Problems Facing the American Education System
A review of the literature
by John Morrison
December 5, 2024
WHAT ARE SOME OF TRUMP’S PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO LITERACY?
Trump’s plans to tackle literacy lack specifics, but he has promoted the link between higher test scores and success in the workplace. Trump has criticized the Democrats’ focus on CRT and “gender indoctrination” for coming at the expense of academic excellence.
During the early days of his election campaign in September 2023, Trump outlined 10 principles for education under his Agenda 47 manifesto.
Education under Trump would be geared toward preparing students for the workforce, as evidenced by the title of the document, “President Trump’s Ten Principles For Great Schools Leading To Great Jobs”
The manifesto cites two studies, a 2016 report from American College Testing and a 2011 study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, that both highlight the link between proficiency in core subjects and success in the workplace.
Indeed, the only extensive mention of literacy and maths scores in the manifesto comes under the section entitled “Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination”.
“President Trump will get the left’s “equity” agenda out of our classrooms—and he will get Excellence back into our classrooms.”
The manifesto highlighted Trump’s first-term achievement when he:
“Prohibited the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the Federal Government”.
Trump has vowed to remove radical left policies from education by cutting federal funding for offending schools and pursuing civil rights investigations while revoking Biden’s executive orders on equity and creating a fund for Americans victimized by “equity” policies.
The manifesto criticizes the Biden administration’s preoccupation with left-wing indoctrination and the proliferation of political activists in the classroom.
The manifesto states that schools advocating radical left principles will have funding cut and be the subject of civil rights investigations:
“President Trump will cut federal funding for any school pushing Critical Race Theory, transgender insanity, and other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content on our children—and he will pursue civil rights investigations into any school that engages in race-based discrimination.”
Trump also vowed to revoke Biden’s executive order on equity enforcement and to push Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been victimized by equity policies:
“On his first day back in office, President Trump will immediately revoke Joe Biden’s sinister executive order mandating that federal departments establish an “equity” enforcement squad to implement a Marxist takeover of the federal government—and he will urge Congress to create a restitution fund for Americans who have been unjustly discriminated against by such “equity” policies.”
The Agenda 47 manifesto states that universal school choice will boost reading and math scores, as well as graduation rates and parental satisfaction.
The manifesto praises the states of Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia for their work in promoting school choice.
Trump promises that every American family will have the right to school choice and cites a 2016 Heritage Foundation report that finds school choice increases school accountability because it creates a:
“Feedback loop that does not exist in the more centralized, top-down systems like the district schools.”
The manifesto cites a 2019 Heritage Foundation article that claims school choice improves graduation rates, competition among schools, and parental satisfaction while lowering costs. It also cites a 2018 Cato Institute report that claims school choice leads to better math and reading scores.
The report singled out school safety as a motivating factor in school choice.
The manifesto singled out a Daily Signal article which reported that students participating in a
“Milwaukee voucher program for four years were half as likely to commit felonies or misdemeanors after graduation.
The article cited similar results when school choice, like charter schools, were available to students in Harlem.
Trump’s pick for Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, is chair of the board at the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). The AFPI’s policy page on reading scores, like Agenda 47, lacks specifics but makes general promises to reform teacher pay and high school graduation standards.
The AFPI’s policies include the promotion of patriotic civics education, restoring parental rights, providing alternatives to the “college for all” mindset, teacher pay reform, and improved safety in schools. It should be noted that the policies below are identical to the AFPI’s policies for improving maths scores.
“Reinstate the 1776 Commission to promote patriotic civics education, ensuring students receive excellent teaching in core subjects reading, math, history, and Western Civilization.”
“Restore parental rights in education, remove critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements from school grants, and reduce the strings attached to federal K-12 funding to reduce federal bureaucratic control over local classrooms.”
“Increase school choice options for families nationwide.”
“Encourage states to reform high school graduation standards to align with alternatives to a “college for all” mindset that recognizes more than one pathway to success, including military enlistment and apprenticeship readiness.”
“Reform teacher pay by implementing merit pay, ending teacher tenure and instead rewarding excellence in teaching and attracting top talent to the profession.”
“Ensure safe, secure, and drug-free schools, creating a conducive learning environment for all students.”
Linda McMahon is chair of the board at the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-friendly think tank, and is especially supportive of school choice. USA Today reports that:
“The America First Policy Institute supports using more tax dollars to fund nonpublic education and expand parental influence over what children learn in the classroom.”
