2022-11-22 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Education
2022-11-22 00:00:00 - Joint Committee on Education
SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
today for the Education Committee's informational hearing, I would just like to take note of the fact that this is I believe the first in personal hearing that the committee has held since 2020, probably maybe even 2019 because I don't think we have gotten into the hearing phase when the28 pandemic hit in March of30 2020. So it's great to be back, it's great to see all of you here in person and I thank you all for joining us. Um I'd like to39 start by recognising the house members of the Education Committee, Vice chair, Representative steve Ultrino of Maldon, Representative Smitty, Pignatelli of Lennox, who is joining us remotely as you can see on the screen, Representative Andy Vargas of Cabral Representative joe McGonigle and Everett Vanna Howard of low uh Jamie Bell ceo of Topsfield I believe Representative kelly piece of Westfield is also going to be joining us virtually um and then um in addition we have Representative Liz Malia and Representative danilo Sena both of whom may be joining us later this morning.
REP PEISCH - So I'd like to welcome and thank you for testifying at today's hearing Uh and for providing all of you for your own perspective on the status of K- 12, education in Massachusetts public schools. The point93 of today's hearing is to gather information from education stakeholders and policy experts to give us context on the impact101 of the pandemic on student learning, student and educator, mental health and a variety of other important issues. Um we all are aware of the fact no one I think can dispute that there has been a significant impact on our students in K 12. The point of this hearing is really to focus on where do we go from here as opposed to how did we get here? Um the information that we gather this morning will help inform our work in addressing the impact of the pandemic in massachusetts schools. I think I would I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that many of the things that we expect to hear from you today are not new. Uh to a large extent, I think the pandemic just exacerbated some of the challenges that we already were facing, but certainly there were other challenges in condition. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Um so before we begin um I would like to just introduce my co chair Senator Jason Lewis and asked him to introduce uh members of the senate, members of the committee. Thank you, Good morning to you. Chair Pease Good morning to the committee members. Good morning and welcome to those of us, those of you who are with us here in person and to those who are participating remotely, including members of the public who are able to watch the livestream and I'm very pleased that we are doing this committee hearing in a hybrid fashion today. It really opens up access to many more people and I'm very hopeful that we will continue to do so going forward. Um I do want to thank and welcome the Senate members of the Education Committee are Vice chair is Senator Sal de Domenico and our committee members are Senator john Cronin adam Gomez, Pat Jalen and Patrick O'Connor Um and um I want to thank everybody who will be test find before the committee today.218 We greatly appreciate all the time and all the thought you have put into preparing for your testimony today. We are eagerly um looking forward to hearing your feedback and input for us. And as um Representative I235 said the we will be using this information to help guide the policies and the funding you know that that we will be pursuing along with our colleagues in the legislature for250 the remainder of this legislative session and into the next legislative session. So thank you again and back to you. Thank you Senator. Um So as Senator Lewis noted, we are being live streamed on the general court website testimony. We've asked those who are testifying to try to limit their testimony to270 approximately 10 minutes which will include time for questions. Follow up questions only from committee members at276 the end. Um There'll be some flexibility on the timing um since we have only invited people testifying here today, we're not concerned about having to get too many287 members of the public who might be there. So um but again we only have the room for a limited period of time so I'd ask you to try to keep your remarks as succinct as possible. So the first group testifying will be um Secretary of Education, Jim Peyser and Commissioner Riley of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education if you'd like to join us at the table.
JAMES PEYSER - EOE - Good morning. Morning madam Chair, uh Good morning Chair Lewis as well uh and all the members of the committee. Thank you so much for inviting us here. Thank you for inviting us here in person. It's great to see you all. It has been a long time. Uh it's kind of shocking to think that maybe it is 2019, but be that as it may, we're here today, uh and both Commissioner Riley and I are grateful for the opportunity. Um for the record, my name is Jim Peyser. I'm Massachusetts, Secretary of Education. Um And uh Madam Chair, as you said, we're all uh well aware too well aware really that COVID-19 has taken a toll on our students, educators, school administrators and staff across the country as well as obviously across the commonwealth with impacts that will unfortunately be felt for quite a while despite our best efforts to rectify the harm. If we didn't know it before, we all know now that there is no substitute for in person learning, especially for younger students, students with disabilities, English learners and other high needs populations.
We've only begun the process of learning recovery for all our students and we'll have to continue these efforts for years to come. Although assessment data from last year show that students are back on an upward learning trajectory. We know that the missed learning time, especially for the in person learning time caused many, if not most students to fall off track. The share of students meeting or exceeding great level expectations in English and math dropped by almost 10% points in 2022 is compared to 2019. A similar decline was seen in our NAEP scores, which are now lower than they have been in the last 20 years, even though we remain the top performing state in the country. Before addressing the work that is underway to make up for these losses let's look back briefly on how we got here. And I just want to run through sort of a brief chronology of, of some of the key events.
Um, as you're well aware when COVID first began to spread in the Commonwealth back in March 2020, schools were closed and students and staff were sent home for what we thought would be a matter of a couple of weeks. Once it became clear that return to school would be delayed indefinitely, the state supported school districts in standing up systems to enable remote learning, which in most places455 lasted through the end of the school year. Through grants and guidance, the department encouraged the expansion of summer programs to reconnect students with one another and to extend their access to learning opportunities under more relaxed health protocols than had prevailed during the spring. Given the state of the virus many of these programs, however, were limited to outdoor activities. At the same time, the commissioner required all districts to submit operating plans for the fall.
Based on detailed guidance provided by the department, districts were instructed to prioritize in personal learning, but were asked also to plan for hybrid and fully remote modalities as necessary depending on the level of the virus in their communities. In the fall of 2020, most students were learning in hybrid models in which they spent498 part of their time at home and part of their time in school, while many others were still502 learning fully remotely. A very small percentage were in classrooms full time. During this period, we saw a dramatic increase in mental health challenges among students with feelings of isolation, depression, suicidal ideation and disconnection from school and and peers. These effects were especially pronounced in those instances where students were primarily learning asynchronously, in other words, working independently on their own time rather than together with their peers and their teachers.
To combat the negative effects of remote learning and to address the wide disparities in the amount of live instruction districts were offering the board approved in December 2020 minimum requirements for live or synchronous instruction in remote and hybrid models. Shortly afterwards, in January, the administration launched the first in the nation statewide pool testing program as an additional tool that can help students return safely to the classroom and in person learning. In March 2021 with limited evidence of in school transmission, further validation of DESE's existing564 guidance on the efficacy of three feet of physical distancing within classrooms, a robust testing strategy now including rapid antigen testing and the availability of vaccines Importantly, the board voted to give the commissioner authority to determine when remote learning would no longer count towards the structured learning time requirements.
After the585 board vote, Commissioner Riley set phase deadlines for each grade span to return to full in person learning while allowing families to make the personal choice to keep their students fully remote as they deemed necessary through the end of the 2021 school year. In August of 2021 the pool testing program was complemented by the introduction of tested stay supported by CIC health and funded by the state paving the way for a fully in person school reopening in the fall of 2021. Throughout the year DESE continued two way communications with superintendents and other key stakeholders to address specific needs and to determine additional areas where DESE could provide support through its primarily through its rapid response help center whose staff members worked around the clock to help districts resolve operational issues. And I want to thank them publicly and personally for their service during this period.
As you know, the federal government has provided significant COVID relief resources to schools in Massachusetts, primarily through the ESSER and GEAR programs. The three tranches of ESSER funds total almost $2.9 billion, the vast majority of which is allocated directly for school districts based on the Title One formula. About 10% of these funds are allocated as discretionary resources for the department. The governor also directed over $180 million to school districts from the initial COVID Relief Fund early in the pandemic before the ESSER funds became available. Two rounds of GEAR funding, totally about $75 million were placed under the direct control of the governor. About 25% of GEAR funding was allocated to higher education. Another 25% was dedicated to the expansion of summer learning, including the new summer step up program that was started by early education and care. Close to 20% was invested in establishing or expanding early literacy tutoring initiatives. About 17% of GEAR dollars were provided to strengthen online learning options and just under 10% were allocated to private schools, which was later supplemented by a separate pool of federal funds that were specifically earmarked for private schools.
