Some tabs I have open

•  If you're a history buff, you might be interested in the events going on across the state in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the "Noble Train of Artillery," led by Henry Knox that brought the cannons of Fort Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights. They crossed from New York into Massachusetts Saturday (Hillsdale, NY to Alford, MA, to be exact).
  As you may know, the cannons arriving at Dorchester Heights are what caused the British to leave Boston, which those who grew up in Suffolk County know well happened on March 17. 
  It'll be in Worcester January 31:
  

  Prior to the program at AAS, reenactors with horses and sleds, accompanied by fife and drum musicians, will walk from Worcester City Hall along Main Street to Institute Park.  The procession from City Hall will begin at 1:00 p.m.  At approximately 3:30 p.m., following the program at AAS, reenactors will fire a canon at Institute Park.

  
  
  
• Great work by Mississippi Today on student absence in Simpson County which actually looks at some of why students aren't in school: 
  

  Aaron Thompson drives his two elementary-aged children to school each day, but only when they aren’t sick or the road isn’t flooded. The family of four lives off a ragged stretch of concrete bounded on one side by a hunting trail and, on the other, by a worn bridge dotted with orange traffic cones....The reasons vary by family, with explanations oftentimes exposing a fraying social safety net now relying on younger helpers around the house to take care of elderly relatives and toddlers and teenage laborers in town, who work to contribute to their household income. 

   

• Intriguingly, Matt Barnum (now back at Chalkbeat) is having ​​Lindsey Burke, the current U.S. Department of Education’s deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, on a webinar on Wednesday at noon to discuss "why the administration wants to eliminate the agency, how officials are already working to do so, and what all this means for students, educators, and parents." I have RSVP'd, though I'm going to see how my blood pressure is doing by Wednesday before deciding to tune in or not. 

Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: accountability and assessment

Martinez: results are mixed
no student group across the Commonwealth that is above pre-pandemic levels
"we always meet children where they're at"
foundational goal: regardless of what people's opinions are of where we were in 2019
"here in our Commonwealth, I seem advantages, I see alignment, I haven't seen in other parts of the country"
At the end it's about us coming together
"I'm fine having critical friends...there are no shortcuts in this work"
"the data will speak for itself"

this sheep has nothing to do with it,
but I thought we might need a sheep to get through this

October Board of Ed: accountability update

 on underperforming and chronically underperforming schools

THREE SCHOOLS COMING OUT OF SUCH STATUS TODAY; ONE DISTRICT

May Board of Ed: opening comments

 You can find the agenda here. The livestream will be here.

Craven calls to order with "one member on the phone and two caught in traffic"
updating as we go

The Board of Ed meets in January: accountability

 and the backup is here

The January Board of Education: opening comments

 The Board of Ed is holding their January meeting today at the Department's new location in Everett. 

You can find the agenda here. The meeting will be livestreamed here.

Governor Healey has appointed Dálida Rocha to the labor seat on the Board; she lives in Worcester(!).

The Board of Ed meets Tuesday

 You can find the agenda here. The Board is meeting at the Department's new location in Everett. 

The meeting is opening with introductions of (and possibly presentations by?) the Teacher of the Year and the Milken Award winners. 

There is then a presentation (I guess?) on school safety

Then, yes, Commissioner Riley is pushing ahead with his insistence that the Board change the state accountability system to increase the weight of chronic absenteeism. You can find his memo on it here. In it, he says:

At the January meeting of the Board, I will discuss changing the system to include three years of data in the 2024 accountability results, with more recent years weighing more: 15 percent for 2022 data, 25 percent for 2023 data, and 60 percent for 2024 data. 

The big change, though, has been whisked away to the summary of the accountability system, In it, the proposal is to increase the weight of chronic absenteeism from 10% to 25% for elementary and from 5% to 20% for high school.

I just want to note that not putting the proposed change in weight in the memo is terrible. It looks like an attempt to slide this by. 

The Commissioner no doubt will tout their "support" for school districts, which has been $10,000 per district...which isn't enough to do much with. And then there are of course Secretary Tutwiler's ads.

Note that a change of this type at this point, 55% or so through the year, counts for more than double, essentially; less than half the year remains. This is simply irresponsible. 

And that's, of course, setting aside that there has been no attempt by the Department to find out let alone work on the reasons why students aren't attending school. 

