Pleasantville is a mostly Black and Hispanic community located between two major freeways, the I-10 and the 610, in Houston, Texas. This placement is no accident, said Bridgette Murray, a retired nurse and local community leader: “The highway plan in the 1950s was used to divide communities of color.” Today, an estimated 300,000 vehicles stream by on a daily basis, she said. The neighborhood is also close to the Houston Ship Channel, exposing it to heavy industrial pollution.

But state air monitoring stations aren’t placed to capture all the hazards concentrated in that small area. So Murray’s group, ACTS (Achieving Community Tasks Successfully), has been partnering for almost a decade with urban planning expert Robert Bullard at Texas Southern University, to do their own air quality monitoring. ACTS just won a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to expand the program.

Bullard has been called the father of the environmental justice movement. His 1990 book “Dumping in Dixie” documented the systemic placement of polluting facilities and waste disposal in communities of color, as well as those communities fighting back. He said scientists and communities need each other.

“Our climate scientists are great at science, but not good translators when it comes to taking that data to people,” he said. “We need the principle of environmental justice embedded in our climate policies. The overarching principle is that the people who are most impacted must speak for themselves and must be in those rooms and at those tables when decisions are being made about their lives.”

“It’s a mutual respect,” Murray said of the relationship between her group and the Texas Southern researchers. “You have to have a partner that respects the ideas you are bringing to the table and also allows you to grow.”

Bullard is co-founder, with Beverly Wright, of the HBCU Climate Change Consortium, which brings together historically black universities and community-based organizations in what Wright has termed the “communiversity” model. There are partnerships like the one in Houston all over the South: Dillard and Xavier Universities, in New Orleans, working on wetlands restoration and equitable recovery from storms; Jackson State is working in Gulfport, Mississippi, on legacy pollution; and Florida A&M in Pensacola on the issue of landfills and borrow pits (holes dug to extract sand and clay that are then used as landfill).

Bullard said it’s no accident that so many HBCUs are involved in this work. “Black colleges and universities historically combined the idea of using education for advancement and liberation, with the struggle for civil rights.”

When these partnerships go smoothly, Bullard said, universities provide community-based organizations with access to data and help advocating for themselves; students and scholars get opportunities to do applied research with a clear social mission.

“We need the principle of environmental justice embedded in our climate policies. The overarching principle is that the people who are most impacted must speak for themselves and must be in those rooms and at those tables when decisions are being made about their lives.”

Robert Bullard, demographer, Texas Southern University

A lot of growth is happening in environmental justice right now. ACTS’ $500,000 EPA grant is part of what the White House touts as “the most ambitious environmental justice agenda ever undertaken by the Federal Government.” Notably, President Biden’s Justice40 initiative decrees that 40 percent of all federal dollars allocated to climate change, clean energy, and related policy goals flow to communities like Pleasantville: marginalized, underserved, and systematically overburdened by pollution.

Expanding on this model, the EPA has allocated $177 million to 16 “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers” — a mix of nonprofits and universities that will help groups like ACTS get federal grants to achieve their goals.

But, warned Bullard, all the new funding might cause a gold rush, raising the danger of attracting bad actors. Sometimes, he said, universities act like “grant-writing mills,” exploiting communities without sharing the benefits. “You parachute in, you mine the data, you leave and the community doesn’t know what hit them. That is not authentic partnership.”

Murray, at ACTS, has seen that kind of behavior herself. “A one-sided relationship where they came in to take information,” she recalled. “The paper was written, the accolades [for researchers] happen, and the community is just like it was, with no ability to address anything.”

“Our climate scientists are great at science, but not good translators when it comes to taking that data to people.”

Robert Bullard, demographer, Texas Southern University

It takes sensitivity and hard work to overcome what can be a long history of town-gown tensions between universities and local communities. “You have to earn trust,” said Bullard. “Trust is not given by a memorandum of understanding.” One way to break down barriers is to make sure that all participants — whether they have a GED or a PhD — share the air equitably at meetings between researchers and community leaders. And those meetings might be held in the evenings or on weekends, because community groups are often run by volunteers. 

Denae King, a PhD toxicologist, works with Bullard as an associate director at the Bullard Center. She said she’s always looking for a chance to give space to community partners like ACTS, and reduce or equalize any power dynamic.

“I just ended a meeting where someone was asking me to put together a proposal to showcase environmental justice at a conference,” she said. “Before I would be willing to do that, I want to make sure it’s OK to showcase community leaders in this space. I might split my time in half and we co-present. Or it may look like me helping the community leader to prepare their presentation. I might be in the room and say nothing, but my presence says, I’m here to support you.”

This column about the ‘communiversity’ was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Next year will mark seven decades since the U.S. Supreme Court declared racially segregated public schools to be unconstitutional. Even the current Supreme Court’s conservatives have embraced that Brown vs. Board of Education decision.

Yet, 70 years after Brown, a key obstacle to racial equality in education continues to be white resistance to racial integration and to adequate funding for the education of Black and Latino children.

In the 1950s and 1960s, white resistance took the form of a revolt against integration and busing.

Private “white academies” — also known as segregation academies — sprang up to preserve the advantages held by the previously white-only public schools.

Today, one form of ongoing resistance is what scholars label “hoarding opportunities.” By using zoning and districting to create and perpetuate overwhelmingly white spaces and declining to share resources with Black and Latino children, white Americans limit the reach of integration and perpetuate inequality.

Related: Reckoning with Mississippi’s ‘segregation academies’

Not surprisingly, in 2022, the Government Accountability Office declared that school segregation continues unabated. The agency reported that even as the nation’s student population has diversified, 43 percent of its schools are segregated, and 18.5 million students, more than one-third of all the students in the country, are enrolled in highly segregated schools (75 percent or more of the students identify as a single race or ethnicity).

The Midwest — with 59 percent of all schools classified as segregated — is the leader in segregation.

The same GAO study showed that when new school districts are formed, they tend to be far more racially homogeneous than the districts they replace.

A key obstacle to racial equality in education continues to be white resistance.

Direct evidence of white resistance to racial equity in education can be seen in a survey experiment my co-authors and I conducted in 2021 that closely replicated findings from earlier periods. The study shows that white Americans continue to be reluctant to support increased funding for schools for Black children.

In our experiment, 552 white Americans were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group was asked: “Do you favor or oppose expanding funding for pre-kindergarten programs so that it is available for poor children nationwide? The $24 billion a year cost would be paid for by higher taxes.”

The second group was asked the same question, except that “poor children” was replaced by “poor Black children.”

About 75 percent of respondents in the first group said they favor spending tax dollars for such a program. However, in the group asked about “poor Black children,” just 68 percent were in favor. This is a significant gap in support.

The experiment suggests that among white Americans, support for public education funding for poor children is robust. But less so for poor Black children.

White resistance to desegregation and school funding for Black students has severe consequences for racial equality and the economy.

Related: OPINION: Our education system is not setting up students for success

Research published this month shows that Black students who attended Southern desegregated schools in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s experienced positive lifelong cognitive effects.

And data from the U.S. Department of Education still shows “substantial” racial gaps in reading and math competencies, high school graduation rates and, inevitably, college entry.

A recent Brookings report estimated that if the racial gap in education and employment had been eliminated, the U.S. GDP from 1990 to 2019 would have been $22.9 trillion larger. This would benefit us all.

The great promise of Brown was one of equal access to high-quality education. The hope was that income and other social disparities among white, Black and Latino people would dissipate over time. White resistance contributed to America not keeping this promise.

Policymakers, funders and education advocates must overcome white resistance to strengthen support for programs geared toward Black and Latino children.

This will help America’s quest to fulfill the promise of Brown. It’s time.

Alexandra Filindra is an associate professor of political science and psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project. She is also the author of “Race, Rights and Rifles.”

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After an elder passed away recently in their community, the students at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School in Dzántik’i Héeni, the Tlingit name for Juneau, Alaska, got to work creating a special gift.

Using skills they’d learned in their computer science lessons, the students designed a traditional button blanket on a laser cutting machine. “They found a meaningful way to apply all of that skill and knowledge that they have learned and in such a way that it was authentic,” said Luke Fortier, the school librarian and math teacher.

Fortier’s school participates in a program operated by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society to expand access to computer science and science, technology engineering and math, or STEM, among Native American, Alaska Native and Pacific Islander students. The program trains educators at K-12 schools whose students include Native children on different ways they can introduce young people to programming, robotics and coding.

But computer science lessons like the ones at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School are relatively rare. Despite calls from major employers and education leaders to expand K-12 computer science instruction in response to the workforce’s increasing reliance on digital technology, access to the subject remains low — particularly for Native American students. 

Only 67 percent of Native American students attend a school that offers a computer science course, the lowest percentage of any demographic group, according to a new study from the nonprofit Code.org. A recent report from the Kapor Foundation and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, or AISES, takes a deep look at why Native students’ access to computer and technology courses in K-12 is so low, and examines the consequences.

