Call me excited about the many billions of dollars that Team Biden is planning to invest in new and renewed education initiatives, from pre-K through college.  Even more exciting is the total absence (so far) of systemic efforts to bribe and/or extort states to adopt corporate policies favored by the profiteers of the education industrial complex.  It's too early to know for sure, but it looks as if these unprecedented education investments now on the horizon actually acknowledge the massive education debt owed to public institutions that have been deprived for decades of needed funds for staffing, physical plants, transportation, and instructional resources.

As these new funding streams come closer to reality, the Biden Team has also targeted child poverty, with tax credits in the Covid relief legislation that will cut child poverty almost in half. If these cuts can be made permanent, the reductions in child poverty would constitute, in themselves, the most important education reform of the past 50 years.  For as child poverty rates decrease, we may certainly expect increases in student achievement.

But old habits of thought die slowly, it seems.  For as we stand on the cusp of dramatically cutting poverty rates and addressing other structural issues that have helped preserve segregation based on race and class, some politicians remain focused on treating the symptom, rather than the disease.  

Senator Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) offers a good example of politicians who believe that the performance, CONTINUE READING: Schools Matter: Dear Sen. Bennet: The best way to help "high poverty schools" is to eliminate "high poverty schools."

On March 11, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, COVID-19 relief bill, which will provide $125.4 billion for state K-12 education programs including investments to help kids catch up, provide after-school programs, offer summer enrichment, undertake facilities upgrades and “stabilize and diversify the educator workforce and rebuild the educator pipeline.”

And on April 9, President Biden proposed doubling the annual Title I allocation in the administration’s FY 2022 federal budget proposal. Title I was created in 1965 as a federal supplement to compensate for inadequate state funding for the nation’s school districts that serve concentrations of poor children.  It has been chronically underfunded. Chalkbeat explains: “The proposal would take the Title I program from its current $16.5 billion to $36.5 billion… The budget plan also includes a boost for special education funding… more counselors, nurses, and mental health professionals in schools… more for child care and Head Start… a big increase for the relatively small Community Schools program (schools with wraparound medical and social services for families)… and more money for the Office of Civil Rights.”  Of course, Biden’s budget is just a proposal for now—the first stage in several rounds of negotiations with Congress before a final federal budget will be passed by September 30.

None of us can fully comprehend what all these billions of dollars will mean. Probably some of us wonder whether they are really needed. In fact, those of us who live in school districts able to pass regular local property tax levies might imagine that all American schools probably look like ours—adequately maintained and at least adequately staffed. But in a CONTINUE READING: Biden Asks Congress to Double Title I on top of Stimulus Dollars: Why Is All This Money Needed? | janresseger

Effective teachers can change and save lives, but being a great teacher is hard.

The challenge is especially acute in our high-poverty, under-resourced public schools where teacher tenure is lowest. Black and brown students are twice as likely to attend one of these schools than their white peers. As nearly 80 percent of teachers are white, our newest educators often find  themselves in a very different cultural context for the first time.

The result is often a gross underestimation of Black and Brown students’ academic abilities, misunderstanding and an inability to cope with what teachers perceive as “problem behavior”. This “culture shock” and racial bias drives many teachers out of schools educating Black and brown children as they escape to lower-poverty, whiter schools.  

Many white teachers are clearly not adequately prepared to teach Black and Brown students. Our students are paying the price for the failures of our teacher-preparation programs. Changes to these programs that result in better education for Black and brown students are long overdue.

The solution is threefold. Our teacher preparation programs must engender cultural fluency; equip teachers with the skills to actually teach Black and CONTINUE READING: What's "Woke" And What's "Whack" About How Teachers Are Being Prepared? - Philly's 7th Ward

For over fifty years sociologists of education have documented the correlation between the ravages of child poverty and challenges for children at school. Hunger, homelessness and the family anxiety that accompanies the struggle to survive make it hard for many students to thrive at school. This is why the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss describes the American Rescue Plan, President Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill signed into law last week, as “a huge new school reform.” And Strauss isn’t writing merely about the $130 billion included in the bill for public schools:

“President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan is aimed at helping the country recover from the coronavirus pandemic—but it is another thing, as well: a major federal school reform unlike those we’ve seen in the past few decades. While the new law is aimed at helping families get back on their feet and helping businesses and schools reopen after a year of turmoil, it includes measures that together have the potential to slash poverty among the 12 million students who live in low-income households.”

