FYI from BSF, 08.26.22

Summer Reading

Transportation dominated an otherwise slow education news week. The City, BPS, and the bus drivers' union announced an agreement to add drivers and transport vans in order to make available more drivers within the city during the overlap of the first days of school and Orange Line shutdown. The City is still discussing with the MBTA whether there is a need for dedicated shuttles for the families and students (~4,600) using the Orange Line to get to school.

Superintendent Skipper outlined priorities again this week: 1) stabilizing systems and supports after many District leadership transitions; 2) focusing on academic acceleration, not just remediation especially for Black and brown students, students with special needs and multilingual learners and 3) creating healthy student-focused schools with focus on social emotional learning.

Is it too soon to examine the impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Closures on kids? Researchers and journalists don’t think so. A Stolen Year looks at the human stories and contrasts the school closure/reopening decisions of a decentralized public education system in the US with other countries with more nationalized education and public health policies (Q&A with Author).

CRPE synthesized all the available research so far on impacts to achievement and progress toward key academic milestones. The synthesis finds impacts on achievement were across grade levels, deeper in math, and highly correlated with the length of time students spent in remote learning which was on average significantly longer for low-income students, Black students and Latino students. The latest assessment results from other states echo these findings and show that recovery is uneven. Despite widespread learning gaps and billions in federally funded recovery programs, a national study found low uptake of academic recovery focused student supports such as summer learning and tutoring, citing “low-parent interest” due to poor communication and parents potentially lacking an accurate understanding of student academic gaps (a pre-pandemic challenge).

These studies raise major concerns about ongoing learning disruptions and student absenteeism further thwarting recovery efforts, and the potential resulting declines in college matriculation and graduation rates. The K-12 to college pathway will certainly be a focus for Massachusetts’ new Commissioner of higher education (4 finalists announced this week), given the decline in college going rates we’ve seen statewide and specifically in urban districts like, Boston during the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, the topic of high school to postsecondary transitions was a top agenda item at a gathering of New England’s state education chiefs with Secretary Cardona this week.

This drop in high school to college matriculation–occurring primarily during the pandemic–came even with steady increases in the number of high school graduates over the same period.

The pandemic drops in college attendance in both Boston and across the State are disproportionately high for the number of students attending 2-year colleges, a figure that had increased significantly in the years leading up to the pandemic.

Renewed focus at the state and city level on early college is certainly one avenue for reversing these recent trends. College affordability is another major challenge, as evidenced by overwhelming student debt loads, which got some relief this week.

EdVestors announced its annual School on the Move Finalists to recognize outstanding educational progress. Congrats to all three of the finalists: Gardner Elementary, Channing Elementary and Taylor Elementary.

Both Channing and Taylor were recipients of our “Good to Great” Multi-year School Improvement Grants so we know first hand how hard these schools have worked to create amazing learning environments for their students. Bravo to all!