SUMMARY: Across the country, rural schools are being forced to shut down as more families move to urban areas and funding sources dry up. In Arena, Wisconsin, six-year-old Brady Schlamp must now travel 10 miles to school. His former school, right around the corner, was shuttered. As Jeffrey Brown reports, the closures can cause logistical challenges, emotional fallout and community divisions.
SUMMARY: Puerto Rico's school system was struggling long before Hurricane Maria struck a year ago. But the disaster exacerbated deep problems, as schools were destroyed, thousands of children moved to the U.S. mainland and students struggle with trauma. Now, special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports, the system is at a crossroads as the schools chief advocates for charter schools.
SUMMARY: Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism, the Associated Press, and Quartz compiled an extensive database of nearly 500 victims of Hurricane Maria whose families say that mismanagement, poor communication and damaged infrastructure were to blame for the deaths. Ana Campoy, Latin America reporter for Quartz, joins Hari Sreenivasan from Dallas.
SUMMARY: President Trump, a number of other Republicans and the NRA have ramped up calls for arming teachers. But it's an idea that generating a lot of criticism among educators. Jason Villalba, a Texas state representative and the architect of the School Marshal Program that allows Texas school districts to train and arm teachers, joins John Yang to discuss how it works.
SUMMARY: What do teachers think of calls from President Trump and others for arming educators as a response to mass shootings at schools? Becky Pringle of the National Education Association joins John Yang to share opposition to the proposal and why many teachers can’t imagine the responsibility of carrying a firearm in the classroom.
SUMMARY: As anxiety increases within the immigrant community over stepped-up enforcement along the U.S.-Mexican border, one small bi-national community in New Mexico is working hard to keep families connected through education and schooling. Special correspondent Simon Thompson reports from public media's Fronteras Desk and PBS station KRWG.
SIMON THOMPSON, Public Media: Daylight hasn't even broken, but 500 children who live in Palomas, Mexico, are up and on their way to school. Their commute is not typical.
They must first cross the international border into the U.S. They show their U.S. passports and birth certificates. Customs and Immigration officials inspect their school bags. Then they're bussed to school in Luna County, New Mexico.
Lizett Preciado is a senior at Deming High School in Luna County. A U.S. citizen, she's lived in Palomas with her parents for seven years.
LIZETT PRECIADO, Student, Deming High School: It was good to be able to go to school there. And, like, there's more opportunities to study and to have a better job in the future.
SIMON THOMPSON: Lizett and her family moved to Palomas from Colorado, after her mother, Rosa Marie, was deported for being in the United States illegally.
ROSA MARIA PRECIADO, Mother (through interpreter): I felt really bad, really badly, because I have four children who are citizens of the United States, and my husband is a resident. I didn't want to go back to live in Mexico. I know it is my country, but life in Mexico in really hard.
SIMON THOMPSON: Preciado and her husband, Ramon, makes their living in Palomas raising goats. Ramon still crosses occasionally back into the U.S. to work.
Preciado says having her children educated in the U.S. was important to her, and that's why they settled in Palomas.
ROSA MARIA PRECIADO (through interpreter): I came to Palomas because of a friend who said Palomas would be a good option to live with my children. It is easy to cross into the United States, and there is a bus to take them to school.
SIMON THOMPSON: Armando Chavez is the principal of Columbus Elementary in Luna County. He says the school district usually sees an influx of students when states enact strict immigration laws, as Arizona did in 2010.
ARMANDO CHAVEZ, Principal, Columbus Elementary: We are sometimes the holding spot for them, for them to fix the papers correctly. We are dealing with children that come from South Dakota, Missouri. It can be any state that they come, but we embrace our children that come to our door every day.
SUMMARY: Federal guidelines advising schools to let transgender kids use the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity are being withdrawn by the Departments of Justice and Education. What will the Trump administration's change mean for schools and students? William Brangham talks to Evie Blad of Education Week.
