be all-consuming,” said Tami Silvera, the district’s liaison to homeless students. “That has a trickle-down effect to their children, and then how their children are able to manage when their families are having such a difficult time.”

She said the district aims to reach students upstream of the disciplinary process as a result, whether by offering therapy or access to a small district food bank — and connecting students to similar resources outside of school.

At Placer Union, Wilson said school counselors attend regular meetings where staff discuss how to respond to student behavior and consider factors like housing.

“We’ve done, absolutely, things where we know that a kid’s living situation is such that we were not going to suspend at home and [instead we] do something entirely different,” Wilson said.

El Dorado Union’s Palmer also emphasized prevention. One of the district’s strategies: Get kids plugged into school activities like sports to strengthen their ties to adults on campus as well as fellow students, and make sure they know resources are available if money is a barrier. The district suspended 24 of 128 homeless students enrolled in the 2021-2022 school year.

At Hanford Joint Union High School District, 35 miles south of Fresno, an administrator pointed to logistical issues that may lead to suspensions of homeless students.

District Superintendent Victor Rosa said it’s possible some students without a stable home are suspended because they’re caught with prohibited items they bring to school, having no permanent home to store them.

“For some of these kids, especially if they’re truly homeless, they have all their stuff on them,” Rosa said, “so sometimes it’d be a situation where you got caught with a vape, but then you have a knife, or you have something else on you that then just lends itself to us not really having any alternative options” except to suspend.

In 2021-2022, the rate of suspension among the district’s 87 homeless students was more than twice the rate for other students.

Rosa said his goal is to change Hanford’s culture and its formal policies, moving away from immediate punishment and toward alternatives like a drug treatment course.

“Our board policies are still a little antiquated from a standpoint of ‘Two fights, you’re expelled. Two marijuana offenses, you’re expelled’ — the type of things where other districts have moved forward already to another means of correction,” he said in a November 2022 interview.

In Fresno, Christensen said the district employs clinical social workers assigned to foster and homeless students. Staff try to keep housing-unstable students in the school they currently attend to strengthen their relationships with peers and adults.

A union official said the district’s approach has several shortcomings.

Manuel Bonilla, the president of the Fresno Teachers Association, said Fresno officials speak of using “restorative practices” to prevent students from facing suspension, but fail to implement steps that would allow students to make amends and reestablish trust when they disobey school policy. After a teacher removes a student from class, he said, “there’s no accountability. What happens is, a student is back in your class 15-20 minutes later. That’s not restorative.”

Plus, teachers on the front lines may not be aware of a student’s housing status.

Bonilla said teachers are often left guessing about the circumstances driving disruptive behavior and forced to decide how best to respond by themselves.

“Eventually, [teachers] reach a breaking point, like, ‘Oh, my goodness, what am I gonna do?’ You’re just surviving at a certain point,” he said.

Tumani Heights, the Fresno Unified district liaison to homeless students, said teachers can access records showing a student’s housing status and can ask school social workers for information. In Fresno schools that have restorative practice counselors, she said, children who have been disciplined can attend a meeting to discuss support they need “as well as try to repair whatever harm was done.”

But one thing that would help homeless students the most might not be within school districts’ control: gaining stable housing.

“Especially when we’re looking at our families who are transient, a lot of them have evictions and different things that they’re facing,” Heights said. “Being able to help them and link them to stable housing sometimes can be a barrier.”

Reform, backlash, and what’s next

California won praise from school discipline reform advocates in 2014 when it became the first state to ban suspensions for children in kindergarten through third grade and to eliminate expulsions for misbehavior known as “willful defiance.”

The state later expanded those protections. California law now shields students up to fifth grade from willful defiance suspensions. There is a moratorium on that type of discipline for sixth through eighth graders through 2025.

Lawmakers in at least seven states are going the other direction, proposing stricter disciplinary measures that would make it easier for educators to remove students from class, according to reporting by Chalkbeat. Those measures are pitched as a response to student misbehavior after the trauma and disruption of the pandemic. Critics say the bills will do more harm than good.

Federal policy on discipline, meanwhile, has vacillated.

Obama-era guidance from 2014 urged schools to avoid zero-tolerance disciplinary policies. The Education Department under Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded those guidelines during the Trump administration, citing an interagency report that found the measures “likely had a strong, negative impact on school discipline and safety.” Research on the impacts of the Obama-era school discipline guidance is limited and broader evidence on the effects of reducing school suspensions is mixed.

The Biden administration in May released a document summarizing recent investigations into racial discrimination in student discipline, saying such discipline “forecloses opportunities for students, pushing them out of the classroom and diverting them from a path to success in school and beyond.”

But some observers said the document is light on specific policy guidance or even marks a retreat from prior efforts to reduce suspensions. The letter “does seem to signal a more conciliatory federal approach to discipline issues as public schools struggle to respond to heightened levels of violence and misbehavior,” wrote Boston College professor R. Shep Melnick in the journal Education Next.

In California, a law that went into effect in January requires schools to notify attorneys, social workers, and others when a foster child receives a suspension notice.

That can help county education officials detect patterns in discipline that might otherwise go overlooked.

Allyson Baptiste, a homeless youth advocate who works for the Kern County Superintendent of Schools, said the law incentivizes school administrators to explore alternatives before taking students out of class.

“We’re making sure that if you are suspending or expelling a foster youth, you better make sure that you really, truly followed the letter of the law, and that you did what you could have done to try to prevent the expulsion or suspension,” she said.

“My hope is that something like that is created at some point for homeless youth as well,” she added, noting that homeless students do not have social workers or attorneys to notify.

For now, Baptiste is urging the district administrators to go beyond the minimum requirements of state law and tell their district’s liaison to homeless students when a child they support is suspended. Some districts consult the county superintendent’s office in those cases, too, though it is not required.

But without a law for homeless children like the foster-student notification, Baptiste and her colleagues in the county office of education likely won’t learn about all suspensions until the state updates its online data portals.

Long after the school year ends — and too late to try to intervene.

Amy DiPierro is a data journalist at the Center for Public Integrity.

Journalist Ian Whitaker contributed to this article.

Chicago Public Schools shows off training program for students with disabilities — and considers opening more

2023-09-25T22:20:04+00:00

Mary Fahey Hughes, a member of Chicago’s Board of Education, went into mom mode Monday during a tour of her son’s former South Side school, which provides work and life skills training to older students with disabilities.

Standing to the side of a horticulture classroom at Southside Occupational Academy High School, Hughes smiled as she snapped photos of Aidan next to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was also on the tour. Aidan has come far from when he was diagnosed with autism as a child — and Hughes was unsure what his future would look like, she said.

She credits the Englewood school — from which Aidan graduated in June — with giving him the confidence to chat up the mayor and show off his alma mater.

“He just gained so much independence,” Hughes said in a hallway at Southside. “The thing I love about this place is there is so much respect for students where they’re at.”

Chicago Public Schools officials are considering expanding the model at Southside and a handful of other so-called specialty schools, which are meant to help students with more challenging disabilities transition into the real world, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said Monday.

Monday’s tour was the district’s opportunity to show off the model to Johnson and a slew of other city and district officials. If the district decides to grow the program, it would need to lobby the state for more funding, Martinez said.

“We’re having the conversation internally about, how do we look at these programs, build on their strengths and potentially expand them,” Martinez said.

The district has seven specialty schools that together enroll about 1,800 students with mild to moderate cognitive disabilities, said Sylvia Barragan, a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Three schools are early childhood programs that serve younger students with disabilities. The remaining four — including Southside — are for older students and have a focus on vocational and life skills.

Unlike traditional high schools, the district assigns students to these schools, Barragan said.

Some students with disabilities who look for work after graduation may benefit more from going through a specialty program first, Martinez said. He believes the need is enough to warrant doubling the number of specialty schools.

Other districts, such as New York City, have similar programs where students with disabilities learn vocational skills.

These programs, however, have drawn some criticism for segregating students with disabilities, instead of allowing students to build skills next to peers who don’t have a diagnosed disability.

Southside Principal Joshua Long has said his school model allows students to have the specialized attention they need.

At Southside, nearly 88% of students came from low-income families last year. Asked if schools like Southside limit students to low-paying jobs, Hughes said the programs hone skills that these young adults may otherwise miss out on, potentially leaving them stuck at home without work. Hughes noted that the schools serve students with a variety of strengths, and some graduates go on to community college.

“The problem is that a lot of jobs are low-paying, despite the amount of work that needs to get done,” Hughes said.

High school students can attend Vaughn Occupational High School and Northside Learning Center High School, both on the Northwest Side. Southside, in Englewood, and Ray Graham Training Center, in the South Loop, serve students who have met graduation requirements but still need “transition supports and services,” as determined by the team that creates their Individualized Education Program, according to the district. At these two schools, students are typically ages 18-22.

At Southside, where 360 students enrolled last year, students learn about various potential jobs and responsibilities they will need in the real world. Most students are exposed to every class, and some do internships, such as with the Museum of Science and Industry, said Kristen Dimas, a teacher at the school.

Long led the mayor and other officials through several different rooms that simulate a different career or life responsibility. Among the classrooms they saw were a horticulture class, a mock grocery store, a broadcast studio with a green screen, a garage where students learn to wash cars, and a café — complete with a bakery display case.

A group of students stopped by the horticulture room to ask if they had laundry. They would eventually go to the laundry room, where they learn how to wash clothes but also learn a mental checklist on basic hygiene.

“Smell your armpits. Do they smell fresh?” said a laminated list in the laundry room. “If not, put on deodorant.”

In a supply room, where a laminated document listed rules for folding a T-shirt, a student carefully practiced folding. Long gently asked her to get the mayor’s T-shirt size, but the student was shy. The mayor, who used to be a teacher, ultimately revealed he’s an extra large.

Mayor Brandon Johnson watches a student practice folding a T-shirt at Southside Occupational Academy High School in Englewood.

“But here’s the thing — you don’t have to tell everybody that,” he said to the student, who laughed and handed him a T-shirt.

The café and laundry classes are favorites of 18-year-old Josiah Hall, who enrolled at Southside in August. He especially enjoys spending time with the teachers, he said. He hopes to attend a four-year university, such as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The school works to help students understand the career options that are right for them and to reach those goals, Long said.

For Aidan, Hughes’ son, that path has led to a new transition program for adults age 18 and older at Daley College. He’s also taking EMT classes and dreams one day of being a firefighter like his father.

Correction: Sept. 26, 2023: A previous version of this story said the program at Daley College is for people age 22 and older. It is for people age 18 and older.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools enrollment is stable for first time in more than a decade

2023-09-20T02:26:40+00:00

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Enrollment in Chicago Public Schools is flat for the first time in more than a decade, according to preliminary data obtained by Chalkbeat.

New preliminary numbers for this school year show just over 322,500 students are registered at CPS schools. The data represents enrollment as of the end of the day Monday, the 20th day of the school year, when the district traditionally takes its official count. On the 20th day of last school year, 322,106 students were enrolled according to official data.

CPS enrollment has been in decline for 12 years, so this year’s shift is significant.

In the past decade, the district’s student body shrunk by 20%, with the district seeing multiple year-over-year declines of roughly 10,000 students. The dramatic contraction began after the 2011-12 school year, which was the last year CPS saw a bump in enrollment, from 402,681 to 404,151 students. Last year, Chicago lost its standing as the nation’s third largest district.

Enrollment now appears to be leveling off in Chicago. In the past year, the city has welcomed thousands of migrant families from the southern border and in July, a top mayoral aide suggested that newcomers were boosting enrollment in schools.

A district spokesperson, however, said enrollment changes are due to multiple reasons and cautioned against attributing the shifts to “any one group of students.”

“We will offer more analysis and context to our enrollment figures later this month,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez said in a statement. “We are honored and privileged to serve each and every student.”

It’s too early to tell if this is the start of a new trend, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

“If it’s just a one-time pause in the trends of declining enrollment, it might not have a big overall long-term effect, but it’s really just hard to say right now since we don’t know what will happen in the future,” Allensworth said.

Thinning enrollment was driven by factors such as dipping birth rates and other population changes. With the onset of the pandemic, districts across the country enrolled fewer students, with more than 33,000 students falling off Chicago’s rolls since the fall of 2020.

Shrinking schools have left CPS officials and mayors to contend with how to best fund classrooms, especially as student needs grew during the pandemic. Enrollment has long been a determining factor for how much state and federal money a district gets. Mayor Brandon Johnson has been an outspoken critic of tying enrollment to funding, but past mayors have funded schools within CPS based on how many kids they serve.

Even with fewer students, the district’s budget has grown to $9.4 billion. That’s roughly flat compared to last year’s budget, but up from a decade ago when it hovered around $6 billion. A new state funding formula and a wave of pandemic recovery money have helped offset enrollment declines. Though state money is increasing, the district has recently seen fewer dollars than expected due to lower enrollment and increased property wealth.

According to preliminary enrollment data analyzed by Chalkbeat, there are 5,767 more students learning English as a new language this school year than last year. That’s a sizable jump: CPS has historically enrolled an average of 3,000 new English learners annually, a district spokesperson said.

CPS officials said they do not track immigration status of students. They have pointed to the growth in English language learners as one sign of newcomers, but emphasized that not all English language learners are newcomers.

The district enrolls migrant students in three ways. First, like any student, migrant children can enroll directly at schools. They can also make an appointment at the city’s new welcome center housed inside Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School on the West Side.

Finally, enrollment teams are going to families’ homes, after receiving information from the city’s Department of Family and Support Services about those in need of help who can’t make it to the welcome center, said Karime Asaf, chief of the district’s Office of Language and Cultural Education.

Schools across the district have historically struggled to meet state regulations for providing proper support for English learners. When finding a school with the right program for English learners, officials try to stay within a two-mile radius of the child’s home, Asaf said.

Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, which provides extra support for kids and families at a handful of Southwest Side schools as part of the district’s sustainable community schools initiative, said they’ve noticed an increase in migrant families among the parents they serve who don’t have stable housing.

Last year, the organization placed a case manager part-time at a high school in Back of the Yards that needed extra help with parents as they enrolled more migrant students, said Sara Reschly, deputy director of the group’s community services division.

At Brighton Park Elementary School, case manager Lupe Fernandez said newcomer families currently have very basic needs, such as undergarments and help navigating the CTA. The school is planning to create a free “closet” where families can pick up things they need for free.

“If there are schools that have those strong community partnerships, you know, like that would be a place to start because then you can wrap services around the whole family,” Reschly said.

Asaf, with the district, said they are processing more school transfers among newcomers as those families find new homes or more permanent housing.

Preliminary data analyzed by Chalkbeat show this school year, nearly a quarter of Chicago Public Schools students are learning English as a new language — a figure that trumps other large districts. For example, 14% of students in New York City public schools, the nation’s largest district, were English learners last school year.

The preliminary data signals the continuation of another trend over the past decade: a decline in the share of students from low-income households. Preliminary data indicate that number is 67%, down from 73% last school year.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

At Denver’s Hallett Academy, principal says intentional hiring — and love — helped boost rating

2023-09-14T22:09:29+00:00

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To recruit students to Hallett Academy, Principal Dominique Jefferson said she tells the truth.

“Here at Hallett, we will love your child into learning,” Jefferson said, sitting in her quiet office on a recent Friday morning. “That is the commitment I make to you. And I keep my word.”

Jefferson’s commitment was clear as she moved through the hallways in a tutu, greeting students by name and opening her arms wide. At a weekly assembly in the gym, she offered a squeezy hug to each of the 289 children who wanted one before she led the entire school in a lesson about self-care, one of Hallett’s school-wide expectations.

The Friday before, she’d handed out green cupcakes — a celebration of the fact that for the first time in nearly a decade, Hallett earned the state’s highest school rating, signified by the color green, based on student progress on state tests taken this past spring.

“Life is hard for the children who look like me,” Jefferson said. “I am just committed to making sure that when they come to school every day that they experience freedom. And they are reminded of the power that they have.”

Jefferson is Black, as are 71% of Hallett students in kindergarten through fifth grade. That high proportion makes Hallett unique in Denver Public Schools, where just 14% of students are Black.

Every single student must choose to attend Hallett. That’s because the school is one of just a few Denver district-run schools without an enrollment boundary that directs neighborhood children there, a circumstance that several families said is both a blessing and a curse.

It’s a blessing because that intentionality is part of Hallett’s magic, they said. But it’s a curse because as lower birth rates and high housing costs drive down enrollment in DPS districtwide, small elementary schools like Hallett are at risk for closure.

Hallett has been closed before. In 2008, Hallett was one of eight DPS schools closed for low enrollment. The building, which is located in the historically Black neighborhood of Park Hill, reopened as the new home for a public magnet school, Knight Fundamental Academy.

Omar D. Blair, the first Black DPS school board president, helped start Knight in the early 1980s. It focused on “structured, stay-in-your-seat learning,” and posted high test scores, according to newspaper reports from the time. At Hallett, the school was renamed Hallett Fundamental Academy. As a magnet school, Hallett no longer had a boundary.

Hallett Academy Principal Dominique Jefferson, in the black tutu, raises her hand as a signal for students to quiet down during a schoolwide assembly.

Bringing healing and restoration

When Jefferson became principal of Hallett seven years ago, one of the first things she did was rebrand the school and remove “fundamental” from its name. A few years before, Hallett had been publicly accused of cheating on standardized tests. The former principal was put on leave while the state investigated Hallett’s high scores, which had earned the school a green rating.

The investigation turned up no wrongdoing; Hallett students and staff hadn’t cheated. But it wounded the community, Jefferson said. When she arrived, the school was rated red.

“I made it my responsibility to bring healing and restoration,” Jefferson said. “I remember them being slandered and never receiving a ‘sorry.’”

To accomplish her goal, Jefferson didn’t focus on curriculum or schedule changes, or stricter rules for teachers or students, as many schools do in their attempts to boost academic performance. Her strategy was much simpler.

“In short,” she said, “I hired well.”

When interviewing job candidates, Jefferson said she doesn’t require a certain background or set of skills. She listens. She waits to hear candidates say they believe all children can learn and achieve. That when children are at school, 100% of the responsibility for their success rests with their teachers, regardless of what’s going on at home. And that the candidates feel called to work at Hallett, just as Jefferson did, even if they can’t pinpoint why.

“I wait to hear potential team members say things like, ‘This may sound strange, but I just think I’m supposed to be here,’” Jefferson said.

That’s how kindergarten teacher Joy Wills felt when she visited Hallett at the end of last school year. Wills was a teacher in a neighboring district who knew Jefferson from years ago but had no intention of leaving her job. The visit — to a school with predominantly Black students in a historically Black neighborhood — changed her mind, Wills said.

“It was great to have that sense of home community that I haven’t had since I’ve been here in Denver,” said Wills, who is from Chicago.

Hallett’s staff is diverse, and Jefferson said that she’s proud that the adult population at Hallett mirrors the student population. “If you are a white boy student, there are teachers who are white and male that you will see at least once a week,” Jefferson said. “If you are a multiracial girl, you will see, ‘Here are three multiracial folks. They look just like you.’”

At the assembly Friday, the entire school played a game called “Just Like Me.”

“If you have your hair in braids, you would stand up,” Jefferson explained to the students and staff. “And you would say, ‘Just like me!’ On the count of three: One, two, three.”

“Just like me!” the students and staff said over and over again in response to questions about whether they were left-handed, an only child, or if summer was their favorite season.

Hallett Academy students hug Principal Dominique Jefferson in the hallway.

‘Children are loved here’

The cultural mirror is one of many aspects of Hallett that parents said they appreciate.

“They just do a lot to make every kid feel seen throughout the day,” said parent Amy Martinez, who described her family as multiracial: She is white, her husband is Mexican, and their first grade daughter Jaliyah is Black. “They instill that pride in the students.”

Parent Emily Nelson said that when she and her husband were looking for a school for their children, who are biracial, she was struck by how the staff at Hallett interacted with the students.

“That was probably the biggest thing, just to walk through the hallways and hear peace,” Nelson said. “Before looking at test scores or any of that, I looked at how the children were acting. The self-esteem was something I was looking for, of just fostering strong humans.”

Parents credit Jefferson with creating that atmosphere. Faith and advocacy are a big part of how she’s gotten there. When DPS tried to change Hallett’s start time this fall from 9 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. as part of a districtwide policy to have elementary schools start earlier and middle and high schools start later, Jefferson and the parents successfully pushed back.

Families come to Hallett from all over the metro area, driving up to 45 minutes from Lafayette to the north and Castle Rock to the south, Jefferson said. Starting school an hour and a half earlier would have made that journey untenable for many families.

When DPS predicted Hallett’s enrollment would dip to just 171 students in kindergarten through fifth grade this year, necessitating that Jefferson cut $697,000 — the equivalent of six and a half teachers — from the school’s budget, she decided to do something district staff told her was impossible: request DPS supplement her budget by the full $697,000.

But Superintendent Alex Marrero said yes, and then Hallett proved the predictions wrong: When school started, 225 students in kindergarten through fifth grade showed up. The school also has 64 preschool students, though preschool is funded separately.

As Jefferson sees it, the last barrier is Hallett’s lack of a boundary. Having a boundary could boost the school’s enrollment and ensure Hallett stays off any future school closure lists.

She’s holding out hope that DPS will restore the boundary, just as she had faith that Hallett would restore its green rating. After years of red ratings, the state’s lowest, and no rating last year because not enough Hallett students took the state standardized tests, Jefferson began telling everyone that Hallett would rocket to the top of the ratings chart this year.

Before third, fourth, and fifth graders took the state tests known as CMAS this past spring, Jefferson wrote each of them a personalized postcard.

“You are an extraordinary human, blooming in boldness, speaking your truth,” she wrote to Nelson’s daughter Gianna, who was in fourth grade last year. “CMAS starts soon. Show up and do your very best because you can and you are more than capable.”

The postcard is still hanging on the Nelsons’ fridge. While Nelson said test scores were never most important to her, the green rating is a public testament to the environment at Hallett.

Jefferson feels similarly.

“What I want folks to know is that children are loved here, that they are seen, that they are thriving, and we are a mystical, magical community in that whether or not we’ve been given what we need, we always have what we need,” she said.

“That’s what I want folks to know. And now they’re starting to know.”

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools is becoming less low-income. Here’s why that matters.

2023-09-06T22:09:52+00:00

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About six years ago, Lori Zaimi’s daughter told her mom that another longtime friend was leaving their elementary school in Edgewater on the North Side. The friend’s apartment building, she explained, had been sold to someone who was going to renovate it.

Zaimi recognized the familiar story of gentrification, when higher-income families move into a working class neighborhood and drive up property values. She’d seen property demolitions and pricey single family housing go up across Edgewater, the formerly working class neighborhood where she grew up.

She has also seen the impact in her daughter’s school, where Zaimi became principal in 2015. These days, she said, rent is “unaffordable for many of our families.”

A decade ago, nearly 73% of students at the school, Helen C. Peirce School of International Studies, came from low-income households, according to district data. Last school year, that figure was just over 34%.

Zaimi’s school is not alone. Ten years ago, 85% of Chicago Public Schools students came from low-income households. Now, that figure is 73% — a 12 percentage point drop — according to district data from the 2022-23 school year. Chicago Public Schools considers a student “economically disadvantaged” if their family’s income is within 185% of the federal poverty line. This year, that threshold is $55,500 or less for a family of four.

The drop, experts say, is driven by several factors, including gentrification, population and enrollment shifts, as well as a potential dissatisfaction with district schools.

Even though the number of students from low-income families has dropped, nearly three-quarters of the district’s student body is still considered “economically disadvantaged.” But if the downward trend continues, Chicago schools could continue to see fewer dollars than expected from the state, which funds districts in part by considering how many students from low-income families are enrolled.

For individual schools, such as Peirce, the decline has led to the loss of Title I money, federal dollars sent to schools with high shares of low-income students. But as the school has become more mixed-income, it has also become more racially diverse: Last school year, Peirce was 47% white and 32% Hispanic, compared to 17% white and 62% Hispanic 10 years ago.

As the district enrolls a smaller share of students from low-income households, Chicago’s schools continue to look different from how they did a decade ago, especially in rapidly changing neighborhoods. That shift raises questions about who schools are serving, how they should be resourced, and what the district — and the city — can do as it continues to lose students.

Low-income drops happening across Chicago, but steeper in some neighborhoods

Peirce is one of more than 200 schools that have seen their share of students from low-income families drop by more than the districtwide decline of 12 percentage points, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the district’s public school enrollment data from the 2022-23 school year.

The analysis of the past decade also found:

While overall enrollment has also fallen, it’s still outpaced by the loss of students from low-income families. The district enrolled 31% fewer students from low-income families than in 2013, as the district’s overall enrollment dipped by 20%.
When looking at neighborhoods, schools in Lincoln Square and Irving Park, on the North Side, and West Elsdon, on the Southwest Side, saw a median 20 percentage point drop or more in students from low-income households since 2013. That’s more than any other community area.
Nine of the top 10 schools that lost the largest shares of students from low-income households were located on the North Side, across gentrifying neighborhoods.
Half of them enrolled more children last school year than they did 10 years ago, bucking citywide trends.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, 73 schools saw increases in their share of students from low-income families. One-third are on the South and West sides — regions that have also lost the most residents between 1999 and 2020, according to a 2022 report from UIC.

CPS officials use two methods to find out which students are from low-income households. They automatically count students who receive certain government aid meant for low-income families, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. And they collect forms handed out at the start of the school year that ask families to report their income, which in the past helped the district determine students who qualified for free or reduced price lunch.

In 2014, CPS became eligible for the federal universal free meals program for districts that serve at least 40% students from low-income families. With less pressure on schools to collect the forms, which are not mandatory, some have suggested that the district may be collecting fewer of them, potentially skewing the data about low-income families.

A CPS spokesperson said it could be “one of several reasons” behind the drop in the district’s share of low-income students. However, district officials declined to share the rate at which forms have been returned over the past decade, instead asking Chalkbeat to file an open records request for that information.

There’s some evidence that those forms do not get filled out, particularly among new students, said Elaine Allensworth, who studies education policy and is Lewis-Sebring Director of the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

In the 2014-15 school year, 86% of preschoolers and 81% of kindergartners were listed as coming from low-income families, on par with children in other grades, district data show. The next school year, after the district became federally eligible for universal free lunch, around 62% of preschool and kindergarten students came from low-income families, while figures in older grades shifted just a couple percentage points from the previous year.

“That says to me new families that are coming into CPS are not signing up for free lunch,” Allensworth said, who added that population shifts are also a likely contributing factor.

The current data for early grades could also signal that CPS is likely to see its low-income population decline further. Last school year, nearly one-quarter of preschoolers and close to half of kindergarteners were from low-income families, compared to more than three-quarters of students in nearly all of the older grades.

Multiple principals told Chalkbeat they don’t believe missing paperwork is a big contributor — or that it is a factor at all — since their funding heavily relies on collecting those forms.

Another factor in the drop of low-income students could be a slight uptick in families seeking out private schools. Of Chicago’s low-income families, 10% were enrolled in private school in 2021 — an increase of 3 percentage points from 2019, according to an analysis of Census data by Jose Pacas, chief of data science and research at Kids First Chicago. That’s after little change since 2012, the last time there was a similar increase.

That coincides with the COVID pandemic when CPS switched to virtual learning, as well as the launch of Illinois’ tax credit scholarship program, which began in the 2018-19 school year. The program grants tax credits to people who fund scholarships for low-income students who want to attend private schools. That program is expected to sunset this year.

Some low-income parents, like Blaire Flowers, say they’re frustrated with the lack of good school options available in the neighborhoods they can afford to live in. Her daughter takes two buses to a charter high school miles away from their home in Austin on the West Side because Flowers wasn’t able to find a school she liked in their own neighborhood.

West Side parent Blaire Flowers, pictured in the center, is surrounded by four of her five children.

The mother of five also fears that CPS won’t provide her 4-year-old son who has autism with an adequate education. She’s already struggled to secure bus transportation for him this year, and she’s heard frustrations from parents of older students with disabilities who have had trouble securing services they’re entitled to.

If Flowers left Chicago, she’d follow in the footsteps of many friends and family members, some who found the city too expensive, she said.

“Everyone I know, that I was close to, has left the city,” Flowers said.

As neighborhoods gentrify, schools face stark choices

The demographic changes in Chicago Public Schools are largely a reflection of a changing city, experts said.

From 2010 to 2020, Chicago’s population grew by 2%. The median household income also grew by more than $20,000, according to U.S. Census estimates. But during that time, the school district saw enrollment decline by 60,000 students. In recent years, the city’s population has dipped by 3%, driven in part by an exodus of working class families.

“The share of working class families in Chicago is decreasing with time, as its industry and economy shifts toward white collar jobs that skew upper class, college educated,” said William Scarborough, the lead author of the UIC report, who is now an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Texas.

School closings, including the mass closures under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, may have also pushed some working-class families to leave the city if they lost a beloved neighborhood school, Scarborough added. More people left the majority Black census tracts that experienced those 2013 school closures versus similar areas that did not, according to a WBEZ/Chicago Sun-Times investigation.

As schools lost students, some principals doubled down on enrolling the kids who lived in their neighborhood.

That’s what happened at Alexander Hamilton Elementary School in Lake View on the North Side, which saw one of the biggest drops in the share of students from low-income families. In 2013, Hamilton enrolled nearly 40% of children from low-income households, according to district data. That dropped to roughly 9% last school year.

James Gray, who was the principal from 2009-17, inherited an enrollment crisis when he took over Hamilton, which had narrowly escaped closure. The school enrolled 243 students when he arrived – roughly half of the almost 500 it served in 1999. He set out on what he called a “guerrilla effort” to sign up more neighborhood children, offering tours of the school, hosting weekend events and open houses, and even venturing to the park to chat up parents of toddlers — or potential future students.

