MEDFORD, Mass. (AP) – Flerentin “Flex” Jean-Baptiste missed so much school he had to repeat his freshman year at Medford High outside Boston. At school, “you do the same thing every day,” said Jean-Baptiste, who was absent 30 days his first year. “That gets very frustrating.”

Then his principal did something nearly unheard of: She let students play organized sports during lunch — if they attended all their classes. In other words, she offered high schoolers recess.

“It gave me something to look forward to,” said Jean-Baptiste, 16. The following year, he cut his absences in half. Schoolwide, the share of students who were chronically absent declined from 35 percent in March 2023 to 23 percent in March 2024 — one of the steepest declines among Massachusetts high schools.

Years after Covid-19 upended American schooling, nearly every state is still struggling with attendance, according to data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University economist Thomas Dee.

Roughly 1 in 4 students in the 2022-23 school year remained chronically absent, meaning they missed at least 10 percent of the school year. That represents about 12 million children in the 42 states and Washington, D.C., where data is available.

Before the pandemic, only 15 percent of students missed that much school.

Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.

Society may have largely moved on from Covid, but schools say they are still battling the effects of pandemic school closures. After as much as a year at home, school for many kids has felt overwhelming, boring or socially stressful. More than ever, kids and parents are deciding it’s OK to stay home, which makes catching up even harder.

In all but one state, Arkansas, absence rates remain higher than they were pre-pandemic. Still, the problem appears to have passed its peak; almost every state saw absenteeism improve at least slightly from 2021-22 to 2022-23.

Schools are working to identify students with slipping attendance, then providing help. They’re working to close communication gaps with parents, who often aren’t aware their child is missing so much school or why it’s problematic.

So far, the solutions that appear to be helping are simple — like postcards to parents that compare a child’s attendance with peers. But to make more progress, experts say, schools must get creative to address their students’ needs. 

Related: Proof Points: The chronic absenteeism puzzle

Across district and charter schools in Oakland, California, chronic absenteeism skyrocketed from 29 percent pre-pandemic to 53 percent in 2022-23. The district asked students what would convince them to come to class.

Money, the students replied, and a mentor.

A grant-funded program launched in spring 2023 paid 45 students $50 weekly for perfect attendance. Students also checked in daily with an assigned adult and completed weekly mental health assessments.

Paying students isn’t a permanent or sustainable fix, said Zaia Vera, the district’s head of social-emotional learning.

But many absent students lacked stable housing or were helping to support their families. “The money is the hook that got them in the door,” Vera said.

More than 60 percent improved their attendance after taking part, Vera said. The program is expected to continue, along with district-wide efforts aimed at creating a sense of belonging. Oakland’s African American Male Achievement project, for example, pairs Black students with Black teachers who offer support.

Kids who identify with their educators are more likely to attend school, said Michael Gottfried, a University of Pennsylvania professor. In one study led by Gottfried, California students felt: “It’s important for me to see someone who’s like me early on, first thing in the day,” Gottfried said.

A caring teacher made a difference for Golden Tachiquin, 18, who graduated from Oakland’s Skyline High School this spring. When she started 10th grade after a remote freshman year, she felt lost and anxious.  She realized only later these feelings caused the nausea and dizziness that kept her home sick. She was absent at least 25 days that year.

But she bonded with an Afro-Latina teacher who understood her culturally and made Tachiquin, a straight-A student, feel her poor attendance didn’t define her.

“I didn’t dread going to her class,” Tachiquin said.

Another teacher had the opposite effect. “She would say, ‘Wow, guess who decided to come today?’ ” Tachiquin recalled. “I started skipping her class even more.”

In Massachusetts, Medford High School requires administrators to greet and talk with students each morning, especially those with a history of missing school.

But the lunchtime gym sessions have been the biggest driver of improved attendance, Principal Marta Cabral said. High schoolers need freedom and an opportunity to move their bodies, she said. “They’re here for seven hours a day. They should have a little fun.”

Related: How one group is tackling chronic absenteeism among English learners by helping their parents

Chronically absent students are at higher risk of illiteracy and eventually dropping out. They also miss the meals, counseling and socialization provided at school.

Many of the reasons kids missed school early in the pandemic are still firmly in place: financial hardship, transportation problems, mild illness and mental health struggles.

In Alaska, 45 percent of students missed significant school last year. In Amy Lloyd’s high school English classes in Juneau, some families now treat attendance as optional. Last term, several students missed school for extended vacations.

“I don’t really know how to reset the expectation that was crushed when we sat in front of the computer for that year,” Lloyd said.

Emotional and behavioral problems also have kept kids home from school. University of Southern California research shared exclusively with AP found strong relationships between absenteeism and poor mental health.

For example, in the USC study, almost a quarter of chronically absent kids had high levels of emotional or behavioral problems, according to a parent questionnaire, compared with just 7 percent of kids with good attendance. Emotional symptoms among teen girls were especially linked with missing lots of school.

 “These different things that we’re all concerned about are all interconnected,” said Morgan Polikoff, a USC education professor and one of the lead researchers. 

Related: An unexpected way to fight chronic absenteeism

When chronic absence surged to around 50 percent in Fresno, California, officials realized they had to remedy pandemic-era mindsets about keeping kids home sick.

“Unless your student has a fever or threw up in the last 24 hours, you are coming to school. That’s what we want,” said Abigail Arii, director of student support services.

Often, said Noreida Perez, who oversees attendance, parents aren’t aware physical symptoms can point to mental health struggles – such as when a child doesn’t feel up to leaving their bedroom.

More than a dozen states now let students take mental health days as excused absences. But staying home can become a vicious cycle, said Hedy Chang, of Attendance Works, which works with schools on absenteeism.

“If you continue to stay home from school, you feel more disengaged,” she said. “You get farther behind.”

Changing the culture around sick days is only part of the problem.

At Fresno’s Fort Miller Middle School, where half the students were chronically absent, two reasons kept coming up: dirty laundry and no transportation. The school bought a washer and dryer for families’ use, along with a Chevy Suburban to pick up students who missed the school bus. Overall, Fresno’s chronic absenteeism improved to 35 percent in 2022-23.

Melinda Gonzalez, 14, missed the school bus about once a week and would call for rides in the Suburban.

“I don’t have a car; my parents couldn’t drive me to school,” Gonzalez said. “Getting that ride made a big difference.”

Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.

This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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AUBURN, Washington – After a series of low-paying jobs, Nicole Slemp finally landed one she loved. She was a secretary for Washington’s child services department, a job that came with her own cubicle, and she had a knack for working with families in difficult situations.

Slemp expected to return to work after having her son in August. But then she and her husband started looking for child care – and doing the math. The best option would cost about $2,000 a month, with a long wait list, and even the least expensive option around $1,600, still eating up most of Slemp’s salary. Her husband earns about $35 an hour at a hose distribution company. Between them, they earned too much to qualify for government help.

“I really didn’t want to quit my job,” says Slemp, 33, who lives in a Seattle suburb. But, she says, she felt like she had no choice. 

The dilemma is common in the United States, where high-quality child care programs are prohibitively expensive, government assistance is limited, and daycare openings are sometimes hard to find at all. In 2022, more than 1 in 10 young children had a parent who had to quit, turn down or drastically change a job in the previous year because of child care problems. And that burden falls most on mothers, who shoulder more child-rearing responsibilities and are far more likely to leave a job to care for kids.

Even so, women’s participation in the workforce has recovered from the pandemic, reaching historic highs in December 2023. But that masks a lingering crisis among women like Slemp who lack a college degree: The gap in employment rates between mothers who have a four-year degree and those who don’t has only grown. 

For mothers without college degrees, a day without work is often a day without pay. They are less likely to have paid leave. And when they face an interruption in child care arrangements – whether their child is at a relative’s home, a preschool or a daycare center – an adult in the family is far more likely to take unpaid time off or to be forced to leave a job altogether, according to an analysis of Census survey data by the Education Reporting Collaborative. 

Related: Free child care exists in America – if you cross paths with the right philanthropist

In interviews, mothers across the country shared how the seemingly endless search for child care, and its expense, left them feeling defeated. It pushed them off career tracks, robbed them of a sense of purpose, and put them in financial distress. 

Women like Slemp challenge the image of the stay-at-home mom as an affluent woman with a high-earning partner, said Jessica Calarco, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The stay-at-home moms in this country are disproportionately mothers who’ve been pushed out of the workforce because they don’t make enough to make it work financially to pay for child care,” Calarco said. 

Her own research indicates three-quarters of stay-at-home moms live in households with incomes less than $50,000, and half have household incomes of less than $25,000.

Still, the high cost of child care has upended the careers of even those with college degrees.

When Jane Roberts gave birth in November, she and her husband, both teachers, quickly realized sending baby Dennis to day care was out of the question. It was too costly, and they worried about finding a quality provider in their hometown of Pocatello, Idaho.

The school district has no paid medical or parental leave, so Roberts exhausted her sick leave and personal days to stay home with Dennis. In March, she returned to work and husband Mike took leave. By the end of the school year, they’ll have missed out on a combined nine weeks of pay. To make ends meet, they’ve borrowed money against Jane’s life insurance policy.

In the fall, Roberts won’t return to teaching. The decision was wrenching. “I’ve devoted my entire adult life to this profession,” she said.

For low- and middle-income women who do find child care, the expense can become overwhelming. The Department of Health and Human Services has defined “affordable” child care as an arrangement that costs no more than 7 percent of a household budget. But a Labor Department study found fewer than 50 American counties where a family earning the median household income could obtain child care at an “affordable” price. 

There’s also a connection between the cost of child care and the number of mothers working: a 10 percent increase in the median price of child care was associated with a 1 percent drop in the maternal workforce, the Labor Department found.

