closing tabs

 Things I've had open to share: 

• I linked to this in yesterday's post, but do read the New York Times coverage that, yes, ICE raids do have an impact on attendance: 
  

  The spike in absences is equivalent to the average student missing about 15 days of school each year, up from 12 days, according to Professor Dee’s paper.
  He called the findings “a canary in the coal mine” for public education. If absences continue to be elevated, they could threaten student learning and children’s mental health.

  While the article suggests unlinking school funding from attendance (the data are from California) and perhaps adding funding when there are raids, the answer is of course not having them in the first place.
  At some point, someone may want to mark that chronic absenteeism is part of the school accountability system in Massachusetts.

  
  
  I'd add that something that is under schools' control is how they talk about attendance. Awards, shiny prizes, and laudatory social media posts, I'd suggest, are beyond tone deaf at this point. 
  Relatedly, don't miss the Boston Globe on Geovani Esau De La Cruz Catalan, who was picked up by ICE four days after graduating from high school, as well as the op-ed from an anonymous Milford High student.

• Speaking of attendance, it turns out that actually talking with families about why their students aren't attending can yield information that schools might be able to do something about.
  
  
• The Daily Beast reports that Trump wanted Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education because he didn't want someone from education.
  
  

• In Maine, the battle over using school funding in private schools is leading to the natural question of if such schools have a right to discriminate.

• In the roster of Trump administration losing in court, note that the Department of Education is bringing back some of the research contracts it has or has had: 
  

   The Trump administration disclosed in a June 5 federal court filing in Maryland that it either has or is planning to reinstate 20 of 101 terminated contracts to comply with congressional statutes. More than half of the reversals will restart 10 regional education laboratories that the Trump administration had said were engaged in “wasteful and ideologically driven spending,” but had been very popular with state education leaders. The reinstatements also include an international assessment, a study of how to help struggling readers, and Datalab, a web-based data analysis tool for the public. 

   

• Somewhere, second grade me is saying 'I told you so': a gender gap in mathematics opens between boys and girls after only four months in schools, and widens stunningly in the second year, finds this study (from France) in Nature.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• And in library news: the British Library is restoring Oscar Wilde's library card, 130 years after it was revoked. Happy Pride!