Education Archives - Page 19 of 36 - Progressive Policy Institute

New Ideas for a Do-Something Congress No. 11: Encourage Employers to Help with Student Debt

Posted on May 29, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

More than anything else, a higher education remains the ticket to the proverbial American Dream. It offers the skills prized by employers in an increasingly global marketplace, and puts graduates on a path to higher wages over a lifetime of work. But for too many Americans, it comes at the price of student loans that can saddle them with debt just as they’re launching their careers and stunt their financial wellbeing for years to come.

New thinking can address the challenge. One promising solution is gaining traction in the private sector. A small but growing number of U.S. employers have begun offering student loan repayment benefits to their employees—helping them erase student debt faster and, not incidentally, earning the loyalty of employees in a competition for the best workforce talent. Though these programs are still uncommon, they are in high demand, leading some to dub student loan assistance “the hottest employee benefit” today (1).

Congress can help spur widespread adoption of this solution by encouraging more employers to offer this benefit to their workers, such as through the tax code. While current law gives employers a tax break for offering tuition assistance benefits to their employees, student loan assistance doesn’t get the same favorable treatment. Lawmakers should take up bipartisan legislation in this session to equalize the tax treatment of student loan assistance benefits.

THE CHALLENGE: Student Loan Debt is Skyrocketing For Generations of American Workers

American college graduates collectively face a student loan debt crisis of eye-popping proportions. As of December 2018, more than 44.7 million borrowers owed $1.5 trillion in student loans(2)—a sum that exceeds the gross domestic product of all but a dozen countries around the globe.

While this student debt burden impacts Americans of all ages and socioeconomic groups, it hits younger workers the hardest. An estimated 65 percent of the total is owed by people under 40—no surprise, considering that more than two-thirds of college seniors graduating in recent years have left campus with student loan debt, averaging $28,650 as of 2017.(3)

Now, there’s evidence that this mounting IOU has consequences for financial wellbeing more broadly. Indebted graduates enter the workforce with less money available to save, and this constraint soon catches up with them. By age 30, those with student debt have accrued only about half as much in retirement assets as those without debt, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.(4) Other studies suggest that student loan debt also makes it harder for young people to pursue graduate studies, buy their first home (5) and achieve other important life milestones—including, anecdotally, even starting a family.

In recent weeks, the issue has drawn the attention of candidates on the Presidential campaign trail. With an eye toward the coveted youth vote, several Democratic contenders have made college affordability a rallying cry and unveiled proposals to address the crushing debt burden. The most ambitious plan to date would “cancel” up to $50,000 in student debt for every borrower with a household income under $100,000—helping an estimated 42 million Americans.(6) This plan, however, would be immensely expensive for U.S. taxpayers and potentially create perverse incentives for borrowers. Workers need better and more cost-effective help.

THE GOAL: Encourage Employers to Help Ease Workers’ Student Debt Burdens

In the search for solutions to the student debt crisis, America’s employers are an important part of the answer. Today’s historically tight labor market and demand for young workers with the right skills presents big challenges—and a big opportunity. In particular, more employers are finding that offering student loan assistance benefits is an effective way to attract and retain workers.

Under this approach, employers can choose to make monthly contributions against an employee’s student loan balance—either directly to the employee, or to the employee’s lender—and speed up pay-off of the loan. This benefit is actually something that Congress and most federal agencies have offered to eligible staff members for more than a decade. In both cases, the repayment programs were implemented as a way to recruit highly skilled young employees to government service. The specifics vary, but broadly speaking, Senate staffers can qualify for up to $500 per month to pay down their student loans, and House staffers can receive as much as $10,000 yearly in assistance, up to a total $60,000. Similarly, all federal agencies are permitted to make payments of up to $10,000 annually against federal student loans for qualifying employees who agree to remain on the job for at least three years. Most recently through this program, 34 agencies assisted nearly 10,000 federal employees with more than $72 million in student loan repayment benefits.(7)

From the perspective of today’s workforce, there’s unmistakable demand for this “perk” in the private sector, too. Recent surveys have found that student debt is a primary source of stress, distraction, and impaired productivity for young workers. More than half worry “all the time” or “often” about repaying their loans, and many say this anxiety has impacted their health.(8) Moreover, big majorities would welcome proactive solutions from their employers.

• Fully 92 percent say they’d take advantage of an employer match for their student loan payments if one were offered.(9)

• 58 percent would even prefer that their company make payments against their student debt over contributions to a retirement fund.(10)

• And—most importantly for companies—offering help with student loans would earn major points for participating employers. In one survey, 90 percent of employees said that having a loan repayment benefit would positively influence their decision to accept a job offer,(11) while in another, 86 percent said they’d commit to a company for five years if it helped pay off their student debt.(12)

Some forward-thinking employers have responded to this growing market demand and launched student loan repayment plans. Among the early adopters:

• Fidelity. Through its Step Ahead student loan assistance program, the investment company has helped more than 9,000 employees by offering a monthly subsidy—totaling up to $10,000 per borrower—toward student loans.(13)

• Abbott. The pharmaceutical company encourages employees to repay student debt and save for retirement simultaneously through a 5 percent employer “match” in its Freedom 2 Save Plan.(14)

• Others ranging from PricewaterhouseCoopers to Peloton, the fitness cycling company, have partnered with Gradifi, an employee benefits platform, to offer monthly contributions to eligible associates, helping them whittle their student debt.

Notwithstanding these models, employer-provided student loan assistance remains rare. According to an annual Employee Benefits Survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), just 4 percent of U.S. companies offered this benefit last year.(15) Far more commonplace, found SHRM, are traditional tuition assistance programs: 51 percent of employers provided tuition support for their associates attending undergraduate studies, and 49 percent offered assistance for graduate school.

THE PLAN: Equalize Tax Treatment of Employer Student Loan Assistance Benefits

There’s a simple reason why so few employers currently offer student loan repayment assistance—current tax law discourages them for doing so. Currently under Section 127 of the Internal Revenue Code, businesses receive a tax break for subsidizing their qualified employees’ postsecondary tuition. (Indeed, that’s been the case for 40 years, when the tuition deduction was first enacted by Congress as a pilot.) But there’s no tax incentive to support employees who have already incurred student loan debt in college or grad school. If student loan repayments were treated the same way tuition assistance is today under federal law, many more employers would be eager to adopt such programs.

