Strike Threat Against a Union

Emily Peck at Axios:

Labor unrest is so intense this year that even labor unions are facing internal staff rebellions.

Driving the news: The field staff of the National Education Association (NEA), the teachers' union, voted unanimously on Monday to authorize a strike.

State of play: The NEA is the largest union in the country, representing about 3 million education professionals from pre-school to graduate school — and its tiny staff of 48 employees has been without a contract since May 2023.

• The vote by the Association of Field Service Employees is the latest sign of the strong labor resurgence. The AFL-CIO is facing similar issues with the union that represents its staff.
• Unless the parties reach a deal this week, a two-day strike would begin Friday at midnight with a picket line in Atlanta at an NEA conference in Atlanta.

Home Schooling

Many posts have discussed education.

Laura Meckler and Peter Jamison at the  Washington Post:

In March 2020, an involuntary form of home schooling — remote learning — was thrust upon American families everywhere. Millions could not wait to get their kids back to school, but for hundreds of thousands of others, the idea of teaching their kids at home was appealing. A surge in home schooling became one of the lasting impacts of the pandemic.

Yet there has been scant reliable data on the magnitude of the growth or the nature of the new home-schoolers. As part of a year-long series, The Washington Post set out to understand who the new home-schoolers are, where they live, how many there are and why they made these choices.

This research has included more than 100 interviews and two groundbreaking data projects: the collection and analysis of six years of enrollment and home-schooling registration figures in nearly 7,000 school districts, and a national poll of home-school parents.

The results paint a picture of home schooling as the fastest growing part of the U.S. education system, embraced by families more diverse than ever before, who are engaged in new and different ways of home education from the home-schoolers who preceded them.

In the first year of the pandemic, home schooling surged. Although small declines followed in the next two years, the number of children in home schooling remained 45 percent higher in the 2022-23 academic year than it was in 2017-18, based on data collected by the Post.

In 18 states, The Post was able to compare the growth of home schooling to enrollment in public and private schools over six years. In those states, the number of home-school students rose 51 percent between 2017-18 and 2022-23 — far exceeding a 7 percent rise in private school enrollment and a 4 percent decline in public school enrollment. That makes home schooling the fastest growing form of education, by a lot

California Update: Losing Population, Flunking Computer Science

Erin Davis at Axios:

New data from the U.S. Census shows that around 820,000 people moved out of California and 550,000 out of New York in 2022. They join more than 8 million Americans who moved states in 2022.

Why it matters: The rising cost of living is pushing people out of expensive coastal areas, and the trend doesn't look likely to change in coming years: four in ten Californians and and three in ten New Yorkers say they're considering moving out of state.

• Many of those moving are headed to Florida or Texas, the states with the largest influxes in 2022.
• But Texans worried about the "California-ing" of their state may not need to worry: Democrats are much more likely to move to blue states, while Republicans move to red states.

Carolyn Jones at CalMatters:

Five years ago, California embarked on an ambitious plan to bring computer science to all K-12 students, bolstering the state economy and opening doors to promising careers — especially for low-income students and students of color.

But a lack of qualified teachers has stalled these efforts, and left California — a global hub for the technological industry — ranked near the bottom of states nationally in the percentage of high schools offering computer science classes.

“I truly believe that California’s future is dependent on preparing students for the tech-driven global economy. You see where the world is going, and it’s urgent that we make this happen,” said Allison Scott, chief executive officer of the Kapor Foundation, an Oakland-based organization that advocates for equity in the technology sector.

Scott was among those at a conference in Oakland this week aimed at expanding computer science education nationally. While some states — such as Arkansas, Maryland and South Carolina — are well on their way to offering computer science to all students, California lags far behind. According to a 2022 report by Code.org, only 40% of California high schools offer computer science classes, well below the national average of 53%.

California’s low-income students, rural students and students of color were significantly less likely to have access to computer science classes, putting them at a disadvantage in the job market, according to a 2021 report by the Kapor Center and Computer Science for California.

