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Commentary: Academic rigor versus cultural relevance is a false choice

Original EdSource article found here.

COMMENTARY | Black Student Success
By Chris Carr
Executive Director, Aspire Los Angeles

February 14, 2024

In the current era of education culture wars — banning books, monitoring curriculum, adjusting school policies — supporting students in a culturally sensitive, relationship-focused way is sometimes presented as being in conflict with maintaining academic rigor.

But balancing these approaches is more important than ever as our schools continue to rebound from pandemic-related learning loss coupled with the ongoing social-emotional needs of students. We should not have to prioritize one approach over the other: academic rigor, or supporting students’ social-emotional needs through culturally relevant teaching and experiences. Individually, each approach falls short in providing all students with the support they require for a successful future. By reframing them as mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive, we have the potential to significantly transform education for every child.

Culturally relevant teaching is the conduit to academic success, and rigorous instruction is effective when grounded in culturally relevant teaching. To support our students, we must equip them with the tools for empowerment while also working to create inclusive educational environments that foster support.

In practice, this means everything from ensuring our teachers and staff reflect the demographic makeup of our students, to examining the resources and professional development we bring into our schools to make sure all our students’ needs are met. It means having data-driven conversations, grounded in equity, about how we are serving our most marginalized students.

As a school leader at Aspire Public Schools in Los Angeles, we knew some of our most vulnerable students were those who were chronically absent. Diving into the data, we discovered that many of our students missed school around three-day weekends and holidays. As a part of the implementation of our positive behavioral and intervention support (PBIS) framework, we focused on timing school celebrations and family engagement activities before and after three-day weekends and holidays so that students wouldn’t want to miss out on the fun.  Additionally, teachers reach out to families of absent students to provide a more personal touch and communicate the positive impact their child has in their classroom community when they are at school. The early results of implementing this PBIS approach are showing promise in reducing absenteeism, with a year-over-year decrease in chronic absenteeism rates across our 11 Los Angeles schools.

A data-driven approach grounded in equity can also help serve special education students. For example, at one of our schools, students in special education demonstrated notable progress in math, surpassing the growth rates in math seen among their peers in general education, both in LAUSD and statewide. The schools took a different approach to intervention than they had in the past. Previously, students with individual education plans (IEPs), which are required for all students in special education, were not included in math interventions — an additional 20-minute small-group math instruction during the school day. Last year, students with IEPs participated in these math interventions along with general education students. This additional intervention, combined with regular “teach back” sessions during which teachers practice delivering content to their peers, gathering feedback and strengthening their practice, yielded positive results among our special education learners.

Developing partnerships to incorporate Afrocentric and LGBTQ+ curriculum and resources can also make an impact. This has included everything from the establishment of several Black student union chapters to a Black families advisory council, where families meet quarterly to discuss Black educational content and curricula. I can say firsthand that we’re seeing these partnerships show promising results: Participants in Black student union programs experienced an average reduction of eight days in absenteeism compared to the previous year. Plans are also underway to pilot an LGBTQ+ course that aligns with state A-G standards (courses required for admission in California public universities). Lastly, dedicating resources to cultivate a pipeline of Black educators is critical to establishing a more diverse teaching staff.

To deliver on the promise of excellent education for every child, it is time to chart a path that is both rigorous and culturally relevant. This is how we deliver on the promise of an education model that serves all students.

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Chris Carr is the executive director for the Los Angeles region of Aspire Public Schools, a nonprofit charter management organization.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

Commentary: California’s public charter schools — and their students — deserve equitable funding

Original EdSource article found here. 

COMMENTARY
By Mala Batra, Aspire CEO

September 19, 2023

In times of crisis, we should be looking for ways to help, not hinder. But in California, the inequities in public school education funding are only deepening the crisis for too many students.

On top of the devastating social-emotional and academic effects of the pandemic, our communities have been dealing with widespread staffing challenges, culture wars and frequent unfair attacks on educators. And in cities across California, projections suggest that public school enrollment will continue to drop — creating a crisis for practically all schools across the state.