Additional funds were used to expand dual enrollment in early college and to provide professional development for teachers to help them deliver applied learning STEM curriculum. The total of all three rounds of ESSER funds allocated directly to districts is approximately $2.6 billion. So far only about $965 million, or about 37% has been claimed by districts, which includes virtually all ESSER One funds. The ESSER Two funds, and Three funds must be drawn down by September 23 and September 24 respectively. Districts have been slow to draw down these federal funds for several reasons. In some cases, districts have not748 been able to hire staff, contract for services, or purchase materials and equipment due to the pervasive workforce shortages and supply chain bottlenecks that we're all aware of. This has been especially challenging in terms of hiring educators and mental health professionals. In other cases, districts have budgeted conservatively due to the uncertainty in the wider economy, which has undermined confidence in the stability of local and state revenues.
At the same time, I do remain concerned that some districts are sometimes treating these funds primarily as ways to fill holes in general operating budgets rather than significantly expand learning time and provide extra help now to the students who need it most, both in and out of school. I know this is easier said than done, but even though learning recovery is a multi year effort, we all need to have a sense of urgency about doing whatever it takes and starting right now. Although districts must submit spending plans to the department for review, federal law prevents DESE from placing any conditions on how that money is actually spent. According to district plans submitted by the department, close to half the ESSER funds are slated for remediation and acceleration to address unfinished learning um with a particular focus on English learners and special needs students. Almost a third821 is supposed to go towards health-related programs and capital projects including improved ventilation and air quality. About 10% plan to mitigate mental health and behavioral health issues and over 5% will be dedicated to summer learning and after school programs.
The biggest share of DESE discretionary ESSER dollars has gone840 to support summer learning and enrichment including targeted acceleration academies. In addition DESE has provided supplementary grants to districts that received little or no district allocations under the ESSER formula and has funded a variety of technical assistance and professional development opportunities to support implementation of its acceleration road map initiative which the commissioner will discuss in greater detail. Importantly, DESE has used its discretionary federal funds to respond in real time to urgent health and safety needs such as the purchase and distribution of thousands of air purifiers, not to mention PPE and test kits. Besides spending money, there's also, there are also some specific policy and programmatic changes that we've been making to strengthen the quality of education which should yield both short term and long term benefits to student outcomes.888
Commissioner Riley will discuss several of the department's priorities but there are three that I want to highlight which I can, which I think can be particularly powerful. First is raising the bar with regard to early literacy. Every child is capable of reading well and we have an obligation to make sure that young children have access to the kind of evidence based instruction, including phonics that will ensure they become proficient readers by the time they enter the fourth grade. In September, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted new regulations to require all districts to screen all students in grades K to three at least twice a year in order to determine whether they are on track to achieving grade level reading proficiency. Students who are significantly off track must be supported by evidence based interventions and instructional strategies. Importantly, schools must share screening data and remediation plans with parents to ensure both transparency and accountability.
These new regulations follow years of work the department has been leading to establish clear standards for early literacy, including detailed guidance on supporting students with dyslexia. They also build on the department's effort to encourage and enable the adoption and implementation of high quality curriculum, especially in support of reading instruction. A centerpiece of which is the growing literacy equity across Massachusetts or GLEAM program, which will award nearly $19 million in federal funds over the next four years for early literacy tutoring primarily for young children living in high needs communities. Fully implementing these new rules and instructional strategies is especially important now, given the significant delays and reading skills among our youngest students, which is unfortunately one of the legacies of remote learning.
A second key initiative is early college and early career pathways. As this996 committee knows well, the Baker-Polito administration has made a priority of launching and scaling early college in order to provide high school students, especially first generation students of color, who might not otherwise see themselves on a college track with a coherent course of study throughout grades nine through 12 that prepares them for college level work and gives them the opportunity to earn 12 college credits or more before graduating from high school at no cost to them. Not only does this save them money, but it also helps these young people experience what college is really like and more important, helps them experience college success even before they get there. Early career innovation pathways are similar to early college in that they are structured courses of study that provide young adults with a sense of purpose and direction, answering those internal questions of most high school students, why am I here and why does this matter?
By providing access to integrated technical coursework and work based learning experiences within broad industry categories like healthcare, life sciences, information technology, and advanced manufacturing students gain a better sense of their future while engaging them more deeply in their education today. And finally, as part of re-benchmarking the competency determination the board also strengthened the regulations governing the educational proficiency plans for high school students who are not yet meeting expectations in English and math. The revised regulations now require districts to provide students and their parents with concrete plans for how they will support students in accelerating their academic progress through their junior and senior years through ongoing assessment tutoring and other individualized supports. Given the missed Learning opportunities in 2020 and 2021 more1098 robust educational proficiency plans will help ensure these cohorts of students who are approaching graduation are set up for success in college and beyond. More than ever given the impact of COVID-19 we are focused on helping each and every student, particularly those who are experiencing opportunity gaps and unfinished learning receive the resources and support they need to be successful in school and beyond. Thank you very much and I think I'll turn it over to my colleague Commissioner Riley.
Thank SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
you Mr Secretary.
JEFFREY RILEY - DESE - Good morning everyone. Chair Lewis, Chair Peisch and members of the Joint Committee on Education. Thank you for the opportunity to testify about our efforts to support the commonwealth students and accelerate their learning and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic for the record. My name is Jeffrey Riley. I'm the Commissioner1147 of Elementary and Secondary Education in Massachusetts. I've submitted a detailed written testimony and today I will discuss highlights from that testimony. Even though I will focus my remarks on DESE's efforts to recover from the pandemic, I want to emphasize Secretary1161 Peyser's comment that we must also look ahead to ways we can improve the long term trajectory of our public school system. The commonwealth remains the number one ranked state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the NAEP test, also known as the nation's report card for the 2022 school year.
However, like other states our absolute scores declined and our scores1182 continued to show an uneven learning experience across student groups. Even pre pandemic our scores on NAEP have been flat for more than 10 years. And while we ranked number one, I noted often that we were only ranked number one for some of our students. We must and will do better. Our work at DESE to support student recovery has been underway for over 18 months. As you know, we brought all students back to school in person full time in the spring of 21. We did this despite the objections of some because we recognize there is no substitute for in person learning. This was especially true for our younger students, our students with disabilities and our English learners, many of whom struggled to learn effectively at home.
As districts returned to in person learning, DESE released our acceleration road map, a comprehensive guide to support schools and districts in their recovery efforts. The road map was organized around three overarching principles. First, supporting students' wellbeing and fostering a sense of belonging in our schools. Second, working towards academic recovery in terms of student learning, and third using data to inform our approach to identify1250 students and their needs. First and foremost, we asked districts and schools1254 to focus on students' mental and physical wellbeing. We knew that we had to take care of our kids most basic needs first, food security, housing security and social emotional wellbeing1265 so that they could return to school ready to1268 learn. Our team has collaborated with stakeholders across the commonwealth to create guidance, offered professional development opportunities and provide funding for districts to address mental health and wellbeing. This includes cultivating safe and supportive learning environments, promoting practices to support healthy1286 behaviors, and attending to the wellbeing not just of our students but also our families and staff.
We have released over $13 million in mental health funding through the state and federal grants. And DESE is working to implement the legislature's recent act to address barriers to care for mental health. Finally, we know that some specialized support staff such as psychologists, nurses, guidance counselors, adjustment counsellors and social workers play a pivotal role in creating effective school environments. I'm pleased to report that we have increased the numbers of these specialty roles by 7% over the last few years. However, we have more1325 work to do to staff up these roles in our schools. Indeed, our numbers remain below the ratios recommended by the important professional associations discussed here. And workforce shortages are preventing schools from fully addressing student and staff needs. To support the urgent work of academic recovery and acceleration for our students, our road map provided districts with a guided approach that included two main components.
First, we asked districts to provide all students with rigorous on grade level instruction along with the scaffolds necessary to fill in the gaps that have been created. This means moving ahead to teach students on their grade level while making sure that we work to get back the things that have been lost. Second, we asked districts to provide students with additional targeted instruction tailored to their individual needs, whether over school vacations through after school programming, or during the school day. We continue to support districts with grants and resources for several acceleration programs. Acceleration academies which take place over the vacations, early literacy tutoring, the biggest winter math challenge and after school and summer programming are just a few examples of this work.