 

Life Expectancy and Education

 Anne Case and Angus Deaton:at Brookings:

The widening gap in death rates between Americans with and without a four-year college degree shows the U.S. economy is failing working class people, suggests a paper discussed at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA) conference on September 28.

The U.S. economy, as measured by conventional metrics such as growth in gross domestic product (GDP), has recently outperformed other advanced economies. But mortality data paint a different picture, according to “Accounting for the Widening Mortality Gap between American Adults with and without a BA.”

“GDP may be doing great, but people are dying in increasing numbers, especially less-educated people,” Anne Case, one of the authors, said in an interview with The Brookings Institution. “A lot of the increasing prosperity is going to the well-educated elites. It is not going to typical working people.”

She and co-author Angus Deaton, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, both of Princeton University, analyzed U.S. death certificate information, including the age of death, cause of death, and educational attainment. They found that life expectancy for the college educated in 2021 was eight-and-a-half years longer than for the two-thirds of American adults without a bachelor’s degree. That’s more than triple the 1992 gap of about two-and-a-half years.

... 

 Deaths of despair were the leading driver of the widening mortality gap over the past 30 years, but the gap also widened for most other major causes of death, the paper notes. Cancer mortality, for instance, has declined overall but it has declined more for people with college degrees.

The mortality gap widened explosively during the pandemic, according to the paper. Both COVID-19 deaths and deaths of despair were more common among people without college degrees, who were more likely to work in public-facing jobs, use public transportation, and live in crowded quarters.

“People with BAs have Zoom. People without BAs don’t have Zoom; they have to go to work,” Deaton said.

 

School Choice Redux

At Vox, Andrew Prokop explains why the school choice movement is making progress with education savings accounts:

Universal voucher bills had long failed because most parents didn’t want radical disruption of the public school status quo. The pandemic brought this radical disruption. Polarizing battles unfolded over school closures, mask and vaccine requirements, and (after reopening) how long kids should be kept home if classmates tested positive.

Then the culture war that erupted over race, gender, and sexuality teaching in schools in 2020 and beyond ensured that things never entirely returned to “normal.” Activists like Christopher Rufo argued that “critical race theory” concepts were pervading teaching about race, Twitter accounts like Libs of TikTok spread videos of educators discussing gender identity, and such matters became omnipresent on Fox News and in conservative media.

In the right’s narrative, parents reasonably recoiled against the incompetence or ideological extremism of educators. In the left’s narrative, conservatives targeted the public school system with a strategic and unrelenting campaign of vilification, laden with exaggeration and moral panic. “The overriding message has been to drive a wedge between parents and public schools,” Polikoff said.

Conservative activists saw opportunity. “It is time for the school choice movement to embrace the culture war,” the Heritage Foundation’s Jay Greene and James Paul wrote in 2022.

In a 2019 survey, 31 percent of Republican respondents said they had very little or no confidence in public schools; in a 2022 survey, that number had risen to 50 percent. Democratic and independent voters, in contrast, remained roughly as confident in the public school system as before the pandemic.

But the drop in Republican support shifted the previous political status quo, especially in red states, making rank-and-file GOP voters less hostile about proposals to shake up the system.

Lost Unions

  At WSJ, Elisabeth Messenger argues that unions often put politics ahead of workers:

The American Federation of Teachers, with more than 1.6 million members, paints a rosy picture of financial prosperity, with $152 million in assets and a net financial-position improvement of $15 million since 2020. A closer examination, however, reveals an alarming trend: the union increased its membership dues while losing more than 10,000 members since 2020.

No wonder teachers are turning away from the union when only 34% of its spending goes toward acting on behalf of its members. The AFT diverts large sums to political activities, supporting left-wing causes and candidates, taking no account of the diverse political affiliations among its members. Political spending accounted for 17.3% of the AFT’s total outlays in the 2021-22 fiscal year. AFT President Randi Weingarten pulls in roughly $488,000 a year—more than eight times what a teacher makes.