Congress could jumpstart private-sector engagement on this pressing issue by passing the Employer Participation in Repayment Act. Introduced by Reps. Scott Peters (D-CA) and Rodney Davis (R-IL) in the House and Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and John Thune (R-SD) in the Senate, the legislation would build on the current educational assistance program by allowing employers to contribute up to $5,250 a year, tax-free, toward any employee’s student loan repayments. The contribution would be tax-exempt for the employee, and could be made against qualified education loans to the employee directly, or through a payroll deduction to the employee’s lender.

At this writing, the measure has broad, bipartisan support, with 128 cosponsors in the House and 21 in the Senate—reflecting much wider interest than in the previous session of Congress. The legislation also enjoys the support of leading education organizations, such as the National Education Association and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, as well as the Democratic House leadership and key figures from the Trump Administration, according to the bill’s sponsors. There’s no official score, but the Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated the measure would cost $3.6 billion over 10 years—far less than the price tag for having the federal government “cancel” all outstanding student debt. The bill’s lead Democrats are pushing to get it attached to an appropriate vehicle—perhaps a tax extenders package—in the current session.

Student debt has saddled millions of Americans and can remain a lifelong drag on their families’ financial health. Employers can help provide much-needed relief, and many seem eager to do so. With a straightforward change in the tax code, Congress could provide a powerful incentive for more companies to help—delivering benefits for workers, their families, and the 21st-century workforce.

Sources:

Zack Friedman, Forbes Magazine, October 18, 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2018/10/18/student-loan-repayment-employee-benefits/#3481b84a566f
Federal Reserve Bank and Federal Reserve Bank of New York, February 2019. https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/interactives/householdcredit/data/pdf/hhdc_2018q4.pdf
Institute for College Access & Success, Project on Student Debt, https://ticas.org/posd/home
Center for Retirement Research, June 2018. https://crr.bc.edu/briefs/do-young-adults-with-student-debt-save-less-for-retirement/
Center for Retirement Research, 2018.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Medium.com: Election 2020 Coverage, April 22, 2019.
U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Federal Student Loan Repayment Program (2016), February 2018. https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/student-loan-repayment/
American Student Assistance, February 2017. https://www.asa.org/innovation/
American Student Assistance, 2017.
Oliver Wyman, 2017. https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/c52b032b-4e17-458f-8c66-bc25d7daf01f
Oliver Wyman, 2017.
American Student Assistance, 2017.
https://www.fidelity.com/about-fidelity/who-we-serve/easing-the-pressures-of-student-debt
https://www.abbott.com/corpnewsroom/leadership/tackling-student-debt-for-our-employees.html

2018 Employee Benefits Survey, Society for Human Resource Management, June 2018. https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/trends-and-forecasting/research-and-surveys/pages/2018-employee-benefits.aspx

Langhorne for Forbes, “Ed Reformers Rejoice: New CREDO Report Shows Student Progress In New Orleans Has Continued”

Posted on May 21, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Nearly 14 years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana’s elected leaders decided to rebuild New Orleans’s failing public education system from the ground up, as a system of public charter schools. Prior to the storm, the district was considered one of the nation’s worst. Half the students dropped out, and four in 10 adults in the city could not read beyond an elementary school level. The district was almost bankrupt, searching for a $50 million line of credit just to meet payroll. Katrina only exacerbated an already dire situation, displacing 64,000 students and creating over $800 million in damage to school buildings alone.

For New Orleans, this catastrophe brought with it an opportunity. In 2003, the governor and state legislature had created a Recovery School District (RSD) to take over the state’s worst public schools, including five in New Orleans, which the RSD had turned into charters. After the storm, the legislature placed all but 17 of New Orleans’s 127 public schools in the RSD. Over the next nine years, the RSD turned them all over to charter operators, and academic progress surged.

In 2015 Louisiana switched to standardized tests aligned with the Common Core standards, which was far more rigorous than the old tests. It began the process in 2014, when it first moved its tests in that direction, and it continued to alter the test after 2015. Not surprisingly, starting in 2014, what had been a steady rise in proficiency leveled off. Education reformers began to fear that this plateau revealed waning effects of the move to charters, rather than just the impact of tougher tests.

But a new report by the Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) focused on student growth scores reveals that New Orleans’s progress has continued.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Do-Something Congress No. 10: Fighting Inequality by Reinventing America’s Schools

Posted on May 15, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Progressives are rightly concerned about inequality, but some overlook the crucial role that underperforming public schools play in perpetuating poverty and inequality in America. The poor quality of many school systems is a serious impediment to social mobility for children from low-income and minority families, who can’t easily pick up and move to communities with good schools. The number of students taking college remediation classes has soared, and too many students graduate high school underprepared to enter either college or the workforce.

First-rate schools are key to delivering on America’s core promise of equal opportunity. That’s true for U.S. students everywhere – not just for kids trapped in poor schools in poor communities. In international comparisons, even students from America’s best suburban school districts consistently score below students from other advanced countries in Asia and Europe.

America’s public education system was designed for the Industrial Era. The centralized, bureaucratic approach that we inherited from the 20th century no longer works for the majority of America’s students. We need a new model, and fortunately one is emerging from cities that have embraced profound systems change, including New Orleans, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Camden, N.J. All have experienced rapidly improving student outcomes as a result.

These four cities are building 21st century school systems, founded upon the four pillars of school autonomy, accountability for performance, diversity of school designs, and parental choice. Essentially, 21st century school systems treat many of their public schools like charter schools, even if they call them “innovation schools,” “partnership schools,” or “Renaissance schools.”

Although transforming our K-12 education system to meet the needs of the modern era is primarily the responsibility of state and local governments, Washington can play an important catalytic role by creating incentives for change. In particular, Congress can create financial incentives for states that strengthen charter authorizing and for districts that create autonomous schools, hold schools accountable for performance, and replace failing schools.

