The Tennessee Department of Education is using ESSER and other U.S. Department of Education funds for its statewide Read 360 initiative, which includes tutoring and online supports to help develop systematic foundational literacy skills, high-quality phonics-based instructional materials, and other resources to support strong reading instruction.
States and districts have almost $122 billion coming their way from the American Recovery Program’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ARP ESSER) fund. Decisions on how to spend the money will have to be made quickly, because the ESSER funding timeline is fast, and student needs are substantial. In theory, the best way to determine how to spend the funds is relatively straightforward. In practice, though, it may feel more challenging. ESSER funds are new, so administrators may have questions about what is allowed, especially given that a broader range of possibilities is permitted under ESSER when compared to other federal education programs.
The Basics of Spending ESSER Funding
The $122 billion from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARP ESSER) is the third round of ESSER funding, which totals $189.5 billion in all. The first round (ESSER 1) was about $13 billion from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, and the second (ESSER 2) was roughly $54 billion from the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act. In all three rounds, 90 percent of the money must go to school districts, which have broad discretion over how to spend the funds. Districts must spend at least 20 percent of ARP ESSER funds to address learning loss through evidence-based interventions.
ESSER funds not allocated to districts are kept by states as “state-reserve” funds. States can spend ESSER 1 and 2 state-reserve funds on emergency needs to address issues related to coronavirus (and a small amount on administrative expenses). ARP ESSER state-reserve funds are subject to specific spending requirements. From the ARP ESSER state-reserve, states must spend 7 percent of the state’s total ARP ESSER allocation for evidence-based activities: 5 percent to address learning loss, 1 percent for summer enrichment, and 1 percent for comprehensive after-school programs. States may spend the remaining ARP ESSER state-reserve funds on emergency needs to address issues related to coronavirus (and a small amount on administrative expenses).
Before states and districts can understand what is possible under ESSER, they first have to understand the program’s rules, including timing and permissible spending options. ESSER can support many activities traditional U.S. Department of Education grant programs cannot, and, most important, misunderstandings about existing programs could shape ESSER implementation in ways that limit its potential.
Timing
States and districts have a limited time to spend ESSER funds, and understanding these timelines is vital for making decisions about which kinds of activities to support and when.
Each round of ESSER money has its own “period of availability.” This means, briefly, that ESSER funds can only pay for work performed during that period, contracts entered into during that period, or certain activities carried out during that period. These are known as “obligations,” which is a technical term under federal law.
Administrators have an extra year to spend all three rounds of ESSER money beyond what is written in Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, and ARP because of a law outside of ESSER called the General Education Provisions Act. That means ESSER 1 is available for obligation until September 30, 2022, ESSER 2 until September 30, 2023, and ARP ESSER until September 30, 2024. ESSER funds must be liquidated within 120 calendar days after the end of each applicable obligation deadline.
States have a narrower window to make some important spending decisions, however. States have one year from the date they received each ESSER grant to choose whether to award state-reserve funds to other entities through grants and contracts or to spend funds directly.
What ESSER can support
ESSER is different from traditional U.S. Department of Education programs in two important ways. First, unlike many U.S. Department of Education programs that are limited to certain students (like the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act for students with disabilities) or schools (like Title I for schools with certain poverty levels), ESSER can benefit any or all students, staff, and schools. This means states and districts can invest in systemwide initiatives to equitably improve outcomes for all students, target funds to students with specific needs, or do both. Second, ESSER can support activities that some traditional programs cannot, like core instruction, facilities upgrades, and construction.
Taken together, this means states and districts need to think differently about ESSER spending. For example, in general, federal education funds cannot be used for districtwide high-quality core curricula. This limitation does not apply to ESSER, however, and some states are already taking advantage of this flexibility. The Tennessee Department of Education is using ESSER and other U.S. Department of Education funds for its statewide Read 360 initiative, which includes tutoring and online supports to help develop systematic foundational literacy skills, high-quality phonics-based instructional materials, and other resources to support strong reading instruction. The Nebraska Department of Education is using ESSER funds to provide statewide access to high-quality math instructional materials.
States and districts can also use ESSER funds for school facility and infrastructure improvements to reduce health risks, mental health supports for students and staff, extending learning time or reorganizing the school day to accelerate learning, extending broadband and device access, and much more.
For as many spending options as ESSER offers, though, there are other considerations that will affect state and local spending choices. Chief among these is the many federal administrative regulations that apply to ESSER, such as federal procurement rules districts must follow when buying goods or services with ESSER money, federal rules for construction, federally funded employee compensation, and more. These rules are manageable, but states and districts might be sensitive to the ways they complicate certain spending choices.
How perceptions of existing federal education programs could impact ESSER spending
Even though ESSER is not subject to the same kinds of constraints as other U.S. Department of Education programs, misunderstandings about those programs could end up as barriers to ESSER innovation.
Even though ESSER funds are distributed to states and districts based on Title I allocations, for example, ESSER funds are not subject to Title I’s spending rules—a point that is confusing to many.
Long-held misunderstandings about traditional U.S. Department of Education programs—particularly the two largest, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—could also limit ESSER spending in unexpected ways, which may be more significant. Some state and district leaders mistakenly believe that an IDEA-funded service for students with disabilities cannot be provided to other students through another funding source. Some also believe that any service delivered to both students with and without disabilities cannot be considered a special-education service, regardless of how it is funded. Neither of these beliefs is correct, but they might make some districts reluctant to use ESSER funds in innovative ways.
One district considered using ESSER funds to expand the use of occupational therapists in its elementary schools to support students’ social and emotional needs after the return to in-person learning. Leaders in this district, however, were concerned that, because some students with disabilities receive occupational therapy as a special-education service, they could not offer services to non-disabled students without running afoul of federal special-education laws. This is not correct, but the district’s equivocation shows how misunderstandings about existing programs could inadvertently incentivize the status quo and limit ESSER’s potential for innovation.