Director of “seeding innovation” at the Kapor Foundation and report coauthor Frieda McAlear, who is Native Alaskan of the Inupiaq tribe, said the study “forefronts the context of the violence of centuries of colonization and its continuing impacts on Native people and tribal communities as the driver of disparities in Native representation in tech and computing.” 

Schools serving higher proportions of Native students are more likely to be small institutions that lack space, funding and teachers trained in computer science, according to the report. In addition, many Native students attend schools that may lack the hardware, software and high-speed internet needed for these classes.

Even when the instruction is available, courses often lack cultural relevance that would allow Native students to authentically engage with the material, the report says.

Given the history of settler colonialism and the use of Native boarding schools that sought to erase Native identity, making sure that students’ tribal knowledge and traditions are celebrated and integrated into the curriculum will allow students to succeed, the report’s authors say.

“For Native young people and Native professionals to be excluded systematically from the computing and tech ecosystem, it really means that they don’t have access both to the wealth generation possibilities of tech careers, but also access to creating technology tools and applications that can support the continual thriving and growth of cultural and language revitalization in our tribal communities,” McAlear said.

“For Native young people and Native professionals to be excluded systematically from the computing and tech ecosystem, it really means that they don’t have access both to the wealth generation possibilities of tech careers, but also access to creating technology tools and applications that can support the continual thriving and growth of cultural and language revitalization in our tribal communities.”

Frieda McAlear, director of “seeding innovation” at the Kapor Foundation and report coauthor

The situation isn’t much better at the post-secondary level, according to report co-author and director of research and career support for AISES, Tiffany Smith, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a descendant of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Since 2020, Native student enrollment in computer science courses has declined at most two-year and four-year institutions, she said, even as more students overall have received degrees in the subject. Part of the reason is that Native students don’t necessarily see a place for themselves and their culture in tech classes and spaces at predominantly white institutions, Smith said.

But the relatively few Native students who do graduate with these degrees are making significant contributions to their communities, according to Smith. She noted that graduates are using their computer science knowledge and emerging technologies to help revitalize Native languages and alleviate other issues tribal nation communities face, including climate change, biases in data collection and poverty. 

Because tribal nations are at the forefront of job growth and development in their communities, they “should be considered critical partners in the future of the technology sector,” the report’s authors write.

The report calls for more investment in training Native educators to teach computer science and related fields, and integrating Indigenous culture, traditions and languages into those classes.

A 4-year-old program run jointly by the Kapor Foundation and AISES, for example, partners with school districts and Native-serving schools to develop tribe-specific culturally relevant computer science curriculum. That instruction doesn’t only happen in computer science class, said McAlear. The program’s staff work with schools to develop project-based, culturally relevant computer science lessons that are woven into other classes including science, language and history.

In Fortier’s district, students in science classes were recently tasked with using robots to code the life cycle of a salmon. Through that activity they gained knowledge of their local tribal economies while being introduced to new tech, he said.

Before the pandemic, Fortier’s school had eliminated some computer science and technology courses due to budget cuts. But with federal Covid relief funding, along with grants from Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit arm of a regional Native corporation, and programmatic support from AISES, the school was able to restore some of that instruction.*

Fortier said he believes these courses are essential for his students — not necessarily because they’ll have to learn all the latest cutting-edge technology for their future careers, but so they can use contemporary methods to share Native practices, knowledge and skills with the wider community.

“We can learn a lot from the elders in the traditional knowledge,” he said. “But our kids need to apply it in a new, modern, meaningful way. They need to be able to communicate to and within the world.”

*Correction: This sentence has been updated with the correct version of Sealaska Heritage Institute’s name.

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JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — El año escolar de la escuela primaria Washington concluyó a las 2:35 pm de un caluroso martes de mayo. Aun así, Malaysia Robertson, de 9 años, permaneció afuera del plantel.

Ella había pasado la mayor parte de su vida en la pequeña escuela pública de este suburbio de Nuevo Orleans, donde vive con su abuela. Su escuela no volvería a abrir sus puertas al comienzo del nuevo año escolar en septiembre. Al igual que miles de otros estudiantes del distrito escolar más grande de Luisiana, a ella se le asignó a un nuevo colegio como parte de un plan de consolidación que afecta a casi uno de cada 10 estudiantes afroamericanos como Malaysia. Esta es una cifra desproporcionada.

En ese último día de clases, ella no quería despedirse. 

“Íbamos corriendo por los pasillos llorando y todo eso”, dijo Malaysia, recordando su último día en tercer grado. El estacionamiento seguía lleno de estudiantes, familias y maestros mucho después de la 4 p.m., todos abrazándose antes de salir de la escuela por última vez.

La decisión de la junta escolar de cerrar 6 escuelas permanentemente ha estremecido a Jefferson Parish, donde la inscripción de estudiantes en escuelas públicas disminuyó casi un 10% desde el inicio de la pandemia.

Esta disminución empeoró casi una década de avances en el distrito, en la que se buscó revitalizar la inscripción escolar después del huracán Katrina. Los funcionarios del distrito han dicho que los cierres de escuelas son una respuesta necesaria a la disminución de la población estudiantil. Datos del distrito muestran que aproximadamente 1 de 3 cupos permanecieron vacantes el año escolar pasado y varios edificios albergaron a menos de la mitad de los estudiantes para los cuales fueron diseñados.

“Tenemos escuelas poco utilizadas — eso es un hecho”, explicó el vicepresidente de la junta escolar Derrick Shepherd durante una votación en abril. “Las cifras no se pueden cambiar”.

 El distrito volvió a dibujar su mapa para distribuir a los alumnos en una manera que requiere que muchos estudiantes deban viajar fuera de sus vecindarios y más lejos de casa. Los oficiales explicaron que los nuevos mapas hacen que las rutas de transporte por autobús sean más estables y que ninguno de sus maestros se quedará sin empleo. Pero la decisión ha enfurecido a los líderes comunitarios y abogados de derechos civiles, quienes dicen que los cierres no son solo dañinos para familias como la de Malasia, sino además son discriminatorios.

A pesar de que los estudiantes blancos representan casi un cuarto de los estudiantes del distrito, según los datos estatales de inscripción escolar estos solo representan al 12% de los estudiantes afectados por los cierres de escuelas. El plan que la junta escolar aprobó, el cual se diseñó teniendo en cuenta cuáles instalaciones escolares tenían más espacio sin usar y su estado, cerró dos escuelas secundarias con alto rendimiento escolar en las cuales la mayoría de los estudiantes eran hispanos y afroamericanos.

Como resultado cientos de estudiantes hispanos y afroamericanos serán asignados a escuelas de rendimiento más bajo el próximo año escolar, repitiendo para algunas familias el pasado de racismo y segregación del distrito.

“¿Quién se va beneficiar de todo este proceso? No serán los niños afromericanos y latinos”, dijo Debra Houston Edwards, de 77 años, quien se graduó de Washington hace más de sesenta años y comenzó a trabajar para el distrito en la década de los ochenta y fue una de las pocas administradoras afroamericanas en aquel entonces. “No hay equidad en lo que está pasando.”

Shepherd y el presidente de la junta escolar, Ralph Brandt, no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentario para esta nota. En un correo electrónico, la persona encargada de comunicaciones del distrito señaló a una página en línea sobre los cierres pero no respondió a preguntas.

La organización sin ánimo de lucro, El Southern Poverty Law Center SPLC (por sus siglas en inglés), presentó una denuncia por incumplimiento a los derechos civiles al departamento de educación, donde alegan que los cierres discriminan a los estudiantes basados en su raza y que el distrito falló en compartir información sobre los cierres con familias que tienen un dominio limitado de inglés. En una segunda denuncia, SPLC alega que los cierres son parte de una tendencia de discriminación racial generalizada, y de otros tipos , contra algunos estudiantes.

El departamento no ha anunciado una investigación a raíz de estas denuncias.

Mientras tanto, a los expertos les preocupa que los distritos escolares en todo el país pronto enfrenten problemas parecidos. A nivel nacional, más de un millón de alumnos no regresaron a escuelas públicas después de la pandemia. Algunos se matricularon en colegios privados, otros comenzaron a recibir educación en su hogar y otros simplemente desaparecieron, dijo Thomas S. Dee, profesor en la escuela de posgrado en educación de la Universidad Standford. Dado la  disminución de tasas de nacimiento, el departamento de educación estima que la inscripción a nivel nacional en escuelas públicas va a bajar un 5% o más para el 2031. Este es un descenso drástico después de décadas en las que la matrícula ha sido creciente.

“Va a haber un ajuste de cuentas para muchos distritos escolares que no han reconocido su nueva realidad”, agrega Dee, quien estudia el éxodo de las escuelas públicas. Él anticipa que muchos distritos se verán obligados a considerar el cierre de escuelas.