Gray was successful. By the time he left, enrollment had jumped back up to about 480 students. He noticed that his students were increasingly coming from wealthier families. They were also more white. But that’s who lived in the neighborhood.

In 2013, the school was 47% white, 12% Black, 30% Hispanic and 4% Asian. Last school year, 73% of students were white — on par with the racial makeup of Lake View — while just 3% were Black, just under 13% were Hispanic, and nearly 4% were Asian American. (Hamilton’s current principal did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Though the shifts at individual schools can be stark, the racial breakdown districtwide has only changed slightly. As of last school year, the district’s students were 4% Asian American, 11% white, 36% Black, and 46.5% Hispanic. Ten years ago, 3% were Asian American, 9% were white, 40.5% were Black, and close to 45% were Hispanic.

Research has shown that students in diverse schools, both socioeconomically and racially, perform better academically than schools that are not integrated.

At the same time, families who become the minority may not feel as included or even shut out from their schools. As more neighborhood white families enrolled at Hamilton, Gray said, he received an anonymous note that said he had “driven Black and brown families away.”

It also stung when former students would visit and notice improvements at the school — bankrolled, in part, by parent fundraising efforts — such as new hoops and backboards in the gym and a new science lab.

They would say some version of, “Oh Mr. Gray, I wish you could have done this while I was here,” he recalled.

“They realized their experience was different from the kindergarteners or first graders’ experience over time,” Gray said.

While the demographic shifts have led to more income and racial diversity at some schools, that diversity could be fleeting as gentrification continues to push longtime neighborhood families out.

John-Jairo Betancur, professor of urban planning and policy at UIC, said as property values “dramatically” increase, families — and their children — leave for other neighborhoods or the suburbs, causing enrollment in the local schools to drop. At the same time, birth rates are declining in Chicago and more households do not include children, Betancur noted.

That has happened in Logan Square, home to Lorenz Brentano Math & Science Academy elementary school.

Similar to Hamilton, Brentano was at risk of closure due to low enrollment in 2013. Principal Seth Lavin’s priority when he became principal in 2015 was to bring in more students. He, too, was successful through various efforts, giving more than 100 school tours his first year, he said.

Today, the school enrolls almost 700 children, a 62% increase from a decade ago. But the school looks different. Roughly 39% of students come from low-income households, a nearly 50 percentage point drop from 2013 when 88% did. The school has also become more diverse: Half of Brentano’s students are Hispanic, just over a third are white, and about 5% are Black. A decade ago, 85% of students were Hispanic, while 5% were white, and 4% were Black.

Lavin said he is worried that gentrification has already “pushed out a lot of families” and will continue to do so, leading to a “great sense of loss” for families who have long called Logan Square home, and believe Brentano is at the heart of their community.

“It’s heartbreaking that even as we grow, and there’s expansion and the programming and things we didn’t have before that we’re able to get because of enrollment growth, that we’re losing families that should have those things, too,” Lavin said.

‘We have to keep kids in neighborhoods’

Lavin can spot six buildings outside of Brentano that have been renovated and hiked up rent prices in the last several years. He said the city “desperately” needs affordable housing and a pathway to home ownership.

“If we want to keep kids in neighborhood schools, we have to keep kids in neighborhoods,” he said.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that building more affordable housing and boosting neighborhood schools are priorities for his administration. Specifically, the mayor wants to grow the district’s Sustainable Community Schools model, which provides extra money for wraparound support and programming.

Separately, Johnson’s vision for school funding would alleviate pressure on principals to enroll more children in order to have a well-resourced school, or even to avoid closure. Though in the past more students meant more funding, CPS officials have been shifting toward funding schools based on need, not just enrollment. But that comes as the district stares down financial challenges, including a fiscal cliff as COVID relief dollars are set to run out.

If the city does nothing to address issues such as affordable housing, Chicago will shift toward “a city that primarily serves elites,” said Scarborough, the author of the UIC report.

District officials have not yet researched the trend around losing students from low-income families, a spokesperson said.

But many principals have noticed these shifts for years.

Even with how her community has changed, Zaimi’s school has two counselors and more staff focused on academic intervention. Still, she wishes she had more funding to hire a parent resource coordinator who could work with families, as well as instructional coaches who could help new teachers or those using new strategies in the classroom.

After all, she emphasized, her students have a lot of needs, regardless of their income. And, last year, more than one-third — about 370 — came from low-income families. That’s larger than the enrollment of entire schools in Chicago.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools reverses policy that docked pay from teachers taking religious holidays

2023-08-31T18:42:54+00:00

Chicago Public Schools teachers will no longer be docked pay when taking a religious holiday.

The Board of Education approved the change last week, overturning a yearslong policy that deducted the cost of hiring a substitute from the teacher’s salary. Different types of substitutes are paid at different daily rates, ranging between $170 to $264, according to the teachers union contract.

“I have friends who couldn’t afford to take off for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur because they couldn’t afford to lose that money,” said Wendy Weingarten, a physical education teacher at Lasalle II Magnet School, who’s advocated for a change since 2016.

Teachers will still get three paid days off for religious holidays, such as the Jewish holy day Yom Kippur. But now, they must provide seven days advance notice before taking their holiday, instead of the previously required two days.

In a statement, district spokesperson Samantha Hart said the change was the result of feedback from teachers, school leaders, families, and others in the community.

“This is an important first step in ensuring that CPS’ holiday pay policy better reflects the values and diversity of the District and our staff,” Hart said.

During the board meeting, Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates said it was “shameful” that the policy had remained unchanged for so long.

Chicago’s public schools are off on seven federal holidays, including Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day and Memorial Day, according to the calendar.

Weingarten and Davis Gates noted that the district’s holiday schedule aligns with Christian holidays. While not denoted as an official holiday, Christmas is included in the district’s two-week winter break. Good Friday is typically included at the end of the weeklong spring break.

The district said the old religious holiday policy for teachers stretches back at least a decade. Weingarten, who has worked for CPS for 25 years, said she’s always been docked pay for taking off on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

Eliminating that requirement will cost the district about $250,000 a year, a spokesperson said.

Weingarten said she began formally pressing the board for a change in 2021, when the start of the school year clashed with Rosh Hashanah. But she didn’t receive an explanation for why the district didn’t want to change the policy.

The next year, Weingarten said she filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates employee discrimination. She does not know the status of that complaint. She mentioned it to district officials during a joint meeting this April with the teachers union and CPS over the school calendar, after getting pushback about changing the religious holiday policy.

A district spokesperson did not directly say whether the policy change was sparked by the federal complaint. However, they said the change was a “preliminary step in remediating the inequities related to pay,” and that the district will review other board rules “to ensure our policies reflect the values of our diverse workforce.”

Correction: Sept. 1, 2023: A previous version of this story said Wendy Weingarten began advocating for a policy change in 2014. She began advocating for the change in 2016.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

These Latina moms in Boulder are concerned about equity in advanced courses. The district says it’s listening and responding.

2023-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

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When Adriana Paola and her family arrived in Boulder in 2017, her son, who was starting high school, loved math.

Slowly, she saw her son’s passion for the subject fade and she realized his math class was too easy. So, she went with her son to the school counselor’s office and asked for him to be enrolled in a more advanced class.

She recalls the counselor questioning the request, saying that his class was “the class that Latinos go into.” It took going to the principal, before the request was approved. Once in the advanced math class, her son noticed he was one of just two Latino students.

Paola recalls the experience as a shock to her and her family.

“That was like our first red flag that there’s something wrong with the system,” she said. “We saw there was no equity.”

Efforts to enroll more Colorado students of color in advanced courses sometimes focus on encouraging students to see their own potential. The experiences of these Boulder moms show how prejudice from educators can shape the opportunities students have.

A recent report from a group of northeastern Colorado school districts that received a state grant to improve diversity in advanced courses similarly found that many teachers underestimated students’ abilities.

And getting access to advanced courses in high school can be important to getting into college, being prepared for it, and to letting students feel confident that they can succeed.

Parents point to systemic issues

In recent years, Paola has connected with other Hispanic moms whose children have gone through similar experiences at multiple high schools in the district.

Noemi Lastiri’s daughter walked into her advanced science class on the first day of school last year and the teacher asked her if she was in the wrong class. In another class, her daughter was assigned to sit next to the few Latino students, and she told her mom that when they raised their hands, they were never called on.

Things changed when another Latina classmate walked out of class, frustrated, and straight to the school office to complain.

Some moms say they’ve been told by teachers or school administrators that their children with autism or ADHD (attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder) who need support, can’t receive assistance in advanced classes. If parents believe their children need extra help, they have been told they could get private tutoring outside school or keep their children in general education classes.

Recently, they’ve been speaking out, and want the district to make changes.

“It’s not that some kids can and other students can’t,” Paola said. “Anybody could take these classes if someone truly motivated them and offered accommodations, if there was truly a structure of support, especially for those students who have had the least access to these classes.”

Boulder Valley School District officials say that, while they can’t respond to individual cases, they started hearing similar stories recently and are making changes.

“It’s absolutely heartbreaking. It’s absolutely unacceptable that students are having these experiences,” said Lora De La Cruz, deputy superintendent of academics for the Boulder district. “What we’re seeing here does not align with our values as a district, our values as a community.”

De La Cruz said that after hearing of the problems Latino students have had in accessing advanced classes, or support once they are enrolled, district leaders have rolled out new teacher training.

Boulder teachers usually have many training opportunities from which to choose, including classes on culturally responsive practices, but this fall was the first time all teachers were required to learn how to create inclusive classroom environments so all students feel they belong.

“As we get more focused in our work around what we are changing, where we’re evolving in our instruction in our building positive climate and culture within our classrooms and schools, we decided that we wanted to get even more focused on professional learning,” De La Cruz said.

Parents are glad the district is focusing on all teachers. Many worry that the problems their children have experienced start from a young age.

“Students are absorbing messages. Ever since they start kindergarten, they are receiving these messages about what they can and can’t do,” said parent Anna Segur. Her high school-age son is no longer interested in taking advanced classes, despite her encouragement, because of a previous bad experience. “It’s not a problem of intelligence.”

District’s strategic plan calls out a need for equity

De La Cruz points to the district’s existing strategic plan which calls for various efforts to close the large gaps in achievement among white students and students of color. Because of those goals, the district has a public website that tracks data on educational gaps. One of those is how many students are enrolled in advanced courses, combining figures for classes including honors, Advanced Placement, concurrent enrollment, and others. Concurrent enrollment courses give students college credit while counting toward high school graduation requirements.

Currently, the dashboard shows 14.7% of students enrolled in advanced courses are Hispanic, while they make up 20% of the entire district’s student population. Black students are also underrepresented while white and Asian students are overrepresented.

Additional data provided by the district shows that from 2021-22 to the 2022-23 school year, the percentage of Hispanic students in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes has actually decreased. But at the same time, many more Hispanic students took concurrent enrollment or other advanced classes, making up for the decline in AP and IB.

The number of students taking concurrent enrollment classes was 1,143 in 2022-23, almost double 2021-22 numbers. The percentage of Hispanic students participating in those classes increased from 10.9% to 11.8% in the last school year.

The district touts those improvements as early results from a new project focused on getting all students to have something to go along with their high school diploma. That could be college credit, workplace experience, industry certifications, or a seal of biliteracy.

“We know all of our students are brilliant and very capable and have the potential of reaching all of their goals,” said Bianca Gallegos, executive director of strategic partnerships for the Boulder Valley district. “We’re very excited to be able to open up paths and opportunities for all students with a specific focus on us ensuring that we’re opening up pathways, opportunities for Latinx, Hispanic Latino students, and students who qualify for free and reduced [price] lunch.”

The district wants to have more students participate this year in the state’s fifth year of high school program, called ASCENT, which allows students to earn an associate degree along with their diploma. Another project goal is that 35% of high school students take a concurrent enrollment class this year and that the demographics of those classes more closely mirror the district’s.

Lastiri said that she was happy to hear the district is making changes and striving to make things better. Her daughter, now a sophomore who changed high schools within the district, is so far having a better experience this school year.

She’s taking two advanced classes this semester.

Regarding the changes, she said, “it’s never too late.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

A Colorado grant aimed to increase access to advanced coursework. It is unclear how much it helped.

2023-08-30T15:55:00+00:00

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Something changed when Sierra High School started automatically enrolling more students in Advanced Placement courses.

The diverse high school in the Harrison district in Colorado Springs saw the demographics of advanced courses shift to better match the school. The students who were enrolled based on their past grades actually had higher average test scores on the AP exam than their classmates who had self-enrolled in the more rigorous courses.

And it changed how students saw themselves.

Principal Connor Beudoin said he’s heard students and parents say things like, “I didn’t know I was supposed to be in that class,” or “I didn’t think my kid would ever be in this class and here they are thriving.”

“It’s really shifting that mindset for students as far as capabilities,” Beudoin said.

Sierra in Colorado Springs is one of the recipients of a Colorado grant that started in 2019 and was designed to encourage more schools and districts to automatically enroll students in advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement courses, as a way to increase diversity and improve access. The grant also can be used for schools or districts to enroll more students in honors or other advanced-type courses, not just Advanced Placement.

Sierra received the grant in the second round of awards and used the money in the 2022-23 school year. At Sierra, the number of Advanced Placement courses offered increased from 15 to 17 with the grant, and included classes like chemistry, psychology, and computer science.

Beudoin said the work was about laying the foundation so the school could eventually enroll all students in pre-Advanced Placement courses. It involved training staff, identifying students who could automatically enroll in advanced courses, hosting tutoring sessions, and holding quarterly celebration dinners.

The outcomes at the Harrison high school are exactly what proponents of the grant wanted. But it’s unclear if the results were replicated at other participating schools across the state.

Colorado first handed out the grants in the 2019-20 school year just before the COVID pandemic started disrupting education. The next school year, the grant was paused, and though it resumed in the 2021-22 school year, the Colorado Department of Education didn’t require districts to report back on how they used the money or what changed for students. In some districts, staff turnover means no one is left who worked on the program, and at least one school that received money later closed.

Four schools and a school district received $187,659 total in the first year, two schools and two districts received $161,703.89 in the second round, and one school and four districts received funding in May to spend in the 2023-24 school year. To receive the grant, schools or districts just had to apply for the money. Only one applicant in the three rounds was turned down because of an incomplete application.

Whether the grant continues depends on legislators continuing to set aside the money for it.

Three schools in the Denver school district, George Washington, Kennedy, and Northfield, received the grant in the first year, and Kennedy received funding a second time, but district officials said the people who were involved in the original grant are “no longer with the district.” They said no one in the district could speak to that work.

Other districts that received funding did not respond to requests for comment.

This summer, schools that received funding in the second round were supposed to submit a report on how they used the money and its impact, but only one recipient has done so.

The Northeast Board of Cooperative Educational Services is a regional group consisting of 12 school districts. The group aimed to get all districts to adopt policies and guidelines for how to accelerate students who might be ready to move into advanced courses. Six of the 12 did. In the report, the Northeast BOCES identified some challenges for its rural schools, but said the grant enabled them to start planning for an expansion of advanced classes and to continue to build on that over the next few years.

One of the main challenges was being able to consistently offer advanced courses. Another challenge was teacher attitudes.

Teachers “believed students were not ready for accelerated instruction at the next grade level in spite of strong data because of their maturity, SEL [social emotional learning] needs, or having achievement at ’only’ the 88th percentile instead of 95th percentile,” their report states. “This truly highlights the need we have within our BOCES to do BOCES-wide professional development around advanced education and student needs. Again, this is a start of a conversation — but time will be needed to reiterate research-based information and offer that type of training.”

Alena Barczak, the state’s program and high school equivalency support administrator, said the participating BOCES schools increased the number of students in advanced courses and the percentage of students of color who participated.

She said Hispanic student representation in advanced classes at the BOCES schools went from 7% to 10% after receiving the grant. Students who were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch increased from 8% of the students in the courses to 20%. The Hispanic student population in the BOCES districts ranges from 6% to 53%.

“This is really the only grant program that we have that really focuses on access for students to advanced courses,” Barczak said. “It’s really key. I’ve been really happy to see the legislature keeps funding it. It’s the only program like it.”

Colorado Sen. Janet Buckner, an Aurora Democrat and a sponsor of the law to create the grants, said she’s heard that the program is working. “I have spoken to many students over the last couple of years who benefitted from this important program,” she said in an emailed statement.

Statewide, Colorado does not track the demographics of students enrolled in Advanced Placement courses. It used to track some data — but only for districts that volunteered the information. The state is preparing to include some advanced coursework data in school performance ratings, but it’s not ready yet.

The data they’re preparing to include in information-only reports in January won’t be broken out by student groups.

The College Board, the organization that runs the courses, does track enrollment demographics at the district level but refused to share the data publicly. They did share some statewide data.

Based on the demographics of students who took an Advanced Placement test in 2022, Black students in Colorado had higher participation compared to Black students nationally, but Hispanic students in Colorado had lower participation than their national counterparts. Colorado’s gap between the participation rate for white students and Hispanic students is larger than the national average.

The number of Latino students participating in AP nationally increased 83% from 2012 to 2022, according to the College Board reports. As a result, 16% of Latino students in grades 10, 11, and 12 participated in the advanced classes in 2022. In Colorado, just 13% of Latino students participated in AP in 2022.

According to data provided by Denver Public Schools, the three schools that received funding from the grant, had both Hispanic and Black students largely underrepresented in Advanced Placement courses at the time they received the grant in 2019-20. Black students represented 10% of students in AP classes in the three schools while Black students made up 15.8% of the population. Hispanic students made up 35.8% of their Advanced Placement students at the three Denver schools, while they made up more than 46% of all students in the schools.

Even at Sierra High School, after the grant money helped improve the representation of students taking Advanced Placement courses, Hispanic students remained slightly underrepresented.

In 2022-23, about 52.9% of students in the courses were Hispanic, up from 49.6% the year before. More than 54% of the school’s students identified as Hispanic. In the same year, Black student representation improved to 22.9%, compared to the 19.7% of students schoolwide who identify as Black.

Sierra principal Beudoin said the work will take time, but he said he hopes to eventually see that all students take rigorous coursework, and that it translates into higher academic achievement on state tests and other outcomes.

He said, “it was not just placing students in these classes and saying good luck.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

After first week of classes, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities waiting for bus routes

2023-08-29T17:50:44+00:00

A week into the new school year, hundreds of Chicago students with disabilities were still waiting to receive bus service, officials said.

A total of 733 students with disabilities, who are legally entitled to transportation under federal law, were waiting for bus service as of Monday, according to a spokesperson for Chicago Public Schools. Additionally, 10 students living in temporary housing, who are also legally entitled to transportation, had yet to be assigned to routes.

Lacking half of the drivers it needs, the district decided this year to limit bus transportation to students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. These students can alternatively choose to receive stipends of up to $500 a month to cover transportation costs, which families of close to 3,270 children have done, the district said. The district is continuing to receive new requests for transportation, a spokesperson said.

For the families who haven’t accepted the stipends, the lack of bus service can be challenging, especially for students with disabilities who have varying needs. Working parents may not have the flexibility to drive their kids to school, and taking public transportation may also not be feasible.

The district said its policy is to pair students with routes within two weeks of their request, and it appears to be making progress. As of Thursday last week, 1,045 students with disabilities were waiting for a seat on a bus — about 300 more than the number at the start of this week. The district has also shrunk travel times for most students with disabilities, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez announced at last week’s board meeting.

However, that progress is happening as the district said it would not provide bus service this year to other students, including those attending selective enrollment and magnet schools. Those students have instead been offered Ventra cards, including another card for a companion, such as a parent.

Parents of some of those children, who are also struggling to accommodate their children’s commutes, sharply criticized the decision during a Chicago Board of Education meeting last week.

In an interview with Chalkbeat, Board President Jianan Shi said he understands “the challenges that this has on families.” But he believes the district is doing better, citing the improvement in commute times for students with disabilities, as well as the district’s efforts to address the driver shortage by planning to boost pay.

“CPS has the responsibility to serve our students with special needs and our students experiencing homelessness, and I believe we are doing that,” Shi said.

During last week’s meeting, chief operating officer Charles Mayfield said that even as the district has employed marginally more drivers, it has received more transportation requests. As of Aug. 19, the district employed 678 bus drivers, 22 more than it did at roughly the same time last year, a spokesperson said. The district has received just over 1,000 more requests for transportation as of this August compared to last year.

This is at least the third year that Chicago Public Schools has struggled to provide bus transportation for all students who are typically eligible. Last year around this time, roughly 3,000 students with disabilities were on routes that were longer than an hour, while more than 1,800 had not been routed, officials said.

The Illinois State Board of Education has taken notice of these issues. In 2021, state officials placed the district on a corrective action plan to ensure it was providing bus service to all students with disabilities whose Individualized Education Programs called for it. One year later, the state instituted a second corrective action plan to shorten commutes for students with disabilities.

Chicago bureau chief Becky Vevea contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Is school integration a path to racial equality? Journalist Laura Meckler on her new book ‘Dream Town.’

2023-08-28T10:00:00+00:00

America’s approach to racial integration of schools can be divided into roughly three periods: hostility, embrace, and finally, indifference.

The period of embrace came in the late 1960s, more than a decade after Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional. Pressured by civil rights groups and empowered with new laws, the federal government began demanding school desegregation through executive action and court mandates. This worked to integrate schools, especially in the South, and improved the education of Black students.

But this period was fleeting. By 1974, a narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court limited courts’ ability to order integration across school district lines, which assured stratified schools in metropolitan areas, like Detroit, with a predominantly Black city surrounded by whiter suburbs.

And thus began the current period, which has been characterized by declining attention to whether students of different races and family incomes go to school together.

Not surprisingly, then, there remains a substantial degree of segregation across schools.

But what if the country had never given up on the goal of integrated schooling?

“Dream Town,” a new book by Washington Post education reporter Laura Meckler offers something of an answer, almost an alternate history. The book tells the story of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a town of roughly 30,000 outside of Cleveland. The schools there are unusual because officials voluntarily adopted a busing program in the 1970s to ensure racial balance across schools. Ever since, schools there have maintained a mix of Black and white students, as well as those from both low- and high-income families.

Meckler, who herself grew up and attended schools in Shaker Heights, asks what happens to a community that never gave up on integration. Her answer offers a tantalizing window into what might have been if the country as a whole had taken the same approach.

But contrary to the book’s title — which Meckler says is aspirational — the answer speaks to both the power of school integration and its limits.

The schools have had long-standing test score gaps between Black and white students. Throughout the district’s history, this fact has been a source of attention and frustration. It’s also contributed to classroom-level segregation, with fewer Black students in advanced courses.

More recently, Meckler reports, Shaker Heights has undertaken a number of efforts in the name of racial equity. Most significantly, it de-tracked advanced courses through ninth grade — in a bid to racially integrate the schools on the inside and not just the outside. Meckler documents the benefits and challenges from this move.

Chalkbeat spoke to Meckler over Zoom about the lessons from the Shaker Heights’ experience and her own takeaways from the book. “Is this a story about people who tried and failed because there is this yawning achievement gap? Or is this a story of something more optimistic and more hopeful?” she asks rhetorically at one point.

The interview had been edited for length and clarity.

What makes Shaker Heights schools worth writing a book about?

For decades, Shaker schools have been held up as an example of the success of school integration. This is a place that voluntarily bused students starting in the 1970s, absent a court order, absent really any external pressure, and has maintained that commitment ever since. So it’s worth asking how that has gone.

Why did Shaker Heights voluntarily integrate its schools in the seventies? And how did it go about doing so?

One person gets the lion’s share of the credit: the superintendent, Jack Lawson, who arrived in the mid-1960s. At first, the two junior highs were out of balance racially and then more significantly there was one elementary school that was overwhelmingly Black.

This was in the context of a conversation around school integration happening all over the country, the civil rights movement happening around the country. He decided this was the right thing to do. What followed was a community embrace of the plan and that was, in some ways, the even more remarkable thing.

His original idea was to essentially distribute the students who were at this predominantly Black school to the majority of white schools. The Black parents were not particularly happy about that. But what really got the plan changed was white parents who said, “This doesn’t seem right. This should be a two-way busing plan.” They volunteered to bus their own kids into the predominantly Black school. That ultimately changed the plan into a two-way busing plan.

How has Shaker’s approach to integration changed since then?

This program was popular in the beginning and then it started losing some of its luster and the numbers were going down. The district really worked hard to try to get volunteers into this program.

The time when it really changed was in 1987 when there was a conversation about facilities. They didn’t need nine elementary schools anymore. They ended up closing four of them and in the process redrawing the boundaries so that all of the schools were racially balanced and it was no longer dependent on volunteers. You went to the school that you were assigned to and some kids of both races were bused in order to make that happen.

This was again done voluntarily. But there was nervousness on the part of school leaders about whether they might be pressured into doing it. Even though they have this voluntary magnet program, many of the elementary schools were still out of balance. There was pressure from the state of Ohio to try to get schools better integrated. And there was a big court case unfolding right next door in the city of Cleveland, which ended with mandatory busing. There was nervousness that Shaker Heights would be pulled into the Cleveland case. They felt like they needed to do a better job with their own community in part to forestall that.

Is that approach what essentially still exists today?

That is exactly what exists today.

So has the Shaker Heights school experience worked? What have been some of the successes and challenges faced by the schools?

As I was reporting and writing this book it was constantly in my mind: What is my ultimate conclusion here? Is this a story about people who tried and failed because there is this yawning achievement gap? Or is this a story of something more optimistic and more hopeful?

Where I landed was that this is a hopeful story, because while they haven’t actually solved these problems — not by a long shot — this is a community of people who are still committed to trying to do this work. That is not nothing, given the pressures that communities everywhere face.

In most of America, wealthy kids are going to school with other wealthy kids and poor kids are going to school with other poor kids. Is it a shock that you end up with school districts where you are filled with kids from families with high needs who don’t have the same kind of resources, and that they struggle?

Can you describe the challenges of classroom-level segregation in Shaker Heights?

They have had upper-level classes dominated by white students and lower-level classes dominated by Black students, which has been the case for a very, very long time.

Some of the interventions have actually backfired. For instance, one of the things they did to try to get more Black kids into upper-level classes is create an open enrollment policy. You don’t need a recommendation to get into the upper-level classes. But the result was that more white kids got into the advanced level classes. More of the white parents were like, “Okay, I’m gonna take advantage of this.”

All this is a precursor to what happened in 2020, which was a pretty remarkable step: They decided — right in the middle of the pandemic — in the summer 2020, that they were going to de-track fifth through ninth grade.

So how’d it go?

Well, it was pretty rocky, certainly at the start. A lot of teachers felt that they hadn’t been prepared.

Keep in mind this was the fall of 2020: These were rough times for schools. They started remote, and then we ended up with these horrible hybrid situations where some kids were being taught in the room and other kids were being taught online. That takes an already practically impossible teaching situation and makes it even harder.

There were complaints from high-achieving students and their parents saying that they weren’t being challenged in the same way as they were before.

The place that school officials were mostly worried about — and I think for good reason — was middle school math. Essentially, you had everybody in honors eighth-grade Algebra I, regardless of whether you had had pre-algebra, regardless of whether you had done well in your math class the year before. That’s not easy.

On the flip side, I watched several classes and I saw a few moments where you can see what this is supposed to look like and where the potential is.

One example: I was in seventh-grade math class. It was near the end of the unit and the teacher asked all the students to write down on a piece of paper, every topic they could remember covering during that unit. There was this white girl, she’s writing on and on — a whole page. She ran out of space. Next to her was this Black boy who was basically writing nothing and just sort of staring out the window. She looked over at him and said, “Wow, you haven’t written anything.” That prompted him to start writing.

That’s a small thing. But it shows that being in a room with somebody else who is more focused on the assignment, and taking it seriously, that kind of positive peer pressure — maybe that made a small bit of difference for that kid in that moment.

Has Shaker Heights maintained de-tracking?

Yes.

Beyond the anecdotes, is there any data to support one way or another whether de-tracking has been successful in some measurable sense in Shaker Heights?

There is some data that is promising, and that school district officials are feeling optimistic about. Specifically, one of their key measurements is what percentage of students show competency in Algebra I in eighth grade. What they found is that the percent that are showing competency has risen both for all students and also for Black students.

I take it there has not been an external or academic evaluation of Shaker Heights attempt to de-track, right?

No.

Do you think white students in Shaker Heights have benefited from attending racially diverse schools?

Absolutely. I think that attending racially diverse schools, and schools that are diverse in other ways as well, is beneficial for all students. It’s important for all of us to be in schools that reflect the world that we live in. By being around people who are different than we are, it helps give us different perspectives — that includes different perspectives on the academic work we’re doing in a class discussing a novel or discussing something in history. Race is such a defining factor in this country that having people who are different races is enormously beneficial just from a purely academic point of view. But beyond that, from a social point of view, there’s enormous value to being with people who are different, who help us see the world in different ways. It also prepares us to live in the diverse world that we will all be launched into eventually.

It seems like there were instances, throughout Shaker Heights’ history, where integration or de-tracking was prioritized on racial justice terms by progressive officials, without paying particular attention to what Black families said they wanted. Is that fair?

One of the problems that the school district has is they don’t always know what Black families want, because the Black families tend to be the least engaged in terms of community feedback. That’s a challenge for school districts to really engage with your community. You need relationships with your community, on the day-in, day-out basis.

Anecdotally, from some of the interviews I did with Black families, I didn’t necessarily find a great desire for de-tracking, I found much more of a desire for the schools to address issues of implicit bias and low expectations.

And, it’s worth saying, the district has been trying to address issues of implicit bias too. But turning to your own experience growing up in Shaker Heights, how did that shape how you viewed the schools and how you reported this book?

