Back to school #3

Cover art, children on swings, Life Magazine, 6/16/1958.

I will never forget my first day of school.  We were housed in a "portable", a trailer, on the grounds of Cerveny School in Detroit, which had mostly higher grades.  All the kids were at the windows crying, after their mothers had left them at school.  

Me and my friend Greg didn't cry ("My son loved his first day of kindergarten. It brings up my own bittersweet memories," NPR).

-- "Back to school reprint: Why isn't walking/biking to school programming an option in Suburban Omaha? | Inadequacies in school transportation planning"
-- "Back to school #2"
-- "Back to school #3"

Past blog entries still very much relevant.  Over the years, sparked by "educational reform" programs for the Washington, DC public schools, I wrote a couple hundred entries probably on school issues.  A lot of those entries remain highly relevant and are worth a read:

-- "Schools #2: Successful school programs in low income communities and the failure of DC to respond similarly," 2019
-- "Back to school as a reason to consider schools issues comprehensively,"  2015
-- "What's your solution?" vis-a-vis K-12 school improvement in DC," 2009 
-- "Positive Deviance and the DC Public Schools," 2007

Students making their way south on SEPTA route 45 bus from stop at N. 12th Street at Market Street as they commute to school, Tuesday, September 2, 2025. Alejandro A. Alvarez / Philadelphia Inquirer.

Transit for schoolchildren.  In many center cities, school systems don't have bus systems like they do in the suburbs, although there can be micro-bus services for special education students.  

Schools often work with the local transit system to offer routes for students, and many transit systems have free or discounted passes for students.

Washington DC youth transit pass, "Kids Ride Free."

Cuts in transit service in Philadelphia, subject of the blog entry, "Transit death spiral starts in Philadelphia," led to an increase in tardiness and absenteeism ("SEPTA cuts made Philly schools’ attendance tumble significantly," Philadelphia Inquirer).  In the interim, the City of Philadelphia paid SEPTA to restore certain routes used by students ("Bus routes for students will be restored after Mayor Parker agreed to advance city money to SEPTA," PI).  Since then, the Courts have ordered SEPTA to restore all cuts. About 52,000 students use public transit to get to school in Philadelphia.

The Inquirer also reported on a charter school that minimized effects from the loss of transit ("Despite relying on SEPTA to get kids to school, one Philly charter has boosted attendance. Here’s how they did it.").  From the article:

But the staff of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia Charter School developed something of a battle plan going into the 2025-26 school year. CEO William Hayes and his team spent weeks before the term began connecting with parents, helping students think through how their commutes might change, even adding students to yellow bus routes the school pays for.

So the communication began early, when SEPTA specifics were known. Colleen Smith, Boys’ Latin’s chief operating officer, broke things down by route and neighborhood.

... It’s worked so far — average daily attendance was 96% among middle school students and 92% among high school students for the first few days after SEPTA service cuts, compared with 91% among middle school students and 88% among high school students for a comparable period last school year.

It's a good example of how I argue in "Why isn't walking/biking to school programming an option in Suburban Omaha? | Inadequacies in school transportation planning," that schools should be more proactive in assisting students in getting to school, especially when there isn't a school bus program.

What are the "Broken Windows" like theories in pedagogy and school management that should be applied to K-12 school systems in a strategic manner? (Learning Policy Institute).  I wonder if educational improvement can be systematized by taking a kind of "broken windows" approach to developing best practice, implementing it, and maintaining it, in part with robust management systems that go beyond a school and its principal.

Schools have a tough job as many children aren't interested in learning ("Students go back to Seattle schools with excitement, nerves," Seattle Times).

“I don’t want to be here,” said Callum McEwan, 13. “I want to see my friends, but I don’t want to learn stuff.” Callum’s friend Benyam Yoseph, also 13, agreed. 

 “There’s new classes and the schedule is a little messed up … we don’t have the electives we want,” Benyam said, pacing back and forth. “I feel like we need to switch computer science for language arts.”

The design of "Sesame Street" was based on rows of brownstones found in Manhattan's Harlem and Upper West Side and the Bronx. Bill Pierce / The LIFE Images Collection via Getty Images.

What about educational television?  Arguably it is a force for good.  The Trump Administration is cutting support for the public media which produce and broadcast it ("As Trump targets public media and media research, I worry for America’s children," Philadelphia Inquirer).  This has an especial impact on children of color.

