Veni, Vidi, Vici
We need victory for all our kids.
Covid Redux?
Shades of Covid’s impact of students losing access to vital education provisions are apparent once again, this time through the disastrous and tragic wildfires raging in California.
While at least 335 schools in the once Golden State are still completely closed, officials report that students will start returning to many schools tomorrow. Governor Newsom signed an executive order today suspending a number of rules, and easing relocation of students.
The sheer volume of innovative approaches to educating students that exists nationally, however, is remarkable and executive orders should empower and invite such innovations to get to work, inside and outside the state. When funds are directed to follow kids, access to life-saving opportunities will emerge. From Katrina to Covid to transformational states, we’ve seen it.
When Covid hit, we turned on the cameras and hosted a series of incredible panel discussions with people solving the problem nationwide (including the Archdiocese of L.A. which was willing to take students in with no payment as long as the state would cover them later. It didn’t - but that’s all for another day…) In fact, what we learned was the inspiration for the Yass Prize.
SoCal’s kids are in a crisis, and when you have a crisis, you call in the best. I asked the following question on X today:
Education innovation helped bridge the gap for students during Covid and it can help during the tragic fires in California.
What are your ideas?
How can your school/tech/program reach students who are displaced?
Looking to hear and report on permanent solutions, not bandaids.
Enter Stride K12, which provides solutions that transcend location:
The trade paper Education Week offered hope for school personnel affected by such disasters, in the past. But students need real solutions now. Let me hear from you if you have them and I’ll share far and wide. Just add your thoughts to the comment section which is open!
F is for Failure
Throughout the pandemic, the masses constantly pondered why the best and most capable nation in the world was unable to pivot quickly to transform learning for kids.
The answer lies in the system’s failure to operate even under the best of circumstances, failures that transcend local, state and national disasters.
I had the pleasure of appearing on Dr. Phil Primetime Monday evening. He did a great job of highlighting the issues, exposing the data and asking the questions that naturally arise when you see that fewer than 40% of our people can read, write and spell at grade level. “What in the world is happening?” he asked. You can watch the episode here.
D.C. Opportunity Turns 20
It’s a real milestone.
It began in the late 1990s with a few dedicated U.S. Senators, D.C. parent voices and some of us in the policy world supporting. The final push in 2002 to give low-income students a chance at their private school of choice, a push to reverse their fate of being confined to failing and unsafe neighborhood schools, was fought for by the unprecedented trifecta of then City Councilman Kevin Chavous, Mayor Anthony Williams and House Education Chair (before he was Speaker) John Boehner.
The D.C. School Choice Incentive Act of 2003 was signed into law by President George W. Bush in January, 2004 with the support of the late Senator Ted Kennedy, among other unlikely Congressional partners.
A massive hero throughout the whole effort was parent-turned advocate Virginia Walden Ford, whose story was made into a cinematic feature film called, “Miss Virginia” starring Uzo Aduba. Virginia’s need for her son William was great then, as is the need of hundreds of thousands of more parents and their kids today.
Over the years, and despite the need and demand, the program has remained tiny - fewer than 2,000 students are funded to participate and since 2019, funding has been stagnant. While states are adopting and expanding ESAs and voucher programs right and left, this powerful program is overlooked.
We need to work to Save Opportunity, with the same non-partisan spirit that got it going to begin with, again. It’s a fitting time for a new campaign to do just that - everywhere - as the DCOSP marks 20 years.
Every student in America, whether affected by national disaster, our own failures to provide opportunities, or our political fears should have the power to say Veni, Vidi, Vici… and know what it means.
Here’s to victory - Jeanne
We can't let reading progress stagnate again. If families are productively engaged with schools around reading outcomes, a crisis like the wildfires can have less of an impact on reading growth.
The question has always been, "How?" We are setting up scalable, structured, inexpensive and realistic collaborations between teachers and families around a child's reading progress, age 3 to grade 3. Families learn about key benchmarks at each age/grade, feel validated and more confident about their roles, and ask better questions/participate in conferences as partners, not visitors. We also give parents specific, playful ways to build language and knowledge and other reading skills at home, through talking and reading together.
It's not a panacea, but it keeps the drip, drip, drip of skill building going while connecting adults and kids – which may be the most important consequence of all during these heartwrenching circumstances.
Nothing is easy when tragedy strikes. The agonizing process of picking up the pieces is just easier when supports are already in place.
Let students lead!
If a school district isn’t implementing www.careerandcollegeclubs.org in every middle school, they’re leadership is either:
1. not looking hard enough for improvement; or
2. wedded to a more costly, less-effective intervention favored by someone with more political or financial power than students have.
This student-led cost-effective California-grown innovation for education and life planning, with an investment of $6,000 per year per middle school, helps students of every demographic background achieve post-secondary success, even in the face of COVID setbacks. For more info, contact Quentin Wilson, 310-800-4715.