Growing up in Shaker Heights, I was all in and on message about the Shaker successes in terms of race. I felt it was a special place. I knew from a very young age that the community had been committed to integration. I knew the story of the busing plan. I was proud of being a part of a community like that. The way I viewed it was: “The rest of you out there in America, you have problems with racism, but we’ve got this figured out.” This was somewhat of a naive view. I certainly was aware of the disproportionate racial makeup of the advanced classes that I was in. I wondered why that was, but I did not have a sophisticated understanding of it.

Reporting this book allowed me to look back on that from my own personal point of view. It allowed me to realize that, even if I was sitting there in a calculus class, not understanding what the teacher was saying, and feeling like I’m not smart, that’s fundamentally different from a Black student who is feeling the same way in that class, but also has this extra layer of “Oh, and people are going think I don’t belong in this class.” I never thought for a second that I didn’t belong in the classroom. Of course, I was in the advanced class — where else would I be?

Beyond my own personal experience, coming back it was very interesting to me to see how the community shifted over the last maybe 20 years from that glow of “We’ve got this figured out, and we’re an integration pioneer” to “Hey, is this really working, and are we really delivering this racial equity that we advertised?”

What do you think the lessons for the rest of the country are from Shaker Heights?

The first lesson is that if you want to do this kind of work — if you want to try to address these issues of racial and economic diversity — it takes an enormous amount of work and commitment. This is a year-in, year-out, decade-in, decade-out commitment that you’re signing up for because I don’t know if these issues will ever be “solved.” It’s something you have to continually work at.

The second thing I would say: One of my takeaways was that a lot of this comes back to a sense of belonging, and whether we are creating spaces where students and parents really feel like it is their place, their space. I think Shaker has done some of those things and could do more along those lines. That’s not something you can initiate a program — “Let’s have a belonging program.” Maybe you can, but it’s much deeper than that. It has to do with everything you do.

Am I right to read your title, “Dream Town,” as half earnest, half ironic?

I certainly don’t mean the title to imply that this is a place that is perfect. The title for me is meant to be almost like a verb. To dream — a place that is dreaming. So it’s a little less like a slap in the face kind of thing like, “Oh, you think this is a dream town?” Obviously, everyone can interpret it as they see fit, but in my mind it’s more of an aspiration.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

This Manhattan adult learning center is seeing a surge in African asylum seekers

2023-08-25T16:28:02+00:00

The case manager’s office at Harlem’s Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center was crowded, primarily with Senegalese men in their late 20s and 30s.

Fatou Kane, the school’s community coordinator, picked up the student sign-in sheet that February afternoon, and with the aid of Patrick Duff, the case manager, started triaging the students’ problems.

Some of the men had received a blue New York benefits card in the mail and had questions about it. They thought it was an immigration document. Another student wanted a school identification card. Others were there to register.

The men were among the 101,200 asylum seekers who have arrived in New York City since spring of 2022. They found their way to the adult learning center, mostly by word-of-mouth and community outreach by the school. But the center is straining to help them: They’re funded by headcount, not the vast and complicated needs of the newly arrived asylum seeking-students. The school is scrambling to provide them with clothing, child care, health insurance, and meals, while also helping them navigate the complicated immigration and legal system.

The center’s principal, Gloria Williams, has been pleading for more assistance. At a Harlem town hall on asylum seekers last year, she described how her school has seen a dramatic increase in recently arrived migrants. She described their desperation, and how students would fight over applesauce thrown out by the day care program the school hosted for students’ children.

“If you are feeding a 3-year-old, it’s what we will call ‘mooshie’ food, you know, stews and applesauce and all of that,” Williams said. “But my students, they eat it because they’re hungry, and they’re not in secure food situations.”

The Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center, which is part of the Education Department’s Alternative School District 79, provides free classes for students 21 years and older who don’t have a high school diploma.

There are eight adult learning centers across the five boroughs with numerous satellite sites. The school is one of two adult education centers in Manhattan and offers programs, such as English language classes, GED prep, and numerous technical certification courses. Mid Manhattan’s zone is 119th Street and above.

This year, Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center saw a 40% increase in student enrollment, jumping to nearly 3,700 students compared to about 2,600 the year before. The biggest registration jump was for English as a second language courses, according to enrollment data.

The school staff members have learned to be multilingual and multifaceted in their knowledge of NYC social services, becoming the bridge for thousands of new asylum seekers.

According to school officials, about a decade ago, 75% of the students were enrolled in the GED program and 25% were learning English as a new language. Since 2020, that demographic has flipped. Now three-quarters are in the program learning English as a new language. Students arrive at the school speaking only Wolof, French, Portuguese or their ethnic language.

Just as K-12 schools are seeing a surge of needs in schools serving asylum-seeking families, so are the city’s adult learning centers. But unlike K-12 schools, these centers aren’t getting additional support for their needier students.

The Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center photographed in New York City.

Adult learning centers like Mid-Manhattan are funded through the New York Employment Preparation Education program. The program retroactively reimburses school systems for services provided based on the number of hours staff spend with a student, but some school officials believe it underestimates the needs of the students.

The city’s Open Arms Project last school year sent an additional $26.7 million to K-12 public schools enrolling asylum-seeking students, according to a May report from the New York City Independent Budget Office. The report did not include schools in special districts like Mid-Manhattan Center’s. Education Department officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment about this.

The center’s employees also wish the city would extend some of the benefits that K-12 students receive, such as free lunch. Employees saw how much it helped this summer when the Education Department provided meals for students for six weeks, Duff said.

“It just never occurred to anyone here that there was that need,” Duff said.

The Education Department said free meals in the city’s K-12 public schools are paid for through federal funds for low-income children, and adult programs aren’t included. Department officials didn’t respond to questions about the summer meals.

To help, the school began giving students food two years ago. The students would come to class hungry, some had not eaten sometimes for days, but they were ashamed to admit their situation — especially the men, Duff said.

The initiative to feed students was started by the school’s principal, Duff said.

In the beginning, Williams paid for the food and toiletries with her own money, according to the center’s staff. Now the school partners with food pantries in Brooklyn and Manhattan. To ensure there is food every week for the students, the pantries alternate on a two-week schedule.

On Tuesdays, the school’s cafeteria is lined with blue bags. Inside is a small bag of rice, potatoes, fruits, juice, and some canned vegetables.

The school hands out an average 150 prepared bags of food each week. They set aside a few bags to be taken to their satellite locations. The school purchased about 100 two-way MetroCards to give to students when they send them to pantries for food.

Center sees needs in African migrant community

Roughly 43% of the school’s students identify as Black or African American, according to demographic data. The school continues to see an increase of African migrants.

There are five case managers, including Duff, and one other community coordinator in addition to Kane.

Kane, 40, is the go-to staffer for African students. She speaks English, French, and Wolof. She is often called upon by other case managers to be a translator.

Kane migrated from Senegal to the United States in 2018 with her two kids while pregnant with her third child. Her husband had been living in the U.S. and had become a citizen. She signed up for the Certified Nursing Assistant Program at the Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center and never left.

Williams, the school principal, noticed how Kane assisted other students and hired her as a community coordinator.

“I like to help them. Because I know they need help. It is difficult for them, because they don’t speak English,’’ Kane said about the students.

For Kane, each interaction feels like an urgent call for help.

“When you welcome them, and you say things like ‘Bonjour’ or ‘As-salamu alaykum’ they are so happy,” she said. “Their first reaction is, ‘Do you speak French? You speak Wolof? Oh my God, thank God.’”

Former students seek her out too. Daniel, 35, had been a student at the school, but stopped attending classes to focus on work. He immigrated from Senegal after winning a green card lottery. He had worked in IT security services at the airport in Dakar before coming to the U.S. In New York, he has a job as a CVS store associate restocking shelves and assisting customers, and he lamented his new station in the U.S.

“When you come here, it is like you never went to school. People treat you like you are not educated,” he said. (Daniel did not want his full name used for fear it might impact his immigration status.)

He came to the school to inquire how best to translate his master’s degree from Senegal to the American equivalent. Kane explained the process, but she cautioned him too.

“If you are patient, step-by-step you can reach your goal, first you learn English,” she said.

She understands the joy and easiness the students experience from interacting with her without the language barrier. That is why she emphasizes to students the importance of learning English above all else.

“First go to school and learn English, second follow the rules,” Kane told Daniel.

Students also get help with immigration hearings

Asylum-seeking students often arrive at the adult learning center with no form of identification. The only documents they carry are a collection of forms given to them by the U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, such as immigration court-ordered appearance dates.

The school staff uses these documents to register the students for classes and create their first official photo form of identification: a school ID.

They also help the students complete applications for the city’s free IDNYC, a local government-issued card for residents that can be used to access numerous city services regardless of immigration status.

Ousmane completes his English test by identifying what he sees in the image on the computer screen at the Mid-Manhattan Adult Learning Center in New York City.

One of those students was 42-year-old Ousmane. Ousmane fled Senegal after it was uncovered that he was gay. Homosexuality is illegal in Senegal, punishable up to five years of imprisonment. (Ousmane did not want his full name included because of fear it might impact his immigration case.)

“Je suis venu ici vivre mieux en paix. Je me sentais bien ici” Ousmane said in French.

I came here to live better in peace. I feel good here.

Ousmane’s first immigration court appointment was in February, and he did not have a lawyer, nor did he speak English. The school doesn’t directly provide legal services, but they scrambled to help him anyway.

Duff explained to Ousmane that at his first hearing, the goal is to tell the judge he needs an extension to get a lawyer.

Duff created two cue cards for Ousmane. The first, written with a sharpie in capital letters said “I SPEAK ONLY FRENCH/WOLOF” and on the second, “I need more time to process my application. This is my first time here.”

District 79 partnered with Sanctuary for Families, a New York City-based nonprofit, to provide free immigration legal consultation. The adult learning center coordinates with an immigration advocacy manager in helping students find legal immigration services.

Kane and Duff have seen migrants, many of them Africans, give all of their earnings to lawyers who promise to get them working permits and asylum status, but then don’t follow through. Other asylum-seeking students come to see case managers for help because their employer takes advantage of their immigration status by not paying them.

As a case manager, Duff said no day is ever the same and you don’t know what to expect.

“It’s like we’re all putting out fires. We started helping people with issues like this, even if we’re not trained to, you just gotta jump in and help,” he said.

Churchill Ndonwie is a freelance immigration reporter based in New York City. He reported this as a student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Colorado banned legacy admissions at its public colleges. Two years later, the impact is unclear.

2023-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling prohibiting race-conscious admissions has led to calls to ban another form of preference — legacy admissions — in pursuit of more inclusive campuses.

In 2021, Colorado became the first state to ban legacy admissions — the process of giving an admissions edge to children of alumni — at public universities. The goal was to help admit a more diverse student body.

At CU Boulder, the state’s flagship, admissions for students who are the first in their families to attend college increased in 2022, but slightly fewer students of color were admitted.

At Mines, the state’s most selective public college, the school admitted more students of color, about the same number of first-generation students, and fewer women in 2022 — but the school accepted and enrolled a more diverse class in 2023.

The trends at Mines and CU Boulder paint a fuzzy picture of whether banning legacy admissions elsewhere would increase campus diversity or provide more opportunity for students from marginalized backgrounds.

Complicating the picture: Colorado public universities changed several other policies at the same time, including making test scores such as the SAT and ACT exams optional and expanding recruitment in diverse communities. These changes have affected who applied, how many students were accepted, and who ended up on campus.

Admissions offices at the two universities said they want to show more commitment to diversifying their campuses in addition to banning legacy admissions. They report they’re facing more competition from other schools with lower tuition or more financial aid. They’re also battling perceptions about whether a campus is welcoming if there is not as much diversity among the students.

“Schools are more aggressive with what they’re doing,” said Lori Kester, Mines’ associate provost for enrollment management. “People think the writing’s on the wall as the population dwindles. People in higher ed are all going after the same students.”

Earlier this month, the Biden administration encouraged colleges and universities to review their admissions policies, including ending the use of legacy preferences. The Office of Civil Rights is investigating whether legacy preferences constitute discrimination. Democrats in Congress have also introduced legislation that would bar schools with legacy admissions from participating in federal financial aid.

Most of Colorado’s public colleges and universities admit the majority of students that apply. CU Boulder and Mines are more selective.

In 2022, CU Boulder applications were up in 2022 to about 54,000, or about 10,500 more applications than in 2020. The school accepted about 79% of students who applied that year.

About 77% of all students of color were accepted — a slight decrease from 81% in 2020. At the same time, first-generation acceptance rates increased two points to 73%.

At Mines, the state’s engineering school, overall applications were down in 2022 to about 11,360 applications, or a decrease of about 1,300 applications from 2020. The school accepted about 57% of all applicants — up from 55% in 2020.

Mines admitted 54% of students of color who applied, an increase of 3.4 points from 2020. First-generation students were accepted at a 40% rate, about the same as in 2020.

Women applicants — who are underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math fields — were accepted at a 65% rate in 2022, down two points from 2020.

In 2023, the school’s admissions rates increased among all students to 59%. Acceptance rates increased among students of color to 58%, first-generation students to 42.5%, and women to 66%.

The school also enrolled more students of color, first-generation students, and women.

Admissions numbers for CU Boulder in 2023 are not yet available.

More states considering a ban

No major research exists about the impact of banning legacy admissions, according to Thomas Harnisch, vice president for government relations at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association.

Several other state legislatures are considering a ban, including New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, he said. Private colleges, however, have pushed back because they see legacy admissions as a way to get students with ties to the university to apply, encourage donations, and build community, Harnisch said.

Colorado’s two premier private colleges, Colorado College and the University of Denver, still consider alumni relations in their admissions decisions.

After CU Boulder ended legacy preferences voluntarily, both CU Boulder and Mines supported legislation banning legacy preferences statewide.

But both schools’ administrators said it’s difficult to identify any one change as the catalyst for whether a student applies or is admitted.

In 2021, Mines and CU Boulder backed legislation to make the ACT and SAT optional in admissions. At the same time, school officials said they increased recruitment efforts and college-readiness programs.

In practice, neither Mines nor CU Boulder weighed legacy as the sole determining factor in admissions. Banning legacy preference sent more of a message to students, said Jennifer Ziegenfus, CU Boulder assistant vice chancellor for admissions.

Ziegenfus said student perception about legacy admissions was “that the student who doesn’t have a family member who went there is already starting from behind and they have to play catch up.”

‘Welcome as many students as possible into our community’

The test-optional change allowed Mines to signal to students that admissions offices want to know more about the whole student, not just a test, said Jen Gagne, interim executive director of admissions. She added that she wants students to know that even after the ban on race-conscious admissions, they should showcase who they are in personal essays.

“We want to make sure that students are challenging themselves in the classroom,” Gagne said. “But we want to know about you. We are looking for problem solvers for the future and that requires students from all backgrounds.”

CU Boulder has also started to recruit more in rural areas and hired Spanish recruiters to better reach students, Ziegenfus said.

The goal has been to spread the message that the state’s flagship institution is for all students in the state, and Spanish recruiters help not only students, but families see why CU Boulder is an option, she said. The school has also had more students in recent years take advantage of Colorado’s free college application days, when Colorado students can apply to colleges for free in October.

At Mines, leaders have wanted its student body to look more like the state’s demographics.

Mines has placed more focus on pre-college programs that prepare students for science, technology, engineering, and math courses, including a new program at Lakewood’s Alameda International Jr./Sr. High, Kester said.

The school is also working more closely with high school counselors to get students early math exposure because the school requires students to have a strong background in the subject. The school also has pushed for alternative pathways to get students to Mines, such as transfer options from the state’s community colleges.

Both schools also face increased competition from out-of-state schools, which has caused pressure on who does and doesn’t show up on campus. That’s especially an issue during a time when more students worry about the cost of college.

Wealthier schools can do more to subsidize a student’s education, Kester said, which has caused some to look elsewhere. Some out-of-state public schools have lower overall tuition rates even when compared to Colorado’s in-state tuition or can provide financial aid to offset costs.

Ziegenfus said she hopes students of color know they have a place despite the school not being able to consider race any longer. Mines did not. CU Boulder asked about race in admissions but it wasn’t a determining factor.

She added admissions officers are looking for ways to get them an acceptance letter.

“It is the goal of most institutions across the state to be able to welcome as many students as possible into our community,” Ziegenfus said. “Whatever efforts we can make to knock down these barriers — perceived or otherwise — it’s always going to be at the root of our mission.”

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Schools can host frank discussions of racism, but likely can’t create race-limited groups, feds say

2023-08-25T15:48:40+00:00

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Schools can facilitate frank discussions about race and racism, but likely cannot create groups that exclude people because of their race — even if done with the stated purpose of combating racism — according to new federal guidance.

The document, which the U.S. Department of Education issued Thursday, comes at a time when schools across the country are wrestling with how to manage various issues related to race — from how to help students write college admissions essays to how to facilitate discussions about race and racism in class.

The guidance, which was praised by a coalition of civil rights groups, is the Biden administration’s latest attempt to provide clarity on what is and isn’t allowed. It suggests that common practices employed by schools — curriculum that explores race, efforts to support specific groups experiencing racism — are permitted. But it also indicates that race-exclusive groups, an approach that has been employed in some schools, would trigger a civil rights investigation.

Written as a letter to school officials from the department’s Office for Civil Rights, the guidance does not hold the force of law. But it does suggest how the current administration would approach legal questions, and such guidance is often closely watched by school officials.

“This resource aims to assist our nation’s schools to fulfill Congress’ longstanding promise that no student experience discrimination based on race,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon in a statement.

The guidance explains what would and wouldn’t trigger a civil rights investigation under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin. The letter runs through a number of hypothetical examples to illustrate the department’s approach.

For instance, the document explains that a “program that requires all students to read a book about race discrimination and racial justice” would be perfectly fine. So would a requirement that all students take a Mexican American history course, the guidance says. That’s because neither instance singles out students because of their race.

On the other hand, the Office of Civil Rights would open an investigation into a school district if, after high-profile police shootings, officials created an assembly for “Black students in order to provide a forum for them to express their frustrations, fears, and concerns” — and excluded white students from the assembly.

The Department would also investigate a class where “students of different races read different materials based on their race … and participate in different discussion groups based on their race.” The investigation would proceed even if the instructor justified the practice by saying that “students often feel more comfortable reading works by authors of their own race.”

An investigation on its own does not indicate that such a practice is illegal. But school officials would have to justify such race-conscious policies by showing that they further a “compelling interest” and are “narrowly tailored.” This is an exacting standard that officials would have a hard time meeting, especially in light of Supreme Court precedent, including the recent ruling barring race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

Some school districts across the country have reportedly created “affinity” groups that are limited to students or teachers of certain races, which have in some cases triggered civil rights complaints by conservative groups. The guidance suggests that the Biden administration will look skeptically on such practices insofar as they limit participation to people of specific races.

Still, the guidance offers a number of other examples that would not run afoul of civil rights law.

A school could, for instance, support an Asian American students’ group that created an event that offered a “safe space for students to discuss hate incidents against Asian students” — so long as such an event does not exclude any student based on their race.

Similarly, a school could sponsor a “National Black Parents Involvement Day.” It could also host focus groups and support groups focusing on Black students and parents.

“While the groups and event expressly limit their agendas and focus to Black students and/or parents, none of the groups or events exclude or limit individuals’ participation based on race,” the guidance explains.

The letter, signed by Lhamon, notes “that many schools, colleges, and universities offer spaces and activities for students … in order to cultivate inclusive communities that feel welcoming to students from populations that have traditionally been underserved.” These efforts are allowed so long as they “are open to all students regardless of race,” Lhamon concludes.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago shortens bus routes for most students with disabilities, while others wait for service

2023-08-24T22:14:56+00:00

Just 47 Chicago Public Schools students with disabilities are on bus routes longer than an hour, an improvement over last year when that figure was roughly 3,000 and 365 children had trips lasting longer than 90 minutes, district officials said Thursday.

“We are working to get that number down to zero,” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez during Thursday’s Board of Education meeting.

The progress comes after more than 8,000 students who may have been eligible for bus service in the past, including those in selective and magnet schools, were told in late July they would not receive busing, but can instead receive free Ventra cards, including for one companion, such as a parent.

Martinez said again Thursday that the district was focused on providing busing to students who are legally entitled to it, such as students with disabilities and those in temporary housing.

CPS officials did not immediately share how many students are waiting to be routed as of Wednesday. As of the first day of school, 7,100 students were on bus routes, and another 3,100 chose the stipend, according to a Monday press release from CPS.

The district has blamed an ongoing nationwide bus driver shortage. In late July, officials said they had just half of the roughly 1,300 drivers they needed.

At Thursday’s meeting, some parents whose children could not get busing, including Patricia Rae Easley, blasted the district. Easley lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side and has a daughter enrolled at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park on the South Side — a route familiar to Mayor Brandon Johnson, who also lives in Austin and has a son enrolled at Kenwood.

“I’m trying to reach out to him,” Easley said. ”Maybe we can get in on their carpool.”

Charles Mayfield, the district’s chief operating officer, suggested CPS is not far from shortening long rides for students with disabilities. Three-quarters of those remaining 47 students who are on rides longer than an hour are on routes that are 61-66 minutes long, he said.

The district’s recent transportation struggles stretch back at least two years. In order to spur more hiring of bus drivers, Mayfield said the district has hosted several hiring fairs and is planning to work with bus companies they contract with to raise driver pay by $2.25. Currently driver pay ranges between $20-25 an hour.

The district was able to accommodate all students with disabilities or those living in temporary housing who requested transportation by the end of July, after extending the sign-up deadline twice, officials said at the time. But they could not guarantee immediate service for families who signed up after that.

Families can opt for stipends of up to $500 a month until they get routed. On Thursday, responding to criticism from some families, Mayfield described the transportation changes this year as a “tough decision that we all needed to make.”

Easley, the parent whose child attends Kenwood, said she pulled her daughter out of a private school so that she could attend the sought-after South Side school as a seventh grader this year.

She was caught off guard with CPS’s announcement three weeks ago that she wouldn’t get bus transportation. Easley said she has no use for the free Ventra card because she doesn’t feel public transit is safe enough for her daughter. That commute would involve two buses and a train, she said.

So she drives her daughter 40 minutes to Kenwood.

“It’s definitely not only an inconvenience but an expense,” Easley said. “An unexpected expense when we’re paying for gas that’s $4.57 a gallon.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

First day of school: Chicago Public Schools reopens under a new era of leadership

2023-08-21T21:28:02+00:00

Chicago Public Schools is officially back in session.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, the first Chicago mayor in recent history to send his children to public schools, kicked off the first day of classes by joining educators, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez, and Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates outside Beidler Elementary School on the West Side.

Under a sweltering sun at 8:30 a.m., Johnson greeted parents and children in front of a chorus of reporters and cameras, before ringing the ceremonial bell to start the school year.

The joint appearance with Davis Gates, Martinez, and other district and union officials was unsurprising for the union-friendly mayor who came up through the CTU’s ranks, but still a break from the past when the union and City Hall officials would visit schools separately.

Despite the district facing a number of challenges ahead, including unreliable bus transportation, ongoing enrollment shifts, and an influx of immigrant students, Johnson focused on a new era of collaboration at the city’s public schools.

Later in the morning, after touring two other campuses, Johnson visited Kenwood Academy, where his son is now a sophomore.

Speaking to a history class, he likened the first-day icebreakers the teacher was doing to what he’s doing as the city’s new mayor.

“I hope that you will lean into the collaborative approach that your teacher is taking, because that is what we’re doing as a city,” Johnson told the students. “We’re building relationships, we’re collaborating so that we can make collective decisions together that ultimately can help transform people’s lives.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, CTU President Stacy Davis Gates, and other city hall, school district, and union officials pose for a photo inside a classroom at Kenwood Academy on the South Side.

CPS claws back from enrollment losses

Visiting Beidler was a symbolic choice for the mayor. The school narrowly escaped closure about a decade ago and is now part of a program Johnson wishes to expand: the Sustainable Community Schools initiative, which aims to provide wraparound services and more programming for students and families.

But Beidler is among several other schools in the program that have lost at least a quarter of their enrollment since the initiative started.

The official enrollment count will not be known until after the 20th day of school in September. But last year, 80,000 fewer students were enrolled in Chicago Public Schools than there were a decade ago and it is now the nation’s fourth largest school district. Chicago’s declining enrollment predated the emergence of COVID-19, but continued during the pandemic.

And for many parents and kids arriving at Beidler Monday morning, more pressing thoughts — like wishing for a great year — were at the forefront. Dondneja Wilson hoped that her daughter, who started preschool, would “grow, and learn, and have fun.”

“She likes kids a lot, so I feel like that’s going to be her favorite part,” Wilson said.

Dondneja Wilson and her daughter pose for a picture outside of Beidler Elementary School.

Last year, data from the last day of school in June obtained by Chalkbeat showed little change in overall enrollment. However, the number of English learners grew by more than 5,000 students. District officials have pointed to the increase as an approximation of how many migrant students have arrived on buses in the past year.

Chicago is seeing an influx of newcomers, many of whom are seeking asylum, arriving by bus from the southern border in Texas.

The number of bilingual teachers in CPS has dipped since 2015, even as the English learner population has grown, according to a recent Chalkbeat analysis. While 6,900 teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements — more than ever before, according to the district — it’s unclear how many are actually assigned to teach bilingual education.

Educators and immigrant advocates have expressed concerns about whether schools can properly support these new students. Jianan Shi, president of the Board of Education, said the city’s new welcome center for migrant students on the West Side has enrolled “hundreds” of newcomer students. He’s requested more information on the system’s overall strategy for supporting newcomers.

A classroom door welcomes students in Spanish at Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park.

Outside Beidler, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez told reporters that “the biggest challenge” is ensuring that all newcomers are registered in school, but he said the district is well-positioned to serve them, noting that Chicago has one of the largest bilingual and dual language programs in the nation. About one-fifth of the city’s students are English language learners.

“The challenge we have right now is, again, keeping up with all the new asylum-seekers that are coming in, going to them, making sure that we’re able to register them, assess them,” Martinez said. “But we’re doing that as we speak now.”

Transportation woes continue on first day

Transportation woes that have plagued the district for the last few years also cropped up on the first day, as parents reported problems with bus routes and trips that took more than an hour.

Laurie Viets, a CPS parent of three children – two of whom have transportation written into an Individualized Education Program – said the district promised to have all transportation issues resolved by last Friday.

However, Viets found out on Friday that one of her children, a seventh grader, was not going to have transportation and another child, a first-year high school student, would have a long bus route. Today, it took 70 minutes to get to school; it’s normally a 12-minute car ride, Viets said.

Viets said she wished Chicago Public Schools would have given her more time to prepare for changes in the transportation plans. Now, she won’t have transportation for one of her children for up to two weeks and she is concerned that her other child will be on the bus without air conditioning in extreme heat until they shorten his route.

The district’s bus problems stem back to 2021, the first year back to full-time, in-person school after COVID forced CPS to close buildings in March 2020. Students were left waiting on the first day and beyond for buses that never showed. In emergency mode at that time, the district began offering $1,000 stipends for rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber. But the transportation troubles continued well into the school year.

Last year, some 365 students were waiting for bus routes the first week of school and in September, district officials said they were still working to reduce 90-minute rides for some students.

The district has blamed and continues to point to a nationwide bus driver shortage as causing the transportation troubles. It signed a $4 million contract with a longtime vendor and bus-routing software company to try to fix the issues.

But last month, on July 31, district officials announced that it would not be able to transport roughly 8,000 students on the first day of school. They offered $500 monthly stipends to families of CPS students with disabilities or those in temporary living situations. Both groups are legally entitled to transportation. The district said at the time that 3,000 students had chosen the stipend option.

Davis Gates called the transportation troubles “a disaster” and a “failure of privatization.” CPS contracts with private bus companies to provide students with transportation. Davis Gates said she would like to see the district bring busing “in-house” and experiment with having its own fleet of buses that could start small by covering field trips and sporting events and then grow.

“These are Band-Aid approaches. I have not seen anything transformative or revolutionary in this space. And again, three strikes you’re out,” she said. “This isn’t a good way to start the school year with respect to transportation.”

The district has previously increased pay rates for bus driver companies, and is hoping to do so again this year. Martinez said he hopes that will help fill the driver shortage.

Viets, the parent worrying about her children’s transportation, said more needs to be done.

“Next year, if CPS is going to start by Aug. 21, by Aug. 1 they should know what the routes are,” said Viets.

If Chicago finalizes plans the Friday before the start of school, she said, the district is “not giving parents any kind of respect at all. They’re not giving us an opportunity to make other plans when they mess up.”

As Viets noted, the extreme heat also adds to worries about long bus rides. The weather also raises concerns about conditions inside buildings once students arrive.

Air-conditioning, aging buildings prompt push for green schools

With temperatures expected to reach 100 degrees this week, Martinez said his team worked “around the clock” to ensure classrooms are equipped with air conditioning this week.

Martinez said every classroom has at least a window unit, a key union demand during the CTU’s 2012 strike that was implemented a couple of years later by then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Still, in some cases, hallways are not air-conditioned, Martinez said.

Johnson has touted “climate justice” as a key focus of his administration and reiterated Monday that includes schools.

“Having buildings that are retrofitted, as well as an economy that’s built around green technology, some of that is top of mind,” he said.

Davis Gates used this week’s weather forecast to illustrate climate change’s impact on the city and why it underscores the urgent need for a new CPS facilities master plan, which hasn’t been updated since 2018. She added that building greener schools will be one issue the union will bargain over ahead of its contract expiration in 2024.

The school calendar’s pre-Labor Day start is an issue Davis Gates would immediately bargain over, she said. The late August start date began in 2021, matching up with many suburban districts.

The union was not able to bargain over the school calendar in 2019, Davis Gates said. But the passage of a 2021 state law reinstating some of the CTU’s bargaining rights could allow the calendar to be back on the table. The union’s contract expires next June and it’s likely the district and new mayor will begin negotiations with the teachers this winter.

