eNews: March 7, 2023
In This Edition:
1. APS' Disparate Holiday Policies are Unfair to Teachers
2. Where is APS' Annual Class Size Report?
3. Focus on Learning Loss Instead of "Reimagining Math"
4. Concerning Middle School Math Inventory Scores
5. What We're Reading
6. 3/2 School Board Recap
7. Happening Soon
APS' Disparate Holiday Policies are Unfair to Teachers
Two years ago, and without a School Board vote, APS changed its 12-month staff holiday policy from 13 paid holidays to an astonishing 31 paid holidays. Teachers, however, do not get paid for these additional days.
The Backstory: In 2021, APS central office staff increased the number of their paid holidays by 18 days - a change, which, according to Dr. Durán, did not require a vote from the School Board. APS 12-month employees (e.g. staff at Syphax, principals, administrative assistants, etc.) now receive 31 paid holidays, while in 2020 they received 13, similar to other 12-month federal government and state government employees. These 31 paid holidays include all of winter break, spring break, and the new religious holidays - this is all in addition to their accrued annual leave.Therefore, 12-month employees receive 14 annual days and accrue an additional day of leave per year of service, meaning that new 12-month employees start with 45 days off. Teachers and other 10-month employees are not paid for these holidays and receive less accrued leave. Additionally, staff lost ten days of parental leave when the School Board voted in 2018 to end that benefit in order to save $500,000.
Why It Matters: This policy change has a calculable cost and negatively impacts staff. For example, it negatively impacts Syphax’s responsiveness to HR requests from staff, and delays the hiring of substitute teachers.
Budget Impacts: If APS reversed this policy, could it instead bring back the more standard benefit of parental leave? Could this money instead be used as a down payment on reduced class sizes? (Reducing elementary classes by 2 requires an investment of $2.5 million.) Could it pay for more math interventionists instead, which is an investment of $420,000 for every four new FTEs?
APS should provide an estimate of the cost of this new paid holiday policy, as it did in 2016 when APS established a parental leave policy and again when it took this policy away in 2018. This budget season our School Board should be assessing the tradeoffs of this policy. It is unconscionable that APS chose to budget for reducing days of work for central office staff at a time when teachers are working harder than ever post-pandemic.
Our Take: Budget season is upon us. It's time to put teachers and students first. We strongly recommend that APS revert to its previous paid leave policy and use the savings to support teachers.
Where is APS' Annual Class Size Report?
With budget and planning season upon us, why is APS’ delaying releasing its critical class size report?
The Backstory: APS publishes an annual report on class sizes that typically comes out in November or December of that school year and provides information based on the official September 30 enrollment. This report provides a detailed analysis of class sizes relative to APS planning factors, including class size for every class in every grade at every elementary school, which control nearly every staffing and materials resource in our schools, including teachers, math coaches, librarians, art supplies, textbooks, instructional hardware/software, etc.
The 2021-2022 report (released on December 3, 2021) also indicates how many classes, and which subjects, are above twenty-seven students at our middle and high schools. However, it is now March of 2023 and APS has still not released this annual report. We urge APS to release this important and informative data on APS class sizes as it has annually since at least the 2015-2016 school year.
Why It Matters: We consistently hear from parents and teachers of class sizes being in excess of the planning factors APS established last year, including at our Title I schools. Two teachers provided public comment on this topic at the March 2 School Board meeting. However, the community and our School Board lack the data to understand if the problem is more prevalent at some schools than others, or in certain subject areas at our middle and high schools.
Our Take: This data is essential to inform the budget discussions currently underway to help best allocate APS dollars. We urge APS to reduce class sizes in the upcoming budget.
Focus on Learning Loss Instead of "Reimagining Math"
The Virginia Council of Teachers of Mathematics (VCTM) is holding its 2023 conference in March. The theme is “Reimagining Mathematics,” however, none of its programming seems to cover how to address learning loss from the pandemic. Rather, the upcoming VCTM conference focuses on topics from the now-discontinued Virginia Math Pathways Initiative (VMPI). While the Administration formally ended VMPI last year, the ideas underlying VMPI appear to continue to nonetheless drive Virginia math instruction.
Why It Matters: Virginia students are currently struggling with unprecedented math learning losses. These losses are particularly pronounced amongst economically-disadvantaged students (evidenced by a 25% drop in Math SOL pass rates), leading to widening achievement gaps across the state.