Public charter schools face all of these challenges and more. At Aspire Public Schools, a charter school network serving more than 15,000 students in 36 schools across the state, our student population is more than 85% Black and Latino, and the vast majority of our students are experiencing poverty. Yet since the day we were founded, we’ve been forced to get creative with limited resources: Aspire students — like all public charter school students in California — receive less funding than their peers in traditional public schools.

According to new research from the University of Arkansas, the problem remains severe. In the 2019-20 school year, Los Angeles public charter school students received $5,226 less per-pupil funding than their counterparts in traditional public schools. In Oakland, the gap is even larger, at $7,103. This is driven by a lack of public funding. In both cities, public charter schools receive less local, state and federal funding than their counterparts in traditional public schools.

Why? While both public charters and traditional public schools receive the same amount of base funding under California’s Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, that doesn’t mean the total funding is equal. One reason for this is that schools receive additional funding for higher-need student categories and for higher concentrations of students in those categories, known as “concentration grants.” However, charter school concentration grant amounts are capped based on the average student demographics for the district in which they reside. This means that public charters are, in effect, penalized for serving a greater share of high-need students than their district. There are also a number of local, state and federal funding streams that are only accessible to traditional public schools —for instance, voter-approved local funding for operations or capital projects.

I’m not writing this to complain. We are honored to serve our school communities and our wonderful, talented scholars. It’s hard work, but unequal funding makes it harder. The more time we have to spend fighting tooth and nail for basic resources, the less we can spend educating California’s next generation. Our scholars are the same students whom politicians claim to want to support, especially in the wake of the pandemic, but they are consistently left out because they and their families made the choice to attend a public charter school. Elected officials frequently speak about the importance of equity, and we at Aspire couldn’t agree more. But equity means all students getting what they need — and Aspire schools (as well as many other public charter schools)serve large numbers of historically marginalized students.

This challenge is nothing new. If you talk to charter leaders across California, they’ll all tell you a similar story. Due to this systemic funding deficit, we have had no choice but to try to raise philanthropic dollars to fill critical funding gaps. But that is often turned into an attack against us, with critics saying that public charter schools are bankrolled by private investors. That is simply untrue. Trust me — I would love nothing more than to be able to operate our schools without fundraising. But it’s just not an option.

And new challenges often emerge. Just two years ago we made the choice to go to Sacramento to advocate for all public charter students to fight against legislation that would have penalized charter schools — and not traditional public schools — for following the state’s guidelines for quarantining students who were exposed to Covid-19. While we were able to win that fight, it is illustrative of the larger issue: Charter students are treated as less than others.

But here’s the thing: Despite these challenges, charter schools have been able to accomplish so much. According to new research from the CREDO Institute at Stanford University, California charter students have gained the equivalent of 11 days of reading and four days of math compared with similar students in traditional public schools. Black and Latino students and students experiencing poverty had even larger gains. At Aspire specifically, we were proud to have met CREDO’s “gap-busting” criteria in both reading and math, recognizing our ability to reduce opportunity gaps at scale.

So many of our students are carrying so much. They are talented and resilient, and they work hard to achieve their goals. We believe in them, and we tell them that every day.

But this funding gap tells them something different — that because they happen to attend a charter school, they matter less. It’s time that education leaders put childish politics aside and focus on giving all of our kids what they need. They’re all California students. They deserve to be treated as such.

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Mala Batra is the chief executive officer at Aspire Public Schools, a charter management organization serving 15,000 TK-12 students across 36 schools in historically underserved communities throughout California.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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Commentary: Quarantines are costing our students financially

Students at Aspire Arts & Sciences Academy, a charter public school serving grades TK-5 in Stockton, CA.
Students at Aspire Arts & Sciences Academy, a charter public school serving grades TK-5 in Stockton, CA.
Original article here.

