Gen Z Has Regrets

September 23, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

A girl stands with one hand wrapped around a gigantic stuffed bear and the other holding her phone.

By Jonathan Haidt and Will Johnson New York Times
Sept. 17, 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.More on the pernicious effects of social media.

Graphics by Aileen Clarke.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business, is the author of “The Anxious Generation.” Will Johnson is the chief executive of the Harris Poll.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, X and Threads.A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 22, 2024, Section SR, Page 8 of the New York edi

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/17/opinion/social-media-smartphones-harm-regret.html?searchResultPosition=1

AmeriCorps Releases Brief Covering 2019-2023 Member Exit Survey Data

September 17, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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WASHINGTON, DC— AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism, released a brief exploring the data from its Member Exit Survey from 2019-2023. Since the survey started in 2015, more than 400,000 AmeriCorps members across all programs have completed this survey after exiting service. The questions cover civic engagement, life and career skills, satisfaction and post-service plans, among other focus areas. This data demonstrates a trend of consistent satisfaction across all areas, and a notable increase in college aspirations post-service.

“For thirty years, AmeriCorps has prioritized meeting pressing community needs while also building the next generation of diverse, proximate, results oriented leaders across the social sector. From increased living allowances to more robust training and career pathways support, the Biden-Harris administration has taken unprecedented action to create a world class experience for AmeriCorps members from all walks of life,” said Michael D. Smith, CEO, AmeriCorps. “Our member exit data shows that we are succeeding. AmeriCorps alum feel they are more prepared to meet challenges that come their way. They are bridge builders, problem solvers, and visionaries committed to strengthening communities and improving lives for the long haul.”

The Member Exit Survey brief compares survey responses from 2019, 2021 and 2023. The survey includes questions which explore the four pathways and five domains of the member experience. Nearly 39,000 AmeriCorps members completed the survey in 2023.

Notable outcomes in the survey’s four pathways (bridging differences, civic engagement, ‘getting things done’, and life and career skills) include:

The vast majority of members agreed or strongly agreed with statements about engaging with diversity.

Across all years, 97 percent respect the values of people from different cultures and backgrounds.

Between 85 and 88 percent believe they can express their views in front of a group of people.

Across all years, 94 percent feel they can solve most problems given the necessary effort.

Across all years, more than half identified or leveraged community resources during their service.

Notable outcomes in the survey’s five domains (describing member experience, training, satisfaction with experience, motivation to join, and post-service plans):

Across all years, more than 90 percent of members felt they made a contribution to the community, and more than 69 percent did things they never thought they could do.

In 2023, 73 percent felt that the training and resources they received from AmeriCorps gave them the preparation and support to have a successful service experience.

In 2023, 86 percent agree that participating in AmeriCorps was a worthwhile experience in furthering their professional goals and endeavors.

For all years, 90 percent joined AmeriCorps to gain general skills or competencies, and 86 percent joined AmeriCorps to gain direct experience for a specific career.

From 2021-2023, members who pursued AmeriCorps service to do something while also enrolled in school increased from 38 percent to 45 percent.

The percentage who plan to go to graduate school after service dropped from 24 percent in 2021 to 19 percent in 2023.

In that same timeframe, those who plan to go to college post-service grew from 24 to 30 percent.

The Member Exit Survey informs AmeriCorps’ strategic vision and goals. AmeriCorps member satisfaction remains a top priority for the agency and is reflected in recent decisions like raising the living allowance to $13 per hour and launching partnerships which prioritize career development like the AmeriCorps NCCC Forest Corps, Public Health AmeriCorps and the Youth Mental Health Corps.

Since the first class of AmeriCorps members pledged to “get things done for America” more than 30 years ago, more than 1.3 million Americans have served. Every year, thousands of AmeriCorps members prepare students for success, rebuild communities and revitalize cities, support veterans transitioning from military to civilian life, fight the opioid epidemic, preserve public lands, strengthen the workforce and so much more. Learn more at AmeriCorps.gov/AmeriCorps30.

AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism, provides opportunities for Americans to serve their country domestically, address the nation’s most pressing challenges, improve lives and communities and strengthen civic engagement. Each year, the agency places more than 200,000 AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers in intensive service roles; and empowers millions more to serve as long-term, short-term or one-time volunteers. Learn more at AmeriCorps.gov.

AmeriCorps offers opportunities for individuals of all backgrounds to be a part of the national service community, grow personally and professionally and receive benefits for their service.

My Teenage Son Thinks the World Is Falling Apart. I’ve Changed How I Talk to Him About It.

September 11, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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A photo of a hand holding a mirror reflecting a flash of light.

By Jake Halpern New York Times September 8th 2024

Mr. Halpern is a journalist and author. He and Michael Sloan shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for “Welcome to the New World,” a 20-part series in The New York Times.

Within our marriage, my wife and I have a clash of cultures, which means we talk to our kids quite differently about the state of the world and its future. We play somewhat typecast roles. I’m the upbeat dad from America; she’s the no-nonsense mom from Poland. We’ve created two different schools of child-rearing; it’s pretty much Disney versus the Iron Curtain.

My wife, Kasia, handles hardship better than I do. In general, she is very at ease when discussing the morbid, the poignant and the tragic. You might say this is her native habitat.

Kasia grew up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in Warsaw. There was no coddling there. When she was in first grade, her teacher took her on a field trip to the site of a recent plane crash, where she stared at the charred sneakers of dead passengers. The lesson seemed to be: Bad things happen, and there is no point in pretending otherwise. Oh, yeah, and build better planes. That plane, by the way, was headed to Warsaw from — where else? — the United States. The symbolism went deep.

When our boys were toddlers, and they asked us about death, I hemmed and hawed, while Kasia explained: I will die, your father will die, and someday you will die. As you can guess, tears were shed, but death was thus accurately explained.

Kasia lost her own dad when she was just 10 years old. At the time, her father — a renowned mathematician — was living in France and fighting a losing battle with cancer. No one ever told Kasia, or her brother, about the cancer. When she learned that her father had died, the news came as a complete shock. Now, as a parent, Kasia favors something close to complete transparency. She once told me, “I just want to protect the kids from feeling unprepared in case something terrible happens.” That still breaks my heart.S

I, by contrast, enjoyed a largely tragedy-free childhood. I grew up in the glow of the 1980s, going to the mall, listening to Men Without Hats on my Walkman and watching “MacGyver” on television. Oh, MacGyver! Is there anything in this world that can’t be fixed with duct tape, a Swiss Army Knife and a roguish smile? You get the idea. I believed, wholesale, in happy endings. As a parent, I offered my boys the same upbeat reassurances that my own parents offered me, when the Cold War was raging and Ronald Reagan was assuring us that it was “morning in America.”

To be sure, I worried about my kids, especially when they were little. In America, there is an entire industry that caters to such worries and offers endless fixes: car seats, covers for electric outlets, baby gates, window guards, corner protectors, toilet locks and anti-scalding devices for faucets. When my kids were young, I bought plenty of this stuff, partly because it made me feel like I was doing my job — like I was in control. The funny thing is, the older my kids got, the more I realized just how little control I had. My kids, of course, knew it, too.