THE CHALLENGE: AMERICA’S K12 PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM IS DESIGNED FOR THE INDUSTRIAL ERA

For a century, our public education system was the backbone of our success as a nation. By creating one of the world’s first mass education systems, free to all children, we forged the most educated workforce in the world – a key pillar of our economic strength. But all institutions must change with the times, and since the 1960s, the times have changed. The Information Age economy has radically raised the bar students must meet to secure jobs that support a middle-class lifestyle. Meanwhile, America’s public school population has grown more diverse, necessitating differentiated approaches to education. Yet our 20th century school districts too often produce cookie-cutter schools that fail to motivate or meet the needs of different students.

Traditional Public Schools are Failing Too Many Students

Overall, our traditional public schools “work” for less than half of our students. Of those who attend public schools, 17 percent fail to graduate on time. Even more graduate but lack the skills necessary to succeed in today’s job market. Almost a quarter of those who apply to the U.S. Army fail its admissions tests, more than a third of those who go on to college are not prepared for first-year courses, and half of college students never graduate. A large portion of middle- and high-schoolers are bored by their public schools; only one in three rate their school culture positively. And among developed nations, the United States ranks 18th or worse in high school graduation rates and in the bottom half in math, science, and reading proficiency (1).

Traditional School Structures are Bureaucratic, Inflexible, and Discourage Innovation

Our traditional public schools struggle to respond to the challenges of today’s world, held back by their traditional district structures, rules, and union contracts. After all, 20th century bureaucracies were built to foster stability, not innovation.

By continuing to assign students to schools based on their neighborhoods, we not only reinforce racial and economic segregation – creating a system with schools of concentrated poverty and concentrated wealth – but we also limit our ability to create innovative schools with diverse and specialized learning models.

Moreover, by clinging to the hierarchal organizational model of a centralized system, we remove decision-making authority from those educating the students. Principals and teachers best understand the needs of their students, but they lack control over school-level decisions that affect student learning. Principals often do not control their staffs, budgets, curricula, or learning models: those decisions are made at district headquarters. They cannot adapt their schools to meet the specific needs of their students, because the centralized system has been designed to treat all students the same.

Since 1983, the U.S. has seen wave after wave of school reforms. Unfortunately, most have been of the “more-longer-harder” variety: more required courses and tests, longer school days, higher standards, and harder exams. Few have reimagined how school districts and schools might function.

THE GOAL: CREATE 21ST CENTURY SCHOOL SYSTEMS IN DISTRICTS ACROSS URBAN AMERICA

By embracing a 21st century school model based on accountability for performance, school autonomy, choice, and a diversity of learning models, we can create public school systems that meet the needs of all students. This model has created the fastest improvement in urban America, in cities like New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and Denver.

In such systems, the central office no longer runs all schools directly; instead, it is responsible for overall policy, oversight, enforcement of compliance, evaluation of schools, and matching school supply to demand. Most 21st century school systems are made up, at least in part, of public schools operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits. They are freed from many of the top-down mandates that constrain district-operated schools, so school leaders can craft unique programs and make school-level decisions. In exchange for increased autonomy, these schools are held accountable for their performance by a district or authorizer, who closes or replaces them if their students are falling too far behind.

Many of the public schools in these systems are schools of choice, but they are not allowed to select their students. If too many students apply, a school holds a lottery to see who gets in—ensuring that all families have an equal shot at quality schools. Districts that have embraced this approach have created computerized enrollment systems that give all families a chance to select their top choices—a kind of lottery for all students.

THE PLAN: INCENTIVIZE STATES TO CREATE 21ST CENTURY SCHOOL SYSTEMS

Although most education legislation occurs at the state level, Congress can incentivize states to create 21st century school systems.

Congress should offer financial incentives for those states that improve their charter laws. One approach would be to expand or revise the U.S. Department of Education’s existing Grants to State Entities, awarded for the preparation, opening, replication, or expansion of high quality charters and for the improvement of state agencies that oversee charters.

The State Entities Program, one of six distinct grant programs included under the Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program, replaced the State Education Agencies program in FY 2017. The State Entities Program expanded grant eligibility from state education agencies to governors, statewide charter authorizing boards, and nonprofit charter support organizations (2). In FY 2017, the program distributed $144.7 million in grants of varying amounts to nine states (3).

Two proposed changes could improve this program. First, no state should qualify for a grant if it caps the number of charter schools it authorizes. Adding this requirement would direct more aid to states that are expanding their use of charters.

Second, in addition to the principal eligibility criteria, the application has six weighted priority preferences, through which a candidate can earn extra points in the selection process. The sixth preference, “best practices for charter school authorizing,” should be worth double its current weight, and, to receive these points, a state entity should have to demonstrate that its authorizers close failing charter schools, rather than merely implement authorizer training. Currently, the state entity must only demonstrate the extent to which it has taken steps to ensure all authorized public chartering agencies implement best practices for charter school authorizing.

In order to be eligible for these preference points, states with multiple authorizers should also have to develop a clear guideline for authorizer accountability. In particular, it should require that authorizers close any charter school with student scores for academic growth that fall in the bottom 10 percent of public schools in the state for three years in a row. Applicants should also be required to have a strong process in place for preventing authorizers with a large portfolio of failing charter schools under their oversight from authorizing new schools. Similarly, applicants should have a procedure in place for revoking authorizing status from authorizers who fail to shutter consistently failing schools.

In addition to modifying the existing State Entities Program, Congress should create a separate program that awards grants to school districts that partner with nonprofit organizations to take over and redesign district schools, with new staffs. The Texas Education Agency has implemented incentives for districts to create such “partnership schools,” and it is working well. In Texas, the nonprofits selected as partners must have acceptable academic performance and financial ratings for the last three years. When they enter the partnership, they get access to district facilities and better financial deals (4).