Related: Inside Canada’s 50-year fight for national child care

In Birmingham, Alabama, single mother Adriane Burnett takes home about $2,800 a month as a customer service representative for a manufacturing company. She spends more than a third of that on care for her 3-year-old.  

In October, that child aged out of a program that qualified the family of three for child care subsidies. So she took on more work, delivering food for DoorDash and Uber Eats. To make the deliveries possible, her 14-year-old has to babysit.

Even so, Burnett had to file for bankruptcy and forfeit her car because she was behind on payments. She is borrowing her father’s car to continue her delivery gigs. The financial stress and guilt over missing time with her kids have affected her health, Burnett said. She has had panic attacks and has fainted at work.

“My kids need me,” Burnett said, “but I also have to work.”

Even for parents who can afford child care, searching for it — and paying for it — consumes reams of time and energy. 

When Daizha Rioland was five months pregnant with her first child, she posted in a Facebook group for Dallas moms that she was looking for child care. Several warned she was already behind if she wasn’t on any wait lists. Rioland, who has a degree and works in communications for a nonprofit, wanted a racially diverse program with a strong curriculum. 

While her daughter remained on wait lists, Rioland’s parents stepped in to care for her. Finally, her daughter reached the top of a waiting list — at 18 months old. The tuition was so high she could only attend part-time. Rioland got her second daughter on waiting lists long before she was born, and she now attends a center Rioland trusts.

“I’ve grown up in Dallas. I see what happens when you’re not afforded the luxury of high-quality education,” said Rioland, who is Black. “For my daughters, that’s not going to be the case.”

Slemp still sometimes wonders how she ended up staying at home with her son – time she cherishes but also finds disorienting. She thought she was doing well. After stints at a water park and a call center, her state job seemed like a step toward financial stability. How could it be so hard to maintain her career, when everything seemed to be going right?

“Our country is doing nothing to try to help fill that gap,” Slemp said. As a parent, “we’re supposed to keep the population going, and they’re not giving us a chance to provide for our kids to be able to do that.”

This story was written by Moriah Balingit and Sharon Lurye of The Associated Press and Daniel Beekman of The Seattle Times. Balingit reported from Washington, D.C., and Lurye from New Orleans. Carly Flandro of Idaho Education News, Valeria Olivares of The Dallas Morning News and Alaina Bookman of AL.com contributed reporting.

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CONCORD, Calif. – Aylah Levy had some catching up to do this fall when she started first grade.

After spending her kindergarten year at an alternative program that met exclusively outdoors, Aylah, 6, had to adjust to being inside a classroom. She knew only a handful of numbers and was not printing her letters clearly. To help her along, the teacher at her Bay Area elementary school has been showing her the right way to hold a pencil.

“It’s harder. Way, way harder,” Aylah said of the new grip.

Still, her mother, Hannah Levy, says it was the right decision to skip kindergarten. She wanted Aylah to enjoy being a kid. There is plenty of time, she reasoned, for her daughter to develop study skills.

The number of kindergartners in public school plunged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Concerned about the virus or wanting to avoid online school, hundreds of thousands of families delayed the start of school for their young children. Most have returned to schooling of some kind, but even three years after the pandemic school closures, kindergarten enrollment has continued to lag.

Some parents like Levy don’t see much value in traditional kindergarten. For others, it’s a matter of keeping children in other child care arrangements that better fit their lifestyles. And for many, kindergarten simply is no longer the assumed first step in a child’s formal education, another sign of the way the pandemic and online learning upended the U.S. school system. 

Kindergarten enrollment remained down 5.2 percent in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the 2019-2020 school year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state-level data. Public school enrollment across all grades fell 2.2 percent. 

Kindergarten is considered a crucial year for children to learn to follow directions, regulate behavior and get accustomed to learning. Missing that year of school can put kids at a disadvantage, especially those from low-income families and families whose first language is not English, said Deborah Stipek, a former dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Those children are sometimes behind in recognizing letters and counting to 10 even before starting school, she said.

But to some parents, that foundation seems less urgent post-pandemic. For many, kindergarten just doesn’t seem to work for their lives.

Related: We know how to help young kids cope with the trauma of the last year – but will we do it?

Students who disengaged during the pandemic school closures have been making their way back to schools. But kindergarten enrollment remained down 5.2 percent in the 2022-2023 school year compared with the 2019-2020 school year, according to an Associated Press analysis of state-level data. Public school enrollment across all grades fell 2.2 percent. 

Kindergarten means a seismic change in some families’ lifestyles. After years of all-day child care, they suddenly must manage afternoon pickups with limited and expensive options for after-school care. Some worry their child isn’t ready for the structure and behavioral expectations of a public school classroom. And many think whatever their child misses at school can be quickly learned in first grade. 

Christina Engram was set to send her daughter Nevaeh to kindergarten this fall at her neighborhood school in Oakland, until she learned her daughter would not have a spot in the after-school program there. That meant she would need to be picked up at 2:30 most afternoons.

“If I put her in public school, I would have to cut my hours, and I basically wouldn’t have a good income for me and my kids,” said Engram, a preschool teacher and a mother of two. 

Engram decided to keep Nevaeh in a child care center for another year. Engram receives a state child care subsidy that helps her pay for full-time child care or preschool until her child is 6 and must enroll in first grade.

“If I put her in public school, I would have to cut my hours, and I basically wouldn’t have a good income for me and my kids.”

Christina Engram, a preschool teacher and a mother of two

Compared with kindergarten, she believed her daughter would be more likely to receive extra attention at the child care center, which has more adult staff per child. 

“She knows her numbers. She knows her ABC’s. She knows how to spell her name,” Engram said. “But when she feels frustrated that she can’t do something, her frustration overtakes her. She needs extra attention and care. She has some shyness about her when she thinks she’s going to give the wrong answer.”

Related: Luring Covid-cautious parents back to school

In California, where kindergarten is not mandatory, enrollment for that grade fell 10.1 percent from the 2019-20 to 2021-22 school year. Enrollment seemed to rebound in the next school year, growing by over 5 percent in fall 2022, but that may have been inflated by the state’s expansion of transitional kindergarten — a grade before kindergarten that is available to older 4-year-olds. The state Department of Education has not disclosed how many children last school year were regular kindergartners as opposed to transitional students. 

Many would-be kindergartners are among the tens of thousands of families that have turned to homeschooling.

Some parents say they came to homeschooling almost accidentally. Convinced their family wasn’t ready for “school,” they kept their 5-year-old home, then found they needed more structure. They purchased some activities or a curriculum — and homeschooling stuck.

Others chose homeschooling for kindergartners after watching older children in traditional school. Jenny Almazan is homeschooling Ezra, 6, after pulling his sister Emma, 9, from a school in Chino, California. 

“She would rush home from school, eat dinner, do an hour or two of schoolwork, shower and go to bed. She wasn’t given time to be a kid,” Almazan said. Almazan also worried about school shootings and pressures her kids might face at school to act or dress a certain way.

To make it all work, Almazan quit her job as a preschool teacher. Most days, the children’s learning happens outside of the home, when they are playing at the park, visiting museums or even doing math while grocery shopping.

“She would rush home from school, eat dinner, do an hour or two of schoolwork, shower and go to bed. She wasn’t given time to be a kid.”

Jenny Almazan, who is homeschooling Ezra, 6, after pulling his sister Emma, 9, from a school in Chino, California

“My kids are not missing anything by not being in public school,” she said. “Every child has different needs. I’m not saying public school is bad. It’s not. But for us, this fits.”

Kindergarten is important for all children, but especially those who do not attend preschool or who haven’t had much exposure to math, reading and other subjects, said Steve Barnett, co-director for the National Institute for Early Education Research and a professor at Rutgers University.

“The question actually is: If you didn’t go to kindergarten, what did you do instead?” he said.

Related: Millions of kids are missing weeks of school as attendance tanks across the US

Hannah Levy chose the Berkeley Forest School to start her daughter’s education, in part because she valued how teachers infused subjects like science with lessons on nature. She pictured traditional kindergarten as a place where children sit inside at desks, do worksheets and have few play-based experiences.

“I learned about nature. We learned in a different way,” daughter Aylah said.

But the appeal of a suburban school system had brought the family from San Francisco, and when it came time for first grade, Aylah enrolled at Cornell Elementary in Albany.

Early this fall, Levy recalled Aylah coming home with a project where every first grader had a page in a book to write about who they were. Some pages had only scribbles and others had legible print. She said Aylah fell somewhere in the middle.

“It was interesting to me because it was the moment I thought, ‘What would it be like if she was in kindergarten?’” she said.

In a conference with Levy, Aylah’s teacher said she was working with the girl on her writing, but there were no other concerns. “She said anything Aylah was behind on, she has caught up to the point that she would never differentiate that Aylah didn’t go to Cornell for kindergarten as well,” Levy said.

Levy said she feels good about Aylah’s attitude toward school, though she misses knowing she was outside interacting with nature.

So does Aylah.

“I miss my friends and being outside,” she said. “I also miss my favorite teacher.”

Lurye reported from New Orleans and Stavely reported from Oakland. Daniel J. Willis of EdSource contributed from Concord.

This article was produced by The Associated Press and. EdSource is a nonprofit newsroom based in California that covers equity in education with in-depth analysis and data-driven journalism.

The Associated Press receives support from the Overdeck Family Foundation for reporting focused on early learning. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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In this short video, reporter Sharon Lurye discusses how parents can help their young children gather basic math skills.

Math is all around us. You don’t have to buy anything expensive or plan an activity in advance. It’s all about taking advantage of those spontaneous opportunities to ask your kids questions and help them learn.

