Part One summarized the premise of this series: an examination of key stats from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) comparing Montgomery County to its largest neighbors. Part Two looked at population. Part Three looked at gross domestic product (GDP). Now let’s look at per capita GDP, which is economic output per person.
The chart below shows real per capita GDP growth (adjusted for inflation) for the large jurisdictions in the region in the most recent year measured.
MoCo’s real per capita GDP grew by close to the region average and surpassed six of ten competitors in 2022. This was one of the county’s better economic performances.
Now let’s look at the five-year change.
During this period, the county’s real per capita GDP was stagnant. This is similar to the county’s performance in GDP overall.
This chart shows the ten-year change.
Once again, MoCo was one of the region’s worst performers. Its real per capita GDP grew at about half the region average over the last decade.
MoCo has the reputation of a wealthy county with a large economy. But let’s remember: we compete in a region of heavyweights, and they are all trying to improve. The chart below shows MoCo’s per capita GDP as a percentage of the region’s. That statistic has had some ups and downs, but it improved more often than not through 2017. Since then, it has been falling.
For much of the last decade, MoCo’s economic output per person has been nearly stagnant while the vast majority of our neighbors have done better. This not only limits economic opportunities for our residents – it also places a ceiling on our county budget growth.
Last fall, MCPS released its spring 2024 Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program (MCAP) results by school. For the first time my sources can remember, MCPS released them in spreadsheet format rather than pdf, a positive step for transparency. As for the results themselves, well… keep reading.
Let’s start with elementary schools. The table below shows a summary of results for all elementary schools in English Language Arts/Literacy and math by demographic group. Overall, 54% of students were rated as proficient in literacy and 45% were rated as proficient in math. There were wide gaps among sub-groups.
The gaps across schools were huge. 131 elementary schools reported results. 75 schools reported that a majority of all students were proficient in literacy and 59 reported that a majority were proficient in math. Among Black students, 55 schools reported that a majority were proficient in literacy and only 15 reported that a majority were proficient in math. Among Latino students, 30 schools reported that a majority were proficient in literacy and only 16 reported that a majority were proficient in math.
Now let’s look at middle schools. The table below shows a summary of results for all middle schools in literacy, math and Algebra 1 by demographic group. Overall, 54% of students were rated as proficient in literacy, 18% were rated as proficient in math and 43% were rated as proficient in Algebra 1. Again, there were wide gaps among sub-groups.
Variation among schools was considerable in literacy and Algebra 1 whereas most results in math were subpar. 40 middle schools reported results. 19 schools reported that a majority of all students were proficient in literacy, 9 reported that a majority were proficient in Algebra 1 and only 1 (Thomas W. Pyle MS in Bethesda) reported that a majority were proficient in math. Ten middle schools reported that less than 10% of all students were proficient in math.
Among Black students, 14 schools reported that a majority were proficient in literacy, just two reported that a majority were proficient in Algebra 1 and none reported that a majority were proficient in math. Nineteen middle schools – nearly half of them – reported that less than 10% of Black students were proficient in math.
Among Latino students, 8 schools reported that a majority were proficient in literacy, 4 schools reported that a majority were proficient in Algebra 1 and none reported that a majority were proficient in math. Twenty-nine middle schools – almost three-quarters of them – reported that less than 10% of Latino students were proficient in math.
Let’s finish with high schools. The table below shows a summary of results for all high schools in literacy and Algebra 1. Overall, 61% of students were rated as proficient in literacy and 5% were rated as proficient in Algebra 1. Literacy had variation among sub-groups but Algebra 1 scores were almost all bad.
25 high schools reported results. In terms of literacy, 17 reported that a majority of all students were proficient, 12 reported that a majority of Black students were proficient and just 6 reported that a majority of Latino students were proficient. In terms of Algebra 1, no schools reported that a majority of all students, Black students or Latino students were proficient. To the contrary – 20 schools reported that less than 10% of all students were proficient, 22 reported that less than 10% of Latino students were proficient and 24 reported that less than 10% of Black students were proficient.
Why are Algebra 1 results so much worse in high school than middle school? Algebra 1 can be taken at either level and most students take it in middle school. High school students taking Algebra 1 are a different group and face challenges associated with taking the class later.
This column concentrates on race a lot, but economics matters too. The scatter charts below provide an example. On each chart, each dot represents an elementary school. On the horizontal axis, the median household income in 2018-22 of each school’s zip code is plotted. On the vertical axis, the percentage of Black elementary students (in the first chart) and Latino elementary students (in the second chart) who were proficient in math is plotted. See the upward sloping line of best fit? That shows the positive relationship between household income and proficiency.