Many urban districts have some form of the partnership model, including Denver, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Atlanta, San Antonio, Tulsa, New Orleans, Camden, N.J., and Springfield, Massachusetts. The schools in the partnerships are given autonomy to control their budgets, staffing, schedules, and learning models. In return, they are held accountable through multiyear performance agreements and replaced if they fail.

A federal grant program could encourage districts to enter partnerships with nonprofits, awarding $2 million per school for each of the first three years. The first year would be a planning year for the takeover and redesign, followed by two years of operation. Deciding which schools would become partnership schools would be left to the districts.

These grant programs alone would not be as effective as districts redesigning their systems to operate on the pillars of autonomy, accountability, family choice, and diversity of school designs. But they would encourage states and districts to implement strategies that have proven to improve student outcomes more rapidly than any other methods used at scale.

[gview file=”https://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EdDoSomething_Final10.pdf”]

David Osborne, Reinventing America’s Schools: Creating a 21st Century Education System (New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2017), 1-2.
“Federal Charter Schools Program (CPS) and Authorizers,” National Association of Charter School Authorizers, at https://www.qualitycharters.org/research-policies/archive/federal-charter-schools-program/
“Awards,” Office of Innovation & Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, at https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/state-entities/awards/.
David Osborne and Emily Langhorne, “Texas has Ambitious Plans to Transform Urban Schools,” U.S. News & World Report, Apr. 13, 2018, at https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-04-13/commentary-texas-has-ambitious-plans-to-transform-urban- schools.

Opportunities for Innovation: Community Responsive Special Health Services in Charter Schools

Posted on May 15, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

After Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, almost 25,000 students left the island. Puerto Rico’s Department of Education closed a quarter of its schools in response to their intensified economic crisis, damaged facilities and infrastructure, and decreased student population. Those students who remained missed an average of 78 days of school. Faced with this catastrophe, legislators passed the Education Reform Act on March 29^th, 2018, which, among other things, allowed for the creation of charter schools.

Charter schools (or Escuelas Alianzas as they are called in Puerto Rico) are free public schools that receive government funding but operate independently of the school district in which they are located. Freed from the top-down mandates that constrain district-operated schools, charter schools receive increased school-level autonomy in exchange for greater accountability for results. Puerto Rico’s Governor Ricardo Rosselló believed that the Education Reform Act could redesign the public school system to meet the demands of the 21st century, by decentralizing to give school leaders more autonomy.

The hurricane further damaged an already struggling system, critically impacting both health and education in Puerto Rico. According to a survey of over 95,000 students in Puerto Rico, 45.7 percent reported damage to their own homes, 32.3 percent experienced shortages of food or water, and 16.7 percent still had no electricity five to nine months after the hurricane. Many Puerto Ricans still do not have consistent access to clean drinking water, food, and health care.

The Boys and Girls Club of Puerto Rico—who had been waiting for this opportunity for years—opened Proyecto Vimenti, the island’s first and only charter school, under the leadership of executive director Eduardo Carrera. According to Carrera, the Boys and Girls Club opened the school with the intention to “break the generational cycle of poverty.” The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 57 percent of children in Puerto Rico lived below the poverty line before the hurricane.

Through its partnership with the Boys and Girls Club, Proyecto Vimenti has been able to provide special services to its students. They provide special health services like eye exams and hearing tests in addition to many other offerings. When the school provided health screenings to their kindergarteners and first graders, they discovered that many of its students had untreated vision and hearing problems. Through these screenings, school officials were able to provide assistive supports like glasses early in a child’s education and thereby avoid many special education misdiagnoses.

However, Proyecto Vimenti is not the first charter school to see the connection between a student’s health and their academic performance. Students with health problems such as asthma, poor vision, diabetes, and tooth pain are more likely to be chronically absent, resulting in poorer academic outcomes and increased likelihood of dropping out of school. Unsurprisingly, children living in poverty are disproportionally affected by health issues. Charter schools, often serving the poorest students, are able to use their flexibility to form community partnerships that can provide these important health services within their schools. Their autonomy allows them to implement innovative solutions in ways that district-operated schools seldom can.

Consider the case of Native American Community Academy (NACA) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 2006, NACA, a charter school serving middle and high school students, has integrated health education and improving wellness as core elements of the school’s mission. NACA received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2011 to build a school-based health center. The health center provides a variety of services such as dental care and access to a primary care physician. The school leadership intentionally sought out community partners who had expertise with Native American students and the specific health problems their community faces. NACA now has over 150 community partners including the University of New Mexico and First Nations Community Healthsource. NACA’s model, which connects the specific health needs of the student’s community with student wellness, has been so successful that the network has grown to seven campuses throughout the state.

KIPP Ujima Village Academy and KIPP Harmony Academy in Baltimore also saw the value of connecting health services to their school. These two schools, housed in the same building, serve over 1,500 students, approximately 83 percent of whom receive subsidized meals. Within its building, KIPP houses a clinic run by the Johns Hopkins Children’s Program. KIPP and its health services partners believe they can reduce chronic absenteeism by providing urban children in poverty with health and psychosocial care.

Staffed by two nurses, a nurse practitioner, and a pediatrician, the clinic provides vision exams, dental services, and behavioral health care in addition to other primary services. Students can be treated on site, which means that parents do not have to leave work to take their child to an emergency center, and health staff can better manage students with a chronic condition, such as asthma or diabetes, because of the regularity with which they see them. In Baltimore, access to regular health care is especially important for students with asthma, as the prevalence of childhood asthma within the city is over twice the national average, approximately 20 percent compared to about 10 percent.

For KIPP, the results of the clinic are telling. After two years of operation, the two schools combined had a 23 percent drop in chronic absenteeism among students with asthma.

Funding realities make implementing health services in every public school a challenge. In a time when only 39 percent of public schools have a full time nurse, it‘s not surprising that only 2.5 percent of public schools offer on-site primary-care services. Indeed, the two KIPP schools received a five-year, five-million-dollar grant from the nonprofit Rales Center to fund their clinic

However, it’s also no coincidence that the Rales Center chose to bestow their grant upon a charter school. Dr. Kate Connor, the medical director of the Rales Health Center, explained that when deciding where in Baltimore to locate the new health clinic, KIPP was the obvious choice. She said, “[KIPP] is really oriented towards educational innovation, and their leadership had begun to recognize the necessity of providing comprehensive wraparound services in order to support students’ not just direct educational needs but other things that determine educational success and relate to educational success in the lives of kids and families.”