The Associated Press’ Sharon Lurye, Stephen Smith and Akira Kumamoto produced this video as part of The Math Problem, a series from The Education Reporting Collaborative exploring the math crisis facing schools and highlighting progress. The collaborative is a coalition of eight newsrooms whose members include AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina and The Seattle Times.

The post How can you help your kids get better at math? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For much of her teaching career, Carrie Stark relied on math games to engage her students, assuming they would pick up concepts like multiplication by seeing them in action. The kids had fun, but the lessons never stuck.

A few years ago she shifted her approach, turning to more direct explanation after finding a website on a set of evidence-based practices known as the science of math.

“I could see how the game related to multiplication, but the kids weren’t making those connections,” said Stark, a math teacher in the suburbs of Kansas City. “You have to explicitly teach the content.”

As American schools work to turn around math scores that plunged during the pandemic, some researchers are pushing for more attention to a set of research-based practices for teaching math. The movement has passionate backers, but is still in its infancy, especially compared with the phonics-based “science of reading” that has inspired changes in how classrooms across the country approach literacy.

Experts say math research hasn’t gotten as much funding or attention, especially beyond the elementary level. Meanwhile, the math instruction schools are currently using doesn’t work all that well. The U.S. trails other high-income countries in math performance, and lately more students graduate high school with deficits in basic math skills.

Supporters say teaching practices supported by quantitative research could help, but they are still coming into focus.

“I don’t think the movement has caught on yet. I think it’s an idea,” said Matthew Burns, a professor of special education at the University of Florida who was among researchers who helped create a Science of Math website as a resource for teachers.*

Related: PROOF POINTS: How a debate over the science of math could reignite the math wars

There’s a debate over which evidence-based practices belong under the banner of the science of math, but researchers agree on some core ideas. 

The foremost principle: Math instruction must be systematic and explicit. Teachers need to give clear and precise instructions and introduce new concepts in small chunks while building on older concepts. Such approaches have been endorsed by dozens of studies highlighted by the Institute of Education Sciences, an arm of the U.S. Education Department that evaluates teaching practices.

That guidance contrasts with exploratory or inquiry-based models of education, where students explore and discover concepts on their own, with the teacher nudging them along. It’s unclear which approaches are used most widely in schools.

In some ways, the best practices for math parallel the science of reading, which emphasizes detailed, explicit instruction in phonics, instead of letting kids guess how to read a word based on pictures or context clues. After the science of reading gained prominence, 18 states in just three years have passed legislation mandating that classroom teachers use evidence-backed methods to teach reading.

Margie Howells, an elementary math teacher in Wheeling, West Virginia, first went researching best practices because there weren’t as many resources for dyscalculia, a math learning disability, as there were for dyslexia. After reading about the science of math movement, she became more explicit about things that she assumed students understood, like how the horizontal line in a fraction means the same thing as a division sign.

“I’m doing a lot more instruction in vocabulary and symbol explanations so that the students have that built-in understanding,” said Howells, who is working on developing a science-based tutoring program for students with dyscalculia and other learning differences.

Related: Teachers conquering their math anxiety

Some elements of math instruction emphasize big-picture concepts. Others involve learning how to do calculations. Over the decades, clashes between schools of thought favoring one or another have been labeled the “math wars.” A key principle of the science of math movement is that both are important, and teachers need to foster procedural as well as conceptual understanding.

“We need to be doing all those simultaneously,” Stark said.

When Stark demonstrates a long division problem, she writes out the steps for calculating the answer while students use a chart or blocks to understand the problem conceptually.

Stark helps coach fellow teachers at her school to support struggling students — something she used to feel unequipped to do, despite 20 years of teaching experience. Most of the resources she found online just suggested different math games. So she did research online and signed up for special trainings, and started focusing more on fundamentals.

For one fifth grader who was struggling with fractions, she explicitly re-taught equivalent fractions from third grade — why two-fourths are the same as one-half, for instance. He had been working with her for three years, but this was the first time she heard him say, “I totally get it now!”

“He was really feeling success. He was super proud of himself,” Stark said.

Still, skeptics of the science of math question the emphasis placed on learning algorithms, the step-by-step procedures for calculation. Proponents say they are necessary along with memorization of math facts (basic operations like 3×5 or 7+9) and regular timed practice — approaches often associated with mind-numbing drills and worksheets.

“I could see how the game related to multiplication, but the kids weren’t making those connections. You have to explicitly teach the content.”

Carrie Stark, a math teacher in the suburbs of Kansas City.

Math is “a creative, artistic, playful, reasoning-rich activity. And it’s very different than algorithms,” said Nick Wasserman, a professor of math education at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Supporters argue mastering math facts unlocks creative problem-solving by freeing up working memory — and that inquiry, creativity and collaboration are still all crucial to student success.

“When we have this dichotomy, it creates an unnecessary divide and it creates a dangerous divide,” said Elizabeth Hughes, a professor of special education at Penn State and a leader in the science of math movement. People feel the need to choose sides between “Team Algorithms” and “Team Exploratory,” but “we really need both.”

Related: How can schools dig out from a generation’s worth of lost math progress?

Best practices are one thing. But some disagree such a thing as a “science of math” exists in the way it does for reading. There just isn’t the same volume of research, education researcher Tom Loveless said.

“Reading is a topic where we have a much larger amount of good, solid, causal research that can link instruction to student achievement,” he said.

To some, the less advanced state of research on math reflects societal values, and how many teachers themselves feel more invested in reading. Many elementary school teachers doubt their own math ability and struggle with anxiety around teaching it. 

“Many of us will readily admit that we weren’t good at math. If I was illiterate, I wouldn’t tell a soul.” “

Daniel Ansari, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Western University in Canada.

“Many of us will readily admit that we weren’t good at math,” said Daniel Ansari, a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Western University in Canada. “If I was illiterate, I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

Still, Ansari said, there is enough research out there to make a difference in the classroom.

“We do understand some of the things that really work,” he said, “and we know some of the things that are not worth spending time on.”

*This sentence has been updated with Matthew Burns’ current employer.

This story was written by the Associated Press as part of The Math Problem, a series produced by The Education Reporting Collaborative exploring the math crisis facing schools and highlighting progress. The collaborative is a coalition of eight newsrooms whose members include AL.com, The Associated Press, The Christian Science Monitor, The Dallas Morning News, The Hechinger Report, Idaho Education News, The Post and Courier in South Carolina and The Seattle Times.

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The post The ‘science of reading’ swept reforms into classrooms nationwide. What about math? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This article was produced by the Associated Press and is based on data collected by the AP and Stanford University’s Big Local News project.

She’d be a senior right now, preparing for graduation in a few months, probably leading her school’s modern dance troupe and taking art classes. 

Instead, Kailani Taylor-Cribb hasn’t taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from Cambridge, Massachusetts’ public school roll in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then.

She is among hundreds of thousands of students around the country who disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and didn’t resume their studies elsewhere.

An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for.* These students didn’t move out of state, and they didn’t sign up for private school or home-school, according to publicly available data.

In short, they’re missing.

“Missing” students received crisis-level attention in 2020 after the pandemic closed schools nationwide. In the years since, they have become largely a budgeting problem. School leaders and some state officials worried aloud about the fiscal challenges their districts faced if these students didn’t come back. Each student represents money from the city, state and federal governments.

Gone is the urgency to find the students who left — those eligible for free public education but who are not receiving any schooling at all. Early in the pandemic, school staff went door-to-door to reach and reengage kids. Most such efforts have ended.

“Everyone is talking about declining enrollment, but no one is talking about who’s leaving the system and why,” said Tom Sheppard, a New York City parent and representative on the city’s Panel for Educational Policy. 

“No one,” he said, “is forthcoming.”

Related: Will the students who didn’t show up for online class this spring go missing forever?

The missing kids identified by AP and Stanford represent far more than a number. The analysis highlights thousands of students who may have dropped out of school or missed out on the basics of reading and school routines in kindergarten and first grade.

That’s thousands of students who matter to someone. Thousands of students who need help re-entering school, work, and everyday life. 

“That’s the stuff that no one wants to talk about,” said Sonja Santelises, the chief executive officer of Baltimore’s public schools, speaking about her fellow superintendents. 

“We want to say it’s outside stuff” that’s keeping kids from returning to school, she said, such as caring for younger siblings or the need to work. But she worries teens sometimes lack caring adults at school who can discuss their concerns about life. 

“That’s really scary,” Santelises said.

Discussion of children's recovery from the pandemic has focused largely on test scores and performance. But Dee says the data suggests a need to understand more about children who aren’t in school and how that will affect their development. 

“This is leading evidence that tells us we need to be looking more carefully at the kids who are no longer in public schools,” he said.

Over months of reporting, the AP learned of students and families avoiding school for a range of reasons. Some are still afraid of COVID-19, are homeless or have left the country. Some students couldn’t study online and found jobs instead. Some slid into depression.

During the prolonged online learning, some students fell so far behind developmentally and academically that they no longer knew how to behave or learn at school. Many of these students, while largely absent from class, are still officially on school rosters. That makes it harder to truly count the number of missing students. The real tally of young people not receiving an education is likely far greater than the 230,000 figure calculated by the AP and Stanford.

In some cases, this wasn’t sudden. Many students were struggling well before the pandemic descended.

Kailani, for one, had begun to feel alienated at her school. In ninth grade, a few months before the pandemic hit, she was unhappy at home and had been moved to a different math class because of poor grades.

Kailani has ADHD and says the white teaching assistant assigned to help her focus in her new class targeted her because she was Black, blaming Kailani when classmates acted up. She also didn’t allow Kailani to use her headphones while working independently in class, something Kailani says was permitted in her special education plan to help her focus.

After that, Kailani stopped attending math. Instead, she cruised the hallways or read in the library. 