The correlation coefficient for Black elementary students and median household income is +0.48, a moderate positive correlation. The correlation coefficient for Latino elementary students and median household income is +0.81, a strong positive correlation. I found similar correlations when comparing literacy results to household incomes.
It’s not just about race, folks. Economics helps explain variation in scores inside the Black and Latino student populations. This is another important dividing line in MCPS.
MCPS deserves credit not just for releasing these scores but also releasing them in spreadsheet format. That significantly increased the speed of these calculations. This particular sheet did not contain comparative data for prior years to enable evaluation of progress. Hopefully the new regime will add that data in the future.
Now to the scores themselves. The overall impression here is not that they are uniformly bad. Rather, from a statistical perspective, the dominant characteristic of these scores is their extreme variability. There are quite a few success stories and also a lot of problems, the latter often concentrated in particular schools and sub-groups.
Folks, is this what a high-performing school system looks like?
Rory Smith has been watching soccer for 40 years and reporting on it for 20, eight of them at The New York Times.
A few weeks ago, the soccer team that occupies rather more of my thoughts than is healthy had a problem. Well, strictly speaking, it had several. One was that all of the players, including my son, were under the age of 7, which it turns out is something of a tactical limitation. Another was that I had been roped into being one of the coaches.
More urgently, though, we kept conceding goals. Avoidable goals. Silly goals. Goals wrapped up in gift paper and presented to the opposition, accompanied by a heartfelt card.
Technically, when children start playing formal soccer in England — at the age of 6 — the games are not competitive. There is no league table. The results are not even recorded. That arrangement is not quite the same, though, as nobody knowing what the results are. And it was apparent, to anyone who could count, that our results were not good.
It was at this point that I hatched a plan to limit the damage. It seemed to me quite a good plan. We had spent two years encouraging the children to play soccer the way it is meant to be played. They pass out from the back. They take a touch. They rely on their technique to avert danger. They express themselves.
But it had become very clear, very quickly that this approach had not survived contact with reality. We were conceding goals in great bucket loads because we kept creating problems for ourselves: dribbling across our own box, passing aimlessly into the middle of a congested field, turning not into space but into trouble. We kept losing games. And while winning or losing was not supposed to matter, we worried that, sooner or later, the children would start losing enthusiasm.
Mr. Smith arriving for practice alongside his son and his father-in-law.Credit…Mary Turner for The New York Times
What we needed, I thought, was just a dash of the ancient wisdom that had been passed down to me, when I was taking my first tentative steps in soccer. Geoff — my first and only youth coach, whose son took all the free kicks and corners — had given us two instructions, and only two: Play the way you are facing and, if in doubt, boot it out.
And so, I took my son aside and suggested, gently, that it would be perfectly fine — if he felt under pressure, if the opposition was swarming him, if there was no other option — just to put the ball somewhere nice and safe. Play it into a channel, upfield, if you can. If that is not an option, then slip it out for a throw in.
This guidance was, in truth, something of a sacrifice for him. My son is a decent player, I think. Quick, tall, hard-working, surprisingly strong for someone I see, quite often, being pinned to the ground by his 2-year-old sister and informed that he is now her “baby.” But he is also more easily instructed than his peers, who do not rely on me for food and shelter, and so it fell to him to act as our troubleshooter.
That was the theory. This was the practice: For a three-week spell, directly after that little parental intervention, there was not a sphere in existence that my son did not efficiently, deliberately and occasionally quite artfully put out of play.
Mr. Smith offered his son some ancient soccer wisdom: clear the ball if swarmed by the opposition.Credit…Mary Turner for The New York Times
Often, that involved his chasing down an opponent, winning the ball and immediately thrashing it off the field. And sometimes it meant taking possession, with time and space, deftly bringing the ball under control, looking up at his teammates and then coolly slotting it out for a throw, like that time Renato Sanches passed to an advertising board.
The problem, I suppose, is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. There are some soccer journalists out there who have taken the time, and made the effort, to earn actual coaching qualifications. I am not one of them. Coaching, until I had children, was not something that I ever particularly yearned to do.
But I have spent 20 years or so talking to those people whose job it is to develop young soccer players, the ones who go on to grace the world’s most famous fields, the ones who take a game and make it an art. Unfortunately, when I was asked to help out my son’s age group — under the auspices of an actual qualified coach, thankfully — I did so with Ideas.
These were, I think, broadly quite healthy. I knew, for example, that such a tiny proportion of players become professional that there is absolutely no point putting any pressure on your charges whatsoever.