Creating a 21st Century Education System: Reinventing America’s Schools – An Abridged Version

Posted on May 1, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

For a century, our public education system was the backbone of our success as a nation. By creating one of the world’s first mass education systems, free to all children, we forged the most educated workforce in the world. The creation of standardized, unified school systems with monopolies on free schooling had a dramatic impact on this country, helping us build the most powerful, innovative economy on Earth.

But all institutions must change with their times, and since the 1960s, the times have changed. First television emerged to dominate the lives of young people, undermining their desire and ability to read. Then the cultural rebellion of the 1960s and ‘70s brought new problems, including widespread drug use and the decline of the two-parent family. Teen pregnancy soared, the percentage of children raised by single mothers tripled, arrest rates for those under 18 shot up, and gang activity exploded. Meanwhile immigration picked up, doubling the percentage of public school children from households that didn’t speak English, from 10 to 20 percent. At the same time, our Information-Age economy radically raised the bar students needed to meet to secure jobs that would support middle class lifestyles.

Today our traditional public schools “work” for less than half of our students. More than one in five families chooses something other than a traditional public school—a private school, a public charter school, or home schooling. Among those who do attend public schools, 16 percent fail to graduate on time. Even more graduate but lack the skills necessary to succeed in today’s job market. Almost a quarter of those who apply to the U.S. Army fail its admission tests, more than a third of those who go on to college are not prepared for first-year college courses, and almost half of them never graduate. Among industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks 22nd in high school graduation rates and in the bottom half in math, science, and reading proficiency.

Since 1983, we have seen wave after wave of school reforms. Unfortunately, most have been of the “more-longer-harder” variety: more required courses and tests, longer school days and hours, higher standards and harder exams. Few have reimagined how schools might function, given our new technologies.

Langhorne for Forbes, “Bookshare: How One Nonprofit Is Improving The Lives Of Students With ‘Reading Barriers'”

Posted on May 1, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Emery Lower loves to read. She loves Harry Potter, Bridge to Terabithia and Pride and Prejudice. Since beginning sixth grade, she’s developed an interest in graphic novels, especially mangas; in particular, she recommends The Tea Dragon Society. Each year that Emery has taken the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness exams, she’s earned a “masters grade level” score on the reading section.

Only a few years ago, however, Emery couldn’t read. By the end of first grade, she hadn’t finished a book independently. She hated reading and didn’t even like it when her parents read to her because they wanted her to look at the text as they read the story.

“Any time Emery had homework in kindergarten and first grade, it would take hours and a lot of crying – mostly her but sometimes me,” says her mother Brandy Lower. “She was mentally exhausted when she came home from school because she’d spent all day trying to decode words and not being able to do it.”

That’s because Emery, like millions of other children in the United States, suffers from dyslexia, a learning disability that affects areas of the brain that process language. People with dyslexia struggle with decoding: the ability to relate speech sounds to letters and words.

“I would look at the page and say a word out loud, but it didn’t click in my brain,” Emery says. “I didn’t know letters made words, that they had to spell something. I thought that any random group of letters could be a word. Reading was not fun at all for me.”

Then, she found Bookshare, and, slowly, her life began to change.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Langhorne for Forbes, “Fixing the Weak Link in the Charter Chain”

Posted on April 8, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

In Washington, D.C., D.C. Bilingual Public Charter School recently celebrated its 15thbirthday by throwing a quinceañera for staff, students and families. In the traditional fashion, this coming-of-age Latin American celebration involved a lot of food, music and dancing.

The school had good reason to celebrate. The Public Charter School Board, D.C.’s charter school authorizer, ranked D.C. Bilingual as one of the top three charter elementaries in the city, with a top score in academic growth.

The dual-language immersion school also ranked first for student achievement among charter elementaries whose students were more than 40% English language learners and first among those with more than 16% special needs students. Not surprisingly, thousands of students are on its waitlist.

D.C. Bilingual’s 15th birthday is a particularly special occasion because just four years ago, it nearly closed due to poor fiscal management.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Langhorne for Forbes, “The Montessori Comeback”

Posted on March 27, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Because Montessori schools are often associated with progressive suburbanites and well-to-do private schools, many people don’t know that Dr. Maria Montessori originally developed her pedagogical approach while running a school for some of the poorest children in Rome. Unfortunately, with the exception of some Montessori magnet schools created as part of desegregation initiatives in the 1960s and 1970s, the Montessori model has been largely relegated to the arena of private schools since it arrived in the United States over 100 years ago. Over the last 20 years, however, the spread of public school choice and charter schools has led to a rapid growth in the number of public Montessori schools.

Only about 500 of the approximately 5,000 Montessori programs in the U.S. are located within public schools. The spread of public school choice has expanded the number of public Montessori programs, from about 130 at the end of the 1980s to around 500 in 2015. Public school choice and charters have allowed the Montessori model to return to its roots of educating low-income students. And because the Montessori model has historically been popular with middle-class families, many districts and public charter school leaders have been using it as a means to create economically and racially integrated public schools. However, as the demand for the model continues to increase, some of these leaders struggle with ensuring that public Montessori schools are serving the children most in need of high quality and different educational options.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Langhorne for Medium, “Why We Need to Make Public School Choice an Easier Choice for Low-Income Families”

Posted on March 19, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Most people who know me know that I’m a big believer in public school choice. To me, it’s a no brainer that when school districts create school attendance zones based on students’ home addresses, they are creating systems in which poor students will most likely attend poorly performing schools. Forcing students to attend a chronically failing school because of where they live sets them up for failure and reinforces cycles of generational poverty. When students have the option to attend any public school that they choose, it helps to unshackle their education — and by extension their future — from their family’s financial history.