A Framework for ESSER Planning
How, then, can ESSER funds be spent in a way that makes sense for each district and allows for innovation? First, states and districts should determine local needs and identify a set of potential approaches to meeting those needs. States and districts then need to do their research. Those approaches that are infeasible or that policy does not permit should be ruled out; the requirements of ESSER do constrain these decisions but rule out surprisingly few options. Finally, spending should be prioritized in cost-effective ways.
1. Determine state and local needs and potential approaches to meeting them
ESSER is designed to permit many types of spending, and there’s no single “right” choice that applies everywhere. To move beyond simply identifying needs and towards determining the best way to address them, states and districts should consider multiple strategies to address each plausible issue, rather than starting with one favored candidate. The point here isn’t to seek out one permissible silver bullet, but to generate a robust set of alternatives to consider. It is therefore critical to solicit and consider a diverse range of perspectives about needs.
Many analyses focus on how student outcomes vary across demographic groups. For more actionable results, districts might consider how student outcomes differ with access to school-based resources, like experienced teachers, enriched instructional offerings, or counseling staff.
2. Do the research
With a list at the ready, leaders should start to gather information on each option. Now is the time to answer two big questions. First, what would it take to implement this strategy well? Many strategies are evaluated at a smaller scale than leaders may envision, so they should consider whether they can implement at their desired scale. Space, transportation, staffing, scheduling, and technology are all required and should be included in cost calculations, as well as the resources that are available but would be diverted from other uses, like staff time.
Timing of spending as well as total costs should be considered. This is straightforward for one-time costs, like a single year of summer school or extended learning time. But for changes that would reverberate into future budgeting, what will happen, instructionally and contractually, when the ESSER funds run out—especially for districts with particularly large ESSER allocations? This is a great reason to reflect not just on which new things districts would like to acquire, but also on how existing spending patterns are working out. Are there less effective practices taking up resources that, over time, could be freed up for new uses?
If the strategy seems feasible, leaders can move on to the second big research question: what would happen if the strategy was implemented well? This means considering evidence based on what’s happened elsewhere, with an eye to how convincing and relevant it is. Thinking through how likely the outcomes are due to the strategy requires thinking through a counterfactual scenario.
Many studies compare test scores at the start of the school year with scores at the end and implicitly or explicitly attribute all of that growth over the year to the use of a particular curriculum or intervention, but a better approach would be to compare test score changes over the course of the year in settings using different interventions. This gets closer to approximating a counterfactual outcome: how did test scores change fall to spring with, say, one math curriculum in place versus another? Ideally, research takes care of the “selection problem,” or why different schools choose to use different interventions, by introducing variation that is random, or close to it, where interventions are used.
3. Rule out the non-starters
Some options simply can’t work, either because their implementation requirements are infeasible in a given context, or because federal law (and sometimes state law or policy) preclude them. In most cases for ESSER, though, getting more information on what is permissible is likely to rule options in rather than out.
What makes a strategy permissible in terms of ESSER’s evidence requirements, which apply to the required set-aside spending categories described above for states and districts? These all draw on the Every Student Succeeds Act’s definition of evidence. ESSA has four “tiers” of evidence but, for the purpose of understanding ESSER, all you need to understand is its most flexible option. Carrie Conaway has described this fourth tier as ESSA’s “hidden gem.” In her words, it applies to “programs and practices that are informed by research and seem reasonably likely to succeed.” Being informed by research is different than being the subject of research. A district might choose to adopt a new core reading curriculum that includes elements research has identified as important for helping students learn to read to replace a current curriculum that is lacking them. This is okay under ESSER, even if that particular new curriculum is not in the What Works Clearinghouse.
ESSA’s numbered tiers imply a hierarchy, but the technical aspects of research that define the tiers determine just a fraction of the practical significance of research findings. For example, many districts are especially interested in resources to help students with disabilities and English learners, for whom the past year has been particularly bleak instructionally. Yet the research base at the highest tiers of evidence on what works for these groups is especially weak. This doesn’t mean districts should walk away from their needs and values. Instead, they should understand and embrace the broad view of evidence permitted under the law.
4. Prioritize based on cost-effectiveness
With any luck, at least one good option has survived to this point. Leaders can use the research they’ve assembled to think about how effective each option is likely to be alongside its cost. This step may seem obvious when it comes in this sequence, but all too often, the sources consulted won’t even mention costs.
It’s true that this process will take longer than running the top contender or two through the What Works Clearinghouse or EdReports.org—which is just doing a fraction of the “do your research” step and nothing else. Still, perfect doesn’t have to be the enemy of the good here: even a light, quick version of this framework will help states and districts make better ESSER funding decisions.
Nora Gordon is associate professor of public policy at Georgetown University and the co-author of Common-Sense Evidence: The Education Leader’s Guide to Using Data and Research. Melissa Junge and Sheara Krvaric co-founded the Federal Education Group, where they are attorneys.
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Kipper, KIPP’s chatbot, sends texts to recent KIPP graduates about topics ranging from registering for college orientation to filling out financial-aid forms, all to prevent summer melt.
Lourdes Rea wanted to transfer from community college to a four-year university but worried about the $70,000 she’d have to borrow to cover the costs. Plus, she would need a strong essay to get in, but as the first in her family to pursue a college education, she didn’t know how to write one.
The problem wasn’t that she lacked an appetite for hard work or vision for the future. At 20, Rea was already financially independent from her parents and worked 30 hours a week at a Trader Joe’s grocery store, along with other odd jobs, to pay her bills. But, like many students, she found it hard to balance those demands with her full-time course load. Meanwhile, she was trying to find an internship in marketing, her intended career.
She sought out advice on her community-college campus, but it wasn’t easy to get the information she needed. “I would literally sometimes ask five, six, seven different people before I got to the place where they could help me,” she said. Even then, she often felt uncomfortable and unsure of what to say. “I was very shy to ask. I just felt so lost.”
So she turned to an unlikely source of support: an advisor from the charter high school she’d attended.