Ultimately, the pandemic and at-home education relieved the anxiety Kailani felt from being in the school building. Kailani preferred online school because she could turn off her camera and engage as she chose. Her grades improved.

When the school reopened, she never returned.

A Cambridge schools spokesperson looked into Kailani’s complaints. “Several individuals demonstrated great concern and compassion towards her and the challenges she was facing outside of school,” Sujata Wycoff said. She said the district has a “reputation of being deeply dedicated to the education and well-being of our students.”

Related: Communities hit hardest by the pandemic, already struggling, could face a dropout cliff

To assess just how many students have gone missing, AP and Big Local News canvassed every state in the nation to find the most recently available data on both public and non-public schools, as well as census estimates for the school-age population.

Overall, public school enrollment fell by 710,000 students between the 2019-2020 and 2021-2022 school years in the 21 states plus Washington, D.C., that provided the necessary data.

Those states saw private-school enrollment grow by over 100,000 students. Home-schooling grew even more, surging by more than 180,000.

But the data showed 240,000 students who were neither in private school nor registered for home-school. Their absences could not be explained by population loss, either — such as falling birth rates or families who moved out of state.

“Everyone is talking about declining enrollment, but no one is talking about who’s leaving the system and why.”

Tom Sheppard, a New York City parent and representative on the city's Panel for Educational Policy

States where kindergarten is optional were more likely to have larger numbers of unaccounted-for students, suggesting the missing also include many young learners kept home instead of starting school.

California alone showed over 150,000 missing students in the data, and New York had nearly 60,000. Census estimates are imperfect. So AP and Stanford ran a similar analysis for pre-pandemic years in those two states. It found almost no missing students at all, confirming something out of the ordinary occurred during the pandemic. 

The true number of missing students is likely much higher. The analysis doesn’t include data from 29 states, including Texas and Illinois, or the unknown numbers of ghost students who are technically enrolled but rarely make it to class.

For some students, it was impossible to overcome losing the physical connection with school and teachers during the pandemic's school closures.

“All they had to do was take action. There were so many times they could have done something. And they did nothing.”

Kailani Taylor-Cribb, former high school student, Cambridge, Massachusetts

José Escobar, an immigrant from El Salvador, had only recently enrolled in the 10th grade in Boston Public Schools when the campus shut down in March 2020. His school-issued laptop didn’t work, and because of bureaucratic hurdles the district didn’t issue a new one for several weeks. His father stopped paying their phone bills after losing his restaurant job. Without any working technology for months, he never logged into remote classes.

When instruction resumed online that fall, he decided to walk away and find work as a prep cook. “I can’t learn that way,” he said in Spanish. At 21, he’s still eligible for school in Boston, but says he’s too old for high school and needs to work to help his family.

Another Boston student became severely depressed during online learning and was hospitalized for months. Back home, he refuses to attend school or leave his room despite visits from at least one teacher. When his mother asked him about speaking to a reporter, he cursed her out.

These are all students who have formally left school and have likely been erased from enrollment databases. Many others who are enrolled are not receiving an education.

In Los Angeles last year, nearly half of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed more than 10 percent of the school year. For students with disabilities, the numbers are even higher: According to district data, 55 percent missed at least 18 school days. It’s not clear how many students were absent more than that. The city’s Unified School District did not respond to requests for this data. 

Related: Many schools find ways to solve absenteeism without suspensions

Los Angeles officials have spoken openly about attempts to find unschooled students and help remove obstacles that are preventing them from coming to school. Laundry services have been offered, as has help with housing. But for some students and their parents, the problem sits within a school system they say has routinely failed their children. 

“Parents are bereft,” said Allison Hertog, who represents around three dozen families whose children missed significant learning when California’s physical classrooms closed for more than a year during the early pandemic. 

Ezekiel West, 10, is in fourth grade but reads at a first grade level. Before the pandemic shutdowns, he was shuffled from school to school when educators couldn’t address his impulsive behavior. 

During online learning, his mother couldn’t get home internet and struggled with the WiFi hotspots provided by the school. She worked as a home health aide and couldn’t monitor Ezekiel online.

When he returned to school in fall 2021 as a third grader, he was frustrated that his classmates had made more progress as the years passed.

“I did not feel prepared,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I couldn’t really learn as fast as the other kids, and that kind of made me upset.”

An administrative judge ruled Los Angeles’ schools had violated Ezekiel’s rights and ordered the district to give him a spot at a new school, with a special plan to ease him back into learning and trusting teachers. The school didn’t follow the plan, so his mother stopped sending him in October.

“I can’t trust them,” Miesha Clarke said. Los Angeles school officials did not respond to requests for comment on Ezekiel’s case.

Last month, Ezekiel signed up for a public online school for California students. To enroll him, his mother agreed to give up his special education plan. His attorney, Hertog, worries the program won’t work for someone with Ezekiel’s needs and is looking for yet another option with more flexibility.

At least three of the students Hertog has represented, including Ezekiel, have disappeared from school for long periods since in-person instruction resumed. Their situations were avoidable, she said: “It’s pretty disgraceful that the school systems allowed this to go on for so long.”

When Kailani stopped logging into her virtual classes during the spring of her sophomore year, she received several emails from the school telling her she’d been truant. Between two to four weeks after she disappeared from Zoom school, her homeroom advisor and Spanish teacher each wrote to her, asking where she was. And the school’s dean of students called her great-grandmother, her legal guardian, to inform her about Kailani’s disappearance from school.

They didn’t communicate further, according to Kailani. She went to work at Chipotle, ringing up orders in Boston’s financial district.

In December, Kailani moved to North Carolina to make a new start. She teaches dance to elementary school kids now. Last month, she passed her high school equivalency exams. She plans to study choreography.

But she knows, looking back, that things could have been different. While she has no regrets about leaving high school, she says she might have changed her mind if someone at school had shown more interest and attention to her needs and support for her as a Black student.

“All they had to do was take action,” Kailani said. “There were so many times they could have done something. And they did nothing.”

*Correction: Due to an update to one state’s enrollment figures, this story has been corrected to change the estimated number of missing schoolkids in all states from 240,000 to 230,000.

This article is based on data collected by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project. Data was compiled by Sharon Lurye of the AP, Thomas Dee of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and Justin Mayo of Big Local News.  

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Reproduction of this story is not permitted.

The post Thousands of kids are missing from school. Where did they go? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.

The Covid-19 pandemic devastated poor children’s well-being, not just by closing their schools, but also by taking away their parents’ jobs, sickening their families and teachers and adding chaos and fear to their daily lives. 

The scale of the disruption to American kids’ education is evident in a district-by-district analysis of test scores shared exclusively with The Associated Press. The data provide the most comprehensive look yet at how much schoolchildren have fallen behind academically.

The analysis found the average student lost more than half a school year of learning in math and nearly a quarter of a school year in reading – with some district averages slipping by more than double those amounts, or worse. Online learning played a major role, but students lost significant ground even where they returned quickly to schoolhouses, especially in math scores in low-income communities.

“When you have a massive crisis, the worst effects end up being felt by the people with the least resources,” said Stanford education professor Sean Reardon, who compiled and analyzed the data along with Harvard economist Thomas Kane. 

Some educators have objected to the very idea of measuring learning loss after a crisis that has killed over 1 million Americans. Reading and math scores don’t tell the entire story about what’s happening with a child, but they’re one of the only aspects of children’s development reliably measured nationwide. 

“Test scores aren’t the only thing, or the most important thing,” said Reardon. “But they serve as an indicator for how kids are doing.”

And kids aren’t doing well – especially those who were at highest risk before the pandemic. The data show many children need significant intervention – and advocates and researchers say the U.S. isn’t doing enough.

Related: PROOF POINTS: Several surprises in gloomy NAEP report

Together, Reardon and Kane created a map showing how many years of learning the average student in each district has lost since 2019. Their project, the Education Recovery Scorecard, compared results from a test known as the “nation’s report card” with local standardized test scores from 29 states and Washington, D.C.

In Memphis, where nearly 80 percent of students are poor, students lost the equivalent of 70 percent of a school year in reading and more than a year in math, according to the analysis. The district’s Black students lost a year-and-one-third in math and two-thirds of a year in reading. 

Nearly 70 percent of students live in districts where federal relief money is likely inadequate to address the magnitude of their learning loss, according to Kane and Reardon’s analysis.

For church pastor Charles Lampkin, who is Black, it was the effects on his sons’ reading that grabbed his attention. He was studying the Bible with them one night this fall when he noticed his sixth and seventh graders were struggling with their “junior” Bible editions written for a fifth grade reading level. “They couldn’t get through it,” said Lampkin.

Lampkin blames the year and a half his sons were away from school buildings from March 2020 until the fall of 2021. 

“They weren’t engaged at all. It was all tomfoolery,” he said.

Officials with the local district, Shelby County Public Schools, did not respond to multiple phone calls and emails requesting comment. According to district presentations, Shelby County schools last year offered tutoring to the lowest performing students. Most students who received tutoring focused on English language arts, but not math. Lampkin said his sons have not been offered the extra help. 

The amount of learning that students lost – or gained, in rare cases – over the last three years varied widely. Poverty and time spent in remote learning affected learning loss, and learning losses were greater in districts that remained online longer, according to Kane and Reardon’s analysis. But neither was a perfect predictor of declines in reading and math.

In some districts, students lost more than two years of math learning, according to the data. Hopewell, Virginia, a school system of 4,000 students who are mostly low-income and 60 percent Black, showed an average loss of 2.29 years of school.

“This is not anywhere near what we wanted to see,” said Deputy Superintendent Jay McClain.

The district began offering in-person learning in March 2021, but three quarters of students remained home. “There was so much fear of the effects of COVID,” he said. “Families here were just hunkered down.”