Strauss reminds us how, over the past quarter century, public education policy has gone wrong—blaming the schools themselves and failing effectively to address children’s needs: “Policymakers have been focused for decades on improving public schools with a culture based on standardized testing, the expansion of charter schools and other ‘school choice’ measures, and, in some places, the demonization of teachers. Child poverty, they said, was an excuse for poor performance by adults. But the testing/choice/big data approach has not closed the achievement gap, and on some measures, it has barely moved… Many schools nationwide have attempted to address the out-of-school lives of students including CONTINUE READING: For Decades America Has Blamed and Punished Public Schools Serving Poor Children: Biden’s Plan Addresses the Underlying Poverty | janresseger

On February 27, the U.S House of Representatives passed President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief bill, and on Saturday, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the House bill. Nancy Pelosi says the House will promptly enact the Senate’s version, and the bill will move later this week to the President for his signature. News reports have focused on big economic elements of the relief package—unemployment relief and one-time stimulus checks, but one of the most important things about this bill has been under-reported: what the President and Congress plan to do for America’s children and their public schools.

The American Rescue Plan Supports Public Schools and the State Governments that Fund Public Schools

There has been enormous and utterly confusing guidance coming from the CDC, the White House, and mayors of big cities, all of whom want to get all children back to school in-person. But it is rarely mentioned that when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, public schools had been struggling for years with inadequate funding. Yes, schools could reopen safely if ventilation were adequate, but lots of old schools have windows that don’t open. Yes, schools could reopen safely if classes were small enough that classrooms could house all the students in desks six feet apart, but in too many classes these days, one teacher works with more than 30—sometimes even 40—students. Running school buses with social distancing would require additional buses. Because most of us don’t spend our time inside schools where we can observe the realities children and their teachers live with every day, we like to imagine that reopening schools ought to be an easy process.  But the complexities can be overwhelming and the problems expensive to address—which is why many students are still learning remotely or attending school on complicated hybrid schedules.

The new stimulus package will help school districts address the complexities. The Washington CONTINUE READING: What Biden’s COVID-19 Rescue Plan Will Mean for American Poorest Children and for Our Public Education System | janresseger

The COVID-19 relief bill working its way through Congress is full of big ideas to help people. But there's one idea that's so big, it was politically unthinkable not that long ago.

President Biden and Democratic lawmakers want to fight child poverty by giving U.S. families a few hundred dollars every month for every child in their household — no strings attached. A kind of child allowance.

If this proposal survives the wrangling in Congress and makes it to Biden's desk, experts say it could cut child poverty nearly in half.

The idea even has some bipartisan support. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, of Utah, has pitched his own, smaller version of a child allowance.

More than 10 million of the nation's children lived below the federal poverty line in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And the pandemic has made life even harder for those already vulnerable families.

Over the past year, job losses have been especially concentrated among single mothers. And with so many school cafeterias still closed and unable to feed kids experiencing food insecurity, researchers are seeing alarming levels of child hunger.

Compared to other wealthy nations, the United States does little to reduce child poverty. According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the U.S. ranks 37th among OECD nations — barely ahead of last-place Turkey — for how little it spends on family benefits: just 0.6% of gross domestic product in 2019.

"Right now, less than 3% of families [in the U.S.] receive any kind of cash assistance," says C. Nicole Mason, who heads the Institute for Women's Policy Research. "The social safety net has all but eroded and dissipated over the last two decades or so."

To begin to repair that safety net, Democrats would give caregivers $300 a month for each child under 6, and $250 a month for older kids — for at least the next year. Romney's benefit would last beyond the one-year window and be more generous for CONTINUE READING: Audio: With One Move, Congress Could Lift Millions Of Children Out Of Poverty | 89.3 KPCC

President Joe Biden, congressional leaders and debt experts continue to argue over student loan debt forgiveness — both how much should be canceled and which branch can offer relief. Biden told a questioner at last week’s CNN town hall he did not think he had the authority to cancel $50,000 for student loan borrowers, and instead would limit relief to $10,000. Earlier, the administration had said it was reviewing its options for forgiveness through executive action. Even the more modest figure of $10,000 per student would represent one of the most ambitious projects under the new administration, erasing an estimated $377 billion in debt.