As Secretary Peyser mentioned, early literacy is a major focus of our recovery efforts. We are providing intense support for districts to adopt practices from the Mass Literacy Guide, a statewide effort to empower educators with evidence based literacy practices. We also provide significant funding through multiple early literacy grants, curricular resources and professional development for our teachers. With the acceleration roadmap supports and funding now in place, we are closely monitoring how these efforts are translating into our state assessment results and other student data. The good news is that our 2022 MCAS results show that we are headed in the right direction. Students showed signs of academic recovery in both math and science compared to 2021. Unfortunately, English continues to be a weakness for us. With that said MCAS scores in all subjects still fall short of pre pandemic levels when you look at, for instance, during 2019.
I believe that it may take several years for our results to return to those pre pandemic levels. Closing achievement gaps continues to be a priority. While achievement gaps on MCAS remains similar to pre pandemic levels, we must continue to do better for our underserved students. As a reminder each year, we conduct a methodical review1473 of the MCAS data and then set improvement targets within our1477 state accountability system for each of our districts and schools. We always strive to set targets that are both ambitious and achievable and we'll be taking significant care in setting this year's targets with these goals in mind. In reviewing the MCAS scores, I want to note that student attendance undoubtedly had an impact on our state assessment results. Students lost an unprecedented amount of instructional time over the past two years when school buildings were closed or if students were required to isolate or quarantine.
Recognizing that it was critical to keep students learning in school, last year DESE introduced the test and state program. This program allowed students to remain in school if they were exposed to COVID-19 at school but tested negative. 90% of our school districts joined into that program which collectively saved over one million school days for our students. However, even with these efforts, the average student in Massachusetts still missed 26 school days over the last two years. This represents a near 50% increase in absenteeism compared to the two school years prior to the pandemic. As such, increasing student attendance is a critical priority for all of us this school year. Finally, we will be monitoring our student enrollment trends after1552 an initial drop in enrollment of almost 37,000 students at the beginning of the 2020 2021 school year enrollment last year stabilized1560 and remained level. Much of the initial enrollment decline was in the pre K and kindergarten grades. And last year's data showed that some of those students went on to re enroll in our public school system.
We are still compiling data for the start of the current school year and we'll provide1576 this information as it becomes available likely in the next few weeks. The Student Opportunity Act has also supported our recovery and acceleration efforts as a commonwealth. This past school year was the first full year districts received SOA funding and the first full year of implementation of districts SOA plans. As a reminder under the SOA districts are required to develop three year plans to close opportunity and outcome gaps for underserved students in their districts. Districts submitted their initial three year plans in January of 21 and they submitted amendments to revise those plans in April of 22. We asked districts to focus their plan amendments on needs that emerged during the pandemic and to address their spending of both1619 SOA funds and the new federal ESSER funds to support underserved student groups.
1625 DESE1625 provided1625 feedback to districts during planned development and each district's plan is publicly posted on the DESE website as required by law. Based DESE's review of SOA Plans, districts are focusing support on underserved student groups prioritized in that SOA Legislation, this includes students with disabilities, high needs students, economically disadvantaged students and English learners and former English learners. Districts have also committed to setting up evidence based programs in their plans. The largest proportion of districts are focusing on the following areas implementing high quality and structural materials, inclusion and co teaching for students with disabilities and English learners, expanding capacity to address the mental health needs of our students and families, research based early literacy programs and the list goes on.
We will continue to support districts in thoughtful planning focused on underserved student groups and we will continue to monitor and advise districts on their use of SOA and ESSER Funds. We will also promote research and evaluation of evidence based strategies selected by districts to see what is working and where we may need to adjust. Before I conclude, I want to mention a few other efforts that are critical to improving the long term trajectory of our public school system here in the commonwealth. First we remain committed to building a more diverse workforce across the state. I called attention to this as a critical issue when I first arrived at DESE in 2018 Noting that 40% of our students in the Commonwealth, our students of color, but only 8% of our teachers are. Since then we have invested in cohort based professional learning programs and provided grants to districts to promote a more diverse workforce.
I'm pleased to report that these efforts have begun to show results with the number of educators of color having risen to 10% statewide. Despite this positive uptick however, we have much more work to do to increase this number. A focus area for this work moving forward is improving and diversifying1741 our teacher pipeline. The work continues. Second, if we want our students to both recover academically but also leap forward we need to double down on making teaching and learning engaging, interactive, relevant and connected to the real world. We need to give students more hands on learning experiences and more opportunities to learn through discovery and play.
At DESE we are working on our new academic vision grounded in deeper learning that will guide our work to support districts in the years ahead. And finally we also need to invest in our data infrastructure so we can uncover success stories in our state and scale that work accordingly. We collect a lot of data in education and we need to mine this resource to find the golden needles that are hidden in our haystacks of data. We especially need to find those examples of practices that effectively serve our student groups with the largest needs. I'm deeply appreciative of your partnership in supporting our students, families and educators and know we share a common commitment to our kids going forward. Thank you for the opportunity1802 to speak to you today. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you very much.1806 Commissioner. We have a limited time for some follow up questions. I would just like to remind committee members first those of you who are attending remotely. If you have a question please text it to your respective chair. So uh house committee members text your question to me and senate committee members to Senator Lewis. Uh secondly um as has earlier been indicated um those testifying today were uh provided in advance with the areas of interest to the committee which was the result of um uh polling the committee last month to see what particular areas that uh committee members wished to have addressed. So I would um I remind you that any follow up questions are to be limited to the testimony we heard this morning and not to anything else. We will have other hearings over the course of the next session getting into other other topics. So um uh with that, are there any members present in the hearing room who have any questions for either the secretary or the Commissioner
Representative Bill said, oh, thank you, thank you very much. I don't know if I need to speak into this mike. Yes, please do. Okay. Great.
REP BELSITO - Thank you very much. I truly appreciate the time. As a parent I want to thank you very much for um, the, the efforts in and your agility during these difficult years. I did, on behalf of my district I represent four regional schools in the Fourth Essex Topsfield, Manchester, Hamilton, Wenham, Rowley and Ipswich in there, several uh, so I did have some pointed questions come to me. One was in regards to using and again, if you don't have the answer, that's fine. You know where to get me. Okay. Um, in regards to1918 using vacation time to address learning shortages or learning gaps rather. There was a concern with contractual obligations that our teachers have and not having that part of their contract. And then in regards to social and emotional need that time is much needed for folks to recharge.
So there was a question around that from our school committees. And I did want to state and I had said raised this to the chair um, that 1st and 2nd grade learners during that time, that gap in their ability to spell read, write, et cetera, they didn't offer services for that particular age group. And I have a learner in that particular age group who's been able to come out of it but curious about what that would look. And again, if you1973 can answer today, great if not, I appreciate you looping back and I thank you for your time. Thank you chair.
RILEY - So thank you for the questions. I would say first over the vacations, the1984 acceleration academy program has always been a voluntary one. It's been one that has been endorsed by various teachers unions. This program started when I was a principal in1993 Boston and then a deputy superintendent it would have the blessing of the Boston Teachers Union and I would ask you to ask the union leadership that's coming on after me about it. But because it's been voluntary, it's also been a celebration of teachers. We created a prize called the Sontag Prize in Urban Education uh, to honor great teachers and we kind of give them an amazing professional development experience over the weekend at Harvard and we kind of celebrate them and then they work with small numbers of students, usually less than 10 students in a class during the February vacation. And we compensate them fairly significantly.
And the research coming out of Harvard has proved that the academies are very effective in improving student performance. And you'll hear more I think in the coming days about this idea of high dosage tutoring. Um, we respect the idea that some people may need the time to recharge and because it's been voluntary, we've never had that issue. What I would say, just to echo and I don't want to take time away from the secretary, but as far as our early learners, that is an area where we remain concerned that our younger students um missed out on a lot during the COVID crisis. I think it was clear that both the governor, myself and the secretary, we're saying it's very difficult to learn to read over Zoom throughout the pandemic. So we're going to be putting extra focus2070 in that area to work with and put our resources towards the places where we think we have the most need and I think early literacy is one of those places. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Thank you representative Vargas
please
REP VARGAS - Thank you very much and thank you very much for your testimony. Um, I'm just curious is there a district or school that you think serves as a good model right now for academic recovery that we should be drawing some lessons from right now?
RILEY - We're in the process of reviewing that as we speak. I think what we have seen is a real effort uh, to recharge and get back on the horse, so to speak. Um, I think this year has been a better year. Last year I think was more difficult than people realized. I don't think people understood that um, when kids have been disengaged from their learning and broken away from the school system that was going to create problems. But this year feels like we're really starting to ramp back up and we're seeing almost every district be thoughtful about the use of data and how to remediate some of these losses. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
All right. Thank you.