The larger issues that officials highlighted were likely not top of mind for many students, such as 5-year-old Pierre, who started kindergarten at Beidler.

Asked what he was most excited about this school year, Pierre replied, “Playing.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago’s first day of school is almost here. Here are five things we’re watching this year.

2023-08-18T20:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ estimated 320,000 students will head back to class Monday for a school year that will be marked by old issues — and some new concerns.

The district’s enrollment has been dwindling for at least a decade, raising questions about how to best fund schools still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Funding overall has become more complicated as the city’s federal COVID relief dollars dry up. Much of that money has been used for supporting existing and additional staff, many of them providing extra academic support for students.

As the district decides on how, if at all, to continue funding some of those programs, it must also contend with the continued enrollment of incoming immigrant students.

Here are five issues Chalkbeat Chicago will be watching this school year:

A fiscal cliff is approaching

This is the last full school year before Chicago must earmark how to spend what’s left of nearly $3 billion it received in COVID relief aid from the federal government. The deadline is September 2024.

That means the district will soon be staring down a financial hole that has been filled by that influx of federal funds since the pandemic.

The district spent a large share of pandemic relief money on staff salaries and benefits. The district also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on academic recovery efforts, including after-school programs, an in-house tutor corps, and more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

District officials have projected a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year, raising questions about how Chicago will sustain any programs and services supported by the federal dollars.

A financial analysis released under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted that CPS “will not have a funding source” to keep up these academic recovery and social-emotional learning efforts.

As the district’s financial picture is becoming more precarious, Mayor Brandon Johnson has shared lofty plans for schools, including expanding the Community Schools model — leaving complicated financial decisions ahead.

The district’s state funding could also be in jeopardy if it fails to comply with a state law requiring that at least two staffers at each school are trained on the use of student restraint and timeout. The deadline for that, coincidentally, is the first day of school.

Student academic needs persist

Three years since the onset of the COVID pandemic, there are still signs Chicago students need extra help in the classroom. Students appear to be improving in reading achievement, but they’re gaining less ground in math, according to recent state test scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

As the district’s COVID dollars fade out, questions remain about how district officials will approach academic recovery, and whether there will be efforts to keep any of the extra support CPS has funded with the federal dollars.

Some of those COVID dollars went toward the creation of a $135 million universal curriculum called Skyline, which has received mixed reviews. The district has pressed schools not yet using the curriculum to prove they’re using another high-quality option, so it’s possible more campuses will use Skyline this year.

Additionally, Illinois’ General Assembly passed a new law requiring the State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools, which is due by the end of January 2024.

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

Chicago’s public school enrollment has dipped by 9% since the pandemic began — a trend also seen among other big-city school districts — and is almost one-fifth smaller than it was a decade ago. Last year’s enrollment dip of 9,000 students was enough to push the district’s ranking from the country’s third largest public school system to the number 4 spot.

This year’s enrollment figures won’t be publicly released until later this fall.

As the district’s student body has thinned out, funding has grown — to $9.4 billion for the upcoming school year. Still, as the district has logged fewer students — including those from low-income families — CPS has in recent years received less state funding than it has projected. And with COVID aid running out, officials must grapple with how to fund schools serving a fraction of the kids they used to. (There is a citywide moratorium on school closures until 2025.)

Some advocacy and interest groups, including the teachers union, believe funding should be divorced from enrollment, in part because investing fewer dollars will only encourage more families to leave or to never enroll in public schools. Just over 40% of new budgets for schools this year was determined by student enrollment, with the rest accounting for other factors, such as student demographics.

Still, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has emphasized that the district can’t factor out enrollment.

“In a large school district where schools serve 40 students, 400 students, and even 4,000 students, enrollment simply has to play a role in our funding formula,” Martinez previously told reporters.

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

Last year, Texas officials began busing newly arrived migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. Since then, an estimated 12,000 migrants, many of whom are fleeing economic and political turmoil from South and Central American countries, have arrived in Chicago, While the district won’t say how many such students have enrolled, CPS saw roughly 5,400 new English learners last school year, Chalkbeat found.

Most Chicago schools have previously struggled with providing adequate language instruction for English learners. And with the city expecting more newcomers, educators and immigrant advocates recently told Chalkbeat that schools are not adequately resourced to serve these new students.

Some of these children may arrive without years of formal education and, if they’re learning English as a new language, are legally required to receive extra support.

The district’s number of bilingual teachers has dropped since 2015 even as the English learner population has grown, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. More teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements, which allows them to teach, but it’s unclear whether any of those educators are using those endorsements in the classroom.

District officials will be tasked with how to properly support these students. Officials had previously promised to release a formal plan by the first day of school but have not done so yet.

No district maps yet for the elected school board

As Chicago prepares to begin electing school board members next fall over the next two years, lawmakers have yet to approve maps that would designate which districts each board member would be elected from in the first round of elections. Ten members will be elected in November 2024, while the rest will be elected in November 2026, for a total of 21 members.

Illinois state lawmakers are in charge of approving those maps. In May, they extended their deadline to April 1, 2024, after concerns over whether the maps would match the makeup of the district’s student body or the city’s overall demographics.

Some observers cheered the extension. However, the delay presents new complications. If maps are not approved until April, the campaign season for the first set of districts would last just seven months, making it potentially challenging for candidates to prepare and for voters to have enough information ahead of Election Day.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Turmoil grips NYC schools office that administers parent-led board elections

2023-08-18T15:08:36+00:00

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Queens parent leader Sherée Gibson worried about turnout even before voting began in this spring’s elections for the city’s Community Education Councils, the 32 parent-led boards that oversee school zones and other policy issues.

New York City public school parents cast ballots through their children’s NYC Schools Accounts, but education officials say a third of the city’s roughly 900,000 students aren’t linked to accounts. Gibson, who worked on the last CEC election and was appointed by the Queens borough president to sit the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, said she voiced her concerns in numerous meetings and conversations.

She wasn’t the only one raising alarms. Staffers and parent leaders pleaded with the Education Department office that administers the elections — Family and Community Empowerment, known as FACE — to roll out publicity campaigns for account sign-ups and voter awareness in the fall ahead of voting, but a plan never got off the ground, according to interviews with parents and campaign workers. One incoming CEC member even stepped down in protest of the election results and lack of outreach, particularly to non-English-speaking and low-income families.

“The outreach wasn’t there,” said that prospective CEC member, Lilah Mejia.

Meanwhile, election workers were diverted from their duties while unanswered emails piled up in a CEC election inbox, according to several contracted workers.

In the end, only about 19,000 votes were cast across the five boroughs, according to Education Department figures. That’s about 2% of the city’s public school families. The city had a similar turnout last election, but that was earlier in the pandemic when many families may have been grappling with greater challenges.

Ultimately, candidates endorsed by the controversial Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE — which advocates rolling back recent policies that reduce screened school admissions — made big inroads, winning nearly 40% of the roughly 320 seats on the parent councils and capturing all of the seats up for election on the high school council, one of four citywide boards.

Chalkbeat interviewed more than 20 current and former FACE staffers, election campaign contractors, and parent leaders and reviewed numerous documents and emails that painted a picture of an office gripped by strife, with different factions leveling allegations of favoritism and discrimination. Several employees have filed complaints with various agencies against other staffers. Ultimately, observers say, the administration of the CEC elections may have suffered as a result.

“It was chaos,” said Tommy Sarkar, who worked as a contractor hired as a data analyst on the election.

The issues were so pervasive that two citywide parent groups called on the attorney general and city comptroller to audit FACE’s handling of the elections. According to a letter calling for the audit, the elections “were not carried out with fidelity, integrity, transparency and equity.”

Among other complaints was a lack of outreach to high schools, particularly in the Bronx where parents at only nine out of the borough’s 153 high schools voted for high school representatives on the Citywide Council on High Schools, according to the letter.

The attorney general’s office referred calls to the comptroller’s office, which said it was reviewing the groups’ complaints and assessing next steps.

The issues with the CEC elections have put a spotlight on turmoil within the office in charge of holding them. Some observers blame FACE’s leadership, including executive director Cristina Melendez, who took over in January 2022 after serving as a lead on the education transition team for Mayor Eric Adams. Others say that long-time staffers are causing turmoil, particularly those who have been through the turbulence of four executive directors in four years.

Chalkbeat asked the Education Department to comment on the strife inside FACE and the various complaints related to the office, but officials said they can’t comment on personnel issues or investigations. Melendez did not respond for comment.

Education officials said FACE has initiatives in place to help parents access their NYC Schools Account logins, including training school parent coordinators, giving incentives to districts with the highest number of sign-ups, and ensuring that Family Leadership Coordinators — who also help parent leaders and are based in each of the 45 superintendents’ offices — have tools and training to help parents.

“Family engagement is the cornerstone of a successful school system,” Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement. “We are committed to meeting families where they are and providing the support needed for our students to excel. The Office of Family and Community Empowerment was reorganized to increase transparency, rebuild trust, and deepen partnerships with all families.”

According to parents and staffers, the problems at FACE seem to run deep: The office has had little stability over the past several years, and with each new chancellor comes a new vision for what FACE should look like, causing tension among the staff and consternation among parents.

“Under every administration, you’ve seen different iterations of FACE,” said Brooklyn parent leader NeQuan McLean and president of Bedford-Stuyvesant’s CEC. “All of those administrations looked at parent leaders, parent engagement, and parent empowerment differently.”

He added: “FACE has always been the stepchild of the DOE. Parent engagement has never been a high priority.”

Parents and community members at 2016 Community Education Council meeting in Brooklyn’s District 13, which includes Brooklyn Heights, Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill.

Internal strife plagues Family and Community Empowerment office

Over the past few months, infighting at the office has resulted in multiple formal complaints from all sides to various city agencies.

In one case, an employee filed a complaint alleging emotional distress with the Education Department’s Office of Equal Opportunity, according to paperwork obtained by Chalkbeat. The staffer, who said in the complaint that he suffered a panic attack during a meeting with Melendez, alleged that he was being targeted because he previously filed a grievance with his union, DC 37, that promotions were being doled out in violation of civil service rules.

Another complaint was also filed with the Special Commissioner of Investigations office, or SCI, against Melendez alleging that staff members in the FACE office were promoted to jobs in violation of civil service rules, while other employees who had fallen out of favor were targeted and retaliated against, according to people who saw the complaint.

SCI officials said they were aware of the matter, but the office doesn’t confirm or deny the existence of any open or ongoing investigations.

Allies of Melendez, meanwhile, lodged complaints of their own. A parent who worked as a contractor on the election outreach teams filed a complaint against some of the long-time FACE staffers with the Office of Equal Opportunity, alleging mistreatment, according to the complaint shared with Chalkbeat. Another parent contractor also complained about the staffers in emails to Chancellor David Banks and other Education Department officials.

Bronx parent Ilka Rios wrote in a June email to Deputy Chancellor Kenita Lloyd, who oversees FACE, along with Melendez and several others that she was treated poorly by long-time staff. She also claimed that when schools from lower-income areas like the South Bronx’s District 7 asked for presentations before the elections, the consultants were told to send them PowerPoint presentations, but when more affluent areas like Bayside in Queens’ District 26 requested the same presentations, the consultants had to be available.

“They made so many mistakes with that election process,” Rios told Chalkbeat. “They left out so many schools in the Bronx.”

Parents elected to a citywide board representing high school parents were all PLACE members, and more than half of them have children at the city’s specialized high schools — elite schools that require a test for entry and have long been criticized for their low enrollment of Black and Latino students.

Gloria Corsino, another parent leader brought on to work on the elections, filed an Office of Equal Opportunity complaint after a staffer allegedly referred to Corsino “wearing an ankle bracelet” — Corsino doesn’t, and she felt that implied she was a criminal.

Meanwhile, Sarkar, another contractor on the campaign, said he felt discriminated against when a manager urged the consultants to work on Eid, a Muslim holiday that Sarkar celebrates.

“I do not like to come down on anyone but it’s crunch time,” the manager wrote in an email shared with Chalkbeat. Even though the manager wasn’t forcing him to work, Sarkar said it felt like “there would be some kind of repercussion” if he didn’t, so he put in a few hours on the holiday.

Family and Community Empowerment has seen many iterations over the years

The discord in the FACE office comes against the backdrop of concerns that the office — tasked with supporting parent leaders from PTAs on up to CECs — hasn’t been made a priority by education leaders. While parent engagement is one of schools Chancellor David Banks’ “four pillars,” undergirding his vision on “building trust” in city schools, it’s the only one that has no action items under it, many parent leaders pointed out.

The office was created when former Mayor Michael Bloomberg won control over the nation’s largest school system in 2002. At that time, it was called the Office for Family Engagement and Advocacy, and it aimed to improve the relationship between schools and parents.

During the de Blasio administration, the office’s approach shifted. The Education Department merged the office with another one focused on supporting parents in the city’s community school program, which receive wraparound services. FACE held training sessions for parents on such topics as fundraising, collaboration, and governance.

Melendez — who calls herself the “parent whisperer” — is shaking things up again. A former bilingual education teacher in the Bronx and assistant principal, Melendez earned a doctorate in education from the University of Pennsylvania in educational leadership. While there, she wrote a thesis entitled “Dominican parenting across generations” and examined difficulties the city had engaging Black and Latino parents. Prior to that, Melendez was a district supervisor for the city’s controversial renewal initiative aimed to turn around failing schools, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Melendez has been trying to reorganize the office from its borough-based structure into four categories: governance and policy; parent engagement and empowerment; community partnerships; and home-school partnerships, according to presentations shared with Chalkbeat. Some staffers say this is taking away focus from its role in supporting parent governance bodies, particularly the lower-level bodies like PTAs and school leadership teams, or SLTs. Some parent leaders say their governance-related questions have gone unanswered.

But others also welcome changes, hoping they could bring fresh ideas on how to meaningfully engage parents. Gibson, for instance, wants to see FACE involving parents on the city’s new literacy initiative mandating certain curriculums in elementary school. In the meantime, she’s been waiting a year to see the results of the office’s restructuring efforts.

“I think Cristina Melendez is under a lot of pressure to make things happen,” Gibson said. “And others want to stymie it.”

Some parents feel caught in the middle. Mejia, who served since last August as president of the CEC representing Manhattan’s Lower East Side and East Village, had been poised to start her new term as an appointment from the Manhattan borough president, but took her hat out of the ring.

In a conversation with Chalkbeat, Mejia said she was frustrated that FACE gave a NYC School Accounts sign-up presentation to CEC members — who already had accounts — but did not do such presentations more widely to all parents, particularly at schools with low voter participation. She complained about voting hurdles for non-English-speaking families and wondered why the Education Department didn’t distribute paper ballots through schools to help those with less tech literacy or access.

She also felt outraged that two PLACE-endorsed parents from Nest+M, a gifted and talented school located in her district that draws students from across the city, were elected to her CEC. Councils typically don’t include more than one parent from a school. The Education Department, however, upheld the outcome.

“FACE has turned me fully away,” the longtime parent activist said.

Julian Shen-Berro contributed.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC must slash class sizes under a new law. The neediest schools stand to benefit least.

2023-08-17T10:00:00+00:00

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When Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new law last year that would slash class sizes in New York City, praise came in from many quarters.

Teachers, along with their union, hailed the move as a victory that would improve classroom conditions and boost learning. Education activists said smaller class sizes would benefit the most vulnerable students. Lawmakers in Albany, who overwhelmingly passed the bill, rejoiced.

There are good reasons for this enthusiasm. Studies have found that students often learn more in smaller classes. Some research suggests that children from low-income families, who constitute a majority of New York City students, benefit the most. Plus, smaller classes are popular with parents and teachers alike.

But in recent months, some of the new law’s costs and tradeoffs have come into sharper focus. A Chalkbeat analysis shows that because the city’s highest-poverty schools already have smaller classes, they stand to benefit the least from the state’s class size cap. This aligns with recent reports from the New York City Department of Education, the city’s Independent Budget Office, and The Urban Institute.

Researchers who have studied class size say that these findings raise troubling equity concerns. The class size cap could mean that new resources will be funneled not to the schools that have the greatest needs or lowest test scores but to some of the city’s better-off schools.

The cap could exacerbate teacher shortages in high-poverty communities by creating a hiring spree that encourages more advantaged schools to poach teachers. And city officials, including Mayor Eric Adams, said they’ll be hard pressed to afford the class size mandate absent additional state money.

“Some of the less advantaged schools already have smaller class sizes — in that way, it’s not putting the additional money you have into the schools that probably need it the most,” said Susanna Loeb, a Stanford University researcher who has studied New York City schools.

Highest-needs schools already have smallest class sizes

The new cap dramatically reduces the number of students allowed in a single classroom.

Under the previous rules, classes were generally capped at 30 to 34 students, depending on the grade, with 25 students in kindergarten. Under the new law, classes may not exceed 20 students in kindergarten through third grade, 23 students for grades 4-8, and 25 students in high school. Physical education and classes involving “performing groups” are limited to 40 children.

But the reductions in class size will not be shared evenly once the law is fully implemented over five years.

At the city’s highest poverty schools, only 38% of classrooms are larger than the new caps allow, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data from last school year. By contrast, at low- to mid-poverty schools, 69% of classrooms are above the caps.

To bring schools into compliance with the law, which will take full effect in 2028, the city will need thousands of new teachers at an annual cost of $1.3 billion to $1.9 billion, according to projections from the Education Department and the city’s Independent Budget Office. That’s at least 4% of the department’s operating budget.

At overcrowded schools that need more classroom space to reduce class sizes, the School Construction Authority estimated the costs could run tens of billions of dollars.

But since the state has not earmarked new funding attached to the class size law, it remains unclear how the city will pay for it. Experts warn of difficult tradeoffs. Additional dollars spent reducing class sizes on lower-need campuses could instead be directed to the city’s highest-need schools — to, say, hire more tutors to combat pandemic learning loss or additional social workers to address student mental health challenges.

In Brooklyn’s District 16, which includes much of Bedford-Stuyvesant and where the vast majority of students come from low-income families, 36% of classrooms were above the new class size caps. That’s the second-lowest rate of the city’s 32 districts.

NeQuan McLean, the president of District 16’s local parent council, said he wasn’t aware that higher-need districts are less likely to benefit from the new law, noting there wasn’t much public debate of that issue when the law passed.

“I would definitely have a problem with resources being pulled from low-income districts to go to high-income districts when investments need to be made in underserved districts,” McLean said. “We can’t use the method of robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

He said additional investments in his district are sorely needed, from upgraded gyms and bathrooms, to additional wraparound services in schools to combat food insecurity. He also wants more on-campus health services and dental clinics, as students often miss school to go to those appointments.

There will be tradeoffs at lower-need schools, too, as school leaders may be required to direct more resources to staff smaller classes, potentially forcing cuts to other programs. City officials may also have to cap enrollment at some schools.

“Maybe principals have decided they want slightly larger class sizes [in exchange] for a math coach,” said Matthew Chingos, an Urban Institute researcher who recently published a report about the impact of the class size caps and serves on a city advisory group on the issue. “It may force some tradeoffs that people didn’t fully appreciate.”

Supporters point to advantages of small classes

The law’s backers contend that small classes are a basic necessity with broad benefits to students.

Jake Jacobs, a Bronx art teacher, said it is difficult to offer individual support when his classes exceed 30 students. “Those classes were nightmares because of it,” he said. Despite some of the tradeoffs of the law, “as a teacher I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.”

As for concerns about equity, supporters point out that most students in New York City are from low-income families, so much of the class size cuts will still redound to their benefit.

“The law actually lowers class sizes for a higher number of high-need kids compared to lower-need kids,” said Christina Collins, the director of education policy at the United Federation of Teachers, which pushed for the new caps.

Collins and other supporters emphasize that the law also requires the Education Department to prioritize higher-need campuses first as the new caps phase in. (However, experts note this doesn’t address the key equity issue, since all schools regardless of poverty level will be required to meet the new class size limits within five years.)

Asked about concerns that the law would still require the city to funnel resources to schools with fewer high-need students, Collins pointed to education programs that give students access to the same resources regardless of family income, such prekindergarten or free meals.

Proponents also contend that there is funding available to cut class sizes, pointing to recent boosts in state education dollars that stem from a decades-old lawsuit that argued New York’s schools were not properly funded.

“The courts mandated that every kid get a sound, basic education. And their mandate cannot be achieved when kids are still in excessively large class sizes,” said state Sen. John Liu, who sponsored the class size legislation.

The city’s Education Department may use increases in state funding to reduce class sizes. But officials note the department has already committed the money to other priorities, including for the first time fully funding the city’s own school budget formula, which channels more resources to schools that enroll higher-need children.

Mayor Adams has warned that complying with the class size mandate will restrict city officials from spending education dollars as they see fit.

“Clearly we should use taxpayers’ dollars to focus on equity — not equality, equity,” Adams said at a press conference last September. “There are certain school districts that need more,” he added. “We’re taking away the chancellor’s ability to focus on where the problem is, and the governor made the decision to sign it.”

A spokesperson for Gov. Hochul did not respond to questions about the equity implications of the law.

Unintended consequences loom large

Hiring thousands of new teachers in New York City could prove a particular challenge, especially at a moment of rising teacher turnover. A hiring spree might force schools to bring on less skilled or less qualified educators, which could limit the gains from smaller classes.

In one study of New York City, Michael Gilraine, an economist at New York University, found that when schools reduced class size without having to hire a new teacher, there were large improvements in student test scores. But when they had to add a teacher to get class sizes down, the benefits from smaller classes were swamped by a decline in teacher quality.

“The results indicate that smaller class sizes do improve student achievement,” wrote Gilraine. “Policy makers and school administrators need to be mindful, however, that these gains can be offset by changes in teacher quality.”

Research in California has highlighted a similar tradeoff, though it suggests that the problem dissipates over the longer term.

Higher-need schools typically bear the brunt of teacher shortages. For instance, an older study in New York City found that better teachers were more likely to migrate from lower-performing schools to high-performing ones, a concern echoed in the city’s working group on class size reduction.

One leader of a Manhattan middle school, where most classes already met the new class size caps last school year, said he’s concerned that higher-performing schools in the district may poach quality educators.

“How many teachers from the lower-performing schools are going to go [to higher-performing schools] because they can get paid the same amount and have an easier life?” said the principal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak frankly about the class size cap’s impact on their campus. “That’s my bigger worry honestly.”

New York City does not offer additional pay to teachers working in higher-needs schools to potentially counteract this effect.

“It’s hard to recruit teachers right now” and high-poverty schools typically have a harder time doing so, said Loeb, the Stanford professor. “Adding class size reduction may in fact escalate that.”

Collins, of the UFT, says there should be efforts to expand the pipeline of new teachers to meet rising demand.

For now, officials don’t have clear answers to these challenges and much remains uncertain about how the city will implement the new law. The Education Department has convened a task force that includes advocates and policy experts to gather input.

The law also includes a handful of exemptions to the class size mandate, including for schools that are overenrolled, would face significant economic hardship to comply, or or have insufficient teachers in subjects that are difficult to staff. The Education Department and the unions representing teachers and school administrators must all agree to those waivers. If they don’t, the decision falls to an arbitrator.

“It’s not clear how those decisions are going to be made — and school communities that wind up losing valuable dollars are going to be up in arms,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied New York City schools.“I would like that process to be as open and transparent as possible.”

Regardless of the challenges, Liu, the state senator who championed the law, remains sanguine. “I don’t think anybody will say 10 years from now that, ‘Oh, this was the wrong thing to do,’” he said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

El personal docente de Newark no siempre coincide con la diversidad de la población estudiantil

2023-08-16T10:30:00+00:00

Read in English.

Cuando los padres de Melissa De Almeida emigraron a Newark en la década de 1990 desde Brasil, navegar el sistema de las escuelas públicas para sus dos hijas fue una de sus batallas más difíciles.

La hermana mayor de De Almeida luchó por aprender inglés en un sistema donde pocos maestros hablaban su portugués nativo. Cuando Melissa se inscribió unos años más tarde, se encontró con maestros que podían comunicarse con su familia, pero era desigual.

Sin embargo, había una luz de esperanza: la maestra de segundo grado de De Almeida en Oliver Street School. De Almeida recuerda con cariño que su maestra hacía malvaviscos y limonada fresca para su clase, pero la gran diferencia era que podía hablar con los padres de De Almeida en portugués.

Ahora, la estudiante de segundo año de 19 años de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair quiere ser maestra bilingüe y ayudar a familias como la suya en Newark, su ciudad natal, donde aproximadamente el 9% de los estudiantes hablan su idioma nativo.

“Necesito ser el cambio que necesitaba mi hermana”, dijo De Almeida, quien se graduó de East Side High School el año pasado.

En Newark y otras ciudades de Nueva Jersey, el personal docente y el liderazgo escolar no siempre reflejan la diversidad de la población estudiantil. Los datos demográficos muestran que los estudiantes afroamericanos y latinos representan alrededor del 90% de la población estudiantil total de Newark, mientras que los maestros de esos orígenes representan poco más de la mitad del personal docente.

Aproximadamente el 20% de las escuelas de Newark tienen una mayoría de maestros blancos. Otras ciudades de Nueva Jersey tienen proporciones aún más bajas de maestros de diversos orígenes raciales y étnicos.

Una mirada cercana revela que los estudiantes latinos, que aumentan en número anualmente en el distrito, están claramente subrepresentados en el personal docente del distrito, según un análisis de Chalkbeat de los datos demográficos escolares proporcionados por el estado de 2021-22.

Los maestros blancos constituyen la mayoría del personal docente en una de cada cinco escuelas del distrito, y los maestros negros son la mayoría del personal docente en poco más de una de cada cuatro escuelas. Pero ninguna escuela en el distrito tiene un personal docente mayoritariamente hispano o latino, a pesar de que aproximadamente la mitad de todas las escuelas del distrito tienen una mayoría de estudiantes latinos.

Una de las escuelas secundarias del distrito tiene una población estudiantil latina de más del 61%, pero no tiene maestros hispanos ni latinos. Otras tres escuelas tampoco tienen maestros que se identifiquen como hispanos o latinos.

De manera similar, la población de niños latinos del estado se ha expandido, aproximadamente un 25%, desde 2010, pero un análisis de NJ Advance Media encontró que aproximadamente el 30% de todas las escuelas no tienen ningún maestro hispano. Además, los distritos han visto una creciente población de estudiantes identificados como aprendices del idioma inglés al mismo tiempo que enfrentan una escasez de maestros bilingües.

Muchos expertos dicen que los fallos de los tribunales relacionados con la desagregación, que una y otra vez no lograron integrar por completo a los cuerpos estudiantiles y al personal, han contribuido a la cantidad desproporcionada de maestros blancos.

Sin embargo, numerosos estudios muestran que un personal docente diverso, especialmente uno que represente a la comunidad escolar, puede fomentar lazos más fuertes entre maestros y estudiantes, relaciones más sólidas entre maestros y familias, y lecciones que responden mejor a la cultura: los beneficios que De Almeida experimentó de primera mano con su maestra de segundo grado.

Los datos demográficos de las Escuelas Públicas de Newark también muestran un rayo de esperanza cuando se trata de acercarse a una fuerza laboral docente que refleje su cuerpo estudiantil: un puñado de escuelas primarias con mayoría de estudiantes latinos tienen una cantidad notable de maestros latinos, que oscila entre el 33% y 44%. Y es más probable que los estudiantes negros tengan una representación proporcional en la administración y el personal docente, según muestran los datos.

Tener maestros con los que los estudiantes de entornos subrepresentados puedan identificarse racial y culturalmente es solo un componente de la calidad de los maestros y la escuela, pero puede ayudar a mejorar la asistencia, los puntajes de las pruebas y la probabilidad de tomar un curso avanzado, según la investigación.

“Si no abordamos de manera más agresiva la falta de coincidencia demostrada entre los estudiantes y el personal escolar que los atiende, es posible que no veamos una aceleración del rendimiento académico de todos nuestros estudiantes”, afirma Leslie Fenwick, decana emérita de la Universidad de Howard, cuya experiencia es sobre la diversidad docente y la equidad educativa. “Debemos hacer un mejor trabajo de reclutamiento, retención y promoción de maestros y directores de color”.

‘Estamos viviendo con las consecuencias de la historia’

Como ilustra la historia de De Almeida con su hermana, muchos estudiantes no tienen maestros que compartan sus antecedentes, y se espera que la brecha entre los estudiantes y maestros hispanos o latinos se amplíe, a nivel estatal y nacional, según sugieren los estudios.

A nivel nacional, los maestros blancos constituyen el 80 % de la fuerza docente, y en Nueva Jersey es el 83%. Mientras tanto, la fuerza docente del estado, que también refleja las tendencias nacionales, es 8% hispana y 6.5% negra, mientras que la población estudiantil es 32% y 15%, respectivamente

Una demanda ante el Tribunal Superior de Nueva Jersey en Trenton argumenta que el estado, con uno de los sistemas escolares públicos más diversos pero segregados del país, es responsable de abordar el hecho de que más de la mitad de los estudiantes negros e hispanos o latinos asisten a escuelas que son predominantemente no blancos. La demanda, encabezada por The Latino Action Network y NAACP-NJ, argumenta que el estado está violando su propia constitución y la decisión de la Corte Suprema de Brown contra la Junta de Educación de Topeka de hace casi 70 años.

Ese fallo histórico de la Corte Suprema, y varios fallos de eliminación de la segregación que siguieron, declararon que la educación segregada era una violación de la Decimocuarta Enmienda. Pero también condujo a una proporción desigual de maestros blancos a maestros de color como personas, incluidos aquellos en el poder que defendían creencias segregacionistas, se resistieron a los esfuerzos de desegregación, según muestran los análisis de documentos históricos.

“Estamos viviendo con las consecuencias de la historia que ocurrió, no como resultado de Brown [v. Board of Education], sino de la enorme resistencia blanca a ella”, dijo Fenwick, autor del libro “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership”.