I won’t argue about the political leanings of public media, but I will argue, as I did back then, that some of the very best children’s media is publicly funded. Sesame Street has been on PBS since 1969, and is perhaps the clearest example of what public media can achieve.

Its aim was to provide underserved children, especially those without access to preschool education, with the opportunity to learn basic skills like their ABCs and numbers before they entered first grade. Studies consistently showed that Sesame Street succeeded in its mission.

... This is where we find ourselves after the devastating cuts. The safe, trusted space PBS provides children and parents could very well disappear. The window of opportunity to better understand the effects of digital media on young, developing brains is closing.

... Our political leaders have decided that it’s best to pull the plug on what has always been a safe space for children in an otherwise banal and crowded children’s landscape. And instead of a robust, evidence-based conversation about how to help kids and families navigate this new digital environment, these same politicians have decided to let tech companies keep experimenting with our young people without anyone (except the companies themselves) understanding how young people are impacted.

Also see "The Unmistakable Black Roots of ‘Sesame Street’," Smithsonian Magazine. 

Marketing.  With the rise in competition from charter schools, private schools, and voucher programs public schools need to develop a system for marketing, at the system and school level, to maintain enrollments.  These Hearst Bay Area articles, "Winning Strategies to Grow Your K–12 Afterschool Program" and "How to Launch an A+ Education Marketing and Advertising Strategy," provide good insight and guidance on what to do.

Also see "Is the Hardest Job in Education Selling Parents on San Francisco Public Schools?," Hechinger Report.  From the article:

Declining enrollment can set off a downward spiral. For every student who leaves SFUSD, the district eventually receives approximately $14,650 less, using a conservative estimate of state funds for the 2022–23 school year. When considering all state and federal funds that year, the district stood to lose as much as $21,170 a child. Over time, less money translates to fewer adults to teach classes, clean bathrooms, help manage emotions and otherwise make a district’s schools calm and effective. It also means fewer language programs, robotics labs and other enrichment opportunities that parents increasingly perceive as necessary. That, in turn, can lead to fewer families signing up — and even less money.

It’s why Koehler is trying everything she can to retain and recruit students in the face of myriad complications, from racism to game theory, and why educators and policymakers elsewhere ought to care whether she and her staff of 24 succeed.

... Remote schooling accounted for about a quarter of the enrollment decline nationally, Stanford’s Dee estimates. The bigger culprit, especially in San Francisco, is population loss. Even before the pandemic, the city had the fewest 5-to-19-year-olds per capita of any US city, about 10 percent of the population, which is roughly half the national average.

City wide public school aid foundation in Park City, Utah ("Build the Foundation campaign calls on Park City families to support schools" Townlift Park City News).  In my writings on parks and libraries, I suggest that city-wide friends groups be created, with affinity groups for specific libraries or parks, with the city-wide group providing back of the house support, the affinity group support for the specific asset.  That's being done for schools (another civic asset I should have considered) in Park City, Utah.

The Park City Education Foundation (PCEF) is urging families to “Build the Foundation” for student success through its annual Parent & Caregiver Appeal Campaign, running July 1 through Sept. 12. The campaign aims to garner broad participation from parents and caregivers across the district to help fund nearly $2 million in programs that support every student, from preschool through high school.

“Participation is key,” said Jennifer Billow, PCEF vice president of advancement. “If everyone is donating what they can, then we can really fund all these programs. Even $1 counts.”

PCEF currently supports over 100 programs across the district. PCEF emphasizes that investing in public schools strengthens not only students but the broader community.

“Great public schools equal a great community,” Billow said. “When families know their kids can get an excellent education here, it helps our economy, it supports employers, and it makes Park City a place people want to live.” “About 99% of our kids attend public schools,” Billow said. “Even in a wealthy area, families choose public schools because they know their children will thrive. That’s possible because of the generosity of this community.” 

Trump Administration and schools.  I guess this group of writings on "back to school" "buried the lede," by not considering the multiple negative effects that new administration policies have on children and schools.  

There are many ("Trump’s Vivisection of the Department of Education," New Yorker) including cuts to:

• access to fresh foods and school meals
• child healthcare and Medicaid
• special funding (Title I) for schools with a preponderance of low income children
• funding and independent oversight of special needs programs (as much as a third of urban school system budgets is spent on special education, serving fewer than 20% of students)
• support for public vouchers paying for private schooling
• etc.