“The GOP officially codified its approval of universal school choice during the Republican National Convention this past summer.”
Given its ties to Linda McMahon, the AFPI’s Center for Education Opportunity offers the best clues for specifics about Trump’s plans for literacy. In December 2022, it published a 15-point model policy document called the “Literacy-Based Promotion Act”, which calls for students' grade progression to be determined in part by reading proficiency and for a series of intervention services to improve literacy.
The model policy document outlines 15 policy solutions to improve literacy in the US. You can find specifics of what each of these policies entails in the link, but a summary is as follows:
A support system for all teachers up to and including third grade to guarantee they are equipped to teach students to read.
Reading instruction materials and intervention programs to guarantee every student reads at a minimum of grade level by the time they finish third grade.
Any students deficient in reading will receive an individual reading improvement plan “no later than 30 days after the identification of the reading deficiency.”
The intensive literacy intervention will continue until the student is no longer deficient in reading.
All parents of K-3 students who are deficient in reading will “be notified in writing no later than 15 days after the identification of the reading deficiency.”
The notification will identify a strategy but inform parents their child will not progress to fourth grade unless the reading deficiency is corrected (“good cause exemption” applies, see point eight).
Incoming third-grade students with a reading deficiency will be identified so that they can be provided with more intensive interventions.
Third-grade students will have to “demonstrate sufficient reading skills for promotion to fourth grade.” Students can demonstrate their literacy by three different metrics.
School districts must provide summer reading camps or approve innovative summer reading programs to all third-grade students scoring at the lowest achievement level on the third-grade statewide English language arts assessment.”
Reading camps must include at least 70 hours of teaching time in reading.
Good cause exemptions relate to disabilities, “English Language Learners” who have received less than two years of instruction in a program, and students who have previously been detained (“no student shall be retained twice in third grade”.
All students “promoted to fourth grade with a good cause exemption shall continue to receive intensive reading intervention that includes specific reading strategies prescribed by the board of education” until the deficiency is fixed.
Any request for Good Cause Exemptions must be submitted by the student’s teacher to the school principal. The principal will decide whether the student meets the exemption and then recommend the exemption in writing to the district school superintendent. It is the district superintendent who has the final say on the exemption.
Schools must notify any parent of a pupil who has been retained in grade 3 and describe interventions and support to remedy the literacy deficiency.
Retained students must be given “intensive reading intervention to remedy the student’s specific reading deficiency” to accelerate their reading progress. The school district will review reading improvement plans for every retained student in grade 3.
Every applicable school must establish an “Intensive Acceleration Class” for any retained grade 3 student who was retained in any prior year of their education, including kindergarten.
The class will have a lower student-teacher ratio and “provide explicit and systematic reading instruction and intervention for the majority of student contact time each day.”
Every district school board must provide an annual report to the Department of Education by October 1 that details students’ literacy performance as well as school policies on retention and promotion.
The Department of Education will create a uniform format that outlines how school districts will report this information.
The Department will then annually compile this information and report it “to the State Board of Education, the public, Governor, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives by October 1 of each year.”
“The State Board of Education shall have authority to enforce this chapter”
Where does the debate stand with phonics/proposed solutions for literacy?
Columbia University’s Lucy Calkins is the author of “Units of Study”, the whole word learning curriculum that thousands of schools have used to teach students to read and write. Calkins was seen as “an education superstar” and “a minor deity.”
A November 2024 Atlantic article that profiled Calkins’ fall from grace wrote that until a few years ago she was “an education superstar”, even “a minor deity” to teachers and parents. So much so that teachers using her curriculum “Units of Study” would often say they were “teaching Lucy”.
The guiding principle of Calkins curriculum was that children develop literacy skills when they love reading which is why their teachers should inspire a love of reading.
Calkins describes Units of Study as a “balanced literacy” curriculum that the Williams Records says “combines reader engagement with explicit instruction on the skills and strategies required for effective reading” and “emphasizes learning words through their context and meaning rather than by letter sound”.
This approach spread from Columbia University’s Teachers College, an institute that Calkins founded, and spread across America, most notably becoming the “centerpiece of the curriculum in New York City’s public schools”.
Her curriculum was first mandated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2003 and as many as a quarter of American elementary schools used Calkins’ curriculum.
But Calkins and her curriculum have become scapegoats for America’s literacy crisis. The turning point for the reading wars (and Calkins’s reputation) came with the 2022 release of the Sold a Story podcast which placed much blame on failing literacy rates on Units of Study. At least twenty-five states have passed laws on the teaching of reading since the release of the podcast.
A January 2020 report by Achieve the Core wrote that while Units of Study was “beautifully crafted” it was “unlikely to lead to literacy success for all of America’s public school children.”
But the Atlantic notes that “the criticism became impossible to ignore” when “Sold a Story”, the American Public Media podcast by journalist Emily Handford, named Calkins’ curriculum as one reason why American children struggle to read.
The podcast series recorded almost five million downloads.
American Public Media (APM) boasted in November 2024 that “at least 25 states have passed laws about how schools teach reading since APM Reports’ Sold a Story podcast was released”.
Aaron Freeman, a Republican Indiana state senator, felt “enraged” after listening to the podcast because his youngest son Cooper was struggling to learn to read.
In January 2023, Freeman introduced legislation to ban cueing, the strategy documented in the podcast. The bill joined a larger education package that became law and forced schools to use programs based on the science of reading.
Minnesota’s Republican state senator Zach Duckworth introduced a cueing ban after listening to the “eye-opening” podcast.
In 2022, Calkins rewrote her early literacy curriculum so that it included daily, structured phonics for the whole class for the first time. Then in September 2023, Columbia University announced that it would close the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, the reading organization founded by Calkins.
Calkins released a statement in which she claimed that she always understood the importance of phonics but stated:
“To reduce the teaching of reading to phonics instruction and nothing more is to misunderstand what reading is, and what learning is.”
The New York Times reports that “a revolt” is growing around “the science of reading”, the systematic and sound-it-out instruction called phonics, while others dub the current controversy the “reading wars”. Mississippi and Washington D.C. lead the way in embracing phonics but districts in Connecticut and Ohio unions continue to resist.
In April 2023, the New York Times reported that nearly 20 states had made or attempted to make reforms toward phonic instruction.
This movement gained steam in 2019 after national reading scores revealed that only Mississippi and Washington D.C., two areas that required more phonic instruction, had made significant improvements
Mississippi implemented the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013. The state ranked 49th out of 50 states in 2012 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in fourth-grade reading. Just ten years later, the state moved up to 21st in 2022.
Ohio’s Republican governor Mike DeWine wants to spend over $160 million over two years to instill the science of reading across the state.
Gavin Newson wants to spend billions to improve literacy and this includes money for a “literacy roadmap” to help districts pick “evidence-based literacy instruction.”
APM reports that “Indiana and West Virginia have been the most forceful in their overhaul of reading instruction. Both states now require schools to use curricula grounded in scientifically based reading research. And they prohibit schools from teaching based on the cueing model.”
A minimum of 14 states have banned cueing from at least parts of the curriculum. Arkansas and Louisiana had already implemented cueing band legislatively while Virginia codified a ban into law in 2024.
Both Republicans and Democrats have sponsored bills in at least 13 states: Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and West Virginia.
Not everyone is on board with the push for phonics.
Over half of Connecticut’s superintendents requested waivers to exempt their schools from the state’s reading law requirements, although the state denied 25 of these 85 waiver applications. Anna Cutaia, the superintendent in Milford, said:
“A packaged program will likely come with teachers’ manuals, and the ones I’ve experienced really encourages reading from the book. And that is not teaching. A teacher’s manual is not building teacher capacity. It’s just actually ensuring one type of instruction for all children.”
President of the Ohio Education Association (a teacher’s union), Scott DiMauro, argued against Ohio’s 2023 law:
“There’s no need for the heavy hand of the state government to single out any specific instructional practices.”
The Bush administration also prioritized phonic instruction but failed because of a mixture of bureaucracy and politics.
Critics are also concerned that there’s no established curriculum for phonics.
Lucy Calkins wrote a defense of her curriculum for the Illinois Times in March 2024. The comments give you an idea of how divisive the debate has become.
But commentators say it’s too simplistic to think of the reading wars as science versus Lucy Calkins. What’s more, students who learn with phonics still need to read quickly and develop a vocabulary and background knowledge for comprehension. Meanwhile, success stories like Mississippi did not just improve literacy through phonics.
Susan Engel, a senior lecturer in psychology at William College, says labeling the debate as Lucy Calkins versus science is too simplistic because understanding the science behind how people master decoding is not the same as understanding what approach will work in a real school setting.
