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As school districts across the country deal with uncertainty about how schools will reopen in the Fall as the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted, many organizations (such as AFT and AEI) have proposed guidelines for education leaders to consider as they pen their plans for reopening. Some of these guidelines include calls for physical distancing, screening […]
School districts spend about $24 billion on food services each year. According to the USDA, approximately 29.8 million students receive school lunch every day through the National School Lunch Program. That’s about 60 percent of public K-12 students in the country. Nationwide, the cost of providing food services on a per-pupil basis, after adjusting for […]
Up to this point, we’ve talked about unbundling what we might call “ancillary” school services like transportation, food, professional development, and remedial education. Now, it is fair to note that thinking of these as ancillary is probably insufficient because if kids can’t get to school, they can’t do anything else. Seems pretty essential. But that […]
“Our public policies fundamentally disrespect them (teachers) and the work they do. No enterprise, public or private, can thrive over time without paying close attention to how it recruits, trains, and retains its very best people.” – Jason Kamras, 55th National Teacher of the Year, and Andrew Rotherham, education analyst and co-founder of Bellwether Education, […]
The greatest superpower the world has ever known laid low by a pandemic, driving divisions that eventually lead to its downfall. Sound worrying? No, we’re not talking about America, we’re talking about Ancient Rome. In the year 165 AD, a plague (probably smallpox) began to ravage the Roman Empire, killing roughly 20 percent of the […]
The idea behind remediation in education is to bring a student who has fallen behind academically back up to speed with their peers by offering extra services. Federal and state funding for remediation programs have increased dramatically over time in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. Sadly, despite this large influx of money, achievement gaps between groups of […]
“ESA” is an acronym used for more than 150 different organizations, technology, policies and other entities. European Space Agency. Endangered Species Act. Emotional Support Animal. Entertainment Software Association. Eastern Surfing Association. Economic and Statistical Analysis. But in the education world, ESA stands for “educations savings account.” In K–12 education, ESAs are state-based programs where parents […]
Over the past few months, researchers have gotten used to state departments of education not releasing data on as regular a basis as they did pre-pandemic. They currently have their hands full figuring out what the fall might look like in their state. And I was honestly a little nervous to see the new Indiana […]
Public pension plans in the United States face about $1 trillion in investment losses due to the COVID-19 recession, according to a recent report by Moody’s. Before the COVID-19 recession hit, states already faced more than $1 trillion in unfunded liabilities. This situation does not bode well for states, school districts and certainly teachers. In […]
K-12 education historically has been insulated from recessions, but the fallout from COVID-19 will strain state and district budgets and leave lawmakers and other public officials struggling to figure out financial solutions for years to come. Policymakers will be hard-pressed to find solutions to these challenges, but the answer is not growing the traditional system, […]