From the article:

A hallmark of right-wing antipathy to the D.O.E., and to public education in general, is the notion that children and schools need to be “taken back” from their federal overlords. In fact, the D.O.E. does not decide what or how students are taught; it does not weigh in on whether a school should adhere to Common Core standards or how many books by Ibram X. Kendi should be found on its library shelves. One thing that does fall under the D.O.E.’s remit, however, is administering the tests and collecting the data for the annual NAEP report, under the aegis of the National Center for Education Statistics. As of the most recent cuts to the D.O.E., the statistics office has been reduced “from roughly 100 employees to a skeletal staff of just three,” according to reporting by Jill Barshay, of the Hechinger Report. If disembowelling a federal agency does somehow lead to higher reading and math scores, the federal workers who would have tracked this progress won’t be around to tell us about it.

Year round schooling.  I've argued for a variety of reasons, a different kind of school schedule, so called "year round school" should be considered.

Some Title I schools do add at least one month of school in the summer.  Partly this is to ensure access to meals, but also to ward off learning loss.  More "summer camp" activities are often added, to leverage the weather and to be outside ("LA).USD's extra learning days bring child care relief and a grade boost," Los Angeles Times

Philadelphia's mayor wants to try it out ("Cherelle Parker wants year-round school. Philly tried it before," "25 Philly schools will pilot an 'extended day, extended year' program, Mayor Parker says," Philadelphia Inquirer).  The "experiment" was too small for the school system to be willing to deal with it, and the evaluation period was too short to show much in the way of positive change. During the off weeks ("interssions"), the schools offered additional enrichment and day care programs.

I'd say set up a system within a system, where people can opt in to the "year round" calendar, somewhat like the "Positive Deviance" model although it can be hard to maintain differences let alone improve on them ("A positive deviance failure in Boston: Timilty Middle School")

More programs offer high school students access to college courses ("UC to offer online classes to some low-income high school students" Berkeleyside) The National Education Equity Lab initiative offers college classes from top schools online for credit, "for free" to Title I high schools.  But school has to pay a $250 per student per class administrative fee.

Redefining DEI?  High school ethnic studies ("Why high school students need ethnic studies," The Hill, "Pittsburgh Public Schools creating one of region's first high school ethnic studies courses," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).  From the second article:

The ethnic studies course, which will be fully implemented in the 2025-26 school year and will be a graduation requirement starting with the class of 2028, will focus on racial, ethnic and cultural groups of people from around the globe who are not typically the focus of social studies courses. Discussions will center on issues that society has faced over time.

The course, a yearslong initiative that mirrors similar movements taking place across the country, will help students develop deeper understandings of different cultures.

Second chance at high school degree with the YouthBuild Academy ("These 300 kids left school. Then they marched down Broad Street to reclaim their education," Philadelphia Inquirer).  Youth Build is a program that had been supported by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a job training and schooling program.  Students get a stipend, which helps for lower income students.

Strengthening high school student retention.  With each transition to a new school, students drop out.  This is a big problem in inner city schools.  Philadelphia figures that providing extra services and attention to new-to-high-school 9th graders will help to reverse that trend ("How do you raise the high school graduation rate? Philly is betting a focus on ninth grade will help," PI).

The research is clear. In Philadelphia, ninth-graders who are considered “on track” — those who earn at least one credit in English, math, science, and social studies, plus at least one more credit — have an 89% four-year graduation rate. Those who fail to hit that mark have a graduation rate of just 45%. The gains are particularly pronounced for groups of students that have traditionally had lower graduation rates, including Black and Latino males. 

Housing as a way to recruit teachers of color ("How can Los Angeles bring more Black men into teaching? Build them a village." Los Angeles Daily News) when most teachers are white ("America’s schools are more diverse than ever. But the teachers are still mostly white," Washington Post).  From the LADN:

On the outside it looks like a normal family home, but on the inside resides an ambitious group of Black men mapping out lesson plans and comparing notes about caring for young children. Welcome to the Teacher Village, America’s first-ever affordable housing program for Black male teachers in training.

The housing is provided in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles by Peter and Didi Watts, co-founders of the Watts of Power Foundation, who are on a mission to “multiply the 2%” of America’s teachers that are Black men. 

Their strategy for doing so is a two-year fellowship program that helps address several factors that can prevent Black men from pursuing teaching such as isolation on campus, stereotypes about teaching, expense of getting credentialed and insufficient training. “When I come to schools a lot of times I may be the only male (teacher). And if I’m not, then I’m the only African American male,” said fellow Christopher Sullivan. “It’s great to be around other people like myself, to be able to relate to the experiences they are going through and share advice.” 