Uh, any other questions?
PEISCH - I just had one, two actually. First, do you have a sense of, you mentioned the various professional2153 development opportunities and supports that the department is providing for districts. Do you have a sense of the uptick on those, the degree to which districts are in fact taking advantage of those programs?
RILEY - Yeah, I don't have it in my fingertips, but we can certainly get it to you. I would say we are seeing a strong uptick in people gravitating towards the professional development opportunities that we're offering.
PEISCH - And last question um, and this may be better for the superintendents, so if you want to defer to them, that that's fine. But I'm wondering the degree to which when we're talking, the impression I have is that while all students were impacted, you've made reference to the fact2193 that some students were impacted in significantly greater ways than others. Um, is there some mechanism for identifying the students most in need of additional supports and ensuring that they are getting in fact the types of supports that work well? So just as a, for instance, how do we ensure that the students that are getting the high dosage tutoring that seems to be sort of the gold standard are actually receiving it?
RILEY - Yeah, I would say now more than ever our testing system comes into play. And I know there's been questions about the test if we need to do a new test, but having the MCAS data is really kind of the gold, the North star if you will for how kids are performing. And that allows us to be able to identify the kids that have had the losses and where the needs are and to target accordingly. Obviously if you have some students that were not impacted uh much by COVID they may need less of an intervention that students that were out of time had problems with connectivity, what have you. So that data is crucial for us to go forward.
PEYSER - Maybe just add to that. Um, two things that I think I mentioned in my testimony, one is the new requirements for early literacy screening for our youngest learners, which most districts are doing anyway, so it's not necessarily new, it's more standardizing or making more consistent across the state. But um, making sure that we are assessing reading progress on a regular basis and intervening and supporting those students in real time so that they don't fall further behind. Now, obviously, um, COVID has made things worse for more students, but this is not, this is nothing new, we only are at levels of something like 50% reading proficiency when you get to fourth grade anyway, so this is a longstanding problem, but it has gotten more acute. But that kind of close attention to screening students universally on a regular basis and taking immediate action is important.
And then the other, the other end2319 of the spectrum is obviously is those students who are in high school who have, you2323 know, um spent a significant chunk of, a critical time in their learning at home or in other sort of, for lack of a better word, nonstandard learning environments. They don't have much time left before they graduate. And so the strengthening of the educational proficiency plans and just the urgency around making sure that students who are not meeting expectations on MCAS but undoubtedly on other kinds of assessments and measures well that are, that are more locally determined are getting the kind of support they need before high school is over for them because this, for many of them, this2355 is our last shot.
PEISCH - Thank you. I just actually one last clarifying question which had to do with your references to absentee rates. I want to be clear, you're referencing students who were neither attending in person or remotely. I think sometimes people think of remote learning as students not attending. But you're, these are students, these high rates of absenteeism2378 mean that the student was not in either situation.
RILEY - I mean that was when that was happening. Obviously after kids came back to school, it was just when they were absent. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
thank you Senator louis
SEN LEWIS - Thank you. I want to applaud and lift up the department's efforts under your leadership and Deputy Commissioner Robinson around advancing and promoting diversity in the educator and the administrator workforce. And I really appreciate that that's been a high priority for the department. Another aspect of um you know advancing DEI in our schools is the is the curriculum. And traditionally you know the department has obviously played a very critical role in establishing curriculum frameworks but the actual selection of curriculum and curricular2423 materials is traditionally left up to individual school districts right to make those decisions. Um I think that DESE has been playing a more active role in recent years in helping to curate you know curriculum and provide support to districts around curriculum. So I wanted to ask you I guess Commissioner um your thoughts in general and this relates to deeper learning as well that I know is a priority for you, but specifically in the area of inclusive curriculum, what you see as the department's role in helping districts in this area.
RILEY - So I appreciate the question. I think um and uh thank you Chairwoman Peisch and and thank you to you chair about recognizing the folks at DESE who have done just a lot of great work over the last few years. I think the strength of Massachusetts has been that we are a local2472 control state and so we do allow districts to choose their own curriculums. To your point, we do set up curriculum frameworks, um, which kind of guide the purchasing or the standards we want to see taught, but we don't actually mandate curriculum. So our job is to be more supportive in this area. With that said, with our curated program, we're starting to really point people towards curriculums that have evidence based research behind them and we know that work. And I think it's likely that you'll see we'll continue this work going forward in these areas. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Senator de Domenico.
SEN DIDOMENICO - Thank you Madam. Chair. Here's a quick question. Um, you talked about all the information that you have that you're trying to mine through obviously there's a lot coming at you at once. I represent communities of Chelsea and Representative McGonagle here2522 in Everett and we have a lot of issues with a lot of the students missing you know personal learning time. Talk about support, what is the mechanism for these communities to access2535 that support? So, you know, there's a lot that2539 they need obviously, and I always say I don't want my fair share because my fair share doesn't work in my communities. But I want my fair share because, a fair share of issues in my communities. So what is the actual, how do these districts access that extra help that you're talking about?
RILEY - Yeah, I appreciate the question. What I would say is historically, DESE has been seen as a compliance based organization uh and and perhaps rightfully so, right. We have federal mandates, state laws that we have to make sure that are enforced. What I've said even before the pandemic is we need to rebalance and be a more supportive organization. So if you think like during the pandemic, you know, we helped districts immediately set up feeding centers. We got people Chromebooks uh including some of your districts when they were running into supply chain problems. We purchased air purifiers, test kits and2587 mass were able to procure those when other states weren't. We put out a lot of guidance. We said three feet and the CDC said six feet and it was proved that we were2596 right.
Um Secretary talked about the first in the nation pool testing test and stay. Uh We took, you know, we took the extraordinary step of asking the board to kind of override local control to order kids back to school because we felt like it was in their best interest. And so that work2613 has kind of set us on a continued path to support people. We've put more of our resources, including our personnel into our support teams in the field and every superintendent has my personal cell phone number and we are able to help people on almost a continuous basis,2629 on a daily basis to tell them not just about opportunities but to also help them about their individual issues in their particular communities. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Senator Lewis, I'd like to turn it over to you to introduce the next group, but I would like to on behalf of the committee. Thank you very much. Not only for your2649 testimony this morning, but for all of the2651 work that has already been indicated, not only the two of you, your staff and everyone at the department has been doing over the past almost three years in over and above the usual. So thank you.
Okay, well um next we're going to hear from leaders2673 of our public school districts. Um The panel includes tom scott, who is the executive director of the massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. And I, you know mary burke is also here. Hello from M. A. S. S. Um2688 and then we have three um of our of our excellent superintendents with us. Diane kelly, revere public schools Timpview Arbil rika Public2699 schools and thomas Anderson from the new Bedford public schools. So thank you very much for I know how busy you all are and um thank you for being here with the committee today and I'll who is going to kick it off. Mr scott. Um Just if you could just sorry, just make sure the microphone so those remote can are remote can follow along
THOMAS SCOTT - MASSACHUSETTS ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENTS - Chair Lewis and Chair Peisch and distinguished members of the Joint Education Committee thanks for inviting us today so that we have an opportunity to talk to you a little bit about what's been going on during the period of COVID. I want to introduce three of superintendents who are with me today. And on my far right is Tim Piwowar, he's the Superintendent of the Billerica Public Schools. In the middle is Thomas Anderson, who is the superintendent of the New Bedford Public Schools. Thomas is the one of the chairs of our urban superintendent network 26 urban districts that meet on a regular basis. Tim is a past president of M. A. S. S. And to my immediate right is Dianne Kelly, who is the superintendent of schools for the Revere Public Schools and currently our M. A. S. S. president this year.
I want to just begin by first sort of expressing appreciation. During this pandemic we obviously had to pivot on a daily basis with information that came to us. And I want2779 to just acknowledge both with Senator Lewis and also Representative Peisch that your support on meeting2786 with us on a regular and frequent basis to look at issues such as transportation, food security, issues around MCAS testing and accountability, multiple issues that we had to confront immediately. Your ability to work with us on a regular basis made a world of difference. Uh, so on the statutory side, you were invaluable to us on the regulatory side certainly the department had provided us with enormous support. We had daily conversations with the commissioner and I would say that probably the better part of the two years that the commissioner and his staff were in regular communication with us working through all the regulatory issues. So you should know that the system has worked very effectively uh during some very challenging times.
