Swift & Change Able

• Matthew Philip Steinberg did an excellent job of putting together an interesting and informative panel. My sense is that he’s an up and comer in the ed policy world.

• The AIR results make it pretty clear that states and districts at best lack the motivation and bandwidth to make supplemental educational services all they can be.
• Only 7 states make the results from the prior year’s assessments available in August, so many parents don’t get notified about their children’s eligibility in time.
• At worst, districts are defying the law and blocking students from accessing after-school programs.
• Some districts seem to make enrollment as difficult to understand as possible, filling their notification letters with jargon, fine print, short deadlines. Many such letters are written at an 11th grade or higher reading level (whoever heard of that from a school district?).
• The findings across the studies are mixed. But the Rand data presented by Ron Zimmer show that such programs in Pittsburgh, PA show promise in helping close achievement gaps, especially in math. And that there, enrollment actually jumped in the second year.
• Patricia Burch and her team at U Wisconsin are trying to find out which SES approaches work, and which do not. Since SES is more a funding stream than a program, this makes a great deal of sense. Here, the truth and the devil seem to be in the details.
• Did you know that LAUSD has 30 staff devoted to research and evaluation? That impressed me. Their SES programs, not so much.
• Why are Gail Sunderman et al. at the UCLA Civil Rights Project so opposed to SES?
• Since when are liberals against community-based programs where children have adult supervision and can get a little help with their homework after school? Since when are they so worried about test scores?

Charles Barone, who analyzed the findings for the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, says some of the programs "are terrible and should be terminated." But, he says, others are working and should be supported.

Barone, a former congressional staffer who helped write No Child Left Behind, adds, "It’s kind of a high bar for an after-school program, to have to improve academic achievement." He notes that a Clinton-era program was lauded for keeping students safe and occupied after school. "I’d say this is a higher bar than what we’ve previously had for after-school."