El racismo y las creencias segregacionistas llevaron a despidos, despidos y degradaciones ilegales generalizados de maestros negros, más de 100,000, entre las décadas de 1950 y 1970, dijo Fenwick en una entrevista telefónica reciente con Chalkbeat y descrita en su libro.

Los esfuerzos de eliminación de la segregación también deben invertir en la diversidad de docentes, dice Fenwick. Sin eso, los estudiantes de color seguirán perdiendo las oportunidades masivas que puede ofrecer un personal docente que los refleje, incluso a nivel socioemocional, así como académico y conductual, lo cual ha sido documentado por décadas de investigación.

“A menos que abordemos este problema de diversidad en el liderazgo escolar y las fuerzas docentes, me temo que no lograremos el tipo de progreso que necesitamos en el país”, dijo Fenwick.

Newark trabaja para crear una cartera de maestros diversa

Aunque los maestros afroamericanos constituyen la mayoría del personal docente en algunas escuelas del distrito de Newark, la proporción de maestros afroamericanos ha disminuido alrededor de 10 puntos porcentuales desde fines de la década de 1990, cuando el distrito estaba bajo control estatal, según un análisis de 2021 de New Jersey Policy Perspective.

El distrito realiza esfuerzos de reclutamiento para atraer maestros de diversos orígenes, incluido uno que crea una fuente de “maestros locales” al incentivar a los estudiantes actuales a especializarse en educación y obtener un puesto docente garantizado en el distrito después de graduarse de la universidad.

Durante una conferencia de prensa en junio, el superintendente Roger León estuvo de acuerdo en que diversificar su personal “es bueno porque genera diferentes puntos de vista” y señaló las estrategias de contratación del distrito, que incluyen una iniciativa de canalización de maestro a director que se enfoca en maestros afroamericanos y latinos.

El distrito se asoció con la Facultad de Educación y Aprendizaje Comprometido de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair para crear la Academia de Maestros Red Hawks Rising, un programa de inscripción doble en las escuelas secundarias East Side y University donde los estudiantes obtienen créditos universitarios sin costo mientras se preparan para una carrera en la enseñanza. El programa recluta estudiantes para la profesión a una edad temprana, brinda tutoría y garantiza una oferta de admisión al programa de formación docente de la universidad después de la graduación de la escuela secundaria.

Una parte esencial del programa es que anima a los estudiantes a volver a enseñar en el distrito de su ciudad natal después de graduarse de la universidad.

León ha prometido a los participantes que un contrato de maestro con el distrito los estará esperando después de que completen el programa de la universidad.

De Almeida, una graduada del programa en East Side, dice que ser parte de él la ayudó a imaginarse un futuro ayudando a los estudiantes que hablan diferentes idiomas nativos. Pero lo que la ayudó a ver que podía tener éxito, dijo, fue el ejemplo establecido por las codirectoras del programa Mayida Zaal y Danielle Epps, mujeres de color que se graduaron de distritos escolares urbanos.

“Creo que es un poco refrescante tener a alguien hablando contigo que entiende y que ha pasado por lo que has pasado y ha recorrido ese camino contigo”, dijo De Almeida.

‘Retener a los maestros es el problema’

En una entrevista telefónica reciente, el presidente del Sindicato de Maestros de Newark, John Abeigon, dijo que apoya los esfuerzos de reclutamiento del distrito, pero que “retener a los maestros es el problema” que León debe abordar, particularmente cuando se trata de maestros de color.

“Tenemos blancos, negros, hispanos, marrones, el arcoíris”, dijo Abeigon sobre la diversidad de maestros en su sindicato. “Todos los que vienen a este distrito, la mayoría de ellos se van dentro de un par de semanas o meses de trabajar en este distrito. Eso es endémico del distrito y la forma en que trata a su personal”.

Las investigaciones ha encontrado que es más probable que los maestros de color enseñen en “escuelas con necesidades altas, difíciles de dotar de personal, con entornos de trabajo desafiantes y tasas de deserción más altas para todos los maestros”, indicó un informe de FutureEd sobre la diversidad de maestros.

Sin embargo, a medida que los maestros de diversos orígenes navegan por distritos con bajos recursos y condiciones de trabajo desfavorables, a menudo se sienten subestimados y pasados por alto, según los comentarios de los grupos focales en un informe de 2019 que examinó la retención de maestros de color.

Nubia Lumumba, una educadora negra y musulmana y ex maestra de inglés en una escuela secundaria de Newark, renunció a su cargo después de solo seis meses de trabajar en el distrito. Lumumba dijo que experimentó y fue testigo del acoso racial mientras enseñaba, pero la falta de sensibilidad de los administradores de la escuela para manejar las preocupaciones sobre el acoso racial provocó tensiones que finalmente la llevaron a renunciar.

Hubo una falta de “empatía genuina por lo que había pasado”, dijo Lumumba, y agregó que los estudiantes fueron testigos de lo que ella experimentó. “Si, como adulto maduro, me dolió profundamente haber experimentado acoso racial y religioso y no obtener ningún apoyo significativo de los líderes escolares y del distrito, entonces, me imagino, debe ser aún más perjudicial para los estudiantes negros”.

Lumumba, quien enseñó durante ocho años antes de su último cargo, dijo que las escuelas deben contar con estrategias y programas que brinden “una verdadera comprensión y celebración de la diversidad” y apoyen a los estudiantes de diferentes orígenes raciales y étnicos. Esto podría conducir a una mejor retención, dijo.

Los maestros de color en el estudio de caso de 2019 estarían de acuerdo. Entre las soluciones descritas en el informe: los líderes del distrito deben asegurarse de que “las escuelas sean lugares que afirmen culturalmente a los maestros de color”, empoderar a los maestros con caminos hacia el liderazgo y ofrecer compensación por el trabajo adicional.

Un grupo de trabajo de Nueva Jersey sobre la escasez de personal escolar, elaborado por orden ejecutiva del gobernador Phil Murphy el año pasado, publicó un informe a principios de este año que muestra signos de que el estado está prestando atención a la retención de maestros.

Proveer apoyo a las escuelas en “implementar políticas y prácticas que creen un ambiente de trabajo libre de prejuicios, incluidas las microagresiones”, así como aumentar el salario de los maestros y expandir la “tutoría y el desarrollo profesional para educadores de carreras tempranas” fueron algunas de las recomendaciones enumeradas en el informe.

Los estudiantes necesitan apoyo a través de la educación superior

Para los codirectores de Red Hawks Rising, Zaal y Epps, sus esfuerzos con el distrito para diversificar la fuerza docente comienzan apoyando a los estudiantes de Newark y convirtiéndose en su “comunidad de compromiso” mientras navegan por la escuela secundaria, la universidad y carreras a largo plazo, dijo Epps.

No podemos centrarnos simplemente en el reclutamiento de jóvenes que representan a las comunidades negras y latinas, y luego no ser intencionales sobre cómo vamos a apoyarlos para que lleguen a la meta”, dijo Zaal. “Tiene que haber apoyo en el camino para que no tengamos una especie de tubería con fugas hacia las escuelas”.

Según el Centro Nacional de Estadísticas de Educación, la tasa general de inscripción universitaria entre los jóvenes de 18 a 24 años disminuyó del 41 % en 2010 al 38 % en 2021. La tasa general de inscripción universitaria ese año fue aún más baja entre los estudiantes negros de 37 años. % y estudiantes hispanos en 33%.

Mientras están en el programa de inscripción dual, los estudiantes se enfrentan a diferentes conceptos erróneos sobre la educación superior, como la idea de que para seguir una carrera tienen que dejar su ciudad natal o que la universidad está financieramente fuera de su alcance, o la creencia de que “la universidad no es algo para ellos”, dijo Epps.

Muchos estudiantes del programa son bilingües o biculturales y tienen experiencia en el manejo de desafíos educativos que, a su vez, podrían ayudar a sus futuros estudiantes.

“Se criaron en familias resilientes donde pudieron encontrar su camino a la universidad como estudiantes de primera generación”, dijo Zaal. “Entonces, tienen una cantidad significativa de capital social para ofrecer”.

De Almeida, quien se graduará en 2026, retribuye a su comunidad trabajando con los padres en su iglesia local y ayudándolos a comprender la tarea de sus hijos o brindándoles apoyo de traducción. Ella se relaciona con esas familias, dice, y les habla sobre ayudar financieramente a su propia familia mientras hace malabarismos con el trabajo escolar y persigue su sueño de enseñar.

La aspirante a maestra bilingüe está ansiosa por ingresar al aula y espera dejar una marca duradera en los estudiantes con antecedentes similares a los suyos.

“Por lo general, soy a quien todos acuden con este tipo de cosas. Me encanta poder ser esa ayuda”, dijo De Almeida sobre trabajar con padres de diferentes orígenes. “Y creo que una vez que sea maestra y regrese a trabajar en Newark, haciendo este trabajo oficialmente, seré 10 veces mejor”.

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por Reporte Hispano, en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por Chalkbeat Newark/NJ Spotlight News y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

This translation was provided by Reporte Hispano, in association with the Montclair State University Center for Cooperative Media and is financially supported by the NJ Civic Information Consortium. The story was originally written in English for Chalkbeat Newark and is republished under a special content-sharing agreement through the NJ News Commons Spanish Translation News Service.

New MSCS board member Mauricio Calvo has one year to make an impact. Here’s how he plans to use it.

2023-08-15T23:41:36+00:00

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Mauricio Calvo, the newest member of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools board, took his oath of office next to the children’s section of a public library, with the county’s juvenile court judge swearing him in.

This was purposeful, Calvo had explained. The ceremony was meant to represent his passions and priorities: literacy and juvenile justice, as well as workforce readiness and Latino students.

Calvo, a longtime Memphian and CEO of the advocacy group Latino Memphis, was appointed to the board to serve the remainder of Sheleah Harris’ term in District 5, representing students and families in Cordova.

“I’m taking this appointment with a big sense of urgency,” said Calvo.

The Memphis school board has not had a Latino member in recent history, and Calvo, a Mexican-American who became a U.S. citizen in 2018, believes he may be the first Latino in local public office. His presence on the board could be welcome representation for the families of thousands of Latino students who make up 18% of the district.

Calvo ran unsuccessfully for a City Council seat in 2019, and ran for school board in 2020, before dropping out to endorse Harris. Last year, he served on one of the committees that helped develop the state’s new school funding formula, known as Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement, or TISA.

As an appointed school board member, Calvo has just a year remaining in his term — he hasn’t decided whether he’ll pursue election next summer — but it’s poised to be a big year. The board is trying again to select a new superintendent, after its last attempt soured and Harris abruptly resigned.

Beyond that, the district faces persistent challenges with academic performance, a slow recovery from the pandemic, and relations with a state government that has pushed a strongly conservative education agenda.

Calvo talked to Chalkbeat about how he plans to guide the district through these challenges.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You are, at least in recent history, the first Latinx person in this position on the school board. What do you hope your colleagues learn from you in this year?

As far as I am concerned, yes, I am the first Latinx person I think in public office in Shelby County. I don’t think the Shelby County Commission, the Memphis City Council, or the school board ever had anybody. And I say this with a sense of, yeah, pride, but also humbleness and responsibility, because I do feel the pressure, in a good way. Some of that may be self-imposed. It could also be a little bit of impostor syndrome. It does come with a responsibility, because when you’re the first, you certainly don’t want to be, shouldn’t be, the last, or the only one. So that’s big.

“I think that matters in representation, particularly in a community that for so long, has been very Black and white.”

I’m also part of the LGBTQ community, and I’m open about that. I’m Mexican-American. I have an accent. I wasn’t born here. I am an American citizen now. I think there are a lot of intersectionalities. I think that matters in representation, particularly in a community that for so long, has been very Black and white. So it is disruptive in a positive way.

You were on the TISA subcommittee for ESL students. There’s quite a bit of funding for students who are English language learners. How do you, from your board seat, plan to evaluate how the board is spending funds toward those programs and toward resources, and whether or not they are working?

This is something very important. And although I keep saying that I represent everybody, obviously, I will have a special emphasis on English language learners.

When I sat on that committee, I actually made some public comments that it was disappointing. The whole process was complex. It felt very scripted. It felt that they had already arrived to decisions when they were asking us. I think at the end of the day, it’s better than what we had before — there’s more funding. But just funding alone is not going to do it. We need to make sure that the district is utilizing this extra money the right way.

Calvo will represent students and families in District 5, which includes Cordova, and also has an additional interest in supporting the district’s English language learners.

I would say that for this and for everything else we need, we need to get away from the “We have always done it this way.” I’m very much going to be looking (for), as a characteristic of the superintendent, somebody who’s very open to innovation, to benchmarking what is happening in other districts, because, you know, when we think about that, it is not only supporting the students that are English language learners. It’s also supporting their families.

But I think I saw there’s about 12,300 English language learners in the district. So I’m curious to see, what else are we doing? Are we just doing the bare minimum? Are we deploying enough resources to the schools with larger numbers?

Perhaps my soft spot is how we’re serving recent arrivals that are more challenging to fit into grade level. So you may have a child from Guatemala who’s 12 or 13, and he’s really too old to put in elementary school, but really if you just put him in middle school, they’re going to be completely lost.

I know we have a newcomer center. But I’m curious to see how well we’re doing with that.

The application for MSCS superintendent has been posted for Round 2. Sheleah Harris, your predecessor, was very publicly a critic of the process. What should your constituents know about how you plan to help the board navigate this process, and what you feel your role will be?

I would love to have a conversation with the search firm. I’m not familiar with the scope of this search team, if they’re just going to say, “Hey, here’s a group of people,” are they actually going to help us filter them? At what point do they stop and say, “Here’s the list,” versus really selecting? Do we have somebody coaching us, advising us how to select this?

I spoke with a member in the City Council, and he told me, “I believe that selecting this superintendent is as important, if not more important than selecting the next mayor.” And I think he’s right on. We cannot take this lightly, and we need to know what we are doing.

From crime, to economic development, to housing, to homelessness to nutrition — we have the future of Memphis on our hands. And we are asking this person to set the vision, to create a plan, to get the staff (for) 110,000 customers every day. If somebody doesn’t believe or doesn’t understand that, they really need to have a check-in with themselves.

It is time to stop saying them and us, private and public, you know, this or that, or Black or white. The superintendent is going to have to be somebody that can rally a ton of people. And we as a board have a humongous responsibility getting this right. I want to go to bed knowing that I did absolutely everything I could to help bring this person here, and then select the person, support that person, hold the person accountable. That is our main job.

I do have experience, because I’ve served on a number of boards, locally and nationally. But I am also not shy. I can check my ego at the door, and say, “We need help.”

You’ve obviously worked with state officials before in different capacities, even on TISA. How have you thought about how you will be able to advocate for Memphis with people who aren’t from here at the state legislature?

I do recognize that importance of the relationship with Nashville. I think having Rep. (Mark) White chair the education committee is key, because he understands Memphis. But we have — I have said this before, and I will say again — we have a legislature that, in general, does not like Memphis. But we are going to continue to build relationships.

I do plan to use any experience that I have in visiting Nashville and building relationships with people, because where Memphis goes, it’s going to be important for the future of Tennessee.

I’m very committed to building a relationship with the County Commission, with the City Council — not necessarily to say that they need to be funding (MSCS), because they probably don’t have the money. But that doesn’t mean that they cannot do anything for us.

There’s a Latina (as) the new (Tennessee) secretary of education. I haven’t had a chance to meet her. From what I have read, she’s probably more conservative than I would probably have liked.

“... we have a legislature that, in general, does not like Memphis. But we are going to continue to build relationships.”

I know education is important for the governor, and for the previous governor. I think we should advocate for districts to have the flexibility that they need, because not all districts are equal — ours being not only the largest, but probably the most diverse. But we have our own challenges. And as such, we deserve our own say. These are our taxes: people in Shelby County paying taxes, sending them to the state and then coming back. For the most part, we are paying for our education, and we have the right to have a strong voice on how we want that shaped.

How, as a leader, do you determine the leading challenges and evaluate how the district and how the city, the county are responding to them? How are you going to evaluate and prioritize?

I think we have to flip the narrative. Instead of having the district being blamed for everything, I think the district needs to say, “Hey, we’re big boys here. We have $2 billion. We have 200 schools. We have 110,000 children. We’re the second largest employer. What are we doing about all of these things?” That doesn’t mean that we have to solve all of those things. But it certainly means that our hands need to be, in some way or capacity, in a lot of those things.

It may not be the position, my responsibility, to tackle all of this, but I’m not the only board member. There are nine of us. And also there are 14,000 employees.

We need to embrace this role as a big, humongous player in the city.

I think the district works really well with some partners, and other partners either haven’t had a good experience or haven’t heard from the district in a long time. We need to be in all of these conversations, and also other people need to join us on this work. Because we can no longer just blame the district for everything.

There’s an expectation for example, from FedEx to sponsor things, to be here, to do this. People want the Grizzlies and St. Jude and FedEx to do well. People in general, whether you have kids or not in the public system, people should have a positive perspective about us.

How do we change the narrative and say, now the Grizzlies and St. Jude and FedEx don’t have to solve all the problems, but they are touching the problems, and we need to do the same. But we don’t need to do it alone. I need and we need people to join us on this work.

In closing, I want to say the opportunity is there. Yes, the challenge is also there. That’s why I’m doing this.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Students shouldn’t shy away from talking about race in college essays, Biden officials say

2023-08-14T19:05:21+00:00

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High school students shouldn’t shy away from talking about their race or ethnicity in college application essays, according to new guidance issued Monday by the Biden administration.

Similarly, school counselors, mentors, and employers should feel free to mention a student’s race in a college recommendation letter, the guidance states.

“The Supreme Court’s opinion recognized what we know to be true: That race can be relevant to a person’s life or lived experience and may impact one’s development, motivations, academic interests, or personal or professional aspirations,” Vanita Gupta, a top-ranking Justice Department official, told reporters on Monday. “That impact can still be considered in university admissions.”

The guidance package may offer some clarity as many high schoolers and school staff are trying to make sense of how the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down race-based affirmative action affects what they should tell colleges about themselves and whether it’s advantageous — or risky — to talk about race in their applications.

In June, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that college admissions officers could look at how race had affected an applicant’s life “through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

But some high school counselors have expressed concern that the Supreme Court’s decision could be confusing for students of color and lead some to avoid talking about their personal identities.

The new guidance suggests, consistent with the court’s decision, that colleges may consider a student’s individual experience of race or racism, even though they cannot give advantages to students solely because of their race.

The guidance is not legally binding, and what is and isn’t allowed likely will continue to be decided by courts.

Still, the guidance may shape how colleges and students respond to the ruling.

According to the guidance, admissions officers can consider how a student’s experience with racial discrimination or the racial composition of their neighborhood or school affected them and how that may influence what they’d contribute to the college.

For example, one student could write in an essay “about what it means to him to be the first Black violinist in his city’s youth orchestra.” Another student could detail how she overcame “prejudice when she transferred to a rural high school where she was the only student of South Asian descent.” A third applicant might discuss “how learning to cook traditional Hmong dishes from her grandmother sparked her passion for food and nurtured her sense of self.”

And a school counselor could write in their recommendation about “how an applicant conquered her feelings of isolation as a Latina student at an overwhelmingly white high school to join the debate team.”

“Students should feel comfortable presenting their whole selves when applying to college, without fear of stereotyping, bias, or discrimination,” two top Biden administration officials wrote in a letter.

Colleges can still tailor recruitment to reach students of color

Though the Supreme Court’s ruling is about college admissions policies, some states and colleges have interpreted the decision to apply to financial aid. Missouri’s attorney general, for example, said that colleges cannot award scholarships that consider a student’s race or ethnicity, leading the state’s flagship university to eliminate a prestigious diversity award.

That left some education equity advocates worried that officials would point to the Supreme Court ruling to limit a slew of other efforts aimed at increasing racial diversity on college campuses.

The Biden administration’s guidance is silent on scholarships — a top education department official said that was because the Supreme Court decision didn’t address scholarships — but it explicitly states that colleges don’t have to “ignore race” when they are identifying prospective students through recruitment efforts.

Colleges can target their outreach to schools and districts that predominantly serve students of color, the guidance states. They can also recruit from high schools that historically haven’t had many students apply to the college — which could be a strategy for recruiting students of color without considering race directly.

Similarly, colleges and universities can also continue to run mentorship or pipeline programs meant to help prepare students from certain schools to attend that college.

That could look like a summer enrichment camp designed for students who attend public high schools near the college. Colleges are also allowed to set aside slots for students who participate in those pipeline programs, as long as it was open to a broad group of kids — such as all juniors at a certain high school.

“Although this decision changes the landscape for admissions in higher education,” Gupta said, “it should not be used as an excuse to turn away from longstanding efforts to make those institutions more inclusive.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Debate over NYC high school admissions heats up at parent meeting

2023-08-10T02:55:39+00:00

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Debate over how selective New York City high schools choose their students erupted Wednesday night, as members of a parent advisory group called on the city to adopt more stringent academic screening.

The Citywide Council on High Schools, a group of parent representatives from across the five boroughs, considered a slate of recommendations on the city’s admissions process, including reinstating the use of seventh grade state test scores at selective schools such as Eleanor Roosevelt or the Clinton School in Manhattan and allowing such schools to once again set their own admissions criteria.

But some members of the public who spoke at the meeting protested the resolution proposing the changes — arguing the old system was confusing and opaque for families, and that the recommendations could stifle integration efforts in a school system that has consistently been among the most segregated in the nation.

The Wednesday night debate followed an especially divisive parent council election cycle. Earlier this year, candidates endorsed by Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, won all of the elected seats on the citywide high school council. The controversial group staunchly advocates for screened school admissions. (One council member was appointed by the public advocate.)

The board, composed primarily of parents whose children attend selective or specialized high schools, passed the resolution 7-1, with the no-vote from the public advocate’s appointee. Though the board lacks the power to enact the changes, its recommendations come as the latest sign of continued debate over high school admissions. (Admissions to specialized schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, are regulated by state law and were not part of Wednesday’s discussion.)

Schools have not used state tests in the admissions process for the past three years — and that change and others spurred by the pandemic moved the needle toward more diverse student bodies at selective schools.

For this fall’s incoming freshman class, students were sorted into different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. In cases where there were more applicants in a priority group than seats, selections were made on a lottery basis. More than 40 selective schools also participate in a diversity initiative, setting aside a certain number of seats to students who are low-income, English language learners, or live in temporary housing. There was a separate lottery for these seats.

The recommendations passed by the council call for the city to allow students to qualify for priority groups based on their grades or state test scores.

Parent arguments over admissions get heated

Tensions rose to a fever pitch during the meeting, as some parents who joined virtually argued with one another in the chat, and members of the public voiced contrasting views. In one particularly heated moment, council member Deborah Kross accused a public speaker opposing the resolution of “running a consultancy for districts.”

Kemala Karmen, the speaker, denied the allegation and said she was a parent and member of NYC Opt Out, a grassroots organization boycotting state tests. During her comment, Karmen said council members were elected amid low turnout and were not representative of NYC public school families.

“This message is for the chancellor, deputy chancellor, and whoever else it may concern: Do not mistake this vote and their resolution as representative of the wishes of families of New York school children,” she said.

Katrina Motch, a parent who said her two children had experienced the high school admissions process in 2019 and 2022, also opposed the resolution, noting the prior system had been particularly confusing and burdensome for parents.

“In 2019, every single school had a different criteria, a different interview, a different thing,” she said, adding it created “incredible stress for parents.”

Others spoke in favor of the resolution, complaining that using lottery numbers within priority groups was unfair and that school grades were too subjective a metric.

Chien Kwok, co-president of PLACE, called the use of a lottery “entirely demotivating for children.”

He added: “Grades are subjective and outright fraudulent, used to hide the failures of the DOE to teach our children.”

High school admissions process remains in flux

The high school admissions system in New York City is notoriously complicated. It saw multiple pandemic-related overhauls, as COVID-19 upended many of the metrics used to screen and sort students. Prior to the pandemic, schools could set their own screening processes, meaning students and families had to search for the criteria at each school. Admissions requirements ranged from essays and tests to interviews — and information about how decisions were made was sometimes difficult to locate or unavailable.

About 20 of the most coveted selective schools — like Beacon High School and Bard Early College — continued to use their own assessments like essays or school-based tests during the last admissions cycle.

Council members said the city should reduce the use of lotteries in making admissions decisions by allowing the roughly 100 other selective schools to once again set their own criteria — stating that thousands of applicants were left with “unsatisfactory placements.” The last admissions cycle saw just under half of eighth graders admitted to their top choice school, with roughly 75% admitted to one of their top three schools, and 95% offered a spot at a school they listed in their application.

Integration advocates and families in favor of the recent changes have said the standardizing of admissions criteria and other pandemic changes helped make the process more accessible and removed barriers for students.

Those gains held fairly steady for this year’s incoming ninth graders. Roughly 32% of offers at selective schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Citywide, roughly 41% of students are Latino, 20% are Black, 19% are Asian American, and 16% are white, according to enrollment data from last school year. About 72% are from low-income families.

To Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, the aims of the resolution represent a step backwards.

“We’re talking about access to public schools, and I think people forget that,” she said. “To think that we need to stop having this lottery so we can make the schools more selective — they’re public schools. People should have as much access and opportunity as possible.”

Berg also questioned whether the board’s decision reflected the broader sentiment of New York City families.

“The majority of parents that sit on the [council] are parents of students at specialized high schools,” Berg said. “An overwhelming majority of students are not going to specialized high schools.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Native students learn how to preserve threatened languages through Fort Lewis initiative

2023-08-01T20:44:55+00:00

Almost 30 years ago, the majority of Native American students at Fort Lewis College could speak their home language, Janine Fitzgerald recalled.

In the years since, more and more students have arrived at the southwest Colorado college without the ability to speak their native language, the Fort Lewis sociology and human services professor said. Nonetheless, these students have wanted to better connect with their family, their culture, and their traditions.

To assist, Fort Lewis College and Fitzgerald created the All Our Kin Collective this year to help address the loss of indigenous languages in students’ communities and help them understand a crucial part of their identities. Fitzgerald, who has an interest in sociolinguistics, was awarded a $1.5 million grant through the Mellon Foundation, as well as support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, to start the collective.

About 44% of Fort Lewis College’s students are Native American, and the collective has created programs, including a summer institute, classes, and a certificate program, that help those students learn and share their language.

Fitzgerald said many Native students have cited that learning their language and sharing culture are even more vital since the pandemic because so many elders who carried on this knowledge died from Covid. Many students believe that the death of tribal elders will also cause some traditions to begin to die, she said.

“And there’s this sort of deep understanding among students — deep — where they say. ‘I got to learn,’” Fitzgerald said. “That it’s super important and ‘I can’t be whole without it.’”

The collective adds to Fort Lewis’ push to compensate for its past as a Native American boarding school. The Fort Lewis boarding school, and many others throughout the U.S. and Canada, were created with the goal of eradicating Native American culture. Students were required to learn English and taught their traditions were inferior.

Fort Lewis College leaders have now pushed to become a place for Native students to further their schooling while also embracing who they are as Indigenous people.

Ally Gee, who is Navajo and a Fort Lewis College graduate working with the collective, said the project is meant to help students connect to who they are. Many students complain that they don’t feel as deep a tie to their culture as they want because they don’t know their language, she said. It’s a vital part of who Native people are, she added.

“If I could help just one student learn just one word, I would measure that as a success,” she said. “Students are learning their cultures, how to introduce themselves, and the meaning of their names. And that’s really heartwarming.”

Students, however, are learning more than just a few words, said Shannen Jones, 31, who recently graduated from Fort Lewis and participated in the collective’s summer institute. She said she expected to just learn how to speak and write in her native Navajo language.

She found that the summer institute offered so much more.

Ally Gee and Shannen Jones sit with other students during an All Our Kin Collective class.

Instructors focused not on grammar and spelling but on the skills needed to learn how to document and learn languages without a textbook, Jones said. Those skills allow students to not only learn how to speak, but preserve the language for future generations by documenting what they learned.

The for-credit, three-week summer institute is focused on four languages. In its first year, the classes featured Navajo, Cherokee, Inupiaq, and Hopi. Program leaders hope to change which languages are taught depending on the students who are enrolled.

Another component of the collective includes one-credit classes that focus on language and cultural identity. The classes include teaching students about preserving languages and how to do that through new technology.

The collective’s programs also allow students the opportunity to take a series of classes that lead to a certificate in language revitalization, including learning about Native languages, doing an internship, and finishing a series of online classes.

The collective documents work from students to help celebrate and preserve indigenous cultures through a digital archive which includes students’ projects and culturally significant material.

Jones participated in the All Our Kin fellowship, which gives students $750 and the ability to work on projects.

As part of her work, Jones led group conversations during the summer program. At first, she looked at the assignment as more of a job, but she left feeling empowered.

Leading group conversations gave her hands-on experience working with other Native students and she wants to take that experience back to her home in Arizona or to other Native communities. She plans to work in public health.

The classes, most of all, helped Jones feel closer to her roots and her peers.

“Around language, we found a sense of community that some of us were missing,” Jones said. “Every time I think about the classes, I get excited. It was an amazing feeling seeing everyone working together.”

8,000 Chicago Public Schools students won’t have bus service on first day of school, district says

2023-07-31T23:43:11+00:00

More than 8,000 Chicago Public Schools students will not have bus service on the first day of class on Aug. 21, a problem the district blames on an ongoing bus driver shortage.

With only half of the 1,300 drivers needed to transport students who require bus service, Chicago said it will instead prioritize transportation for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness. Both groups are legally required to receive transportation to school.

For some students with disabilities, bus service is a requirement on their Individualized Education Programs. More than 7,100 such students have signed up for bus service so far, officials said. (Siblings of students with disabilities can still receive bus service if they attend the same school.)