An “alumni college success” coach from Bright Star Schools, which runs three charter high schools in Los Angeles, helped Rea put together an admissions essay to transfer to the University of Southern California, get financial aid to avoid the debt she feared, and win a coveted digital-media internship at a major entertainment company—all while cheering her on along the way.
That high-school coach “has been the most important person in my educational journey,” said Rea, now 22 and a junior at USC majoring in business administration with an internship at the Walt Disney Company on her resume. “She would always check in with me, and we would go back and forth with different situations that I had. Her support is not just school; it’s being there for me when things get really hard.”
When it comes to first-generation college students, “everyone just passes the buck from one to another,” says Liane Hypolite, a former charter high-school counselor.
Bridging a “Vast Divide”
Charter high schools largely serving low-income, first-generation, Black and Hispanic students have long boasted of the comparatively high proportions of their students who graduate and go to college. But as these schools and their alumni grow older, charters also are looking at their rates of degree attainment, which remain lower than they’d like. In response, several leading charter networks, including Achievement First, Bright Star Schools, Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Summit Public Schools, and Uncommon Schools, have been expanding two key aspects of their high-school programs to promote alumni success on campus: detailed data tracking and analysis, and hands-on counseling and support.
First, a relatively new source of data is showing high schools how well their graduates do after they leave. The National Student Clearinghouse’s Student Tracker reports whether and where graduates enroll, attend, and complete college. This information is helping charters find and address shortcomings in the way they prepare high-school students for postsecondary success. Many public high schools have started using data in this way, too.
The charters also have begun to leverage the insights from that data, and the rising numbers of entering college students they collectively produce, to demand better outcomes from the universities and colleges where those students end up. Already, some are steering their graduates away from institutions where the data show they don’t do well—advice that is bound to get the attention of institutions already struggling to fill seats and meet diversity goals.
Second, charter schools have expanded their alumni-support services to address low rates of completion, including by following their graduates to college campuses and providing advisors, mentors, and ongoing advocacy to raise the odds that students will make it to the finish line. College-access counseling is growing to become college-completion counseling, too.
These initiatives are too new for long-term impacts to be measured decisively, especially considering that postsecondary success rates are computed over six or eight years. But they apply tools that have been separately shown to increase completion among students who are low-income, first-generation, and ethnic and racial minorities, such as encouraging them to attend more selective institutions with greater resources and supports. Funding for this work is covered largely by private philanthropy, though there are ongoing discussions with partner universities to share the costs, since they also share the benefits of improved success rates.
These kinds of interactions between high schools and colleges largely haven’t existed before. K–12 and higher-education institutions generally exist separated from one another across a vast divide, seldom talking to each other, never mind collaborating in the interests of students. This has created a confounding non-system of college preparation and postsecondary education, with large numbers of students falling off track in the transition.
“Everyone just passes the buck from one to another, and I can say that as someone who was at the intersection of those two sectors,” said Liane Hypolite, assistant professor of educational leadership at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a former charter-high-school college counselor.
“We continue to have these arbitrary divides between K–12 and higher education,” she said. “If we saw them as connected, maybe we could really strengthen the learning that our students experience.”
Mandy Savitz-Romer says that, as more data on student success is gathered, charter high schools will advise graduates against attending certain institutions.
Higher Education’s Failings
The proportion of high-school graduates going on to college has been rising overall, and has reached 70 percent. But colleges and universities have generally failed to improve retention or fully close gaps in degree attainment between first-generation, low-income, Black and Hispanic students and higher-income whites.
Sixty-four percent of white students enrolling in a four-year institution earn a bachelor’s degree within six years compared to 54 percent of Hispanic students and 40 percent of Black students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In addition, students from higher-income homes are substantially more likely to earn a degree. By age 24, an estimated 62 percent of students whose household income is in the top 25 percent have earned a bachelor’s degree. That number falls sharply for students from poorer households, to 44 percent, 21 percent, and 16 percent for the second, third, and bottom quartiles of household income, according to an analysis by the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.
Narrowing these divides is especially important to the nation’s leading charter networks, which enroll large numbers of low-income Black and Hispanic students. KIPP, the biggest, serves about 113,000 students in 21 states. Nearly all are low income, measured by whether they qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Fifty-five percent are Black and 40 percent are Hispanic.
KIPP students, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college, often arrive on campus with more challenges than are faced by many of their classmates, said Ajuah Helton, the national director of KIPP Through College, the network’s college-advising arm. “There is potentially a financial gap, a sense of belonging on campuses, and a third piece around what it looks like to be able to compete academically in situations where there are not enough resources.”
Higher education is not doing enough to address this “triple threat” to student success, said Helton. “It’s frustrating that high schools have to really carry the burden of strong transitions to help students get to and through” college, she said.
As much as institutions say they’re student facing, “sometimes they really aren’t,” said Onjheney Warren, a college transition specialist at KIPP Generations Collegiate High School in Houston. “That just goes back to how higher education is not accessible unless … unless you’re white, honestly. We are filling that void, because our students deserve college counselors. They deserve choice.”
These efforts by charter operators come at a moment of change and vulnerability in higher education. The potential pool of applicants coming out of charter schools is especially attractive to colleges and universities amid enrollment declines and new calls for diversity and inclusion.
Enrollment in higher education in the United States has been falling steadily for a decade and took a sharp dive during the Covid-19 pandemic. While the number of applicants to college in the fall of 2020 in every other category rose, the number of first-generation applicants declined, according to the Common App. And about half of college students already enrolled said Covid-19 disruptions will make it harder for them to finish their degrees, according to a poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. That included 56 percent of Black and Hispanic students, compared to 44 percent of whites.
Even if enrollment rebounds, declines in the country’s birthrates that began during the economic crisis of 2008 point to even steeper dropoffs in the numbers of incoming freshmen starting after 2025, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education estimates. After the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and widespread calls for racial justice, many schools have also made a broad commitment to attracting a more racially and economically diverse student body to their campuses.
Charter schools already use the intelligence they’ve been collecting to steer their students away from institutions where they don’t do well. For example, Bright Star recommends its families not send graduates to certain community colleges in southern California with very low completion rates.