But another reason I like public school choice is that it often leads to a variety of school models that can meet the needs and interests of a variety of students. Systems of public school choice usually have many unique learning models — computer-science focused, dual-language, diverse-by-design, arts-based, project-based, policy-oriented, and more — within their public schools. Districts that assign students using their home addresses rarely attempt to create an abundance of schools with innovative learning models. Imagine a district trying to force a parent to send their child to an arts-based school or a single-sex school, and you’ll understand the difficulty. It’s far easier for these districts to create cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all schools and hope that most kids succeed in them.

And so, without public school choice, it’s only affluent families — the ones who can pay for their children’s education or help them test into a selective public school — that have access to this menu of options.

Continue reading at Medium.

Community Responsive Rural Charter Schools as a 21st Century Solution to School Consolidation

Posted on March 15, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The West Virginia House of Delegates recently voted against Senate Bill 451, which would have allowed for the creation of public charter schools throughout the state. Critics of charter schools claim that they “drain money” from traditional local public schools. However, West Virginia has been draining money from its local public schools for years.

Since the 1900s, West Virginia has closed thousands of its schools. Smaller, rural schools were consolidated into larger, regional schools to increase efficiency and save money. In 1989, Governor Caperton accelerated school consolidation by forming the School Building Authority (SBA) which only provided funding for school-building maintenance and renovation if a school met SBA’s minimum enrollment requirements. Unsurprisingly, SBA’s one-size-fits all approach predominantly affected small rural schools, forcing them to consolidate. SBA and Governor Caperton claimed that this would save money, increase efficiency, and improve educational quality. What really happened was quite different.

Maintenance and transportation costs increased as thousands of students endured longer bus rides– sometimes up to two hours a day– on rough terrain. Students had less time for extra-curriculars. Grades dropped while student stress and unhappiness rose. School officials promised to offer more course options, including advanced placement, but these courses were eliminated.

Meanwhile, the number of state administrators increased as did their salaries. Ultimately, the consolidation did not save any money. On the contrary, it cost the state 1 billion dollars from 1990 to 2002.

School consolidation is an old solution to the enduring problem of cutting costs in rural areas. However, increases in transportation costs and bureaucratization often offset any savings so consolidation rarely results in lower per-pupil spending. To make matters worse, school consolidation negatively affects communities both socially and economically. Rural schools often act as the center of the community, and losing a school leaves a hole in the community that rarely gets filled.

Many rural communities want to keep their local schools; however, they need innovative 21^stcentury solutions to overcome their respective challenges in doing so.

Rural populations are becoming poorer, older, and less white. Unlike in metro areas, rural employment has not recovered since the 2008 recession.The National Center for Education Statistics has labeled more than half of rural districts in the United States as “high poverty,” with nearly half of their students considered economically disadvantaged. Rural schools typically receive less funding and spend less per pupil than suburban or urban schools, and they have been shown to be disadvantaged in Title I funding formulas. They spend twice as much on transportation. They also struggle to recruit and retain skilled teachers because of low salaries, geographical isolation, and poor recruiting incentives.

Charter schools, with their school-level autonomy and increased flexibility, could have been an innovative solution to the problem of consolidation in West Virginia.

Other rural communities have used the flexibility of charter schools to address state-forced consolidation initiatives. For example, the community of Tidioute, PA, with a population of only 654 had success in establishing a charter school when the district proposed closing its school as a part of a consolidation. Because of their remote geography, distance from other communities, and the icy conditions they face in winter, the community members felt it was important to have a school located within Tidioute. Their charter school capitalizes on their tight-knit community and local natural resources to offer their students place-based education and a family-like culture.

Community support, however, is hard won in rural communities. As in urban and suburban areas, traditional local schools are often at the heart of a rural community. Children attend the same school that their parents and grandparents attended, and community members sometimes view a new charter school as an invader. Sometimes, new charter schools in rural areas initially face opposition. That was the case with Upper Carmen Charter School in the remote ranching community of Carmen, Idaho. Carmen had lost its local one-room school in the 1950s after consolidating with neighboring Salmon school district. In 2005, Sue and Jim Smith used Idaho’s charter law to reopen the school as a charter school. Unsurprisingly, Salmon public school district strongly opposed this idea, making the Smiths fight a long uphill battle. However, with persistence and a dedication to understanding Carmen’s needs, the Smiths convinced community members that the charter school was the best option for their children. Sue and Jim’s hard work has paid off. Out of the state’s 490 K-8 public schools, Upper Carmen Charter School is in the 85^thpercentile for ELA and Math achievement, and Idaho’s State Department of Education recognized the school as a 2018 Top Performer in ELA growth.

Difficult problems require innovative solutions. Rural communities need a system that is flexible and responsive. Letting charters open doors that consolidation closed can bring schools back to the center of a rural community.

Langhorne for Forbes, “Separating Fact From Fiction: Five Important Findings About The Nation’s Charter School Landscape”

Posted on March 14, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Charter schools serve about three million students across 42 states and the District of Columbia. To clarify, charter schools are public schools operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits. Most are schools of choice, and unlike magnet schools in traditional districts, they are not allowed to select their students. If too many students apply, they hold lotteries to see who gets in. Charter schools are freed from many of the rules that constrain district-operated schools. In exchange for increased autonomy, they are held accountable for their performance through contracts with authorizers.

Each state’s charter law empowers a variety of different agencies to authorize charters. The most common types of authorizers are a local school board, a state education agency, higher education institutions, and statewide bodies set up for the sole purpose of overseeing charter schools. Authorizers vet and approve charter school applications, and they also close or replace underperforming schools.

Based on both performance and sustainability, charter schools have been the most successful education improvement strategy of the millennium, and they’ve been particularly effective at educating low-income students. In places like New Orleans, Denver, and Washington, D.C., the charter formula – school-level autonomy, accountability, diversity of school design, and parental choice – has proven far more effective than the centralized, bureaucratic approach inherited from the 20^thcentury.