This is the third year in a row in which the return to class has been marred by transportation woes that have left thousands of students without transportation or with long commutes. The district, which contracts with outside companies to provide transportation, has attributed bus service snarls in previous years to nationwide driver shortages.

In an effort to help fix ongoing transportation problems, the district in March approved a $4 million contract with Education Logistics Inc., known as EduLog, to schedule bus routes, determine start times for summer school and assign bus vendors during the school year. The contract is set to run through June 30, 2026.

This year, in the face of continued bus service troubles, the district will instead offer Ventra cards to general education students and one companion, such as a parent, “for as long as they are without school bus transportation,” according to a news release from Chicago. These families may have the option to get bus service “at some point” in the school year but the timing for that is not yet clear, said Charles Mayfield, chief operating officer for Chicago Public Schools.

Last year, Chicago provided bus service to 17,275 children, or about 5% of students.

“There’s been a nationwide shortage, and I think that is not an easy thing for any K-12 [district] right now,” Mayfield said Monday in an interview with Chalkbeat. “Even if you Google search bus driver shortage, you get a number of school districts that have the same issue that we’re having today and they are making adjustments similar to where we are, to try to provide alternatives.”

As of Friday, the district said it could guarantee bus service on the first day of school for students with disabilities and those experiencing homelessness, after Chicago twice extended a sign-up deadline this summer, Mayfield said. But it can’t guarantee immediate service for families who sign up now. The district is required to link those families to bus service within two weeks of their request for transportation.

As an alternative, CPS is offering families of students with disabilities and those in temporary housing up to $500 in monthly stipends to cover transportation costs. So far, 3,000 students have chosen this option, officials said.

The continuing transportation issues have Chicago parent Laurie Viets bracing for yet another chaotic start to the school year. Two of her three children have district-provided bus service written into their Individualized Education Programs.

This year, she said the district has been more proactive since parents have raised concerns about bus services issues over the past few years. Over the summer, Viets received a couple of phone calls from the district asking if she would like to take the $500 stipend, but she declined. She said she prefers that the district provide bus service for her children.

Viets only learned the district had yet to figure out routes for students when she talked to a district representative last week.

“I have no hopes at all that transportation will show up,” said Viets. “I’ve got three kids, three separate schools in three different parts of the city. We’re going to be scrambling to get the two that need transportation to school because I guarantee we will not have transport on that first day.”

It is a familiar scenario for Viets – last year, she said she couldn’t get transportation for one of her children for about six weeks – and for thousands of other CPS families.

In the 2021-22 school year, when students returned to classrooms after COVID shuttered buildings, the district did not have bus services for 2,100 students on the first day of classes. At the time, the district provided families with $1,000 to help with transportation and even reached out to ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft for support.

At the start of the next school year, the district was able to route 15,000 Chicago Public Schools students to classes but hundreds of students with disabilities dealt with long commute times. At the time, the district reported that 365 students with disabilities had to deal with commute times of 90 minutes or longer and could not arrange transportation for 1,200 students.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

Pell Grants return to incarcerated people after nearly 30 years. Here’s what that means in Illinois.

2023-07-28T17:30:06+00:00

Jason Marks, 48, said he remembers sitting in a prison cell and thinking to himself: “Is this it? Am I going to die in prison?”

He wanted the answer to be no. But Marks had been in and out of the criminal justice system since his youth — and he didn’t know how to break that cycle.

“I was running in a hamster wheel, watching everybody in the world,” he said about a week after his release from prison. “I wake up one day, I look in the mirror, I got gray in my goatee. So I’m like: What am I going to do?”

About half a year after he asked himself that question, Marks hit a turning point. He was transferred to a different prison — East Moline Correctional Center — and there, he heard about a program that could grant him a bachelor’s degree, run through Augustana College in Rock Island.

Marks applied and got in — and could finally envision a way off the hamster wheel.

“I actually felt like a human being when I was in class,” he said. “I don’t want this to sound cliche or take this lightly; it’s changed my life.”

Access to higher education is limited in prison. In 1994, a sweeping federal crime bill cut incarcerated people off from Pell Grants, a form of federal need-based financial aid. In the years after the legislation went into effect, the number of higher education programs in prison fell sharply across the nation, from estimates of more than 700 in the early 1990s to eight in 1997, according to a historical review by the American Enterprise Institute.

This month, for the first time in nearly three decades, the federal government restored Pell Grants to incarcerated people. More than 760,000 incarcerated people across the nation could benefit, the U.S. Department of Education estimates.

A handful of Illinois prisons currently offer non-vocational higher education, according to a 2022 report by the Illinois Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Task Force. That may change under the new policy — but availability of program spots and systemic educational issues could keep many people in prison from actually enrolling this fall.

Eligibility depends on correctional facility, educational level

Pell Grant eligibility will depend on whether an incarcerated person lives in a prison with a federally-approved program. The U.S. Department of Education opened up applications early this month and will approve higher education institutions on a rolling basis.

So it’s hard to pin down the number of incarcerated students in Illinois who will receive Pell Grants this school year. But a previous initiative offers clues into how funding will work.

Before this month’s change, nearly 200 colleges across the country participated in the “Second Chance Pell Experiment,” giving them permission to disburse Pell Grant funds, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Two existing college programs in Illinois drew upon this funding, and both will continue to provide services, said Naomi Puzzello, a spokesperson from the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Augustana Prison Education Program, which Marks attended, is one of those sites.

Sharon Varallo, the executive director of Augustana’s program, said the Pell Grant money makes a dent in the cost of running the program. But she said grants and private donors heavily contribute so incarcerated students can attend for free. Augustana enrolled 10 students the first year, then an additional 24 the next year, she said.

“It’s going to take more than just Pell (Grants) to fix this system,” she said. “It will be a game changer, but it’s not going to be a tsunami of new programs opening, I guarantee you that. It is very hard to get going.”

The Illinois Department of Corrections contracts some colleges to provide courses, mostly vocational, and Puzzello said these particular programs won’t be impacted by Pell restoration as of now. But the majority of higher education programs in Illinois prisons are not state-funded, and could apply to use Pell as another funding stream, as the case with Augustana.

A wide expansion of programs may require more incentive – or more money – than Pell, Varallo said. The Illinois Department of Corrections had not received interest for new programs as of late July, said Puzzello, the spokesperson for the agency.

For now, ending up in a prison with a program is a matter of chance – and there are only so many spots.

A little over 400 people in state-run prisons enrolled in non-contractual programs during the 2021 school year, according to the most recent public data. That’s less than 2% of the total prison population at the time, based on the Illinois Department of Corrections’ quarterly reports.

Along with having physical access to a program, eligibility depends on sentence length and education level. The Illinois Department of Corrections’ policy requires prospective students to have enough time on their sentence to benefit from a program, though it does not outline exact lengths.

Per policy, participants must also have a high school diploma or an equivalent, and they must score an 8 or higher on the Test of Adult Basic Education (TABE), a nationwide assessment of math, reading, and language skills. Over 60% of test-takers in the state correctional system scored below a 6 on the TABE in 2020, according to the Illinois HEP Task Force report.

Often, incarcerated people face disparities in their education before prison, said Xavier Perez, a criminology professor at DePaul University.

So Pell Grants can help with funding, but they won’t erase every barrier to college access, said Perez. Rather, he said broader, structural change will be necessary, and not only around the prison system. He points to underfunded schools — along with poverty, lack of adequate healthcare, and structural racism — as some of the root issues interlocking with incarceration.

For Perez, education was his own escape. He said he went to a juvenile facility as a teenager, but found a refuge through reading and writing. Perez has since earned his Ph.D, and now, he teaches classes at Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security prison south west of Chicago.

When he walks into class, he sees himself in a lot of his students.

“It might just be a chance of luck, that I’m not in there with them,” he said. “Many of them come from my neighborhood. We grew up in the same context, I just was fortunate enough to have programs around me that took my life in another way.”

Some research shows that incarcerated people who participate in higher education programs while serving time are less likely to go back to prison.

But Perez said these programs go deeper than those numbers. Where they really shine, he said, is the way they “get people rethinking about their environment and their worldview.”

Jason Marks — the student at Augustana’s program – knows that transformation well. He’s been in and out of adult prisons nearly 10 times, mainly for theft and some battery charges.

So when he took classes in prison, he had a question for his professors: What do I do after release?

“I thrive in prison; I’m good at that, I’ve done it enough times. Where I need help is here and now, upon getting out. I said: ‘Is there a path forward?’” Marks said. “It was breaking my mind – so many times back and forth inside of that hell.”

Thanks to Augustana’s program, Marks said he finally felt supported when he got released in June. This time, as he walked outside the prison gates, he saw his professors there to celebrate. No one had cared to wait for him like that before, he said.

“I finally feel like I found some inner peace,” he said. “Since I’ve been out, I keep getting these waves of anxiety coming on — like I have this fear that something’s wrong, but nothing’s wrong. Because I’m just so used to something always being wrong.”

Marks grew up surrounded by abuse and addiction, he said, with family members getting him drunk at 10 years old and high on cocaine by 15. And, in the past, he said he tended to end up on his family’s couch, or right back to doing what landed him in the system.

But now, the Augustana program is giving him a chance at a different path.

Marks has heard the criticism that people in prison don’t deserve to go to college, especially not for free. But he said everyone deserves an education and wishes the Pell Grant restoration could have happened long ago.

Breaking the cycle requires changing structures, hope

Student Tyrone Stone — who also participated in Augustana’s program – said people need more than education to break the cycle. They need hope and support.

Now out of prison, Tyrone Stone is working on creating a clothing line called Born Worthy, which he said is about giving people the confidence to be themselves. “We’re all worthy of a second chance,” he said. “We all go through things and I want people to know you’re worthy of the energy that you were given.”

Growing up on Chicago’s West Side, Stone said he excelled in high school. After graduating, he moved to Lincoln, Illinois to enroll in college.

“In my family and my friends’ eyes, I’m this guy that’s doing really great — you know, ‘He’s the one that’s going to help, he’s the one that’s going to change things,’” Stone said.

But his life took a turn. His father died in prison. Stone couldn’t afford to stay at his college. He moved back to the Chicago area and took classes at a few other colleges, but he struggled.

Then he said he got caught up in the streets. In 2015, Stone went to prison for armed robbery. He got to go home earlier this year. He’s now 35.

“Your thinking process has to change. Things you want to keep up with, you gotta let go. You can’t be the same person,” he said. “So I had to grow up really, really fast.”

While in prison, Stone said he did what he could — he raised his kids over the phone, calling them and listening to their remote lessons when COVID-19 forced virtual learning. He taught some of his peers reading skills and said he participated in any program he could.

Stone got released early for good behavior. But even so, his life was on pause for about seven years. Time went by, chipping away his confidence and motivation.

That changed with his college program, he said. In his first class, he doubted that he could form genuine connections — but by the end, he said his classmates came rushing to hug him. They could tell when he was hurting or sad, he said, and they’d support him when he needed it.

“The camaraderie is a real thing, the learning is a real thing,” he said. “It’s a competitiveness like no other. A lot of people might think, you guys are just inmates. But there are some brilliant people behind bars.”

During one class, he said they close-read the lyrics of “Strange Fruit” sung by Billie Holiday, a song protesting the lynching of Black Americans. The previous day, he said he had watched the trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who ultimately was convicted in 2021 for murdering George Floyd.

“It was not a coincidence to me. It was like, ‘I have to wake up,’” he said. “I don’t want to be a victim. I know George Floyd or any of these other victims didn’t go outside and want to become a victim. I don’t want to be a martyr in that way.”

That’s why he’s motivated to change the systemic issues in the incarceration system, he said – including the way that people of color are disproportionately locked up. Two-thirds of people incarcerated in state-run prisons are people of color, based on the most recent public prison population data, while 76% of people in Illinois are white, according to the U.S. Census.

Stone said he’s also concerned about young people who are incarcerated. When he got sent to Cook County Jail — a Chicagoland facility where thousands of people wait for their trials — Stone said he saw many teenagers there with him. He remembers hearing some say they didn’t expect to live past 21, so why read a book?

“They looked like babies,” he said. “They look like my babies — these are the same babies that I saw inside these cages.”

So Stone now dreams of creating a program to support youth, and using the space of his old elementary school — Paderewski — to do it. Paderewski closed in 2013 when then-mayor Rahm Emanuel recommended shutting down 50 public schools, the majority serving primarily Black students.

Without his higher education program in prison, Stone said, he wouldn’t have the belief in himself to come up with that idea.

“Once we have that beacon, that light, that hope, then we start to rebuild our personalities,” Stone said. “We start to rebuild our purpose and create a complete self, someone that we can present to the world and say, ‘I messed up, but look at what I’m doing now.’”

Prison education programs can help change perspectives

The programs can provide more than a boost to the spirit. In Marks’ case, it helped him find his bearings after his release from East Moline Correctional Center late last month.

When he got out, Marks said he had about $30 to his name. Members of the Augustana program helped coordinate his housing and basic necessities. And they formed a support network around him.

That first day of release, Marks got a blanket, handmade for him. It was donated by a local church that the director of his program attends.

In a corner panel reads a message: “Welcome Home.” He still keeps it on his bed.

“I’m surrounded by positive, smart, successful people, and I’m like — how is this happening?” Marks said. “It’s sad that people are getting out that won’t have this, and I didn’t have this any other time.”

Marks’ professors call him up to get lunch. His previous roommate taught him how to use a computer, so Marks could type up his cover letter. And in the month since his release, Marks has landed a job.

These days, Marks said life looks different — he’s no longer running frantically on a hamster wheel, looking at the world passing him by.

“I walk outside and everything’s slowed down a little bit,” he said. “I enjoy the fresh air and the trees look greener; I start laughing sometimes, like man, this is crazy.”

It’s surreal at times, Marks said, but it’s an outlook he wants to keep. While at his transitional housing, Marks saw a neighbor across the street moving in. He decided to offer his assistance.

He helped get her stuff moved out of a storage unit and into her house. And one day, after he saw her son riding around in a scooter, Marks gave the boy a bike that had been donated to him.

“I felt like, ‘I gotta do something for somebody, because everybody’s doing things for me,’” he said.

He’s also determined to do something for himself: Break the cycle and keep moving forward, off that hamster wheel.

Chicago schools with mostly Black student bodies share less information about LSCs: report

2023-07-27T21:17:13+00:00

Chicago families on the South and West sides were less likely to have access to information about their Local School Councils, compared with their North Side neighbors, according to a new analysis about the 2021-22 school year.

The report, released this week by advocacy organization Raise Your Hand, also found that most schools — 61% — had at least one parent vacancy on their Local School Councils, or LSCs. These school-based elected bodies, made up of parents, other community representatives, and students, can make school-level decisions, such as evaluating and selecting principals and voting on the annual campus budget.

The findings suggest that white and more affluent parents are more likely to have access to accurate LSC information and LSCs without parent vacancies. On top of the neighborhood disparities, schools with mostly Black student bodies were less likely to have updated information online about their LSCs, compared with schools citywide. They were also more likely to have at least three parent vacancies on their LSCs.

Last year, following LSC elections with significant voter turnout, more than 1,400 vacancies remained, mostly on the South and West sides, Chalkbeat found at the time.

“Vacancies make it impossible for the schools that need LSCs the most to have effective LSCs,” the just-released Raise Your Hand report said. “This means student needs are ignored, budgets are cut, and more.”

On the city’s North Side, schools were more likely to list basic information on their websites about their LSC, the report found. That information includes a mention of the LSC’s existence, meeting times, agendas, minutes, a list of current members, and contact information for those members.

For example, an average of 67% of schools across the Far North, North, and Northwest sides had LSC meeting times listed on their websites. In comparison, meeting times were listed for less than a quarter of schools, on average, in neighborhoods across the South and West sides, according to the report.

“This lack of transparency and accessibility is unacceptable and leaves parents feeling frustrated and powerless,” the report said.

Other findings include:

About one third of all schools have an LSC meeting time posted online, while the same is true for 14% of schools with student bodies that are at least 90% Black.
32% of all schools have three or more parent vacancies. The same is true for 36% of schools on the South and West sides, and 23% of schools on the North sides as well as the Loop.
42% of schools with more than 90% of Black students have three or more parent vacancies.

Raise Your Hand said that school websites have not changed even after they raised some of their findings with Chicago Public Schools “months ago.” The group has urged CPS to ensure websites have updated information, including meeting times and locations, a list of current LSC members, and contact information for the LSC.

After Raise Your Hand members revealed some of the study’s findings at a Wednesday Chicago Board of Education meeting, Board President Jianan Shi said the district “has to do better.” Shi is the former executive director of Raise Your Hand.

In a statement, CPS spokesperson Evan Moore noted that the district saw a record-breaking 6,145 people apply for LSC positions last school year. He touted district efforts to raise awareness about LSCs, including roughly 100 “engagement sessions.”

Still, Moore acknowledged the need to improve and said officials are reviewing Raise Your Hand’s study.

“As a District, we are committed to continuing to work to improve awareness and access to this important democratic process,” Moore said.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Newark’s teaching force doesn’t always match its diverse student body — especially among Latinos

2023-07-27T20:15:00+00:00

Read in Spanish.

When Melissa De Almeida’s parents immigrated to Newark in the 1990s from Brazil, navigating the public school system for their two daughters was among their steepest battles.

De Almeida’s older sister struggled to learn English in a system where few teachers spoke her native Portuguese. By the time Melissa enrolled a few years later, she encountered teachers who were able to communicate with her family, but it was uneven.

There was, though, one shining light: De Almeida’s second grade teacher at Oliver Street School. De Almeida fondly remembers her teacher making s’mores and fresh lemonade for her class, but the big difference was that she could speak with De Almeida’s parents in Portuguese.

Now, the 19-year-old sophomore at Montclair State University wants to be a bilingual teacher and help families like hers in Newark, her hometown, where roughly 9% of students speak her native language.

“I need to be the change that my sister needed,” said De Almeida, who graduated from East Side High School last year.

In Newark and other cities in New Jersey, teaching staff and school leadership do not always reflect diverse student bodies. Demographic data shows Black and Latino students make up about 90% of Newark’s total student population, while teachers from those backgrounds make up just over half of the teaching staff.

Roughly 20% of Newark schools have a majority of white teachers. Other cities in New Jersey have even lower proportions of teachers from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.

A close look reveals that Latino students, who are increasing in number annually in the district, are starkly underrepresented in the district’s teaching staff, a Chalkbeat analysis of 2021-22 state-provided school demographic data found.

White teachers make up a majority of the teaching staff at one in five district schools, and Black teachers are the majority teaching staff at a little more than one in four schools. But no school in the district has a majority Hispanic or Latino teaching staff — even though roughly half of all the district schools have a majority Latino student body.

One of the district’s high schools has a Latino student population of more than 61%, but no Hispanic or Latino teachers. Three other schools also don’t have any teachers who identify as Hispanic or Latino.

Similarly, the state’s population of Latino children has expanded — by roughly 25% — since 2010, but an analysis from NJ Advance Media found that roughly 30% of all schools don’t have any Hispanic teachers at all. In addition, districts have seen a growing student population identified as English language learners while also facing a shortage of bilingual teachers.

Many experts say that desegregation court rulings, which have failed time and again to wholly integrate student bodies and personnel, have contributed to the disproportionate numbers of white teachers.

Yet, numerous studies show that a diverse teaching staff, especially one representative of a school community, can foster stronger teacher-student bonds, stronger relationships between teachers and families, and lessons that are more culturally responsive — the benefits De Almeida experienced first-hand with her second grade teacher.

Newark Public Schools’ demographic data also displays a glimmer of hope when it comes to moving closer to a teaching workforce that reflects its student body: A handful of elementary schools with majority Latino students have a notable number of Latino teachers, ranging between 33% and 44%. And Black students are more likely to have proportionate representation in administration and teaching staff, data show.

Having teachers who students from underrepresented backgrounds can identify with racially and culturally is just one component of teacher and school quality, but it can help lead to improved attendance, test scores, and the likelihood of taking an advanced course, research has found.

“If we don’t more aggressively address the demonstrated mismatch between students and the school personnel who serve them, we may not see an acceleration of academic achievement by all of our students,” said Leslie Fenwick, dean emerita at Howard University whose expertise is on teacher diversity and education equity. “We must do a better job of recruiting, retaining, and promoting teachers and principals of color.”

‘We are living with the fallout of the history’

As De Almeida’s story with her sister illustrates, many students don’t have teachers who share their background – and the gap between Hispanic or Latino students and teachers is only expected to widen, statewide and nationally, studies suggest.

Nationally, white teachers make up 80% of the teaching force, and in New Jersey, it’s 83%. Meanwhile, the state’s teaching force — also mirroring national trends — is 8% Hispanic and 6.5% Black, while those student populations are 32% and 15%, respectively.

A lawsuit before New Jersey’s Superior Court in Trenton is arguing that the state — one of the most diverse yet segregated public school systems in the country — is responsible for addressing the fact that more than half of Black and Hispanic or Latino students attend schools that are predominantly non-white. The lawsuit, led by The Latino Action Network and NAACP-NJ, argues that the state is violating its own constitution and the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka from nearly 70 years ago.

That historic Supreme Court ruling — and several desegregation rulings that followed — declared segregated schooling to be a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. But it also led to an uneven proportion of white teachers to teachers of color as people, including those in power who upheld segregationist beliefs, resisted desegregation efforts, analyses of historic documents show.

“We are living with the fallout of the history that occurred — not as a result of the Brown [v. Board of Education] decision, but of the massive white resistance to it,” said Fenwick, who authored the book “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership.”

Racism and segregationist beliefs led to widespread illegal firings, dismissals, and demotions of Black teachers — upwards of 100,000 — between the 1950s and 70s, Fenwick said in a recent phone interview with Chalkbeat and described in her book.

Desegregation efforts must also invest in teacher diversity, Fenwick says. Without that, students of color will continue to lose out on the massive opportunities a teaching staff that reflects them can offer, including on a social emotional level, as well as academically and behaviorally, which decades worth of research has documented.

“Unless we address this diversity issue in the school leadership and teaching forces, I fear we won’t make the kind of progress that we need to make in the country,” Fenwick said.

Newark works to create diverse teacher pipeline

Though Black teachers make up a majority of the teaching staff in some Newark district schools, the proportion of Black teachers has dropped about 10 percentage points since the late 1990s, when the district was under state control, a 2021 analysis from New Jersey Policy Perspective found.

The district has recruitment efforts in place to attract teachers from diverse backgrounds, including one that creates a pipeline of “home grown teachers” by incentivizing current students to major in education and get a guaranteed teaching position in the district after they graduate college.

During a June press conference, Superintendent Roger León agreed that diversifying his staff “is good in that it brings about different viewpoints” and noted the district’s recruitment strategies, which include a teacher-to-principal pipeline initiative that targets Black and Latino male teachers.

The district partnered with Montclair State University’s College for Education and Engaged Learning to create the Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy, a dual enrollment program at East Side and University high schools where students earn college credits at no cost as they prepare for a career in teaching. The program recruits students into the profession at an early age, provides mentorship, and guarantees an offer of admission to the university’s teacher education program after high school graduation.

An essential part of the program is that it encourages students to return to teach in their hometown district after college graduation.

León has promised participants that a teacher contract with the district will be waiting for them after they complete the university’s program.

Melissa De Almeida, a sophomore at Montclair State University and East Side High School graduate, says the “home grown” teacher program in Newark helped her pursue her dream of becoming a bilingual teacher.

De Almeida, a graduate of the program at East Side, says being part of it helped her envision a future helping students who speak different home languages. But what helped her see that she could be successful, she said, was the example set from program co-directors Mayida Zaal and Danielle Epps, women of color who are graduates of urban school districts.

“I think it’s kind of refreshing to have someone talk to you that understands and kind of has been through what you’ve been through and kind of walked that path with you,” De Almeida said.

‘Retaining teachers is the problem’

In a recent phone interview, Newark Teachers Union President John Abeigon said he supports the district’s recruiting efforts, but “retaining teachers is the problem” that León needs to address, particularly when it comes to teachers of color.

“We have white, Black, Hispanic, brown, the rainbow,” Abeigon said about the diversity of teachers in his union. “Everybody that comes to this district, a majority of them leave within a couple of weeks or months of working in this district. That’s endemic to the district and the way it treats its staff.”

Research has found that teachers of color are more likely to teach in “high needs, hard-to-staff schools with challenging work environments and higher attrition rates for all teachers,” a FutureEd report on teacher diversity stated.

As teachers from diverse backgrounds navigate districts with low resources and unfavorable working conditions, though, they often feel undervalued and overlooked, according to feedback from focus groups in a 2019 report that examined retention of teachers of color.

Nubia Lumumba, a Black and Muslim educator and former English teacher at a Newark high school, resigned from her position after just six months of working in the district. Lumumba said she experienced and witnessed racial harassment while teaching, but lack of sensitivity from school administrators in handling concerns of racial harassment led to tensions that ultimately led to her resignation.

There was a lack of “genuine empathy for what I had gone through,” Lumumba said, adding that students were witnesses to what she experienced. “If, as a mature adult, it cut me deeply to have experienced racial and religious harassment and not get any meaningful support from district and school leaders, then, I imagine, it must be even more damaging to the Black students.”

Lumumba, who taught for eight years prior to her last role, said schools need to have strategies and programs in place that will bring “a true understanding and celebration of diversity” and support students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. This could lead to improved retention, she said.

The teachers of color in the 2019 case study would agree. Among solutions outlined in the report: District leaders need to ensure that “schools are places that culturally affirm teachers of color,” empower teachers with pathways to leadership, and offer compensation for extra work.

A New Jersey task force on school staff shortages, put together by executive order from Gov. Phil Murphy last year, released a report earlier this year that shows signs the state is paying some attention to the retention of teachers.

Providing support to schools in “implementing policies and practices that create a work environment that is free of bias, including microaggressions,” as well as increasing teacher pay and expanding “mentorship and professional development for early career educators” were among the recommendations listed in the report.

Students need support through higher education

For Red Hawks Rising co-directors Zaal and Epps, their efforts with the district to diversify the teaching force start by supporting Newark students and becoming their “community of commitment” as they navigate high school, college, and long-term careers, Epps said.

Red Hawks Rising Teacher Academy co-directors Mayida Zaal and Danielle Epps say the dual enrollment program aims to support Newark students from high school to their career in teaching.

“We can’t just focus on the recruitment of young people who represent Black and brown communities, and then not be intentional about how we’re going to support them to get to the finish line,” Zaal said. “There has to be support along the way so that we don’t have a sort of leaky pipeline into schools.”

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the overall college enrollment rate among 18- to 24-year-olds decreased from 41% in 2010 to 38% in 2021. The overall college enrollment rate that year was even lower among Black students at 37% and Hispanic students at 33%.

While in the dual enrollment program, students confront different misconceptions about higher education, such as the idea that to pursue a career they have to leave their hometown or that college is financially out of reach, or the belief that “college is not something that’s for me,” Epps said.

Many students in the program are bilingual or bicultural and have experience dealing with educational challenges that, in turn, could help their future students.

“They’ve been raised in resilient families where they have been able to figure out their way into college as first-generation students,” Zaal said. “So, they have a significant amount of social capital to offer.”

De Almeida, who’s set to graduate in 2026, gives back to her community by working with parents at her local church and helping them understand their children’s homework or providing translation support for them. She relates to those families, she says, and talks to them about helping her own family financially while juggling school work and pursuing her dream of teaching.

The aspiring bilingual teacher is eager to get into the classroom and hopes to leave a lasting mark on students with similar backgrounds as her.

“I’m usually the one that everybody runs to with this kind of stuff. I love being able to be that help,” said De Almeida about working with parents of different backgrounds. “And I think that once I’m a teacher and come back to work in Newark, doing this work officially, I’ll be 10 times better.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark, covering the city’s K-12 schools with a focus on English language learners. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Teachers sue over Tennessee law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias

2023-07-26T18:58:23+00:00

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Tennessee’s largest teacher organization has joined with five public school educators to legally challenge a 2-year-old state law restricting what they can teach about race, gender, and bias in their classrooms.

Their lawsuit, which was filed late Tuesday in a federal court in Nashville by lawyers for the Tennessee Education Association, maintains the language in the 2021 law is unconstitutionally vague and that the state’s enforcement plan is subjective.

The complaint also charges that Tennessee’s so-called “prohibited concepts” law interferes with instruction on difficult but important topics included in the state’s academic standards. Those standards outline state-approved learning goals, which dictate other decisions around curriculum and testing.

The lawsuit is the first legal challenge to the controversial state law that was among the first of its kind in the nation. The law passed amid a conservative backlash to America’s reckoning over racism after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis and subsequent anti-racist protests.

Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge, one of the Republican sponsors of the legislation, argued the law was needed to protect K-12 students from being “indoctrinated” with social concepts that he and other lawmakers considered misguided and divisive such as critical race theory. That academic framework, which surveys of teachers suggest are not being taught in K-12 schools, is more commonly found in higher education to examine how policies and the law perpetuate systemic racism.

Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed the legislation in the final days of their 2021 session, just days after the bill’s introduction. Gov. Bill Lee quickly signed it into law, and later that year, the state education department set rules for enforcement. If found in violation, teachers can be stripped of their licenses and school districts can lose state funding.

Only a small number of complaints have been filed and no penalties levied during the law’s first two years on the books. But Ragan has introduced new legislation that would widen eligibility for who can file a complaint.

The lawsuit seeks to overturn the law and asks for a court order against its enforcement.

The complaint claims the statute fails to give Tennessee educators a reasonable opportunity to understand what conduct and teachings are prohibited.

“Teachers are in this gray area where we don’t know what we can and can’t do or say in our classrooms,” said Kathryn Vaughn, a veteran teacher in Tipton County, near Memphis, and one of five educators who are plaintiffs in the case.

