Broader BOLDER Approach to Education

HuffPost piece: Making Christmas Shine Bright All Year Round

Elaine Weiss — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 15:15:31 +0000

As we reflect on 2016 and look forward to holidays and a new year, in communities across the country, many children and their families are struggling to find reasons to celebrate. But a broader bolder initiative, Bright Futures, is bringing joy not only at Christmas, but year-round, to students, families, and teachers alike. So add it to the list of things to cheer!

In Our Schools, Black Lives Matter, Too

Elaine Weiss — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 13:33:30 +0000

The Black Lives Matter Movement has drawn attention to the disparities African Americans face in the criminal justice system, but this blog post acknowledges that the discussion needs to include that black lives of all ages matter. These disparities actually begin in preschool, and then continue throughout the rest of a child’s education. Our education system must address these inequalities.

Appalachian Schools are Helping Isolated Students Go to College. Here’s How.

Elaine Weiss — Tue, 12 Jul 2016 16:46:25 +0000

Appalachia has some of the worst rural poverty in our nation, but schools are creating new strategies to improve access to mentors, tackling summer learning loss and increase high school graduation rates. Elaine Weiss writes on how community engagement and family supports in Appalachian schools have been critical in the efforts to improve educational outcomes in rural communities.

How one struggling school can help education policy-makers do the right thing

Elaine Weiss — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 16:18:53 +0000

The documentary “Oyler: One School, One Year” provides a firsthand look at the economic and social factors that can affect academic success. This post encourages the policy-makers creating the Every Student Succeeds Act to watch the documentary in order to understand the challenges that schools, principals, teachers, and students face. New rules under ESSA must address the diverse needs of individual schools and the unique problems they face in their communities.

Schools Didn’t Start it. Achievement Gaps Start Earlier.

Elaine Weiss — Thu, 19 May 2016 17:12:51 +0000

The same systemic forces that have sucked most of the income and wealth from the bottom half of our population in recent decades and channeled it into the top one percent have substantially widened income-based achievement gaps. Without intentional measures to direct a broad range of educational and other resources to reversing that trend, gaps will continue to grow. And because big disparities in parents’ – and society’s – investments in children begin at birth, those resources need to be channeled early.

How One Missouri School District Took on Poverty (and a Tornado)

Elaine Weiss — Thu, 19 May 2016 17:05:31 +0000

Joplin, Missouri, a small city in the Southwest corner of the state, is probably best known for the devastating tornado that ripped through it on May 22, 2011. The storm killed 161 people and caused more than $2 billion in damages. Less well known is the widespread and growing poverty that is damaging the community—especially its students and schools—in quieter but no less harmful ways. But Joplin has begun to rebound, and the rest of the country should take note.

BBA Newsletter May 10

Elaine Weiss — Thu, 12 May 2016 14:11:26 +0000

With new flowers popping up all over and bunnies hopping across our laws, babies are on our minds. And apparently it’s not just us. News and information about infants and toddlers and their care and education is all over the place. So we wanted to share some of the best new stuff out there.

In an effort to bring together much of the research around the importance of investing in young children and their families, the consequences for the US of failing to do so, and the benefits we’d reap if we did, a team of EPI researchers and BBA’s Elaine Weiss jointly produced It’s Time for a National Investment in America’s Children. As BBA has long emphasized, bringing our nation into line with our Western peers in terms of such basic family supports as paid parental leave, accessible high-quality child care, and pre-k that is available to all children, not only those lucky enough to have parents who can pay for it, would go a long way toward leveling the academic playing field, not to mention boosting the economy in numerous ways.

Last week, BBA and the Learning Policy Institute got a first-hand look at a district embedding quality early childhood education in its comprehensive school improvement plan. We visited Frederick County, VA, where superintendent David Sovine has adopted the Bright Futures USA framework to meet all children’s basic needs, engage the entire community to support students and schools, and make service learning a core part of education, and is also working to enhance ECE. Last year, the district made full-day kindergarten the norm for its 13,000 students, and leaders are now working to leverage state pre-k dollars to get all kids ready to learn on the first day. By incorporating teacher and student input into the gorgeous new middle school that will serve the district’s most disadvantaged students starting next year, Frederick County is also ensuring that those early benefits it is carefully cultivating continue to grow.

For the young (or young at heart, or anyone who cares about improving childcare in the US), Young Invincibles and Generation Progress are co-hosting a “Millennial Month of Action” throughout the month of May. They kicked it off with a May 2^nd #MillennialMon Twitter Chat about on-campus childcare. Stay posted for a variety of actions, including a sign-on letter, infographics and some more social media pushes!

And next month, the National Family and Community Engagement Conference takes place in Pittsburgh. Among the terrific opportunities offered are a series of sessions on all things early childhood with a who’s who of speakers. Featured plenaries include the important role parents plan in early learning, led by Annie E. Casey’s Ralph Smith, Portia Kennel of the Buffett Early Learning Fund, and the Brazelton Institute’s Jayne Singer. Erin Ramsey of Mind in the Making, New America’s Lisa Guernsey, and Michael Levine of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center discuss a range of innovative strategies to get parents involved.

The latest in the podcast series for the American Institutes for Research’s Education Policy Center is jointly produced by AIR researcher Eboni Howard and AIR researcher and BBA Advisory Board member Peter Cookson. In Episode Two: How do we Ensure High-Quality Early Childhood Experiences for all Kids? they discuss disparities in access to quality early education and the brain science and economic benefits of ensuring it’s available for all children. They also touch on the issue of targeted versus universal pre-k.