“The science of reading is not the same as the science of teaching reading in schools.”
Engel also says it's wrong to place blame for low literacy standards on Calkins. It’s also wrong to criticize her for not embracing the science of reading when a lot of this knowledge is new.
“We’re not doing worse than we were doing. When Lucy Calkins introduced this curriculum, we didn’t slip backwards.”
“(And) it’s like being furious that we didn’t know that mask-wearing was good for the mask wearer and the other person, even three years ago, and we know it now. Science progresses.”
American Public Media claims, however, that cognitive scientists “debunked” such theories by the 1990s.
Mississippi spent years implementing systemic reform to achieve its progress. This included assigning literacy coaches to the worst-performing schools in the state.
Jack Silva, the chief academic officer in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, is an early adopter of the science of reading. But he notes that training is still underway eight years later.
First, principals in his district were trained, and then teachers grade by grade. Only in 2023, eight years later, was training in progress for middle and high school principals.
Timothy Shanahan, professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, says it’s wrong to think of literacy as an “inoculation”. He emphasizes that students need to keep developing skills, progressing from children’s books to Steinbeck and Shakespeare.
A rare link between the Trump team and phonics is the AFPI’s 15-point “Literacy-Based Promotion Act”. There are three references to phonics: educator preparation programs will teach phonics, reading intervention programs will also provide instruction in phonics and phonological awareness, and teachers up to fourth grade will have comprehensive training on the science of reading.
An indication of the AFPI’s position on phonics can be found in its fact sheet on early literacy in Arkansas. It states that a strong reading program starts in kindergarten and that:
“Successful reading programs begin with phonics in kindergarten and build on reading comprehension and critical thinking by third grade.”
The document highlights Arkansas’s 2017 Reading Initiative for Student Excellence, which provides:
“reading instruction based on reading science, emphasizing phonics. The program is designed to create a culture of reading in the schools, with individualized help to ensure third-grade students read at grade level.”
The first point of of Literacy-Based Promotion Act proposal calls for comprehensive training for teachers from kindergarten through to fourth grade on the science of reading. Section F part II states teachers will have:
“Comprehensive training on the science of reading, including explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness, the alphabetic principle, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and building content knowledge, to ensure all teachers have the knowledge and skill to teach all students to read, including students with dyslexia.
The first point also calls for a support system for all teachers up to and including third grade to guarantee they are equipped to teach students to read. Section H point I of this first proposal is on educator preparation programs for elementary education and states they should:
“Effectively teach foundational reading skills: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.”
The second point of the policy proposal calls for reading instruction materials and intervention programs to guarantee every student reads at a minimum grade level by the time they finish third grade. Section B of this proposal states that the reading intervention program will:
“Provide explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension, as applicable.”
WHERE DOES THE DEBATE SIT WITH DIRECT INSTITUTION?
Project Follow Through, the most extensive educational experiment ever conducted, found that students who received Direct Instruction had significantly higher academic achievement than students in any of the other programs. They also had higher self-esteem and self-confidence.
In 1968, the federal government-sponsored Project Follow Through, was “the most extensive educational experiment ever conducted”. Its goal was to find the best way to teach at-risk children up to third grade.
The study included more than 200,000 children in 178 communities and compared 22 different instruction models.
The participating communities included a large range of ethnicities, economic levels, and demographic variables like geography and community size.
Participating groups of parents could choose one approach to implement.
The experiment implemented strong safeguards to guarantee that districts implemented the approach they adopted.
The federal government gave stipends to supplement budgets and to support the experiment. The government also offered comprehensive health services like medical-dental care and a nutritional component.
In 1977, nine years later, the government evaluated the results of Project Follow Through and the results were categorical.
Students taught under Direct Instruction achieved much better academic results than students taught under any other program.
Students taught under Direct Instruction also reported higher levels of self-confidence and self-esteem.
Later research discovered that students taught under Direct Instruction continued to outperform their peers. They were more likely to finish high school and enter higher education.
The US Office of Education suppressed the results of the Follow Through program. Ernest L. Boyer, the U.S. Commissioner of Education (equivalent to Education Secretary) bizarrely concluded, in the words of Siegfried Engelmann, that “it was equitable to treat all models the same and simply promote selected sites.”