The situation is arguably worse at the even larger National Education Association. It spent $49.2 million on political activities in 2021-22, surpassing the amount spent on membership representation by $3.5 million. Like the AFT, the NEA protected revenue from membership losses by hiking dues. The union’s emphasis on financial investment further highlights its shift away from representing teachers and toward building its own wealth.

Dissatisfied with US Education, Satisfied with Own Schools

 Megan Brenan at Gallup:

Americans’ satisfaction with the quality of K-12 education in the U.S. has fallen six percentage points in the past year to match the record-low 36% reading on this measure, which Gallup has tracked for 24 years. In contrast, parents of K-12 students remain largely satisfied with the quality of the education their oldest child is receiving, as 76% say they are “completely” or “somewhat” satisfied, significantly higher than the 67% low on that measure from 2013.

Since 1999, when Gallup started asking these two questions every August, there has been a consistent, significant gap between parents' satisfaction with their child's education and Americans’ views of U.S. education in general, averaging 31 percentage points.

The latest readings, from an Aug. 1-23 poll, find that Americans’ overall satisfaction with the nation’s K-12 education quality is nine points below the 45% historical average for this metric. At the same time, parents’ satisfaction with the quality of their school-aged child’s education matches the historical average for the measure.

All told, 35% of parents of K-12 students are “completely satisfied” with their child’s education, 41% are “somewhat satisfied,” 12% are “somewhat dissatisfied” and 9% “completely dissatisfied.” Meanwhile, 8% of Americans are completely satisfied with K-12 education nationally, 28% are somewhat satisfied, 38% somewhat dissatisfied and 25% completely dissatisfied.

Parents’ more-positive views on education are reserved for their direct experience with their own children. They are only a bit more satisfied with education nationally (41%) than the public at large is (36%).

Participation, Education, and News Consumption Do Not Ease Polarization

Many posts have discussed partisan polarization and aversive or negative partisanship.

James Davenport at NonDoc:

Our disdain for one another leads us to separate from one another, which, in turn, leads us to misunderstand one another. Worse yet, many of the social sciences’ presumed solutions to reduce this polarization might not actually work. The YouGov/More in Common research discovered that political participation does not help reduce the perception gap. Instead, they found that the more ideological and politically active one may be, the larger their misperceptions about those in the other party may become. Conversely, the politically “disengaged” had the smallest perception gap among those in the survey.

Similarly, news consumption helps reduce polarization much less than the journalism world would hope. Those who followed the news “most of the time” had a much larger misunderstanding of their political opponents than those who did not pay attention to the news, according to the study. In fact, these researchers found that only the traditional and national network television news had a positive impact on how accurately partisans viewed one another. When one considers the ideological segmentation of the news media and its subsequent reinforcement of political polarization of the public, this finding may not be surprising, but it is nonetheless depressing.

Another surprise from the YouGov/More in Common study was that education does not help reduce the perception gap either. These researchers discovered that while increased educational attainment among Republicans did not reveal a difference in how they perceived Democrats, tiers of Democrats with higher education levels showed significantly increased misunderstanding of their Republican counterparts.

“This effect is so strong that Democrats without a high school diploma are three times more accurate than those with a postgraduate degree,” the study’s authors wrote. In examining the data, they speculated that this outcome was due, in part, to highly educated Democrats reporting less ideologically diverse friendship networks than more educated Republicans.

Catholic Schools

Last October Kathleen Porter-Magee wrote at WSJ:

Today, the The Nation’s Report Card is out, and it is dismal. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, released Monday found that achievement in reading and math among fourth- and eighth-graders has dropped since 2019 in nearly every state.

