Friday Report – June 2, 2017

The Friday Report

June 2, 2017

State News

Shortly after midnight this morning, the House passed its budget bill, SB 257, as reported throughout today’s Friday Report.  Overall, the House’s budget plan contains more bells and whistles in K-12 public education spending and policy than the Senate’s, including increases in veteran teacher pay, assistant principal salaries, children with disabilities funding, and “low-performing schools” changes, among other big and smaller ticket items as reflected below in the chart.  (Please note: House budget amendments went through midnight last night, so the appropriations listed below may have been slightly altered by these amendments.) 

The items above in bold are generally not in controversy between the two Chambers’ budgets, and therefore are likely to be funded at the above levels in the final budget.  The differences, however, portend the ensuing debates and the ultimate winners and losers in the state budgeting process.  The next step will be the Senate’s inevitable non-concurrence with the House’s budget bill, which then kickstarts the Conferees process.  This process requires House and Senate budget leaders to “confer” behind closed doors, horse-trade among the winners and losers, and determine the final appropriations and special provisions that will ultimately be brought back to the House and Senate for a final vote later this summer.  For a more detailed line-item comparison of the Governor’s, House and Senate budgets, please check NC DPI’s Financial and Business Services Division website and its “Comparison of the 2017-18 Proposed Budgets.”

Expansion of Vouchers Sparks Debate

House and Senate Republican leaders are planning to expand the state’s school voucher program by nearly one-third next year, but Democrats say the money should be spent on reducing class sizes in public schools instead.

The 2016-17 budget allotted $34.8 million for the vouchers, called Opportunity Scholarships. A proposal in both the House and the Senate budgets would add $10 million more in 2017-18, and another $10 million in 2018-19. The increase follows legislation approved last year to drastically expand funding for the program over the next decade. About 5,800 students received vouchers this year. Some 8,300 will be served next year, and 10,700 vouchers will be available in 2018-19.

“It’s simply supply and demand,” said Rep. David Lewis, R-Harnett. “We are responding to parents who say, ‘Hey, my kid’s on the waiting list. I’d really like the opportunity to do this.'”

House Democrats say the expansion is neither necessary nor prudent.

In a budget subcommittee Thursday, Rep. Rosa Gill, D-Wake, tried to amend the provision to put the additional money into public school classrooms, saying it would help schools pay for a mandated reduction in K-3 class sizes.

Rep. Elmore, R-Wilkes, one of the chief education budget-writers, said the fix to the class size mandate passed earlier this year had taken the immediate pressure off of local school districts, so the extra money wouldn’t be needed.

“We have begun the process of investing in the Opportunity Scholarship program,” added fellow budget-writer Rep. Hugh Blackwell, R-Burke. “There are waiting lists in general. We don’t need to cut these funds back. We need to maintain this investment.”

Gill asked committee staff whether all of the current funding had been used this year. The answer was that it had not.

The amendment was defeated on party lines. Speaking to reporters after the vote, Gill insisted the money isn’t needed.

“What I could not understand is why they’re increasing that amount of the monies for scholarships when it’s already been determined that we have not filled all of the slots, and we still have a reserve,” she said. “They could use it for the arts teachers or the special teachers if they needed to, especially in places where they had to cut.”

Elizabeth McDuffie with the North Carolina State Education Assistance Authority, the organization that administers the voucher program, says both Blackwell and Gill are correct.

McDuffie explained that the program currently has a waiting list of more than 1,500 students. However, some funds for the 2016-17 school year were not spent because some parents accepted scholarships but did not use them. By the time the program was aware the slots were unused, it was too late to offer them to other students.

“We have changed our procedures to require families to provide the name of the school the student will attend by July 1, and we will work with the schools to identify who is not enrolled in order to offer unused scholarships to other students,” McDuffie wrote in an email to WRAL News. “I fully expect we will fund 8,300 students in 2017-18.”

To continue reading the complete article click here.

Excerpt from:

Leslie, L. and Browder, C. “Expansion of vouchers sparks debate.” WRAL. 5/26/17. 

Student Achievement Gap Dominates Debate Over Math

NC House Moves to Shift Road Funding to New Charter School Bus Grant

If Only CMS Could Clone America’s Best Magnet School

Site Chosen for Western NC School of Science and Math

Gov. Cooper Names Senior Education Advisor, Business Committee Head

National News

U.S. Education Dept. Has No Plans for a ‘Federal Voucher Program.’ Let’s Break That Down.

Since President Donald Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal 2018 was released last week, a lot of attention has been paid to a $250 million plan in the U.S. Department of Education’s budget that would pay for, and study the impacts of, private school vouchers. But if you listen to the department’s description of that plan, how you talk about the program matters a great deal.

In an email, department spokeswoman Liz Hill told Education Week last week that, “To be clear, there is no federal voucher program. The [private school voucher] grant program would support states who apply for funding to develop school choice programs, and those States’ plans must adhere to Federal law.”

Here’s where the budget proposal isn’t strictly a direct voucher plan: The proposal in the budget blueprint would not send money directly from Washington to use for tuition vouchers at private school. That makes it different than state voucher programs. Instead, it would be run through a competitive grant program, as Education Week writer Sarah Sparks described here.