Finally, for those who want a basic primer on how poverty and education interact early in life, BBA offers its third MOOC session: The Influence of Poverty on Early Childhood Education and Gaps. Whether you’re new to the topic (start with Required Reading), want to dig a bit deeper (Optional is for you), or prefer to talk through the issue with good friends over crackers and cheese (which should lead you to our monthly Book Club offering), there’s something in this one for you and everyone you know, so share it widely! (And don’t forget our first two great MOOC sessions).

Thank you, as always, for your dedication to ensuring that all children receive a rich, comprehensive education and have the support they need to fulfill their potential. We look forward to continuing to work with you in 2015 and beyond, and to keep you informed of activities and policies that support a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Don’t forget to share our Facebook posts and follow us on Twitter!

Student Poverty isn’t an Excuse, It’s a Barrier

Elaine Weiss — Wed, 11 May 2016 20:32:18 +0000

The four co-chairs of the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education -- Helen Ladd, Pedro Noguera, Paul Reville, and Joshua Starr -- write for EdWeek about why this is BBA's ed policy moment. Increasingly widespread recognition that poverty is not an excuse, but a serious barrier to student and school success, is a first, and important step. And the passage of ESSA may make future steps easier. But if we are to build on those, and on growing momentum for investments in early childhood education, wraparound services, and systems to develop and support educators, we must seize this moment, not blow it!

Rich Hill: The Gap between Student Needs and School Capacity

Elaine Weiss — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 20:11:05 +0000

This 2014 white paper jointly produced by AASA: the School Superintendents Association and BBA as a companion to the documentary Rich Hill illustrates the unique challenges many rural schools face in meeting their students’ needs. Inequitable funding schemes that put high-poverty schools and districts at a disadvantage are compounded in rural contexts by the difficulty of attracting strong teachers and staff to remote settings and by the isolation that makes accessing supportive services a challenge.

BBA Monthly Newsletter

Don Long — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 15:26:29 +0000

Supporters of a Broader Bolder Approach to Education,

Spring isn’t bringing many showers this year, at least not in DC, but it is certainly bringing attention to ESSA’s new provisions and opportunities for states, districts, and schools. So this newsletter is dedicated to some of the best and newest of ESSA commentary and guidance. We hope you enjoy it as much as you are enjoying the gorgeous weather!

To no one’s surprise, the Learning Policy Institute (LPI), Linda Darling Hammond’s new think-and-do tank, has come out strong and positive on the issue. Jointly with SCOPE, LPI released Pathways to New Accountability through the Every Student Succeeds Act. As they point out, “The passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides states with flexibility and the responsibility to design and implement new systems of accountability, support, and intervention. With the new law comes an opportunity to focus efforts at the school, district, and state level on ensuring that all students graduate high school with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions to participate fully in our society.” The two institutes also offer a peek into pioneering states at the forefront of this work, providing helpful examples to adopt and adapt (and an emphasis that the work should be slow, patient, and thoughtful).Among the many opportunities offered by the passage of ESSA are new resources for schools and districts that partner with community organizations to support a broad range of student needs. Check out helpful guidance from the Coalition for Community Schools on how to engage community members and key stakeholders and more (plus a bunch of other ESSA-related stuff).Alongside the good ESSA news are reasons for caution. On top of the responsibility ESSA puts on states and districts, many of which lack the capacity, will, or both to do the hard work needed, there’s the issue of ESSA’s “fifth indicator.” This US News commentary captures the promise — and potential pitfalls — of social emotional learning in this new policy context:

“Despite growing evidence that social and emotional learning is important to college and career success, these skills are largely unmeasured in schools. Many of the assessments used to measure these skills have not yet been widely used, and evidence of their validity is limited. Most existing measures of these skills, including those used by CORE, are based on self-reported surveys, which typically do not work well for accountability because people can be pressured to report in positive ways. When high stakes are involved, even tightly controlled, standardized testing is often gamed, and assessments of social and emotional learning could be manipulated particularly easily.”

The right actions under ESSA will be critical in fighting the disadvantages that poverty and minority racial status pose for too many American children. But they will not be sufficient. Children of color and their parents understand all too well that the US school system is rigged against them, from before they even begin kindergarten. The timely new book Too Many Children Left Behind by education scholar Jane Waldfogel and four colleagues documents that not only schools but broader social systems conspire to put lower-class US children behind early and keep them behind in ways that similar countries do not.

Indeed, generational poverty in the United States can feel inevitable. As a new Century Foundation study of at-risk youth from Baltimore’s Sandtown neighborhood demonstrates, it doesn’t have to be. But we need to be much smarter, more intentional, and willing to invest in their future, if we are going to break longstanding chains that bind. On the anniversary of Freddie Gray’s murder, this report’s call to action couldn’t be more timely.

Bottom line: for the many of us frustrated by years of narrow views of what constitutes student and school progress, how to measure it, and the definition of accountability, we must seize this moment to go broader and bolder! Wouldn’t it be wo
nderful to see districts and schools following in the footsteps of Redtail Rid
ge Elementary School in Prairie Lake Minnesota and getting kids outdoors all year long to learn hands-on from and with nature? It’s up to all of us to help them move in this direction.

Thank you, as always, for your dedication to ensuring that all children receive a rich, comprehensive education and have the support they need to fulfill their potential. We look forward to continuing to work with you in 2015 and beyond, and to keep you informed of activities and policies that support a Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. Don’t forget to share our Facebook posts and follow us on Twitter!