My youngest son, Lucian, who is now 15, has a fatalistic streak. He recently observed to me, “The world is coming apart, isn’t it, Dad?” His proof, which was ample, included climate change, power outages, Ukraine, Gaza and the protests on the college campus near us. And he didn’t seem convinced that any of the world’s “supreme leaders,” as he called them, were doing an especially good job.

“How much faith, in general, do you have in adults?” I asked him recently.

“Not much,” he replied.

“Have you always felt this way?” I asked.

“No, the world was better 10 years ago,” he said wistfully. “But, I never really thought about that kind of stuff when I was 5. Back then I just thought about what I was going to have for lunch.”

Fair enough.

In one conversation, Lucian told me: “Dad, it’s not a matter of ‘if’ there will be nuclear war; it’s a matter of ‘when.’” He had this look in his eyes: a gleam of defiance, as if he were daring me — the resident optimist — to disagree. I was at a loss for words because, truth be told, I had been inching my way toward that same terrifying realization. The only question was whether I was willing to offer him some grand reassurance that we both knew would be a lie.

Kasia, as far as I can tell, feels far less conflicted about discussing the apocalypse. This is perhaps because, as a child, she had her own brush with Armageddon. When she was 11 and still living in Poland, the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl had its meltdown in 1986. Her mother and stepfather managed to glean tidbits of information, over the crackle of their radio, via Radio Free Europe.

Everyone feared the worst and scrambled to get hold of iodine pills, because they can protect the thyroid against the effects of radiation. Initially, Kasia’s parents couldn’t find any. Eventually, they learned that a friend of a friend, who lived across town, had some extra pills. They rushed over, but by the time they arrived, the friends explained that they had only two doses to spare. “My parents gave the pills to me and my brother,” Kasia recalled.

Her mother and stepfather didn’t minimize the gravity of the situation. Their approach was to give the kids as much information as possible. Their goal, they later told me, was to “build trust” with their kids so that they could all respect and depend on one another. This vector of trust was tested, a year or so later, when her parents chose to hide subversive, underground newspapers in their apartment. They initially were vague with their children about what they were hiding, but later came clean. Their unity, it seemed, was predicated on truth.

This is still Kasia’s approach to life. She is all about the facts. Perhaps not surprisingly, she went on to become a scientist — an endocrinologist who, incidentally, knows a fair amount about thyroids.

The truth is, Lucian is right. The world is coming apart. I see it from his perspective now. He has grown up in an age in which Covid closed schools, forest fires darkened the skies, hurricanes intensified and rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol. My instinct to minimize all of this was wrong. On some level, I just didn’t want to admit to my kids — or to myself — that I was powerless to protect them. This was, at heart, a lie that would only undermine their trust in me.

The real problem with my approach, however, is that I was robbing my kids of a sense of urgency, a sense that the situation, in much of the world, is dire and that it demands their attention. So I’ve embraced the Iron Curtain response: Yes the world is broken, which is why you need to fix it. Lucian’s response to this, of course, is: We didn’t break it. You did. Touché. He also reminds us: If you can’t fix things, what makes you think I can? And I can only reply: Maybe you can’t, but you still have to try.

Jake Halpern is a journalist and author. He and Michael Sloan shared the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning for “Welcome to the New World,” a 20-part series in The New York Times.

Link

911 twenty three years later

September 11, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sept. 10, 2024 AmeriCorps Press Office press[@]AmeriCorps.govRemarks as Prepared for CEO Michael D. Smith at the September 11 Anniversary EventMichael D. Smith, the eighth CEO of AmeriCorps, gave remarks at a 9/11 Day of Service event hosted with the US Department of Veteran Affairs in Virginia honoring the September 11th terrorist attacks.

CEO Smith’s remarks as prepared are below:

I was a recent college graduate living in Washington, DC, in the fall of 2001. The sight of the gaping hole in the Pentagon as I drove by on Interstate 395 will be seared in my memory for the rest of my life. As anyone who is old enough to remember 9/11 and its aftermath recalls, it was a frightening, chaotic and uncertain time. Our hearts were broken in the face of such devastating loss, and we had no idea what the future held for our nation or our world.

But just like we always have, Americans around the country mobilized to help each other. While firefighters, first responders and healthcare workers stared down disaster and tragedy, faith leaders, childcare providers and mental health professionals began planning for the days and weeks that followed. Neighborhoods around the country came together to pray, comfort one another and meet immediate needs. People of all ages, faiths, backgrounds and lived experiences reached out to one another with kindness and care, overwhelming things that threaten to divide us.

Americans have a history of stepping up and showing up for one another. The aftermath of 9/11 put on full display the instinct we share to reach out beyond ourselves, find community and look out for each other. We have always turned tragedy into triumph, not just with words, but with meaningful action. But that instinct doesn’t just kick in during tragedy. People from all walks of life committing everyday acts of service is what binds us together – in our communities, across our nation and as part of our shared humanity.

At AmeriCorps, we see this humanity in full force every single day. AmeriCorps members and volunteers, just like you, are participating in projects like this all around the country today. Service and volunteering represent the very best of our nation every single day. Regardless of age, background, faith or identity, volunteers across the country come together to heal our shared world. They build community with each other. They step up for their neighbors by tutoring and encouraging students to keep trying, spending time with older neighbors who are homebound or isolated; and building and refurbishing homes for families in need; and caring for our environment, so we can pass on a healthy world to future generations.

Service and volunteering is part of our DNA. According to our most recent Volunteering and Civic Life in America study, more than half of Americans regularly reach out to their neighbors to provide help informally, finding ways to meet unplanned needs by acting together. Each year, tens of millions of people spend time volunteering with an organization that works to improve our country, through meal-packing and food drives, protecting and conserving our environment, supporting public health and spending time with the people in our communities who need a listening ear. And as we all well know, volunteers walk away from their service with a heart full of grace and deeper resolve.

Every day, millions of people learn the healing power of helping others. Joining together in service – whether in the face of disaster or in the face of an everyday challenge – is what unites us as a nation. Service to others is, and will always be, foundational to the American experience. When we leave here today, I invite you to keep that spirit moving forward.

Find a place to volunteer regularly. Tell someone in your life who’s contemplating their next steps to consider AmeriCorps. And above all, keep meeting your neighbors with the grace and humanity our legacy teaches us.

###AmeriCorps, the federal agency for national service and volunteerism, provides opportunities for Americans to serve their country domestically, address the nation’s most pressing challenges, improve lives and communities and strengthen civic engagement. Each year, the agency places more than 200,000 AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers in intensive service roles; and empowers millions more to serve as long-term, short-term or one-time volunteers. Learn more at AmeriCorps.gov.

AmeriCorps offers opportunities for individuals of all backgrounds to be a part of the national service community, grow personally and professionally and receive benefits for their service.

Students Headed to High School Are Academically a Year Behind, COVID Study Finds

August 29, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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As federal funds dry up, eighth graders feel the pandemic’s long shadow most acutely, according to NWEA researchers.

Middle school students need more extra months of learning than those in the earlier grades to reach pre-COVID academic performance, according to new data from NWEA. (NWEA)

By Linda Jacobson July 23, 2024 “The 74”

Eighth graders remain a full school year behind pre-pandemic levels in math and reading, according to new test results that offer a bleak view on the reach of federal recovery efforts more than fours years after COVID hit.