They are not there to win. They are not there to fulfill your dreams. They are there to feel the joy of playing, to love the game, to learn all it can teach about teamwork and endeavor and exercise. In Norway, which produces a lot of soccer players, there is no actual competition until the children hit their teens.
Such a tiny proportion of players become professional that there is no point in putting pressure on young players.Credit…Mary Turner for The New York Times
I knew that abusive language and behavior, even violence, is a mounting problem in youth soccer, that referees and coaches and all the other volunteers who provide a service for children each weekend do so in an increasingly poisonous atmosphere, all spittle-flecked rage and threats.
I knew that English soccer in particular had been held back, for years, by the emphasis on the physical and the industrial and the cynical, by the tyranny of booting the ball out of danger when in any doubt. I knew that elite academies now cherish technique above all else, that they teach children to revere the ball, not to surrender it at the first opportunity.
And I knew, a little counterintuitively, that no less an authority than Pablo Aimar — one of soccer’s last great true artists — feels that the emphasis on passing at any cost is debilitating to young players’ technical development. If children are not encouraged to dribble, Aimar believes, then the thrill of seeing a player slalom between opponents will be all but lost.
The problem, of course, is that there is nothing so dangerous as a little knowledge. In my three months or so as an under-7 coach, I have learned many things. I have learned that some people take youth soccer very seriously: One of our opponents had rigged up an iPhone to film the game, presumably so that the coaches could review the tape afterward.
I have learned, too, that on occasions, children can be too obedient. They take things both seriously and literally. If you tell them, say, to put the ball out for a throw, then that is what they will do. Every single time. (This does not work in a domestic setting, with tidying up, for instance. I’ve tried.)
Mostly, though, I have learned things about myself. I would never have thought to describe myself as competitive, not really. If I am playing, of course, I would generally prefer to win than to lose, but the result does not prey on my mind, particularly.
There is something, though, about seeing your child play — knowing their happiness is dependent, to some extent, on the outcome; knowing that you want them only to experience pleasure, and never pain; knowing that you are all but powerless to determine what happens — that sharpens the senses.
Perhaps that stands to reason. Perhaps that is something people have always known, that it is in sports that parents catch their first, unnerving glimpse of what is to come: a son or daughter, out there in the world, no longer under their protection, reliant only on themselves and their friends to overcome the challenges being placed relentlessly in their path.
Mr. Smith and his son at the end of practice.Credit…Mary Turner for The New York Times
But it still comes as a shock to know one thing and to feel another, to tell yourself that the outcome does not matter, that it is the taking part that counts, that what they learn today will serve them well tomorrow, and yet to want more than anything for them not to taste disappointment, to fret at the prospect of sadness and dismay.
I had always found reports of referees being verbally abused in youth soccer troubling, of course, but also somehow laughable: The idea of being so worked up over a bunch of children chasing a ball seemed essentially absurd to me.
I know now, though, that at least once I have had to stop myself from offering an instantaneous and unfavorable review of a referee’s performance. And that was after I had refereed my first game, and come off the field to some pretty pointed criticism from both my son and his grandfather. (I knew it was a foul, I just thought my son was being dramatic. It was a teachable moment.)
Mostly, though, I know now quite how much it can mean, to be there with your child as they start to do this thing that you love, that you have loved, for so long, and to see it start to bring them the joy that it has brought you.
We won our first game last week. My son scored twice. I don’t think he was trying to put either of them out for a throw. (He has subsequently described them as “Luis Díaz goals.”) At the final whistle, he and his teammates ripped off their jerseys in the cold November air and wheeled away in celebration, beaming at what they had achieved. I have loved soccer for a long time. But it has never made me happier than it did then.
Some Montgomery high schools will offer Holocaust studies as a semester-long elective course, following a school board vote earlier this month.
By Nicole AsburyNovember 18, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST Washington Post
Amid calls for Montgomery County Public Schools to educate its students more on the Holocaust, some high schools in the district will offer an elective course next year on the history surrounding the World War II murder by Nazi Germany and its collaborators of about 6 million Jews.V
The semester-long course will give students an “in-depth historical analysis of the Holocaust and the events and ideas which led to the Holocaust and the aftermath of the Holocaust,” according to a summary given to the Montgomery school board. It was one of several elective courses unanimously approved by the board earlier in November.
The decision comes after the school system — Maryland’s largest with over 160,000 students — saw several antisemitic incidents in recent years, ranging from students drawing swastikas on classroom desks and in bathrooms to a person spray painting “Jews Not Welcome” across Walt Whitman High School’s entrance sign.
