Dear John,

That commitment has guided every aspect of our work at 50CAN and has informed each edition of this newsletter over the past five years. By confronting the challenges created by these disruptions honestly and remaining open to new paths forward, we have aimed to plant our feet firmly in the reality of our present so we can build a better future together. 

We appreciate you being on this journey with us through this new reality and are hopeful that we will look back on the next five years with pride because of the new, dynamic, student-centered education system we built together.

Best,


Marc Porter Magee, PhD
50CAN Founder and CEO

 @marcportermagee

“We tell ourselves we’ve moved on and hardly talk about the disease or all the people who died or the way the trauma and tumult have transformed us. But Covid changed everything around us,” writes David Wallace-Wells in an interactive essay in the The New York Times entitled “How Covid Changed America.”

Wallace-Wells catalogues a wide variety of changes from an increase in time spent alone to a decline in trust of public health officials to a sudden resurgence and then collapse of political protests. But it is in the area of education that Covid’s impact may be felt the longest. 

Historic Learning Loss and an Anemic Recovery. The pandemic brought unprecedented learning loss, clearly reflected in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results. The 2022 NAEP showed alarming declines, with students’ performance in math and reading falling backwards to levels not seen in 20 years. In the recently released 2024 NAEP, it is clear that the hoped-for bounce back to pre-Covid levels has not happened. Despite slight improvements in math, reading proficiency continued to fall, illustrating a slow and uneven recovery process.

For an on-the-ground look at how this learning loss developed amidst deteriorating school cultures, Jennifer Gaither’s firsthand account in Alexander Russo’s The Grade is a must-read.

Sharp Rise in Mental Health Problems. Academic loss is only part of the story, with teachers and families also grappling with a mental health crisis that has unfolded since 2020. The isolation, anxiety, and trauma of the pandemic took a heavy toll on students’ well-being. By 2021, rates of teen depression and suicidal thoughts had skyrocketed. An alarming CDC survey found nearly 3 in 5 teen girls felt “persistently sad or hopeless” – the highest level in a decade​. Reports indicate that mental health struggles among teens—particularly anxiety, depression, and feelings of hopelessness—remain far above pre-pandemic norms, signaling a need for continued prioritization of mental health support.

Decline in Public Satisfaction with Public Education Systems. In last month’s update to their long-standing poll on satisfaction in U.S. institutions, Gallup found that 73% of Americans are dissatisfied with the state of public education. In fact, across 31 different aspects of American life, public education is now ranked third from the bottom. Americans are more dissatisfied with the quality of public education than they are with the amount of taxes they pay, the affordability of health care or the state of the nation’s economy. As Rick Hess noted in an essay last week, “there’s no way to sugar-coat what happened.” The pandemic fundamentally altered the relationship between the public and public schools. Polling from both the Walton Family Foundation and yes. every kid. clearly shows a powerful parental appetite for transformative change, and that desire continues to this day. Nearly three-quarters of American families now support more flexible and customized education pathways, demanding new solutions beyond traditional models.

New Models Emerging, New Interest in Pathways and a Surge in Support for Reading Reforms. If there’s one bright spot in this new education reality, it’s the burst of innovation and parent-driven change. In the chaos of school closures, families took education into their own hands – and many aren’t turning back. The pandemic gave rise to microschools and learning pods, small multi-age groupings often led by a tutor or parent, that offered a more personalized and flexible learning environment. Likewise, homeschooling surged as an attractive option when traditional schools faltered. Even after schools reopened, many families stuck with it – homeschooling numbers in the post-pandemic period remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, parents are demanding new pathways for their children as the old approaches to higher education have broken down. In our 20,000-parent poll we found that there was three times more interest in CTE programs that current participation, suggesting that now is the time to build more pathways for kids. Finally, there has been a burst in interest around better approaches to teaching reading as the failures of misguided approaches compounded children’s pandemic-era learning losses. In states across the country, the science of reading is on the march. 

The message is clear: we cannot simply return to the old normal and expect broad public support and thriving students. Education advocates must embrace this new era of education and help deliver the bold changes that parents and children so desperately need. 

“New York City public schools entered the pandemic with a 25% chronic absentee rate, which increased to 34.8% at the end of the 2023–24 school year,” writes 50CAN William E. Simon Policy Fellow Danyela Egorov in a new brief for the Manhattan Institute.