“You could imagine a situation in which K–12 would start to use those data to advise their students differently, as in, ‘These institutions are doing a terrible job with Black students, with Latinx students, with low-income students—don’t go there,’” said Mandy Savitz-Romer, director of the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s master’s program in prevention science and practice and a former urban high school counselor.
Now several charters are banding together to remind enrollment managers of the diversity and growing number of their graduates, forcing colleges and universities to do a better job if they want these students on their campuses.
There’s self-interest involved on the part of charter schools as well. KIPP, for example, has publicly committed to “preparing students for economically self-sufficient, choice-filled lives,” which typically involves more education than a high-school diploma. Charters including KIPP are judged by families and donors not only on how many of their students graduate high school and go to college, but on how many earn a degree.
“These are charter schools that rely on private philanthropy,” said Savitz-Romer, “and they would like to say that they’re successful.”
Power in Numbers
Bringing their emerging clout to bear on improving campus support for students is “the next frontier” for charter high schools, said Amy Christie, senior director of college access and success at the Achievement First network of charter schools in New York, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.
“We’ve been trying to do that in isolation, leveraging our own political capital,” she said. Now, charter schools seeking to change colleges’ and universities’ behavior are teaming up to share information and broadcast a common message to admissions officers across the country: do better by our students.
“We’re saying, ‘Listen, we’re sending you 100 kids every year,’” she said. And they are keeping track of how those students do once on campus.
“I know my equivalents at every charter system in the country, and we’re swapping information about what’s going on with XYZ College,” Christie said. “Inevitably that school will come up on some kid’s list, and we’re going to say to families, ‘Here’s the track record. This ultimately is your decision, but I wouldn’t recommend it.’”
Not all colleges and universities have welcomed questions from their students’ high schools. Many resist sharing the kind of detailed records high schools need to keep track of their alumni, such as the academic progress of individual students or groups of students—with or without their names attached. “Colleges are very, like, ‘We don’t want to give you our data,’” KIPP’s Warren said. Some are unwelcoming of the charter-school coaches who materialize on campus with their students looking for help. “I’ve had people in offices say, ‘What is your job? Why are you here with them?’” she said. “As if we’re going to be judging them or telling them they’re doing their job wrong.”
But charters already have access to detailed information about student trends on campus through other sources. StudentTracker provides information that high schools generally haven’t ever had, at least in the surprising amount of detail they can now get. In the past, high schools had known only whether or not their students, as they were handed their diplomas, said they planned to go to college. StudentTracker can report back about which graduates enrolled at which institutions, in close to real time, and where they end up each semester after that. It can break this down by students’ gender, race, ethnic background, and other characteristics. And schools can compare how their graduates in each of these categories perform against national averages. The price: $595 per year, per high school.
With this expanded transparency, a growing number of institutions are beginning to cooperate and form explicit partnerships with charter schools and networks. KIPP has agreements with 97 institutions to recruit, support, and share data about its students. The network sends one quarter of its graduates to these schools, which include Brown, Duke, and Vanderbilt universities, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At least one partner institution, Colorado State University in Fort Collins, has agreed to split the cost of a full-time advisor for KIPP students on its campus.
Other charter schools have similar deals with higher-education institutions. Achievement First has partnered with Lafayette College and to date, 30 of its graduates have enrolled at the school.
“We feel like they’re an extension of our admissions office,” said Gregory MacDonald, vice president for enrollment
management at Lafayette in Easton, Pennsylvania. “Their success is our success, and our success is their success. It’s completely intertwined.”
Although the small liberal-arts college has a low student-faculty ratio of fewer than 11 to 1 and provides its own mentors, tutors, and advisors, first-generation students like the ones who come from Achievement First schools “might not know that there are services available, and they might not even know what help they need and what to ask for,” MacDonald said. “There’s a lot of pressure on these kids, and, culturally, asking for help might be seen as a weakness, and that’s what we have to overcome.”
Having advisors from Achievement First working with them even after they’ve shown up on campus, he said, is “another safety net.”
Still, these sorts of active partnerships are the exception, not the rule.
“I would not say that higher-education institutions are typically reaching out to us,” said Helton of KIPP. “They do want to reach out and recruit. But in terms of deep partnerships, I would like to see more. It could and should be so much more.”
Filling a Need
Much of what college-success advisors do for charter-school alumni is provide the help they need to clear the many obstacles that can derail them: finding housing, registering for classes, picking majors, budgeting money, keeping financial aid flowing, and managing time. They also connect students with “campus champions” known to be accessible and in touch with a range of student needs.
“Sometimes as we get to know these campuses, our alumni will say, ‘Everyone needs to go see Joe,’” said Christie. “‘Once you know Joe, you’re made.’ Our success team is aggressively finding out who those people are.”
A significant amount of the advising consists of helping students cut through red tape, said Patrick Rametti, director of college completion at Uncommon Schools, a charter school network that operates in New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
“College can be a very bureaucratic, difficult place to navigate,” Rametti said. “That’s often what our support ends up being: answering questions that the student doesn’t know who to turn to [for assistance] on the college campus.”
The early days of college can be particularly challenging for any young person learning to manage unstructured time, meet increased academic expectations, and adjust to campus life. Then there are the financial stresses, homesickness, imposter syndrome, family responsibilities, and other hurdles many low-income, first-generation, Black, and Hispanic students in particular often must surmount. These students also tend to lack the networking savvy of classmates whose parents went to college.
A survey of KIPP alumni in college found that one in four was financially supporting family members, more than 40 percent had missed meals, and more than half worked at least one job. Fewer than one third had internships connected with their career plans.
The support these students need is often straightforward, such as reminders to register for classes on time or visit professors during office hours. Advisors also remain on call to step in when something unexpected happens.
“I don’t have to be their therapist. I don’t have to be their mom. I don’t have to be their best friend. But I want them to be able to text us when they need some help,” said Warren.