I also want to just say thank you for the actions of this committee and the legislature in terms of food security for this year. Uh The fact that you stood up provided our children with the food security that we needed, given some really challenging times is much appreciated. I know that that was something that really was bolstering a lot of the support that our superintendents and teachers felt in terms of what we needed. Let me begin by2860 talking a little bit about the fact that since 2018 - 2019 uh school year that this feels like a more normal environment for us. Um while joy is returning, it's going to take some time as far as to go back to any sense of complete normalcy. Much the same way we shifted to uh ensuring food security and personal connections for our students and families at the outset of COVID we are now continuing to focus on the negative effects of COVID on the social emotional and mental health effects from the isolation of our Children and the impact resulting from their loss of routine developmental structures that our schools and classrooms provide on a daily basis.
To put it mildly, to put it mildly our Children and many adults are dis-regulated. Psychologists describe to us that many children and adults are experiencing a form of pandemic PTS. We see forms of depression, anxiety, emotional dis-regulation and relationship issues far beyond the normal conditions. This is affecting attention issues, concentration, memory and motivation for many of our children. According to the CDC during the pandemic, looking at our youths' mental health, we showed that 37% were experiencing poor mental health and 44% were feeling persistent sadness and hopelessness. We are still working through this this problem. Our school attendance while better this year continues to be a concern. Much as we have seen with the private sector as they readjusted from the virtual employment to the office a similar mindset is prevalent in many schools with irregular attendance among many of2959 our students.
Our superintendents and principals have been on a campaign messaging the importance of regular school attendance in their communities to the parents. It will take some time to acclimate to the pre COVID attendance for many of our communities. While we are aware of the need for academic acceleration, this can only be achieved if we acknowledge and provide the scaffolding to build the emotional and social development skills lost during the past two years. Our superintendents will elaborate more specifically as we talk, speak to you in the next few minutes, Teachers articulate to us the classroom routines most notably at the elementary level require greater attention when creating the classroom culture of routines and expectations. With many children continuing to adjust to the structures of classroom participation, this has consequences to their time on task academically.
In addition this has not been a return to February 2020 with curriculum and instruction. Much the same way teachers had to adapt to virtual curriculum during the pandemic the same as necessary, bringing children back to pre pre COVID times in the conditions of their classroom. Based on the readiness of students, teachers have had to regularly adapt their instructional practices and their curriculum to meet with the students that they're confronting every day. A time consuming and3040 challenging task on a daily basis. Personnel pipeline issues are adding to the3045 complexity of a full normal return. Depending on the location and demographic of a district we are experiencing hiring issues. Whether it's simply looking for school adjustment counsellors, psychologists are in the more rural areas, finding a math or language teacher, finding special education3062 teachers and EL teachers is particularly concerning.
We hear consistent messages from superintendents and principals that finding the high quality staff we need is challenging at best. Finding support staff such as paraprofessionals to support our special education or accelerated learning programs has been extremely difficult. And finding sufficient transportation services is a major issue, particularly for our districts with high special needs students. One particular area where we can certainly help and support from you is to continue the exploration of how do we secure alternative transportation services, both vendors and services to be provided? Costs are increasing and finding transportation for our out of district special needs students has been particularly challenging and oftentimes we have to call on parents to provide the transportation themselves.
So what's being provided to bring students up to speed? How have we been using the ESSER funds? Districts have prioritized resources to bring back more mental health services into the districts. Social workers, counselors, psychologists are all priority. We are experiencing inadequate staffing pipeline. Teachers have been adapting classroom routines along3135 with curriculum and instruction practices to meet both individual student and classroom needs. Providing needed materials and professional development time for learning and planning have been highly valued. Accelerated learning approaches have been employed, matching student readiness to student engagement, recognizing that some students have missed the better part of two years in a school environment, demanding the focus and resources that we need.
Expanded purchase of the use of diagnostic materials, curriculum materials along with time on task have all been resources that we have needed and certainly3168 have used many of our ESSER funds for that purpose. ESSER funding has been a significant benefit for those districts who have had substantial amounts being received. Keep in mind that the vast majority of our districts have received limited funding. Using additional paraprofessionals to provide individual and small group tutorials, summer programs where feasible additional before and after school programs have been used to get additional time on learning. Districts have been3194 strategically spending federal dollars. Two factors have influenced the use of funds available staffing due to shortage and the need to see these as a multi year process for both the regulation of student behavior and their disposition to schooling as we try to catch students up to the academics they missed over3212 the over the last two years.
We would be foolhardy not to realize that education funding typically rises and falls depending on the economy. Too often we have developed innovative programs during good times only to dismantle them when resources decline. Wisely districts are planning expenditures over the life of the ESSER funding to extend the accelerated initiatives that they have3238 selected. We3240 expect to see an incremental progress over the next few years with student preparedness and engagement, resulting in incremental academic growth.3247 I can3248 assure you that we all feel the sense of urgency. We are hopeful that educator pipeline improves. Currently we see that the normal turnover of teachers and school leaders is significant. We have concerns that with making education an attractive profession, given the negative climate, we've experienced too many of our educators are feeling less supported and the public vitriol of the education system has only hastened our challenges, attracting new talent.
We will need to make expeditious the use of our are funding sources reminding ourselves that SOA funding has been about bringing our underserved districts the equity of resources compared to their suburban counterparts. ESSER funding has been a welcome to address the acceleration of student loss and it will be over time. This isn't a short term solution, but it's a persistent effort over the next few years. I will close by just saying thank you for all that you do for us and the support you provide to make our education system what it is today.
THOMAS ANDERSON - MASS - Good morning. Again, I'm Thomas Anderson Superintendent in New Bedford Public Schools. So I appreciate your time and attention for the next few minutes just to share some thoughts with you. Education is the business of people and as educators who we are is represented through our core values and the impact we have on those around us our sphere of influence. Equity through access can be the equalizer. Education is a tool that when equally provided, can equip individuals with the skills to make a global impact. I grew up with the opportunity and the support to focus on education because my father who grew up as a sharecropper, then worked 40 years on a factory assembly line did not allow me another option. He taught me that all jobs are good jobs, but made it clear that education can create access, make opportunities, and provide choices.
Although the pandemic exacerbated many inequalities and current challenges with mental health and other learning difficulties, it further illuminated the need to focus on human development, specifically student stamina and perseverance, which is often overshadowed by critical academic expectations. In New Bedford Public Schools, we worked to turn this challenge into an opportunity to be creative. I'll briefly touch on how we stimulated growth and shifting our thinking to incorporate acceleration, How we proactively addressed the specific challenges, how we effectively communicated about navigating the situation, and what we continue to do having learned from this unique experience.
First, a little background, New Bedford is a city of roughly 100,000 people will close to 13,000 students representing more than 40 different countries and languages and over 2800 staff. For 42% of our students English is not their first language, 26% receive English language services, 22% receive specialized learning services, and over 82% are considered low income or high needs. Not unlike many other communities, but unique in its own way that students and families in New Bedford encountered many challenges throughout this time. Over the last two years, we have experienced challenges that we never could have imagined in our lifetime. I'm not quite sure how I would have handled the situation if I was a high school student during the pandemic. But as a parent of a high school child now and two during that time we lived it. That first hand experience of the impact this had on our social, emotional and physical well being.
It's very important that critical and analytical thinking skills along with our ability to cultivate students interpersonal skills are an intense focus. We must take time to understand the lingering effects of this pandemic. The loss was that of the opportunity to learn and how to engage and work with others. There was no learned, there was no loss of learning. This opportunity loss created and exacerbated the existing inequities. In New Bedford we focused on providing clarity and seeking the root cause. We expanded our internal mechanisms to measure and engage in strategic discussions around the accountability that we have to one another. We proactively informed our families and worked well with our bargaining units to accurately3490 understand the challenges we were facing.
Our outlook for the academic year our focus this academic year is to be consistent with previous years, which includes the objectives to address the impact of the3501 pandemic. The pandemic exposed or exacerbated previous issues such as whole child and trauma sensitivity and mindsets around expectations. Pre pandemic we focused on multi tiered systems of support and now we fully understand and appreciate the importance of focusing on these areas. Our goal is focused on accelerating student learning and growth, strengthening instructional practices, and realigning our literacy instructional practices to support acceleration. Other examples include support for staff to address social emotional learning needs, positive behavior interventions, counselor lead whole groups in classroom lessons, training on how to provide students with high rigor curriculum, and culturally responsive teaching to ensure best practices.