Kansas City has a similar program ("Teachers Like Me completes 1st house to support Black teachers," KSHB-TV).

The Kansas City-based organization’s goal is to recruit, develop and retain Black teachers. It does so by offering mentorship, instructional planning and discounted rent in houses it owns. Teachers Like Me works with students at UMKC studying to become educators and new classroom teachers. The program works with new teachers for three years. UMKC students can benefit throughout their college career and first three years of teaching.

School vouchers increasingly costly and divert funds from public schools ("In Red States, the Bill for School Voucher Bait-and-Switch Is Coming Due," The Nation).

For GOP lawmakers who view public education as a quasi-socialist project, the gaping hole in state budgets left by subsidizing private school tuition is a feature, not a bug. ... in Arizona, taxpayers are now staring down a $400 million shortfall, with an even bigger bill coming due next year. How did the Grand Canyon State go from sitting on a huge cash reserve to facing a rising tide of red ink? 

Simple. Voucher proponents suggested that paying for private school tuition would cost taxpayers $65 million a year; but as it stands, the program is on track to cost roughly 15 times that. All told, Arizona taxpayers are likely to spend close to a billion dollars reimbursing the cost of tuition and luxury expenses—including ski resort passes, pianos, and theme park tickets—for families whose children were never enrolled in the public schools. 

It isn’t just Arizona’s problem. Over the past two years, multiple states have enacted universal or near-universal voucher programs that far exceed initial cost projections. ... 

It wasn’t just the price tag that voucher proponents were deceptive about—it was also the projected beneficiaries of such programs. Advocates promoted vouchers as a benefit for poor students, students with disabilities, and students in struggling schools. Yet the reality has looked very different. As The Wall Street Journal recently reported ("Vouchers Helping Families Already in Private School, Early Data Show"), the vast majority of parents taking advantage of these tuition coupons are those who already send their kids to private schools. 

The 10 Commandments.  Out of the same ideology about government schools, many states are enacting rules that require the posting of the 10 commandments, regardless about the First Amendment's stricture of the separation of church and state ("Eyeing a friendly Supreme Court, Republicans push for the Ten Commandments in schools," Stateline). 

Oklahoma targets progressive teachers ("He Taught AP history. Now he attacks Teachers for Being Too Woke," Wall Street Journal, "Oklahoma will require teachers from NY, CA to prove they back 'America First'," USA Today).

Under enrolled schools as a question of resources and system resilience.  Cities like Chicago (School Closings in Chicago Understanding Families' Choices and Constraints for New School Enrollment, University of Chicago), DC (I had a conversation with a national pundit who averred that Adrian Fenty lost reelection because of school closures), Oakland ("Why is it always that black schools are closed?," Oaklandside), and Salt Lake City ("School closure and consolidation planning needs to focus on integration planning at the outset as a separate process") have been roiled by school closures as a result of changing enrollment patterns.  

Families, teachers, and community members gather for a march against school closures on March 26, 2022. Credit: Amir Aziz

Though even I've argued that some under enrolled schools are worth keeping open because of how they anchor neighborhoods ("National Community Planning Month: Schools as neighborhood anchors").  Parents usually are advocates for keeping schools open even when they aren't succeeding that well. 

But studies in Los Angeles call attention to the fact that keeping low enrollment schools open costs the district monies that could be better used elsewhere ("Hundreds of thousands fewer students, but few closed schools. Can LAUSD make the math work?," Los Angeles Times, Facing the Decline Building a Resilient LAUSD, Great Public Schools Now). 

An Austin elementary school.

Austin, Texas successfully sold school closures in terms of being able to redirect resources ("How Austin school closures became more palatable, Austin American-Statesman, School Changes 2019 Plan: Reimagine, Reinvest, Reinvent, AUSD).

A different form of homeschooling, microschools? ("In Tennessee, the Microschooling Movement Shows No Signs of Slowing Down," The74, "Rise of the microschool: Small, student-centered learning spaces take off," Christian Science Monitor).  These are private schools, usually no larger than 100 students.

Take a Father to School Day as a way to increase parental involvement ("Take a Father to School Day celebrates its 26th year at Pittsburgh Public Schools" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).

Parent mentor program.  Over the years, I've written about programs that hire and/or train parents to work as paraprofessional support personnel in schools.  Chicago has an interesting program ("Lessons for locals on power of parents in schools," Seattle Times).

The parent mentor program run by the Logan Square Neighborhood Association shows it doesn’t have to be that way. Over the past 18 years, it has recruited about 1,800 parents to spend two hours a day, five days a week for a semester or more in their children’s schools. 