SUMMARY: Just in time for the start of school, a federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administration's directive regarding transgender bathrooms and locker rooms. That rule said that students should be able to choose the facilities that match their gender identity. William Brangham talks with Education Week's Evie Blad about how schools are responding.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): This ruling is the second setback in recent weeks for transgender advocates. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court said a Virginia school board could block a transgender student from using the boys bathroom while the higher court decides if it will take up these broader case.
Yesterday's decision is the first to say that the Obama administration's directive could be blocked nationwide. Those directives instructed school districts to allow trans students to use the bathroom of their choice. Texas is one of 13 states challenging the constitutionality of the directive.
In this case, the judge wrote that the administration had exceeded its authority under Title IX, the 1970s-era law banning sex discrimination in schools.
To help us wade through the meaning of all this, I'm joined now by Evie Blad, who is the Education Week reporter who's been covering this story.
So, Evie, what does this ruling say, and how significant is this?
EVIE BLAD, Education Week: It's very significant, in that it's the first time we have heard a federal court weigh in on a nationwide basis.
There are several cases winding their way through the federal courts now, but the only one that has had a ruling so far applied only in one circuit. And it's significant, in that the school year is about to start, and this judge is saying, nationwide, that the Obama administration's regulations under Title IX, its civil rights guidance, doesn't need to be implemented.
So what that means is if a school doesn't want to create a policy allowing transgender students to use the rest room of their choice, it doesn't have to. But if a school has a policy that it wants to have, it can keep that policy. It just doesn't have a federal directive to do so.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, Texas was one of a bunch of states that had objection to these rules. What is the essence of their objection?
EVIE BLAD: Well, there are two primary things that you will see in these lawsuits.
One is something that we're all familiar with, which is the argument that folks are making about privacy rights of students. Does my student or my child who isn't transgender have a right to use a restroom that doesn't have transgender students in it?
SUMMARY: The Obama administration's new directive that all public schools should allow transgender students access to restrooms that correspond with their gender has intensified a nationwide fight over the issue. For more on the reaction to the order and its possible impact, Hari Sreenivasan talks to Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defending Freedom and Alex Myers of Phillips Exeter Academy.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): I'm joined by two people who have been involved on both sides of this issue.
Alex Myers is an English teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy, a private school in New Hampshire. He's also an author and speaks frequently about gender identity. He's transgender, came out in high school and was the first openly transgender student to attend Harvard. And Jeremy Tedesco is senior legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, a faith-based legal advocacy group. It represents several groups of parents that oppose allowing students to use school bathrooms based on gender identity.
Alex, let me start with you.
Why is this so significant to you?
ALEX MYERS, Teacher, Phillips Exeter Academy: This is really a moment of recognition that is unparalleled.
I think the transgender community has been existing at the margins not only of mainstream society, but also in some ways of the LGBT community. And President Obama's and Loretta Lynch's statement earlier this week really bring us out of the shadows and into the mainstream.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Jeremy Tedesco, your organization is involved in two different lawsuits in Chicago and in North Carolina to try to prevent these types of policies from rolling out.
Are there a lot of students not transgender who are trying to go into the other bathrooms, so to speak? I mean, why is this a step too far?
JEREMY TEDESCO, Alliance Defending Freedom: Well, I really appreciate you having us on. And I'm glad we can be on PBS and have a civil discourse about this whole issue.
The reality is, ADF, Alliance Defending Freedom, where I work, has been pushing out policies to school districts for several years now, policies that are promote a compassionate alternative that meets the needs of every student at the school.
So, our policy says students who for whatever reason are uncomfortable using the locker room or shower or restroom designated for their biological sex should be given alternative facilities, single-stall facilities or whatever is available at the school. Almost all schools have those available.
But they shouldn't allow the privacy rights of other students to be violated in providing those accommodations. There's interests, rights on both sides of the equation in the bathroom and locker room contexts. Students have an expectation of privacy in those facilities.