Released Tuesday, the data from over 7.7 million students who took the widely used MAP Growth tests from NWEA doesn’t bode well for teens entering high school this fall. Finishing 4^th grade when the pandemic hit, many students not only lost at least a year of in-person learning, but also transitioned to middle school during a chaotic period of teacher vacancies and rising absenteeism.

The 2023-24 results reflect the last tests administered before federal COVID relief funds run out. Districts must allocate any remaining funds by the end of September — a cutoff that is expected to cause further disruption as districts eliminate staff and programs aimed at learning recovery.

Older students don’t make gains as quickly as younger kids and will have to work harder to catch up, the researchers said. At the same time, the effects of the pandemic “continue to reverberate” for children in the early elementary grades, many of whom missed out on preschool because of COVID. On average, students need at least four extra months of schooling to catch up.R

Studies: Pandemic Aid Lifted Scores, But Not Enough To Make Up for Lost Learning

“It’s not fun to continue to bring this bad news to the education community, and I certainly wish it was a brighter story to tell,” said Karyn Lewis, director of research and policy partnerships for NWEA. “It is pretty frustrating for us, and I’m sure very disheartening for folks on the ground that are still working very hard to help kids recover.”

Thus far, only two states, California and Colorado, have asked officials for extra time to spend the diminishing relief funds that remain, according to the U.S. Department of Education. That means the question for most leaders is how to keep paying for extra tutoring and staffing levels for students still learning below grade level — especially those belonging to groups that weren’t meeting expectations before the pandemic.

Relief money “made a difference, but it certainly did not eliminate the learning loss,” said Dan Goldhaber, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. A recent paper he authored showed that recovery linked to those dollars was small, in part because the federal government gave districts few restrictions on how to spend it.

The American Rescue Plan’s requirement that districts devote 20% of the $122 billion toward reversing learning decline was “super loosey goosey in terms of what that actually meant, how it was measured and what programs counted,” he said.

Some districts that hired teaching assistants to give students additional practice in reading and math have now lost those positions. Dothan Preparatory Academy in Alabama, a seventh- and eighth-grade school, had several staff members who gave students “a few extra lessons” throughout the day based on their MAP scores, said Charles Longshore, an assistant principal. Now those positions are gone.

Charles Longshore, an assistant principal in the Dothan City Schools, said teachers are working to fill in the gaps that students missed during the pandemic. (Courtesy of Charles Longshore)

He hopes a new sixth grade academy opening next month will better prepare kids for grade-level material. Two years ago, when he joined the Dothan City Schools, just north of the Florida Panhandle, he attended a districtwide administrator meeting where every school’s data was posted on the walls.

He remembers looking at elementary school scores with “really low” student proficiency rates of roughly 20% to 30%; teachers have been trying to fill those gaps ever since.

“We’re trying to go backwards to go forwards,” he said. “What third, fourth and fifth grade standards did you miss that are essential for your understanding of seventh and eighth grade standards?”

The NWEA results show achievement gaps continuing to widen. For example, Asian students are showing some growth, but made fewer gains in math last year than during the pre-COVID years. White, Black and Hispanic students, however, continue to lose ground. In both elementary and middle school, Hispanic students need the most additional instruction to reach pre-COVID levels, the data shows.

Racial achievement gaps in reading and math continue to grow despite billions spent on COVID recovery. (NWEA)

In reading, the gap between pre-pandemic growth and current trends widened by an average of 36%, compared with 18% in math. It’s possible, NWEA’s Lewis added, that districts focused extra recovery efforts on math because initial data on learning loss showed those declines to be the most severe.

But that’s left many students without the reading skills to tackle harder books and vocabulary as they move into high school, said Rebecca Kockler, who leads Reading Reimagined, a project of the nonprofit Advanced Education Research and Development Fund. The organization is funding research to find which literacy strategies work with adolescents, who are easily turned off by books intended for young kids.

The pandemic, she said, only exacerbated a longstanding literacy problem for older students.

“About 30% of American high schoolers for 30 years have been proficient readers, and that really hasn’t changed,” said Kockler, a former Louisiana assistant superintendent who oversaw a redesign of the state’s reading program. “It’s always the hardest to move middle school reading results, and even some of the success we would see in fourth grade didn’t always carry up into middle school.”

School closures were especially hard on students with learning disabilities. Both of Tracy Compton’s daughters, who are entering fifth and seventh grade this fall, have dyslexia and didn’t receive services during the pandemic when they were in the Fairfax County Public Schools in Virginia.

“The time they were learning to read was during the school board’s shutdown of schools,” she said. Under a federal civil rights agreement, the Fairfax district still pays for makeup services with a private tutor.

But Compton also moved to a Massachusetts district where she feels her girls are getting the support they need, like access to audio books and noise-canceling headphones during tests to help them focus. “They have made progress, but [have] not fully recovered,” she said.Related

Rose-Colored Recovery: Study Says Parents Don’t Grasp Scope of Learning Loss

She said too many parents don’t know their children are behind.

“They see the report card with A’s or whatever and think all is fine,” she said. “They don’t know where else to check and how to weigh things like standardized tests.”

That’s likely because different tests often tell different stories. The MAP results, for example, are worse than what many states have reported about student performance on their own assessments, which are used for accountability.

Several states last year noted at least partial recovery, and a few showed students had even reached or were exceeding 2019 scores. Lewis explained that state tests measure the “blunt designation between proficient or not,” while MAP tests capture the full spectrum of student achievement levels during the school year.Related

Science of Reading Push Helped Some States Exceed Pre-Pandemic Performance

Districts, particularly low-income districts that received the most funding, need to contend with the latest snapshots of students’ learning as they adjust to the end of federal relief funds, Goldhaber said.

“How districts go about dealing with the fiscal cliff is going to have pretty significant consequences, particularly for the kids that were most impacted by the pandemic,” he said. If districts have to lay off staff — and newer teachers are the first to go — they should limit the impact on the neediest students. “They’ll be shuffling teachers within districts, and that shuffle itself is harmful for student achievement.”

As more time passes since the pandemic, Lewis added that school leaders might be tempted to stop comparing their students’ performance to pre-COVID levels, when states were making progress in closing achievement gaps.

“What keeps me up at night is this idea that these persistent achievement gaps are inevitable, that this is just how it’s going to be,” she said. “I don’t think that’s the case, but I do think it takes innovation and creative thinking … to get us out of this mess.”

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Students Headed to High School Are Academically a Year Behind, COVID Study Finds

Parents Don’t Understand How Far Behind Their Kids Are in School

August 29, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Tom Kane and Sean Reardon May 11,2023 new york times

Graphics by Quoctrung Bui

Dr. Kane is a professor of education and economics at Harvard. Dr. Reardon is a professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

Parents have become a lot more optimistic about how well their children are doing in school.

In 2020 and 2021, a majority of parents in the United States reported that the pandemic was hurting their children’s education. But by the fall of 2022, a Pew survey showed that only a quarter of parents thought their children were still behind; another study revealed that more than 90 percent thought their child had already or would soon catch up. To hear parents tell it, the pandemic’s effects on education were transitory.