Este debate sobre el cierre de escuelas y cómo hacerlo, también es sobre para identificar cuáles cuáles estudiantes tendrán que asumir las cargas. Hasta ahora los estudiantes hispanos y afroamercanos se han visto afectados de forma desproporcionada. Investigadores académicos y defensores les preocupa que la decreciente inscripción en las escuelas públicas, y los cierres que probablemente seguirán, intensifican la desigualdad académica  en la educación pública.

“Los siguientes 10 años van a estar repletos de este tipo de historias”, dijo Douglas N. Harris, presidente del departamento de economía en la Universidad Tulane y director del Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre Acceso y Elección en Educación. Al analizar cierres de escuelas y tendencias de reestructuración en todo el país durante los últimos 30 años, Harris encontró que escuelas con altos porcentajes de estudiantes de color tenian una probablidad mas alta de cerrarr que las que tienen una mayoría de estudiantes blancos.

Harris explicó que esto a veces ocurre por desigualdades históricas, como cuando colegios donde asisten más estudiantes de color reciben menos inversión a largo plazo y terminan con resultados bajos en los exámenes y edificios deteriorados. Eso puede empeorar la baja inscripción, y al considerar el rendimiento escolar y el panorama financiero, puede hacer parecer que cerrar la escuela es una opción sensata.

Pero incluso cuando Harris y sus co-investigadores compararon escuelas con niveles de inscripción y rendimiento parecido, las de mayor cantidad de estudiantes de color y de bajos ingresos seguían siendo las más propensas a cerrar. Investigaciones previamente realizadas por el Centro de Investigación sobre Resultados en la Educación de Stanford revelaron hallazgos similares al observar que de entre las escuelas con bajo rendimiento académico, las que tienen una mayor proporción de estudiantes hispanos y afroamericanos tienen mayor probabilidad de cerrar cuando se las compara con las que tienen más alumnos blancos, aunque tengan una clasificación similar.

Para la tía de Malaysia, Cheryl Earl, la decisión de la junta ha sido devastadora. Su hija mayor se mudó a Washington hace dos años y su hija menor comenzó el primer grado en esa escuela el año pasado. Igual que Malaysia, sus niñas prosperaron en la escuela comunitaria de 240 estudiantes.

Antes de transferirse a Washington para el cuarto grado, la niña mayor de Earl, Ce’Vanne Ursin, le había dicho a su mamá que odiaba la escuela. “No podía esperar llegar al doceavo grado para abandonar la escuela”, recordó Earl. Pero Ce’Vanne cambió de opinión en Washington. Para el quinto grado fue seleccionada para el programa de estudiantes dotados y talentosos. Al finalizar el año escolar, fue nombrada maestra de ceremonias para la graduación final, un puesto codiciado entre los estudiantes.

“Antes pensaba que era tonta, pero realmente no lo soy”, dijo Ce’Vanne, de 12 años. “Washington me hizo sentir cómoda. Me hizo sentir que todos en la escuela eran mis amigos y familiares”.

Ce’Vanne dijo sentirse afortunada de formar parte de la última generación que se graduará en Washington. Pero el cierre significa que su hermana de ocho años, Canyon Sunday, no tendrá la misma experiencia. En cambio, el distrito asignó a Canyon a cursos el segundo grado en el  mismo colegio donde Ce’Vanne tuvo malas experiencias, antes de ir a Washington. Su madre dijo que está demasiado cicatrizada  por el tiempo de Ce’Vanne en esa escuela como para enviar a su hermana menor allí, por lo cual decidió inscribir a ambas niñas en una escuela privada católica cercana.

Cuando las escuelas cierran, el efecto dominó dura años, explica Molly F. Gordon, quien fue científica investigadora del Consorcio de Investigación Escolar en la Universidad de Chicago. El rendimiento académico de los estudiantes sufre, algunas familias optan por mudarse a medida que sus vecindarios se vuelven menos deseables, y como consecuencia se borran historias importantes.

Después de que Chicago cerró casi 50 escuelas públicas en el 2013, Gordon y su equipo siguieron los resultados de los estudiantes afectados. Incluso antes de que ocurrieran los cierres, durante el año que se anunciaron, la lectura y matemáticas de los estudiantes afectados sufrieron y los estudiantes quedaron retrasados por meses comparados con los estudiantes de escuelas que permanecieron abiertas.

“Los estudiantes que venían de las escuelas cerradas sentían que habían perdido algo, porque lo perdieron”, dijo Gordon, ahora científica investigadora senior en el Centro Nacional de Investigación de Opinión en la Universidad de Chicago. “Ellos estaban viviendo un duelo”.

Los cierres en Chicago tenían el objetivo de ahorrarle dinero al distrito y cerrar escuelas con bajo rendimiento, donde casi exclusivamente asistían estudiantes hispanos y afromericanos. Los funcionarios prometieron que el cambio resultaría en colocar a esos estudiantes en escuelas con mejor rendimiento académico. Una investigación del periódico The Chicago Sun Times y la estación local de radio WBEZ descubrió que una década después muchos de los beneficios anunciados con el cierre masivo, hasta la fecha, nunca se materializaron.

Los estudiantes de las escuelas cerradas no mostraron mejor rendimiento académico que los alumnos de escuelas parecidas que permanecieron abiertas, y su índice de graduación era ligeramente más bajo que el de estudiantes de las escuelas comparadas, por debajo del promedio del distrito escolar. Y, a pesar de que el cambio recortó costos, los ahorros probablemente fueron mucho menores de lo que originalmente habían calculado los funcionarios. 

La pregunta que permanece es una que le plantean frecuentemente a Marguerite Roza, directora del Edunomics Lab en la Universidad de Georgetown: ¿Con pocos recursos y la disminución cifras de inscripción, que deben hacer los distritos escolares?

Roza enfatiza dos factores esenciales para limitar la interrupción: planear con anticipación y darle prioridad al rendimiento. Esencialmente, al cerrar escuelas se debe beneficiar a todos los estudiantes del distrito; y liberar recursos para usarlos en personal y programas. Pero para asegurarse de eso, los distritos deben prestar atención especial a los estudiantes a los que reubican, cambiándolos a escuelas de mejor rendimiento y siendo transparentes al explicarle a las familias el razonamiento tras el cambio.

Pero en Jefferson Parish, los datos estatales del rendimiento muestran que este no ha sido el caso. Mientras los estudiantes de primaria serán incorporados a escuelas de alta clasificación, los de secundaria enfrentan una realidad distinta. El nuevo plan cerrará las escuelas secundarias que ocupaban el segundo y tercer lugar de rendimiento en el distrito -un paso que “desafía la lógica” dijo Roza. .

Una de esas escuelas es la secundaria Grace King, donde los dos nietos de Lillie Magee, residente por largo tiempo de Jefferson Parish, completaron el décimo y undécimo grado en mayo. La escuela estaba compuesta en su mayoría por estudiantes hispanos y afroamericanos, como los nietos de Magee, y todos parecían llevarse bien, dijo ella.

Magee siente que sus nietos, a quienes cuidaba, estaban seguros dentro de las paredes de la escuela. Ella conocía a sus profesores y entrenadores y había asistido a juegos de fútbol americano, llena de pasión y orgullo escolar. Ahora, ella se preocupa de que al reasignar a muchos estudiantes de Grace King a su antigua escuela secundaria rival resulte en violencia y peleas. Sus chicos han perdido la escuela que conocían, y ella ha perdido la comunidad en la que confiaba para mantenerlos a salvo.

“La forma en que nos trataron, fue simplemente muy injusta”, dijo Magee. La escuela a la que asistirá su nieto mayor el próximo año está clasificada como la segunda peor del distrito en términos de rendimiento.

Mientras tanto, en la primaria Washington, los edificios están oscuros y vacíos, el césped exterior está descuidado y lleno de basura. Un mes después del cierre, un incendio arrasó el edificio que albergaba el gimnasio y la cafetería, dejando escombros esparcidos sobre las largas mesas donde los maestros habían organizado un desayuno de graduación semanas antes. Ahora, las ventanas siguen cubiertas con madera y las puertas exteriores están cerradas con llave.

El momento del incendio, que la policía dijo que parecía haberse originado como un incendio eléctrico, dejó a muchos miembros de la comunidad con sospechas. El distrito ahora planea vender el terreno, permitiendo que el futuro comprador restaure o derribe la escuela.

Debra Houston Edwards, la anterior administradora del distrito, espera que al menos los edificios puedan ser salvados, dado su importancia histórica y para que puedan seguir sirviendo como centro para la comunidad.

A principios de la década de 1930, el abuelo de Edwards y otros cinco hombres del condado que vivían en la ribera Este del río Mississippi pidieron a la junta escolar que abriera una escuela secundaria para estudiantes afroamericanos en la zona. Pero la junta les dijo que era su responsabilidad: tendrían que comprar el terreno y cubrir parte de los costos de construcción. En respuesta, la comunidad recaudó fondos de puerta en puerta. En 1936, se convirtió en la primera escuela en la ribera este donde los niños afroamericanos podían recibir una educación superior al octavo grado.