To the extent that anyone could deny it before, the results settle the debate: America’s response to the pandemic set a generation of students back. But amid the bad news, Catholic schools were a bright spot, reflecting how these schools are making a difference in students’ lives.divergence between Catholic schools and public ones is so great that if all U.S. Catholic schools were a state, their 1.6 million students would rank first in the nation across the NAEP reading and math tests for fourth and eighth graders.
...
Catholic-school students now boast the nation’s highest scale scores on all four NAEP tests. The average score among fourth-graders in Catholic schools was 233, 17 points higher than the national public-school average, or about 1½ grade levels ahead. In eighth-grade reading, the average score for Catholic school students was 279, 20 points higher than the national public-school average, or about two grade levels ahead.

When disaggregated by race, Catholic schools showed significant gains since 2019. In particular, achievement among black students enrolled in Catholic schools increased by 10 points (about an extra year’s worth of learning), while black students in public schools lost 5 points and black students in charter schools lost 8 points. Similarly, on the eighth-grade reading test, Hispanic students in Catholic schools gained 7 points while Hispanic students in public schools lost 1 point and Hispanic students in charter schools lost 2 points.

Catholic schools lead the nation for Hispanic achievement on each of the four tests, and lead the nation in black student achievement on three of the four. They also rank first in eighth-grade reading and third in both fourth-grade reading and fourth-grade math for students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch.

Prop 13 and Education in California

 From The Orange County Register

The U.S. Department of Education publishes data on per-pupil spending in public elementary and secondary schools by state and by year, comparing the annual spending in constant 2021-22 dollars. The data can be found online in the National Center for Education Statistics’ Digest of Education Statistics, in table 236.70.

In the 1969-70 school year, California’s per-pupil spending was $6,474. (That’s the inflation-adjusted number. The nominal dollar amount at the time was $867.)

Proposition 13 was adopted in 1978. In the 1979-80 school year, per-pupil spending in California went up to $8,238. It rose to $9,752 in 1989-90, to $10,663 in 1999-2000, and to $12,596 in 2009-10.In 2019-20, the most recent year for which statistics are available on the U.S. government site, per-pupil spending in California was $15,860.

The state’s Department of Finance projects per-pupil spending will be $17,444 for the nearly 5.9 million students enrolled in grades K-12 in California’s public schools in 2023-24.

According to the May revision of the governor’s budget, the state will spend a total of $127.2 billion on K-12 education.

Anyone who believes California would be better off if only we could go back to the school funding level before Proposition 13 should consider this: If per-pupil spending was restored to the pre-Proposition 13 level in 1969-70, the state’s total spending on K-12 education for 2023-24 would be approximately $38.2 billion.

That’s $89 billion less than we’re paying now.

Maybe the Legislature should focus on where the money is going.

Declines in Civics and History Proficiency

 Donna St. George at WP:

Just 13 percent of the nation’s eighth graders were proficient in U.S. history last year, and 22 percent were proficient in civics, marking another decline in performance during the pandemic and sounding an alarm about how well students understand their country and its government.

The findings, released Wednesday, show a five-point slide since 2018 in the average history score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, often called “the nation’s report card.” In civics, eighth grade scores fell two points, the first decline ever recorded on the tests, which cover the American political system, principles of democracy and other topics.

Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, referred to the results as “a national concern,” saying that “too many of our students are struggling … to understand and explain the importance of civic participation, how American government works and the historical significance of events.”

Told They Can't

Narrated by, Xolo Maridueña (star in Cobra Kai, Netflix)

"Told They Can't" is the compelling story of high profile professionals of color from families and backgrounds society doesn't consider ideal. Their parents (if they had family support) didn’t have access to an education, most worked for low pay and had little or no hope for advancement in life.

Their classroom experiences were painful and offensive. They were overlooked, dismissed and marginalized. Unfairly placed in remedial classes, not considered for the advanced readers group, and presumed to be uninterested in college prep classes, yet not even asked.