Student debt forgiveness is popular among voters, but a handful of economists have questioned whether it helps those most in need. They argue that middle-class families will benefit more than poor and marginalized Americans.

There are many ways to look at the types of people loan forgiveness would benefit: Should we consider household income? What about net wealth? How would borrowers of different races be affected? A Hechinger analysis of federal data provides additional dimensions to the picture of student debt. We show more detail about where student debt falls most heavily and how different cancellation plans would affect different groups of Americans.

First, here is the overall picture of student loan debt and its rapid growth.

Americans amassed trillions of dollars in student loan debt in the course of just a few decades. Throughout most of the Department of Education’s life as a guarantor of loans and a direct lender, student borrowing remained below $20 billion per year, according to a 1998 report from the Institute for CONTINUE READING: Interactive: Explore who gains most from student debt forgiveness

Last week, while America was reliving the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol and listening to an impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, the U.S. House continued marking up President Joe Biden’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. In a society that has, over the past four years, not even managed to name widespread child poverty as a problem, the new President has—by  getting to work and immediately proposing a comprehensive COVID relief package—managed entirely to change the national conversation. I clipped seven different articles last week alone on Biden’s proposed provisions to reduce child poverty.

First Focus on Children’s Bruce Lesley explains: “(T)here were 12 million children in the United States living in poverty in 2019… Even before the pandemic and recession, the kids were not alright. In an international comparison, our nation is well behind other wealthy nations in a report by UNICEF on dozens of child well-being measures, including child poverty and child mortality.  In that report, the United States ranks… 36th out of 38 countries—behind countries like Romania, Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Greece, Poland, Lithuania, and Malta.”  Leslie points out that 31 percent of U.S. children live below the poverty line.

Leslie highlights a key provision in the President’s proposed COVID-19 relief plan, “What stands out is the Biden-Harris proposal to make the Child Tax Credit fully refundable to help… one-third of all our kids… whose parents make too little to qualify for the full child benefit, which is $2,000 annually under current law. The legislation also raises the amount of the Child Tax Credit to $3,600 to families with children 5 and under ($300 per month) and $3,000 to families with children 6-17 years-of-age ($250 per month).”

The Child Tax Credit is exactly that: a tax credit. It works by reducing a parent’s federal CONTINUE READING: Biden’s Relief Package Moves Along—Including Child Tax Credit to Ameliorate Child Poverty | janresseger

Last summer and through the autumn, Jason DeParle—a NY Times reporter and long chronicler of the devastation wrought when, in 1996, welfare reform eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children—made the case (here and here) for augmenting the Child Tax Credit as the best way to reduce child poverty in the United States.  In a long piece in July for the NY Review of Books, DeParle explained why reforming the Child Tax Credit is the key to reducing the alarming incidence of child poverty in the United States:

“In talking with scholars over the past year, I’ve been struck by how many substantive reasons there are for focusing on poor kids—even more now than three decades ago. Neuroscientists have shown that much of a child’s developmental trajectory is set during the first few years of life, before children even start school. Economists have shown that even a brief episode of poverty, especially in early childhood, can have life-long consequences—leading to fewer years of education, lower earnings, and worse health in adulthood. It’s also become harder to excuse America’s exceptional child poverty by arguing that the U.S. enjoys exceptional mobility compared to CONTINUE READING: Suddenly President Biden Has Made Ameliorating Child Poverty a Topic of the Hour | janresseger

President Joe Biden has proposed a new pandemic relief package, his “American Rescue Plan,” which includes essential support for public education.