Engelmann’s quote is discussed in more detail in the heading below. The following is Boyer’s letter:
Siegfried Engelmann, the senior author of the direct instruction programs, disputed Boyer’s rationale in a chapter of his book Teaching Needy Kids in our Backward System.
Engelman wrote,
“The first sentence of point 1 in Boyer’s letter contradicts the assertion by Wilson, House, and Glass about whether Follow Through was designed to find successful models or to evaluate the aggregate of models. “Since the beginning of Follow Through in 1968, the central emphasis has been on models.”
“Boyer freely admits that policymakers accepted the data as valid. Several references in his letter indicate that he had no doubt that only one model was highly successful, which means that he was aware of facts that had never been shared with states and school districts.”
“The ultimate conclusion Boyer drew was that if there was only one successful model, it should be treated like all the other models. In response to the question about funding selected models, Boyer’s logic seems to be that somehow such funding would be irresponsible because there were not selected models, only one selected model. So rather than fund that model, the Office of Education assumed it was equitable to treat all models the same and simply promote selected sites. Imagine spending half a billion dollars to draw this conclusion.”
“The effect Boyer presumed would happen is naïve: “ ... we are funding 21 of the successful sites as demonstration sites this year so that other schools and educators will learn about, understand, and hopefully adopt the successful activities and procedures taking place in these effective sites.”
“Boyer had data that the effective non-DI schools were aberrations and that they were so elusive that the sponsors could not even train their other schools to do what the successful school did. If there were any validity to the notion that people would visit a dissemination model for High Scope and be able to implement as well as the school visited, the sponsor would have been the first to know about this excellent site and, therefore, the first to try to disseminate in his other sites. This dissemination failed. The successful school remained an outlier. Therefore, there would be no hope of visiting schools being able to replicate the procedures of this school. In fact, the National Diffusion Network (NDN) did not create more than a handful of success stories for failed schools.”
“Schools from High Scope and other failed models were disseminated for one reason: to preserve at least a modicum of credibility to all the favored ideas and practices of mainline educational thought. If everybody failed, at least Stallings, Piaget, and the rationale that drove at least 19 of 22 models would not be shown to be grossly inferior to the ideas and practices that innervated DI.”
“In terms of morality, Boyer’s decision not to permit sponsors to disseminate was brutal. Why wouldn’t it have been possible to fund us as a model and fund sites from other models? The consistent performance of our model affirmed that our techniques and programs were replicable and that, with proper training, teachers in failed schools could succeed. Why wouldn’t that information be important enough to disseminate? Why did the government feel that it had to initiate some form of affirmative action to keep failed models floating?”
“Boyer admits that the results didn’t come out the way experts predicted. Policymakers didn’t have the vision of only one program excelling in basic skills and cognitive skills or the same program excelling in reading, spelling, and math. They were not prepared for the possibility that this program would also have children with the strongest self-image.”
A notable academic debate on the merits of direct instruction versus inquiry instruction took place between 2021 and 2023. The takeaway was that direct instruction is essential for novices in a subject who need to learn content and skills, but should be used with inquiry instruction to develop a love for the subject matter.
A pivotal moment for inquiry learning came in 1996 with the publication of an influential report by the National Research Council, which is part of the National Academies of Sciences that helps to shape science education policy in the US.
The report called for science teachers to implement an inquiry-based approach which led to more calls from policymakers.
The 2021 publication of “There is an Evidence Crisis in Science Educational Policy”, a commentary in the journal Educational Psychology Review, “reignited” the debate between direct instruction and inquiry instruction.
Four science education experts stated that there is little evidence for the benefits of inquiry instruction. They added that proponents of inquiry learning ignore studies that demonstrate little support for the method while promoting research that lacks control groups for comparison.
They also claim the 1996 report used references that were “theoretical ideas packaged in conceptual articles rather than empirical evidence.”
But in March 2023, a team of 12 scholars led by Ton de Jong published a rebuttal in Educational Research Review titled “Let’s talk evidence – The case for combining inquiry-based and direct instruction”.
The team summarized hundreds of studies and conceded that research doesn’t conclude that inquiry-based learning is best.
Nevertheless, they stated that “Inquiry-based instruction produces better overall results for acquiring conceptual knowledge than does direct instruction.”