At home, most faced extreme personal hardships including hunger, poverty, abuse and neglect. No one would ever have predicted each would become a successful professional. Today they are engineers, doctors, medical professors, educators, authors, research scientists and elected state and federal government leaders.

Each one of them deserves our deepest respect and fullest admiration. Their stories make it clear, since they overcame nearly impossible problems to be successful, we all can beat the issues facing us and be successful as well.

So, why were they told they can't? How did society get it so wrong? Their success stories shine a penetrating spotlight on how and why they were so badly misjudged. It's stark glare reveals a familiar false premise, one deeply believed by many in our society - only the ideal few, from a traditional, privileged background and family income level will/can be successful. This is pure myth, daily proven false many times over. Yet, this old fairy tale, when preferred, generates toxic negative stereotypes and prejudices, which foster irrational biases toward others.

The truth is every child (human), has unlimited potential, no matter background, ethnicity, or family income.

THE FILM'S HEROES

Lisa Ramirez, Ed.D - migrant child farm laborer; an author who earned a doctorate in education and served in leadership at the U.S. Department of Education.

Tony Cardenas - His immigrant parents had very little opportunity or education; yet their offspring, including Tony attended college. He became an engineer, community leader and was elected to and serves in the U.S. Congress

Anna M. Caballero - California State Senator, graduate of UCLA law school and UC San Diego. Born to a family of copper miners from Arizona. She has very real world advice for students and parents.

Esteban G. Burchard, MD, MPH - raised in the tough SF Mission Barrio; he studied at Stanford Medical School and Harvard, was a National Health Advisor to President Obama and now is a research scientist at UCSF

Katherine Flores, MD - grew up a migrant child farm laborer; attended college, became an MD, a medical professor and Director of the Latino Center for Medical Education and Research at UCSF Fresno

Fernando S. Mendoza, MD, MPH - son of an immigrant farm worker; he studied at Stanford and Harvard, became a pediatrician, professor of pediatrics and Associate Dean of Diversity at Stanford Medical School

Enrique Diaz - Enrique, when 2, came to the U.S. with his mother, both undocumented. By age 6 he was laboring in the fields, a migrant child farm worker. Enrique earned his computer engineering degree at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where he was recruited and hired as a Research and Development Scientist for Apple in the Silicon Valley

Blanca E. Rubio - as an undocumented child, she was twice deported; today she is a U.S. citizen and elected leader in the California State Assembly

Raul Ruiz, MD, MPH, MPP - grew up a migrant child farm worker; attended Harvard, is an ER doctor and a leader in the U.S. Congress

Ramon Resa, MD – Abandoned age 2, grew up a migrant child farm laborer; earned a degree in medicine, became a pediatrician in the Central Valley to kids like he was. An author, and public speaker

THE FILM'S LESSONS

1. REFUSE to accept being told you can’t, even by those in authority. Rather aspire to become all you possibly can, no limits.

2. Acknowledge that every child has limitless human potential, no matter background, ethnicity, or family income.

3. All may overcome seemingly insurmountable problems and challenges, just as the individuals featured in this film have. If they could do it, so can each of us.

4. It's imperative to correct the flawed metrics society uses when forecasting which students have potential for success. Parents, school boards, administrators, teachers, and staff must adopt a more inclusive understanding and appreciation for the human potential of all – not only "ideal" candidates from privileged traditional backgrounds.

5. It's time for deep examination of what is valued and who is admired in our culture and why; move individuals like those featured in this film to the top of the list of heroes we respect, admire, and want to be like. Follow their example.

Every Child Has Limitless Human Potential

Class Inversion and House Districts

  Stef Kight at Axios:

Nine of the top 10 wealthiest congressional districts are represented by Democrats, while Republicans now represent most of the poorer half of the country, according to median income data provided by Rep. Marcy Kaptur's (D-Ohio) office.

Why it matters: The last several decades have ushered in a dramatic political realignment, as the GOP has broadened its appeal to a more diverse working class and Democrats have become the party of wealthier, more-educated voters.