For the clearest overall summary of Biden’s new COVID-19 relief plan, please read the two page statement from Sharon Parrott, the new president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Parrott explains that Biden’s relief proposal addresses the needs of individual workers and families and finally begins to relieve the budget pressures on states, tribal governments and cities resulting from the pandemic-caused economic recession.  You will notice that Parrott pays particular attention to the ways Biden’s plan addresses the needs of America’s poorest children. Here is a very quick extract:

“President… Biden’s emergency relief proposal is a substantial, responsible plan that would significantly reduce the hardship that millions of people across the country are now facing… The President’s proposal would extend a series of important relief measures…. expanded unemployment benefits for millions… the federal moratorium on evictions….  additional funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program…. (and) the recently enacted increase in SNAP benefits…. Rates of food hardship are particularly high among children.”  President Biden’s plan also temporarily expands the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which would help millions of low-income families with children and workers without minor children at home make ends meet…. The proposal would increase the amount of the Child Tax Credit and make the full credit available to the 27 million children who currently don’t get the full credit (or in some cases, any credit at all) because their incomes are too low… The plan calls for substantial additional child care funding, to supplement the funds provided in the year-end relief package. This funding could help child care providers cope with reduced enrollment due to the pandemic and with increased costs to keep children and staff safe.  It also could provide needed help to families to afford child care as more people are able to return to work.” “The proposal includes much-needed state and local government CONTINUE READING: President Biden’s Proposed Economic Stimulus Plan Would Help Public Schools and Begin to Alleviate Child Poverty | janresseger

“President-elect Joe Biden will seek to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour as part of his relief bill,” reported Alina Selyukh for NPR.

Across social media, people began doing calculations of what $15/hour translates into for annual salaries, and here are a couple responses from white Christian conservatives:

McChristian, personifying the relationship between a McNugget and real chicken, seems to be aware that teachers are underpaid, but lacks any Christian compassion for other workers also being underpaid (such as minimum-wage workers often constituting the working poor and living without healthcare or retirement—or job security).

Rachel, hollow mouthpiece for the equally vapid TPUSA, doesn’t just lack compassion; she also lacks any grasp of basic facts, embodying not only the hypocrisy of the Christian conservative movement but also the complete misunderstanding of how the free market works.

Note that “[r]aising wages for fast-food workers to $15 an hour would lead to a noticeable but not substantial increase in food prices, according to a new study by Purdue University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management,” as reported by Sally French at Market Watch.

Social media, as well, was quick to point out that in areas such as DC and the San Francisco Bay, where the minimum wage is already $15 and above, Taco CONTINUE READING: MLK and “the Guaranteed Income” – radical eyes for equity

The idea that we can educate poverty away has been a popular one with policymakers and politicians for years now. Here's just one example, from Janet Yellen, former Fed Chair and, possibly, future Treasury Secretary, back in 2017:

You can find this kind of idea echoed at the international level or when plugging particular edu-programs-- education ends the "cycle of poverty" or "lifts the economy."

Now, I am not an economists (though there are so many economists that pretend to be education experts that it would serve them right if I got in their lane), so I may be missing something here. Feel free to sort me out in the comments.

But it seems to me that two things are being conflated here. One is that education can help an CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: How Does Education Fix Poverty? Spoiler alert...

Twenty years ago, Sarah Deschenes, David Tyack and I wrote an article published in the Teachers College Record called: “Mismatch: Historical Perspectives on Schools and Students Who Don’t Fit Them.” 

Because of the pervasiveness of the age-graded school since the middle of the 19th century, “normal” students were those who satisfactorily acquired the slice of curriculum 1st, 5th, or 8th grade teachers distributed through lessons in their self-contained classrooms Those students who met their teachers expectations for grade-level academic achievement, behavior during lessons, and the school’s requirements for attendance and performance were “normal.” And “normal” students were the majority.

But a sizable fraction of students, for many reasons deviated from the “normal.” They didn’t fit. Since the mid-19th century until the present, these students have been given labels. They were (and are) “educational misfits.”

Examining the changes in the language of labels attached to students who strayed from the definition of “normal” required in age-graded schools offers reformers pause in considering the power of these labels over time. Especially now as the U.S. schools enter the fourth decade of the standards, testing, and accountability reform movement, surely an added template for judging “normal” performance.

Between the “normality” structured within the age-graded school and the state and federally driven standards movement since the mid- CONTINUE READING: Labeling Students Then and Now (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice