Education Week - August 18, 2021 - 4

A $5 Million Fine for Classroom Discussions
On Race? In Tennessee, This Is the New Reality
By Eesha Pendharkar
Tennessee aims to levy fines starting
at $1 million and rising to $5 million on
school districts each time one of their
teachers is found to have " knowingly
violated " state restrictions on classroom
discussions about systemic racism,
white privilege, and sexism, according
to guidance proposed by the
state's department of education late
last week.
Teachers could also be disciplined
or lose their licenses for teaching that
the United States is inherently racist or
sexist or making a student feel " guilt or
anguish " because of past actions committed
by their race or sex.
The guidance received immediate
backlash from advocates of students of
color in the state who say it would have
a disproportionate impact on already
underfunded, majority Black and Latino
school districts.
" There's also a fear for young students
of color who are in districts that
are majority white and now there's no
protection for them and their white
student peers in learning about truthful
history and racism, " said Cardell
Orrin, the executive director of Stand
for Children Tennessee, a group that
advocates for historically disenfranchised
students.
The new guidance lays out the complaint
process that a current student,
parent, or employee can initiate against
a district if they believe an educator has
violated the law, but it does not elaborate
on what specifically school districts
are banned from teaching, as many
teacher advocates had hoped. Instead,
it cites 11 broad concepts that teachers
can't teach or use materials to promote.
For example, students can't be told that
they are " inherently privileged, racist,
sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously
or subconsciously, " or bear
responsibility for past actions committed
by members of their race or sex.
Experts have called the language of
these laws vague.
Tennessee's department of education
allowed the public to weigh in on
the rules through Wednesday, Aug. 11,
according to the Tennessean.
States set specific penalties
Tennessee is one of 11 states this
year that have drastically curtailed
the ways that districts can fight systemic
and individual acts of racism,
homophobia, and sexism in the classroom
and how teachers can talk to
students about the ways America's
government has historically discriminated
against minorities. Another 16
states have similar bills that are set to
be considered during next year's legislative
session.
Advocates of the bills argue that public
school districts are indoctrinating
students with teachers' political agendas
and, through their equity initiatives,
giving students of color an unfair
advantage over white students.
Opponents of the bills argue that
school districts can no longer ignore
longstanding academic disparities between
white students and students of
color and are obligated to teach all students
a more complete and nuanced
version of America's racist past.
In most instances, the laws spell out
which anti-racist initiatives districts
are no longer allowed to practice and
what " divisive " concepts teachers are
no longer allowed to discuss, but state
legislatures left room for state departments
of education to determine how
to enforce the laws.
Several lawyers Education Week
has spoken to have expressed fear that
state departments will make the laws
more stringent through the rules.
Tennessee's Department of Education
is the second in the country to
release additional guidance on how
its censorship law will be enforced, following
Oklahoma's state department,
which released guidance in mid-July.
Oklahoma educators could have
their teaching licenses suspended or revoked
and schools could lose accreditation
if an investigation finds evidence
that they taught about racism and sexism
in ways that violated the law.
Oklahoma will also allow parents
the right to inspect curriculum, instructional
materials, classroom assignments,
and lesson plans to " ensure
compliance. "
Tennessee's 11-page document outlines
the process of filing a complaint
alleging the violation of the law and the
consequences that teachers might face
if the district or state determines that
they used prohibited materials or discussed
a banned concept. For the most
An Action Plan for Confronting
Chronic Absenteeism
By Stephen Sawchuk
If students aren't in school, they can't
learn.
That has to be the starting theory of
action for district officials putting together
their return-to-school plans for
the upcoming year.
Before the pandemic, federal data
from 2017-18 showed that more than
8 million K-12 students were chronically
absent-defined as missing 10
percent or more of the school year.
Now there's emerging evidence that
rates surpassed that during the 2020-21
school year, as students turned off from
lackluster remote learning, cared for
relatives, or sought jobs to keep their
families afloat.
Education Week asked a number of
district practitioners and researchers
with a history of working on chronic
absenteeism to describe their recommended
strategies.
1. Get your data in order
As remote and hybrid learning entered
the scene, the definition of attendance
has changed.
In some cases, students needed to
log on to remote classes just once to
be considered present; other districts
required it for a majority or every class.