Familiar Faces
These relationships begin in high school. The Bright Star Schools network has a coordinator of its alumni support and college success program (ASCS, pronounced “ask-us”) at each of its three high schools. These counselors help seniors with financial-aid applications and teach skills including time management. Students are required to get to know their ASCS counselors before they can receive their diplomas.
“If our students don’t know us and trust us, they’re not going to willingly let us track and support their progress,” said Genoveva Cortes, the program’s director.
At Achievement First, students work with college and career counselors throughout high school, with the goal of getting into the “best-fit four-year college or university.” Once that’s happened, they’re paired with alumni-success counselors who will support them during and after graduation, in what Christie called “a warm handoff.”
“We’re trying to get our students to meet the success team in trust-building ways,” she said.
At Uncommon Schools, alumni-success coaches interview students before they finish high school to learn their goals, where they plan to go to college, and what they want to study, said Rametti. And at KIPP, college-transition specialists start their work during the final semester of high school, teaching seniors about such subjects as financial aid and credit hours. Students aren’t allowed to have their high school transcripts until they meet with a college coach and complete a 35-point college checklist covering everything from financial aid to health insurance.
After graduation, the focus moves to avoiding “summer melt”—that is, when students who initially enroll and intend to go to college fail to show up on campus in the fall. Summer melt sidetracks between 10 and 40 percent of high-school graduates, according to the most comprehensive study of the problem, by the Harvard Strategic Data Project. Low- and moderate-income students, those with low academic confidence, and students headed for community colleges are all at the high end of that range.
KIPP has started using a chatbot called Kipper to stay connected to its college-going graduates in the summers and help reduce summer melt. Kipper regularly sends students text messages like “Did you know that you have to register for orientation? Check your school’s calendar” and “I think you’re amazing. Just popping in to tell you that you’ve got this.” The chatbot also uses artificial intelligence to answer commonly texted questions.
The charters’ most intensive efforts happen once these students finally arrive on campus and have to navigate the often-baffling complexity of college. KIPP counselors check in to make sure they have, in fact, shown up, see how they’re doing, and find out whether they have housing, went to orientation, are attending classes, and bought the textbooks and supplies they’ll need. KIPP keeps track of its growing caseload in college with check-ins each semester and a color-coded system based on how well students seem to be doing on their own. “I can just pull out every color from the benchmarks and that’s my 20 students who need more help this semester—let me call them,” Warren said.
Advisors also help their students pick classes strategically—not just electives that sound fun, but core requirements for majors that connect with their career aspirations. They comfort them through homesickness and connect them with resources on campus that they might not otherwise easily find or are reluctant to use.
High-school college-success advisors “are constantly encouraging students through our support to be better self-advocates,” Rametti said. “We’re not going to just call the financial aid office and yell at them. We’re going to talk to the student to make sure they understand what the problem is and only intervene as needed.”
“We think of ourselves as successful once we can say our students are plugged in, whether it’s an office or a program
or a mentor who can help them navigate that campus,” echoed Christie.
Codman Academy Charter School changed its practice of allowing students to resubmit assignments for better grades, as this amount of flexibility worked against alumni as soon as they got to college.
Helping or Handholding?
Charter networks often boast that their graduates finish high school “college ready.” But some charters provide so much personalized attention in the lower grades that graduates who are prepared academically still can find the largely self-directed world of college singularly challenging. The intensive supports that help many charter-school students persist through high school, which some critics disparage as handholding, may leave students unprepared for the realities of college life.
“The charter schools do a great deal of regulating students—and then students transition to college where they have to become self-regulated,” Savitz-Romer said.
For example, at Codman Academy Charter School in Boston, students were allowed to resubmit assignments to earn higher grades. The practice was intended to provide more opportunities to learn the subjects. But a study of alumni found it worked against them when they got to college, where no such second chances were allowed. In response, the school changed its revision process.
The Summit Public Schools charter network in California and Washington State, which is underwritten by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, made a similar discovery. While an impressive 98 percent of its graduates are accepted to four-year colleges and universities, just 49.9 percent earn a degree within six years of high-school graduation. That’s still considerably higher than national averages for low-income students of color, but not high enough.
Summit determined that its alumni had become accustomed to intensive support, such as one-to-one mentors, which suddenly fell away after high-school graduation. So the network introduced self-directed learning cycles, which require high-school students to set goals, reflect on their progress, and learn time-management skills. The goal is to empower students to become self-directed learners with “habits of success” and a greater sense of purpose. A Summit spokeswoman said that, because college completion rates are calculated over six years, it won’t know the results of this until mid-2022.
Advisors from charter schools say their support is far from coddling; rather, they are simply providing what first-generation and low-income students need to persevere. Students who lack middle-class resources or family knowledge about how universities work can easily be knocked off course by a minor financial mishap or missed administrative deadline. And it’s hard to catch up.
Depending on their financial-aid packages, for example, students might not have access to money for textbooks until several weeks into the semester, noted Christie of Achievement First. Many charter-school graduates, unlike higher-income college classmates, don’t have the cash to spare while waiting for grants and loans to come through, Christie said.
“That’s a very micro example, but the macro of college is that you need a lot of money during the transition that people assume everybody has,” she said. In addition, costs for transportation and supplies also tend to not be factored in to financial-aid awards. When the pandemic forced universities to close, many lower-income students were stranded on campus. In response, KIPP created an emergency fund to help its students travel home.
“The seemingly small barrier of those sorts of small purchases also impacts other things, like your connection to campus,” said Christie. Instead of enjoying “what the movies tell us college is supposed to be,” she said, many of her students spend the start of freshman year waiting for help at the bursar’s office.
Rametti told the story of an Uncommon Schools alumna who landed at a top liberal-arts college but couldn’t decide on a major. Instead of starting her studies with general coursework and deciding on a major later, she decided to take a semester off—which research shows is often a first step to dropping out. “She had no one advising her” until her high-school coach stepped in, he said. “You can only imagine how our students are making it at larger public institutions, where they’re really just a grain of sand on the beach.”
Warren recalled one of her KIPP Through College advisees at just that sort of institution. After one semester, the student was intimidated, overwhelmed, and ready to drop out. “She was just, ‘I can’t do this. There are 200 people in this class, the professors don’t even know my name. I’m just so used to smaller classes. I’m going to leave.’”
Warren convinced the student to persist and helped her find and register for smaller classes.
“I really have to emphasize to students that the college offices are frightening and the people there may not be the nicest, but you need to go and talk to them,” she said. “Sometimes it’s really hard to go to an office on your own. In the past, we’ve walked students to mental-health services. We’ve walked students to financial aid.”
These supports are most broadly provided for freshmen but can last throughout a student’s college years. Uncommon Schools provides at least a year of intensive support to its graduates and extended counseling to its most vulnerable alumni. KIPP, Bright Star, and Achievement First offer counseling supports for as many as six years after graduation.
The Results
Because many of these efforts are new or evolving, their impact is not yet clear.
One of the earliest wins for charter schools that keep supporting students after high school appears to be in slowing summer melt. At KIPP, the combination of text nudging, artificial intelligence, and human interaction has cut summer melt among New York students to 2 percent from 35 percent.
Measuring summer melt, however, only takes a summer. Tracking completion rates takes six years or more, and some of the charter networks haven’t been providing intensive support to their alumni on campuses long enough for it to show up significantly yet in the statistics.
Eight in 10 KIPP students now enroll in college after graduating high school. The proportion who earn bachelor’s degrees within six years has been rising steadily to reach 43 percent, according Helton, head of KIPP Through College. Another 6 percent earn associate degrees. At Uncommon Schools, 58 percent of high-school graduates earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. The figure at Achievement First is 53 percent and at Bright Star, 37 percent. Another 8 percent of former Bright Star students complete associate degrees.
Research into what boosts graduation rates more broadly suggests the charters are aiming at the right targets.
Charters typically push students to apply to and enroll at more academically demanding colleges than they might ordinarily consider. Low-income students in particular tend to “undermatch” with less-selective institutions that have poor graduation rates. Pushing them toward more elite institutions, as the charter-school programs relentlessly do in the first step of their alumni-success work, improves their outcomes, according to research by the UChicago Consortium on School Research, which is based at the University of Chicago.
Charters are also helping students find resources they might not have known existed. One of particular importance to low-income students is work-study, which the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment finds is often better connected to students’ career plans than off-campus employment and reduces commuting time. While research has found that work-study participation slightly decreases first-year grades, it also slightly increases the number of credits students earn in their first year of college.
Other programs comparable to what the charter schools are doing have also had positive outcomes. The Carolina Covenant, for instance, at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, gives low-income students not only significant financial aid, but also work-study jobs, mentoring by faculty, staff, or older Covenant scholars, and workshops about such things as time management and study techniques. Started in 2003, it’s increased graduation rates for this category of students by 8 percentage points.
Those types of supports have helped Allison Gonzalez-Castro stay the course in higher education. The first in her family to go to college, she got cold feet at the threshold of her freshman year, until her KIPP Through College counselor talked her out of putting off her education. People who postpone college, regardless of their intentions, are much less likely ever to go, according to research by the National Center for Education Statistics.
Once on campus, homesick and struggling to manage her own schedule, Gonzalez-Castro ended up on academic probation and fell back on her KIPP Through College coach to help her through.
“I probably texted her hundreds of times,” she said. “She was my person to go to when I needed help. If I was crying because I was stressed, she was the person I would text. They already know what I’ve been through. They know my story, my background. So I feel more comfortable talking about personal problems and stuff that would eventually affect my education.”
Now a junior at Colorado State University majoring in human development and family studies, Gonzalez-Castro, 20, is on track to graduate on time.
“I really, really, really appreciate them,” she said of her KIPP college success advisors. “If they hadn’t opened my eyes and gotten me on the right path, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”
Jon Marcus is higher education editor at the Hechinger Report. He writes about higher education for the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and others.
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Real wages in America today are lower than they were 48 years ago. The rich are getting even richer. Here’s the truth: if we’re going to retain the faith of the American people in their government, we’re going to have to stand up for them, and not the big money interests.
An assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, Daniel Hamlin, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the Conference on the Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling, which was recently hosted over seven weeks by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School.
By: Education Next Title: The Education Exchange: Will the Increase in Homeschooling Continue After the End of the Pandemic? Should Homeschooling be More Tightly Regulated? Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/the-education-exchange-will-the-increase-in-homeschooling-continue-after-the-end-of-the-pandemic-should-homeschooling-be-more-tightly-regulated/?utm_source=The%2BEducation%2BExchange%253A%2BWill%2Bthe%2BIncrease%2Bin%2BHomeschooling%2BContinue%2BAfter%2Bthe%2BEnd%2Bof%2Bthe%2BPandemic%253F%2BShould%2BHomeschooling%2Bbe%2BMore%2BTightly%2BRegulated%253F&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS%2BReader Published Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2021 09:00:08 +0000
It’s been thirty years since the first law enabling charter schools was enacted in Minnesota back in 1991. Today, there are over 7,500 charter schools and campuses across the country, with 200,000 teachers serving 3.3 million students. To take stock of the current state of charter schools, I checked in with Nina Rees, who since 2014 has been the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Rick Hess: Nina, what’s the state of charter schooling today?
Nina Rees
Nina Rees: What started with one law and one school in Minnesota in 1991 has blossomed into a nationwide movement. Student-centered, tuition-free, and always public, charter schools have changed the American public education landscape for the better—and the data is compelling. A 2020 study from the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University using “the nation’s report card” data found that students attending charter schools made greater academic gains from 2005 to 2017 than students attending district-operated schools, with the most significant gains for Black students and low-income students. And a 2017 study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that our sector has gotten stronger over time in terms of growth and academic performance.
Hess: For readers who don’t track these things: What is it that makes something a charter school?