Still, on another level, Hill’s distinction might be confusing. Federal money under Title I, for example, flows by a set of formulas (approved by Congress) to local districts, who then spend that money on their schools, within certain federal requirements. Yet you might be hard-pressed to find an education funding expert who says Title I isn’t a federal program just because the federal money doesn’t go directly from Washington to students.

The grants would also be subject to federal oversight, since the Education Department would have the responsibility of monitoring the use of the federal grant money.

To continue reading the complete article click here.

Excerpt from: 

Ujifusa, A. “Ed. Dept. Has No Plans for a ‘Federal Voucher Program.’ Let’s Break That Down.” Education Week. 5/31/17.

Free Play or Flashcards? New Study Nods to More Rigorous Preschools

Ashley Rzonca, a preschool teacher at Woodside Community School in Queens, with students in May 2017.

Photo Credit: Edu Bayer, New York Times.

A group of students at Woodside Community School in Queens peered up at their teacher one morning this month, as she used an overhead projector to display a shape. It looked like a basic geometry lesson one might find in any grade school, except for the audience: They were preschoolers, seated cross-legged on a comfy rug.

“What attributes would tell me this is a square?” asked the teacher, Ashley Rzonca. A boy named Mohammed raised his hand, having remembered these concepts from a previous lesson. “A square has four angles and four equal sides,” he said.

As school reformers nationwide push to expand publicly funded prekindergarten and enact more stringent standards, more students are being exposed at ever younger ages to formal math and phonics lessons like this one. That has worried some education experts and frightened those parents who believe that children of that age should be playing with blocks, not sitting still as a teacher explains a shape’s geometric characteristics.

But now a new national study suggests that preschools that do not mix enough fiber into their curriculum may be doing their young charges a disservice. The study found that by the end of kindergarten, children who had attended one year of “academic-oriented preschool” outperformed peers who had attended less academic-focused preschools by, on average, the equivalent of two and a half months of learning in literacy and math.

“Simply dressing up like a firefighter or building an exquisite Lego edifice may not be enough,” said Bruce Fuller, the lead author of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. “If you can combine creative play with rich language, formal conversations and math concepts, that’s more likely to yield the cognitive gains we observed.” The study comes amid rapid expansions of taxpayer-funded preschool in cities like Washington, San Antonio and New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio announced last month that he would eventually expand the program, now open to all 4-year-olds, to 3-year-olds as well.

The new wave of preschools provide playtime, but their major goal is academic “kindergarten readiness,” and the study could provide ammunition for policy makers who want to keep on that course. It could also help officials like Mr. de Blasio make the case for even more public spending on prekindergarten programs.

To continue reading the complete article click here.

Excerpt from: 

Goldstein, D. “Free Play or Flashcards? New Study Nods to More Rigorous Preschools.” The New York Times. 5/30/17.

When Schools Meet Trauma With Understanding, Not Discipline

Young children play outside in the fog at Crocker College Prep, an elementary school in New Orleans.
Photo Credit: Clarence Williams, WWNO.

If you know anything about New Orleans public schools, you probably know this: Hurricane Katrina wiped them out and almost all the schools became privately run charters. Many of those schools subscribed to the no excuses discipline model — the idea that if you crack down on slight misbehavior, you can prevent bigger issues from erupting.

That was also true of Crocker College Prep, an elementary school in New Orleans. It had strict rules about everything. Students had to sit up straight at their desks, eyes tracking the speaker. They had to walk the halls in silence and even wear the right kind of socks. Students who broke these rules, or acted out in other ways, were punished.

The thing is, students across New Orleans face high rates of exposure to trauma, but school discipline policies have rarely accounted for that. Crocker College Prep is now one of five New Orleans charter schools in a collective to become more trauma-informed. That means Crocker aims to account for the social, emotional and behavioral needs of all students, and their lives outside of school.

The Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies found that kids in New Orleans screen positive for post-traumatic stress disorder at more than three times the national rate. The institute also found that up to half of all kids have dealt with homicide in some way, with 20 percent actually witnessing murder. And then there’s the city’s high poverty rate — about 40 percent of kids living below the poverty line. The state’s high incarceration rate means many children have a parent behind bars.

“Generally there just was really not an understanding of how trauma impacts a child,” says Paulette Carter, president and CEO of the Children’s Bureau of New Orleans, a mental health agency for kids and families. “Teachers and school staff really look at children through the lens of, ‘What’s wrong with that child?’ Versus, ‘What happened to that child?’ “

Carter says schools, because they have so many children dealing with many different issues, often don’t think about the reasons behind behaviors. Mental health workers, like her, though, have learned a lot recently about how trauma changes the brain. “A kid who’s been exposed to trauma … that fight or flight response is much more developed and stronger,” Carter says.

To continue reading the complete article, click here.

Excerpt from:

Falk, M. and Troeh, E. “When Schools Meet Trauma With Understanding, Not Discipline.” NPR. 5/30/17.

Opportunities

Applications Open for 2017-18 NC Education Policy Fellowship Program (EPFP)

NC Science and Engineering Fair Teacher Workshop Opportunities

Eastern NC Educators Invited to Attend Free Teacher Leadership Symposium

The Friday Report is published weekly by the Public School Forum of NC and is distributed to Forum members, policymakers, donors, media, and Forum subscribers. Archived editions can be found at www.ncforum.org.

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