Dear John,
It is week 244 of our new reality and we are thinking about college attainment, social mobility and the American dream.
It wasn’t that long ago that the mantra of “college for all” was at the heart of a lot of ed reform efforts. Afterall, many good paying jobs in America require a college degree and college graduates, on average, earn much more over their lifetimes than those without a college degree.
At the same time, the number of students attending college peaked in 2010 and there is increasing interest in career pathways that don’t involve a college degree. Clearly there is a lot more we can do to strengthen Career and Technical Education (CTE) in America, which is a key pillar of our Believe in Better policy vision, without giving up on the goal of ensuring all students have equal access to a college education.
Now a new report from Pew Research reveals the huge divides across racial and gender lines in college attainment in America. For example, while 77% of Asian American women between 25 and 34 years old now have a college degree, the number for Hispanic men is just 22%. Yes, you read that right: there is a 55 point gap.
In fact, across every racial and ethnic category significant gaps have emerged between male and female college completion rates. While it's clear that we must be doing much more for the students who choose not to attend college after high school, it's also true that we can’t afford to turn a blind eye to the growing inequalities in college completion. From unequal academic preparation to a lack of support systems that encourage persistence, there is much more we can and should be doing to ensure that all students have the opportunity to reach their full potential.
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Last time, in the New Reality Roundup, we looked at the results from state and local races in the most recent cycle and explored the need to expand the educational information available to parents. This week, we examine two shortcomings of the current system in both grading practices and instructional time.
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Restore trust in report cards by recommitting to high standards
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“In a recent national survey of 20,000 parents, respondents said they trust communication from their children’s teachers more than any other source of information to judge whether their kids are on track. That was the case regardless of whether parents thought their children performed on grade level,” Jacobson wrote in a new piece for The 74. “The finding came as a surprise to Bibb Hubbard, president of Learning Heroes, a nonprofit that helps parents understand student achievement data. In past research, including surveys her own organization has conducted since 2017, parents have listed grades as the primary indicator of student performance. ‘For the first time, grades are not the number one factor,’ she said.”
That tracks with the perceptions of Fordham’s National Research Director, Adam Tyner, who also shared his thoughts with The 74. “I do think that it is possible that we are nearing a tipping point with regard to grade inflation. Maybe parents are also starting to see teacher-assigned grades as a less valuable signal.”
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While Huddard and Tyner look at the role that schools and educators play in keeping parents informed, a research team at CRPE led by Morgan Polikoff (and supported by 50CAN National Voices alumnus Travis Pillow) looked at the role of SEAs in giving parents access to comparative data to understand the scope of Covid-era learning loss. “We have lots of suggestive evidence that parents don’t understand the magnitude of the COVID-19 downturns in achievement or attendance, or at least aren’t as concerned as experts think they should be,” the authors write. “Is that because school report cards aren’t leveling with parents about how these outcomes have changed since before the pandemic?”
CRPE performed a state-by-state analysis and ranking, finding that most state report cards–34 of them–received a “C” or worse on their efforts to accurately inform parents. Only seven states–including four CAN states of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii and Tennessee–received an “A” rating, suggesting that, while accurate grades are possible, much more work remains to be done.
The first step is to recommit to the idea that high standards are actually good for kids. That’s something Alexandra Moe takes on in a new piece in the Washington Post. While getting a low grade on an assignment or a report card can be stressful, Moe points out that “a slew of research confirms the importance of discomfort in motivating growth; in developing psychological well-being; and among adolescents, reappraising stress responses to learn how to engage positively with stressors in their lives.”
Indeed, when teachers hold students to high standards, such as by marking up an essay with critical comments, research shows “students were twice as likely to revise their essays, and they improved the quality of their final drafts. Black students benefited more than White students in the experiment, and nearly 90 percent of their scores improved from the first to the second draft.” If we want students to reach great heights, the first step is to be honest with how far they have to go.
- The task this week is to take on the challenge of ensuring parents have an accurate understanding of their childrens’ academic performance.
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Expand learning time to increase learning
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If the past month was particularly challenging for you as you juggled a large number of days off from school, you’re not alone. It is part of a pattern that Fordham’s Mike Petrilli wryly calls “No School November,” noting that in his school district, kids only have 16 days of instruction this month.
That observation may have been a motivating factor for a new piece in Education Next by Mathew A. Kraft and Sarah Novicoff, who analyzed dozens of research studies to understand the role school time plays in student learning. “When it comes to time in school, both quantity and quality matter,” the authors write. “Looking across 74 studies with causal research designs, we see a compelling body of evidence that increasing total school time leads to gains in academic achievement, on average. The most substantial impacts are at schools where longer days or years are part of wholesale reforms to maximize student engagement and instructional quality, such as turnaround or charter schools.”
While a number of states and districts have expanded their calendars and instructional days in the wake of the pandemic, many others are trying to save on costs by reducing time instead, including a number of districts that have moved to 4-day school weeks. In their study, Kraft and Novicoff found “broad differences from state to state—an underappreciated dimension of education inequality. Students in states with the longest schedules spend 133 hours more in school each year, on average, compared to those with the shortest schedules, which is equivalent to 1.4 additional years of school over the course of a K–12 education.”
- The task this week is to find out how your state is doing on learning time and explore ways to provide students with more time to learn.
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Earlier this month, CarolinaCAN’s Executive Director Marcus Brandon shared that the Governor’s attempted veto of the universal school choice bill was officially overridden by the legislature. The CarolinaCAN team now turns to implementation and expansion, including work in 2025 to ensure that ESAs can be used for both tutoring and after-school enrichment programs.
HawaiiKidsCAN’s David Miyashiro and newly hired Advocacy Director Erica Nakanishi-Stanis sat down with Hawaii’s KITV Island Life show to inform families about how to fill out FAFSA forms. The team estimates that over the past several years, Hawaii’s families have left millions of dollars of federal funding for college on the table due to a lack of information.
CNN spoke with 50CAN President Derrell Bradford on what the incoming administration could do at the federal level to advance school choice.
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The science of reading has gone international. The World Bank explores how changes in instruction can address the global reading crisis, particularly in low- and middle-income countries.
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The National Association of State Boards of Education reports that the 2024 state education elections resulted in minimal shifts, suggesting that the gains made in school choice over the past few years are likely to continue.
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A new study published in The Economics of Education Review looks at the progress of Mississippi in moving from the 49th state in literacy to the 29th over a period of six years.
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Full Circle Indy reports on Indiana's Summer Learning Labs, a program that combines engaging activities with academics, offering a model for effective summer programming across the country.
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Fordham explores the financial challenges of maintaining under-enrolled schools in Baton Rouge, emphasizing the need for strategic resource allocation in shrinking districts.
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A new study published by EdWorkingPapers provides a review of research on the achievement gap from 1934 to 2023, identifying key trends, the most cited scholars and areas for future study.
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The Economist questions the value of master's degrees in today's job market, exploring which degrees are most likely to leave students in debt.
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Beautiful the Turkey is one of three birds who toured schools around Tennessee last week with owner Laura Turner. Students were able to meet and touch the turkeys while learning about the role they’ve played throughout American history–from the usage of all the parts of the bird by Native Americans to the myth of an unsuccessful effort by Benjamin Franklin to make the turkey the United States’ national bird. From all of us at 50CAN, we hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend.
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