And the Obama administration is completely trampling those rights by directing schools to just let students of one sex into the locker rooms and restrooms of students of the other sex.
SUMMARY: Amid the national furor over North Carolina's bathroom bill, the Departments of Justice and Education on Friday issued a joint directive to all public schools to allow transgender students the use of restrooms that match their gender identity. Although noncompliance could cost states billions in federal aid, some conservative lawmakers have already vowed to defy the order. Judy Woodruff reports.
SUMMARY: Detroit's public schools have been in financial decline for more than a decade as their enrollment plummeted. Now on the brink of insolvency, the district is confronted with decrepit buildings, a chronic lack of resources and fed up teachers who have staged "sick-outs" in protest of the conditions. The NewsHour’s April Brown reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Next, to Detroit, and a city school system in turmoil, plagued with decrepit buildings, financial uncertainty, a chronic lack of resources, and now a recent wave of teacher sick-outs.
All of it is fueling a growing anxiety that the system could run out of money in coming months.
April Brown has our report. It’s part of our Making the Grade series, which airs every Tuesday.
Tonight’s story is in partnership with the American Graduate Initiative.
APRIL BROWN (NewsHour): The playground at Detroit’s Spain Elementary and Middle School sat empty for weeks. No children were allowed in because of this.
LAKIA WILSON, Counselor, Spain Elementary-Middle School: We started to call it a steam geyser, because we really don’t know what it is, if you notice that there is steam coming out there. There is also some liquid that is spewing out from it. So it’s very dangerous because it causes the temperatures on the playground to reach 110 degrees.
APRIL BROWN: Lakia Wilson is the counselor at Spain, a school with a century-long legacy in this Detroit neighborhood. But for the last two years, she says, steam and water, reportedly from the sewer system, have been seeping out of the concrete in the parking lot and shooting out of this pipe a few feet away.
This is your only playground?
LAKIA WILSON: This is our own only playground. We have lost our gym, and we have no playground now.
APRIL BROWN: What do your kids do for exercise now?
LAKIA WILSON: Our children are limited to walking the hallway. They have become like mall walkers.
APRIL BROWN: The gym she referred to is now locked. But before that happened, a few cameras captured what is there.
How would you describe what we see inside?
LAKIA WILSON: A scary movie. The floor has been removed, the parquet. And now what you see is just a layer of blackness. We have been told that it was black mold. In fact, the city inspector said that it was mold.
APRIL BROWN: Teachers and staff say they have had building issues for years, including mold, water damage, and broken windows, some of which city inspectors recently cited as code violations.
India Brimberry, the school’s student health aide, is among those concerned these problems are affecting the health of those who work and study here.
SUMMARY: Despite a historic Supreme Court ruling outlawing segregated schools, today huge numbers of students remain in separate and unequal schools, most in inner cities. Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks with Pedro Noguera of the University of California, Los Angeles, about the consequences of such inequality and what can be done.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT (NewsHour): Despite an historic Supreme Court ruling some 61 years ago outlawing segregated schools, today, huge numbers of students remain in separate and unequal schools, most in inner cities.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, says Pedro Noguera, director of the Center for Study of School Transformation at UCLA. I met him in New York, where he was about to speak with a group of educators.
Professor Noguera, thank you so much for joining us.
Sixty-one years after separate and unequal was ruled illegal, you say it’s still happening. Why?
PEDRO NOGUERA, University of California, Los Angeles: Well, it’s happening because the courts have basically made it very difficult to continue to pursue integration.
And that’s after we made quite a bit of progress in this country, especially in the South, but now we know that schools in the North and the West are more segregated now than they were 30 years ago. So, we now find ourselves in a situation where not only are schools increasingly racially separate, but we’re also concentrating the poorest children in schools that have the fewest resources.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Why?
PEDRO NOGUERA: I would say it’s a combination of lack of investment in schools that serve poor children and the fact that we have no longer the political will.
CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: But you have argued that separate schools play a role in perpetuating inequality, not just in the schools, but in general.
PEDRO NOGUERA: They do.
They do, because separate has still been unequal in education. The racially separate schools, even when the schools do a good job, the learning opportunities you have a child will influence the kind of college you go into, the kind of profession you have access to, the kind of income you earn.
And so if we really are interested in creating a society that’s more equal and less characterized by racial divisions, then we need to put more investment in education and leveling the playing field and integrating our schools.
SUMMARY: One year ago, two students in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, began sharing plans to gun down their classmates. They may have gotten away with it had it not been for a group of students who alerted school authorities. Young journalists from NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs look at the actions of the whistleblowers that led to the arrest of the potential shooters.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): This month we have been bring you stories from high school students around the country reporting on how the concept of school safety is evolving.
Tonight, we travel to the town of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where a potential attack by students was foiled one year ago.
As part of our ongoing Student Reporting Labs series called The New Safe, student television network correspondent Nick Weiss investigates what inspired a handful of brave students to take action.
NICOLE MALINOSKI, Principal, Cedar Crest High School: You know, the first thing I do when I wake up every morning is think about the safety and security of all students here. It’s actually even before education, just because of school safety, how it’s been in the media and, unfortunately, you know, things that have happened over the last number of years.
I was actually out of the building the day that this occurred and I received a text message from Ms. May, who’s an assistant principal here. She asked me if I could call ASAP. She had something very important to discuss with me.
One school district in Michigan tried to tell the difference between a "good guy" with a gun, and a "bad guy" with a gun.
What they came up with is this proposed flow chart. The best outcome? Waiting for a police officer to come to school and see if the person's open carry license is legal. The worst outcome? "Take evasive action until law enforcement arrives."
There's a nationwide push to arm teachers and to allow the public to have guns on public college campuses -- neither of which will make schools or communities safer.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And it’s been 50 years since Freedom Summer galvanized the civil rights movement, registering voters in Mississippi and urging them to the polls.
But the young volunteers focused on the children as well, creating Freedom Schools that still exist in another form today.
Gwen reports for our American Graduate series. It’s a public media initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Marian Wright Edelman was a young lawyer when she headed south half-a-century ago determined to change the world.
Were you breeding young activists?
MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN, Children’s Defense Fund: Absolutely.
And this — when you begin to teach people about the importance of reading — and Frederick Douglass talked about the importance of literacy to anything. Once you know how to read, it’s very hard to make you a slave.
And, secondly, once you learn about your history, and learn to question, rather than just to accept, you create a new child.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Most students in the U.S. spend far less time in school than their counterparts in other industrialized countries, and it’s been that way for a long time.
But now, as academic expectations are rising, one idea for improving student achievement that is gaining more attention is extending the school day.
John Tulenko of Learning Matters Television has our report.
JOHN TULENKO, Learning Matters Television: When the school day ends at Middle School 223 in the Bronx, New York, the fun begins. Each day from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., the school offers all six graders a healthy dose of extracurriculars. There’s African drumming, Latin dance, chess, technology, and more.
PUJA RAO, Executive Director, Arete Education Inc.: I think every student should have the opportunity to have all these experiences available to them.
JOHN TULENKO: Puja Rao is the executive director Arete, a nonprofit that runs the extended day program in Middle School 223, where the majority of students qualify as low-income.
She used to teach math here, but says she recognized the need for a program like this long before that.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Saturday marks 60 years since the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared separate schools for black and white students are unconstitutional.
Gwen Ifill recorded a conversation about the anniversary earlier this week, but, first, some background.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The case was named for Linda Brown, a third-grader in Topeka, Kansas, forced to travel more than an hour each day to an all-black elementary school, rather than attend the all-white school located just blocks from her home.