Rees: Charter schools are a special kind of public school. They are established when people from the community—often veteran teachers and school leaders—apply to charter school authorizers, who are typically a nonprofit organization, government agency, or university, for a “charter” to open a school. After the application is approved, the charter is good for a specific time period and can be renewed if they meet their goals or revoked if they do not. Charter schools are also accountable to parents. If they cannot fill their seats with enough students, they will have to close. Because charter schools are under the administrative control of the authorizer and not the school district, they have the built-in flexibility and autonomy to design and implement classroom instruction. Teachers and leaders can meet students where they are and provide the best learning methods for them to gain the knowledge and skills needed to be successful in college, career, and life. And that model works. Millions of students and thousands of teachers and schools make up the dynamic charter school community. Some schools focus on college prep, some follow a STEM curriculum, and others integrate the arts into each subject. All are focused on the student and their unique learning needs.
Hess: What are some common misunderstandings about charter schools?
Rees: Thirty years after their creation, people are still unclear about what charter schools are and who they serve. There are three big things to know. First, charter schools are public schools—they’re free and open to all, without the admission standards or tests that are often required to attend a magnet school or a gifted and talented program at a public school. Charter schools also serve predominantly underserved communities and do an exceptional job at it. The data tell us that almost sixty-nine percent of charter school students are students of color, compared to about fifty-two percent of district school students. Finally, the charter school movement is bipartisan. In fact, most charter schools are created in progressive communities by progressive educational leaders who share a basic belief that all children deserve an excellent public education and every opportunity for success.
Hess: How has the pandemic impacted demand for charter schools?
Rees: The pandemic drove parents to explore different education models and find schools that are the best fit for their children. While final numbers are not yet in, we are seeing evidence that families voted with their feet to enroll their children in charter schools—for example, in New York City, charter school attendance grew by about ten thousand students this school year, a seven percent increase over last school year’s enrollment. That’s because charter schools’ nimbleness and flexibility were especially on display during the pandemic. The Center for Reinventing Public Education, the Fordham Institute, and our own organization, in partnership with Public Impact, found that during the initial pandemic-related school closures in the spring of 2020, charter school networks and single sites established online learning that mimicked typical school days and that maintained structure for students and prioritized student health and well-being through family outreach and support. We know that charter schools were able to provide online learning options within just a few days of campus closures, ensuring that learning continued and students did not fall behind.
Hess: You recently celebrated 30 charter “Changemakers” under 30—how do their stories capture what you see as the most promising things about charter schooling?
Rees: When you read the stories of our honorees, who were all blessed with access to a charter school in their communities, you realize very quickly that if they were not fortunate enough to attend those schools, they would not have been able to blossom into the leaders they are today. Parents who seek charter schools are drawn to these schools for very different and specific reasons, often rooted in finding a school that fits their children’s unique learning needs. Some of our students needed to attend a charter school because their schedules didn’t permit them to attend a traditional public school, like NCAA champion gymnast Natalie Wojcik from Michigan; others were drawn to their schools because they saw them as the best or only pathway to college, like anti-gun violence activist Lauryn Renford from Washington, D.C.; and still others found our educational sector because a school offered a specialized curriculum that allowed them to study something they loved, like 15-year-old scientist and app developer Gitanjali Rao from Colorado.
Hess: Prominent Democrats have expressed skepticism about charter schools in recent years. And this year was the first time in many years that, for whatever reason, the White House did not issue a proclamation for National Charter Schools Week. How are you operating in this new political environment?
Rees: Our sector needs to be more diligent in holding our elected officials accountable, at all levels of government. In the 2020 election, voters elected or re-elected charter-friendly candidates in races across the country. Those elected officials are listening to their constituents and creating more favorable conditions for charter schools, and states are embracing the innovation and opportunities charter schools bring to communities and students. Most public charter schools are in solidly-Democrat congressional districts and, in that respect, voting against charter schools is voting against the families, students, and prosperity of that community. We remain hopeful that the Biden administration will honor its commitment to unifying the nation by supporting all public schools—both charter and district. And, we are fortunate to have strong Democratic advocates in Congress whose support is crucial in passing legislation and furthering our work to help more families across America. For example, in the House, there are Representatives Jeffries, from New York; Clyburn, from South Carolina; and Cleaver, from Missouri. In the Senate, there are Senators Coons and Carper, both from Delaware; Sinema, from Arizona; and Booker, from New Jersey.
Hess: It sounds like you’re saying, in general, Democrats are actually more supportive of charters than Republicans—is that what I’m hearing?
Rees: I’m saying there is strong bipartisan support for charter schools, particularly among parents. Black and Latino Democratic voters are overwhelmingly strong charter supporters; in fact, they are the strongest. All types of Republicans are supporters and, among lawmakers, we do have more Republican than Democratic champions. But the major point I am trying to make is that, on balance, charter schools have more supporters than detractors, period. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. This is an American issue.
Hess: You mentioned a moment ago that states are enacting charter-friendly legislation. Can you give me a few examples?
Rees: Recent laws passed in Georgia and Indiana will bring facilities and funding equity for existing charters. Iowa, West Virginia, and Wyoming have improved charter school laws by establishing statewide authorizers to allow for rapid expansion and more opportunities for families. We were also pleased to see the steadfast support of Governor Dan McKee of Rhode Island to protect the state from a charter moratorium.
Hess: Looking back over the decades, what would you say are the biggest things the charter movement has gotten wrong and right?
Rees: Our sector has demonstrated that the achievement gap can be closed, and it has effectively disrupted the public education system, but we need to be better storytellers. We have often relied on policy wonks and researchers to convey the benefits of charter schools and successes of our children and teachers, while forgetting to leverage the voices and stories of our communities. We will continue lifting students and school leaders like our 30 Under 30 Changemakers to show the country what public charters are and can do for all students, and especially our Black, Brown, and underserved students. There simply is no other education model that works as well as a high-performing charter school when serving students who have struggled academically or are members of underrepresented communities. That’s what truly matters, and that’s what we need to communicate.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.
Republicans all across the country are touting the absurd position that the former president, Donald Trump, won the last election in a landslide, and zero Republicans are prepared to vote to support American democracy. That is the sad reality we face.