When schools resumed in the fall, the virus swept through Hopewell, and half of all students stayed home either sick or in quarantine, said McClain. A full 40 percent of students were chronically absent, meaning they missed 18 days or more.

Related: ‘I can’t do this anymore’: How four middle schoolers are struggling through the pandemic

The pandemic brought other challenges unrelated to remote learning. 

In Rochester, New Hampshire, students lost nearly two years in reading even though schools offered in-person learning most of the 2020-2021 school year. It was the largest literacy decline among all the districts in the analysis. 

The 4,000-student district, where most are white and nearly half live in poverty, had to close schools in November 2020 when too few teachers could report for work, said Superintendent Kyle Repucci. Students studied online until March 2021, and when schools reopened, many chose to stay with remote learning, Repucci said. 

“Students here were exposed to things they should never have been exposed to until much later,” Repucci said. “Death. Severe illness. Working to feed their families.”

Meantime, in Los Angeles, school leaders shuttered classrooms for the entire 2020-2021 academic year, yet students held their ground in reading.

It’s hard to tell what explains the vastly different outcomes in some states. In California, where students on average stayed steady or only marginally declined, it could suggest that educators there were better at teaching over Zoom or the state made effective investments in technology, said Reardon.

But the differences could also be explained by what happened outside of school. “I think a lot more of the variation has to do with things that were outside of a school’s control,” Reardon said.

Now, the onus is on America’s adults to work toward kids’ recovery. For the federal government and individual states, advocates hope the recent releases of test data could inspire more urgency to direct funding to the students who suffered the largest setbacks, whether it’s academic or other support. 

Hopewell, Virginia, a school system of 4,000 students who are mostly low-income and 60 percent Black, showed an average loss of 2.29 years of school.

School systems are still spending the nearly $190 billion in federal relief money allocated for recovery, a sum experts have said fails to address the extent of learning loss in schools. Nearly 70 percent of students live in districts where federal relief money is likely inadequate to address the magnitude of their learning loss, according to Kane and Reardon’s analysis.

The implications for kids' futures are alarming: Lower test scores are predictors of lower wages and higher rates of incarceration and teen pregnancy, Kane said.

It doesn’t take Harvard research to convince parents whose children are struggling to read or learn algebra that something needs to be done. 

At his church in Memphis, Lampkin started his own tutoring program three nights a week. Adults from his congregation, some of them teachers, help around 50 students with their homework, reinforcing skills and teaching new ones.

“We shouldn’t have had to do this,” said Lampkin. “But sometimes you have to lead by example.”

This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission. The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Everywhere, it seems, back-to-school has been shadowed by worries of a teacher shortage.

The U.S. education secretary has called for investment to keep teachers from quitting. A teachers union leader has described it as a five-alarm emergency. News coverage has warned of a crisis in teaching.

In reality, there is little evidence to suggest teacher turnover has increased nationwide or educators are leaving in droves.

Certainly, many schools have struggled to find enough educators. But the challenges are related more to hiring, especially for non-teaching staff positions. Schools flush with federal pandemic relief money are creating new positions and struggling to fill them at a time of low unemployment and stiff competition for workers of all kinds.

Since well before the COVID-19 pandemic, schools have had difficulty recruiting enough teachers in some regions, particularly in parts of the South. Fields like special education and bilingual education also have been critically short on teachers nationwide.

For some districts, shortages have meant children have fewer or less qualified instructors.

In rural Alabama’s Black Belt, there were no certified math teachers last year in Bullock County’s public middle school.

“It really impacts the children because they’re not learning what they need to learn,” said Christopher Blair, the county’s former superintendent. “When you have these uncertified, emergency or inexperienced teachers, students are in classrooms where they’re not going to get the level of rigor and classroom experiences.”

Related: PROOF POINTS: Researchers say cries of teacher shortages are overblown

While the nation lacks vacancy data in several states, national pain points are obvious.

For starters, the pandemic kicked off the largest drop in education employment ever. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people employed in public schools dropped from almost 8.1 million in March 2020 to 7.3 million in May.

Employment has grown back to 7.7 million since then, but that still leaves schools short around 360,000 positions. 

“We’re still trying to dig out of that hole,” said Chad Aldeman, policy director at the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University.

It’s unknown how many of those positions lost were teaching jobs, or other staff members like bus drivers — support positions that schools are having an especially hard time filling. A RAND survey of school leaders this year found that around three-fourths of school leaders say they are trying to hire more substitutes, 58% are trying to hire more bus drivers and 43% are trying to hire more tutors. 

Still, the problems are not as tied to teachers quitting as many have suggested.

Teacher surveys have indicated many considered leaving their jobs. They’re under pressure to keep kids safe from guns, catch them up academically and deal with pandemic challenges with mental health and behavior.

National Education Association union leader Becky Pringle tweeted in April: “The educator shortage is a five-alarm crisis.” But a Brown University study found turnover largely unchanged among states that had data.

Quit rates in education rose slightly this year, but that’s true for the nation as a whole, and teachers remain far more likely to stay in their job than a typical worker.

Hiring has been so difficult largely because of an increase in the number of open positions. Many schools indicated plans to use federal relief money to create new jobs, in some cases looking to hire even more people than they had pre-pandemic. Some neighboring schools are competing for fewer applicants, as enrollment in teacher prep programs colleges has declined.

Related: Can apprenticeships help alleviate teacher shortages?

The Upper Darby School District in Pennsylvania has around 70 positions it is trying to fill, especially bus drivers, lunch aides and substitute teachers. But it cannot find enough applicants. The district has warned families it may have to cancel school or switch to remote learning on days when it lacks subs.

“It’s become a financial competition from district to district to do that, and that’s unfortunate for children in communities who deserve the same opportunities everywhere in the state,” Superintendent Daniel McGarry said.

The number of unfilled vacancies has led some states and school systems to ease credential requirements, in order to expand the pool of applicants. U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters last week that creative approaches are needed to bring in more teachers, such as retired educators, but schools must not lower standards.

Schools in the South are more likely to struggle with teacher vacancies. A federal survey found an average of 3.4 teaching vacancies per school as of this summer; that number was lowest in the West, with 2.7 vacancies on average, and highest in the South, with 4.2 vacancies.

In Birmingham, the school district is struggling to fill around 50 teaching spots, including 15 in special education, despite $10,000 signing bonuses for special ed teachers. Jenikka Oglesby, a human resources officer for the district, says the problem owes in part to low salaries in the South that don’t always offset a lower cost of living.

The school system in Moss Point, a small town near the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, has increased wages to entice more applicants. But other districts nearby have done the same. Some teachers realized they could make $30,000 more by working 30 minutes away in Mobile, Alabama.

“I personally lost some really good teachers to Mobile County Schools,” said Tenesha Batiste, human resources director for the Moss Point district. And she also lost some not-so-great teachers, she added — people who broke their contracts and quit three days before the school year started.

“It’s the job that makes all others possible, yet they get paid once a month, and they can go to Chick-fil-A in some places and make more money,” Batiste said. 

A bright spot for Moss Point this year is four student teachers from the University of Southern Mississippi. They will spend the school year working with children as part of a residency program for aspiring educators. The state has invested almost $10 million of federal relief money into residency programs, with the hope the residents will stay and become teachers in their assigned districts.     

Michelle Dallas, a teacher resident in a Moss Point first-grade classroom, recently switched from a career in mental health and is confident she is meant to be a teacher. 

“That’s why I’m here,” she said, “to fulfill my calling.”

This story on teacher shortages was produced by the Associated Press and Al.com as part of collaboration on the educator workforce between those two outlets, The Hechinger Report, The Christian Science Monitor and the Education Labs of The Dallas Morning News, The Fresno Bee in California, The Seattle Times and The Post and Courier in Charleston, South Carolina.

Associated Press writers Brooke Schultz in Harrisburg, Pa., Collin Binkley in Washington, D.C., and Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, N.Y. contributed to this report. Lurye reported from New Orleans. Schultz is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Rebecca Griesbach, a member of The Alabama Education Lab team at AL.com who is supported through a partnership with Report for America, contributed from Alabama.

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Before the pandemic, Patricia Woodward’s son Zion struggled in school. He was a shy kid, someone who didn’t feel comfortable asking questions in front of the whole class. Even when he needed help, the middle schooler didn’t ask for it. That changed when his school district in Fairfield County, South Carolina, switched to online learning during the pandemic.

“Online, he has no problem asking the teacher a question,” said Woodward. Zion’s grades picked up; by the end of the year, he was on the honor roll. So Woodward was excited to learn that, even after most kids in Fairfield went back to school in person, the district was opening a full-time virtual academy. She enrolled her 14-year-old son there for ninth grade.

The Fairfield County School District might seem like an unlikely place to have embraced virtual instruction. It’s in a small, rural county in the northern part of the state that has been hit hard by the closure of several key businesses over the years — a Mack Trucks plant, a nuclear power construction project, a Walmart — and where 9 in 10 students live in poverty.

When the pandemic arrived, the school district struggled to connect its students to remote learning, as nearly half its households didn’t have high-speed internet. Even when the district handed out personal hotspots, they didn’t work for many families due to poor cell service.

Yet despite all these challenges, the district found something surprising: For some families, virtual learning was still an absolute hit. Some parents, like Woodward, noticed their children worked better away from the distractions and social pressures of in-person school; others enjoyed being able to see their children’s classes. Starting this school year, the district decided to open a full-time virtual academy, one designed to outlast the pandemic.

“This will be the new normal,” said J.R. Green, superintendent of the Fairfield County schools.

Related: As schools reopen, will Black and Asian families return?