By Mala Batra | CEO, Aspire Public Schools

Students at Aspire Arts & Sciences Academy, a charter public school serving grades TK-5 in Oakland, CA. This pandemic has cost us all in countless ways — in physical and mental health, in community, in employment, in hours and minutes with loved ones and in education. Now that we’re facing yet another surge, our schools are worried about new ways this disease is robbing us.

Our state leaders are seeking to address some of the ramifications of Covid-19. Recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled a $2.7 billion Covid response plan, which would help schools receive the rapid test kits we need to keep school doors open, communities safe and kids in school.

But what happens when kids can’t be in school? What happens when thousands of students test positive or have a risk of exposure and need to quarantine?

That’s when educators are backed into a corner: By following the state-mandated student quarantine requirements, California’s public schools are losing millions of dollars — money needed for the critical work of supporting our students, keeping our staff safe and rebuilding our school communities.

In California, when a student quarantines to protect the health and safety of their school community, that same student loses money for their education.  Current state law requires schools to mark quarantined students absent, unless students sign up for independent study for the time off, and the district keeps track of their work. The Legislature agreed to hold school districts harmless for Covid absences this year, but that allowance was not extended to charter schools. Unless the law is changed, all public schools will be affected in the coming year.

When students are absent, the school doesn’t receive money for the student that day. At one of our schools, that means for a 10-day quarantine for an entire classroom, a school loses about $14,000 based on the school’s average daily attendance funding. While schools have the option of enrolling quarantined students in independent study, the process to do so is difficult — if not impossible — for families to navigate during a two-week period. Furthermore, students who receive special education services need to have an updated individualized education plan — a process that can take weeks to months — to participate in independent study. These complexities have led most public schools to mark quarantined students absent, resulting in millions of lost dollars for California students’ education.

This problem is reinforcing an issue that predated the pandemic and has been exacerbated by it: It’s disproportionately impacting students of color and those in low-income communities. Since our communities have higher infection rates than white and more affluent communities, they are more likely to need to quarantine and therefore have money taken away from their education.

At Aspire Public Schools, a charter school network with 36 schools serving over 15,000 students across the state of California, we’ve known from very early on in this pandemic that our students and their families were among the most likely to bear the brunt of this disease and its devastating impacts. More than 85% of Aspire’s scholars are Black or Latino and live in communities that are among the hardest hit across our state.

At face value, the financial implications of this law may seem like a small, even logical consequence. But it adds up. In the first few months of this school year, the delta variant wreaked havoc on our communities despite our best efforts to institute policies that would protect our students and teammates. As a result, during this time period, Aspire saw the compounding impacts of this law cost our schools $1.2 million dollars. With omicron now surging in our communities, our schools — and consequently our students — are losing even more.

Reductions in funding force schools to make devastating decisions like eliminating much-needed programming or staff — both of which would have devastating impacts on students and teachers. Educators are going above and beyond every day to support students, all while holding their own feelings of exhaustion and anxiety. We cannot keep expecting them to do more with less.

California schools are steadfastly committed to both prioritizing student learning and protecting student health. As part of protecting our community from Covid-19, we enforce quarantine and isolation protocols as necessary. As rapid tests hopefully become more readily available, we are eager to pilot “test-to-stay” programs as a means to keep more students in our classrooms. But should that enforcement really be costing our students so dearly?

With unpredictable variables, such as the omicron variant, being introduced to our landscape daily, we must ensure there aren’t financial consequences that force schools to make impossible choices between safety and learning.

There should be zero cost — to schools, and most importantly to our students — for a medically responsible and necessary quarantine. Our state leaders can and must develop a solution that allows schools to follow state-mandated quarantine requirements without losing critical funding. This pandemic has already cost our students far too much. It is our collective responsibility to lighten that burden and clear a path for healing.

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Mala Batra is CEO of Aspire Public Schools, California’s largest charter school network serving more than 15,000 students in the Bay Area, Central Valley and Los Angeles.

Read more at EdSource.org. The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.

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