enews: May 4, 2023
In This Edition:
1. Community Corner: Tap Into Volunteer Tutors for APS
2. Our Take on the New Calendar Policy
3. Budget Takes: Prioritize Learning Loss and Student Mental Health
4. What We’re Reading
5. 4/27 School Board Recap
6. Happening Soon
Community Corner:
Tap Into Volunteer Tutors for APS
(Editor’s Note: From time to time, we will offer a perspective written by an APS parent, teacher, or community member on a topic of concern or interest for APS. What follows has only been lightly edited for clarity.)
We have had the pleasure of volunteering as tutors for students over the past couple of years. Initially, we were both volunteer reading tutors in the Experience Corps in DC. That highly structured program, sponsored by the AARP Foundation, trained and placed people over the age of 50 in select elementary schools, and program staff closely supervised and mentored them. The Experience Corp program is no longer in operation in DC.
We also volunteered for a couple of semesters in the AHC, Inc. after-school program. The AHC program uses volunteers to provide homework help and tutoring support in literacy and numeracy in AHC-managed buildings. The program is held after school for elementary school students, with a separate teen program in the evenings.
We believe there are opportunities to expand community volunteer involvement, supporting Arlington Public Schools in learning loss recovery and addressing educational equity. We don’t claim to have answers, but offer some observations;
Our anecdotal interactions are consistent with published test results. In the wake of the last few years, many students are struggling with basic skills. In grades when they should be reading to learn, they are still learning to read.
The professional staff of the programs are engaged and dedicated. However, the needs exceed the capacity of both staff and volunteers.
There is a huge pool of community volunteers who generously give of their time and experience. With recruiting, that pool would expand.
Increased involvement of school staff and close coordination with the curriculum is crucial to program success. Areas include: identifying students and needs, matching appropriate volunteers, training, materials, and communication.
Technology integral to managing the modern classroom can hinder volunteers who do not have access to school systems, online instructional materials, and student assignments.
While schools can leverage their staff through volunteers, they need to recognize that for a program to be successful, staff time and school resources will be required to train, coordinate and manage the logistics of a volunteer pool.
Based on our experience as tutors and volunteering in other community organizations, Arlington has a potential army of volunteers that could be mobilized in APS’ efforts to address learning loss and help close educational gaps.
APE's Take on the New Calendar Policy
APS recently released a proposed calendar policy for public comment through May 19th. It would create permanent parameters to guide all future calendar proposals.
What We Love:
Proposal that enshrines 180 instructional days.
Planning the calendar two years in advance.
Seeking to maximize five-day school weeks.
Our Concerns with the Draft Policy:
Requirement that school will always start two weeks before Labor Day(August 19 in 2024 and August 18 in 2025). This would push teachers’ start back to at least August 11th (and new teachers to August 5th) and have impacts on summer school and building maintenance.
Requirement that winter break is always two weeks long, no matter when Christmas and New Years fall. This will force a late ending to the school year and potentially upset the balance of fall and spring semesters. In contrast, next year’s adopted calendar provides for eight days at winter break, consistent with past APS calendars where those holidays do not neatly align over two weeks. In contrast, Fairfax Public Schools (FCPS) policy states “Other days may be included as needed with the preference of ensuring that the school week either before or after the vacation is not less than two days in length. Thus, the winter vacation may vary in length from five to ten school days.”
Potential for an administrative change to become enshrined, which pays twelve-month staff for eighteen additional days while not paying ten-month staff for those days. This has disparate impacts on ten-month employees, including hurting teacher morale and APS operations, and imposes monetary costs as discussed in a recent APE report. This administrative change was announced in November 2021.
Classification of five religious days that are not federal holidays as non-school days, while naming others as cultural observance days. We encourage APS to set objective standards based on data, as required by law, for religious holiday closures and observances to avoid an arbitrary two-tiered system that seemingly picks and chooses which holidays to observe. For example, FCPS has data from the past eight years demonstrating that absences would imperil operations. Fairfax County also provides day-off programming in schools, resulting in less disruptions for families and staff. In contrast, neighboring FCCPS changed the religious holidays to observations that take place during the school day (rather than closing schools), because of the burden closures put on working families and special education students, as well as the fact that an operational justification is required to observe religious holidays.
APS is seeking parental input via a survey that was deployed to all APS households. Please make your voice heard.
Prioritize Learning Loss and
Student Mental Health In Budget
As budget season progresses, APS’ staff and advisory committees continue to urge APS to invest more heavily in resources for learning loss. We agree.
Why It Matters:
The current needs of our students exceed APS’ capacity and we urge APS to budget for what our students need, not just for what APS believes it can spare. Learning loss is uneven across our system and this inequity cannot continue.
Structural deficits are catching up to APS, yet non-school based positions continue to grow faster than its school-based positions. Based on the past, APS is far more likely to increase class sizes rather than roll back non-school based positions.
Per a recent Budget Work Session, few students are engaging with the online tutoring program–Paper–translating to an unsustainable usage cost of $190 per student. This money could be better spent. You can see the data here.
Our Take:
Cease funding of Paper and use this money to fund more math interventionists (as recommended by the Math Advisory Committee) reduce class sizes, or offer high-dosage in-person tutoring.
Fund more mental health resources and support the intervention and substance abuse counselors proposed in this budget. Some of these salaries may be recouped through Medicaid reimbursement and we encourage greater transparency on those reimbursements in future budgets.
Freeze growth in non-school based positions (per Budget Advisory Council recommendations). We urge the School Board to scrutinize these requests.
Strengthen the independence of the APS auditor, similar to the model used by the County Board and recommended by the Association of Local Government Auditors.
Ask the School Board to prioritize student learning loss and mental health in the upcoming budget.