Fairfield County is far from the only school district where parents have asked for more full-time virtual options. A Rand Corp. survey conducted in June found 26 percent of districts said they would run a virtual school this year, compared with just 3 percent pre-pandemic. Schools that served primarily families of color — Fairfield is around 90 percent Black — reported particularly high demand from parents for a virtual option.

Yet it’s unclear how many students will remain in virtual learning when the pandemic subsides — or whether they should. Research before the pandemic often showed poorer outcomes for students in virtual schools versus brick-and-mortar ones. Only 3 percent of parents, in another Rand survey conducted this July, said they would send their youngest school-age child to full-time virtual school if the pandemic were over.

“We need to pull the quality up in virtual schools so that we don’t have yet another form of splintering, fragmenting public school offerings, where we have a lower-quality track in the form of virtual schools relative to in-person schools.”

Heather Schwartz, co-author of Rand surveys on virtual learning

If district-run virtual schools do become the new normal, their leaders will have to address the pitfalls that have led to poorer outcomes in the past. Fairfield says it’s doing several things to make the virtual learning system last, including an application process to select the students who are best suited to remote learning; a strong emphasis on live classes taught by district teachers; and allowing virtual students to still have access to in-person sports, after-school activities and hands-on vocational courses. If this small district, despite all the challenges, can find a way to keep students engaged outside the four walls of a classroom, it may shine a light on how other districts can make virtual schools work as well. And the answer to whether a small, rural district can make virtual learning work has key implications for equity in schools across the United States.

“We need to pull the quality up in virtual schools,” warned Heather Schwartz, co-author of the Rand  surveys, “so that we don’t have yet another form of splintering, fragmenting public school offerings, where we have a lower-quality track in the form of virtual schools relative to in-person schools.”

Related: These parents want more virtual learning. New Jersey says they’re on their own

For Zion, the school day starts at 9 a.m. and lasts until 3 p.m., with a break for lunch. The teenager’s classes in English and junior ROTC are taught by a district teacher, while history and math are self-paced courses via the online platform Edgenuity. He’ll be able to take career technology classes next semester in person, although his parents will be responsible for transporting him. Zion, who enjoys video games, drawing on his iPad and practicing archery, is quite content with his learning schedule, his mother said.  

“He seems to do wonderful virtually. He follows the schedule as if he’s at school,” said Woodward.

Overall, 190 students are now enrolled in Fairfield’s Virtual Academy, taught by 40 teachers. Educators who enjoyed working remotely last year were invited to apply; most of the elementary teachers at the online school teach virtually full time, while the upper-grade teachers split their time between the virtual and in-person schools in the district. It’s just a small portion of students overall, around 8 percent of the district — but higher than what South Carolina has encouraged.

Gov. Henry McMaster pushed hard to return all schools to in-person learning this fall, saying remote learning was “not as good.” This year’s state budget allows only 5 percent of a school district’s students to enroll virtually; if a district exceeds that limit, the state will give only about half as much per-pupil funding for any additional online students.

But administrators said they didn’t have much of a choice. If Fairfield County didn’t offer a virtual option, some families would leave the district entirely and instead enroll in an online charter school. Fairfield fits a national trend: 31 percent of leaders in districts that serve primarily students of color said that parents “strongly demanded” a fully remote option this year, compared with 17 percent in majority-white schools, according to Rand.

“Our parents were so adamant that if we could not provide them with the virtual, then they would seek virtual options elsewhere,” said Brandon Dixon, director of Fairfield’s Virtual Academy.

Still, Fairfield did not let just any student attend the academy; students had to demonstrate that they were a good fit for a virtual environment, based on their grades during remote learning and a recommendation from their principal. Parents had to submit an application and affirm that their child had support at home and consistent internet access — which the parents have to provide themselves.  

That last part is one of the biggest barriers to remote learning in rural areas. Almost one in five rural Americans don’t have access to broadband at the speed considered minimum for basic web use, according to a report this year from the FCC.

“The area I live in, the internet is horrible. Most days he was not able to log in,” said Woodward. She had to make a costly switch to another cable company, and now has reliable service.

There are plenty of reasons, however, to question whether states should even encourage full-time virtual learning, except for students who are medically vulnerable to Covid. The research paints a grim picture. The National Education Policy Center, for example, found that the high school graduation rate last year was only 53 percent for virtual charters, which enroll the majority of online students, and 62 percent for district-run virtual schools. The overall national average is 85 percent. A Brown University study last year on virtual charter schools in Georgia found that full-time students lost the equivalent of around one to two years of learning and reduced their chances of graduating from high school by 10 percentage points.

“Before the pandemic, I think there was a lot of skepticism, that maybe it was bad for everybody. Because you look at a lot of the data on virtual learning, and it’s been discouraging,” said Diana Sharp, a senior researcher at RMC Research Corp. who is working on a federally funded study of online learning in three Southern states. Since then, however, schools have realized that while virtual learning is not for everyone, she said, “some kids really thrive.”

Fairfield County is trying to ensure that its virtual program keeps the same quality standards as its in-person schools by making sure that, for the most part, students continue to follow a normal bell schedule and regularly interact with the teacher. There are live classes for most of the day, every day except Thursday.

“Our model was probably one of the most difficult models to implement, but it was also one of the most effective,” said Superintendent Green.

In contrast, a survey this spring of educators in 17 virtual schools established before the pandemic found that only 3 percent of virtual teachers said their classes were mostly synchronous.

The only exception to the live learning model at Fairfield is that high schoolers also take some courses via the self-paced Edgenuity platform. However, Fairfield didn’t have the staff to create fully virtual classes for every high school course, and South Carolina requires districts to pay teachers extra for hybrid courses. The district had used Edgenuity before the pandemic and decided to keep using it for some high school courses.

“Our parents were so adamant that if we could not provide them with the virtual, then they would seek virtual options elsewhere.”

Brandon Dixon, director of Fairfield’s Virtual Academy

Woodward said she was concerned about the Edgenuity courses, as Zion has struggled to know who to reach out to if he has a question about an assignment. Some parents in other school districts that have used Edgenuity have criticized the quality of those courses, and research isn’t clear on whether they are effective.  Edgenuity spokesperson Tim DeClaire stated that there is an option for schools to pay for access to more instructional services from the company, including on-demand tutoring and a teacher who is available to respond to all student communications within 24 hours, but the vast majority of school districts, including Fairfield, opt to purchase only the self-paced courseware.

Still, Woodward says Zion’s grades are good, and she expects to keep him in virtual school next semester. Beyond that, she’s not sure.   

“There’s a lot of things he’s probably missing out on by not interacting with more people,” she said.

Related: Despite mediocre records, for-profit online charter schools are selling parents on staying virtual

Fairfield County teacher Claudia Fletcher-Lambert has gotten into the swing of things when it comes to virtual education. In one math class in September, she was teaching her fourth graders how to add multi-digit numbers. Twelve faces stared out from boxes on the screen, joining her from bedrooms and living rooms. Little girls with beads in their hair held on to notebooks and pencils, ancient tools that still prove useful in the digital era; a boy lounged on his stomach with his legs swinging up and down; grandparents in the background watched over their charges.

Fletcher-Lambert, sitting at home in front of a poster that said “You Are My Sunshine,” made the lesson feel like a game show. She explained how to expand the numbers, for example turning 1,234 into 1,000 plus 200 plus 30 plus 4. She spun a virtual wheel on screen to pick a number, played applause sound effects, and called out to the class, “Write that number!”

The kids wrote out the expanded form of the number in the chat box; Fletcher-Lambert called out those who got the right answer by name: “Great job, great job!” She asked the students to break down 1,780 plus 173 into expanded form, add them up, and write their answers on a virtual sticky note in a shared, interactive whiteboard.

While the kids worked, Fletcher-Lambert kept up a steady stream of encouragement, commentary and questions to keep them focused, knowing how easy it is for kids to drift off when they’re watching a screen most of the day. “Breaking your numbers down — good job,  Shanise, good job,  E’Nija.” “De’Arte, you only broke one answer down. Where’s the second number?” “Rodreikus, unmute and explain your thinking for me.”

Fletcher-Lambert said it’s crucial that her class size is small, so that she can keep tabs on all her students. When she reached out to virtual teachers in other schools for tips, she found some of them were working with classes of 40 students.

“It is impossible to have 40 kids working with virtual at the same time,” said Fletcher-Lambert, especially when those students have diverse learning needs.

While Fletcher-Lambert always loved using technology in the classroom, Kim Yarborough, a sixth grade teacher, was surprised to find she was well suited to online learning.  She said, “I have thoroughly enjoyed the start of this school year probably better than any school year I’ve had” in her 28 years of teaching.

Why is she happier? “I don’t have to decorate my classroom,” she laughed.

But more seriously, Yarborough added, she’s noticed that the 18 students in her class are far more comfortable outside of the social pressures of the classroom. Students are more willing to ask her questions through a private message. If Yarborough needs to help a child who’s struggling with a lesson, they can work together in a breakout room without drawing anyone’s attention. Bullying, she’s noticed, has disappeared.

“Students aren’t judging each other like they do during face-to-face instruction,” said Yarborough.

Related: While learning online, many students received a surprising pandemic respite from cyberbullying

Skylar Walker, a soft-voiced 11-year-old in Yarborough’s class, said she struggled in school with “a lot of girls distracting me and a lot of drama.”

“I’m learning more when I’m in virtual, because I can focus a lot and I’m by myself,” she said.

Her mom, Kayla Hartpence, agreed that Skylar has “thrived” academically since she started learning at home. “I think that was because of less distraction,” she said. “I think it’s a little bit more intimate because it’s just her in her room by herself.”

