This and That, February 10, 2024

 Huge Congratulations to the Garfield High School Boys Basketball team - State Champs!

Interesting story about how Everett School District had a huge deficit ($28M) that their senior leadership was able to drop to about $4.4M. From HeraldNet:

Everett Public Schools’ deficit is projected to drop by over $20 million by the 2024-2025 school year, following attrition and layoffs that led to the loss of 140 staff members last year, as well as an increase in tax revenue.

Twenty-three of those staff members were laid off, according to the school district. 

 Under a plan approved by the school board last year, the district would save $27 million through “staff reduction” and slashing operation costs. Most of the reductions were made through attrition, Reeves said.

“There have been no reductions in teachers, office professionals or paraeducators,” Reeves said in an email on Wednesday.

A February 2023 budget presentation predicted a deficit of $27.9 million for the 2023-2024 school year, but that number plummeted to an estimated $4.4 million for 2024-2025, partly thanks to a predicted $12 million increase in revenue.

I believe that before she left, Director Vivian Song, had asked staff about an increase in revenue and they admitted that was true. It is unclear to me how much it is. 

Interesting interactive story from the New York Times on test scores after the pandemic; they are starting to turn the corner. 

Elementary and middle-school students have made up significant ground since pandemic school closings in 2020 — but they are nowhere close to being fully caught up, according to the first detailed national study of how much U.S. students are recovering.

Overall in math, a subject where learning loss has been greatest, students have made up about a third of what they lost. In reading, they have made up a quarter, according to the new analysis of standardized test score data led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard.

The findings suggest that the United States has averted a dire outcome — stagnating at pandemic lows — but that many students are not on pace to catch up before the expiration of a $122 billion federal aid package in September. That money — the single largest federal investment in public education in the country’s history — has paid for extra help, like tutoring and summer school, at schools nationwide.

Even with the federal funds, the gains were larger than researchers expected, based on prior research on extra money for schools. Recovery was not a given, judging from past unexpected school closures, like for natural disasters or teachers’ strikes.

Still, the gap between students from rich and poor communities — already huge before the pandemic — has widened.

Speaking of "high dose"tutoring (which I have heard mentioned at SPS Work Sessions), another story from the NY Times:

At first, it was heavy lifting. With one student especially, she said, it felt “like I was falling on a brick wall — he was always trying to ditch Saga.” So she spoke to him one-on-one, explaining how tutoring could help him. He began showing up and making progress.

“The most fulfilling part of tutoring is that ‘aha’ moment when students finally believe in themselves, too,” 

While tutoring during Covid conjures reports of teachers hired away to lead private pandemic pods, or families with means paying generously for tutoring outside school, the kind of tutoring Ms. Mitchell did — high-dosage, in-school learning in small groups — is one of the most powerful interventions the public education system has, with a large body of research showing benefits like higher graduation rates, reduced absenteeism and the ability to close half a year’s gap in learning.

Research out of the University of Chicago on Saga Education’s model shows an even greater potential impact: the ability to close a gap of up to two and a half years of math in a single school year.

Since 2018, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — one of the philanthropic investors providing funding for in-school tutoring — has worked with Saga to significantly bring down the cost of in-person tutoring, to $1,300 per pupil from $3,400 per pupil. That accomplishment represents the kind of innovation the new funding is designed to support. Bob Hughes, the director of K-12 Education for the foundation, said he hopes that, through research, schools can eventually understand which students need a $500 tutoring model, versus $1,200 or $3,400, making these programs more sustainable with public dollars.

The federal government is confident enough about the evidence behind tutoring that it is investing heavily in such programs.