What We're Reading
Secretary Cardona Shows Off Dual-Language School to International Education Leaders (Education Week)
“Cardona wanted to start a handful of school visits with Escuela Key because of its dual-language program, in which kindergarten through 5th grade students spend half the day learning in English and half learning in Spanish.
Escuela Key is ‘a great model to develop a strong second language,’ Cardona said. ‘It’s showing our international colleagues that we also recognize the importance of language development and the role that has…’ The elementary school, in which 61 percent of students are English learners, has offered a full immersion dual-language program since the mid-1990s. ‘The idea is to start off all students, including native Spanish and English speakers and students who speak other languages, with strong linguistic skills so they can easily pick up more languages as they move through middle and high school,’ Escuela Key Principal Marleny Perdomo said.” Read more.
A Kindergarten Lottery Evaluation of Core Knowledge Charter Schools: Should Building General Knowledge Have a Central Role in Educational and Social Science Research and Policy? (Ed Working Papers)
“The Core Knowledge curriculum is a K-8 curriculum focused on building students General Knowledge about the world they live in that is hypothesized to increase reading comprehension and Reading/English-LA achievement. This study utilizes an experimental design to evaluate the long term effects of attending Charter schools teaching the Core Knowledge curriculum…The unbiased confirmatory Reading-English-LA results show statistically significant ITT (0.241***) and TOT (0.473***) effects for 3rd-6th grade achievement with statistically significant ITT and TOT effects at each grade. Exploratory analyses also showed significant ITT (0.15*) and TOT (0.300*) unbiased effects at 5th grade in Science. A CK-Charter school in a low income school district also had statistically significant, moderate to large unbiased ITT and TOT effects in English Language Arts (ITT= 0.944**; TOT = 1.299**), Mathematics (ITT= 0.735*; TOT = 0.997*) and positive, but insignificant Science effects (ITT= 0.468; TOT = 0.622) that eliminated achievement gaps in all subjects.”Read more.
The Case for Quality Homework (Education Next)
“Homework is a red herring. . . . Some otherwise privileged children may have too much, but the real issue lies in places where there is too little.” Read more.
An Early Analysis of One-on-One Tutoring Model (Fordham Institute)
“How did it work? Treatment group students were 38.1 percentage points more likely to reach the target reading level (or higher) by the end of kindergarten than their control group peers (nearly 70 percent of treatment students versus 32 percent of control students). Treatment group students were, on average, one reading level ahead of control group students at the end of the school year and achieved growth of 1.12 levels during the year. Importantly, native English speakers and English learners in the treatment group both showed similar levels of achievement and growth. Treatment group students scored, on average, 0.23 standard deviations higher than their peers on a year-end oral reading fluency assessment. Scores on the district’s kindergarten reading assessment were not fully available, but among the available data, evidence suggests a small but statistically significant boost for students who received the Chapter One tutoring treatment. The lack of full data likely contributes to this lackluster outcome, but we cannot discount the possibility that the new tutoring program may not be fully aligned with existing district assessments.” Read more.
Seven New Studies on the Impact of a Four-Day School Week (Hechinger Report)
“Researchers at NWEA, led by Morton, and at Oregon State University began by analyzing the test scores of 12,000 students at 35 schools that had adopted four-day weeks in six states: Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming. Like the more recent crop of studies, they found that four-day weeks weren’t great for academic achievement on average. The test scores of four-day students in grades three through eight grew slightly less during the school year compared to hundreds of thousands of students in those six states who continued to go to school five days a week…
The switch seemed to hurt reading achievement more than math achievement. That was surprising. Reading is easier to do at home while math is a subject that students primarily learn and practice in school. During pandemic school closures and remote learning, for example, math achievement generally suffered more than reading.”Read more.
April 27th School Board Meeting
Our Top Three Takeaways:
1. Two APE members spoke: on the calendar policy and learning loss and the budget.
2. There was an APS Substance Use Education and Prevention update.
3. There was an English Language Arts and Literacy update presentation with substantive discussion.
Read the full report.
See the scorecard.
Happening Soon
Thursday, May 4, 5:30 PM: Budget Work Session #6. Syphax. Watch live.
Thursday, May 4, 6:30 PM: Work Session on Homework & Communications of Student Progress. Syphax. Watch live.
Thursday, May 4, 6-8 PM: Arlington Reads Event "Get Graphic," Presenting Graphic Novelist Gene Luen Yang.
Sunday, May 7, 10 AM to 6 PM: School Board Endorsement Voting, Drew Elementary, 3500 23rd St S, Arlington, VA 22206. Learn more about the Arl Dems’ School Board Endorsement Vote here.
Tuesday, May 9, 7-9 PM: Open Office Hours with Mary Kadera. Sign up to speak.
Tuesday, May 9, 5:30 PM: Committee of the Whole Meeting (tentative). Syphax. Watch live.
Wednesday, May 10, 8 AM: Policy Subcommittee Meeting. Syphax. Watch live.
Wednesday, May 10, 5:30 PM: Committee of the Whole Meeting (tentative). Syphax. Watch live.
Wednesday, May 10, 7-9 PM: School Board Endorsement Voting, Campbell Elementary, 737 S Carlin Springs Rd, Arlington, VA 22204. Learn more about the Arl Dems’ School Board Endorsement Vote here.
Thursday, May 11, 7 PM: Next School Board Meeting. Sign up to speak. Syphax. Watch live.
Saturday, May 13, 10 AM to 6 PM: School Board Endorsement Voting, Washington-Liberty High School, 1301 N Stafford St, Arlington, VA 22201. Learn more about the Arl Dems’ School Board Endorsement Vote here.
Did you know you can add the APS calendar to your iphone calendar or google calendar? Check it out!