Jennifer Greif Green, who co-wrote a Boston University study on bullying during the pandemic, said, “A lot of bullying occurs during unstructured times, times like recess or during lunch in the cafeteria.” The study found Google searches for both school bullying and cyberbullying plummeted while the majority of U.S. students were learning remotely.

“The virtual environment and experience eliminate a lot of those unstructured times for students,” she said, “for better and for worse.”  

The flip side is that less unstructured time also means less time spent just hanging out with friends at the playground or in the hallway between classes. Skylar’s mom says she still wants her daughter to go back to regular school next year so that she doesn’t get too “sheltered” from unstructured experiences. 

“I want her to socialize. I don’t want her to be too comfortable in her room,” said Hartpence.

“I’m learning more when I’m in virtual, because I can focus a lot and I’m by myself.”

Skylar Walker, 11-year-old student in Fairfield’s Virtual Academy

Fletcher-Lambert, the fourth grade teacher, said she understands it’s important sometimes to pause the carefully orchestrated academics and let the kids start a free-flowing conversation. Sometimes she’ll create breakout rooms where her students don’t have to do anything but sit and chat.

“Sometimes I just look at their faces. …‘Can I just speak to you for a minute in the breakout room?’ Sometimes they’ll say, ‘I’m so tired today.’ We have a lot of conversations,” she said.

It’s hard in those moments to not be able to sit right next to the kids, look at them face-to-face, give them a hug. Creating those connections with students, supporting them even from afar, will be the biggest test of whether districts like Fairfield County can make virtual learning work even after the pandemic fades.

“I think it’s the biggest challenge for us now,” said Fletcher-Lambert. “That missing piece of human interaction.”

This story about virtual schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post Some families don’t want to go back to in-person school. Here’s how one S.C. district is dealing with this demand appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

NEW ORLEANS — A bubble machine and a table lined with cookies and coloring books welcomed families coming for a midsummer meet-and-greet at Noble Minds Institute for Whole Child Learning, a new charter school in the Carrollton neighborhood. One new student, a 5-year-old boy wearing an eyepatch, seemed scared by the new surroundings; he clung to his father and made noises of distress. This didn’t faze the school director, Vera Triplett, at all.

“He’s fine,” she said cheerfully. “We’re quite used to this.”

Noble Minds is the kind of school that takes every kind of child, Triplett said. This approach stands out in this city just three years after local and state school officials settled a lawsuit that alleged massive and systemic discrimination against students with disabilities. The school, whose full name is Noble Minds Institute for Whole Child Learning, offers therapy, yoga, meditation and social-emotional classes to every child. And it does not use suspensions or expulsions as punishment, Triplett said. (Noble Minds is not related to the Noble charter network in Chicago, which is known for its strict disciplinary practices.)

“We are not a school that suspends or expels students,” Triplett promised parents at a meeting this July. “We just do not do that under any circumstances, for any reason.”

The school director believes that therapeutic approach has made the school attractive to families of kids with disabilities that affect their emotions or behavior.

“We do attract a number of families of kids that have special needs because of the environment that we provide and we do attract a number of parents that have had issues at schools, in particular with discipline,” Triplett said. However, she emphasized that the school is not exclusively for students in special education: “We are a school for everybody.”

Around 16 percent of the students have been officially identified as needing special education, compared to the citywide average of 13 percent. That number is expected to grow as more students are evaluated, according to the school’s COO, Kristine Barker.

Related: The ‘forgotten’ part of special education that could lead to better outcomes for students

Noble Minds is not the only school in New Orleans that has put a greater emphasis on serving all students, including those with disabilities, in recent years. The entire system — the only public school system in America made up almost entirely of charter schools — had a wake-up call in 2010, when the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the Louisiana Department of Education over New Orleans charter schools’ treatment of students with disabilities.

The state-run Recovery School District governed most of the charter schools in New Orleans at the time. The Orleans Parish School Board, which controlled all city schools before Hurricane Katrina, was responsible for a small number of high-performing traditional and charter schools.

Reforms were put in place even before the SPLC lawsuit was settled in 2015: The city’s schools adopted a centralized expulsion system so students can’t be kicked out of schools without oversight, and began a citywide enrollment system known as the OneApp, which gives all students, with or without disabilities, a chance to enroll at the school of their choice.

In July, the Orleans Parish School Board assumed oversight of nearly all the city’s public schools. For the first time since before Katrina, most of the schools in New Orleans now answer to a local elected body. (Noble Minds is an exception. It’s overseen by the state school board.)

Some advocates hope the transition to local control will lead to clearer citywide standards for special education. But the system has changed since Katrina. Charter schools are designed to be autonomous; each school is its own school district. The city school board doesn’t manage their day-to-day operations or set policies on issues like staffing or what types of programs to use.

“The worst mistake you can make is getting a reputation for being good with special children”

Although all schools must accept students with disabilities, a few independent charter schools, including Noble Minds, Cypress Academy and Morris Jeff Community School, have placed special emphasis on the inclusion of all children. Larger charter networks such as Collegiate Academies and New Orleans College Prep have also expanded their focus beyond college-or-bust, investing in intensive programs to help students with intellectual and other significant disabilities prepare for life as independent adults.

But the challenges of serving a higher-than-average population of children with disabilities can be daunting. A single, small charter school doesn’t have the economies of scale that can make it easier to afford specialists like speech pathologists or sign language interpreters. The first few years after a charter opens, before it has a full student population, are particularly precarious.

Cypress Academy learned that the hard way. In just three years, its special education population ballooned to 26 percent of the student body, according to a letter from parents to the Orleans Parish School Board. The school projected that it would need an additional $600,000 to stay open for another year. In May, the Cypress board of directors sought to merge with another charter, Lafayette Academy. Instead, after parent outcry, the Orleans Parish School Board, which authorizes most charters in the city, announced it would take over management of the school for the next two years.

“The worst mistake you can make is getting a reputation for being good with special children,” lamented Sidney Longwell Jr., a father with an autistic son at Cypress, on Facebook. “If you build it, they will come.”

Related: In New Orleans, a case study in how school, health care decentralization affect neediest children

Wider problems outside of the school system exacerbate the challenges individual schools face in serving students with disabilities. There’s a nationwide shortage of qualified special education teachers. The net of medical and psychological services that support children outside of school is riddled with holes, which makes services within the school system all the more important.

“I would say one of our most pervasive challenges just has to do with the fact that there is not a continuum of behavioral healthcare in the city,” said Liz Marcell Williams, founder of the New Orleans Therapeutic Day Program for children with significant behavioral health disabilities.

New Orleans isn’t the only city with a high number of charters grappling with how to meet the needs of children with disabilities in a decentralized system, said Lauren Rhim, executive director and co-founder of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools. But since New Orleans is almost all charters, she said, those issues are “on steroids.” From Denver to Washington, D.C., Rhim said, high-charter school systems are facing the same question: “How do we have a choice district but also ensure that students and resources are distributed in an equitable way?”

“Miss Amber!”

Back at the Noble Minds family meeting, Langston Kali, a six-year-old boy with long curly hair, ran up to one of Noble’s assistant teachers and jumped into her arms, happy to see her after the summer. “Miss Amber!” he shouted. Then he dashed off to the school yard to play basketball.

The boy’s mom, Amika Kali, was glad to see him so excited to be back to school. Before he started at Noble Minds, his school experience had not been so positive.

“Langston at his prior school basically got in trouble for surviving,” Kali said. Her son has a speech disability that makes it difficult for him to vocalize his feelings. Frustration over not being able to express himself often made him lash out or start crying, and then he’d get in trouble.

“I’m not setting him up to be suspended. I want him to love school,” Kali said.

Last year she switched Langston to Noble Minds, where the students take social-emotional classes that teach them how to express and manage their feelings in a healthy, controlled way. The school has its own clinical director who manages counseling and therapeutic programs. When Kali gets calls from school about Langston’s behavior, she said, the focus isn’t your kid is in trouble but rather how can we help?

“Instead of them being penalized for being little humans, they’re going to be given coping skills and mechanisms to help them be little humans,” Kali said.

These resources have a cost, and it’s more than local, state, or federal government provide. To offer its services, Noble Minds has had to rely heavily on outside donations. Last year, 36 percent of its budget came from non-governmental sources. A grant from the Institute for Mental Hygiene, for example, helps pay the clinical director’s salary. The Walton Family Foundation, a pro-charter organization led by the family that runs Walmart, has donated $325,000 for start-up costs. The students are predominantly low-income; in the last school year, 81 percent were considered economically disadvantaged, according to state data.

“As we grow, our budget will continue to change as our governmental funding increases (with student increases) and our start-up funds decrease,” wrote Barker, the COO, in an email.

Triplett, the school director, knows her school has higher costs. But she says that the upfront expense results in lower long-term costs to society. Triplett used to be a counselor for incarcerated youth — an experience that left her determined to start a school that did not contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline. She believes that harsh disciplinary measures worsen existing behavioral problems, because students are not given the tools they need to learn better behaviors.

“I have had the opportunity to see the end result of not addressing some of the things that lead to maladaptive behaviors in the first place,” she said. “The punitive nature of discipline is just counter-productive to what we want to see happen. Putting kids into the system, particularly into the prison system, only teaches them to be better criminals.”

Related: A new movement to treat troubled children as ‘sad, not bad’

“You will find a way to make it happen”

Noble Minds plans to rely less on philanthropy over time as it adds more grades and becomes a full K-8 school. Currently it has three mixed-grade classes covering kindergarten through third grade. But at the moment, Triplett says she has to spend half of her time fundraising.

“We have to have other sources of funding other than what we get from the state and federal government, otherwise it’s just not enough,” she said.