• "Republicans were the party of the country club, and they're increasingly the party of country," lobbyist and political analyst Bruce Mehlman told Axios.
• "We have seen an inversion of Democrat and Republican shares of the highest- and lowest-income districts — and the highest and lowest college degree-holding districts," Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman told Axios.

By the numbers: 64% of congressional districts with median incomes below the national median are now represented by Republicans — a shift in historical party demographics, the data shows.

California Inequality

Income Inequality in California, by Tess Thorman, Daniel Payares-Montoya, and Joseph Herrera at PPIC

• The gap between high- and low-income families in California is among the largest in the nation—exceeding all but three other states in 2021 (the latest data available). Families at the top of the income distribution earned 11 times more than families at the bottom ($291,000 vs. $26,000 for the 90th and 10th percentiles, respectively). In 1980, families at the top earned 7 times more than those at the bottom, and the current gap reflects 63% income growth for the 90th percentile, and 7% growth for the 10th percentile over four decades.
• California’s income distribution reflects high rates of poverty. Income is frequently not enough to meet basic needs (on average a family of four requires about $37,000). Families in the bottom quarter of the income distribution are at risk of poverty absent major safety net programs.
• Wealth is more unevenly distributed than income. In California, 20% of all net worth is concentrated in the 30 wealthiest zip codes, home to just 2% of Californians.
• Californians are concerned. According to the PPIC Statewide Survey, 71% believe that the gap between rich and poor is increasing; a similar share think the government should do more to reduce that gap.

The COVID-19 pandemic widened income inequality.

• Income inequality was shrinking in the years leading up to the pandemic, due to notable gains for the lowest-income families. Incomes for families at the 10th percentile increased by 23% between 2016 and 2019, compared to 5% for families at the 90th percentile.
• Between 2019 and 2021, top incomes grew consistently, by 6% for the 90th percentile. Middle incomes (50th percentile) faltered in 2020 but rebounded in 2021. Low incomes (10th percentile) fell 7%.
• These estimates describe pre-tax income and include a conservative estimate of unemployment (UI) benefits, without which low incomes would have been lower by at least 12% in 2020, and 5% in 2021. They also take a conservative approach with inflation, which may impact lower- and higher-income families differently and exacerbate inequality. For instance, from 2017–20, those in the bottom 20% spent 69% of all pre-tax income on food and transportation (including gasoline)—areas where prices have risen most—while those in the top 20% spent 14% of their income on those same categories.

Rising income inequality is driven by a job market that favors highly educated workers.

• Shifts in technology and international trade have played key roles in reshaping jobs, creating advantages for college-degree holders. Among families in which any member holds a four-year degree or higher, median income has increased by 34% since 1980. Median income did not increase for families where no member holds a four-year degree.
• Families with college graduates earn $2.24 for every $1 that families without college graduates earn, as of 2021.

Work and Social Capital

Brent Orrell, Daniel A. Cox, Jessie Wall at the Survey Center on American Life:

To understand better the social nature of the American workplace, we surveyed 5,037 American adults in June 2022. We asked them about workplace friendships, relationships with supervisors, workplace social capital investments, and feelings of satisfaction, appreciation, and loneliness. The answers to these questions help highlight and clarify work as a social environment and activity and what that environment and activity mean for workers, employers, and managers.

Our data suggest the workplace is an important generator of social capital, with spillover effects for personal, family, and community life. More than half of Americans have met a close friend through their work or a spouse’s work, and those who have strong relationships at work tend to have strong social connections with their family and people in their community. However, not everyone contributes to or benefits from workplace social capital equally, with disparities arising along gender and educational lines. College-educated women and men with no college education represent the positive and negative poles of workplace social capital.

These findings mirror recent research that has identified a growing social disparity in the lives of Americans with and without a college degree. On nearly every metric, the college-educated are reporting more sustained engagement across a wide variety of social outlets. As a previous AEI report said, “College graduates live increasingly different lives than those without a college degree. They are more socially connected, civically engaged, and active in their communities than those without a degree.”[13] It seems this disparity exists on the job as well.