Republicans refusing to even debate protecting our democracy is a total outrage. We can disagree on issues, but we should not disagree on whether or not Americans have the fundamental right to vote.
The incoming dean of the newly created College of Ethnic Studies at California State University, Los Angeles is an ally of extremist Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and has publicly expressed hope that Clarence Thomas dies an early death.
During a public television appearance in 1994, Malveaux said of Justice Clarence Thomas: “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early, like many black men do, of heart disease.”
In a 2018 column for the Birmingham Times, she wrote, “White people’s hatred for Minister Farrakhan is irrational and, might I say, racist.”
A 2018 article in the Nation of Islam’s newspaper, the Final Call, quoted Malveaux as saying, “until these Jewish people who are running around asking Black people to buck dance, until they ask White people to buck dance, I ain’t having it! I’m just not having it!” The article quoted her as saying, “Min. Farrakhan has never picked up a gun and shot anybody. These people need to just back off.”
Malveaux reportedly appeared with Farrakhan in 2005 to announce plans for a march in Washington.
The California State Board of Education this year approved a model curriculum for ethnic studies, and California may soon become the first state to require ethnic studies for high school graduation. In 2020, the state enacted a law making an ethnic studies class a degree requirement in the California State University system. An Education Next article published earlier this year, “Ethnic Studies in California,” while acknowledging that “the curriculum has been a major stumbling block,” alarmist, reported, “While some national conservative voices have denounced the entire concept as political indoctrination, support for some form of ethnic studies coursework has been widespread in California.” The Wall Street Journal editorialists call the push for ethnic studies “radical,” “a left-wing power grab,” “Marxist,” and warn that ethnic studies “interprets all social interactions through the lens of oppression.”
The Malveaux appointment is likely to fuel criticism of ethnic studies as overly political and tainted with antisemitism.
Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO StandWithUs, a nonpartisan Israel education organization that is based in Los Angeles has been deeply engaged on the ethnic studies issue, said in a statement to Education Next, “While we fully support better representation of marginalized groups in public education, it is now well documented that too many ethnic studies departments are institutionally biased against Jews and Israel. Unfortunately, it appears this appointment will make that problem worse. How can Jews expect to be treated with respect in a college where the leader has defended Louis Farrakhan, downplayed concerns about antisemitism, and promoted destructive conspiracy theories about Jewish power?”
The president of Cal State LA, William A. Covino, in a press release announcing the appointment, said, “This is a significant appointment for the college, but also for the city and the nation.” The release paraphrases him as saying “Malveaux’s long and accomplished record in academia and her history of advocacy will serve her well in her new role as dean of the college.”
Covino did not return a phone message left at his office about the appointment, and a spokesperson for Cal State LA did not return a message left on her cellphone. The spokesperson and aides to Covino also did not respond to multiple email messages asking whether Covino had been aware of Malveaux’s statements before making the appointment, or if they raised concerns. Malveaux did not respond to a written inquiry made via the contact form on her personal website.
In a column published in May 2021, Malveaux wrote, “Israel has a lock on U.S. foreign policy, and too many Jewish people say that criticism of Israel makes you anti-Semitic.” Actually, while Israel has strong bipartisan support from the American public and politicians, it does not have “a lock on U.S. foreign policy”: witness, for example, President Obama entering the Iran nuclear deal that Israel opposed, and President Biden negotiating to re-enter the same deal.
In a 1995 column for the Washington Post, Malveaux offered a mixed view of Farrakhan: “while I reject white Americans’ use of Louis Farrakhan as a litmus test of acceptable black opinion, I also reject the notion that I have to embrace Farrakhan just because white America looks askance at him. Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam offer an array of positives and negatives to black America. On the plus side, there is his focus on economic development and discipline. On the minus side, there is the antisemitic rhetoric and the traditionalism in gender relations.”
An Anti-Defamation League fact sheet describes Farrakhan as “a notable extremist figure, railing against Jews, white people and the LGBT community.”
In a 1997 column, Thomas Sowell described Malveaux as among the “shallow and noisy people who think that government programs are the answer to all problems.”
Malveaux, 67, has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT. Between 2007 and 2012 she was president of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is a historically Black liberal arts college for women. When she announced her resignation from that post the News & Record newspaper credited her with helping to increasing the college’s enrollment to more than 700 students from fewer than 400.
A 2019 profile in the Boston College alumni magazine reported, “the same woman who detests President ‘rump’ (she won’t say his name) and Mitch McConnell (a ‘turtle from Kentucky’) also criticizes Barack Obama, whom Malveaux felt was afraid of being perceived as ‘the President of black America,’ and instead opted for ‘President of all America.’”
Several other politically outspoken Black public intellectuals have been involved this year in high-profile battles over academic appointments, including Cornel West at Harvard and Nikole Hannah-Jones at the University of North Carolina.
The press release announcing Malveaux’s appointment says she will begin as dean on July 1, 2021. The College of Ethnic Studies is home to the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies and the Department of Pan-African Studies. The university, founded in 1947, has 27,827 students.
Ira Stoll is managing editor of Education Next.
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By: Ira Stoll Title: New Cal State LA Ethnic Studies Dean Backed Farrakhan, Wished Clarence Thomas Dead Sourced From: www.educationnext.org/new-cal-state-la-ethnic-studies-dean-backed-farrakhan-wished-clarence-thomas-dead/?utm_source=New%2BCal%2BState%2BLA%2BEthnic%2BStudies%2BDean%2BBacked%2BFarrakhan%252C%2BWished%2BClarence%2BThomas%2BDead&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS%2BReader Published Date: Thu, 24 Jun 2021 09:00:46 +0000
“Sometimes as we get to know these campuses, our alumni will say, ‘Everyone needs to go see Joe,’” said Christie. “‘Once you know Joe, you’re made.’ Our success team is aggressively finding out who those people are.”
An assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, Daniel Hamlin, joins Paul E. Peterson to discuss the Conference on the Post-Pandemic Future of Homeschooling, which was recently hosted over seven weeks by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at the Harvard Kennedy School.