“Nadie más tuvo que hacerlo excepto nosotros”, dijo Edwards, quien ha conservado la historia de la escuela en recortes de periódico antiguos y fotografías que se desvanecen. “Y aquí estamos de nuevo, pasando por el mismo proceso”.

A principios del mes pasado, Edwards y un grupo de miembros de la comunidad ofrecieron comprar la escuela por un dólar, esencialmente solicitando a la junta escolar donara el terreno, un sitio “por el que nuestros antepasados ya han pagado”, escribió el grupo en una carta a Brandt, el presidente de la junta.

Pero el grupo dijo que no ha recibido una respuesta formal. En una declaración a los medios de comunicación locales  Brandt dijo que la junta está “legalmente obligada a buscar el valor justo de mercado” por cualquier propiedad que tenga la intención de vender.

Cuando Malaysia se imagina el nuevo año escolar ella dice que siente esperanza. Varios de sus profesores se van a mudar con ella al nuevo colegio y ella espera que varios de sus compañeros de clase la acompañen en el nuevo edificio desconocido.

Pero para su abuela, Angie Robertson, es un mundo diferente – un vecindario en el cual no viven y una comunidad a la cual no pertenecen.

“Tenía profesores allá,” en Washington, “que era como parte de la familia”, dijo Robertson, quien también va a enseñar en el programa de aprendizaje temprano del Head Strart de la escuela. “Para mí, yo siento que ese era el hogar fuera del hogar de los niños”.

Ahora, ese hogar ha desaparecido.

Este artículo acerca del cierre de escuelas en Louisiana fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Lea sus otros artículos en español.

The post Se acerca un precipicio de cierres de escuelas. Los estudiantes hispanos y afroamericanos son los más propensos a sufrir las consecuencias. appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In the heart of the Deep South, Mississippi has wrestled with enduring educational disparities, a profoundly rooted challenge passed down through generations.

The pandemic exacerbated preexisting funding inequities for high-need, under-resourced school districts, a longstanding challenge for the Magnolia State. Evidence of this persistent struggle is the distressing fact that 32 school districts remain under federal desegregation orders.

To delve deeper into how chronically under-resourced schools fared during the pandemic, the Mississippi Center for Justice (MCJ) spent over a year conducting parent focus groups and examining educational testing data in 12 predominantly Black and economically disadvantaged communities in the rural Delta, the northwestern section of the state, one of the poorest regions in the U.S.

Sadly, what we discovered was not surprising. Mississippi’s past, marked by a legacy of racial segregation and educational inequality, continues to cast a long shadow on its present and future.

Our extensive work at MCJ culminated in a report that showcased an unsettling reality: Affordability and availability are formidable barriers to internet access, while reading and math proficiency rates are significantly below the state averages in grades 3-8. In addition, special education programs and staff remain woefully under-resourced, while access to mental health professionals and support is often limited or, in some cases, entirely nonexistent. Past excuses by the state to avoid addressing these disparities are no longer acceptable.

It is past time for lawmakers to make education in Mississippi a priority for all students.

These issues, among others, further widen the chasm between the haves and have-nots in Mississippi and are creating a new generation of students failed by the system. The evidence of this gap is glaring according to the School Finance Indicators Database.

Spending in Mississippi’s highest-poverty districts is 55 percent below the estimated “adequate” level and 18 percent below adequate in the state’s wealthiest districts, according to the Database.

A significant challenge for Delta communities is the ever-growing digital divide. During the pandemic, students in better-resourced school districts had greater access to high-speed internet connections for a relatively seamless transition to remote learning, while students throughout the Delta struggled with internet accessibility, which contributed to significant learning loss.

While most students across the state received devices for virtual learning, many couldn’t use them due to poor, limited or no internet access. Our report found that this left them at a severe disadvantage.

Related: Homework in a McDonald’s parking lot: Inside one mother’s fight to help her kids get an education during coronavirus

Mississippi has one of the largest populations of K-12 students who lack broadband access; its sparsely populated rural communities are often redlined by internet service providers, leaving them grossly unserved or underserved. But it’s not just a Mississippi trend. According to a national study of the Black Rural South, nearly three-quarters, or 72.6 percent, of households in the Black Rural South do not have broadband of at least 25 Mbps — the minimum standard for broadband internet.

Compounding these challenges is the stark lack of access to mental health care, a formidable barrier for Mississippi students. According to our report, while parents described the immense toll the pandemic had on their family’s mental health, few of them sought help or had access to mental health professionals. Over 70 percent of children in Mississippi with major depression disorder do not receive treatment, surpassing the national average of 60 percent.

Unfortunately, the pandemic exacerbated this issue, with many students grappling with losing loved ones, economic instability and the social isolation imposed by remote learning. The student-to-counselor ratio in Mississippi is 398 to 1, almost 60 percent higher than the American School Counselor Association recommendation of 250 to 1, according to an analysis done by Charlie Health.

Our report also found that students with disabilities were acutely affected during the pandemic. Although Covid guidelines mandated compliance with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, many districts consistently failed to support students and their parents.

Mississippi now confronts a moral imperative to fortify its historically underserved school districts, especially those most severely impacted by the pandemic. With a $3.9 billion surplus of state revenue in 2023, legislators finally have the means to fully fund the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP) for the first time since 2008. Yet they have chosen not to do so during a time when schools need investment and support the most.

Related: OPINION: Lessons from Mississippi: Is there really a miracle here we can all learn from?

It is past time for lawmakers to make education in Mississippi a priority for all students, especially those in historically under-resourced districts. The state must begin investing in education to overcome historical inequities and post-pandemic challenges. This is the only viable path toward dismantling the systemic barriers that have perpetuated disparities for far too long.

Until then, Mississippi’s commitment to the well-being and success of all its residents, regardless of their ZIP code, will remain in question.

The time for unwavering action is now.

Kim L. Wiley is a former educator who serves as the Education Analyst & Project Coordinator for the Mississippi Center for Justice, a nonprofit, public-interest law firm committed to advancing racial and economic justice.

This story about Mississippi education inequality was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: Historically underserved school districts in Mississippi were hit hard in the pandemic and need immediate help   appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

I make a habit of sitting at the lunch table and chatting with my preschool students every day. It is a wonderful time to talk with them. They are relaxed, sharing stories about pets, upcoming T-ball games and some truly terrible knock-knock jokes. Sometimes, those conversations take us in unexpected directions.

During a pause in lunchtime chat last week, 5-year-old Iris (name changed to protect privacy) looked up at me, frowned, and said, “I wish I was white instead of Black.”

I have been teaching for over two decades, and not a year has passed that I have not heard a Black child make a similar heartbreaking statement. As a white teacher, my responses have changed greatly over time.

Early in my career, I may have deflected my discomfort with an overly earnest statement about the beauty of melanin and why she should appreciate her skin. Or I might have avoided responding at all because I lacked the skill to navigate conversations about race with young children.

But I know now that I owe Iris and every other student in my classroom the dignity of a real and honest response in these moments when they are seeking connection. This time, I looked at her, nodded my head, and asked her a question to open up a conversation that I would have tried desperately to shut down 20 years ago:

“What would be different for you if your skin was white?”

As Iris leaves my preschool to begin her K-12 journey in public school this fall, she may have a Black teacher or two at some point who can respond to her in moments like this with a depth of lived experience in ways that I cannot.

Yet we should not expect those teachers of color to shoulder the work of supporting children’s healthy racial identity development: Students of color in the U.S. are much more likely to have white teachers than teachers who reflect their own race.

Related: Inside one school’s efforts to bridge the divide between white teachers and students of color

White teachers like me cannot build trusting relationships and meet the emotional needs of our students unless we learn how to talk honestly about race. Teacher training programs ensure that their graduates receive specific coursework related to children’s language and literacy development, elementary mathematical concepts and many other core subjects that all teachers must understand to support to students’ learning.

However, many white teachers are ill-prepared to navigate conversations with students about race, despite the fact that children as young as 2 are already forming ideas about race and are internalizing biases. Teacher training programs fail to address this knowledge gap between white teachers and teachers of color — very few of whom have had the luxury of avoiding conversations about race.

There are myriad opportunities for white teachers to learn this skill on their own time that did not exist when I started teaching. Organizations like EmbraceRace and the Center for Racial Justice in Education are terrific resources.

5-year-old Iris (name changed to protect privacy) looked up at me, frowned, and said, “I wish I was white instead of Black.”

But we need to expect more than self-directed professional development by individual teachers. We need systemic solutions.

Teacher training programs should address this educator skill gap. We can do real harm to students when our only response to conversations about race is to shut them down as quickly as possible.