Are they right to be so sanguine? The latest evidence suggests otherwise. Math, reading and history scores from the past three years show that students learned far less during the pandemic than was typical in previous years. By the spring of 2022, according to our calculations, the average student was half a year behind in math and a third of a year behind in reading.

Below: 2019 compared to 2022

As part of a team of researchers from Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins and the testing company NWEA — the Education Recovery Scorecard project — we have been sifting through data from 7,800 communities in 41 states, to understand where test scores declined the most, what caused these patterns and whether they are likely to endure. The school districts in these communities enroll 26 million elementary and middle school students in more than 53,000 public schools, roughly 80 percent of the public K-8 students in the country.

We’ve looked at test scores, the duration of school closures, broadband availability, Covid death rates, employment data, patterns of social activity, voting patterns, measures of how connected people are to others in their communities and Facebook survey data on both family activities and mental health during the pandemic.

And to get a sense of how probable it is that students will make up the ground they lost over the next few years, we looked at earlier test scores to see how students recovered from various disruptions in the decade before the pandemic.

Our detailed geographic data reveals what national tests do not: The pandemic exacerbated economic and racial educational inequality.

In 2019, the typical student in the poorest 10 percent of districts scored one and a half years behind the national average for his or her year – and almost four years behind students in the richest 10 percent of districts – in both math and reading.

By 2022, the typical student in the poorest districts had lost three-quarters of a year in math, more than double the decline of students in the richest districts. The declines in reading scores were half as large as in math and were similarly much larger in poor districts than rich districts. The pandemic left students in low-income and predominantly minority communities even further behind their peers in richer, whiter districts than they were.

But while the effects of the pandemic on learning were quite different across communities, they were, surprisingly, evenly distributed among different types of students within each community. You might expect that the more affluent children in a district would be better protected from the educational consequences of the pandemic than their lower-income classmates. But that’s not what we found.

Instead, within any school district, test scores declined by similar amounts in all groups of students – rich and poor, white, Black, and Hispanic (we didn’t have enough data on Asian and Native American students to measure their learning). And the extent to which schools were closed appears to have affected all students in a community equally, regardless of income or race.

Overall, it mattered a lot more which school district you lived in than how much money your parents earned.

Once we know that there was much more variation between districts than within them, the obvious question is: Which community factors determined how children were affected? One primary suspect is school closures. And indeed, our study — like other studies, one of which members of the team worked on — shows that test scores declined more in districts where schools were closed longer. In districts closed for 90 percent or more of the 2020-21 school year, math scores declined by two-thirds of a year, nearly double the decline in districts that were closed for less than 10 percent of the school year.

But school closures are only part of the story. Students fell behind even in places where schools closed very briefly, at the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, and then re-opened and stayed open for the next few years. Clearly, there were other factors at work.

What were they? We found that test scores declined more in places where the Covid death rate was high, in communities where adults reported feeling more depression and anxiety during the pandemic and where daily routines of children and families were most significantly restricted. In combination, these factors put enormous strain on parents, teachers and kids — making it unlikely that adults could help kids focus on school. Curtailed social activities were particularly harmful: On average, both math and reading scores declined by roughly a tenth of a year more in the 10 percent of districts where social activities were most curtailed than they did in the 10 percent least restricted.

We also found that the test score declines were smaller in communities with high voting rates and high census response rates — indicators of what sociologists call “institutional trust.” School closures were also less harmful in such places.

What all this means is that the educational impacts of the pandemic were not driven solely by what was happening (or not happening) in schools. The disruption in children’s lives outside of school also mattered: the constriction of their social lives, the stress their parents were feeling, the death of family members, the signals that the world was not safe and the very real fear that you or someone you love might get very sick and die. The pandemic was a public health and economic disaster that reshaped every area of children’s lives, but it did so to different degrees in different communities, and so its consequences for children depended on where they lived.

Regardless of how exactly the pandemic caused educational harm, the overall effect has been devastating.

So what do we do now?

Schools cannot just “hurry up.” Especially in math, teachers build students’ understanding sequentially — from arithmetic to fractions to exponents to algebra. Schools have curriculums, and teachers have their lesson plans for each topic. In theory, a school district could rethink its curriculum following a disruption — skimming and paring to move more quickly — but that would be difficult to coordinate across hundreds or thousands of teachers. And do we really want students to have an abbreviated understanding of fractions?

When students fall behind, they don’t just catch up naturally. Reviewing data from the decade preceding the pandemic, we identified numerous instances where a school district’s test scores suddenly declined or suddenly rose in a particular grade. Our data does not reveal the causes. But we can see what happened afterward: Students resumed learning at their prior pace, but they did not make up the ground they lost or lose the ground they gained. Years later, the affected cohorts remained behind or ahead.

Over the past two years, many school districts have used the $190 billion in federal pandemic relief money to add tutors and other school staff and to raise summer school enrollment — all in an attempt to accelerate learning. To a limited extent, they succeeded. In one widely used math and reading assessment, the average student in grades three through eight resumed learning at a slightly faster than normal rate — making up about 25 percent of their pandemic loss in math and reading during the 2021-22 school year and the summer of 2022. But even if schools are able to maintain that pace after the federal dollars to pay for tutors and summer school run out, it will take four years or more to return to pre-pandemic achievement levels.

The truth is children are already paying the price. In the coming weeks, 3.5 million high school seniors are set to graduate — less prepared, on average, for college and a career. They will be joining the more than 10 million students who have already graduated since the pandemic began.

In the hardest-hit communities — where students fell behind by more than one and a half years in math — like Richmond, Va.; St. Louis; and New Haven, Conn. — schools would have had to teach 150 percent of a typical year’s worth of material for three years in a row just to catch up. It is magical thinking to expect they will make this happen without a major increase in instructional time.

For those districts that lost more than a year’s worth of learning, state leaders should require districts to resubmit their plans for spending the federal money and work with them and community leaders to add instructional time.

Parents are relieved to see their children learning again. But most parents remain ill informed about how far behind their children are. To help change that, we’ve made our data public and will continue doing so as new data become available.

Public officials could — and should — help get the word out as well. This summer, mayors and governors should be launching public service campaigns to promote summer learning. And school boards should begin negotiating to extend the next school year (and use the federal dollars to pay teachers for the extra time).

Especially given the mental toll of the pandemic, students need more than math and reading this summer. Rather than school districts trying to do it all themselves, they should link with other organizations — museums, summer camps, athletic programs — that already offer engaging summer programming, and add an academic component to those programs. For instance, Boston After School and Beyond provides an average of $1,500 per student in financial incentives and teaching support to add three hours of academic programming per day from a certified teacher at summer camps enrolling Boston students. The incentives are largely paid for by Boston Public Schools. The program is a potential model for other communities.

While summer learning can be part of a solution, it cannot be the sole solution. Research on programs like the one in Boston suggests that participants make up about one-quarter of a year’s worth of learning in math during a six-week summer program. That takes us part of the way, but nowhere near as far as we need to go.