In our over 1000 district learning walks we've had so far this year we use the data and we observe the specific instruction occurring in3552 our classrooms. We're working to refine restorative systems focusing on positive behavioral strategies and not punitive behavioral redirection. We employed strategies to bring learners up to speed and support teachers with a continued focus on ensuring access to grade level curriculum and evidence based instruction as you heard from the commissioner and the secretary earlier, implementing an acceleration road map with regards to high expectations with raising ceilings and floors. We have rigorous tasks and materials and provide accommodations that ensure all students can access to learning. Using data driven strategy sessions, which isn't new, but something we're focusing more on. We're identifying student needs across learning domains such as literacy numeracy attendance and behavioral3594 and providing targeted assistance and interventions within our multi tiered system of support.
We've increased our focus on academic vocabulary and language and targeted training for staff, providing training related to inclusive practices and provide consistent timely feedback on instructional observations. And we can thank the Department of Education for supporting a lot of that professional development. We're again and bringing our learners up to speed when it comes to mental health, even challenges have included teachers feeling overwhelmed and burned out compassion fatigue less intolerance. Kindergartners we see have experienced a lot of emotional dis-regulation especially seeking instant gratification for the time that they weren't in school. Teachers3634 fear that they are not doing enough.3636 Increased examples of depression, anxiety, family financial stressors and trauma.
We heard about attendance. Attendance, absenteeism has increased due to the thought of being sick. In the past, many people would come to work, come to school, and they know they really shouldn't be there and they're not feeling that their best. Now, what3657 we're seeing is that people are being mindful of their own health and taking more ownership, I could say of that and they are staying home. So as we talk about the numbers in attendance unfortunately will continue to be an issue, but we need to really continue to focus on how students are getting that and receiving instruction if they're not there. Also something we're doing to address a relationship building with families and students, helping families navigate supports. We have a lot of wraparound services and collaborating with our community service agencies. We're offering our employees more assistance3685 and encouraging them to take time off for themselves during nights and3690 weekends when we used to thrive and having that be a badge of honor of working, you know, countless hours. Encouraging people to know that it's okay to not be okay and to ask for help. Again, doing more counselor lessons in our classrooms of social emotional issues, raising those issues and challenging our students to really share information and building stronger relationships.
Another area when3713 we3713 think about advantages of the, taking advantage of some of the opportunities. So we look at the effective incorporation of technology within our classrooms. So now we're a fully 1 to 1 district. We're able to have a large number of our students during the pandemic participate in person and virtual. A clearer focus on our why, meeting the needs the whole child, focusing on equity as both a means and an end,3734 and building positive relationships among students, families and staff. Increased opportunities in different communication modalities with families using more audio video, using our cable access channel in the city to air video lessons and3747 messages during the time. We've worked to address the negative impacts specifically working with our students who have IES or are learning English.
So we've increased our focus on action plans and trainings to support these students, weekly meetings for English learners in our special Ed department teams to analyze data trends and patterns, identify more of those social skills and implementing classes for the students and supporting our counselors, strengthening classroom co teaching to minimize the amount of time students are being pulled from classrooms for review. So we think about acceleration versus remediation. How are we incorporating that? We3782 haven't mastered it, no one has but these are things that we are focused on getting done. What are the things that we need to closely monitor that you can help us with? Housing stability to ensure that students are enrolled in school with minimal transition.
Increasing staff diversity by supporting pipelines for internal educator prep and licensure flexibility, fiscal support that ensures Student Opportunity Act health insurance costs commitments are3809 uncompromised3810 and3810 that the FY 24 rate increase doesn't have a negative impact on districts like New Bedford. And finally maintaining the accelerator repair program that will ensure districts like New Bedford can replace roofs, windows, doors, boilers and then otherwise structurally3825 sound facilities3826 to allow us to continue renovation repair and the creation of accessible learning spaces and extending the useful life of our schools. State stakeholders should ensure the maximum flexibility on ESSER, the late liquidation process and revisit support for the accelerated repair program and the MSBA to ensure facility needs to be addressed. I appreciate your time this morning. Thank you.
TIM PIWOWAR - MASS - Thank you Thomas. Chair Peisch, Chair Lewis, and esteemed members of the joint committee on Education. My name is Tim Piwowar. I'm the Superintendent of Billerica Public Schools, a position I've proudly held since 2012. We're a district of just shy of 5000 students, about 20 miles northwest of here. And I've also had the honor of serving as this year's past president of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. I want to thank the joint committee for inviting us to speak with you today about the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our educational systems. For me, the last time I spoke to this committee, I came with one of my principals on a Zoom call in October of 2020. And compared to where we were then starting that year by implementing a brand new hybrid learning model while simultaneously running a fully remote option for about 1/6 of our students in the district, hoping that we were on the road back to normal but about to be hit by the surge of positive cases that beset us that winter our3911 schools and our students today are in a significantly much better place. And you see it when you walk through the halls and classrooms of our schools.
Students are in school with their peers, participating fully in their academic and extracurricular without restrictions. They are engaging in meaningful learning activities with their teachers, working together in groups inside and outside of schools, they're eating at lunch tables with their friends, they're performing in plays and concerts, and they're competing on our athletic fields. These are things to use a word that Tom used in his opening remarks that bring joy and life to our students and our schools. And that's critically important because learning isn't just an intellectual3950 exercise, it's an emotional one. As well and as we know, students can't learn and think deeply about something unless they care about it so that joy is fundamentally important. So we have to remember to take a step3963 back and celebrate all of this considering where we've come from in the past 2.5 years. But that being3969 said, we also need to acknowledge that while on the surface if you walk our halls it looks like we're back to normal when you dig deeper, there's a lot there that we need to continue to address.
Like everywhere else in the commonwealth our students in Billerica have academic needs that were exacerbated by the lost opportunities for instructional time during the pandemic. This is particularly true in the areas of early literacy and numeracy, where those skills form the foundation for all the other learning that we do with students in school. But that foundational need is also present even more so with our students' social and emotional development. Students missed out on opportunities to interact with their peers during the pandemic, which is how those skills developed. They went from an isolated environment at home to a stimulus rich environment at school and has led to challenging student behavior across all of our grade levels. Recognizing these dual needs, both academic and social emotional we are using a significant portion of our ESSER funding in Billerica to address both of these by providing direct targeted support for students through the use of both academic and SCL interventionists.
However, the major challenges with implementing this plan is actually finding staff to fill4040 these positions. Not just our interventionists but educational positions all across the district, particularly special education teachers, related service providers like speech language pathologists and social workers, paraprofessionals and4055 long term and even day to day substitutes. This is true, not just for us in Billerica but also for my colleagues across the commonwealth. And so for interventions, the challenge is not only finding the quality individual to hire to work with our students, but retaining that person in the role. Because these are grant funded positions, they don't come with a guarantee of continued employment. So if a more permanent teaching position becomes available in another district, they understandably will jump at that opportunity, which has already happened to us a couple of times since the school year started.
This speaks directly to one of the main challenges that we're all having with staffing. There has been a significant influx of new money into districts both through one time ESSER funding and more importantly and sustainably through the Student opportunity Act, and we're incredibly grateful to the Legislature for passing the SOA to address the problems that exist in our previous funding formulas. But the immediate impact of the increased funding is that there have been so many new positions created schools across the commonwealth, both in response to the pandemic and to the systemic inequities that SOA was designed to address, that we have found ourselves with a heightened demand for educational staff without a commensurate increase of supply in the educational workforce.
And so this year and particularly this summer was the most challenging hiring season my colleagues that I have ever had. With a high number of teaching and other professional positions open4137 and with an applicant pool whose size was significantly diminished, there was a large amount of movement of staff from one district to another just before the school year began. This created staffing holes, right is that year was starting and in Billerica alone we had 10 members of our professional staff submit their resignations in the month of August alone. While we were able to fill almost all of those positions before the school year started, it often involved pulling our paraprofessional staff into teaching roles, either permanently or temporarily. This can be a positive thing for the district and its students who benefit from continuity and personnel and it's certainly a benefit for the employee who has an opportunity for career advancement. And we believe in the importance of a pipeline for paraprofessionals to move into teaching positions.