... But Logan Square’s program goes further, installing a cadre of 10 to 20 moms and dads in each participating school on the belief that teachers in the longtime immigrant neighborhood would learn as much from parents as parents would gain from watching and talking with teachers.

“It is pointing the way for how schools can build much deeper, richer, more productive relationships with parents as collaborators in improving student success. It’s not just a series of random acts of family engagement, which is what you often see,” said Anne Henderson, one of the authors of a 2002 review of 50 studies of parent involvement. ...

The program starts out with a week of training that focuses on the parents themselves, encouraging them to further their own education and become leaders. That’s based on the belief that better-educated parents lead to stronger students, and stronger communities.

After the training, parents are matched with teachers who request mentors, although never their own child’s instructor.

Those who speak little English often work in dual-language classes, and those with little formal education are placed in kindergarten or preschool. The only requirement is that the parents work with students — not photocopy work sheets or grade homework.

Those who complete 100 hours in a semester receive a stipend of $500.

The program model has expanded beyond Chicago and Illinois to schools across the country through the  Parent Engagement Institute.. Sadly it doesn't seem as if Seattle developed a similar program ("Could Seattle train, fund parent mentors in schools? | Ed Lab Revisited," ST).

Boston is one of the places that has adopted the program ("A ladder of opportunities’: This parent mentor program works — but its funding is in danger," Boston Globe). 

New Orleans school progress.  It's the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastation of New Orleans.  

One of the rebuilding actions was to dissolve the school system and shift to charters and more independently run schools ("18 Years, $2 Billion: Inside New Orleans’s Biggest School Recovery Effort in History," The74).

Some argue this has had measurable learning gains ("‘Never seen before’: How Katrina set off an education revolution," Washington Post).  Others that it had disproportionately negative effects on the black community, especially for those teachers who lost their jobs ("After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans fired thousands of Black teachers. Twenty years later, these groups are bringing them back," Guardian, "‘They broke us down’: New Orleans teachers, fired after Katrina, reflect on lives upended," Louisiana Illuminator).  

It's an interesting "point counterpoint" intellectually, but at the same time many people suffered greatly.

Technology in the classroom: rote for the poor, individual support for the well off (" Big tech has transformed the classroom – and parents are right to be worried," Guardian).

As these systems scale and cheapen, however, a troubling divide is emerging: mass, app-based instruction for the many, and human tutoring and intellectual exchange reserved for the elite. What is sold as the “democratisation” of education may be entrenching further inequality. Take Photomath, with more 300m downloads: snap a photo of an equation and it spits out a solution. Convenient, yes; no need for a tutor, perhaps – but it reduces maths to copying steps and strips away the dialogue and feedback that help deepen understanding.

Hotter days: how do schools deal with the heat? Schools weren't built with hot weather in mind.  Most don't have air conditioning ( "How to protect US students from heat in schools – and is it time to rethink summer break?" Guardian).  

Pprograms like summer school and year round school raise issues of hot classrooms and the hot outdoors. 

One measure is to increase the greenery and tree canopy on school properties by removing asphalt ("Out with asphalt: US schoolyards transformed into green oases – in pictures," Guardian).  

The Washington Post has reported, ""Kids getting burned on swings and slides? Here’s how to fix it," on "weatherizing" playground equipment for heat effects, calling out attention to studies out of Australia ("Outdoor playgrounds and climate change: Importance of surface materials and shade to extend play time and prevent burn injuries," Building and Environment).

Conversion of a sea of asphalt to greenery and play equipment at a NYC elementary school.

Hispanic desegregation lawsuit from 1947, Mendez v. Westminster ("80 Years After Mendez v. Westminster: Sylvia Mendez’s Mission Continues," Inside Fullerton).  The article profiles the still alive plantiff of a court case in California which led to desegregating schools for Hispanics, seven years before Brown v. Board of Education.  

"60 years ago today, 6-year-old Ruby Bridges walked to school and showed how even first graders can be trailblazers," CNN.

For all the conservatives complaints about DEI and critical race theory, it's important that the story of US school desegregation not be lost and that it be taught in schools, just like learning how to read ("What one author discovered about racial equity in schools," Christian Science Monitor).

The gender gap in STEM (science, technology, engineering math).  AP reports, "The gender gap in math widened in the pandemic. Schools are trying to make up lost ground," that the gender gap in technical oriented schooling was declining in K-12.  Now it's not.