Communities must find other ways to add learning opportunities outside the typical school calendar. Most educational software — like Zearn and Khan Academy — makes it possible to track students’ use and progress. Schools could incentivize organizations working with students after school, on weekends or during school vacation weeks to include time for students to learn online and then reimburse them based on students’ progress. Some districts are even paying tutoring providers based on student outcomes.

Especially in the hardest-hit communities, it is increasingly obvious that many students will not have caught up before the federal money runs out in 2024. School boards and state legislatures should start planning now for longer-term policy changes. One possibility would be to offer an optional fifth year of high school for students to fill holes in academic skills, get help with applying to college or to explore alternative career pathways. Students could split their time among high schools, community colleges and employers. Another option would be to make ninth grade a triage year during which students would receive intensive help in key academic subjects.

As enticing as it might be to get back to normal, doing so will just leave in place the devastating increase in inequality caused by the pandemic. In many communities, students lost months of learning time. Justice demands that we replace it. We must find creative ways to add new learning opportunities in the summer, after school, on weekends or during a 13th year of school.

If we fail to replace what our children lost, we — not the coronavirus — will be responsible for the most inequitable and longest-lasting legacy of the pandemic. But if we succeed, that broader and more responsive system of learning can be our gift to America’s schoolchildren.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/05/11/opinion/pandemic-learning-losses-steep-but-not-permanent.html

Four years after covid, many students still losing ground

August 29, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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New test scores show the worst may not be over, with chronic absenteeism a major barrier to academic progress.

By Laura Meckler and Lauren Lumpkin July 23, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT Wsahington Post

For a time, it appeared as if academic recovery from covid was underway. Now, new research shows that many students are actually sinking even deeper.

The research is based on tests from last winter and spring 2024, four years after schools abruptly went online — and comes just as billions of dollars in federal covid relief money for schools run out.

“At the end of 2021-22, we optimistically concluded that the worst was behind us and that recovery had begun,” NWEA, a testing company that works in more than 9,000 U.S. school systems, said in a paper released Tuesday. “Unfortunately, data from the past two school years no longer supports this conclusion.”

The test score gaps between today’s students and their pre-pandemic counterparts are growing wider, the group found, and are worse than “what we had previously deemed as the low point.”

Together, data from three large testing companies paints a more pessimistic and troubling picture than prior reports and raises questions about how school districts, which face a fall deadline to spend the last of the $190 billion in federal covid relief money, will help large numbers of students who are still behind.

“We’re a long way from pre-pandemic levels of student achievement,” said Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research and the University of Washington, who was not involved in any of the new reports.

It’s unclear exactly why some students remain behind, but experts suggest that teaching children what they missed and current material at the same time is a tall task. Researchers at NWEA, hunting for possible explanations, say one factor may be rising absenteeism. “If kids aren’t in their classroom, how can they be learning?” asked Karyn Lewis, director of research and policy partnerships at NWEA.

The new research comes from NWEA, Curriculum Associates and Renaissance — companies that are employed by school districts to provide assessments throughout the year to help teachers track their students’ progress.

Their findings do not line up perfectly. Two of the three companies found that older students are struggling more than younger ones, while the third found the reverse. But all three found large groups of students who are falling further behind.

NWEA examined spring 2024 scores from about 7.7 million students from grades three to eight who took its MAP tests. It found the gaps between those results, compared with how students performed pre-pandemic, have widened in the years since the height of the pandemic in many grades. For instance, the gap with pre-covid results in sixth grade grew by 40 percent in math between fall 2023 and spring 2024; the gap in eighth grade reading grew by 31 percent.

The gaps are so large, for instance, that the average eighth-grader would need about nine months of additional schooling to catch up to pre-covid levelsin math and about the same extra time to catch up in reading.

The youngest students performed better, NWEA found. They still lagged behind their pre-pandemic counterparts but have started to close the gaps, while they’ve widened for older students. Third-graders, for instance, would need 2.2 more months of school to make up the reading gaps and 1.3 months for math.

“Students, especially older ones, remain a long way from recovery,” the report said.

Some middle-schoolers are struggling because they are behind on basic reading skills, said Cory Chapman, a special education math teacher at MacFarland Middle School in Northwest Washington. This past year’s seventh-graders were in third grade — a crucial year for literacy — when the pandemic sent them home for virtual school.

“The thing is, once you get past third grade, no one’s teaching you how to read anymore,” Chapman said. He has students who understand math — they can multiply, divide and solve equations — but can’t comprehend word problems. “So that wonderful math kid now gets bumped down a little bit because they can’t get through the words.”

Renaissance, which administers Star assessments, does not yet have results for spring 2024, but it does have data from last winter for 5 million students in math and 6.3 million in reading. Its findings echo NWEA’s: The oldest students are struggling the most.Share this articleNo subscription required to readShare

In math, Renaissance found that first-graders had recovered to pre-covid levels of achievement, and there was steady progress from grades two to six. But the gaps between where scores used to be and where they are now widened in math for grades eight through 12.

“Not only has there been no progress in closing the initial covid impacts, average performance in those grades is even farther,” a summary of the results said. “It’s as if the pandemic or some other factor is continuing to result in lower and lower performance.”

The losses were less steep in reading, Renaissance found, and students were not as far behind. Grades one and four had caught up, and grades three and five through 12 were making steady progress. Grade two had made no progress, a finding that researchers were not sure how to explain.

The third testing company, Curriculum Associates, which administers i-Ready assessments, found somewhat different results. It follows cohorts of students and found those who were in grades two, three and four in 2021-22 showing signs of recovery in reading; in math, this was only true of those who were in grade four that school year. It also found that, in most cases, students who were close to or on grade level at that time were doing well by spring 2024.

But on average, younger students and those who were academically behind have lost even more ground in the last two years.

“The younger cohorts had their early childhood experiences messed up — maybe they did not get some foundational skills,” said Jennifer Sattem, senior director of research strategy at Curriculum Associates.

“Recovery is a little bit all over the place,” she added.

Some researchers suggested the academic regression may relate to a twin crisis unfolding across the country: chronic absenteeism. The average number of students missing at least 10 percent of school days — about 18 days — nearly doubled from 15 percent in 2017-18 to 28 percent in 2021-22, based on data from all 50 states analyzed by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. The rate improved but only slightly in 2022-23 — to 26 percent, based on 43 states. Data for last school year is not yet available in most states.

It’s hard for students to learn when they’re not in school, and students who return after missing days in class are often confused and behind, leaders and experts in academia say.

“There’s absolutely a correlation between students coming to school and academics,” said Tiffany Anderson, superintendent of the Topeka Public Schools in Kansas. Before the pandemic, her district successfully worked to decrease chronic absenteeism but saw it spike again in 2021 and 2022. It fell to about 24 percent last school year — still double the pre-pandemic rate.

A 2016 study published in the Economics of Education Review found that reducing absences by 10 days led to gains of 5.5 percent in math and 2.9 percent in reading. An analysis published last year by the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that absenteeism accounts for 27 percent of the overall test score decline in fourth-grade math and 45 percent of the decline in fourth-grade reading. Research last year by the Public Policy Institute of California found that schools with greater increases in chronic absenteeism also had steeper drops in proficiency tests; however, it said that it was not clear if one was causing the other.