But unfortunately, the staffing, creates this in the role of paraprofessionals. There is no external pipeline that incentivizes people to move into these roles and our paras are essential because they provide some of the most personalized services to some of our most at need students. In our collective bargaining agreement are paraprofessionals we've worked to create a tiered compensation scale to financially reward those staff members who work with our students that have the most significant challenges. But even with that we still can't find the staff to fill these positions either externally or through internal transfers, particularly in some of our substantially separate special education classrooms. And so adding money to support increased staffing schools is only part of the solution. The other part is working to increase the supply of people wanting to get into the education field in general particularly in these support roles.
But unfortunately, the public conversation around education right now does not incentivize people to get into the field. While most families across the commonwealth are happy with their schools in every community there is a small but vocal minority that believes that the words civil and the phrase civil discourse no longer applies whether it's in public meetings and attacks level through social media. And I'm not speaking particularly of me. As the superintendent of a public figure and it's my job to deal with criticism. I understand the important part of my role is to act as a human shield so that my staff can do the work that they need to do with kids. I can turn off and ignore comments on Facebook and Twitter and I'm so much happier since I have. It's true and I tell my staff do the same. But when those attacks are being levelled at principals and individual teachers, particularly when they're of a4279 personal nature, it has such a detrimental effect on the morale in our schools and by4284 consequence on the learning environment for our students.
These past few remarks I shared directly with our, of our public discourse I shared when speaking with the State Board of Education last year, and they are as true today as they were then. And so I will provide the same adaptive ask of this legislative body that I did on that board. Please join us in finding a way to work together to change the narrative around schools, education and the profession. Our educational system is built on the power of human capital and if we want our schools to thrive, they need to be filled with people who believe that there is meaning, purpose and honor in the work that they're doing. We need to work to replace the echo chamber of blame and negativity with one of hope and optimism about the future of schools. We need to tell the stories, as Thomas mentioned of not just the work we do,4331 but why we do the work that we do with kids. This need to sell and share the purpose of public schools has to be an essential part of our work if we want to stabilize, heal transform our profession and ultimately serve all of our children across the commonwealth. Thank you again to Chair Peisch, Chair Lewis, and the Joint committee for welcoming us here today and I'll turn it over to Dianne Kelly.
DIANNE KELLY - MASS - Thank you all very much and and thank you again, as my colleagues have said for having us here today. we really do appreciate you taking the time to listen to us. Um, I think my colleagues have already articulated most of the points that I would want to make here today, but I want to dig a little bit deeper into the mental health piece, which is one of the pieces you asked us to look at. Um, I think the biggest misstep that we made last year when we came back to school at the start of the 21-22 school year was that we were so hopeful about coming back to some sense of normalcy um, that we did4390 not anticipate the amount of dis-regulation that we were going to encounter. And that wasn't just among the4396 students of course it was among the adults as well. But those things served to exacerbate each other. Because the teachers and the staff were a little bit out of sorts due to everything they had endured through the pandemic, they had less tolerance of the students who were out of sorts themselves, and those things snowballed into some pretty tense situations.
Um, thanks ESSER funds, we, like, most school districts were able to increase the number of social workers and school psychologists and our behavior analysts that we had on staff. Uh, we made sure that sometime in each child schedule was dedicated to working on their social emotional issues, but there was never enough time. It was about 20 minutes a day. We need to actually spend time working with students and staff on what it means to be in school and4444 what that looks like and how that's different from being in remote school. We had forgotten that most of our students have not been present in a school building for over a year and a half. Some of them, the younger ones had never been in their entire lives. Absenteeism among staff was incredibly4460 high and finding folks to cover was an incredible challenge. This added even more stress for the teachers who were present and fears of COVID were still incredibly real at the time. Mixing groups was discouraged. So we faced a lot of challenges.
As Tim mentioned, things are much better this year. We have fewer unfilled positions, but there still are several. We struggle particularly with our, to find English language learner teachers, STEM teachers, special educators and Multilingual counselors to assist our bilingual students with their SEL work. I definitely think the self regulation has improved among students and staff, but we're not back to where we4505 were emotionally. And we know that all of the psychologists that we work with tell us these things don't resolve themselves in short order. Um, I worry about where we're going to be when the ESSER funds do dry up. We have consciously in Revere held onto most of our ESSER Three funds as we hope they're going to ride us through the next two school4528 years. And we've been trying to hold on to our SOA funds so that they can then capture the cliff that we're going to encounter in 2024.
But as Tim mentioned, if we lose all of these positions just two years from now, we're really going to be in a crisis point because I don't feel that all of the students and all of the staff will have recovered emotionally from what they've endured throughout the pandemic, whether it was a lost parent, a lost sibling, a lost child, um a loss of employment, a loss of housing. So many different losses that so many people have endured um that we all need to contend with. Our elected officials and our leaders place, where our elected officials and our leaders place their emphasis is going to inform our ability to help4578 folks navigate this recovery. Focusing on additional learning time to close the learning gap, the quote unquote learning gap uh and I agree with Thomas, it's a learning opportunity, it's not a learning gap might not actually be the most effective use of time for our students.
Engaging in joyous learning activities and building community among students and staff. Taking time to process difficult situations will better equip students to successfully complete their regular school tasks. We can accelerate their learning by focusing on grade level content with the requisite social emotional learning supports and ensure individual student success. However, when we are still implementing our accountability system as if nothing is different we message to educators, students and staff that the test is the most important thing. Schools will not devote adequate time to helping achieve a balance when they are assessed and measured in only one direction. Our accountability system in Massachusetts is far more comprehensive than is required by federal law. We're not required to test at every grade level from three through 8 and then 10 as well.
Um these are areas in which the Legislature and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education could make changes that4656 would release some of the pressure on schools and provide more time for schools to focus on mental health needs for students and adults. I think that we are truly right now at an inflection point in education. We unexpectedly see that as a benefit coming from COVID. If we can take a pause and take time to think about what's really important for our students and our staff, do students feel happy in school? Do they feel welcome? Do they feel engaged in their academics? Are our teachers glad to be there?
Do they feel honored and respected for the work that they have accomplished in their lifetime? Do we find time to treat them like professionals providing adequate common planning time or professional development time within their workday and not expect that just to have on the vacation weeks? These are all of the things that we have an opportunity right now as a commonwealth to consider. And I think that as Commissioner Riley mentioned if we focus on the deeper learning activities where students bring their history and their culture and their own assets into the learning and we provide time for teachers to develop that kind of a curriculum it would be the next way for the state of Massachusetts to move forward in all of our successful K through 12 learning.
LEWIS - All right, well thank you all so much for your very insightful and thoughtful testimony. I particularly appreciate your holding up, you know, all of the just wonderful work that's going on in our schools just every single day that's unsung and unheralded. We always focus on the challenges and you know, the disparities and all the work we need to do of course, which we need to focus on. But there's a lot of great things happening as well. Thanks to our educators and our administrators, our staff and students and families. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
questions Senator de Domenico, take care.
DIDOMENICO - Two quick questions. Um, one you mentioned about absenteeism. Um, that's a big challenge in a lot of communities right now trying to recover and trying to get our kids back up to speed. So I know in some4778 districts they have excused absences and then they have other absences as well. And sometimes I kind of get in the water a little bit. What's excuse was not and, but how do you address the at home learning at that point? Because they could be a stretch of the COVID and how do you how do you combat that?
ANDERSON - That's a good question. We have, we learned a lot as we dealt with the pandemic in terms of the access of information and those types of things. So the absenteeism piece when when we we share the measurement of it, it focuses on no matter whether it's excused or not. So we're not talking about,4814 we haven't, as a district we can pull out our excused absences and put it out there but the rest of the world from you know from the from the DESE side they share absenteeism. And so many of those could be excuses. Students are there are supports in place to get work at home and you know call it many different things home and hospital teaching. Just different areas that that that we were able to focus on.
But with that we focus on getting students the support in terms of whatever the work that they're missing, utilizing technology and those types of things. So that those are things that were already in place. It's been heightened during the time. But specifically thinking about the absentee numbers just want to make sure everyone knows we're talking about whether there, whether it's excused or not. Whether the student has made up the work whether they've taken the test that's not having an impact on that number that some districts, you know my district gets put out and it's a high number, but there's nothing that demonstrates to say, well, these students have actually been able to get to work.