However, over the last few years, the growth of charter schools across the nation has slowed. In an effort to understand this decline in growth, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) examined charter school proposals and approvals over the last five years, analyzing 3,000 charter school applications to authorizers in the 20 states that oversee nearly two-thirds of charters nationwide. Their new report Reinvigorating the Pipeline: Insights into Proposed and Approved Charter Schools unearths important facts about the nation’s charter school pipeline, facts that also dispel some of the commonly perpetuated myths about charter schools.

Continue reading at Forbes.

Charter Schools in Rural Communities: An Opportunity for Career Preparation through STEM Skills Development

Posted on March 7, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The West Virginia House of Delegates recently shot down Senate Bill 451, abruptly killing a promising chance for education reform throughout the state. The bill, which would have allowed for creation of public charter schools throughout the state as well as an increase in open enrollment policies, would have created more educational options for all of West Virginia’s children. However, the teachers unions and their allies rallied against the bill, arguing that charter schools would take money away from public schools. This is, of course, nonsense, since charter schools are public schools. Nonetheless, West Virginia teachers walked out of their classrooms last week in protest of the bill, striking for the second time in the last 18 months.

The state’s House of Delegates missed a tremendous opportunity to ensure that all children in West Virginia have the best chance for academic success. Many of the jobs in well-paying industries that rural communities used to rely on, like manufacturing and energy, are no longer available or have adapted to the digital age so that today’s workers need higher-level skills, such as coding, equipment maintenance, or systems knowledge, to enter to the workforce. As a result, there’s an increasing need for the rural workforce to develop STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) skills for STEM and non-STEM fields such as computer science and coding. Rural areas across the nation have been experiencing significant “brain drain” as young people leave their communities for better academic or economic opportunities elsewhere.

And, in a state where over 50 percent of the population lives in rural areas, the legislature can’t afford to miss opportunities to improve education.

Twenty-first century school systems built upon the pillars of autonomy, accountability, diversity of school design, and parental choice have resulted in dramatic and positive educational change in urban areas such as New Orleans and Denver. Essentially, these systems treat all of their public schools like charter schools. Rural communities can likewise benefit from the creation of public charter schools.

Many rural charters partner with local industry, higher education institutions, and the community to provide students with the skills needed to succeed in the local economy. Many rural charter schools such as North Idaho STEM charter academy in Rathdrum, Idaho offer dual-enrollment courses, which allow for students to earn an associate’s degree while in high school. These students not only save money by earning college credit during high school, but they also improve their skill set by taking career applicable courses. The Academy of Seminole, a public charter school in Seminole, Oklahoma, was founded by the leader of a local aerospace manufacturing company because his company had encountered difficulty in finding skilled local workers to fill their positions. The school has a partnership with the company, and it focuses on career and workforce development. It also offers dual enrollment courses through a partnership with a local community college, vocational certificates, and a business mentoring program that enhances students’ exposure to different types of careers.

Other rural charter schools have also used place-based education to draw upon their existing natural resources to encourage curiosity and teach STEM concepts while enhancing their connection to the community. Through a partnership with Oregon State University, Elkton Charter School in Elkton, Oregon, uses its proximity to the Umpqua River to create a natural resources curriculum where students engage in project-based learning: they study soil samples, mold, fungi, leaves, trees, and estuaries.

STEM-focused charter schools and school choice programs offer a potential solution for communities who wish to retain and adequately prepare their young populations for skilled careers in their community. Considering West Virginia is the third most rural state in the United States, it is a shame that lawmakers are failing to seize the opportunity to address the needs of students in rural communities by allowing for the creation of charter schools.

Langhorne for Forbes, “The Real Faces Behind the ‘Corporate Reform’ of America’s Public Schools”

Posted on February 28, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

With 2019 barely underway, the nation has already witnessed another set of highly publicized teacher strikes. Teachers unions and anti-charter activists have wasted no time in painting public charter schools as the culprit, blaming them for “draining money from public schools.”

To clarify, charter schools are public schools. They’re supported by taxpayer money and overseen by public organizations—often school districts. All charter students must participate in state tests and related accountability measures. However, charter schools are operated by independent organizations, usually nonprofits, so they’re free from top-down mandates and bureaucratic red tape that often constrain district-operated schools.

In exchange for increased autonomy, charters are held accountable through performance contracts with authorizers, who close or replace them if their students aren’t learning enough. Most charter schools are schools of choice, and unlike magnet schools in traditional districts, they are not allowed to select their students. If too many students apply, they hold a lottery to see who gets in.

Continue reading at Forbes.

New Ideas for a Do-Something Congress No. 5: Make Rural America’s Higher Education Deserts Bloom

Posted on February 26, 2019 by The Progressive Policy Institute

As many as 41 million Americans live in “higher education deserts” – at least half an hour’s drive from the nearest college or university and with limited access to community college. Many of these deserts are in rural America, which is one reason so much of rural America is less prosperous than it deserves to be.

The lack of higher education access means fewer opportunities for going back to school or improving skills. A less educated workforce in turn means communities have a tougher time attracting businesses and creating new jobs.

Congress should work to eradicate higher education deserts. In particular, it can encourage new models of higher education – such as “higher education centers” and virtual colleges – that can fill this gap and bring more opportunity to workers and their communities. Rural higher education innovation grants are one potential way to help states pilot new approaches.

THE CHALLENGE: HIGHER EDUCATION “DESERTS” ARE HANDICAPPING RURAL AMERICA

For millions of Americans, distance is as big or bigger a barrier to higher education access as finances. According to the Urban Institute, nearly one in five American adults—as many as 41 million people—lives twenty-five miles or more from the nearest college or university, or in areas where a single community college is the only source of broad-access public higher education within that distance. Three million of the Americans in these so-called “higher education deserts” also lack broadband internet, which means they are cut off from online education opportunities as well (1).

Rural students have lower rates of college-going and completion.

More than four in five people in higher education deserts – 82 percent – live in rural areas. This could be one reason why fewer rural Americans attend or finish college.