In D.C.’s charter and traditional public schools, officials also see a connection between academic performance and attendance and have battled to bring down chronic absenteeism. Roughly 35 percent of students in both school systems were chronically absent between the start of the year and March 1, compared to almost 40 percent over the same period during the 2022-23 school year, according to a midyear attendance report.

Complete data for last year is not yet available. By the end of the 2022-23 school year, chronic absenteeism had reached 43 percent — lower than the previous year but still 13 percentage points higher than pre-pandemic.

“We need young people in school every day, all the time, in order to ensure that we are recovering most effectively and that they are showing up and learning as much as they possibly can,” said Paul Kihn, the city’s deputy mayor for education. “That’s why you see our relentless pursuit of improved attendance.”

Schools have sent automated letters and phone calls to remind parents about attendance, changed program offerings to entice more kids to come, and even purchased rides for students who don’t have safe or reliable transportation. The D.C. Council is piloting an approach that will send teens to social service programs, rather than penalizing them in court, for missing class.

Districts across the country are making similar efforts, said Liz Cohen, policy director at FutureEd, a Georgetown University education think tank.

“There are a lot of states and districts that are really working hard on absenteeism, but I think it’s something that we have to continue to have this sense of urgency on because we will never get the kinds of academic results that kids deserve if we don’t figure out how to get them to come to school regularly,” Cohen said. “Everything else that we’re trying to do around learning loss, whether it’s tutoring or extending the school day or whatever, it’s only going to work if the kids are in school.”

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By Laura MecklerLaura Meckler covers the news, politics and people shaping American schools. She previously reported on the White House, presidential politics and immigration for the Wall Street Journal, as well as on health and social policy for the Associated Press. She is author of DREAM TOWN: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity, about her hometown. Twitter

By Lauren LumpkinLauren Lumpkin is a reporter at The Washington Post covering local schools. Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/07/23/covid-test-scores-learning-loss-absenteeism/

Why social-emotional learning isn’t enough to help students today

August 28, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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Perspective by Valerie StraussDecember 17, 2021 at 2:00 p.m. EST Washington Post

For years now, we’ve watched a movement called social-emotional learning become popular in U.S. schools with the aim of meeting the needs of students beyond academics — a recognition that many aspects of a young person’s life outside school affect how they achieve in a classroom.

Social-emotional learning (SEL) programs are intended to help people learn and effectively use “knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” That comes from the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, which you can learn more about here.

Academics and others have raised questions about the creation and implementation of SEL programs, and others have questioned whether the approach is enough to meet the needs of students today. In this piece, two well-regarded scholars argue that SEL is not enough — and they detail how the United States is far behind other wealthy countries in dealing with the well-being of young people.

The authors are Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, both professors at Boston College. Their book “Well-Being in Schools: Three Forces for Uplifting Your Students in a Volatile World” was just published. They previously published together the book “Five Paths of Student Engagement: Blazing the Trail to Learning and Success.”🌸

Hargreaves has been working for decades to improve school effectiveness. He has been awarded visiting professorships in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Sweden, Spain, Japan, Norway and Singapore. He is past president of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement.

Shirley has for many years worked with schools around the world to improve teaching and learning, helping educators in diverse environments work together across disciplines and schools.

The good news: Social-emotional learning is hot. The bad news: Some of it is giving cognition a bad name.

By Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley

A broad movement is tearing through our schools. Many teachers love it. Professional developers can’t get enough of it. Systems are investing heavily in it. Finally, it seems, schools can focus on something else other than test scores and technology: our children’s emotional and mental health. It’s called social and emotional learning, or SEL for short.

SEL is aimed at developing skills that enable young people to understand and express their own and each other’s emotions, manage feelings, learn self-regulation, and build positive relationships. SEL has become a front-line effort to battle the mental health epidemic that is plaguing our young people.

But the question remains: Is it enough?

In the face of rampant racism, digital addiction, a climate change crisis that threatens our entire species, and the greatest economic inequalities in 50 years, positive psychology books that urge us to manage our behavior with calmness, resilience, and grit have been flying off the self-help shelves. SEL has joined them. Psychologists, consultants, philanthropies, and system leaders are tackling the mental health crisis with individualistic, psychological strategies.

No, it’s not enough. When it comes down to the quality of our kids’ lives, we need to go all in.

We’re not against SEL as one way to deal with the covid-19 crisis in education and the spate of mental health issues that preceded it. Covid-19 pulled everyone up short about what truly matters during students’ time in school.

Separated from their peers, teenagers were the most likely age-group to get anxious and depressed. Adolescent suicide attempts escalated by over 30 percent between 2020 pre-pandemic levels, and 2021 levels during the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Adolescents spent over seven hours a day on screens — over double their pre-pandemic use levels. Childhood obesity levels have skyrocketed.

It’s not just the pandemic that has been getting to our kids. So is climate change. Some three-quarters of young people said in a recent survey (conducted in 10 countries by a group of universities) said they view the future as frightening in regard to the climate.

For years, the U.S. record on child well-being has been atrocious. UNICEF places the United States at 36th out of 38 wealthy nations on a table measuring the well-being of 15-year-olds. On physical health, with its astronomical rates of child obesity and third-world levels of child poverty, the United States ranks dead last.

It’s hard to be well if you live in a sick society.

Overdue efforts by U.S. government to turn the tide for America’s poorest and most marginalized young people are more than welcome. The Build Back Better Act promises to reduce child poverty by as much as 40 percent. It will extend paid child-care to millions.

But even all this is insufficient. Compared to many other nations, the United States is still taking a more limited response to the student mental health crisis. Other countries pin their hopes on a broader concept of well-beingthat was advanced by the World Health Organization in 1948. It brought well-being onto the world stage, regarded it as central to peace and security, and made it a societal issue as well as an individual one.

The United States is not fighting awful ill-being with a quest for better well-being. While schools in other countries are confronting big issues such as digital dangers, wealth inequality, children’s rights, excessive testing, and climate change, SEL is offering U.S. educators and their kids into a lesser world of trainable, culture-free, psychological competencies.

By 2013, all U.S. states had identified preschool competencies for SEL. Many states have also developed age-appropriate competencies for K-12 education. Countless professional development courses are being accessed by teachers eager to promote SEL in their schools.

In a world that seems to be falling apart, and where people’s quality of life is collapsing, influential organizations such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (famous for its PISA tests), and the US National Center for Education and the Economy, are turning to social and emotional competencies for most of their answers. This is like responding to the catastrophic flooding caused by climate change, with calls for more sandbags.

The manipulation of social-emotional learning

What does this mean, in practice?