When the school first opened last year, it had a staff of 11 full-time and two part-time employees. The overall cost to serve 37 students was $988,782 — over $26,000 per student. While the price tag might seem high, a school will typically have a high per-student cost in its first year due to a small student enrollment and high start-up expenses. To save money, many staff members at Noble Minds hold multiple roles.

“Everyone here is doing multiple jobs,” Triplett said. “I am the CEO, founder, school leader, I help serve lunch, sometimes I clean up. And everybody here falls into that category.”

Size is a challenge that all independent charters and small networks face, said Nahliah Webber, executive director of the Orleans Public Education Network, a nonprofit public policy organization.

“I’m just really concerned about the capacity of schools to meet the needs of kids that come into their school building given that they do not have the economy of scale,” Webber said. She’s particularly concerned about schools that are not part of a larger network: “I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel for single-site charters.”

The district has a tiered funding formula that gives schools more money based on the significance of a child’s disability — the number of service minutes required each week. In 2016-17, schools received an additional $1,499 in funding for a Tier 1 student and $22,486 for a student at Tier 5, the highest level. However, even that might not be enough to cover the costs of some students. For example, schools pay up to $225 per day — $40,500 per school year — for children who need to attend the off-site Therapeutic Day Program. Although charters can apply to a special emergency fund, the Citywide Exceptional Needs Fund, when a student needs exceptionally costly services, schools with above-average special education populations can still come up short.

“Students with special needs are not equitably allocated across the system,” Webber said.

Related: Special education’s hidden racial gap

Despite the challenges facing single-site charters, Triplett is confident that her school will find a way to succeed. “I don’t think that economy of scale makes a difference,” she said. “I think that if you intend to be a good actor around all students, then you will be. And you will find a way to make it happen.”

But sometimes good intentions aren’t enough.

Cypress Academy, by academic metrics, was thriving: Even with a quarter of its students in special education, it still beat the state average in 2018 on end-of-year standardized tests. (The school is comparatively affluent; only 66 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged, a rate 15 points below the city’s average.)

When the school opened in 2015, its founders planned to set aside 20 percent of its seats for children with reading disabilities. But Cypress quickly got a reputation for providing excellent special education services to children with all types of disabilities, Longwell, the Cypress parent, said in an interview. Word spread through the parent grapevine, and soon enrollment included a large population of high-needs students that required extra staffing and services.

“Cypress wasn’t set up as a school for special needs,” Longwell said. “It was a typical charter school. It just got that reputation.”

For example, according to an independent monitoring report, Cypress had at least nine students with autism last year — a disproportionately large number for a school of only around 150 students. Longwell, whose son has autism, said several families who attended the same clinic as his child decided to enroll their kids in Cypress.

“There aren’t other options,” he said. “You’ve got to roll the dice. Where do you send your child if even the private schools are saying, ‘We can’t handle them’? … Cypress is the best option and that’s absolutely why that percentage shot up.”

Longwell was thrilled with his son’s experience at Cypress, but he pointed out that Cypress’s founder, Bob Berk, didn’t set out to open a school in which one in four kids has a disability. That’s just the population the school attracted.

“Bob was like, ‘Hell yeah. If we’re going to have this many kids, let’s get good at it,’” Longwell said. Berk declined to comment for this article.

Ben Kleban, an Orleans Parish School Board member, said the school’s budget problems were not due to the high cost of educating students with disabilities. Cypress was overstaffed, he said. “They were probably three or four positions from breaking even,” said Kleban, who is also the founder of New Orleans College Prep. “They just needed to slim down a bit.”

At parent meetings after the school announced it would close, Berk said he’d considered cutting school staff but was uncomfortable running the school with any fewer staff.

The theory behind a competitive, all-charter school system is the free market will produce quality; the best schools will attract more students and succeed. Cypress did attract students. But Longwell believes it is exactly what he called “market pressures” that almost shut the school down.

“The system is set up to not reward people who do the right thing,” he said.

MONITORING PROGRESS

That system does have oversight built in, as required by the 2015 settlement between the state Department of Education and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Every 120 days, independent monitors release reports on how a sample of New Orleans schools are complying with the federal Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act. Twelve schools are chosen based on various data measures; the monitors look through student records and interview staff members, but do not visit classrooms.

Zoe Savitsky, deputy legal director of the law center’s children’s rights division, said that the city has made “significant strides” since the lawsuit was filed in 2010, but most schools still struggle to comply with federal law.

“The single most common trend that I can point to is that the first time a school is monitored, it pretty much always is non-compliant,” she said. “Often they then get to compliance through the work of the defendants and the work of the monitors, but not every school in New Orleans has been monitored yet.”

A report released this July ordered 10 out of 12 schools to fulfill corrective action plans “to address findings of systemic noncompliance.” Issues cited included the failure to include parents in important meetings about individual students; the failure to find social workers or occupational therapists when students needed their services; and the failure to screen students sufficiently for potential disabilities even after they failed core classes. In spite of its reputation for providing high-quality services for special-education students, Cypress Academy was one of the schools cited, for missing some details in the documentation of students’ goals and current abilities.

As the report showed, local efforts to make progress in New Orleans are stymied by a nationwide shortage of qualified specialists.

“We don’t have enough teachers,” said Aqua Stovall, co-founder of the city’s Special Education Leader Fellowship, or SELF. “We don’t have enough ABA therapists. We don’t have enough school psychologists. All the related service providers, there’s a shortage.”

Related: Is teacher preparation failing students with disabilities?

Stovall started SELF to help train more special education coordinators, after noticing how many had burnt out and left the profession because “they didn’t feel like they had the necessary tools in a decentralized system to do their job.”

She said it’s important for all the players in the city to work together — not just the schools but also universities, which can create certification programs for specialists and hospitals to provide clinical support.

Nicole Mayeux, a SELF graduate, helped launch a program for students with the most significant disabilities at the Cohen College Prep high school. The program, called the Academy of Career and Community Education, works with students ages 14-22 who have cognitive disabilities that put them at a fourth-grade level or below. They learn self-sufficiency skills so that they can transition to life outside of the public school system, and are placed in paid internships.

Mayeux says that Cohen’s charter network, New Orleans College Prep, is one of several college-focused charter networks that have realized they need to prepare students who aren’t likely to go to college.

“Historically there hasn’t been as much of a roadmap for, ‘If [college] is not the goal, then what is the goal?’” she said.

Related: Low academic expectations and poor support for special education students are ‘hurting their future’

The Collegiate Academies charter school network offers a program similar to Cohen’s: the Opportunities Academy, which also helps students with intellectual disabilities become self-sufficient. The nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans gave over $1 million to Collegiate for the Opportunities program and almost $600,000 to New Orleans College Prep for different special education initiatives, including the ACCE program.

Mayeux said that working in a decentralized system can lead to extra challenges for the special-education staff. Under the OneApp system, parents can enroll their child in a school without disclosing the child’s disability. The system was designed that way to help prevent disability discrimination.

“On any given day at the start of school, you could have a student walk in who needs a one-to-one paraprofessional and also needs medical services, to have a feeding tube, or needs diapering and toileting services,” Mayeux said. If a student has a rare disability a school hasn’t seen before, school administrators might have to find an outside contractor to provide services.

“We rise to meet the challenge, but it is a unique challenge you might not face as much in a traditional district,” Mayeux said.

Rhim, of the National Center for Special Education in Charter Schools, said it’s important for the school system to inform parents of their options so they know that special programs like ACCE exist. She noted that several cities with a high number of charter schools have discussed the idea of allowing a few charter schools to be certified as having particular expertise serving students with specific disabilities. Although specialized programs could appeal to some families in New Orleans, the city would have to remain vigilant that other schools still accepted all students regardless of ability, she said.

“There’s a chasm there between the goals of open enrollment and avoiding discrimination and the practical realities that parents need information,” Rhim said.

A return to local control

Now that the local school district once again oversees the city’s schools, Marcell Williams, of the Therapeutic Day Program, said she hopes to see uniform standards.

Related: In New Orleans, a case study in how school, health care decentralization affect neediest children

“One of the conversations that’s happening citywide now is thinking about, ‘Let’s set a minimum bar for what should exist in every school,’” Marcell Williams said.

That would mean setting standards on which services — like specialized transportation or self-contained classrooms — are offered in every single charter, versus which services for rarer disabilities could be offered in a few specialized schools. But that has not yet materialized, she said.

“There’s not a collective vision for what world-class special education service should look like,” Marcell Williams said.

Orleans Parish schools’ spokeswoman Dominique Ellis said that the district promotes consistent standards by enforcing federal and state regulations.

“We hold schools accountable to these regulations through our charter framework,” Ellis said. “We also have an additional layer of compliance and monitoring under the SPLC consent judgment….OPSB has and will continue to provide citywide training, in addition to developing additional tools and resources to support schools in the implementation of these regulations/guidelines.”

Even so, the New Orleans school system still differs substantially from a traditional district. Any new policies that set city-wide standards on topics like programming or teacher training could set off debate on the limits of charter schools’ closely-guarded autonomy.

Webber said that special education should be more centralized, with more decisions made at the district level. She argues that special education is a civil right — and there should be no difference between schools when it comes to civil rights.

“We have to declare what our values are, what our non-negotiables are,” said Webber. “And what our non-negotiable are, I think that we should have those addressed at the district level.”

But Triplett said she believes decentralization has played a more positive role. If families didn’t have a choice, she said, schools wouldn’t feel pressure to serve their needs.

“I think decentralizing and autonomy and choice play a huge role in driving quality and incentivizing people to provide high-quality seats to students,” she said. “I think the only way we can go back to a centralized system is if every school in the system was offering high-quality seats, offering the level of services to special-needs students that they needed. And right now, we just don’t have that.”

This story about special education was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our newsletter.

The post These schools are opening their arms to special education students. Can they afford it? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.