In the aftermath, several Jewish students called on the district to expand its teachings on the Holocaust, and also joined efforts with state lawmakers to advocate for a bill that would have mandated “antihate and Holocaust education.” Proponents say such instruction could curtail the rise of antisemitism in schools, which they say has escalated since the start of the Israel-Gaza war. Students have also reported a rise in Islamophobic and anti-Arab incidents.
The state bill didn’t pass in the most recent legislative session. Currently, Maryland’s social studies framework — which guides school systems on what to teach — explicitly mentions the Holocaust as a topic for discussion in grades 6-7 and in U.S. history courses. It also guides high school world history teachers to provide instruction over the role nationalism played in the development of Germany during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Montgomery County Public Schools has previously said it teaches students about the Holocaust in U.S. history and world history classes. But some educators say they have noticed high school students don’t have a strong academic understanding of what happened during that time.
“I think as we get further and further away in terms of knowing people who have survived the Holocaust, there’s a lot more myth and misconceptions,” said Christopher Murray, a social studies teacher at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School who proposed the elective and plans to teach it next school year. “A lot of students fill in and hear things or piece together what they think the Holocaust was.”
Murray said he believes some students don’t understand that the Holocaust “is a piece of a larger concept of antisemitism,” and lack the knowledge of “how certain structures came together and how it unfolded.”
Murray, who has been an educator for about 20 years, said he briefly taught a Holocaust studies elective course at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Catholic school in Bethesda about six years ago. At the time, Murray was getting his master’s degree in Holocaust and genocide studies at Gratz College.
He returned to Montgomery County Public Schools to teach at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High, and he proposed the Holocaust studies course in 2022.
His course proposal said students would learn, among other things, how the impacts of antisemitism and propaganda created an environment that led to a human catastrophe and how Jewish people resisted discrimination.
After he pitched it, Murray briefly left the school system to teach in Mexico for two years. But while he was gone, Steve Kachadorian, a social studies teacher at Damascus High School, taught the elective in fall 2023 as a pilot. Kachadorian, who typically teaches AP European History and AP World History, said he wanted to try something new.
Kachadorian said he allowed students’ interests to guide the course rather than following a rigid curriculum. He said the class was interested in learning more about modern antisemitic movements that deny the Holocaust happened and wanted to understand how social media has spread hatred. He said students were also curious about the history of antisemitism in Europe before the rise of Nazi Germany.
He said the course — which is taught for about 90 days — allows students to dig deeper into the Holocaust and its lasting impacts. “When you have this much time, you can talk about how the survivors have dealt with it,” he said. “You can talk about how the Holocaust is reflected in art. You can talk about the rise of antisemitism in Europe.”
Kachadorian tried teaching Holocaust studies again in the spring, but not enough students enrolled.
Courses require a minimum of 15 enrolled students to be placed on the schedule, said Tracy Oliver-Gary, a supervisor for PreK-12 social studies for the Montgomery school system. She said Whitman High School also tried offering the course as a pilot last school year, but similarly struggled with getting enough students to sign up.
Typically, courses are piloted for two years to allow for feedback before receiving final school board approval. The Holocaust studies course has only been taught one year, Oliver-Gary said.
The school board approved a recommendation to make Holocaust studies an active course at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High. It will also be offered at Damascus High and Whitman High. The elective has no costs associated with it, since the teacher creates the curriculum on their own, Oliver-Gary said.
The school board also approved several other electives, including ethnic studies at Poolesville High School; Muslim global experiences at Magruder High School in Rockville; and global climate change at Northwood High School in Rockville and Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda.
By Brian Broome November 11, 2024 at 1:09 p.m. EST Washington Post
Every Sunday, like many Black boys way back when, I was stuffed into a suit, a comb was run through my hair, and I was dragged off to church very much against my will.
It never took. My questions about it were far too numerous, and the inconsistencies within it became too much of a strain when I got old enough to recognize how suffering was doled out by said God. It always seemed to me that some people, by their mere existence, were receiving far more than their fair share. I realized that injustice and cruelty were much more prevalent in the world than were kindness and charity, and by the time I got around to asking myself what kind of loving God would approve all this suffering for only certain people, I was done. I never darkened the door of that church again.S
But my mother soldiered on. Service every Sunday and Bible study on Wednesdays. My mother is a devout Christian. I mean a real one. She believes in feeding the hungry, housing the unhoused and caring for the sick. She was my very first example of faith before I got out into the world and saw with my own eyes how religion seemed to have morphed into a weapon of greed and power. My mother’s faith is strong. It comforts her. And now I wish I had some of it.