Assuming we get through that, there will also be a budget update, the day before Governor Healey proposes her budget. 

I'll be blogging. 

As ongoingly true, and as it says on the blog itself, the above is my own opinion. Me. Personally.

Interesting little note on the Commissioner's push to increase chronic absenteeism in the accountability system

 ...in this WBUR piece on Secretary Tutwiler coming soon to a television near you:

Tutwiler has long argued that absenteeism is often driven by the “unmet needs” of students and their families, including stable housing. And indeed, among the 59 Massachusetts schools and districts where 30% or more of students were chronically absent last year, all but seven enroll majority low-income students.

Tutwiler acknowledged that some student needs are inevitably “beyond the scope” of educators and school administrators.

But he said that he’s “unwilling to give up,” and hopes to pursue a partnership with community-based organizations that can help families find housing, food or employment. “I feel pretty optimistic,” he added.

MCAS scores and other indicators show that the state is still midway through a fragile academic comeback that depends in part on a return to regular attendance, Tutwiler said.

He stopped short of endorsing Riley’s proposal to fold chronic absenteeism into the state’s school-accountability framework, saying only that he will remain engaged in the process for approving that change.

Hm. 

Meanwhile, we're seeing spikes in COVID, flu, and RSV, and vaccination rates are not nearly what they need to be.

Hey, can we talk about how weird the Board of Ed in December was?

a white tee shirt says "A lot going on at the moment"
(as seen on Taylor Swift)
This is actually one I bought as a gift more than once.
I hope that doesn't violate an anything?

I feel like this kind of got caught up in the December crush, but can we note for a minute how WEIRD the December Board of Ed "is there an agenda/yes, there is/it only has two things/oh wait no meeting after all" thing was?

Secretary Tutwiler gets it

 He's more than the face on the attendance billboards:

As I often say, absenteeism is really a manifestation of a need being unmet. We need to think carefully about questions like, is there a mental health challenge the student is experiencing? Do they have stable housing and enough food? Those are the kinds of things that we're having deep conversations about. In our first fiscal year, we really were thoughtful about investing in mental health strategies and universal [mental health] screeners. I think we're going to see improvements over the coming years. But it is a big issue and we're paying close attention to it.

This is not, of course, how the Commissioner has been approaching this issue at all.  

This may get interesting in the new year. 

Tuesday's Board of Ed meeting agenda: UPDATED

...squeaked in on the legal posting with fifteen minutes to spare this morning. You can find it here.

It's a two item agenda:

• Boston Public Schools
• "Chronic Absenteeism and Proposed Changes to 2024 District and School Accountability Reporting" with that tagged as "Continuing Discussion and Vote to Solicit Public Comment"

The first, of course, is Boston finally getting to be at the table when they're discussed, as opposed to the Board discussing them in their absence when it's not a posted agenda topic. We will, no doubt, hear about bathrooms and buses, as well as English learners and special education. 
And gosh, watch the gender dynamics on this one.

The second is, of course, the continuation of the "these kids need to get in school, districts!" that we've seen at two meetings now. At the last meeting, the Board was reminded that this is not a matter of state regulation, so there are not requirements around time for public comment of a particular length. However, this is, I'll be honest, not the direction I thought we'd see at this meeting. 
There is, as yet, no backup, so we don't have any idea what is being proposed. Don't you love a surprise?

The meeting is also being held at the McCormick Building in Boston, which requires photo identification and scanning of a metal detector to enter. There appears to continue to be no provision for public comment remotely. 

But if you have thoughts on the above, you should get in touch with the Board. 

UPDATE: The meeting was cancelled this morning, but you should still get in touch with the Board. 

What happened at the December 7 Worcester School Committee meeting

 Last night was a LOT, and with two members having commitments as parents and it being the mayoral holiday rounds, we ran part of the Committee with just a quorum, which is unusual! 

That's why, oh committee watchers, I was chairing; in the absence of both the chair and the vice-chair, the senior member chairs (and then hands off sequentially, which is why Molly McCullough chaired when I was speaking). 

Also, it appears the T&G is going to do a terrible job covering this meeting, so I guess it's up to us again.

Note that the agenda is over here.