The issue disproportionately affects certain student demographics:​

• Students with disabilities: 45%​
• Hispanic students: 42%​
• Black students: 42%​
• English Language Learners: 40%
• Low-income students: 39%

The findings–which the New York Post covered as a “bombshell”–shows a student population where neither students nor adults are fully committed to the idea that it’s important to show up for school. Outside of New York City, the problem is even worse, with 62% of Buffalo students chronically absent and 59% of Rochester’s students. 

Why is this happening and what can be done? Danyela cites two primary factors for the crisis. First, prolonged school closures in New York, which included 10-day quarantines of students for close contact with an infected student through both 2020 and 2021, has sent a message to students and families. “Many NYC educators can attest that parents have become more lenient about their kids skipping school if they say they are sick,” Danyela writes. “Some teachers said that remote work has made it easier for some families to keep kids at home on weekdays. In general, many parents have come to believe, as one educator put it, that “missing school in non-testing grades is not a big deal.”

The second reason is that New York has not made the same effort as other states to address the crisis, choosing instead to sweep the issue under the rug, with the state’s new accountability framework removing chronic absenteeism from the factors considered in evaluating schools. 

The nearby states of Connecticut and Rhode Island are charting a way forward, however, by showing that addressing this challenge requires targeted efforts, including improving school safety, enhancing engagement and support for vulnerable students, creating dashboards that allow absenteeism data to be centralized and restoring accountability by reintegrating attendance into school performance evaluations. Without meaningful interventions, and an acknowledgment of the broken schooling ritual catalyzed by Covid, many students risk ongoing academic struggles. 

• The task this week is to take stock of chronic absenteeism rates in your state and to sound the alarm about unacceptably high levels.

Fresh off a major legislative victory in passing the Education Freedom Act earlier this year, TennesseeCAN is hard at work on their other priorities. With a growing demand for additional options and 13 new charter school applications in the queue, the team is focused on passing legislation that will create and streamline new pathways for school operators by having them apply directly to the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission.

HawaiiKidsCAN took positive notes from crossover day, with two bills crossing chambers. SB742, a bill that seeks to ensure career-readiness initiatives are actually helping youth stay in Hawaii by building a statewide data system to track student outcomes from cradle to career, has crossed over to the House. HB637, which would require the DOE to provide dyslexia-specific screening and support in grades K-3, has also successfully passed its third reading and is heading to the Senate.

With legislative session in full swing, ConnCAN has testified before the Appropriations Committee, the Education Committee and the Black and Puerto Rican Caucus on a variety of priorities, including expanding the state’s Right to Read legislation, modernizing the charter school approval process and expanding district capacity to meet the needs of special education students.

Three Questions for GeorgiaCAN’s Michael O’Sullivan

You’ve just arrived at crossover day. How is the session going in Georgia so far?

“Our 2025 session is going very well so far. Nearly all of our top priorities - from early literacy to charter school approvals to college/career pathways - have made it through crossover day and remain viable for final passage. We’ve actually only had one legislative goal, a bill focused on access to higher-level math courses, that despite unanimous approval in committee didn't get called for a floor vote. However, even with that policy, other avenues remain for us to secure a win.”

One of your priorities this year is a bill that promotes phone-free school environments. Why is that so important? 

“Our team began to notice other states looking at this issue over time. Starting around this time last year we began talking with legislators to gauge interest in doing something here in Georgia to address this issue. In examining survey data and conversations with parents, we found high levels of interest and support for a policy to reduce distractions like cellphones in school. Apart from the academic, social and mental health benefits of a policy to restrict the use of student cell phone use, we even found support from the law enforcement community due to the school safety benefits this policy would provide. Ultimately, we see this as a common sense policy to remove distractions and let schools be a place of learning. When I testified before the House Education Committee, I told legislators, "Years from now we'll look back at this and say to ourselves, ‘How did we ever let that happen?' To know the data and still allow children to access such an enormous distraction throughout the school day. It's unfathomable.’ There's no better time to fix a problem than today, so that's why we've taken up this issue.”

You’ve been doing advocacy for over a decade now, and so you know that not every goal is an immediate win. When an advocate gets a loss, like with a bill not making it through crossover, what’s your advice for what to do next?

“Every state's process is different. For us in Georgia, we immediately begin exploring other procedural avenues. Generally, the first thing to do is take stock of the support you have and why the legislation didn’t cross over. Sometimes good legislation just gets caught up and doesn't advance. In a situation like that we'd keep an eye on other legislation to attach it or utilize the amendment process to get important components. In certain cases you can try to get it done through the budget or regulatory process. But if the support isn’t there? Take a breath and figure out how to use the interim to educate, advocate and build support among policymakers. Maybe a study committee or stronger community engagement are needed? Use the time to focus on how to make the next run successful.”