When I called her a couple of days after the election from my newly turned red state, she answered the phone in her red state as fresh as a daisy. Didn’t seem stressed at all, even though she, like myself, was hoping for a different outcome. When she heard the exhaustion in my voice, she asked me what was wrong, and I told her about my fears. I told her about my anger. I told her about the woman standing in front of me at the drugstore who bumped fists with the cashier celebrating their victory over me and those like me — and about the hatred toward them I felt bloom in my heart that hadn’t been there before. I told her how there was no justice in the world.
And, before I could go on any longer, she stopped me and told me that all was in God’s hands and that He would make things right.
It has always annoyed me when she says things like this. It feels like a platitude. A nonanswer. A nonsolution. And, for the first time, in my distress, I told her that. And she wasted no time dressing me down.
My mother is a septuagenarian Black woman who grew up in rural Georgia and then moved to Ohio. She has lived in red states (or purple states that turned red) before we even called them their colors. She remembers Strom Thurmond, George Wallace and Richard M. Nixon. She has been screamed at in the face by their minions, who didn’t hide behind anonymity on the internet. She has seen it all, including a thousand Trumps, Vances, Bannons and Stephen Millers, and she believes she survived it all because of God and that everything is going to be all right. There is, she says, nothing new under the sun.
My mother comes from a generation of Black Americans who have seen justice snatched away more times than you’ve had hot dinners. She has heard politicians shout the n-word into microphones in the middle of the town square. And, through it all, Jesus was her rock. I envy her that sense of security now. That ability to get on with things, certain that they will get better. She told me she slept like a baby after Trump was named the winner because she knows, firsthand, that strife in this life is unavoidable.
But even though we’re tired, she said, it’s not okay to sit back and do nothing. Embrace your second wind when it comes (and it will come).
I forget sometimes that some of the worst racism of our past isn’t that far back in the rearview mirror. Many of the people who endured so much of its naked ugliness are still here to tell the tale. My mother’s way is hard for me. Faith in God feels so passive. Although I don’t share her faith, I do believe in her.
So, if you’re a Black American, or riddled with anxiety right about now, maybe you should talk to your mother. Or your grandmother, if you’re lucky enough to still have one. Perhaps they can shed some perspective on what you’re going through right now. Or, at least, offer a little hope.
How does faith inform your politics? Does your belief system affect or dictate how you vote? Do you look to your faith leaders for guidance in how to cast your ballot? Or do you believe religion and politics should be kept separate? Share your thoughts with us.
Every two years, AmeriCorps partners with the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct the Current Population Survey Civic Engagement and Volunteering Supplement, the most robust survey about civic engagement across the country and over time. The most recent survey shows the civic participation of Americans aged 16 and up between September 2022 and 2023.
The data informs AmeriCorps’ Volunteering and Civic Life in America research, a comprehensive look at how people make a difference in their communities and promote the common good. The latest research examines trends in formal volunteering (including virtual volunteering for the first time), informal helping, and other civic behaviors at the national level, within each state, and in the largest twelve metro areas. The research supports evidence-based decision making and efforts to understand how people make a difference in communities nationwide.
Formal Volunteering and Informal Helping
According to the latest data, the share of Americans who volunteer through an organization is rebounding. The national formal volunteering rate increased by five percentage points between 2021 and 2023.
Formal Volunteering
Formal volunteering involves helping others through organizations and includes activities like supporting public health efforts, supporting food banks, and tutoring students to help them stay on track in school.
More than 28 percent of Americans—nearly 78 million people—formally volunteered for an organization between September 2022 and 2023. In total, these volunteers served an estimated 4.99 billion hours with an economic value of $167.2 billion.
Informal Helping
Informal helping involves helping neighbors with tasks like house sitting, watching each other’s children, or lending tools.
The share of Americans who informally help their neighbors is climbing in the latest data. More than 54 percent of Americans—or 137.5 million people—informally helped their neighbors between September 2022 and 2023. This represents an increase of 3 percentage points over previous years.
Dr. Grant, a contributing Opinion writer, is an organizational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Humans may be the only species that can imagine an unknown future. But that doesn’t mean we’re any good at it.
We’re routinely wrong about which career we’ll choose, where we’ll end up moving and whom we’ll wind up loving. We fail even more miserably when we try to predict the outcomes of national and global events. Like meteorologists trying to gauge the weather more than a few days out, we just can’t anticipate all the variables and butterfly effects.