Researchers Rita Kohli and Marcos Pizarro of the Institute for Teachers of Color have looked closely at this issue, and their proposed solutions include two game-changing ideas: requiring a “base level of racial literacy” for admission of candidates to undergraduate teaching programs  and including initiatives to “educate white teacher candidates on how whiteness operates … and teach them how to recognize and disrupt these ideologies.”

Back at our school lunch table, 5-year-old Iris, without missing a beat, was ready to answer why she wished she were white.

“I wouldn’t get shooted. I wouldn’t have to worry about police.”

The Black child next to Iris nodded her head in response. A white classmate across the table nodded too. The five of us asked one another questions and kept the discussion going long after lunch was done. I know that Iris left that lunch table feeling heard and valued.

Related: OPINION: Educators must be on the frontline of social activism

My heart aches when I think of the students with whom I failed to connect in my early years of teaching, all because I lacked the skill to respond to them honestly and openly.

Students learn best when they feel connected to their teachers.

While racism is not a problem we will solve overnight, each new day is another opportunity for us to act. As pivotal long-term efforts to recruit and retain more teachers of color take root, there remains an immediate need for our teacher training programs to prepare white teachers to truly support our students in all areas of their growth and development.

Suzanne Stillinger is an early childhood teacher leader and accessibility coordinator at New Village in Northampton, Massachusetts. She is a 2023-2024 Teach Plus Senior Writing Fellow and Teach Plus Senior Policy Fellow.

This story about teaching about race was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Jenna Saykhamphone, a senior at Annandale High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, helped start an equity team at her high school to fight stereotypes both inside and outside her school in suburban Washington, D.C.

Saykhamphone, who has Laotian and Nigerian ancestry, said there are not many other Black or Hispanic students in her accelerated International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, even though 85 percent of the student body is Black, Hispanic or Asian.

And in one IB history class, she said a teacher had students pick cotton seeds off cotton plants to demonstrate the efficiency of the cotton gin, in an attempt to include multiple perspectives in his class. Saykhamphone and other Black students at the school found this lesson offensive, but their teacher did not understand why until students talked to Fairfax County’s culturally responsive pedagogy specialists to intervene.

So, when she learned that Virginia was planning to revise its history standards — sparking fears of an attempt to downplay the importance of minority communities in the state — she joined dozens of other opponents at a public hearing in Mount Vernon, Virginia, near the home of George Washington.

“I felt like it was my social responsibility to go out and speak,” she said. At the meeting, reading a prepared speech from her cell phone, Saykhamphone shared the cotton gin story and told board members that “for me to truly appreciate American history and my Black and Asian history, standards should not be watered down.”

And, she added, “I also have to miss studying for my physics test to be here.”

Virginia’s rewrite of its history curriculum started off with heat and discord. But the process eventually ended with a set of standards approved unanimously by a bipartisan state board, which included members appointed by current Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a conservative Republican.

That conclusion is a marked contrast to Florida’s recently approved and controversial African-American history standards. Critics say that document minimizes slavery through such standards as requiring students to learn how “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement

Andy Rotherham, who was appointed to the state board of education in 2022 by Youngkin, said the outcome of the social studies debate shows that people can get past politics to a good result. Rotherham, a Democrat, also served a four-year term on the board from 2005 to 2009, when he was appointed by then-governor Mark Warner, a Democrat.

“We did good work, and we listened to each other,” Rotherham said. But the final outcome is getting lost in the continuing political tensions, he said. “Youngkin appointed good people, but he’s getting zero credit for that.”

But the “good work” that led to unanimous approval was honed through compromise, another difference from Florida’s process.

“In Virginia, Youngkin can’t begin to do what Ron DeSantis can do in Florida on questions of ‘wokeness,’ because there is a Democratic Senate majority that is blocking much of Youngkin’s preferred agenda,” said Stephen Farnsworth, the director of the Center for Leadership and Media Studies at the University of Mary Washington. However, every seat in the General Assembly is on the ballot in November, and that election will determine if that legislative balance will remain for the rest of Youngkin’s term.  

The Virginia Board of Education reviews the state’s “standards of learning” — which guide curricula and are tied to end-of-grade tests — every seven years. Redrafting of the history standards started in 2021 under the administration of Ralph Northam, the former Democratic governor.

But in August 2022, the new proposed standards, which included recommendations from the state’s African American History Education Commission, were put on hold to allow Youngkin appointees a chance to review them.

That review set off a roller-coaster process that led to three versions making it to public view before the state board approved the standards in April.

The new standards say that teachers must facilitate “open and balanced” discussions about topics such as discrimination and racism, but the standards also note that teachers should engage their classes in “fact-based, non-ideological, and age-appropriate ways that do not imply students today are culpable for past events.”

The standards refer to the “indelible stain” of slavery and require that in fourth grade students be taught that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, along with secondary factors. The standards also require students to learn more about the Reconstruction era, an era many educators consider undertaught in schools, but pivotal in American history.

Related: CRT debate repeats past battles about state history textbooks

At one point in this revision process, the Youngkin administration presented a new draft to the board that generated immediate controversy: It referred to Native Americans as “immigrants” and removed mentions of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Juneteenth from the elementary standards, among other changes. The board unanimously agreed to send the draft back for further revision.

The third draft of the standards was sent out for public comment in March. More than 300 people spoke at meetings around the state, and more than 1,000 people submitted comments online. After the hearings the board went through the draft line by line, making further changes before its vote.

While the final vote suggests unity, some still don’t like the outcome. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, a professor of Virginia Black History and Culture at Norfolk State University, said some standards still don’t contextualize events properly, or emphasize the order of events and how they are related to each other.

Newby-Alexander, a co-chair for the commission on African American history, said she did not expect the standards to be changed by the Youngkin administration, because the process had almost been completed when he came into office. She believes the newly passed standards are trying to erase division and conflict in history.

As an example, she cites the introduction to the standards, which describe the abolitionist and reformer Frederick Douglass as having a “complicated love” for America.

“Douglass’s love of America was in no way complicated,” Newby-Alexander said. “He condemned America’s White society for its hypocrisy about equality and its support of slavery.  But he also insisted that he is a citizen and as such, deserves fair treatment.  That is not a complicated love unless the argument is that you cannot complain about and fight against unfair treatment if you love America.”

Edward Ayers, a historian who co-chaired the history commission with Newby-Alexander, said that the biggest difference between the standards that were passed and the previous August draft is that the new version strips out an engaged model of teaching, produced by experienced educators and focused on inquiry, and replaces it with long lists of names and events for students to memorize.

“We were almost there, in Virginia, to have what would have been one of the best history curriculums in the country, and now it’s just been taken away,” Ayers said. The new standards do include many of the changes recommended by the history commission, but “instead of students engaging with the hard questions about the American past, they will now be returned to old-fashioned pedagogy that is easy to measure on standardized tests,” he said.

Related: What do classroom conversations about race, identity and history really look like?

After the history standards were approved, Youngkin appointed three new members to the state education board to replace three members whose terms had expired. The nine-member board is now made up of eight Youngkin appointees, who are expected to be more in favor of his priorities.

During his campaign, Youngkin tapped into concerns about pandemic school closures and promised to elevate parental rights to control their children’s exposure to certain topics, such as sexuality and gender identity.

He has already been successful in passing one part of that promise: Virginia districts must now notify parents of any instructional material that includes content deemed “sexually explicit.”

Some school leaders are taking further action beyond what the state requires. The school board representing the 1,700-student Madison County district voted to ban 21 books from its high school library. They include books by Toni Morrison, Stephen King, Anne Rice and Sherman Alexie, among others. The superintendent in Spotsylvania County, a district of some 24,000 students, removed 14 books from school shelves, citing the law.

This policy has added to an already-tense environment among teachers, said Jessica Berg, who teaches English and Women and Gender Studies at Rock Ridge High School in Loudoun County. Loudoun County, a district of 82,000 students 45 miles west of Washington, D.C., has been the center of heated battles over issues such as parental rights, “critical race theory” and transgender rights.

Related: Teachers, deputized to fight the culture wars, are often reluctant to serve

In Loudoun County, parents must be notified 30 days in advance of material being taught in classrooms. Berg said this can be impossible when teachers don’t always know what is divisive and are balancing this with all the other struggles of being a teacher. She said teachers around her are deciding not to teach certain books because they don’t want to deal with backlash.

But she said the best moments in her classroom have come from texts that create discussion about conflict, authenticity and reality.

“If you came into our classroom and actually asked them, these conversations aren’t harming them in any way,” she said. “In fact, these are the conversations they want to have. They’re starting to form their opinions, they want to be validated, they want someone to listen.”

Akira Tanglao-Aguas, a senior at Jamestown High School in Williamsburg, is taking AP English Literature this year. This class usually involves a senior research paper about a book of students’ choice. Tanglao-Aguas was going to read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.