Educational disparities are also associated with different outcomes in social capital development between workers and supervisors. College-educated workers are most able to take advantage of rich networks of relationships to access opportunities on the job, from mentoring to skill building to personal support.

Americans with close workplace friends are generally more satisfied with their job, more often feel engaged and excited about their work, and are less likely to be looking for new career opportunities. They are also more invested in and satisfied with their community outside of work. Where social capital at work is missing, which is the case especially for noncollege-educated men, loneliness and dissatisfaction prevail.

However, increasing investments at work also appear to be associated with a preoccupation with work that can become “workism.” The college-educated population, and women in particular, reap benefits from being the social capital catalysts, but they also report increased anxiety, stress, and dependence on work for personal identity. The close of this report discusses barriers to social capital development in the workplace, including imposter syndrome, crude or insensitive humor, code-switching, workplace tenure, and remote work.

Test Scores Plunged During the Pandemic

Mark Schneider, Director of IES: 

Mounting evidence shows just how much damage the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closures wreaked on our nation's students. The recently released results for NAEP's Long Term Trend (LTT) assessment for 9-year-old students adds depth to an already dismal picture.

LTT has been administered to 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students for decades. Focused on core skills, LTT in reading was first administered in 1971 and math in 1973, giving us a very long trend line. But for now, I am interested in a much shorter (2 year) time frame. NAEP administered LTT for 9-year-olds between January and March in 2020—the data collection ended within days of the nation's schools shutting down. LTT was administered again in January through March of 2022, making it a nationally representative sample of student performance right before the pandemic and (hopefully) at the end of the nation's misery.

What does LTT show?

To paraphrase an old saw and repeating my comments on other NAEP results: If there wasn't bad news, there would be no news at all. Between the pre-pandemic assessment in 2020 and the post-pandemic assessment in 2022, overall scores went down 7 points in math and 5 points in reading—an unprecedented decline. Tapping into LTT's extraordinarily long trend line, math scores this low were last seen in 1999 and reading scores this low in 2004. Decades of progress wiped out in 2 years.

Fathers

At AEI, W. Bradford Wilcox and colleagues write:

The decline of marriage and the rise of fatherlessness in America remain at the center of some of the biggest problems facing the nation: crime and violence, school failure, deaths of despair, and children in poverty.

The predicament of the American male is of particular importance here. The percentage of boys living apart from their biological father has almost doubled since 1960—from about 17% to 32% today; now, an estimated 12 million boys are growing up in families without their biological father.1 Specifically, approximately 62.5% of boys under 18 are living in an intact-biological family, 1.7% are living in a step-family with their biological father and step- or adoptive mother, 4.2% are living with their single, biological father, and 31.5% are living in a home without their biological father.2

Lacking the day-to-day involvement, guidance, and positive example of their father in the home, and the financial advantages associated with having him in the household, these boys are more likely to act up, lash out, flounder in school, and fail at work as they move into adolescence and adulthood. Even though not all fathers play a positive role in their children’s lives, on average, boys benefit from having a present and involved father.

 1. Numbers are calculated based on the 2019 American Community Survey, and Lydia R. Anderson, Paul F. Hemez, and Rose M. Kreider, “Living Arrangements of Children: 2019,” Current Population Reports, P70-174, U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC, 2021.

2. Ibid.

State and Local Government Employment

From the Census:

 Education, hospitals, and police protection constitute the largest functional categories of state and local governments. In March 2021, 12.6 million people were employed on a full- or part-time basis in a capacity related to these functions. The remaining 6.2 million employees worked in other functional categories. Education, the single largest functional category for state and local government (which includes elementary and secondary, higher, and other education), employed 10.5 million people. Among those public education employees, 7.8 million worked at the local government level, primarily in elementary and secondary education. State governments employed another 2.7 million education employees, mostly in higher education. The next largest functional category, hospitals, employed 1.1 million state and local government employees. Of those employees, 0.7 million worked at the local government level, and 0.5 million worked at the state government level. Police protection, which includes people with power of arrest as well as other police support staff, accounted for 1.0 million workers for state and local governments. Local level governments employed 0.9 million of all police protection workers, and 0.1 million worked at the state government level. 