In 2016, 61 percent of rural public school seniors went on to college the following year, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, compared to 67 percent for suburban students (2). Only 20 percent of rural young adults between 25 and 34 have four-year degrees, says the USDA’s Economic Research Service, compared to 37 percent of young adults in urban areas (3). Moreover, the urban-rural gap in college degree attainment is growing. From 2000 to 2015, the share of college-educated adults rose by 7-points in urban locales compared to 4-points in rural areas.

Less-educated rural areas are falling behind while better educated cities leap ahead.

With more and more jobs demanding ever higher levels of skill, disparities in access to higher education are translating to vast disparities in the distribution of jobs and opportunity throughout the United States, including a widening urban-rural divide. Wealthy urban areas are getting richer, while rural areas are increasingly lagging.

The Economic Innovation Group (EIG), for instance, reports that of the 6.8 million net new jobs created between 2000 and 2015, 6.5 million were created in the top 20 percent of zip codes, which were predominantly urban (4). These prosperous, job-creating zip codes are also the best-educated. EIG further finds that 43 percent of residents in the top 10 percent of zip codes has a bachelor’s degree or better, compared to just 11 percent in the bottom 10 percent. While a four-year degree is of course not a prerequisite for a good living, the heavy concentration of highly-educated workers is indicative of the imbalance in economic opportunities between rural and urban areas.

Most of the nation’s least educated and most impoverished counties are rural.

If education and prosperity are linked, so conversely are poverty and the lack of educational attainment.

Out of 467 U.S. counties identified by the USDA as “low education” counties – places where 20 percent or more of the population has less than a high school diploma – 79 percent are rural (5). These counties tend to be clustered in the rural South, Appalachia, along the Texas border and in Native American reservations and also suffer from higher rates of poverty, child poverty and unemployment.

THE GOAL: ERADICATE HIGHER EDUCATION DESERTS AND ENSURE EVERY RURAL AMERICAN HAS HIGHER EDUCATION ACCESS

Better access to higher education in rural areas, especially for the many millions of “nontraditional” students who are now increasingly the norm (6), can help close the gulf in opportunity between urban and rural areas. Greater opportunities for convenient, affordable higher education would allow more rural Americans to finish their degrees or pursue occupational credentials, qualifying them for higher-skilled, better-paid jobs. Rural students would also benefit by not being forced to leave home for school – not only lowering costs for students but potentially slowing or even reversing the population declines plaguing rural areas. Institutions of higher education can also serve as engines of economic development in the communities they serve. They can work with businesses to turn out the skilled talent they need and provide research or other support.

THE PLAN: CREATE RURAL HIGHER EDUCATION INNOVATION GRANTS TO ENCOURAGE NEW MODELS OF HIGHER EDUCATION REACHING RURAL AMERICA

While it’s unrealistic to establish a new college, community college or university in every rural area that needs one, emerging models for delivering higher education potentially offer a creative, cost-effective and effective alternative. These new models can also expand the ability of workers to obtain high-quality occupational credentials, which in many instances are likely to be more practical, affordable and desirable than pursuing a two-year or four-year degree.

Some states, such as Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland, are pioneering new approaches, such as “higher education centers” and virtual colleges, that use technology to broaden students’ options for both traditional college education and occupational training (7). The Northern Pennsylvania Regional College, for instance, operates six different “hubs” scattered throughout the 7,000 square miles it serves, plus numerous “classrooms” using borrowed space from local high schools, public libraries and other community buildings. In addition to conferring its own degrees, it provides the infrastructure for other accredited institutions to extend their reach through “blended” offerings combining virtual and in-person teaching.

Similarly, Virginia’s five higher education centers provide physical infrastructure for colleges and community colleges offering classes as well as occupational training in fields such as welding, mechatronics and IT certification. In Maryland, the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center offers specific courses from ten different institutions, including Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland. Though relatively new, these institutions are already establishing a track record of success. In South Boston, Virginia, for instance, the Southern Virginia Higher Education Center worked with more than 30 area industries and entrepreneurs in 2017, developed customized training for nearly 150 workers in local companies and placed 173 students into new jobs (8).

Congress should encourage all states to make rural higher education a priority and help more states experiment with new models for accessing higher education in remote areas. One way to do this is to provide seed money in the form of Rural Higher Education Innovation Grants so that states can stand up pilots, evaluate the effectiveness of new models and scale up promising approaches. These grants moreover do not need to be large – the Pennsylvania legislature initially appropriated just $1.2 million to launch what is now NPRC.

As a start, Congress should set aside $10 million in competitive grant funding for states. Funding for these grants could come from an earmark of the money collected from the 1.4 percent excise tax on large university endowments included in the 2017 tax legislation (9).

Read Here: New Ideas For a Do Something Congress No. 5

A Look Inside Monument Academy, a D.C. Public Charter School Designed to Serve Students in Foster Care

Posted on February 22, 2019September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The industrial-era public education system that America inherited from the last century no longer works for the majority of students. Because it is highly centralized and assigns students to schools based on their home address, it produces cookie-cutter schools that treat all children the same. However, that educational model is profoundly unfair to the majority of America’s children. Kids come from different backgrounds. They speak different languages. They have different interests and different learning styles. They arrive at school on different academic levels.

Whereas traditional public schools attempt to treat most students the same, public charter schools attempt to create best-fit learning environments that meet the specific needs and interest of their students.

When children land in the right school, they flourish in surprising ways.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Washington, D.C. The District has a universal enrollment, and nearly 50 percent of the public school students attend charter schools whose leaders have the autonomy to control their school designs and influence school culture. As a result, the District’s charter sector has an extraordinary number of innovative learning models– STEM, Classics-based, dual-language immersion, Montessori, etc.– creating a variety of educational options so that each student can find a best-fit school.

Reinventing America’s Schools and The 74 recently highlighted some of these unique schools in our Schools of the Future series. However, because D.C. has so many innovative schools, we simply couldn’t cover them all. As such, we encourage you to read Harvard Ed. Magazine’s piece on Monument Academy, a D.C. public charter school designed to serve kids in foster care.

Read the story here.

New Ideas for a Do-Something Congress No. 11: Encourage Employers to Help with Student Debt

As the idea of “free college” gains popularity, Virginia and Iowa are instead focused on career and technical education.