In a landmark study, the psychologist Philip Tetlock evaluated several decades of predictions about political and economic events. He found that “the average expert was roughly as accurate as a dart-throwing chimpanzee.” Although skilled forecasters were much better, they couldn’t see around corners. No one could foresee that a driver’s wrong turn would put Archduke Franz Ferdinand in an assassin’s path, precipitating World War I.
Yet a hunch about the future can feel like a certainty because the present is so overwhelmingly, well, present. It’s staring us in the face. Especially in times of great anxiety, it can be all too tempting — and all too dangerous — to convince ourselves the future is just as visible.
In 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles ended World War I, the Allied powers celebrated. The world was finally returning to peace. They had no idea that the national humiliation of that treaty would sow the seeds of another world war. Just as a tragedy can leave us oblivious to the possibility of silver linings, a triumph can blind us to the prospect of terrible reverberations.
In 2008, Democrats rejoiced at Barack Obama’s victory, unaware of how it would pave the way for the rise of Donald Trump. In 2020, Democrats were thrilled that Joe Biden won, certain that it was the best outcome. But in hindsight, were they right?
Think of how things might have played out if Mr. Trump had won that election. There would have been no big lie. No Jan. 6 insurrection. No Supreme Court doctrine of presidential immunity. Fewer axes to grind and more moderates to temper the president’s worst impulses. And in this year’s presidential campaign, we would have been voting for a new slate of both Republican and Democratic candidates, fully vetted through party primaries. Of course, it’s also possible that even worse things would have happened. There’s no way to know. And that’s precisely the point.
Acknowledging that the future is unknowable can bring some comfort when it feels as if the world is shattered. It can also offer a dose of humility sorely needed in a chaotic world, in which new technologies such as artificial intelligence accelerate the pace of change and make its effects that much harder to guess. Even the Cassandras who manage to anticipate extreme events are usually lucky, not smart; they tend to overweight unlikely scenarios and miss the mark on probable outcomes.
Our struggles to predict the future aren’t limited to events. They apply to our feelings, too. In the heat of the moment, we overindex on our anguish today and underestimate our capacity to adapt tomorrow.
Elections are a perfect case study. In 2008, studies showed that John McCain’s supporters overestimated how unhappy they would be after Mr. Obama won the election. In 2016, when Mr. Trump beat Hillary Clinton, research revealed that although stress was high among her supporters on election night, their moods started to recover within a day or two. In surveys before and after, liberals reported being depressed only if asked directly about the 2016 election; they didn’t actually end up being more depressed over the next year. Across millions of tweets, negative sentiments about the 2016 election among Democratic voters took only about a week to return to the pre-election base line, and in blue states, there were no increases in Google searches for depression or antidepressant use.
Political defeat is an example of what psychologists call ambiguous loss. We may be mourning the death of our hopes and dreams, but it’s temporary. We forget that unlike people, plans can be resurrected. That was true for Trump supporters in 2020, and it’s true for Democrats now.
Pain and sorrow are never permanent. They evolve over time, and ideally they help us make sense, find meaning and fuel change. As the author and podcaster Nora McInerny put it, “We don’t move on from grief. We move forward with it.”
Ambiguous loss is not a funeral. It’s a reckoning. Like touching a hot stove, it hurts so we don’t miss its lessons. Feeling devastated about an election is a cue to figure out what went wrong so it doesn’t happen again. A sense of righteous indignation can energize us to stand up for our principles. Anxiety about what comes next can help jolt us out of complacency.
It’s unsettling to realize we have no power to predict the future, because it means we aren’t in control of our fate. At the best of times, that can leave us holding our breath. But in the worst of times, embracing uncertainty proves liberating. It reminds us how quickly our fortune can change.
By Nicole Asbury November 8, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EST Washington Post
Montgomery County advocacy groups and afterschool service providers say they have noticed a troubling trend: Students of color were not reading on grade level, but their parents had no idea because a report card indicated the child was passing in the subject.
Now, the Black and Brown Coalition — an advocacy group for families of color — is asking Montgomery County Public Schools to make that information moreeasily accessibleto parents. The group is asking for an “early-warning system” that would require educators toidentify students who are falling behind in reading and communicatethat directly to families through a letter and phone call. They arealso asking that the school system provide interventions once a child is below grade level and that those plans are communicated with parents.
Part of their request mirrors a literacy policy recently approved by the Maryland State Department of Education that requires schools to screen students on their reading progress three times each year and notify families.