On the surface, it seems that two groups of researchers arrived at two different conclusions when looking at the same evidence. But they’re making slightly different claims that don’t necessarily contradict each other:
Critics of inquiry learning say the method doesn’t help students learn content and skills while its defenders say the method is better for developing conceptual understandings. So different teaching methods can be used for different learning goals.
The critics of inquiry instruction note that the method may help create a love of science. Meanwhile, its defenders concede that teachers should use both approaches so students learn content and procedural skills.
Indeed, in a December 2023 response to the rebuttal in Educational Research Review, the critics found some agreement:
“Our view… is that explicit instruction is essential for novices” but that as students gain knowledge, there should be “an increasing emphasis on independent problem-solving practice,” Sweller and his camp wrote. “To the extent that De Jong et al. (2023) agree that explicit instruction can be important, we appear to have reached some level of agreement.”
As the controversy around phonics demonstrates, direct instruction at least seems to be winning the battle when it comes to literacy. John McWhorter penned a 2021 New York Times op-ed titled “We know how to teach kids to read” in which he exalted the benefits of direct instruction.
McWhorter described the results of Project Follow Through as “polio-vaccine-level dramatic” and called for educators to get rid of “fad” methods.
“The fact remains that phonics, and especially the Direct Instruction method pioneered by Englemann, works. With all children.”
“We have known how to teach Black children, including poor ones, how to read since the Johnson administration: the Direct Instruction method of phonics… I consider getting Direct Instruction to every Black child in the country a key plank of three in turning the corner on race in America”
The most relevant section in Agenda 47 manifesto relates to Trump’s support for project-based learning. The intention is for students to do more than read textbooks and to “develop a deep conceptual understanding of abstract concepts” so they’re prepared for the real world.
The manifesto uses Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education definition for project-based learning. The manifesto writes it is:
‘A way to “develop deep conceptual understanding of abstract concepts” by seeing how those concepts “actually operate in the real world”—because in order to be successful, “students need to do more than just read textbooks or listen in lecture halls.” ’
The manifesto says that project-based learning is more hands-on and prepares students for real-world work situations. The benefits are that students solve problems that:
“Can only be solved if they deeply understand what is to be learned in the class.”
The intention is that project-based learning leads to more meaningful learning, better and more active student-teacher relationships, improved student engagement, and exposure to career paths. The manifesto cites a 2021 report from Lucas Education Research which found that:
“Students in project-based learning classrooms across the United States significantly outperform those in typical classrooms.”
WHAT ARE SOME PROPOSED SOLUTIONS TO CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM?
The share of public school students who are chronically absent has risen from 13% in 2019/20 to 26% in 2022/23. Attendance has not recovered from the pandemic which broke the habit of school attendance Arkansas is the only state where attendance has improved since the pandemic.
The data from the American Enterprise Institute comprises 40 states as well as Washington D.C.
The definition of chronic absenteeism is usually an absence rate of 10 percent or higher for any reason.
However, experts blame the pandemic for breaking the habit of daily school attendance and for breaking families’ trust when schools closed in 2020 and offered remote learning. Katie Rosanbalm, associate research professor with the Center for Child and Family Policy at Duke University, told the New York Times:
“Our relationship with school became optional”.
Associated Press 65
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona announced new resources to tackle chronic absenteeism. This includes $250 million in grant funding for learning acceleration which will help improve attendance rates, as well as a toolkit for districts to discuss the importance of school attendance with families.
Cardona hosted the Every Day Counts Summit at the White House in May 2024. The Education Secretary used his speech to encourage applications for the Education Innovation and Research grant program.
Cardona also cited $8 billion in grants made available in the proposed budget for the 2025 fiscal year that will purportedly help reduce absences and close achievement gaps.
Some 34% of Rhode Island students were chronically absent in 2021/22. Governor Dan McKee proceeded to make attendance a top priority and launched the “Attendance Matters RI” public awareness campaign along with a leaderboard to rank schools statewide on attendance.
Rhode Island’s chronic absenteeism problem seemingly improved.
Some 46,328 public school students, over a third of enrolled students, were chronically absent in the 2021/22 school year.
That number fell to 38,894 in 2022/23 and fell again by 4.2 percent to 32,939 students in 2023/24.
Governor McKee claims that other states are looking to mimic Rhode Island’s online dashboard.
However, it’s too early to say that Rhode Island is a trailblazer on this issue. Most states haven’t released data for the 2023/24 school year. Rhode Island has also not returned to pre-pandemic levels.