But because of this new state policy, his teacher submitted each book for parent and district approval. The process took so long, his teacher canceled the research paper because there wasn’t enough time left in the semester.

“Teachers are afraid of what they can show,” he said.

Though the controversy over the social studies standards has died down, Saykhamphone is among those who believe there is still work to be done to support equity in the state. Her team has helped create a dual enrollment African American history course at Northern Virginia Community College. This year, the team also organized school protests for LGBTQ+ students and held a Black History Month fundraiser to buy Black children’s books from a local Black-owned bookstore and distribute them to local elementary schools.

“We want to provide more resources and opportunities for students to flourish and blossom within classes and within clubs,” she said. “We want to be able to learn like the correct kind of information about our history.”

This story about Virginia social studies standards was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — The school year ended at Washington Elementary at 2:35 p.m. on a hot Tuesday afternoon in May, but one hour later, 9-year-old Malaysia Robertson lingered outside.

She had spent most of her life at this small public school in the New Orleans suburb where she lives with her grandmother, but when she returned to school this month, it had closed. Like thousands of other students in Louisiana’s largest school district, she has been shuffled to a new campus in a consolidation plan that affects nearly one in 10 of the district’s Black students, like Malaysia, a disproportionate number.

On the last day of classes, she didn’t want to say goodbye.

“We were running down the hall, crying and everything,” Malaysia said later, remembering her final day of third grade. The parking lot remained filled with students, families and teachers well past 4 p.m., sharing hugs as they scattered from the campus for the last time.

The school board’s decision this spring to permanently close six schools has rocked Jefferson Parish, where the number of students enrolled in public schools has dropped by nearly 10 percent since the pandemic began. The decline exacerbated the district’s nearly decade-long struggle to revive its enrollment after Hurricane Katrina, and district officials have said the closures are the necessary response to its shrinking student body. District data show that last school year, approximately 1 in 3 available student seats remained unfilled, and several buildings housed fewer than half the number of students they were initially built for.

“We have schools that are underutilized — that’s a fact,” said school board Vice President Derrick Shepherd at the April vote. “Math cannot be changed.”

The district has redrawn its map to redistribute its students, requiring many to travel out of their neighborhoods and farther from home. Officials have said the new maps will make bus transportation more reliable, and no teachers will lose their jobs. But the decision has brought ire from community advocates and civil rights lawyers, who say the closures are not only harmful to families like Malaysia’s, but discriminatory too.

Though white students make up nearly a quarter of the district’s enrollment, they represent only 12 percent of the students affected by the closures, according to state enrollment data. The plan the school board approved, which weighed which schools had the most empty space and inadequate facilities, closed two of its top-performing and majority Black and Hispanic high schools.

As a result, hundreds of Black and Hispanic students will be shuffled to lower-performing schools next school year — an echo, to some families, of the district’s segregated and racist past.

“Who is going to benefit from this whole process? It’s not the Black and brown children,” said Debra Houston Edwards, 77, who graduated from Washington over six decades ago and began working for the district in the 1980s, one of the few Black administrators at the time. “There is no equity in what is going on.”

Shepherd and board president Ralph Brandt did not respond to requests for comment for this story. In an email, the district’s communication director pointed to an online information page about the closures but did not respond to further questions.

Related: Nearly all the seniors at this charter school went to college. Only 6 out of 52 finished on time

The nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Education alleging that the closures discriminate against students based on race and that the district failed to share information about the closures with families who speak limited English. A second complaint from the SPLC alleges that the closures are part of a trend of pervasive discrimination against some students based on race, as well as other attributes.

The department has not announced that it has opened an investigation into either complaint.

In the meantime, experts worry that districts across the country may soon face a similar problem. More than one million students nationwide did not return to public school after the pandemic. Some enrolled at private schools, others began homeschooling, and still others seemingly disappeared, according to Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education. Amid declining birth rates, the Education Department estimates that national public school enrollment will drop by 5 percent or more by 2031 — a sharp change after decades of increasing enrollment.

“There’s going to be a reckoning for many school districts that haven’t acknowledged their new reality,” said Dee, who has studied the exodus from public school districts. For many, he predicts, that will mean considering school closures.

That debate will not only be about whether and how to close schools, but also about which groups of students will bear the burden. Already, Black and Hispanic students have disproportionately taken the brunt, leaving researchers and advocates concerned that the nation’s declining public school enrollment — and the closures that will likely follow — will exacerbate inequities in public education.

“Who is going to benefit from this whole process? It’s not the Black and brown children. There is no equity in what is going on.”

Debra Houston Edwards, 77, a Washington Elementary graduate and former Jefferson Parish schools administrator

“The next 10 years is going to be full of these kinds of stories,” said Douglas N. Harris, chair of the economics department at Tulane University and director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice. Through an analysis of nationwide school closures and restructuring trends over the past 30 years, Harris found that schools with a higher percentage of students of color were more likely to close than those with more white students.

Sometimes, Harris said, that’s because of historical inequalities, when schools serving more students of color have received less long-term investment, resulting in lower test scores and more dilapidated buildings. That can exacerbate their enrollment loss and make them seem, from a financial and performance standpoint, like a more sensible choice to shut down.

But even when Harris and his co-researcher compared only schools with similar enrollment and performance levels, those with more students of color and more low-income students were still more likely to close. Previous research from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes showed similar results, finding that among low-performing schools, those with a greater share of Black and Hispanic students are more likely to be closed than those with more white students, even if they ranked similarly.

To Malaysia’s aunt Cheryl Earl, the board’s decision has been devastating. Her eldest daughter transferred to Washington two years earlier, and her younger daughter started there in first grade just last year. Like Malaysia, her girls have thrived at the 240-student community school.

Before transferring to Washington for fourth grade, Earl’s older daughter, Ce’Vanne Ursin, had told her mother she hated school. “She couldn’t wait til she made it to the 12th [grade] to drop out,” Earl recalled. But at Washington, Ce’Vanne’s outlook completely shifted. By fifth grade, she had been selected for the school’s gifted and talented program. And at the end of the school year, she was named Mistress of Ceremonies for the final graduation, a coveted position.

“I used to think I was dumb, but I’m really not,” said Ce’Vanne, who is now 12 years old. “Washington made me feel comfortable. It made me feel like everyone in the school was my friends and family.”

Ce’Vanne said she felt lucky to be part of Washington’s final graduating class. But the closures meant her 8-year-old sister, CanyonSunday, wouldn’t have the same experience. Instead, the district reassigned the rising second grader to the same school where Ce’vanne had her bad experiences before Washington. Their mother said she is too scarred by Ce’Vanne’s time at that school to send her youngest back there and decided to enroll both girls at a nearby Catholic private school. The district will lose two more students; the family will lose their entire school community.

When schools close, the ripple effects play out for years, according to Molly F. Gordon, previously a research scientist at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Students’ academic performance often suffers, some families opt to leave as their neighborhoods become less desirable, and important histories are erased.

After Chicago closed nearly 50 public schools in 2013, Gordon and her team followed the outcomes of students who had been affected. Even before the closures, during the year they were announced, reading and math scores of affected students took a hit, putting them months behind students whose schools would remain open. Though the students’ reading scores eventually rebounded, the effect on their math scores persisted for four years.

“Students coming in from the closed schools felt like they lost something, because they did,” said Gordon, now a senior research scientist at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. “They were grieving.”

Related: When the waters rise, how will we keep schools open?

Chicago’s closures were meant to save the district money and close low-performing schools, where almost exclusively Black and Hispanic students were enrolled. Officials promised that the move would serve those students by placing them in better-performing schools. But, a decade later, many of the advertised benefits of the nation’s largest mass closure to date never materialized, an investigation by The Chicago Sun-Times and local radio station WBEZ found. Students at schools that closed did no better academically than those at similar schools that stayed open, and they graduated at slightly lower rates than students at comparison schools, well below the district’s average. And though the move did cut costs, the savings were likely much lower than officials had originally estimated.

The question that remains is one that Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, gets asked a lot: With resources stretched, enrollment numbers down, and closures on the table, what should districts do?

Roza stresses two key factors as essential to minimizing the disruption — planning ahead and prioritizing performance. Closing schools should, in essence, benefit all students in the district, freeing resources to spend on more staff and programming. But to ensure that’s the case, districts must pay special care to the students they relocate by transitioning them to better-performing schools and transparently conveying the rationale for the move to families.

Yet in Jefferson Parish, state performance data shows that hasn’t been the case. Though elementary school students will be absorbed into higher-rated schools, high schoolers face a different fate. The new plan shutters the district’s second- and third-highest performing high schools — a kind of move “that just defies logic,” Roza said.

One of those schools is Grace King High School, where longtime Jefferson Parish resident Lillie Magee’s two grandsons completed 10th and 11th grade in May. The school was mostly made up of Hispanic and Black students, like Magee’s grandsons, and everyone seemed to get along, she said.