SEL emphasizes keeping calm and getting children to self-regulate “negative” emotional states like anger, anxiety, and depression. A wider view of well-being, however, regards so-called negative emotions like righteous anger and indignation as exactly what’s needed to fire up civic engagement in response to the monumental challenges of our time. Emotions like frustration (with dithering leaders), enmity (toward hatemongers), and disgust (with racism) rarely receive validation in SEL.
SEL justifies almost everything in terms of learning. Perhaps this is a strategy to stave off conservative criticisms that SEL detracts from academic achievement. But pushed to the limit, SEL can be just one more way to jack up test scores. In its very name, SEL addresses only those aspects of well-being that can be regarded as learning, rather than ones that also affect the human development of the whole child. This is very different from well-being policies in Canada, Australia, and Europe.
SEL is indifferent to high stakes tests that are responsible for widespread ill-being. A real well-being agenda challenges such anxiety-inducing practices of top-down accountability.
SEL has limited psychological ways of managing digital risks such as online bullying. Well-being strategies advance systemic strategies of ethical technology use concerning issues like excess screen time and digital addiction.
SEL ignores spiritual, physical, and societal well-being. It doesn’t encourage students to learn outdoors in nature and become stewards of the environment. It has nothing to say about physical fitness. Nor does it address young people’s spiritual hunger to feel part of something greater than themselves.

To be sure, SEL has led to some improvements in student achievement and mental health, including among racialized and minoritized groups. After years of criticism that the so-called neutral competencies of SEL favored privileged White forms of emotionality, an emerging movement toward what’s being called “transformational SEL” is now helping some students find their voice in relation to racism and poverty. But, in general, we think SEL is still being massively oversold.

It’s time for U.S. educators to go beyond the positive and culturally neutral psychologies of grit, growth mindsets, resilience, and self-regulation as the answers to the mental health crisis and everything that’s causing it. We have to reclaim the bigger and bolder well-being agenda for our students and ourselves.

Our world needs to wake up. Keeping our kids calm and just helping them to carry on will achieve the exact opposite. So, instead of turning inward to our skill sets, let’s go all-out and all-in for well-being in our schools and in our societies, to give everyone a better education, for a better quality of life, in a better world.Share14Comments

By Valerie StraussValerie Strauss is an education writer who runs the Answer Sheet blog. She came to The Washington Post as an assistant foreign editor for Asia in 1987 and weekend foreign desk editor after working for Reuters as national security editor and a military/foreign affairs reporter on Capitol Hill. She also previously worked at UPI and the L.A. Times. Twitter

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/17/why-socialemotional-learning-isnt-enough/

After virtual academy closes, student heads to classroom for the first time

August 28, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Nicole Asbury August 26, 2024 at 6:11 p.m. EDT Washington Post

Ameilya Coleman waited expectantly for her mom in front of their driveway Monday morning. She was ready to start the 10-minute walkfrom their hometo Dr. Ronald McNair Elementary School in Germantown.

Monday marked not just the first day of school for Ameilya and thousands of other D.C.-area students. It would be the third-grader’s first time taking classes in person.

The D.C. region is heading back to school, and our local education team wants to hear how you’re preparing for the new year. Submit your thoughts here.

Before now, most of Ameilya’s education was through Montgomery County Public Schools’ virtual academy. But it closed over the summer as Maryland’s largest school system tried to reconcile a shortfall in its budget. The school board’s June decision left the families of over 700 students enrolled in the virtual academy scrambling to decide what to do in the fall.

Some students who are medically vulnerable were eligible for an online home and hospital teaching program that the Montgomery school district provides. But there were many other students, like Ameilya, whose schooling routine would change.

Ameilya’s mother, Barbara Galasso, took photos of the third-grader before they started theirwalk to the school. “Are you excited?” Galasso asked. Ameilya replied with a simple, “Mhm.”🌸

Then, Galasso asked, “Are you scared?” Ameilya shook her head. “Are you sure?” She shook her head again.

Galasso admitted she was scared. One of her 13-year-old twins was bullied in elementary school years ago, she said. She was worried about those experiences repeating as her twins also started their first day at Northwest High School in Germantown. Already, the twin who had been bullied was targeted again while trying out for the high school’s volleyball team, Galasso said, when a girl went up to her and said, “Have you ever played volleyball before? Are you stupid?” Galasso called the athletic director immediately and said, “If one hair on my kid’s heads gets ruffled, I will sue the entire county,” she recalled.

The school system’s leaders “don’t understand the anxiety and mental torment they’re putting these kids through,” Galasso said. “We have to deal with these children.”

The Montgomery Virtual Academy was introduced in 2021 as an option for families who did not want to return toin-person classesafter the coronavirus closed schools. Families filled out an application to join.

Former Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight included money to continue the virtual academy in her recommended budget for the 2024-25 school year. School board members briefly considered cutting the academy in February because it was covered by federal covid relief funds that are set to expire September, according to an email the school board sent at the time. But they chose to keep it.

In June, the board reversed course and eliminated the academy after the county council approved a budget that would give the school system about 99 percent of its requestbutleft a funding gap of about $30 million.School officials claimed that the academy’s graduation and attendance rates were lower compared with the rest of the district. The decision stunned some families, who rallied outside of school board meetings to call on the district to reopen the academy.

Some families appealed the decision in a filing to the Maryland State Board of Education but learnedit could take months before that process is complete, said Sterling High, a parent whose son attended the virtual academy last school year.

High’s two students are enrolled in the district’s home and hospital teaching this school year, buthe said the program is not “as comprehensive or comparable to what the MVA provided.”

Earlier in August, new MontgomerySuperintendent Thomas Taylor apologized to families in a letter for the way the closure of the academy was handled. He wrote the board made the decision to cut the program with the understanding that district administration would find a solution for the families enrolled. But that work did not happen, he said.

Taylor saidhis administration is working toroll out a hybrid program that would “not be identical but similar” to the virtual academy. If approved by the school board and funded, it would launch during the second marking period — which starts in November. He added that the solution wouldn’t work for every student since it would be designed “to serve only those with a demonstrated medical need.”

In an interviewwith The Washington Post earlierthis month, Taylor said that a majority of students in the academy “can return to a regular ed setting.”

“I get that it’s not their preference and that there’s going to be some challenges with that,” he said. “Our school team is there to support our students through those challenges and their families through those challenges.”

Galasso doesn’t think Taylor’s proposed hybrid program is an option for her daughters, and she is worried about their academic performance in a school building. She said that when the coronavirus caused schools to shift to virtual instruction, her twins flourished. Both of them have ADHD, she said, and were able to walk around when they needed breaks. Their grades were a mix of As and Bs.

“Their performance was incredible,” Galasso said. “I can’t even explain to you the difference.”

The family chose to remain online when the school system offered it in 2021. Ameilya followed her older sistersinto the academy when she started school.

But on Monday, that changed.

Ameilya walked a few paces ahead of her mom, carrying her pink Stitch backpack and purple lunchbox. She was excited to see her best friend and her teacher, she said.

Galasso wrapped her arm around her daughter as they approached McNair Elementary. They walked in through the school’s front doors together.

When Galasso emerged a few minutes later, she was crying.

“It’s just everything is brand new,” she said.Share83Comments

By Nicole AsburyNicole Asbury is a local reporter for The Washington Post covering education and K-12 schools in Maryland. Twitter

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The Case for Mandatory National Service

August 28, 2024 Paul Costello1 Uncategorized

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By Jay Caspian Kang

Opinion Writer Jay Caspian Kang A wide-ranging cultural critic and New York Times Magazine contributor tackles thorny questions in politics, culture and the economy.