For still others, students needed to interact
with teachers or submit an assignment
to be counted as present. All
of that has made for messy data.
Some districts, like Pomona Unified,
in Southern California, quickly made
changes to their student information
systems to account for the new learning
modes. Those additions came in handy
later when Pomona was trying to get a
handle on new absenteeism patterns
and helped distinguish if the problem
was tech-related or some other issue,
said Tatiana Gomez, the district's coordinator
of pupil resources, child welfare,
and attendance.
Districts that haven't yet should get
started on making these changes, especially
if they plan to preserve remote
learning this fall, attendance advocates
said.
" You have to decide on the code, and
where things get stored in your data
system, and train staff to know what
counts as attendance in the different
modes of learning, " said Hedy Chang,
the director of Attendance Works, a
nonprofit that has worked with Pomona
and other districts to decrease
absenteeism. " But this is perfect for
recovery spending-it's not only OK by
the feds, but you can invest in it once,
and it operates for you. "
2. Equip school leaders with
good information
Often the more salient problem
with data systems is figuring out how
to query them and analyze absenteeism
patterns in a way that produces actionable
information to intervene before
patterns of absenteeism become
chronic.
" In the past, people didn't have usable
reports. Data got collected, it all
went in, and never came out in ways
anyone could interpret it, " said Chang.
4 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 18, 2021 | www.edweek.org
If you don't visualize it in ways people
can make sense of it, and notice which
kids need support, it doesn't get used
for action. "
Michael Romero is the superintendent
of one of the Los Angeles Unified
School District's six regions, called
Local District South, which serves
more than 85,000 students. At every
monthly meeting with his principals,
he gives out data for each school comparing
the prior month's absenteeism
rate to that same month the previous
year; a portion of time is spent reviewing
the data and sharing out successful
approaches.
He's used the approach for three
years and attributes it for helping bring
the region's rate of chronic absenteeism
below 12 percent-and below the
national average of 15 percent.
The point isn't to blame or shame
but to set clear targets. Romero asks
schools to aim to reduce chronic absenteeism
to 11 percent, or to cut the rate
by 20 percent from the prior year's figure.
School leaders design the specific
plans to get there.
3. Consider using 'nudges' to
find and connect families
Among the most promising ideas
are to employ " nudges, " sent by phone
calls, text messages, and letters that
remind families of the importance of
daily attendance for students.
The idea developed out of behavioral
science; the basic mechanism is to use
simple messages to alter people's behavior.
It has a robust research base. In
Zikirah Skinner runs toward an educator dressed as the panther mascot from her
school, William Dick Elementary, during a surprise visit to her home in north
Philadelphia to celebrate high attendance.
one study based in Philadelphia, the
nudges reduced chronic absenteeism
by 10 percent.
Phone calls, text messages, and
email are all viable methods for reaching
out to families. One of the challenges,
though, is that districts' family
contact phone numbers are often out of
date, particularly when the families are
low income. It turns out, in fact, that
good old-fashioned snail mail is particularly
effective at reaching families and
prompting them to change behavior.
" It has both the reach-change of address
cards work pretty well-and also
when it comes to behavior change, it's
a really sticky form of communication.
We design them to be something you
want to post on your refrigerator and
want to leave on the kitchen table, " said
Emily Bailard, the CEO of EveryDay
Labs, which advises districts on how to
use nudges.
How do you craft a good nudge?
Bailard said it should be short and written
in easily understandable language,
not jargon or legalese. (EveryDay Labs
aims at a 4th grade reading level and
translates the text into all languages
spoken within the district.)
It should provide parents with useful,
specific information they can act on,
not aspirational goals. And it should be
personalized to note how many days a
child has missed, because parents frequently
underestimate the number.
4. Relationships,
relationships, relationships
Now we come to the heart of the
matter: It's building-or rebuilding-
relationships with parents and families
that can really make the difference and
help solve the individual problems that
keep kids out of school.
In Los Angeles, Romero's schools use
three principles to guide their relationship
work. First, school staff members
reiterate the importance of attendance
in most communications. Second,
whenever a student is absent, the family
gets a personal phone call to make
sure everything is OK. And finally, for
Heather Khalifa/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP
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Education Week - August 18, 2021

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