“For years, Black and Brown parents had been anesthetized, if you will, because they had no idea the magnitude of the problem facing their own children,” said Diego Uriburu, whose group, Identity, provides afterschool programs to Hispanic and Latino youth in the county.🌸
Wylea Chase, director of operations and community engagement for the Black and Brown Coalition, said parents have talked among themselves for a long time about their confusion with their child’s progress in reading. A report card would indicate a child was performing well in the subject, she said, but parents would later get a notice to enroll them in summer school to improve their academic performance.
“Our parents simply did not know,” she said. “And you can’t support what you don’t know.”
The school system gives other data — like state and district test scores — that say whether a child is behind, but it can be confusing.
MontgomerySuperintendent Thomas Taylor has acknowledgedthere are “a lot of gaps” in how the school system communicates with families. During a recent town hall hosted by the coalition, he told audience members he was compelled by the organization’sidea “of creating a better system of reporting to parents,” and saidit will be piloted at some district schools. The district did not make administrators running the pilot available for comment.
Across Maryland, there are wide performance gaps between Black and Latino students, and their White and Asian peers. Results from Maryland assessments taken in the spring show that, overall 79 percent of both White and Asian students tested in the Montgomery district were proficient in English Language Arts. Meanwhile, 46 percent of Black students and 32 percent of Latino students were proficient.
The Montgomery school system is Maryland’s largest andone of the state’s most diverse. About 35 percent of its student population is Hispanic/Latino, 24 percent is White, 22 percent is Black, and 14 percent is Asian.
But the coalition has said some families of color havehad problems navigating the district.
In 2022, the district released an “antiracist audit” thatincluded comments from focus groups and surveys for district parents, staff and students. It found that “some staff perceive that the current system for communication and family engagement produces barriers for families of color.” And nearly 30 percent of families “didn’t know or disagreed that their child’s school engaged them in ways that respect and honor culture,”according to the report.
Leaders with the Black and Brown Coalition say it is imperative for parents to have better information about their child’s progress in reading, especially given changes at the state level.
Maryland’s new literacy policy includes a component that would hold back third-graders who aren’t reading on grade levelstarting in the 2027-28 school year. As the policy was crafted, associations representingschool board members and superintendentsacross Maryland told the state board of education in a letter that they were worried the policy could disproportionately impact non-White students.
At therecent coalitionforum, Taylor said he had concerns over the policy’s long-term impacts, and cast it as having “very high stakes.” When asked by another parent how many students entered the fourth grade reading below grade level, Taylorsaid he was unsure but guessed it was likely to be “in the 50 percent range.”Hecalled the data point “alarming and really disquieting.”
Thenew statepolicy allows parents to insist their child move on to the fourth gradeeven if they are reading below grade level, but the student would have to enroll in a supplementary reading program. School systems muststart screening students regularly for reading difficulties during the 2026-27 school year.
In the meantime, leaders with the Black and Brown Coalition say they are waiting for more details from Montgomery school leaders about how it will adopt some of the group’s recommendations.
Taylor has said publicly he wants to implement the suggested strategies districtwide, but he has some concerns about how well the school system is positioned to do it. He said the request is “labor intensive” for teachers and would require training.
But he said the request “is high on the list of priorities” for the district.
“There is nothing more frustrating as a parent when your child comes home with something from school, and you don’t know how to help them,” Taylor said. “And I feel like we’re holding the keys to unlocking how to do that well.”
By Jonathan Haidt and Will Johnson New York Times September 17th 2024
Dr. Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business; Mr. Johnson is the chief executive of the Harris Poll.
This article has been updated to reflect news developments.
Was social media a good invention? One way to quantify the value of a product is to find out how many of the people who use it wish it had never been invented. Feelings of regret or resentment are common with addictive products (cigarettes, for example) and addictive activities like gambling, even if most users say they enjoy them.
For nonaddictive products — hairbrushes, say, or bicycles, walkie-talkies or ketchup — it’s rare to find people who use the product every day yet wish it could be banished from the world. For most products, those who don’t like the product can simply … not use it.
What about social media platforms? They achieved global market penetration faster than almost any product in history. The category took hold in the early aughts with Friendster, MySpace and the one that rose to dominance: Facebook. By 2020, more than half of all humans were using some form of social media. So if this were any normal product we’d assume that people love it and are grateful to the companies that provide it to them — without charge, no less.
But it turns out that it can be hard for people who don’t like social media to avoid it, because when everyone else is on it, the abstainers begin to miss out on information, trends and gossip. This is especially painful for adolescents, whose social networks have migrated, since the early 2010s, onto a few giant platforms. Nearly all American teenagers use social media regularly, and they spend an average of nearly five hours a day just on these platforms.