“There’s going to be a reckoning for many school districts that haven’t acknowledged their new reality.”

Thomas S. Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education

Magee had felt like her grandsons, whom she took care of, were safe within the school’s walls. She knew their teachers and former coaches, and had attended football games full of passion and school pride. Now, she worries that reassigning many Grace King students to their former rival high school will result in violence and fighting. Her boys have lost the school they knew, and she has lost the community she trusted to keep them safe.

“How they treated us, it’s just so unfair,” Magee said. The school her eldest grandson will attend next year is ranked second-worst in the district by performance.

Related: Inside the Christian legal campaign to return prayer to public schools

Back at Washington Elementary, the buildings now sit dark and empty, the grass outside overgrown and littered. One month after the closure, a fire tore through the building that housed the gymnasium and cafeteria, leaving debris strewn over the long tables where teachers had hosted a graduation breakfast weeks earlier. Now, the windows remain boarded up, the gates outside locked.

The timing of the blaze, which police said appeared to have stemmed from an electrical fire, left many community members suspicious. The district now plans to sell the site off, allowing the future buyer to restore or raze the school.

Debra Houston Edwards, the former district administrator, hopes that at least the buildings will be saved for their historical significance so they can continue to serve as a community hub.

Amid declining birth rates, the Education Department estimates that national public school enrollment will drop by 5 percent or more by 2031 — a sharp change after decades of increasing enrollment.

In the early 1930s, Edwards’ grandfather and five other men who lived on the parish’s east bank of the Mississippi River petitioned the school board to open a high school for Black students in the area. But the board told them it was their responsibility — they would have to buy the land and cover part of the construction costs. In response, the community collected funds door to door. In 1936, it became the first school on the east bank where Black children could receive an education beyond the eighth grade.

“Nobody else had to do that but us,” said Edwards, who has preserved the school’s history in old newspaper clippings and fading photographs. “And so here we are again, going back through the same process.”

Earlier this month, Edwards and a group of community members offered to buy the school for $1, essentially requesting the school board donate the land — a site “for which our ancestors have already paid,” the group wrote in a letter to board president Brandt.

But the group said it has received no formal reply. In a statement to local news outlets, Brandt said the board is “legally required to seek fair market value” on any property it intends to sell. 

As for Malaysia, when she pictures the next school year, she says she feels hopeful. Many of her teachers will move to her new school as well, and several of her old classmates will join her in the unfamiliar building.

But to her grandmother, Angie Robertson, it’s a different world — a neighborhood they don’t live in, a community they have not been a part of.

“You had teachers over there,” at Washington, “that were just like family,” said Robertson, who also taught in the school’s Head Start early learning program. “To me, I felt like it was the kids’ home away from home.”

Now, that home has disappeared.

This story about the impact of school closures was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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The phrase “Mississippi Miracle” trips off the tongue. Who doesn’t like alliteration? More pointedly, who doesn’t like rising test scores?

In recent months, the phrase has been associated with Mississippi’s performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the Nation’s Report Card.

In 2022, Mississippi’s fourth graders eligible for free lunch (a marker used to estimate poverty) performed significantly higher on the NAEP reading test than similarly low-income children in 43 other states and the District of Columbia.

A mere nine years earlier, Mississippi’s fourth grade students living in poverty had NAEP reading scores near the bottom of the state scores list.

Although there have been skirmishes about whether or not these test score gains in Mississippi are real, and what they mean, we believe that they indicate genuine, although modest, progress in the literacy skills of young Mississippi schoolchildren.

The gains are due to the steps Mississippi took to support the teaching of literacy skills in early elementary classrooms and not, as some have suggested, due to the manipulation of the student population taking the test or to aligning Mississippi’s learning standards specifically to the NAEP standards.

NAEP is the only assessment used in all states and territories — a small subset of schools from each state participate — and the test’s design allows for state-by-state comparisons in a way no other assessment can.

Mississippi’s NAEP performance gains accompanied new policies that began at roughly the same time: The Literacy-Based Promotion Act (LBPA), passed by the Mississippi legislature in 2013, is primarily known as a policy to hold back third graders who have not demonstrated basic reading proficiency on a state assessment.

Related:  Tennessee law could hold back thousands of third graders in bid to help kids recover from the pandemic

But the law is more complex than that one policy, as it focuses on capacity-building as well as mandates for K-3 reading instruction.

A big component of the LBPA and the substantial private investment that preceded it was a new vision for reading instruction. Some commentators call it “The Science of Reading” and highlight a narrow emphasis on phonics instruction. But, as is true for any complex phenomena, teaching reading and learning to read require knowledgeable practitioners able to adapt instruction to students’ needs.

Literacy is about making meaning of the world, and that meaning emerges through the study of content as much as from using knowledge of letter patterns to sound out unfamiliar words.

In Mississippi, there has been a push, backed by private funding through the Barksdale Reading Institute, to build greater understanding of the importance of code-based instruction and word recognition, including phonics and phonemic awareness (the ability to hear individual sounds within spoken words), alongside other components of reading that the Barksdale Reading Institute calls “The Reading Universe” — language comprehension (including background knowledge and vocabulary), reading comprehension and writing.

The LBPA provided numerous resources to support all of these aspects of better reading instruction.

The act included state funding for assistant teachers in grades K-3, access to literacy coaches and additional training. Reading Universe, for example, provided online classroom videos, interviews with teachers and detailed guides to support the teaching of specific literacy skills, such as identifying phonemes and drawing on background knowledge to make meaning of a text.

It would be a tragedy if policymakers in other states were to take away a surface lesson like “retention works” without a deeper understanding of the supports needed to bring about change.

Additionally, for many years leading up to and following passage of the LPBA, the literacy faculty at teacher preparation institutions discussed how to prepare teachers to teach reading in the early grades.

These supports, we suspect, have been influential in better preparing Mississippi elementary school teachers and changing instruction in K-3 classrooms. But they have also been hit or miss, with some schools and educators deeply understanding multiple facets of literacy instruction and others more exclusively relying on curriculum packages emphasizing the decoding of words.

Recognizing this hit or miss aspect is important. In Mississippi, there are geographic and demographic disparities in school funding, teacher availability and access to advanced coursework.

Schools in the Mississippi Delta underperform most schools. We can celebrate the literacy gains across the state, but we must also seek solutions to address disparities and uneven policy implementation.

We are not persuaded that the third grade retention policy has been a magic bullet; retention effects vary across contexts. Even in Mississippi, the evidence that retention boosts achievement is ambiguous.

A recent working paper by economists Kirsten Slungaard Mumma and Marcus Winters compared students who scored just below the threshold for third grade retention on the Mississippi ELA test in 2014-15 with those who scored just a bit above that threshold, tracing the students’ performance for several years.

They found that retained students outscored similar students who were not retained on the state ELA test. But this difference did not reach conventional levels of statistical significance, even with a sample of over 4,000 students.

Mumma and Winters acknowledge, however, that it is not possible to discern which features of the retention policy account for the upswing in subsequent ELA scores.

Students retained under the policy receive close monitoring and intensive reading interventions. This enhanced instruction, supported by intensive teacher coaching, may be what really matters.

Related: NAACP targets a new civil rights issue—reading

All we know for sure is that scores on a single, high-profile ELA test have gone up, and it’s worth taking time to understand why.

It would be a tragedy if policymakers in other states were to take away a surface lesson like “retention works” without a deeper understanding of the supports needed to bring about change, and the challenges still facing students in Mississippi — and similar states.

In education, miracles are often mirages; demographic inequalities in resources and achievement are stubborn; and quick-fix policies are no substitute for steady hard work.

Devon Brenner is the director of Social Science Research Center and a professor in the department of Teacher Education and Leadership at Mississippi State University.

Aaron M. Pallas is the Arthur I. Gates Professor of Sociology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

This story about Mississippi reading scores was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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It wasn’t the first time Ventrese Curry’s granddaughter had gotten into trouble at school. A seventh grader at a charter school in St. Louis, Missouri, she had a long history of disrupting her classes and getting into confrontations with teachers. Several times, the school issued a suspension and sent Curry’s granddaughter home. 

In each instance, the school followed state law: The punishment was officially recorded and assigned a set length of time, Curry was formally notified and she and her granddaughter had a chance to appeal the decision.

But one day in February, after refusing to go into her classroom and allegedly cursing at her teachers, the seventh grader was sent home to learn online indefinitely. Curry said she wasn’t given any sense of when her granddaughter would be able to return to the classroom, just that the school and administrators would determine the best learning environment for her. In the meantime, the middle schooler would be left to keep up with her schoolwork on her own, on a district-issued tablet that Curry says would often lock her granddaughter out. 

“They’d rather send her home than work on the issues she was going through,” Curry said. “She missed out on a lot of work, a whole lot. It makes me feel bad. It wasn’t fair at all, the way they were treating her.” 