Virginia’s math leaders should be prioritizing learning loss and viewing it as the crisis that it is. The most equitable practice in math right now is to focus on remediating students’ significant learning losses.
Concerning Middle School Math Inventory Scores
Just-released Math Inventory (MI) Scores from the winter reflect that our middle school students are not recovering quickly from learning loss, unfortunately matching nation-wide struggles with learning loss. The percent of students scoring below basic on the MI in grades 5-8 reflect only modest improvement from last year, and this performance is still much worse than prior years. In Winter 2022, 25.7% of students scored below basic, which is 5.7% more than the average of the pre-pandemic years (20%), translating to over 420 middle school students.
Why It Matters: APS needs to invest in learning loss recovery, and leave behind the view that "business as usual" will get the job done. The data are clear: recovery from learning loss is moving too slowly.
Budget Impacts: We ask that APS support increasing the number of interventionists, which will allow APS to target those students and schools that need more support, which will reduce learning loss as well as help close the achievement gap.
Our Take: Other districts that have added a large number of interventionists are seeing better results. We support proposals from the Math Advisory Committee and Math staff to fund 34 full-time equivalent (FTE) Mathematics Interventionists and 7.5 FTE Mathematics Coaches (41.5 FTE total).
What We’re Reading
Tell Parents the Truth About Learning Loss (Washington Post)
“By any measure, America’s students are in crisis. According to a survey released this month, nearly half of all school children started the year below grade level in at least one subject, up from 36% in 2019. The pandemic caused students to lose, on average, half a year’s learning in math, with low-income students falling further behind…Inadequate information about student performance makes it harder to convince parents of the need for supplemental instruction or summer school. It also weakens political incentives for districts to invest in high-quality tutoring, an extended school year and expanded school choice. That task is all the more urgent because of next year’s deadline for using $190 billion in federal COVID relief funds, much of which remains unspent.” Read more.
Is There a ‘Science of Math’ Too? (EdPost)
“Experts say it’s time for districts to turn their attention to math instruction, now suffering through a parallel crisis—low student achievement, deeply entrenched philosophical battles over how to teach and thousands of teachers, like Rhianna Penner, never shown how to help struggling students.
‘Take every single thing that’s been written about the science of reading, and hit “find/replace” for math,’ said Sarah Powell, associate professor of special education at the University of Texas, Austin. She also leads a group of psychologists, cognitive scientists and math educators committed to evidence-based instruction, called, fittingly, The Science of Math. ‘Just as we know there are foundational skills in reading, there is the same thing in math. Schools have been swayed by sexy practices, but that’s not how people learn.’ Riffing off the science of reading, the group hopes to launch a movement, dispelling myths and clarifying misconceptions about math learning using decades of evidence on how to teach math to all students, especially struggling learners.” Read more.
Nobody Knows What the Point of Homework is (Vox)
“Homework proponents argue that while it is difficult to design randomized control studies to test homework’s effectiveness, the vast majority of existing studies show a strong positive correlation between homework and high academic achievement for middle and high school students. Prominent critics of homework argue that these correlational studies are unreliable and point to studies that suggest a neutral or negative effect on student performance. Both agree there is little to no evidence for homework’s effectiveness at an elementary school level, though proponents often argue that it builds constructive habits for the future.
For anyone who remembers homework assignments from both good and bad teachers, this fundamental disagreement might not be surprising. Some homework is pointless and frustrating to complete. Every week during my senior year of high school, I had to analyze a poem for English and decorate it with images found on Google; my most distinct memory from that class is receiving a demoralizing 25-point deduction because I failed to present my analysis on a poster board. Other assignments really do help students learn: After making an adapted version of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book for a ninth-grade history project, I was inspired to check out from the library and read a biography of the Chinese ruler.” Read more.
3/2 School Board Recap
Here are our Top Three Takeaways from the March 2nd School Board meeting:
Summer School planning is underway with an increase in capacity.
The Proposed FY 2024 Budget includes nothing on smaller class sizes.
The Office of English Learners (OEL) presented a draft Five-Year Plan with an initial comment period that ends today - March 7. Based on questions from the Board, more details on goals, objectives, strategies and metrics would be helpful.
Why It Matters: In previous years, more students qualified for summer school than there were slots to accommodate them. APS parents and teachers have expressed concern about the large class sizes in several ES and asked for it to be addressed in the upcoming budget. Moreover, we are happy to see the Board asking questions and requesting objectives and metrics for any strategic planning.
Read the full recap.
See our scorecard for this meeting.