So what does Gen Z really think about social media? Is it more like walkie-talkies, where hardly anyone wished they had never been invented? Or is it more like cigarettes, where smokers often say they enjoy smoking, but more than 71 percent of smokers (in one 2014 survey) regret ever starting?
We recently collaborated on a nationally representative survey of 1,006 Gen Z adults (ages 18-27). We asked them online about their own social media use, about their views on the effects of social media on themselves and on society and about what kinds of reforms they’d support. Here’s what we found.
First, the number of hours spent on social media each day is astonishing. Over 60 percent of our respondents said they spend at least four hours a day, with 23 percent saying they spend seven or more hours each day using social media. Second, our respondents recognize the harm that social media causes society, with 60 percent saying it has a negative impact (versus 32 percent who say it has a positive impact).
Turning to their own lives, 52 percent of the total sample say social media has benefited their lives, and 29 percent say it has hurt them personally. Although the percentage citing specific personal benefits was usually higher than those citing harms, this was less true for women and L.G.B.T.Q. respondents. For example, 37 percent of respondents said social media had a negative impact on their emotional health, with significantly more women (44 percent) than men (31 percent), and with more L.G.B.T.Q. (47 percent) than non-L.G.B.T.Q. respondents (35 percent) saying so. We have found this pattern — that social media disproportionately hurts young people from historically disadvantaged groups — in a wide array of surveys.
And even when more respondents cite more benefits than harms, that does not justify the unregulated distribution of a consumer product that is hurting — damaging, really — millions of children and young adults. We’re not just talking about sad feelings from FOMO or social comparison. We’re talking about a range of documented risks that affect heavy users, including sleep deprivation, body image distortion, depression, anxiety, exposure to content promoting suicide and eating disorders, sexual predation and sextortion, and “problematic use,” which is the term psychologists use to describe compulsive overuse that interferes with success in other areas of life. If any other consumer product was causing serious harm to more than one out of every 10 of its young users, there would be a tidal wave of state and federal legislation to ban or regulate it.
Turning to the ultimate test of regret versus gratitude: We asked respondents to tell us, for various platforms and products, if they wished that it “was never invented.” Five items produced relatively low levels of regret: YouTube (15 percent), Netflix (17 percent), the internet itself (17 percent), messaging apps (19 percent) and the smartphone (21 percent). We interpret these low numbers as indicating that Gen Z does not heavily regret the basic communication, storytelling and information-seeking functions of the internet. If smartphones merely let people text each other, watch movies and search for helpful information or interesting videos (without personalized recommendation algorithms intended to hook users), there would be far less regret and resentment.
But responses were different for the main social media platforms that parents and Gen Z itself worry about most. Many more respondents wished these products had never been invented: Instagram (34 percent), Facebook (37 percent), Snapchat (43 percent), and the most regretted platforms of all: TikTok (47 percent) and X/Twitter (50 percent).
Our survey shows that many Gen Z-ers see substantial dangers and costs from social media. A majority of them want better and safer platforms, and many don’t think these platforms are suitable for children. Forty-five percent of Gen Z-ers report that they “would not or will not allow my child to have a smartphone before reaching high school age (i.e. about 14 years old)” and 57 percent support the idea that parents should restrict their child’s access to smartphones before that age. Although only 36 percent support social media bans for those under the age of 16, 69 percent support a law requiring social media companies to develop a child-safe option for users under 18.
This high level of support is true across race, gender, social class and sexual orientation, and it has important implications for the House of Representatives, which is considering just such a bill, the Kids Online Safety Act. The bill would, among other things, disable addictive product features, require tech companies to offer young users the option to use non-personalized algorithmic feeds and mandate that platforms default to the safest settings possible for accounts believed to be held by minors.
On Tuesday, in response to mounting pressure from child-safety groups and the threat of regulation, Meta announced new settings and features on the Instagram accounts of teen users, to address concerns about safety and sleep deprivation. While we welcome this first step, we remain cautious; Meta has long been accused of prioritizing profit over the safety of its youngest users, which, of course, Meta denies.
Social-media platforms serve as communication platforms, which means any reforms must respect First Amendment protections; the House measure seeks to do this by focusing on what content is being recommended to kids through their algorithms, not on what kids are posting or searching for. But even so, imagine if walkie-talkies were harming millions of young people. Imagine if more than a third of young people wished that walkie-talkies didn’t exist, yet still felt compelled to use them for five hours every day.
If that were the case, we would take action. We’d insist that the manufacturers make their products safer and less addictive for kids. Social media companies must be held to the same standard: Either fix their products to ensure the safety of young users or stop providing them to children altogether.
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