 

Local Deliberation

Jonathan E. Collins and Julian Bessinger have a Brookings article titled " The case for participatory democracy during educational crisis."

In 2010, an organization called Everyday Democracy (ED) organized the Strong Start for Children (SSFC) citizens’ deliberation to identify policies and practices that could be used to strengthen the quality of early childhood education. ED partnered with local community organizations, which recruited 290 community members from across Albuquerque to participate in small group deliberations called “dialogue circles.” Through these deliberations, they shared ideas with representatives who then raised the ideas at the 2011 SSFC Policy Forum in Santa Fe. The policy forum itself featured small group deliberations with community members and policymakers. As a result of SSFC, the University of New Mexico Family Development Program created an early childhood development and education resource directory. There was even healthy spillover, as the New Mexico state legislature went on to pass a tribal-language preservation bill.

Study Casts Doubt on Value of Pre-K

 

Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade.© Request Permissions

Durkin, K., Lipsey, M. W., Farran, D. C., & Wiesen, S. E. (2022). Effects of a statewide pre-kindergarten program on children’s achievement and behavior through sixth grade. Developmental Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001301.  Abstract:

As state-funded pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs expand, it is critical to investigate their short- and long-term effects. This article presents the results through sixth grade of a longitudinal randomized control study of the effects of a scaled-up, state-supported pre-K program. The analytic sample includes 2,990 children from low-income families who applied to oversubscribed pre-K program sites across the state and were randomly assigned to offers of admission or a wait list control. Data through sixth grade from state education records showed that the children randomly assigned to attend pre-K had lower state achievement test scores in third through sixth grades than control children, with the strongest negative effects in sixth grade. A negative effect was also found for disciplinary infractions, attendance, and receipt of special education services, with null effects on retention. The implications of these findings for pre-K policies and practices are discussed.

From the article:

While a state pre-K program is the focus of this article, a large body of research has focused on the Head Start program. However, there is only one randomized study of longer-term Head Start effects (Puma et al., 2012), one that also randomized applicants to oversubscribed programs. Head Start children had larger gains than controls on literacy and language measures (but not math) prior to kindergarten entry, but these effects disappeared by the end of kindergarten. Focusing on earlier Head Start programs, Deming (2009) conducted a study comparing siblings within the same family born between 1976 and 1986 who did or did not attend Head Start, and found long-term positive Head Start effects on adult outcomes even though test score differences faded. In a similar analysis, Pages et al. (2020) found that using the Deming sample but extending the measurement period decreased the adult effects, and data for children attending more recent Head Start programs showed mostly negative effects. Siblings who attended Head Start were less likely to be employed or enrolled in school compared to their siblings who mostly received home care. These later Head Start programs occurred within the same time window as the implementation of the Tennessee Voluntary Pre-K (TNVPK) program that is the topic of the current article

Deming, D. (2009). Early childhood intervention and life cycle skill development: Evidence from Head Start. American Economic Journal. Applied Economics, 1(3), 111–134. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.1.3.111

Pages, R., Lukes, D. J., Bailey, D. H., & Duncan, G. J. (2020). Elusive longer-run impacts of Head Start: Replication within and across cohorts. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 42(4), 471–492. https://doi .org/10.3102/0162373720948884

Puma, M., Bell, S., Cook, R., Heid, C., Broene, P., Jenkins, D., Mashburn, A., & Downer, J. (2012). Third Grade Follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study Final Report (OPRE Report # 2012-45). Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services