“The rollout of the law — from guidance to training — has been almost nonexistent,” Vaughn added. “That’s put educators in an impossible position.”

The lawsuit also charges the law encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement and violates the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids any state from “depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

“Laws need to be clear,” said Tanya Coats, president of the teachers group known as TEA, which is leading the litigation.

She said educators have spent “countless hours” trying to understand the law and the 14 concepts banned from the classroom — including that the United States is “fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist;” or that an individual, by virtue of their race or sex, “bears responsibility” for past actions committed by other members of the same race or sex.

TEA says the ambiguity of those concepts has had a chilling effect in schools — from how teachers answer a student’s question to what materials they read in class. To avoid the risk of time-consuming complaints and potential penalties from the state, school leaders have made changes to instruction and school activities. But ultimately, it’s students who suffer, Coats said.

“This law interferes with Tennessee teachers’ job to provide a fact-based, well-rounded education to their students,” Coats said in a news release.

The 52-page lawsuit gives specific examples of how the ban is affecting what nearly a million public school students are learning — and not learning — daily across Tennessee.

“In Tipton County, for example, one school has replaced an annual field trip to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis with a trip to a baseball game. In Shelby County, a choir director fears that his decades-long practice of teaching his students to sing and understand the history behind spirituals sung by enslaved people will be perceived as ‘divisive’ or otherwise violative of the Ban,” the suit says. Other districts have removed books from their curriculum as a result of the law.

The governor’s office typically does not comment on pending litigation, but Lee’s press secretary, Jade Byers, provided this statement on Wednesday in response to the lawsuit: “The governor signed the legislation because every parent deserves transparency into their child’s education, and Tennessee students should be taught history and civics with facts, not divisive political commentary.”

Tennessee targeted anti-CRT policies early

Tennessee was among the first states to pass a law limiting the depth of classroom discussions about inequality and concepts such as white privilege.

In March, Tennessee’s education department reported that few complaints had been filed with local school districts based on the law. And the department had received only a few appeals of local decisions.

One was from the parent of a student enrolled in a private school in Davidson County. Because the law does not apply to private schools, the department found that the parent did not have standing to file an appeal under the law.

Another complaint was filed by a Blount County parent over the book “Dragonwings,” a novel told from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant boy in the early 20th century. The state denied the appeal based on the results of its investigation.

However, Blount County Schools still removed the book from its sixth grade curriculum. And the lawsuit described the emotional toll of the proceedings on a 45-year teaching veteran who was “entangled in months of administrative proceedings, with her job on the line, because of a single parent’s complaint about an award-winning work of young adult literature that the Tennessee Department of Education approved and the local elected school board adopted as part of the district’s curriculum.”

The department also declined to investigate a complaint from Williamson County, south of Nashville, filed soon after the law was enacted. Robin Steenman, chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, alleged the literacy curriculum “Wit and Wisdom,” used by Williamson County Schools in 2020-21, has a “heavily biased agenda” that makes children “hate their country, each other and/or themselves.”

A spokesman said the department was only authorized to investigate claims beginning with the 2021-22 school year and encouraged Steenman to work with Williamson County Schools to resolve her concerns.

Department officials did not immediately respond Wednesday when asked whether the state has received more appeals in recent months.

Meanwhile, critics of the law worry about new legislative efforts to broaden its application.

Under the state’s current rules, only students, parents, or employees within a district or charter school can file complaints involving their school. Ragan’s bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Joey Hensley of Hohenwald, would allow any resident within a public school zone to file a complaint.

But critics argue such a change would open the door to conservative groups, like Moms for Liberty, to flood their local school boards with complaints about instruction, books, or materials they believe violate the law, even if they do not have direct contact with the teacher or school in question.

The prohibited concepts law is separate from 2022 Tennessee law that, based on appeals of local school board decisions, empowers a state panel to ban school library books statewide if deemed “inappropriate for the age or maturity levels” of students.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comments from the governor’s office and one of the plaintiffs.

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Students worry about fate of some race-based scholarships after end of affirmative action

2023-07-21T20:35:07+00:00

When Royce Griffin weighed his college options two years ago, scholarship offers played a big part in his decision.

Griffin, who is Black and hails from Jackson, Mississippi, chose the University of Missouri in large part because it offered him a scholarship that covered more than $20,000 a year in out-of-state tuition costs. Known as the Diversity Award, it’s a scholarship given to high-achieving students from racial or ethnic backgrounds that are underrepresented at the university.

But last month, after Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey wrote in a letter that colleges there had to adopt race-blind criteria for scholarships following the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action, the university announced it would not offer scholarships like the Diversity Award to future applicants. When Griffin found out about that decision, he worried it could limit opportunities for students of color.

“It’s a really important scholarship for us,” said Griffin, a rising junior studying in the university’s top-rated journalism program. Without that aid, he said, he couldn’t have afforded to go to college outside of Mississippi: “It puts us on that same playing field as our white counterparts.”

The text of the Supreme Court’s ruling, released last month, is limited to college admissions and says nothing directly about scholarships. But some state officials and college leaders have interpreted the decision to include scholarships that consider a student’s race, too — a view some legal experts say could hold up in court.

Officials with organizations that represent financial aid administrators and diversity officers in higher education are cautioning colleges to take their time in deciding whether the ruling applies to scholarships, and to wait for forthcoming guidance from the federal government. That guidance, slated to be released by mid-August, is expected to outline which admissions practices and student programs remain lawful in the Biden administration’s view.

Meanwhile, there’s uncertainty and confusion as many high schoolers gear up to apply to colleges and scholarships this fall and counselors try to help them figure out their options.

“Programs like that — they benefit our students all the time,” said Vanessa Lee, a Chicago teacher who spent the last eight years advising students on their postsecondary options at Back of the Yards College Prep, a high school that serves mostly Latino students from low-income families.

One state university comes to the high school to recruit aspiring Latino engineers, she said, while another local university recently gave a student a scholarship for Black women pursuing careers in fields like science and math. If programs like those went away, Lee said, “our students would not have as many opportunities.”

Scholarships that consider race are in limbo

So far, the number of colleges that have announced concrete changes to their scholarship offerings has been small, though some legal experts and college officials expect more to follow.

In states that previously banned affirmative action, college administrators and attorneys often interpreted state law more broadly to include financial aid, noted Wil Del Pilar, the senior vice president at The Education Trust, an education civil rights group.

“There was this kind of chilling effect on using race as institutional administrators, one, were afraid of political backlash, and second, they were afraid of legal action,” he said. “We’re really watching that.”

Already, the University of Missouri system, which includes the flagship university commonly known as Mizzou and three other universities, has said it would no longer offer scholarships that take a student’s race or ethnicity into consideration, though it will honor awards it gave previously to incoming and existing students, like Griffin. The Diversity Award, for example, is no longer listed on Mizzou’s scholarships page.

The university system has notified 1,600 students that their previously awarded scholarships or grants that had racial requirements or preferences would be upheld, wrote Christian Basi, a spokesperson for the system, in an email to Chalkbeat.

Griffin was relieved to find out his own scholarship was safe. But he saw the university’s quick move to end race-conscious scholarships, while other Missouri colleges took time to deliberate as another example of how the university was failing to support Black students like him. Already, he said, some students have shared on social media that the decision made them feel less welcome and more like “Mizzou might not be the place for them.”

In an email, Basi said the university system made a speedy announcement because “we knew we would be getting questions and calls from students and parents immediately following the ruling” and officials wanted to let incoming students know their financial aid wouldn’t change “as quickly as possible.”

The university system’s statement about the scholarship changes, he added, “specifically talked about how ‘contributions from individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives….’ lead to making our university a ‘better place to work, learn and innovate.’”

The University of Kentucky, meanwhile, has yet to notify students that it will honor previously awarded scholarships that took race into account, after the university’s president said it appeared that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling applied to both admissions and scholarships.

“We are discussing that process and how best to do that in the near future,” Jay Blanton, a spokesperson for the university, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat. Officials are reviewing whether to make changes to scholarship programs going forward.

For now, the university’s diversity scholarship is still listed on its website.

End of scholarships, even small ones, could derail students

Given the current political climate — with ongoing efforts to ban diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in colleges and schools, and new laws restricting what schools can teach about race and gender — Del Pilar said there could be “a slew of bills” that target the use of race in colleges beyond admissions.

Two years ago, a conservative law firm sued the Wisconsin agency that oversees the state’s financial aid system, arguing the grants it offered to Black, Native American, Hispanic, and some Southeast Asian students were discriminatory and unconstitutional. That case was dismissed last year. But the president of the law firm that filed the lawsuit, Rick Esenberg, has said he thinks the Supreme Court’s latest ruling would bolster their argument.

“It’s very difficult to see how the state wins that case now,” Esenberg told Inside Higher Ed.

The Republican speaker of Wisconsin’s state assembly, Robin Vos, has said he plans to introduce a bill this fall “to correct the discriminatory laws” that created those grants in 1985.

For now, private scholarships that consider race and ethnicity haven’t faced the same kind of pushback. The University of Missouri system, for example, said it will continue to accept scholarships from private organizations that consider a student’s race — so long as the university was not involved in the selection process.

Angelique Albert, the CEO of Native Forward, a nonprofit that awards private scholarships to Native students, said her organization has been reassuring donors in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that their donations will still reach Native students.

Her organization has also been reaching out to colleges to make sure they’re aware that their scholarships are based on tribal citizenship, not race.

Still, she is worried about what will happen if students lose access to scholarships that consider their Native identity.

“The need is so high,” Albert said. “As Native people in this country, we have not had generational access to education, we haven’t had generational wealth.”

Corri Tate Ravare, the executive director of a charter school in central New Jersey that’s part of the College Achieve Public Schools network, said for her students, even smaller scholarships of $500 to $1,000 that consider race or ethnicity can be the difference between a student being able to attend a college, or not. Many of the students at her school are of Puerto Rican or Dominican descent.

Scholarships often cover tuition, she said, but families still need help paying for housing costs or fees for things like on-campus health care.

If her staff sees colleges getting rid of certain scholarships, she said, they’ll likely start preparing students to apply for private scholarships earlier in their high school career.

“We don’t want any student to not go to their college of choice because of a small financial gap,” Ravare said. “We just sort of have to wait and see.”

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago opens school enrollment center for migrant children and families

2023-07-17T20:28:56+00:00

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Recently arrived migrant families on Chicago’s West Side will get help with enrolling in school, receiving free school supplies, signing up for public benefits, and getting vaccinated at a new “welcome center” run by Chicago Public Schools and the city.

Mayor Brandon Johnson and city and district officials unveiled the new center at Roberto Clemente Community Academy, a high school in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood, on Monday. Officials said the center is a pilot effort — possibly the first of several such facilities across the city.

They also called it a centerpiece of a broader plan they have promised for better serving migrant families across the city, though the center will only help smooth the transition into the district for those living in the Humboldt Park and West Town neighborhoods.

The center, which will work with families by appointment only starting later this week, is estimated to cost roughly $750,000, according to CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, who described it as a “very small investment” from the district’s operating budget.

More than 10,000 migrants have arrived in Chicago since August, many sent on buses from Texas by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Roughly half are staying in temporary shelters, including police stations. Hundreds of school-aged children are among the new arrivals, though the school district has not shared exact numbers. Helping these families find permanent housing and easing children into local public schools are key challenges facing the Johnson administration.

The Chicago Teachers Union, which helped carry Johnson — a former union organizer — to victory in April, had criticized district officials for not doing more to support newly arrived migrant students. Union leaders said some schools were overwhelmed by an influx of such students and scrambled to provide translation and other basic services.

District leaders have said they were working on a detailed, comprehensive plan for helping migrant students, to be released before the first day of school on Aug. 21. That bigger plan is still to come, Martinez said Monday.

Johnson said the area around Clemente was one of the city’s most densely populated with newcomer immigrants.

“We’re going to stand on the shoulders of our ancestors, and we’re going to bring people closer together to make sure that the families who have been here have the full force of government and families who wish to call Chicago their home also have the full force of government,” Johnson said at the Monday press conference.

Martinez balked at saying exactly how many migrant students enrolled in the district this past school year — it’s in the thousands, he said — or how many the district expects to serve in the fall. That latter number is too fluid, he said, but he promised to have an update at the start of the school year.

Johnson said his office will track “outcomes with this center” in order to improve how it operates and also use it as a model to potentially expand to other neighborhoods.

At the new “welcoming center” on the high school’s second floor, families will make their way through several classrooms to get a string of services, officials said. Children will get an English language screening, receive free supplies, and get assigned to a school.

Martinez said the high school students will be assigned to Clemente while younger children will be enrolled at one of eight nearby elementary schools — Chopin, De Diego LaSalle II, Mitchell, Moos, Pritzker, Sabin, and Talcott.

“These are migrant families who come here to seek their dream, and we’ll be part of that dream,” said Martha Valerio, the community coordinator at Clemente, standing in front of a table piled with coats, running shoes, and backpacks. “We are all going to receive them with a warm smile.”

Families will meet with a social worker and get help signing up for medical, dental appointments, and public benefits, such as food assistance and Medicaid.

“These are the types of services we have to provide across the entire city,” Johnson told journalists in front of the center.

According to WBEZ, some migrants are now living in tents, rather than police stations or crowded shelters, as they wait for permanent housing. School-aged migrant children are eligible to be classified as Students in Temporary Living Situations – a status that protects children without permanent housing.

Meanwhile, some teachers have been volunteering their time this summer to get students ready for school.

Earlier this month, the police department opened an investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against officers, including one accused of impregnating a recently-arrived teen, at a west side police station. The investigation prompted city officials to move migrants out of police stations.

Johnson said at the Monday event that the investigation is ongoing, with an update slated for Tuesday.

Reema Amin contributed.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

This summer program fills academic gaps for NYC students (and pays them, too)

2023-07-14T20:45:21+00:00

Rising senior Nana Ama Gyamfi-Kordie started her freshman year of high school during a global pandemic and is now starting her college application process in the shadow of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings against affirmative action and student debt relief.

For her and many other New York City teens, the path to college feels bleak. But at least one local university is broadening its access by reaching out early — to 10th and 11th graders — and showing how important it is to provide students with extra academic and financial support even before college.

Gyamfi-Kordie is among 65 high school students participating in a summer program run by the Center for K-12 STEM Education at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. Called ARISE (which stands for Applied Research Innovations in Science and Engineering), the program promises students a leg up, with hands-on training, mentoring, and experience — all for free, making it more accessible for students across the five boroughs. While other programs offer possible scholarships once accepted, the ARISE program makes it clear that a full scholarship and stipend will be offered with their acceptance.

The program lasts seven weeks and is designed to increase access to high-quality STEM learning experiences for all students, regardless of need. It’s one of three free high school summer programs at NYU Tandon’s Center for K-12 STEM Education, which has an emphasis on working with teens from groups underrepresented in STEM fields such as students of color, girls, and those from low-income backgrounds. Of the three free programs, ARISE is the only one that also offers a stipend to students.

The program requires a college-type application and multiple interview rounds. The 6% of students who make the cut go on to conduct college-level research, practice expository writing, learn scientific methods, and are partnered with a Tandon student ranging from undergraduates to postdocs.

“I had never met somebody else who wanted to be a biomedical engineer before this program,” Gyamfi-Kordie said with a huge smile.

A first-generation American whose family is from Ghana, she said her older sister is the reason she learned about ARISE.

“My sister is the first person to go to college in my family,” said Gyamfi-Kordie, who attends Democracy Prep Charter High School. “She’s been through the system, and she’s teaching me how to go through the system, too.”

In 2022, her sister insisted she apply for Code Next, a free Google computer science education program for Black, Latino, and Indigenous high school students.

Code Next pairs students with a Google mentor throughout their high school years. Gyamfi-Kordie’s Google Code Next mentor told her about NYU’s K-12 STEM programs.

Aysha Naveed, an NYU rising sophomore in engineering and ARISE alumnus, offers advice to incoming ARISE students.

Warren Axelman, a rising senior at Essex Street Academy in Manhattan, said that because of the pandemic, he didn’t take a math class during his freshman year. The ARISE program is helping students like him fill academic gaps.

“Ultimately, it put me behind academically. My school doesn’t offer physics, and we don’t have APs either. I wanted to come to ARISE so I could have the opportunities I haven’t had at my high school,” Axelman said.

Sandra Labriel, a student from Queens attending Manhattan’s Professional Performing Arts High School, said, “because of COVID-19, my school’s academics don’t feel as strong as they used to be so I’ve been doing the College Now courses offered through my high school.”

College Now, is a partnership between NYC public schools and CUNY in which 17 campuses offer college-level courses to all students at the 35 partner public high schools.

Last year, she took two college-level classes, adding six hours to her full-time school schedule. For her final ARISE project, she is focusing on oncology research, in remembrance of her grandmother.

Summer program offers scholarships and stipends

The largest one-year drop in college enrollment rates in over 30 years was recorded between 2019 and 2020, as a result of the pandemic. While there was a small uptick in 2022, lawmakers and economists across the country are still very concerned. Incentives or encouragement offered to students could make or break their interest in applying for college.

That’s why incentives offered by the ARISE program such as free MetroCards, a $750 stipend, and access to the discount dining halls are imperative. The university intends those perks to enable students from low-income backgrounds to have the same access to STEM education as their wealthier New York peers.

Having access to the dining hall makes a big difference for Labriel because the food is as tasty as the dozens of nearby restaurants, but half the price, she said.

“The disparity was so huge when I was in high school. When it came to STEM programs, there was NYU’s full scholarship program which also offered a stipend or other programs that cost $4,500 for just one week,” said Aysha Naveed, an NYU undergraduate in engineering and ARISE alumnus who returned to teach this summer.

“Not only would I not ask my parents for that kind of money, but I didn’t want to ask them. It was too much.”

Naveed, the youngest of five children, learned about NYU’s summer STEM program from her older sister. She believes that participating in the program enabled her to get a full ride to NYU, giving her a college experience without debt, family separation, or strain on her emotional well-being.

Being close to her family was just as important as being able to afford college. While she also received a full-ride offer to Smith College, she feared the potential exclusion and emotional distress attending a predominantly white institution could bring.

So she elected to stay in the city instead. Her ARISE mentor continued offering guidance through her remaining years of high school. Eventually, the mentor helped her pick her civil engineering major with a concentration in environmental engineering and a minor in social public policy as a full-ride scholar.

Naveed smiles while sharing stories of her older sister’s help during her college application process.

Program looks for students with a passion for science

During their final week in the summer program, ARISE students present their projects in a colloquium of their peers while their teachers and mentors grade them. Program Director Ben Esner said many of the students’ projects are considered college-level projects.

“I call it the virtuous cycle. High school students are benefiting, the faculty are benefiting from the program, the Ph.D. students are benefiting,” said Luann Williams-Moore, the program’s assistant director.

“The program contributes to NYU’s academic enterprise,” Esner said.

While the 2024 dates aren’t out yet, Wiliams-Moore said applications launch Thanksgiving week, and close on March 4.

Perfect grades don’t guarantee acceptance into the program, Esner and Williams-Moore said. They’re looking for well-rounded students who have demonstrated an interest in science but haven’t had all of the access to put that passion into practice.

“We’ve had students tell us they didn’t realize how much they struggled with writing until they got here,” said Williams-Moore. “That’s the kind of student we want to support, the type that might not be great at writing but it’s clear they love science.”

Eliana Perozo is a reporting intern at Chalkbeat New York. You can reach her at eperozo@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago teachers help refugee youth navigate a new language, a new culture, and in the fall, new schools

2023-07-11T15:18:53+00:00

Leer en español.

Sitting on the floor of a South Side police station and reading “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Eric Carle to two young Venezuelan refugees, Chicago teacher Melissa Faccini Deming suddenly seized on an idea.

She looked at the 5- and 7-year-old girls and launched into a Colombian folk song that asks the sun to “warm me up a little.” “Sol solecito, caliéntame un poquito,” sang Deming.

The children immediately joined in, along with their mother Maria and a chorus of other newly arrived migrants crowded into the lobby of the 22nd precinct police station in the Morgan Park neighborhood. Chalkbeat is not using their real names to protect their privacy as they seek asylum.

It was a brief moment of joy and familiarity for the mostly Venezuelan asylum seekers and refugees temporarily housed at police stations until the city finds more permanent housing.

More than 10,000 refugees and asylum seekers have arrived in Chicago since August, about half of them still staying in temporary shelters, police stations, and respite centers.

When Deming, a Chicago Public Schools elementary school teacher, heard about refugees placed in her neighborhood, she felt she had to reach out and offer them something special — familiarity. She made arepas and offered the traditional South American stuffed cornmeal patties as a taste of home.

Deming then realized she had something else to offer. On her next visit she brought books to read to the children. The kids loved it. This inspired her and a few local teachers to hold regular classes for the refugee children at the community garden across the street from the police station.

With the youngest learners, Deming danced and sang and read books, while retired teacher Laura Amaro read lesson books in Spanish with an older child at a picnic table.

Amaro said she hoped to allow the kids to feel a sense of normalcy and to help prepare them for new schools in the fall.

Retired Chicago Public Schools teacher Laura Amaro answered the call to help prepare the young children staying at the 22nd police precinct station for school in the fall. “Before you know it, September is going to be here,” said Amaro. “I want them to be ready.”

With migrants arriving regularly in Chicago on buses sent by Texas governor Greg Abbott, local officials do not know how many school-age children are among the refugees and asylum seekers, nor how many will enroll in Chicago Public Schools in the fall.

Many of these children have been out of school for months, have endured traumatic experiences, are not proficient in English, and live in unstable and under-resourced conditions.

The children, their adopted communities, and their teachers will cope with these together when the school year begins.

But volunteers and teachers like Deming and Amaro are spending their own time this summer to help them feel welcome.

While schools and the city have some systems to support English language learners, educators who work with refugees note that both students and teachers who work with them need more specialized support.

Refugee trauma is ‘very specific’

Maria and her two daughters endured a frightening and treacherous journey from their home in Caracas, Venezuela, to Chicago. They traveled on foot through seven countries, she said, begging for food in the streets and witnessing people drown in mud in the forests. She saw a woman die with her baby still in her arms.

“I saw horrible things in that forest,” Maria said. “I would not wish that forest on my worst enemy.”

Bilingual Chicago educators Sol Camano and Josh Lerner have seen trauma from these kinds of experiences manifest in different ways in schoolchildren.

For example, a student of Camano’s who had been separated from her mother for three years, struggled with transitions throughout the school day. One of Lerner’s students had difficulty forming relationships with peers and teachers.

“These children are coming from a lot of trauma, and the first thing cannot be academics,” said Camano. “It has to be, how can we help them work through this trauma … making sure there are bilingual therapists and teachers to be there with the child before you start to think about their math and literacy scores.”

The school district has invested more than $30 million in social and emotional learning and mental health resources, and last school year increased the number of social workers and counselors in schools, a district spokesperson said in a statement.

Still, Camano sought out her own training and researched trauma-informed education to better help her students.

“I think it’s very important for there to be more trainings for teachers or more information for teachers on how to help students that have this much trauma. And this is a very specific trauma,” she said.

She herself spoke only Spanish when she started school in 2000. Her parents had come to the U.S. from Argentina.

“I remember sitting on the sidelines as other children played and communicated with the teachers,” Camano said. “I could only say ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ ‘please,’ ‘thank you.’”

During their Clothing Study, Sol Camano’s Pre-K students created a visual graph using photographs of their own shoes to practice categorizing items. One of the students placed their shoes in a category labeled “shoes for walking” and another student placed their shoes in a category labeled “shoes for running.”

Now, two decades later, she is a dual-language pre-K teacher at Dr. Jorge Prieto Math and Science Academy in the Belmont Cragin neighborhood, where she teaches Spanish-speaking kids from all over Latin America.

In her classroom Camano prioritizes making her students feel welcome by helping them maintain their native languages and by including in her lessons books, food, decorations and music from their cultures.

“What I would have wanted so much as a child is to have gone to school and people speak to me in my language and invite me and welcome me, and be able to talk to the other students,” Camano said. “I didn’t really have that, so I make a big point to give that to my students as much as possible.”

At least a decade of research demonstrates better outcomes for English learners when their native language is used in the classroom.

For language learners who are also refugees “it’s [about] much more than language,” Camano said.

It all comes down to trust, according to Jeanine Ntihirageza, a Northeastern Illinois University professor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages.

“You can make [learning] engaging, you can make it fun, but deep down if they don’t feel safe, they can’t learn,” said Ntihirageza, who also is founding director of the Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora Center. “Once the children feel kind of safe, then the world is open … but this comes with stability.”

Stability and safety can be hard to come by.

Back at the police station in Morgan Park, a few weeks into the classes, a bus arrived unannounced one day to take the kids and their families to shelters around the city. One child cried as she boarded the bus and said goodbye to Deming.

Two weeks later, more refugees arrived at the station, only one child among them — a precocious 4-year-old. Deming reconfigured her classes in the garden to offer English lessons to the now primarily adult group.

“It’s a very fluid project so far, which has been good, because it’s a very fluid situation so far,” she said.

Teachers offer refugees more than language

For recent arrivals, education challenges start long before entering a classroom.

Federal law gives refugees and other youth experiencing housing instability the right to immediately enroll in public schools even when they do not have records. Chicago Public Schools offers transportation, school supplies, and food assistance.

However, misinformation, unreliable internet connections, and lack of stability can still impede enrollment.

Deming says she has spoken with families who thought they were not eligible to enroll and others who believed that they could enroll only in a school two hours away.

When Maria was referred to a school for her daughters before summer break began in early June, she said it was too far to easily get there, and when one of her daughters got sick, she put it off. Now, she’s looking ahead to August.

According to a statement from the district, officials intend to share more information about accommodating more English learners later this summer.

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration told the Chicago Sun-Times they may open an enrollment center for new arrivals at Roberto Clemente Community Academy High School and potentially in other locations before school starts on Aug. 21.

Many of the recent arrivals who’ll join CPS will qualify for bilingual education. While the district reported that it has 2,255 bilingual educators, it has a vacancy rate of 2.5% for bilingual positions, according to a district spokesperson.

Josh Lerner teaches a math lesson to a group of kindergarten students as part of the bilingual program at Peirce Elementary.

Last fall, “there were not enough bilingual certified staff, especially in the middle grades,” said Lerner, who teaches English learners at Peirce Elementary School in Edgewater. He is an English language program teacher and collaborates with administration and other teachers to optimize education for English learners at Pierce.

The teacher union contract recently increased the number of such positions and added incentives for bilingual certification.

Lerner thinks the district should remove barriers to school volunteering — like a long online form, fingerprinting, and hard-to-access information — to enable parents who are refugees or speak other languages to help in the classroom, provide bilingual help, and strengthen home-school ties.

“I have seen, firsthand, mothers who when I show them the online form they kind of reverse course and say no,” he said.

“My hope is that [my daughters] develop well and don’t get frustrated,” Maria said. “The most important thing is that they feel good and like going to their classes. From there, I’ll just hope everything goes well.”

Deming checks in with Maria and her daughters by phone and occasionally visits or has them over at her house. She hopes this will help them feel welcome in Chicago and in schools. Still, she worries.

“How many people will understand them and where they’re coming from?” said Deming, who is training to be a leader teacher through with CPS’s Personalized Learning Department to provide students with more personalized education that focuses their strengths and interests. “The more we can help them feel like there’s a desire to understand who they are first … that’s where connections can be forged.”

A previous version of this story said that Deming teaches preschool at Chicago Public Schools. She is an elementary school teacher.

Crystal Paul is a freelance reporter covering communities, arts, race and culture. Contact Crystal at crystal.l.paul@gmail.com or @cplhouse.

New Brooklyn high school aims to create social justice-focused design professionals

2023-06-30T18:10:57+00:00

Design Works High School, opening this fall in downtown Brooklyn, has a mission: to create socially conscious design professionals.

Students at the new social justice-oriented school will spend their freshman year studying how housing and environmental issues affect their community. They will also learn about the politics of poverty and inequality. Then they will choose among three specialties: housing equity, tech equity, and design equity.

“When CUNY is holding a big talk about water, and how safe water is an equity issue, we want our young people to not just be invited to come to see the talk, but to be able to go toe-to-toe with those experts,” said Corinth Hunter, who has served as project coordinator for the new school and hopes to lead it as principal.

Hunter said having students focus on the language and literature of topics, such as one’s privilege and position, is imperative, particularly in their first year. She wants students to understand logically what these terms mean before they begin offering solutions.

The school’s three tracks could lead students to careers in urban planning, software engineering, and interior design.

Bank Street College of Education, Pratt Institute, and New York City’s education department are opening the doors this fall to Design Works High School, or DWHS. Birthed from the 2019 Imagine NYC Schools competition, which had over 200 entries, the new school originally planned on having a freshmen class of 80. However, after a growing waitlist of 200 students and counting, it has bumped the number to 90.

Bank Street President Shael Polakow-Suransky said one of the stronger selling points for prospective parents and students has been the school’s direct pathway to a promising design career. Hunter said another selling point has been the degree of intimacy she and others have offered incoming students before the new school year even begins.

As part of the participatory learning practice for Design Works High School, students and teachers share ideas on a wall at Pratt Institute.

An outreach plan rooted in community participation

DWHS is building its intimate setting through a community-centered tactic called participatory practice. Essentially, students and community members will work together to decide the problem and solutions plaguing their everyday lives instead of students discussing problems and solutions by themselves.

Pratt Institute President Frances Bronet said, “We are not NYU, we are not Columbia. We are a small school of 5,000 students, but we are committed to participatory practice, and that’s what sets us apart.”

According to its website, participatory research experts at TakeRoot Justice say that “local groups are the experts on what their communities need to thrive,” while NYU Steinhardt has a report saying participatory practice benefits students by teaching them how to have a voice and weigh solutions that impact their community.