Government-sanctioned racial discrimination was the law of the land in 1954. The Supreme Court’s Plessy vs. Ferguson ruling half-a-century earlier had ruled that, as long as separate facilities were considered equal, segregation itself wasn’t a violation the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
But the Browns, Linda and her two sisters, who were joined by families of students in four states and the District of Columbia, said no. Their class-action suit eventually reached the Supreme Court.
Retired Baltimore public school principal John Stokes was one of the original plaintiffs in the Virginia case included in the Brown litigation.
JOHN STOKES, Plaintiff, Brown v. Board of Education: It was separate, though it was never equal.
GWEN IFILL: He describes the conditions at his overcrowded all-black high school in Farmville, Virginia, as deplorable, with no running water or indoor plumbing, and a potbelly stove that leaked soot into the classroom.
JOHN STOKES: We knew we were being programmed for failure. It was very obvious. We could not only see it. We could smell it, and when that soot fell down from that flue, we could taste it. We could actually taste it. So we knew we had to do something to make a change.
SHERYLL CASHIN, Georgetown University Law School: There are also innovations that you can do in terms of changing the finance system. Why is it? We haven’t — we haven’t really tried this many places, but why is it that states require schools to be funded based on property taxes?
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Next, we turn to the latest in our series Parenting Now.
Last night, we focused on concerns about raising girls and the ways our culture shapes their identity.
Tonight, we turn to questions about that challenge of raising boys.
In the classroom, it has long been a given that girls perform better than boys, but that academic achievement gap has now widened beyond elementary school level, to high school and college, where experts are increasingly concerned that boys are falling behind.
When it comes to test scores, girls have essentially closed the math gap with boys. But boys have not closed the reading gap with girls. Reading scores show girls seven points ahead by fourth grade, a difference that grows to 10 points by eighth grade, and remains there through high school.
Boys also lag when it comes to grade point averages, and in every state, they drop out of school at a slightly higher rate. By the time they get to college, 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees are being awarded to women.
For boys who are poor and of color, the situation can be profoundly worse. Black boys in public schools score almost 30 points lower on reading and math than white boys by fourth grade. They account for one-fifth of all school expulsions. And dropout rates for Latino and African-American boys are substantially worse.
T’Roya Jackson, who dropped out of high school in Washington, D.C., is raising a 2-year-old son. She says she realizes that education must be a higher priority for her child.
T’ROYA JACKSON: I’m very concerned for him, especially in this day and age, especially for him being an African-American male, and just today, period. It’s crazy.
GWEN IFILL: Statistics are only part of the story. Educators, psychologists and child welfare experts are also concerned about the messages that boys get about masculinity.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): The Obama administration made a big move today on the question of school discipline policies around the country. It issued new guidelines to urge school administrators to ensure they are not being overly zealous with strict punishments for students that are sometimes called zero tolerance rules.
The Departments of Education and Justice warned schools to make sure they are being fair and equitable and that they are complying with civil rights laws.
Two years ago, the NewsHour's Tom Bearden looked into a story in Texas that was drawing international attention to the unintended consequences of such policies, often for minority students.
TOM BEARDEN (Newshour): Seventeen-year-old Diane Tran is still upset after spending 24 hours in jail for missing class. The 11th grade honor student in Willis, Texas, was locked up for contempt of court after being warned by a justice of the peace to stop skipping school.
The judge who issued that warning in April sentenced her to jail last month when the absences continued.
LANNY MORIARTY, judge: If you let one of them run loose, what are you going to do with the rest of them? Let them go too?
TOM BEARDEN: But after Houston's KHOU reported her story, the international spotlight fell on Tran and Texas' school truancy laws, laws that were originally crafted in the mid-19th century to keep kids in class and prevent parents from pulling them out to work in the fields and then later in factories.
But for students like Tran, life is more complicated than it used to be. She is a straight-A student who holds down two jobs in order to help support her younger sister and another sibling in college.
