Coming Attractions:
On 6/30, I’ll be leading a keynote discussion at the NACPS conference on the state of the charter school sector. Jed Wallace and I will also record a WonkyFolk later in the day. I hope you’ll also check out sessions by my Bellwether colleagues Carrie Irvin and Jenn Schiess on academic recovery and finance.
ICYMI – Kathleen deLaski and I talked higher ed and who needs college, when, why, and how?
Philanthropy
Over on LinkedIn Goldstein’s going wild and poking bears.
Include Teachers In Social Security
The Social Security Administration released updated figures on Social Security “insolvency” and the picture is…not good:
In plain English, on his way out the door, Joe Biden signed a politically popular but not policy-sound provision eliminating measures in Social Security intended to preserve its progressiveness by accounting for workers also covered by various government pensions— who did not pay into Social Security while earning those pensions. That move accelerated Social Security’s fiscal cliff by about six months, costing about $196 billion over the next decade.
Those pension offset measures could have used reform—like many complicated government formulas, they had problems. Yet the fundamental idea that people with government pensions shouldn’t be treated the same under Social Security as a low-wage worker is an important one and, again, key to Social Security’s progressiveness.
One thing Congress and the states could do now to help, and potentially address the insolvency problem long-term, would be to sweep all teachers into Social Security. About 40% are not covered now. Yes, you read that right—40%. Including all teachers in some large states like Ohio or Illinois.
This isn’t ideal for anyone, especially given that public pension plans often have long vesting periods. Teachers can go five, seven, or nine years without being vested in a pension plan and without earning Social Security credit by paying in. Not great. Social Security isn’t a substitute for a good retirement plan for teachers, but it’s one leg of the stool.
Even well-functioning democracies tend to wait until the last minute to address big, complicated problems. Stay tuned.
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Diversity, More Instructional Time, Inclusion
It’s easy to pick on the excesses of the 2020 political pivot and what’s often referred to as “wokeness”—not in the Leadbelly sense but rather in the “math is racist and we should decolonize coleslaw” way that suddenly became prevalent and fashionable.
But it wasn’t all absurdities. In addition to raising awareness about real problems, the “reckoning,” as it is sometimes called, also led to some good ideas and progress. In our part of the world, school systems with diverse populations realized that maybe they shouldn’t just orient their calendars around Christian holidays. Suddenly, you saw days off for Eid, Diwali, Ramadan, Lunar New Year, and Jewish holidays. At one level, this is great—these are important holidays for people, and these are public institutions that should be responsive to the public.
At another level, it created frustrations. Parents had to arrange childcare on various days that, to many, felt out of the blue or like moving targets. This frustrated them. Teachers had to figure out how to navigate irregular school schedules. (People debate four-day versus five-day school weeks, but some districts are already basically there by default.)
Districts and schools realized this, and now some are walking things back—declaring holidays to be school days but non-instructional in terms of anything graded or, in some cases, even introducing new content. This addresses the childcare problem and helps comply with various state laws and policies about minimum days kids have to be in school, but it also irritates many teachers. The picking and choosing of holidays isn’t ideal either. And this creates a de facto downward pressure on instructional time—already in short supply due to various constraints.
The school year is too short, in my view. Count me among fans of year-round schools with real breaks at different times of the year—where out-of-school providers can plan to serve parents needing sustained childcare. I had hoped that the inclusion of more holidays would give cover to school leaders to start extending the school year in this direction. That didn’t happen.
It’s too bad. Instead of having non-instructional days, why not explicitly have enrichment days? Schools could remain open during holidays with an explicit focus on enrichment and extra support for students. Parents could opt kids in or out, teachers who want to work and earn more money could do so, and students could get more time and support. Schools could also offer non-academic activities. By not counting these days as mandated instructional days, this would augment learning rather than informally curtailing it, as we often do now.
Would it cost money? Of course. But everyone says they want to spend more on schools—let’s take them up on that. And if we want to pay teachers more, it will have to come with some outputs tied to those inputs. So here’s one. Polling consistently shows two things: people support increases in teacher pay tied to various criteria (not just across the board), and support for raising teacher pay declines as people learn more about how teacher compensation works.
An approach like this could address multiple issues: more money for teachers, a more responsive system, more time for students to learn when many desperately need it, and actual meaningful steps to reflect the diversity that exists in many communities. It could also help move toward a system with more flexible schedules for teachers—something important to a changing workforce.
Or, instead, we can keep doing this I guess.
Friday Fish
Chat Ratliff runs innovation for Albemarle County Public Schools in Virginia (the county surrounding the city of Charlottesville). He’s been featured here a few times with fish and his family. Today we’re going to look at his day job—specifically, a lab school program using fly fishing to teach ecology.
Here’s a local news station.
Here’s a video the school division put together:
Want more? Here are hundreds of pics of education folks, including the fishing Ratliff’s, with fish. Even more pics here.
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View the original article and our Inspiration here