In that spirit, Hunter, her team, and Impacct Brooklyn, a nonprofit focusing on housing equity support for Brooklyners, went to community events, block parties, and high school fairs in District 13, which includes some of Brooklyn Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Navy Yard, and Bedford Stuyvesant. From October to December, they hit the pavement to get the word out about DWHS.

Hunter started a Mailchimp newsletter, and while visiting community events, she would encourage people she met along the way to sign up. While the school wasn’t yet up and running, Hunter used the newsletter as a tool to collect data from interested parents and students by adding surveys inquiring about preferred start times and what topics students enjoyed learning the most. This outreach strategy helped Hunter build relationships with students and parents well before the school’s opening.

“There’s an attraction to a small school that listens,” she said.

An educator and students brainstorm together during a student design workshop at Pratt Institute.

After gathering information about students and teachers through her Mailchimp efforts, Hunter and her staff have been contacting families that have accepted a spot at DWHS who would qualify for free and reduced price lunch and after-school programs to inform them of other resources, and then supported families through those applications. Some of these programs include Pratt’s Design Initiative for Community Empowerment and its Young Scholars program.

DICE focuses on creative thinking and problem-solving through studio classes in design. Pratt’s Young Scholars offers mentorship and college readiness guidance over a three-year period.

Social justice meets design curriculum through local partnerships

Given the school’s relationship this year with Pratt Institute, a top design college, school officials believe that the three career tracks will offer a concrete pathway to higher education opportunities.

The school’s day-to-day schedule will be similar to a regular public school day, with some differences. Three times a week, students will have “design time” where their core classes will be 75 minutes instead of 45 minutes. Hunter says the goal is to allow students to create instead of just discussing how to solve problems.

To make sure no student falls behind academically, teachers will hold office hours at the end of each day to address students who might need extra time on a specific topic.

Because of its mission to center social justice, Hunter said the school also is committed to providing mental health support to students who could develop burnout. Hunter acknowledges that many students have struggled since the COVID-19 pandemic and that social justice work can be emotionally difficult work.

Students’ daily advisory time will be focused on addressing potential burnout, she said. Hunter has already been developing a partnership with counseling in schools and organizations running community circles. The school is also laying the groundwork for partnerships with arts-related groups such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, BRIC Arts Media, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

Hunter hopes that prioritizing both social equity and design collectively will encourage students to experience more pride in where they come from and feel more confident in providing solutions to problems they could be experiencing themselves.

“There are schools out there that can create the best coder, the best designer, but if they don’t have that social justice lens, those students are just furthering the status quo,” she said.

Eliana Perozo is a reporting intern at Chalkbeat New York. You can reach her at eperozo@chalkbeat.org.

‘Master teachers’ develop strong English language instruction at Perry Township school

2023-06-30T11:00:00+00:00

When Sun Par arrived at Perry Township’s William Henry Burkhart Elementary from Myanmar as a fourth grader in 2007, she said “it was overwhelming” as a student who didn’t know English.

Even though her first few days at William Henry Burkhart were difficult, Par said as she and her peers “adapted to the culture and our environment” the teachers gave them “a loving welcome.”

Now, she’s back at her old elementary school as a tutor and translator. She attributes her passion for education to her former school and the teachers who worked with her.

“I’ve always wanted to be a teacher,” Par said. “Growing up, I always tell myself, ‘Maybe I should go back to my former elementary school, so that I could give back what they gave me.’”

When Sun Par, left, arrived in Indianapolis from Myanmar in 2007, she got a warm reception at William Henry Burkhart Elementary School in Perry Township. She now works as a tutor and translator at the school.

Sun Par’s story isn’t an accident. William Henry Burkhart has been committed to improving English language instruction for refugees from Myanmar — which was previously known as Burma — since the first students from the country began arriving in the community nearly two decades ago, said Principal Darlene Hardesty, who used to be Par’s teacher at the school.

By implementing strategies like integrating language instruction into different activities and a support structure for teachers, Perry has tried to achieve this goal.

The school’s hard work has led to recognition. In June, William Henry Burkhart was shortlisted for a World’s Best School prize awarded by T4 Education, which was founded to establish and support a network of teachers and schools and “highlight innovation.” Burkhart is one of just ten schools worldwide that’s up for the group’s Community Collaboration award, which focuses on schools that use “a whole child approach based on equity and inclusivity.”

Hardesty said that welcoming students, regardless of background, into the school community is what Burkhart does best, and its “goal is to help them grow to the next level.”

T4 Education will announce the three finalists in September, and the winners in October. Each winning school will receive $50,000.

Indiana has had a relatively large population from Myanmar for some time. According to the Burmese American Community Institute, there are over 40,000 living in Indiana, almost 27,000 of whom live in Indianapolis. (The U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 estimate for the population in Indiana is lower, at about 23,500.) There are over 4,000 students with family roots in Myanmar in Perry Township.

There has been an increase in English language learners in Indiana for several years. In 2005, the number of English learners was over 56,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. By 2022, that figure was over 77,000, the Indiana Department of Education reported.

In Perry Township, 28.3% of its over 16,000 students were English learners in the 2020-2021 school year.

Hardesty said she realized that she had to change her teaching style as more English learning students arrived beginning in 2005.

“As a fifth grade teacher, I was not used to instructing students who had no reading skills,” she said. “So that was very different. We needed to learn very quickly how to differentiate our instruction.”

Using master teachers to improve English language instruction

In response, Perry adopted the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) in 2007, which has eight parts such as interaction and practice and application. This method targets the needs of English learners by integrating language instruction into each classroom activity.

In addition, Perry Township began a partnership with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching in 2012 for each school, after an initial collaboration with two Perry schools beginning in 2010.

The structure includes the leadership of master teachers who guide professional development and demonstrate classroom strategies. Patrick Mapes, Perry’s superintendent, said that it’s important for teachers to have “this contact point to get better.”

Jenny Taylor has been a master teacher at Homecroft Elementary since 2014. Besides guiding professional development, master teachers analyze data from state assessments. Perry gathers this data by conducting monthly district-wide testing for language arts and math, according to Mapes. Master teachers also organize and oversee field testing in classrooms to better understand the effectiveness of different strategies.

Taylor said the most powerful shift in English language instruction for Perry was consciously thinking about how the four domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening apply to each aspect of teaching using SIOP. She said with these methods, teachers constantly ask themselves how English learning students might absorb content.

“What reading are they going to struggle with?” she said. “When they’re listening to me talk, am I talking too fast? Do I need to change my vocabulary up to something that they understand?”

By building a strong foundation of development with teachers, Taylor said, she can focus on “the support to teachers that I can give” which ultimately helps students.

Helping a new generation of Burmese students

Par graduated from Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis in May 2022. Shortly after, she reached out to her former school looking for a position. Hardesty said she was a perfect fit.

“There was a moment this school year where she was teaching some first graders,” Hardesty said. “And she had out some of the phonics tiles, the letter tiles, and they were pushing and making words, doing sounds, and I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this is the moment right here. She’s doing what we taught her to do so long ago.’”

As a tutor and translator, Par works with several small groups of students who are at different levels of English learning. She said it’s wonderful to be able to relate to students.

“I remember within fourth and fifth grade, learning how to write basic things, even like writing my own name,” she said. “Just seeing them, I could feel they try so hard. But at the same time, as a teacher, we can see and push them harder. And that’s what I did, just like my teachers did with me.”

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

Report on racial, cultural dynamics at Newark’s Global Studies to remain internal, Superintendent Roger León says

2023-06-30T10:00:00+00:00

A review of the racial, cultural, and religious dynamics at Newark’s School of Global Studies is meant to help the district design a strategy to tackle racial issues in city schools, said Superintendent Roger León.

The review, conducted by consulting firm CREED Strategies, began in January and is the first mention of the district’s long-awaited plan to mend problems at the high school after incidents of racial harassment surfaced last fall. CREED Strategies is led by Dr. Lauren Wells, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka’s former chief education officer whose firm also helped create NPS Clarity 2020, the district’s one-year plan laying the foundation for change in schools after returning to local control.

But details about the firm’s analysis of Global Studies and its recommendations will not be made public, said León, speaking at a press conference on Thursday.

León offered few details about the report, which he said remains under review and is meant to serve as “an internal document for us to consider.”

Global Studies, which first opened its doors in 2020 welcoming ninth graders, has been promoted as a high school offering a global perspective where students could study different cultures and prepare to study abroad.

“We found it to be quite a problem that the school that we had created to show everyone the way was actually mirroring the problems that are in the way,” León said.

Last November, students at the Newark School of Global Studies spoke publicly about their experiences of racial harassment and abuse during their time there. The tensions led several students to transfer and some teachers to resign.

In response, the district said it was working on taking “corrective action” at the school but has not shared specific details about its plan.

Thursday’s update was the first glimpse into the district’s efforts to fix long-standing racial issues that drew heavy criticism from parents, students, and advocates about the way the school and district leaders handled the situation. The incidents also garnered attention from Baraka, who met with students in December and hosted a town hall in March to discuss unity among Black and brown communities.

The district’s partnership with CREED Strategies includes a research and data-sharing agreement that launched a study of the events at the high school last fall as well as interviews with students, parents, and teachers “who have been victims of racial, cultural, and/or religious incidents,” according to the agreement approved in January by the board.

León did not disclose details of the group’s review or findings on Thursday but said “three recommendations that were shared” are on par with what the district is doing to fix the problems. He also said the district would need to “procure other experts to really help us understand how to address particular issues.”

District leaders are currently reviewing the report and will meet with Wells and her team following revisions to the document, León said.

As the district works on developing strategies to address the racial issues, León wants to “tap the students at Global Students” to work with him and help inform the district’s strategy. The district is listening to students about these and other issues, León added, and is working to promote trust and honesty among them.

“If there are issues occurring in other schools, how do students activate that voice? What is the adult response that we need to have?” León added.

Students, staff, and parents at the center of the incidents grew increasingly frustrated at what they say was an initial lack of response from the high school’s administration, including principal Nelson Ruiz. At least one parent called for the removal of Ruiz but he has remained in his role since.

During Thursday’s press conference, León said he would also call on Ruiz to help other principals deal with similar issues at their schools and provide guidance as needed.

“So, his role will not only be to be the principal of a school, but also to help his colleagues in discussing these types of conversations, which must be addressed at all times,” León added.

Board members also said they have not reviewed the draft report from CREED Strategies. During June’s regular school board meeting, board vice president Dawn Haynes said she was expecting to hear an update on the report, which was brought up during June’s legal and governance committees that are closed to the public.

“It is a hot topic item that pretty much everybody on this dais is expecting to see some results from,” Haynes said. “To know that we put that in place as the board and we’re expecting some information based on it, a synopsis, the actual report, what are the beginning findings? It is imperative that that information gets to the board.”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Biden says Supreme Court ruling should not deter colleges from efforts to diversify their campuses

2023-06-29T22:45:09+00:00

President Joe Biden, responding to the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday that severely restricts how colleges can consider a student’s race in the admissions process, called on colleges and universities to find alternative ways to create racially diverse student bodies.

“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” Biden said in a Thursday news conference. “We cannot let this decision be the last word.”

In lieu of considering race, Biden urged colleges to give strong consideration to the adversities students have faced, such as whether they overcame hardship or racial discrimination and whether they come from a low-income family. Colleges could also consider where a student grew up and where they attended high school, Biden said.

Already, some college recruitment programs zero in on communities where many low-income Black and Latino students live as part of their efforts to boost student diversity on campuses. Biden’s comments appeared to be aimed at preserving those efforts.

Colleges “should not abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies are of diverse backgrounds and experiences that reflect all of America,” Biden said.

While colleges can no longer explicitly consider a student’s race as part of a holistic admissions review, the court’s opinion does allow colleges to look at how race affected a student’s life, so long as it’s tied to a unique skill or character they’d bring to the school. Discussions like that typically come up in an applicant’s personal essay.

In a fact sheet, White House officials said the Education and Justice departments would issue guidance within the next 45 days to help colleges and universities navigate which admissions practices and student support programs “remain lawful.” That will likely involve poring over the Supreme Court’s most recent and past decisions on affirmative action, and looking for any wiggle room.

In his 6-3 opinion for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s race-conscious admissions policies were unconstitutional because they did not have “sufficiently focused and measurable objectives” that warranted the use of race; they used race in a “negative manner” that involved racial stereotyping; and their policies did not have “meaningful end points.”

“That is a list of faults with the UNC and Harvard programs, but it could be read as a blueprint for what would pass muster in some subsequent lawsuit,” said Anthony S. Chen, an associate professor of sociology at Northwestern University, who is publishing a book on the history of affirmative action next year.

But the ruling “doesn’t tell us specifically, well, what does a ‘sufficiently focused and measurable objective’ look like?” Chen added.

Federal guidance — and potentially future litigation — could help fill in that gap.

Some university officials say they will be looking for workarounds.

At the University of Colorado’s School of Medicine, which regularly gets 10,000 applications for 184 spots, that could include putting more weight on essays and responses to questions about past experiences, advocacy work, and personal attributes, said Shanta Zimmer, the senior associate dean for education.

Those questions can help illuminate whether an applicant speaks another language, whether they’ve had to seek primary care in an emergency room, whether they are the first in their family to go to college, or whether they have worked with community groups to improve health outcomes for marginalized communities, Zimmer said.

Given the correlation between patient health outcomes and the race and ethnicity of health care providers, admitting diverse medical students is “not just about what the class looks like,” Zimmer said. “It’s about how patients get healthy and how they survive, literally.”

Notably, the Supreme Court carved out an exemption that allows military academies, such as West Point, to continue to consider race in admissions, citing their “potentially distinct interests.” In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the exemption was too narrow, given that civilian universities could also have national security interests in maintaining racial diversity.

In his speech, Biden directed the Education Department to analyze which admissions practices are likely to produce a more inclusive and diverse student body, and which practices “expand privilege instead of opportunity,” such as “legacy” admissions policies that favor the children of alumni.

The Education Department will release a report in September, White House officials said, that will lay out strategies for how to boost diversity and use student adversity as a factor in admissions. The report will also detail practices that hurt the admissions chances of students from “underserved communities,” and explain how to run outreach and recruitment programs so they still create diverse applicant pools.

After the Supreme Court’s ruling, several school leaders and education equity advocates called on colleges to get rid of legacy admissions that tend to favor wealthier, white students as a first step.

Opponents of legacy admissions include Shavar Jeffries, a civil rights lawyer who heads the KIPP charter school network, which enrolls some 120,000 students nationwide, most of whom are Black and Hispanic students from low-income families.

“Legacy admissions transfer privilege across generations, disfavoring first-generation KIPP students,” Jeffries said in a statement. “The Supreme Court’s decision should be a wake-up call for colleges to reimagine their admissions practices.”

Erica Meltzer contributed reporting to this article.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

What the Supreme Court ruling on race-conscious admissions means for Indiana students

2023-06-29T17:19:08+00:00

Colleges and universities in Indiana and across the country can essentially no longer consider race in the admissions process, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.

The practice, known as race-conscious admissions, is used most often at the most selective colleges and universities in the country. It’s commonly known as affirmative action, but it is a distinct concept: Race-conscious admissions aims to increase diversity, while affirmative action was used to address historic inequities, something courts no longer allow in admissions.

The court ruled that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional and violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars discrimination.

However, Chief Justice John Roberts also wrote the court’s ruling does not mean that universities are prohibited from “considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described this as a meaningless concession — “nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.”

The ruling overturns roughly 40 years of precedent and removes what many colleges and advocates of the practice consider to be an important tool aimed at racial equity in higher education.

In Indiana, state leaders and others are already worried about the declining college-going rate, which is especially low for Black and Hispanic and Latino students. The Supreme Court’s decision could impact students’ college plans and whether they see themselves as college material at all. It could also directly affect several of the state’s largest, most influential institutions of higher education.

Here’s what to know about how the ruling impacts Indiana students:

Which colleges in Indiana consider race in admissions?

Chalkbeat examined common data sets for Indiana’s roughly 40 four-year colleges and universities to determine what factors they consider in admissions. If the data sets weren’t available, Chalkbeat reached out to the institutions directly.

About three dozen had data available or responded. A majority said they didn’t consider race in admissions. Additionally, Ivy Tech Community College, the state’s largest postsecondary institution, doesn’t consider race in admissions.

However, nine colleges and universities do, most notably the University of Notre Dame, as well as the main campuses for Indiana University and Purdue University. At those three schools, students of color make up a minority of enrollment, data shows. (The smaller regional campuses of IU and Purdue do not consider race in admissions.)

At Notre Dame, about 13% of undergraduates are Hispanic or Latino, about 4% are Black, and 6% are Asian. Students who are two or more races are also 6% of the undergraduates.

At Purdue, 7% of undergraduates are Hispanic or Latino, 2% are Black, 13% are Asian, and 5% are two or more races. And at IU, 8% of undergraduate students are Hispanic or Latino, 4% are Black, 9% are Asian, and 5% are two or more races.

The other schools that consider race are: Bethel University, Franklin College, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Saint Mary’s College, Taylor University, and Wabash College.

What’s the racial breakdown of Indiana students in college?

The share of Indiana students who go to college began falling before the pandemic and is causing concern among state leaders.

The latest data available on the college-going rate showed that 53% of the high school class of 2020 went to college, per a report released last summer by the Indiana Commission for Higher Education.

In the Class of 2020, Asian students had a college going rate of 71% and white students had a rate of 56%. But Black students had just a 43% college-going rate. Hispanic and Latino students had a college going rate of 44%.

Boosting the college-going rate has been a priority for many state leaders, including Indiana Higher Education Commissioner Chris Lowery.

Ahead of the ruling, Lowery stressed that the commission will continue to call out “educational attainment gaps” for Indiana, and respond with initiatives including the 21st Century Scholars program, which provides full in-state tuition to students who qualify based on financial need, and more.

“We have a responsibility to not only highlight the challenges that persist but to also ensure all Hoosiers can access the opportunity education and training beyond high school can provide,” Lowery said in a statement to Chalkbeat Indiana.

What does ending race-conscious admissions mean for students?

The Supreme Court decision removes a way for students who are from underrepresented populations to reach campuses, said John Kuykendall, dean of the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Indianapolis.

However, it also could have ripple effects on the way students look at colleges.

Joe Zachery, director of the College Prep Institute at the Center for Leadership Development, an Indianapolis-based organization that aims “to foster the advancement of minority youth in Central Indiana,” said that students could see this ruling and wonder if they’ll be admitted to a college, and if they are, whether they’d be accepted and welcomed on campus.

It is yet another reason that students might think college isn’t for them or that college isn’t affordable, Kuykendall added. He said their perception could be “they don’t want me there.”

Additionally, experts and others have worried about the impact on scholarships and programs that are based on race, as well as what students write about in their college essays.

Plus, it puts a spotlight on the inequities in K-12 education, Zachery said. He said if students go to K-12 schools that lack resources and funding, have fewer counselors, and have fewer Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes, then they are already at a deficit when it comes to applying to college, especially the most selective institutions.

It doesn’t mean that they can’t do it, but they’ll have to work to overcome those deficits, he said.

What will colleges do now?

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, both IU and Purdue University stressed they will follow the law.

IU leaders told students, faculty and staff in a message that they will work to understand the ruling in the coming weeks, while also continuing “principles and values” that shape IU’s campus.

The university also said in a separate statement that it “reaffirms our commitment to fostering a learning environment that is enriched by students, faculty and staff with a broad range of backgrounds and by robust discourse that draws on various perspectives and beliefs.”

Similarly, Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins said in a statement that university leaders will study what the ruling means for admissions, while also stressing the university’s mission “to build a class reflecting the diversity of experiences and gifts of the human family” and its aim to “provide opportunities for a wide range of young people.”

Rose-Hulman also reiterated its commitment to access “for all students in STEM careers and education — especially those who have been historically underrepresented.”

In light of the Supreme Court’s decision, it will be even more important for schools to deliver on their promises of being welcoming and inclusive, Zachery said. He added that admissions is one thing, but student retention is another.

Students have to feel like they belong and have a community, or they will be in survival mode, instead of being actively engaged in campus and their education, he said.

This goes for all Indiana colleges and universities, not just the ones that are highly selective, experts agreed.

Kuykendall said students who don’t get into the more selective schools now might go more to the local and regional colleges, so those institutions need to be prepared for — and have appropriate resources for — those students.

“I see it becoming a bigger problem,” Zachery said.

One way that students can find that community is through first-year experience programs and offices, he said. These initiatives can set students up for success from activities to get them engaged and involved, find a community, as well as academic advising, mentoring and mental health, he said.

The reason students leave is that what was pitched to them wasn’t truthful, Zachery said. So in order to keep students and ensure they graduate, not only do schools have to say it, he added, they must “back it up and back it up in spades.”

Chalkbeat national education reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed to this article.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief and covers higher education. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat Indiana partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

How the Supreme Court ruling on race-based admissions could affect Colorado students

2023-06-29T23:04:07+00:00

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Colorado’s colleges and universities will no longer be allowed to consider race when admitting students, after the nation’s high court ruled Thursday that admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.

Only a few Colorado schools factor race into their admissions decisions, including the University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado College, and the University of Denver.

The Supreme Court decision to halt 45 years of colleges’ use of race-conscious admissions could reshape campuses here and nationwide.

The decision means the state’s most selective schools won’t be able to consider racial diversity as a factor in enrollment, which could limit the tools they use to balance their student bodies to be more reflective of states and the nation. It also could discourage students from applying to college and deter university officials from addressing racial inequities on campus, according to experts.

Native American, Black, and Hispanic students enroll in college at lower rates than their white and Asian peers.

Ben Ralston, Sachs Foundation president, said race-based admissions were created to rectify systemic inequities that had erected barriers to Black students and students of color. The Colorado Springs-based foundation supports Colorado’s Black communities, including by offering college scholarships.

“The fact that the federal government is saying that historic inequity is something that they no longer want to address is just a clear signal to the students that we serve that those inequities are going to continue to persist throughout the course of their education and probably the rest of their lives,” Ralston said.

President Joe Biden said the ruling should not deter colleges from seeking to improve diversity. University administrators in Colorado said that they are working to understand how the ruling will affect their admissions processes and that they’ll keep working to admit students from a range of backgrounds. That includes putting more weight on students’ personal experiences and removing barriers in the application process.

“Excellence is not defined by a test score, so this will force us to define excellence even better,” said Shanta Zimmer, senior associate dean for education at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.

Most Colorado colleges don’t consider applicants’ race

The majority of Colorado’s public universities and community colleges do not consider race in their admissions decisions. Students of color go to those schools at higher rates than more selective schools but typically have fewer resources. That contributes to lower overall graduation rates.

Selective colleges typically have more financial and student support resources that help students of color graduate at higher rates.

In admissions, selective colleges in Colorado largely consider the rigor of classes taken in high school, grade point average, application essays, recommendations, and geographic location. Colorado’s public schools do not consider scores from standardized tests like the ACT and SAT, but some private colleges do.

CU Boulder, Colorado College, the University of Denver, and the U.S. Air Force Academy treat academic performance and rigor as the most important factors in deciding whether to accept a student, but they do consider race as well.

The high court’s decision exempted military academies, on the premise that they are not party to the case and have “potentially distinct interests” that were not considered in the court cases. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called that distinction essentially arbitrary and said it shows that even the majority doesn’t believe the 14th Amendment prohibits all use of race in admissions.

CU Boulder, the state’s flagship institution, is the only Colorado state university that considers race in admissions. Public universities in the state have tried to be more representative of the state’s residents — and, in turn, taxpayers who help pay for their operations.

CU Boulder is 65% white, 13% Hispanic, and 2% Black, according to the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. In contrast, Colorado’s K-12 population is just 51% white, 35% Hispanic, and 4.6% Black. The school has become slightly more demographically diverse in the last decade. The student population also has grown, and the school is admitting and serving more students who are Black and Hispanic.

In a statement, University of Colorado President Todd Saliman and Philip DiStefano, chancellor of CU Boulder, said the university would continue to use admissions processes that consider “the whole student,” including demographic characteristics and life experiences.

“As we move forward, the University of Colorado will continue to advance our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion,” they said. “We are steadfast in our belief that a vibrant and inclusive community leads to a richer educational experience for all, contributes to a positive society, and prepares our graduates to excel in an increasingly interconnected and diverse world.”

Jennifer McDuffie, CU’s associate vice chancellor of enrollment management, said the university plans an audit of all its admissions practices and staff trainings to figure out what needs to change in response to the ruling. At the same time, CU is looking at what barriers it can reduce in admissions, which may mean expanding financial aid or removing extra essays from its application process. The university also wants to ensure students from diverse backgrounds feel wanted and welcome, McDuffie said.

University of Denver Chancellor Jeremy Haefner said in a statement that his institution would continue to work to build a more diverse study body, for example by prioritizing diverse high schools in its recruitment efforts and working to create a more welcoming campus environment.

“Without question, there is much to learn about how this decision will impact admission processes at the undergraduate and graduate level,” he said. “Legal professionals will apply their expertise to interpreting the decision over the coming days and weeks, and we will make the best choices for DU’s commitment to diversity and our students while complying with the legal landscape.”

Colleges’ argument relied on stereotypes, court’s opinion says

The Supreme Court decision stems from two cases that were brought by Students for Fair Admissions, an organization headed by Edward Blum, who has spent years fighting admissions policies that consider race.

The group alleged that the race-conscious admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unfair and discriminate against Asian American applicants, among other allegations.

The universities said they needed to take race into account to build a diverse student body, which brings benefits to the schools and students.

In a 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court ruled that argument relied on stereotypes about how people of different races and ethnicities think and behave. The majority opinion argues that using race as a factor in admissions inevitably harms groups that aren’t favored by the policy.

“Excellence is not defined by a test score, so this will force us to define excellence even better.”

“College admissions are zero-sum, and a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter,” Roberts wrote.

Opponents of the use of race-based admissions had argued that Asian American applicants are harmed by the practice.

But the decision also will have an impact on the Asian American community, said Jennifer Ho, a University of Colorado Boulder professor. While Asian Americans are highlighted in the case, they have a mixed view on affirmative action and using race in admissions, according to a Pew Research Center study.

While some Asian American communities are highly educated, many struggle to get to college, such as Hmong, Laotian, and Cambodian students, and those from Myanmar, Ho said.

“Asian American students who are from Southeast Asian groups are vastly underrepresented in colleges and universities and have some of the lowest graduation rates from high school by percentage,” said Ho, a professor of Asian American studies.

Many Asian Americans have also benefited from race-based admissions policies, Ho said, including herself.

“My guess is that some of the parents who are driving the narrative that affirmative action is harming their children have actually been the beneficiary of affirmative action policies,” she said.

Less diversity makes college feel less welcoming

The last time the Supreme Court took up affirmative action was in 2016, when it upheld that colleges and universities can use race in admissions. The makeup of the court has since shifted to a more conservative majority.

Data from states that previously banned the use of race in admissions provide a look at what may happen nationwide.

After California and Michigan banned the use of race in admissions, the share of Black, Latino, and Indigenous students at several of the most selective universities fell sharply. Those figures tended to tick back up with time, but never fully rebounded — and they still fail to represent the racial diversity of high school graduates in those states, the Boston Globe reported.

When colleges become less racially diverse, students of color often feel the schools are less welcoming — which could discourage Black and Latino students from applying or staying in college. That matters because Black and Latino students are more likely to benefit from the social capital that comes from attending a top college.

Ralston said more of his students have chosen to go to historically Black colleges and universities because some schools have felt like less of a place for them. He expects that portion to increase as students feel less inclined to consider a school that’s less diverse.

Experts nationwide say it’s hard to boost admissions of Black, Hispanic, and other underrepresented students without considering race. Some people worry the ruling will discourage universities from even trying, for fear of running afoul of the ruling.

Kelly Slay, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, said states could consider sending more resources to colleges that serve higher numbers of students of color. CU Boulder’s Ho said that schools could also try to diversify their student bodies by considering the economic background of students or whether they’re the first in their family in the United States to attend college.

Advocate Satra Taylor said she hopes foundations will step up scholarship offers to get students of color to college.

“No matter what, we’re going to have to be proactive,” said Taylor, higher education director of Young Invincibles, which works on promoting student voice in policy debates, “and we’re going to have to ensure that we’re creating equitable access pathways for students from marginalized backgrounds.”

Colorado universities to give more weight to personal experiences

Administrators at the University of Colorado said they are committed to just that. McDuffie pointed to recent initiatives such as a partnership with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe that provides free tuition to some tribe members and a program that pays for travel and lodging for students and families from Colorado’s rural San Luis Valley to visit campus.

CU is doubling the number of students eligible for its CU Promise Program, which waives tuition for students whose families earn less than $65,000 a year. The extra financial aid will be paid for in part by admitting more out-of-state students. CU also plans to reduce extra essays not already required by the CommonApp, continue diversifying its recruiters, and do more outreach in communities that historically don’t send a lot of students to the university, McDuffie said.

Zimmer said she believes the court ruling relies on a mistaken idea about merit. With more than 10,000 applicants for just 184 spots, the school has always looked at test scores to ensure students are academically prepared. But simply ranking applicants by their MCAT scores wouldn’t produce the best medical school class — or the best doctors, she said.

In the future, the medical school likely will give more weight to essays and responses to questions about past experiences, advocacy work, and personal attributes, Zimmer said.

Relevant information could include whether applicants speak another language, whether they’ve had to seek primary care in an emergency room or been pulled over by the police without cause, whether they are the first in their family to go to college, or whether they have worked with community groups to improve health outcomes for marginalized communities.

Given the correlation between diverse health care providers and patient health outcomes, admitting diverse medical students is “not just about what the class looks like,” Zimmer said. “It’s about how patients get healthy and how they survive, literally.”

Kayln Belsha and Erica Meltzer contributed reporting to this article.