SUMMARY: Learning to read is the essential foundation of elementary education, but it's also very complex and many students in America are falling behind. John Tulenko of Learning Matters reports on one model school that has re-trained teachers in hands-on skills and strategies and has dramatically improved proficiency scores.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): The new school year is under way in many districts around the country, an even more important time than usual, as many states get used to new testing standards and changing course work.
Teachers remain front and center in the ongoing debate over accountability and student performance. But there is new attention to the role of principals as well.
We begin a two-part look with a report from Eddie Arruza of WTTW Chicago.
ERNESTO MATIAS, Wells Community Academy: Hey, why are you messing around? Why are you messing around?
EDDIE ARRUZA: Principal Ernesto Matias runs a tight and disciplined school on Chicago's north side. Like most urban high schools, Wells has occasional problems, but nothing like what was happening when Matias first arrived five years ago.
ERNESTO MATIAS: There was a lot of conflicts, a lot of violence. There was a student walkout the year before. There were four teachers in remediation who were taken out of this building, not to return. And so that's what I stepped into, a lot of distrust, disunity, and a lot of beating up of staff members here.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: Ray Suarez has the second part of our report.
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Some perspective now on the national picture when it comes to finding and retaining good principals and how that's changing.
Will Miller is the president of the Wallace Foundation, a national philanthropy that focuses on education for disadvantaged children. The foundation funds research, including on ways of improving principal quality.
For the record, the Wallace Foundation is also a NewsHour underwriter.
To the Editor:
Re: “Debut of School Standards Is Rocky, and the Critics Are Pouncing Left and Right” (news article, Aug. 16):
As a high school science teacher, I welcome the Common Core initiative and its near national adoption in curriculum and instruction. Its emphasis on critical thinking and problem solving over memorization is essential to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Although putting the Common Core assessments into effect has been a challenge, as any educator will tell you, adjusting for the kinks in testing comes with the territory.
Politicians and policy pundits frequently point to international rankings as a sign that our schools need improvement to become more competitive.
Most countries outranking the United States have a national curriculum that provides a unified vision for public education. Only through such a vision can schools assume the critical role of meeting the needs of higher education, business and society.
Common Core is a step in the right direction.
ETHAN AKE
Philadelphia, Aug. 16, 2013
To the Editor:
My experience with the Common Core is far different from the picture painted in this article. As a group of classroom teachers who came together to build a new public school several years ago, my colleagues and I saw the Common Core standards as an opportunity to grow as professionals and create transformational experiences for our students.
Our school took advantage of what the standards have to offer and did an excellent job resetting our curriculum so that students could acquire the skills these exams are testing for. We used the standards to continue to establish collaborative learning groups, school leadership teams, and thoughtful coaching and professional development.
My biggest concern is how politics has replaced practical experience and common sense in shaping this debate.
SARAH BEVER
Brooklyn, Aug. 18, 2013
To the Editor:
If the educational community wishes to avoid the “terrifying prospect” of an anti-test rebellion led by both the right and the left, it should consider turning over the composition of these “high stakes” standardized tests to teachers. Currently, these tests are composed by educational big business. They adhere to a formula that results in confusing and artificial content.
While standardized tests are here to stay, primarily because they are a necessary way to track education, stronger teacher input is needed in their composition, in the skills to be tested, and in how they are to be graded and used.
MITZI WITKIN
New York, Aug. 17, 2013
RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): Estimates suggest that many kids consume at least half their daily calories while at school. The new rules, from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, are designed to lower the amount of fat, salt and sugar in a child's diet.
Starting next summer, vending machines would not have traditional candy bars or full-fat cookies, for example. High schoolers will only be able to purchase drinks on campus that have fewer than 60 calories in a 12-ounce serving, much less than many sodas.
The regulations, which affect 50 million students, do not cover food sold after school or brought from home or at a fund-raiser.
For more, I am joined by Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
We invited several food and beverage companies, as well as their trade associations, to join us, but they declined our offer.