Another issue is that Rhode Island’s rates of absenteeism were the seventh-highest in the country in 2021/22 at 34%.
Neighboring Connecticut’s absenteeism reached a high of 23.7% in 2021/22 and fell to 17.7% in 2022/23.
The number of chronically absent Rhode Island public school students from 2017-2024 (the Providence Journal)
From July 1 2024, a new Indiana law mandated that school districts must meet with parents about their children’s absences and offer services to improve attendance. Cases where elementary students are absent must be referred to the county prosecutor, similar to bills in Iowa and West Virginia.
School officials have always been able to seek prosecution against the parents of truant students, but the Indiana General Assembly mandated a new course of action to tackle growing rates of absenteeism. Chalkbeat reports that,
“As of July 1, Indiana school districts must meet with parents about their student’s absences and offer services to help improve their attendance.”
“For elementary students who are habitually truant — defined as having 10 or more unexcused absences in a school year — districts must take a more punitive approach by referring those cases to the county prosecutor under Senate Enrolled Act 282.”
The law also means that schools and prosecutors must inform parents about the legal consequences of their children’s absenteeism, which could include a fine or jail time.
Chalkbeat notes that similar bills are in place in Iowa and West Virginia.
Prosecutions have historically been rare. Marion County educates more than 165,000 students but in 2023 only 15 referrals were made to the prosecutor’s office.
Critics say students require engagement and a prevention method is best. Punishment won’t solve absenteeism, primarily due to a lack of resources and available staff. Marshall County Prosecutor Nelson Chipman said,
“Jail for non-complying adults is not the answer. [The] criminal justice system has limited effectiveness for correcting this behavior.”
But there are few statewide efforts to improve absenteeism so some districts are addressing the problem independently. Medford High outside Boston lets students play organized sports at lunch if they attend classes while a program in Oakland pays kids $50 a week to attend all their classes.
In permitting students to play organized sports at lunch, the principal of Medford High near Boston effectively gave pupils recess in exchange for attending all their classes. Principal Marta Cabral said,
“They’re here for seven hours a day. They should have a little fun.”
The school also mandates that administrators greet students every morning, particularly students with a history of absenteeism. But Principal Cabral said the lunchtime gym sessions were the biggest driver in raising attendance levels.
Chronic absenteeism dropped from 35% in March 2023 to 23% in March 2024.
In Oakland, California, the rate of chronic absenteeism peaked at 53% in 2023, up from 29% before the pandemic. When officials asked pupils what would get them to attend school, the answer was money.
So in spring 2023, officials launched a grant-funded program that rewarded 45 students with $50 a week if their attendance was perfect.
Students also had to complete mental health assessments every week and check in every day with an assigned adult.
Over 60% of students improved their attendance after taking part in the program.
The CARE-H program in Washington DC sees attendance data shared with healthcare providers who then offer medical appointments to address health conditions that may explain absences. Meanwhile, schools in New York use data to devise tailored early intervention strategies for at-risk students.
In Washington D.C., some 2,000 families have opted into the CARE-H program that permits schools to share attendance data with health care providers.
The program monitors data and when absences rise, a social worker or community health worker contacts the families to offer support.
That’s because many absences can be attributed to underlying health problems. Dr. Danielle Dooley’s team at Children’s National Hospital in D.C. monitors symptoms like headaches and stomach aches.
Administrators at Gotham Collaborative High School in the Bronx have instilled a data system to track students’ absences and work with staff and community groups to help students most at risk. Data collection is seen as a first step in resolving chronic absenteeism:
Gotham Collaborative High School groups students into four buckets based on their attendance.
Support teams which include peer mediator ambassadors, school counselors, or social workers, then stage interventions to students in each bucket. These interventions could be a home visit or hosting school socials for students for lack of friends.
Chronic absenteeism was 56% before the pandemic and peaked at 61% in 2020. But it’s down to 29% in 2022/23.
Schools in New York City get automatic weekly reports with lists of students who have missed five or ten days of school.
Officials say early intervention is important and these reports are most effective when schools use the data to create workflows to address the absences.
A 2018 Harvard study reported that sending letters to parents that compared their child’s attendance with other students reduced chronic absenteeism by 10%. A 2019 study found that “teachers of color increase school success for students of color.”
A 2018 Harvard study found that sending letters to parents that compare their child’s attendance with other students reduced chronic absenteeism by 10% “by correcting parents’ biased beliefs about their students’ total accumulated absences.”