"It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

 gb 3-257 O’Connell Novick (November 28, 2023) 

To submit testimony in opposition to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s proposed increase in weight in the state accountability system for chronic absenteeism at the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s December meeting.
from the December 7, 2023 Worcester School Committee agenda

I suspect that you might need to be deep underground, beyond the reach of cell service, in order to have missed that there is some concern on children's school attendance. Just in the past two weeks, you could read about it in The New York Times, The Hill, USA Today, plus about every corner of the country. 

If you've been following Board of Ed meetings here in Massachusetts, you may have noticed that this has been a frequent topic of Commissioner Riley at meetings; he spoke about it in October, and then again last month. He has declared, absent any research or even discussion, that the uptick in students being absent is a result of their falling out of the habit of going to school. When asked if he's discussed this with families (which Member Mary Ann Stewart has done at both meetings), his response has been that he's talked to--not with, let alone listened to--them. 

He has decided, not only that this is a focus of this year, but that it is such a focus that the state accountability system needs to be reworked, so that districts can be (my quotes) "held accountable" for student absence. 

Now, let me first be clear: yes, we have more kids not attending school than we did before the pandemic. The presentation at the October meeting made that very clear.

But what Massachusetts as a state does not know is why. We haven't asked. We haven't delved into the various and many reasons why kids might be missing more school than they were. What the Commissioner--and make no mistake that it IS the Commissioner--has done has simply asserted, in his ongoing conviction that school buildings being open is both an unequivocal and irreplaceable good, and that closing school buildings was nothing but harmful, that having buildings closed meant that kids "fell out of the habit."

In marked contrast, and just for example, last month The 74 suggested six reasons for children being increasingly absent: 

1. worsening mental health
2. death of caregivers
3. teacher absence
4. remote assignments
5. higher minimum wage
6. better record keeping

To those--none of which has been mentioned by the Commissioner, note--I'd add offhand that the pandemic did give some of us an increased appreciation for not spreading illness when we have it. I know I, both for myself and my children, am more apt to stay/keep home when ill, both for my own health and for the health of others.

This is a good thing. 

Many of us as parents also know--and maybe we learned that from those remote learning days--how much is and is not missed, in actuality, when our child misses school. Considering that balance on a day when a child is iffy is, I would assert as both a parent and as an educator, part of the balance of making decisions as a caregiver. 

 The Commissioner's solution to this has been twofold: he has given, he's said, about $4M in grants statewide. $4M in a state in which the total for K-12 spending is somewhere in excess of $20B a year. 

He's also going to put the Secretary of Education on billboards to emphasize to parents that it's important that their children attend school. 

Now, I'm more than happy to see Secretary Tutwiler's general enjoyment of his job in more places. But the implicit condensation in billboards telling parents that school is important is a demonstration of just how little the Commissioner is connecting with anyone on this. 
He's certain he knows what the issue is, despite no information.

Doing the actual real work of getting kids back to school more is hard, time consuming, and, yes, quite probably expensive work. It's about relationships, and health, and better support for families and students (and staff, come to that). It's about finding out why each student isn't coming to school, and what it would take to get them there.

That isn't what the Commissioner is doing here. There's no time, no relationships, very little money, and zero interest in the actual why's here. 

The Commissioner now going to jump straight to punish--and that's all this is going to be is a punishment--districts who don't pull those rates up, with very little state support to do so.  

Thus my item on Thursday's Worcester School Committee agenda. The only way we have of stopping this is for many--MORE THAN WORCESTER, please!--push back from the district level on this one. 

The next meeting of the Board is on December 19. 

 _______________________________

The post title is attributed to Mark Twain, but there is no evidence that he said it.

November Board of Ed: chronic absenteeism and accountability

 the memo for this is here 'though that doesn't give any details
Curtin: adjusting the weighing of chronic absenteeism
students missing at least 10% of their days in the school year, so 18 days in 180 days
'19 was just under 13%
have come down from high water of 29.9% in '21 to 22% in '23
rate in elementary has doubled from before 2019
high school, percent increase isn't as great, but almost 30% of high school students are chronically absent in the '23
"impact is startling" MCAS for students who were chronically absent versus those who were not
close to half an achievement level of difference 
all grade spans, all school types
Students who are not chronically absent achieve more highly
DESE is interested in increasing weighting in accountability system FOR THIS YEAR
"coupling this with...grant or seed funding to districts to work on the problem" plus a public service campaign
"But one of the levers that the Department has is the accountability system"