“There’s a pattern that the easiest solution is to remove a student rather than deal with the underlying issues.”

Sabrina Bernadel, legal counsel at the National Women’s Law Center

Lawyers and advocates across the country say that the practice of forcing a student out of the physical school building and into online learning has emerged as a troubling — and largely hidden — legacy of the pandemic’s shift to virtual learning. Critics charge that these punishments can deprive students and their families of due process rights. Students risk getting stuck in deficient online programs for weeks or even months without the support they need and falling behind in their academics. Sometimes, there is no system in place for tracking how many students are being punished this way or how many days of in-person classroom learning they are forced to miss. 

“We are speaking about an equal right, an equal opportunity to access education,” said Sabrina Bernadel, legal counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “Instead of taking traditional or legal pathways,” she said, “there’s a pattern that the easiest solution is to remove a student rather than deal with the underlying issues.” 

Related:Hidden expulsions? Schools kick students out but call it a ‘transfer’

In 2020, nearly every school district in the nation was forced to come up with a way of providing education online. Later, as students returned to in-school learning, that infrastructure remained, making it easier than ever for districts to remove students from the classroom but say they were still educating them. The pandemic showed, however, that the quality of virtual instruction varies greatly and that online classes work best for only a minority of students; vast learning loss and student setbacks resulted. 

Still, districts nationwide are now placing students in online learning in response to misbehavior, in a process referred to in certain circles as “virtualization.”

Some school districts consider virtual learning an alternative to discipline — not a form of discipline itself. Other districts embrace virtualization as a disciplinary measure and have started to develop official policies around using this punishment. 

In Clayton County School District, outside Atlanta, “misdeeds” committed by a student can lead to mandatory online learning until “behavior challenges are identified and mitigated,” according to a statement provided over email by Charles White, a district spokesperson. He said that virtual assignments are intended to be temporary and not to serve as in-school suspensions “or elimination of the expected learning experience.” 

In Toppenish School District in Washington State, serving Yakima County, however, the transfer of a student to online learning for 10 to 20 school days is used as a top-tier disciplinary sanction, according to its student handbook. This action is considered a “long-term out-of-school suspension” and is to be used only after a number of other less drastic methods have failed to achieve behavior change, the handbook says. The district did not respond to requests for comment.

“I have worked on a lot of cases where the attorney gets involved, and suddenly the school lets the kids back in, no questions asked. They aren’t making any arguments as to why the child should be out of school — because they have none.”

Maggie Probert, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri

Paula Knight, superintendent of Jennings School District in Missouri, said students can be placed in online learning for anywhere from a few hours to a full semester as a punishment, calling the virtual option a “game changer” in how the district is able to deliver instruction. 

An afternoon away from the classroom in virtual learning is “almost like a restoration practice, giving them an opportunity to cool down or cool off,” Knight said. For other students, virtualization has its “pluses and minuses,” she said. “It just depends. When the kids are academically on target, for example, you don’t want them to lose that momentum, and we allow [virtual] as an option.”

Knight said that online learning has not yet been written into the district’s disciplinary code, but that there are plans to incorporate it more formally at some point. Currently, students are recommended for involuntary virtual learning by the principal, she said, and these placements are tracked aggregately along with suspensions, which makes identifying the particular impact of virtualization difficult. 

Related:Some kids have returned to in-person learning only to be kicked right back out

Rosalind Crawford moved her five young boys, all in elementary and middle school, to Jennings, just north of St. Louis, in the spring of 2022. A single mom, Crawford left her longtime home of Memphis to get her family away from gun violence near their home. She enrolled her boys in the local schools that April. 

It wasn’t long before she started hearing about two of the boys getting into trouble. Crawford said she could see that they were dealing with trauma and struggling to behave in school as a result. She also believes they were being bullied. She says she met with administrators several times to raise concerns about her kids’ relationships with their peers and their performance in school. 

After a fight broke out involving two of her children and other classmates in October 2022, Crawford and her lawyers say all five of her kids were placed on virtual learning. 

Jennings School District officials did not respond to follow-up questions about Crawford’s case, but a letter addressed to the family said that the boys were transferred to home-school learning at Crawford’s request. She denies making this request and says she sought legal help to get them back into school. 

In the meantime, Crawford said, the boys were provided with laptops and Google Classroom access. 

For the better part of the school year, they tried to learn from home. Crawford says that sometimes they only received two lessons per week and that there was no teacher instruction, which made it hard for them to learn. She watched as they fell behind in everything from academic courses to physical education. Her sixth grader soon was at risk of being unable to move up to seventh grade in fall 2023. 

“I feel like a failure. How do you tell your kids — when you see the devastation — that this isn’t their fault?” Crawford said. “Virtual learning is basically putting the kids somewhere [the school doesn’t] have to deal with them.” 

“I feel like a failure. How do you tell your kids — when you see the devastation — that this isn’t their fault.”

Rosalind Crawford, parent of children placed on virtual learning

Ventrese Curry’s granddaughter was also in danger of falling behind due to the amount of schoolwork she missed while learning virtually, her grandmother said. In all, she missed nearly a month of school. 

“They never gave her homework. I was calling every day asking if they could give me a package of her work,” she said. “They were telling me she might have to repeat the same grade.” 

The school did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Related: How the pandemic has altered school discipline — perhaps forever

The stakes of such discipline playing out in schools across the country “are fairly enormous,” said Sara Zier from TeamChild, a youth advocacy organization in Washington State that also provides legal services. Lost classroom time reduces social and emotional skills, hinders academic progress and can decrease a student’s likelihood of graduating; lower levels of education can lead to lower employment and financial prospects in adulthood. “It’s not something we can solve by representing one kid at a time,” she said. “It’s a much bigger challenge.” 

Yet because many schools don’t separate virtualization from other suspensions or, in some cases, even record it as a removal from the classroom, it’s almost impossible to know how often it’s happening and to whom. 

For example, although Clayton County uses virtual learning as a disciplinary tool, the district has no records of how many students have been put into online programs involuntarily.

Hopey Fink, a lawyer at Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, said, “We suspect that there is an attempt to obscure and euphemize the suspension data that’s kind of embedded in part of this” in order to evade accountability. Without data, advocates like Fink worry that disproportionate disciplinary measures against already-marginalized groups could be hiding in plain sight. 

In the 2015-2016 school year, Black students lost 103 days of learning per 100 students, 82 more days than their white peers.

Typically, discipline overwhelmingly and disproportionately affects students of color and students with disabilities. Research from the UCLA Center for Civil Rights Remedies, using data from the 2015-16 school year, concluded that Black students lost 103 days of learning per 100 students, 82 more days than their white peers. Another study found that Latino students were more likely to receive disciplinary action than white students. U.S. Department of Education data from the 2017-18 school year shows that students with disabilities accounted for 16 percent of total enrollment but received 25 percent of in-school suspensions and 28 percent of out-of-school suspensions. Disparities for Black students with disabilities were even worse. 

“We can only extrapolate” that disparities are comparable in other newer forms of discipline, such as virtualization, said Bernadel of the National Women’s Law Center. “Without formal data, we can’t speak to that directly and address that problem, and it’s a huge issue.” 

Related: When typical middle school antics mean suspensions, handcuffs or jail

Getting back into the classroom after being placed on virtual learning can be more difficult than returning after a suspension. Lawyers in Washington State say clients have been required to make behavioral and academic improvement in a virtual setting before returning to the classroom, and when students do return, they’re typically saddled with cumbersome and alienating rules. 

Documents show a laundry list of requirements that a middle-schooler in Washington’s Toppenish School District would need to re-enroll in brick-and-mortar classes: pick-up and drop-off in the main office; random student searches; escorted transition times five minutes before class is over; and chaperoned bathroom trips with a staff member, among others.

For Crawford’s children to return to the classroom in the Jennings School District, she and two of her sons were required to participate in a conflict resolution program through the St. Louis County Juvenile Courts, according to a November 7, 2022, letter from the Jennings School District superintendent and security director. Failure to do so risked “further disciplinary action” that could result in “virtual learning for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year.” 

In all, it took nearly five months and a lawyer’s involvement for Crawford to get her kids reenrolled. The boys also needed to sign a behavior contract, but were ultimately admitted back into the classroom in March.

Indeed, family and student advocates say that the legal credibility of this practice of virtualization is fragile. If families are able to get legal support, school districts tend to quickly allow the student to reenroll, said Maggie Probert from Legal Services of Eastern Missouri. But even free legal aid can be difficult for already-vulnerable families to access. 

Probert worked with Curry to get her granddaughter back into her regular classes after more than three weeks of online learning. 

“I have worked on a lot of cases where the attorney gets involved, and suddenly the school lets the kids back in, no questions asked,” Probert said. “They aren’t making any arguments as to why the child should be out of school — because they have none.” 

This story about online learning and school discipline was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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