A 2021 study led by Michael Gottfried of the University of Pennsylvania found that students were more likely to attend class when they identified with their educators. Specifically,
“Teachers of color increase school success for students of color.”
There’s no specific mention of chronic absenteeism in Trump’s Agenda 47 manifesto or the 2024 GOP platform. The only notable reference is a statement on Trump’s campaign website that ties hands-on skills-based learning to school attendance.
Under the section for internships and work experience for Agenda 47, the post quotes a Southern Regional Education Board report that claims:
“Project- and work-based learning ‘motivates students to stay in school and improve their grades and attendance. It improves employability skills and makes students aware of nontraditional career opportunities.”
WHERE DOES THE DEBATE SIT WITH COMMON CORE?
Obama pushed Common Core onto the states with his $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition and over 40 states signed up to the Common Core State Standards Initiative. But a bipartisan coalition of parents and critics disliked its focus on testing and by the mid-2010s over 20 states had rolled back.
The Obama administration pushed states to implement Common Core through its $4.3 billion Race to the Top competition that tied test scores to teacher evaluations.
States didn’t have to implement Common Core, but the Department of Education made college and career-ready standards an important factor in applying for grants.
By the end of Obama’s second term, over 40 states signed up to the Common Core State Standards Initiative.
However, critics stated that schools had become obsessed with test prep and exam results. Many parents complained that the new curriculum created unwarranted stress and complicated schoolwork.
In 2015, some 20 percent of students in New York State opted out of their end-of-year tests.
By the mid-2010s, over 20 states repealed, rolled back, or revised parts of Common Core.
Kentucky, the first state to implement Common Core in 2010, repealed the program in 2017 with bipartisan support.
Although Kentucky is an example of a state that renamed its program under similar terms. According to the Home School Legal Defense Association in 2020, “Kentucky Academic Standards” maintains “the controversial standards… but under a less polarizing and recognizable name.”
In December 2009, Linda McMahon was a member of the Connecticut State Board of Education and voted to apply for the New Venture Fund from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that helped states compete for these funds. But Trump and Republicans have pushed back against such federal overreach meaning McMahon will likely follow suit.
McMahon’s vote can be seen on page 7 of the minutes of the 2 December 2009 meeting.
However, conservatives have long disliked the federal overreach of Common Core and its association with Obama. Trump’s Agenda 47 manifesto doesn’t outline any new policies regarding Common Core, but the bottom of the document touts his success in fighting Common Core:
‘The Trump administration restored state and local control of education by faithfully implementing the Every Student Succeeds Act, which prohibits the U.S. Department of Education from “attempting to influence, incentivize, or coerce a state to adopt the Common Core State Standards or any other academic standards common to a significant number of states.”’
Commentators have long claimed that despite the backlash, Common Core is now deeply embedded in American classrooms and “it’s a bell that can’t be unrung”. So while the trend is towards state autonomy, many states that seemingly rolled back on Common Core introduced new programs that kept the standards under less polarizing names
Many of the individuals who crafted the Common Core claim that despite the backlash the program is deeply embedded in American classrooms. Sandra Alberti, a senior fellow at Student Achievement Partners which is a consulting group founded by three of Common Core’s lead writers, told the New York Times in 2019:
“It’s a bell that can’t be unrung.”
Michael Hansen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said in 2016 during the Republican primaries that promises to end Common Core were grandstanding.
Slate reported that the president cannot end Common Care because it’s not federal law. By Trump’s 2016 election, the federal government had stopped funding the standards because the Race to the Top initiative had ended the previous year.
Slat claimed that rolling back Common Core would mean a president would have to rewrite the Every Student Succeeds Act to remove mentions of college and career-ready standards.
And while by the mid-2010s, over 20 states repealed, rolled back, or revised parts of Common Core, Slate reported in 2016 that many states had just “artfully renamed” their programs. Indeed, the Federalist complained in November 2024 that,
“While most people have stopped paying attention to these controversies, they still create headaches for educators. Common Core has largely been accepted by most states — even if it goes by different names now.”
As mentioned earlier, Kentucky became the first state to implement Common Core in 2010, then repealed the program in 2017 with bipartisan support.
But according to the Home School Legal Defense Association in 2020, “Kentucky Academic Standards” maintains “the controversial standards… but under a less polarizing and recognizable name.”
