police: Protesters hold signs that say police-free schools now

Opinion: We Are Terrified Police in Our Schools Will Harm Us

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Every day, I walk into school greeted with silencing stares from armed police officers. They’re not facing the windows or the doors looking out for a stranger who could walk in and hurt my friends and me. Their eyes are on us, not some external threat. We walk past them silently, afraid that anything we do or say will be perceived as a “threat” that will lead to suspension, arrest or worse, physical harm. 

Our schools have normalized this fear by allowing officers to patrol our hallways and criminalize us. In my county, a police officer was celebrated for tasing a Black freshman girl three times inside her school cafeteria.

Education For Young People In Shelters Was Already a Challenge — Then Coronavirus Hit

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More than 40,000 K–12 public school students in Washington experienced homelessness in 2017–18, a number that has nearly doubled in the past decade and likely will continue to grow because of pandemic-driven job losses. For these youth, remote schooling might mean attending class in a shelter room they share with their mother and two siblings. It might mean missing classes due to glitchy Wi-Fi or insufficient cellphone data. And, especially for homeless youth who are on their own, it might mean not having an adult who can help them with assignments and prod them to stay on track. 

Yellow envelope stamped with school records in red

Opinion: Academic Credits Mostly Don’t Get Transferred By Justice Facilities; COVID Makes It Worse

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The COVID-19 crisis has laid bare the very real and dangerous problems of educational inequity in this country — and it has exacerbated them. Nowhere is this more stark than in the experiences of youth in the juvenile justice system — youth already routinely ignored, disenfranchised and left behind. Youth incarcerated during 2020 will likely have even less education than those incarcerated before the pandemic. 

Youth have long faced challenges in receiving an education in the juvenile justice system. A new report, “Credit Overdue: How States Can Mitigate Academic Credit Transfer Problems,” highlights the numerous shortcomings of educational programs within juvenile justice facilities that persisted even before the additional obstacles created by COVID-19. 

Youth in juvenile justice detention centers and longer-term placements face educational instability as they are moved from facility to facility within the juvenile justice system. The curriculum of juvenile justice schools is often academically inferior and may not align with state requirements and standards.

New Report Examines High Cost of School Discipline in Budget-Stressed Texas Districts

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The Austin-based advocacy organization Texas Appleseed recently released a report examining the financial impact on several Texas school districts of using exclusionary discipline techniques, including expulsions, out-of-school suspensions and alternative education program referrals. The findings in “Breaking Rules, Breaking Budgets: Cost of Exclusionary Discipline in 11 Texas School Districts” stem from an evaluation of about 25 percent of the state’s 4 million public school students. According to researchers, the total “cost of discipline” for the 11 school districts studied resulted in a combined $140 million in expenditures from 2010 to 2011. The combined cost includes a number of factors, including the cost of operating alternative education campuses, security and monitoring expenses and overall lost state funding due to out-of-school suspensions. Researchers said that budgetary constrictions - including a recent $5.4 billion cut to the state’s public education budget - means Texas school districts will have to be more strategic in selecting effective, evidence-based programs to improve student outcomes.

Honor student Diane Tran, 17, was arrested and sentenced to 24 hours in jail and $100 dollar fine. Photo: CNN

UPDATE: Contempt Charges Dropped Against Texas Honor Student Diane Tran

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UPDATE, MAY 31: Following an intense public backlash, Texas Judge Lanny Moriarty dismissed contempt charges Wednesday against Diane Tran - a 17-year-old high school student punished last week for truancy. Tran, an 11th grade student at the Houston-area Willis High School, spent 24 hours in a Montgomery County jail last week and was ordered to pay a $100 fine for excessive truancy, Houston’s KHOU-11 reports. Under Texas law, students are allowed to miss no more than 10 class days during a six-month window; reportedly, Tran had missed 18 days for that school year. Following her parents’ separation, Tran has been financially supporting her siblings, working full time at a dry cleaning operation and performing part-time work as a wedding planner. Considered a legal adult under state law, Tran was warned about her absences - considered a misdemeanor offense within the state - by a judge in April.

Financial Aid office, Kennesaw State University. Photo: Clay Duda/JJIE

Pell Grant Cuts Begin in Summer School

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It might make for a more leisurely summer, but Kennesaw State University student Steven Welch didn’t dump college courses to have more free time. He did it because he couldn’t afford the cost. Welch, 24, had to make the move because he no longer qualified for a Pell Grant to cover the cost of summer tuition. Restrictions on the grant program, long used to help low-income and some middle-class students stem the cost of higher education, were enacted by Congress last year -- but students are feeling the impact for the first time this summer as the changes are implemented across the country. Before this summer, students could use more than the allotted $5,550 per year to help cover the cost of tuition and other school related expenses.

‘Drop Out Factories’ Decline, Nation Pushes for Graduation Benchmark

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Drop out factories. Since coined by a Johns Hopkins researcher working on high school dropout issues in 2004, that’s the name given to schools that lead our nation in dropout rates, graduating less than 60 percent of their students each year. Around the country, half of the more than 1 million students that fail to graduate high school each year come from just 12 percent of the nation’s schools, according to U.S. Department of Education statistics. President Barack Obama, retired General Colin Powell and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, among others, have taken notice. Since 1980, dropout rates around the United States have decreased – and graduation rates are up – but nearly one in four public school students still leave high school without a diploma.

Joe Biden

Higher Education Must Be Kept Affordable, Biden Says

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Following the defeat by Senate Republicans of a bill that would have prevented student loan interest rates from doubling July 1,  Vice President Biden addressed students and representatives from higher education and youth-service organizations about the importance of keeping college affordable and accessible. His remarks were preceded by a panel discussion with policy experts from the Domestic Policy Council, the Department of Education and the White House Office of Legislative Affairs. Update:

This morning, Biden talked about how it is a “gigantic priority” for the President and his administration to make higher education affordable and to prevent interest loans from doubling on July 1 of this year. He began by expressing how much he and the President appreciate people for participating in “this critical debate.” He called making higher education affordable his passion and his hobbyhorse, saying that the first bill he ever introduced helped more people qualify for Stafford loans. He then talked about his “typical middle class life” growing up and how his dad was so ashamed when he couldn’t get a loan to send his son to college.

college success

Performance-Based Scholarships May Improve Academic Progress of College Students

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A new policy brief states that performance-based scholarships – financial aid incentives allotted to students based upon one’s ability to achieve certain academic benchmarks – may serve as a catalyst for both improved grades and greater odds of finishing college, especially for low-income students. The brief, Performance-Based Scholarships: Emerging Findings from a National Demonstration issued by the Manpower Demonstration Research Center (MDRC) was published earlier this month. The policy brief examines the effects of performance-based scholarships on students in select colleges in, among other states, New York, California and Florida, with the authors saying that their findings seem to indicate a slight, yet positive impact on the academic progress of students enrolled in such financial assistance programs.

In 2009, an MDRC report on Louisiana’s Opening Doors program exhibited improved grades, higher credit accumulation levels and greater likelihoods of retention for several college students that were enrolled in the performance-based scholarship program. A year earlier, MDRC began a six-state study, the Performance-Based Scholarship Demonstration, to gauge the overall effectiveness of scholarship programs contingent upon ongoing student academic progress. Although the authors say that the preliminary findings for the six states surveyed for the brief were not as pronounced as the Louisiana data, they still noted that performance-based scholarship programs resulted in several statistically-significant influences for students, including an increase in credits earned and an increase in students’ abilities to meet end-of-term benchmarks during program terms.

MDRC research on the impact of performance-based scholarships will continue until December 2014.