A few weeks ago, I debuted a running feature called “The Magic Wand,” where I throw out an idea and make the case for it in this newsletter. This week, I want to suggest a solution to the civic worker problem that would bring in a fleet of new employees into some of the more unskilled, less in demand, but ultimately invaluable positions that are indispensable to functioning communities.

The Problem

Last month, The Times published a story about the severe understaffing of New York City’s municipal services. “The wave of departures has included health care workers, parks employees, police officers and child protective service workers,” my colleagues Dana Rubinstein and Emma G. Fitzsimmons reported. Nearly 8 percent of city jobs are currently vacant, a rate five times that of recent years. It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific cause for this situation — The Times’s story cited slow hiring processes, better opportunities in other fields, and the hangover from a pandemic hiring freeze that ended in November 2021.

New York City is certainly not the only city facing a civic employee shortage. In San Francisco, municipal staffing problems have gotten so bad that workers have taken to the streets demanding that the city fill vacant positions. The city of San Diego, as of this spring, had an eye-popping 16 percent job vacancy rate for its various agencies and services. Washington D.C., which is facing a police shortage, started offering a $20,000 hiring bonus to new officers who join the force.

The effects of all these civic worker shortages can be felt in nearly every facet of life. Trash doesn’t get picked up; the police take longer to respond to calls; services that help the homeless suffer from chronic understaffing and infrastructural failure.

The Solution: A Major Expansion of AmeriCorps

In late March, the White House proposed a more than 16 percent increase to the budget of AmeriCorps, a federal service program that gives people a modest stipend to work on various projects across the country. If approved, the agency would receive a total of $1.34 billion, which will go to supporting “250,000 AmeriCorps members and AmeriCorps Seniors volunteers” and “support targeted investments in communities where the need is greatest.”

Instead of just adding 16 percent to the budget of AmeriCorps, the White House should increase the size of the AmeriCorps work force from 250,000 to three million (for the rest of this column, I’ll refer to it as Mega AmeriCorps), embark on a substantial press tour to promote it, and broadly expand the benefits of enrolling in the program. This would be the first step in eventually calling for a revival of the Universal National Service Act, which would require every American to commit two years of their lives to national service between the years of 18 and 25.

This idea might sound scary at first blush, but was actually part of the Democratic mainstream as recently as 14 years ago when Barack Obama seriously discussed a similar idea during his 2008 campaign. Charles Rangel, the former longtime Democratic congressman from New York, repeatedly called for forms of compulsory service for years. More recently, Pete Buttigieg floated the idea while campaigning in 2019. Last year, my colleagues on the editorial board asked if young Americans should be required to do a year of service.

The issue, as the editorial board pointed out, is that it’s difficult, potentially illegal, and perhaps even morally wrong to compel young Americans into a period of service. That said, it’s also difficult to imagine that these programs could become voluntary societal norms without a radical shift in the sense of precarity and pressure that young people feel on a daily basis.

What’s needed is a real test run for universal national service; one that’s championed by the government and not just an assortment of nonprofits like, say, Teach for America. Mega AmeriCorps could be just that. A new fleet of workers, mostly between the ages of 18 and 25, could be placed in cities, towns, and rural areas with civic labor shortages. They should be provided housing, a livable salary, and a job training infrastructure that will not only prepare them to do their work, but also set them up for a career in whatever civic organization they enter.

The key for success would be a slow, but ultimately forceful normalization of joining up with Mega AmeriCorps after high school, which would have the added effect of lessening the pressure that many kids feel to compete and excel in their academic pursuits. Access to higher education plays far too large a role in nearly every facet of American life, from what salary you earn to what side of the political divide you fall. This would be a conscious effort to reduce the importance of a postsecondary education by creating a bridge between high school and a career that could allow you to circumvent the need to go to college at all. Much of the money that goes to Mega AmeriCorps would be spent on training and apprenticeship programs to get young people credentialed and prepared for a career.

Even middle-class kids who might ultimately find their way to a four-year college could be encouraged to join up with AmeriCorps with the proper incentives. For what feels like years, the White House has been debating student loan forgiveness. While I’m not entirely sure about tying existing loan forgiveness to Mega AmeriCorps, I do think the White House could partner with states and, much like the G.I. Bill, offer to supplement or fully cover the state or community college tuition of anyone who had completed two years of service. The service time would also count as class credits and could even help with admission into more exclusive state schools. This would also reduce tuition costs by cutting down on the time a Mega AmeriCorps graduate needed to be on campus.

Here’s a specific example of how it could work

I’ve written quite a bit about how one of the enduring and less-discussed problems with homelessness in California is that there simply are not enough workers to carry out the grand plans of politicians or even maintain the current raft of services. This is understandable even in times when civic agencies are fully staffed, for the very simply reason that working with the homeless isn’t easy.

Currently, much of the homelessness work in California gets contracted out to third-party nonprofits like Urban Alchemy, an organization that helps formerly incarcerated people find work. But the intensity of the homelessness crisis and the labor shortage have placed a great deal of strain on these organizations to keep up with demand.

An energized and well-funded Mega AmeriCorps could produce a new work force to engage with the homeless at every level: Outreach on the streets, support to get people into shelters or into permanent housing, and then follow-ups once people have stabilized. Because it’s a federal program, it would be easier for the public to monitor than third-party nonprofits. And while it might be true that many of the young people who go into these jobs will not work in homelessness services for their whole career, there will at least be enough bodies around to run everything from shelters to permanent supportive housing services to harm reduction centers to so-called “Safe Sleep” sites.

An admittedly too-broad and unpopular opinion

I, myself, am an AmeriCorps alumnus. I did an environmental restoration program in Seattle when I was 19 years old. I was not an ideal employee by any means, but I did plant some trees and learn quite a bit about forestry, climate change and park maintenance. I also learned that there is a value to service, which was an invaluable lesson during a dark time in my life when the thought of going to college and pursuing some sort of career seemed like an impossibility.

Some of these revelations came from just growing up a bit, but I do think that there was something about the almost conscripted feel of the organization that provided me with a sense of duty to the city of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. I joined AmeriCorps as a teenager because I did not have any other plans with my life, nor did I have any skills. It was, in effect, the only place that would take me and give me something to do.

Today’s young people are dealing with much more than I did back around the turn of the millennium. Many feel hopeless and depressed. National service is not a panacea for these ailments, nor can it change the economic precarity that many young people feel, but it can provide a sense of community and a meaningful pathway into a career that falls outside of the clogged and ultracompetitive pathways that exist today.

I do not support compulsory military service, but it seems clear to me that many of the problems with political polarization and the atomization of the individual in this country come from the fact that there are increasingly few places where people from different economic backgrounds can work together for a good cause.

Among the elite classes, the idea of service has mostly been reduced down to a line item on a college application. The much-discussed divides in this country, whether economic, racial or educational, cannot be solved through some feat of wonkery or through pretty speeches by politicians. What needs to exist is some place that can pool a lot of different young people together. College will never accomplish any of that in the way that two years of service — hopefully eventually two mandatory years of service — could.

The good news is that AmeriCorps already exists. It’s time to turn it into something much more ambitious and hopefully let its example pave the way for a national service requirement.

Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.”

Have feedback? Send me a note at kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.Read 471 Comments

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