In this week’s newsletter: A burst of school absenteeism coverage. Behind the scenes of LAUSD’s massive effort to replace student suspensions. A researcher is so surprised at widespread teacher racism that she’s writing a book about it. Awards season for (education) journalism has arrived. And anti-DEI crusader Chris Rufo gives a colorful PG-13 “no comment” to Inside Higher Ed.

AN EXPLOSION OF ABSENTEEISM COVERAGE

The big story of the week

While the FAFSA fiasco continues — and the lunar eclipse is everywhere — the big K-12 education story of the week is the explosion of school absenteeism coverage. 

The surge kicked off a little more than a week ago, with a detailed interactive in the New York Times’ Upshot section (​Why School Absences Have ‘Exploded’ Almost Everywhere), followed up with a half-hour podcast segment (The Daily) and the top spot in the daily newsletter (Morning Briefing).

While nearly half of teachers say chronic absenteeism is a major problem (Pew), a new study also shows that parents are surprisingly uninformed or unaware of how bad the absenteeism crisis is (Brookings Institute, EdWeek). But across the country — from Vermont to Oregon — schools are continuing to see high rates of absenteeism (Philadelphia Inquirer, WCAX, Local12, El Paso Times, Oregon Public Broadcasting). 

To combat the problem, schools are employing solutions like home visits (Voice of San Diego, KCRA), morning intramural sports teams as incentives (MassLive), and building stronger relationships between students and teachers (Colorado Sun).

Increasingly, absenteeism is being talked about in terms of a cultural shift — a change in attitudes and expectations among both kids and parents, rather than a specific problem of transportation or illness. Remote work might play a role, but folks like me who are obsessed with prolonged (and largely ineffective) school shutdowns during the pandemic think we know what’s to blame. 

Check out daily links from @thegrade_ for other big education stories including the solar eclipse and the Oklahoma religious charter school case.

SUSPENSION SUCCESS

The best education journalism of the week

The best education journalism of the week is One school district stopped suspending kids for minor misbehavior. Here’s what happened by Gail Cornwall for The Hechinger Report. The piece also appeared in USA Today.

Part of a new series on student discipline, Cornwall’s investigation offers a detailed, clear-eyed look at what it takes — both systemically and individually — to totally revamp the discipline system in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

The nation’s second largest district has moved away from suspensions for “willful defiance” and related behaviors ahead of California’s recent move to ban them in high school. That makes LAUSD a bellwether for educators wanting to embrace restorative justice, an approach that has faced heavy criticism from the political right.

But it doesn’t come easily or cheaply, Cornwall finds: the district budgeted more than $300 million on “school climate personnel” alone this year, hiring school climate advocates, psychiatric social workers, mental health coordinators, and campus aides and training educators in the new way of doing discipline.

Cornwall’s story is full of vivid anecdotes, including one about a student who gets into an argument with a teacher and instead of being suspended is offered a bottle of water and asked what had happened. Being listened to and treated with empathy “makes me feel better,” he said — better enough to put himself in his teacher’s shoes, consider what he could have done differently, and offer an apology. 

Moving away from suspensions, though expensive, has had positive impacts: schools didn’t become less safe, more chaotic, or less effective, as critics had warned. And the district has seen a reduction in racial disparities in discipline, even as students report feeling safer in school. Academic performance, meanwhile, has remained stable.

Other journalism we admired this week include stories about a San Francisco school that does a surprisingly good job getting kids into elite colleges (San Francisco Chronicle), the struggle to figure out why some students are persistently disruptive (The Cut), a mysterious drop in district enrollment (The Lawrence Times), and the defeat of right-wing school board candidates (St. Louis Post-Dispatch).

Above: Ranita Ray’s 2022 piece in Slate about her research on teacher racism.

THE SLOW VIOLENCE OF EVERYDAY TEACHER RACISM

Our latest columns and commentary

When researcher Ranita Ray embedded in a school district, she didn’t expect to find widespread teacher racism in classrooms and hallways. But there was so much of it that she felt compelled to make it the focus of her forthcoming book — which is coming out next year (and just won a Lukas prize for notable work-in-progress). 

Ray wrote about her findings two years ago in Slate (above), and in this new essay, Why’s there so little coverage of everyday teacher racism?, she explores why the topic has proven so hard for educators, researchers, and journalists to see and talk about — and why it’s too important to leave out of the discussion. 

According to Ray, who’s now at the University of New Mexico, the “slow violence” of everyday racism students experience in schools isn’t just the result of systemic racism in the form of unfair policies and disproportionate practices. Nor is it limited to the most obvious and egregious examples of school-based racism, which distract us from the everyday comments and interactions that alienate kids from schools. 

Also this week: School budget cuts are everywhere, but it’s no easy feat to understand and cover the decisions being made in a way that’s useful. So we gathered insights from nine reporters and budget experts from places like the Hechinger Report, The 74, Chalkbeat, Ed Fund, and the Edunomics Lab. 

PEOPLE, JOBS, & EVENTS

Who’s going where and what’s happening

Above: Congrats to the newly announced Spencer Education Journalism Fellows, (from left to right) NPR’s Sequoia Carrillo, Vox’s Fabiola Cineas, and contributor to The Nation Dani McClain!

📰 EWA Awards: The Oscars of education journalism are upon us. EWA named 50 finalists in 17 awards categories. Notable finalists include Open Campus’s Charlotte West for covering the unique beat of higher education in prison. For investigations, WFYI’s Lee Gaines (who wrote a piece for The Grade on special education NDAs in 2022), Business Insider’s Matt Drange (whose interview we’ll run next week), and the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Danielle DuClos (who, like Drange, has investigated sexual predators in schools) were also named.

📰 More awards: The American Society of Magazine Editors also announced nominees for the 2024 National Magazine Awards. Among those selected for education-related stories are the Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and Frontline PBS (for their investigation into the failed law enforcement response to the Uvalde shooting), Hannah Dreier’s work in the New York Times (on migrant children with brutal jobs), and Jay Kirk (for his feature on what crime scene investigators saw at Sandy Hook) for the New York Times Magazine. Locally in Illinois, Chalkbeat Chicago was named a finalist for the Peter Lisagor Awards for coverage of choice. WBEZ Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times were also named for their retrospective on the closure of 50 schools a decade ago. We recently featured a piece from reporter Lauren FitzPatrick reflecting on her own experience covering the closures.

📰 Segments, appearances, & podcasts: A new episode of “Sold a Story” called “The Aftermath” — about backlash from the likes of Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell — came out yesterday. Also yesterday, GBH and the Hechinger Report debuted their second season of “College Uncovered,” starting with a focus on misleading financial aid offer letters. NPR ran three education segments this week on why Oregon schools rank among the lowest in education gains after the pandemic, how school principals are staffing classrooms, and more on the fallout from the botched FAFSA rollout. And Marketplace dug into private school enrollment numbers — and the problem they pose for public school finances.

THE KICKER

“What can I say? This ain’t a family newspaper.” – Inside Higher Ed’s Ryan Quinn, who included anti-DEI advocate Chris Rufo’s off-color email in his story.

That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading!

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By Alexander Russo with additional writing from Colleen Connolly.