DIDOMENICO - And so I'm kicking myself for not following up on the commissioner question earlier. So we have Gateway communities sitting here, we have New Bedford, we have Revere and Dianne and Mary back there who has been an expert on these issues for a long, long time. I know Billerica has their own issues as well with, the Gateway communities have. You're not classified as one, but you could be one. Um, I asked a question about what the supports look like and how they get to the school system. I heard a lot about what they've done in the past. I didn't hear about a little bit of, you know, I didn't hear about how it's happening today. Um how does the supports that they talk about at DESE giving to communities that need it the most? I'm hoping the answer is yes. But are you happy with the mechanism and happy with how that is filtering down to the school district, to the classrooms, to our teachers, to our kids? You know, we4926 hear a lot about all these great things that, that are going to fill the gap. Is it is it working and is there improvement and how does that?
KELLY - I do think there is improvement. I think we hear most about the opportunities directly from the commissioner and his office. Um they do regularly share different opportunities that are coming up. Often they're presented through a grant opportunity that we can apply for. I know the secretary mentioned the GLEAM branch which Revere is participating in and that's been tremendous for our middle school literacy program. That's where we chose to start with in middle school, we're hoping to expand that to the high school next year because we actually do have students who need literacy help at the middle and high school levels. Um and we did use the ESSER grant funding. Um we used DESE's curate program to help us select new curriculum at the elementary level in both um literacy and in mathematics, so that's been helpful.
Um I find that often the resources available are focused on the academics and on that piece of it. I feel like as a state we need to do more work on codifying what the social emotional work looks4995 like and how we can provide supports in that. Um it's not going to be enough. As we mentioned, we can create as many social worker positions as we want, if we can't fill them um or if they can't speak the language of our students then that's not terribly helpful. What we need to do is build the tool blocks for teachers and other staff so that all of us are working regularly on helping kids understand self control and how to monitor their own wellbeing and how to address when they're in need. Uh That's where I think that we could use more support at the state level. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Other questions represent Vargas
VARGAS - Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you to this panel for the leadership that you've shown during this pandemic. I often say that leadership is many things, but one of the things that it always is is asking who or what are you willing to take the hits for? So thank you for taking the hits in your communities. Um I had a couple of questions. The first was around the teacher emergency licenses and what impact that has had in your districts, not just on the workforce piece, but maybe5056 on the diversity piece as well.
PIWOWAR - Yeah, I can tell you it has certainly been helpful when I talk about pulling paraprofessionals into teaching roles quite often um those are people that do not have or do not currently have licensure that may be working towards it. Um and so being able to move, um that has been a big help in filling some of those teaching positions. Um what I would say is that in terms of5078 supporting efforts towards diversity, I think there is going to be some district to district challenges. You have to if you're doing that, um you know, you have to have people in the building first. We certainly want to um what I would say it's more challenging in a district like mine for for a whole slew of reasons um that I probably won't get into here today. Um but I will just say that. But it doesn't, it doesn't limit our efforts to want to do it and the extension of those kinds of ways that um remove sort of the filtering out process of educators. I mean, there's studies out their about the MTEL, for example, how the MTEL disproportionally impacts potential educators of color coming into the pipeline in the5119 first place. Right? So anything that we can do to remove some of those barriers in terms of helping helping increase the diversity of our educator pipeline down the road is going to be beneficial.
VARGAS - Taking an extension potentially of the waiver of not needing a Master's might be a good idea to look at.
PIWOWAR - Um yeah, I would say any any and all of the above. Um you know, we are the ones that are working with our kids every day. And while we obviously want to have some level of quality control, um I think the best quality control comes from the local level because we know our students, we know what they need um and so we can support the individuals that can be there with them, helping them get what they need in our classrooms.
VARGAS - And then last question here, I'm just curious what is the impact of universal school meals, particularly in Billerica? I would love to hear how that's been.
PIWOWAR - It has been huge. Um5170 you know, we are, an incredible credit to our nutrition services staff who served over a million meals during the course of the pandemic. It was really humbling for us to see um, the level of food insecurity in the community, how many of our families benefited from that. When the federal legislation, the federal waiver on universal free meals went5192 away it was, we were frightened let's say of what the impact is going to be that fall. So again, Tom said in his opening remarks, I really want to offer my thanks on behalf of all of my colleagues across the commonwealth and for the Legislature for stepping up and funding that this year. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you.
BELSITO - Thank you Chair. I appreciate this. I'd like to thank this panel. I'm a public school girl public university and my kids are in the elementary school system and I can't say enough about the day to day. Um, it just hats off.5225 You've just done a phenomenal job as a community. I'd like to for the record say I believe we need a rural and regional lens on this conversation. As well I'd like to to see that in whatever iteration going forward, and Superintendent Kelly loved what5241 you said. Uh, one of my questions from my school committee members was, has an updated 21st century future forward model been born out of this outside of MCAS and SAT scores and I think you really hit the nail on the head on that. I thank you very much for that. I wanted to ask, are ventilation needs still an issue for you folks in the school systems? Um, And perhaps tom you might know even better from other school communities. Are you still in need of ventilation support?
5275 SCOTT5275 -5275 I5275 would say that we've certainly come a long way in terms of the ventilation support. Um, I think that many of the districts and schools have addressed the problem. Do we need additional support5285 around that? Yes. I mean, I think that there are a number of our schools that still um look for other means of financial support to do that. I mean, I think that's been one of the challenges that we've faced. We certainly have focused with MSBA in conversations with them about with projects that are coming up that we focus in on that question. But yes, I would say that there are still a number of districts and schools that speak to that issue, but I would say we've come a long distance in terms of addressing most of the problem.
BELSITO - I think you and I would ask if there is anything in writing you can submit to the committee I would appreciate what that need looks like. In regards to ESSER funds we've hit the nail on the head. These are temporary one time funds coming out of the federal government. And of course, what I'd like to call the Proposition 2.5 merry go round a lot of our communities face. Um what do you need from the Legislature to make sure that these gaps for workforce and salary needs etcetera are fulfilled future forward? Just curious if there's a quick answer to that and if not5353 if you could submit to the committee, that would be great.
SCOTT - Well, it's a dangerous question when you ask us about funding. I would say, first of all, I would say that um we're still working through the ESSER funding and I think what Dianne Kelly talked about was how do we position ourselves over the next couple of years? We don't know where the economy is going to go from here. Um We know that that what we're working through over the next couple of years is, the programs that we've designed in terms of bringing kids back socially emotionally academically. Um And I think that if you ask that question, you know, a year from now, I think we might have a little different answer in terms of where we are. But I would say that for many of the districts that are the beneficiaries of SOA and from the ESSER funding, I would say that they're probably feeling pretty comfortable at the moment.
What I hear a lot is for those districts that have not been the beneficiary of that, that is a big concern for them? Uh And so I hear more often from them that how are we going to get through this and what kind of funding will we be able to anticipate going forward? Um So you'll probably hear from us continually, um and looking at areas where there's going to be some financial need. Um our rural districts are in tough shape. Uh and you will see some some of legislation proposals from us in terms of how to deal with that. I know that the Legislature has, this committee has been involved with a study around rural rural schools. So that's clearly one of the areas, but I would say also some of our suburban areas are going to need some additional support. So I think5454 we'll be certainly having conversations about that. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
I thank you for your response. So, yes, thank you.
KELLY - Sorry if I could just add to that, being fortunate to be one of those districts that did have a tremendous impact from ESSER and SOA very thankful for all of that. Um My concern as I mentioned earlier is how can we stretch that out? Right, and obviously, ESSER we don't have5478 a lot of control over because it's federal money, but we do at the state level. So are there things that we could do with our Chapter 70 funding that maybe we could pocket those while we're spending the ESSER funds and then at least reduce the level of that cliff that some districts are going to face? That would be tremendously helpful to all of us.
PIWOWAR - I know we're kind5501 of going down the down the road here and I just want to offer a different perspective. So as a district that has been the beneficiary of ESSER funds, but not really any SOA funds, right? So that's put us in a situation where as I talked about in my testimony right where we are hiring people for what are very to temporary positions. And it's made it really difficult to bring staff in. And particularly when you look at, you know, for example, were right next to Lowell. Lowell deservedly so got an influx of a substantial amount of money because it was well needed to address those inequities that existed over time. But it's put us in a position where we can be competitive in terms of hiring in some ways and that's been the challenge as relates to what this means for us right now. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you so very much. And I thank you chair Lewis for the opportunity to ask the questions.
5550 Okay,5550
REP HOWARD - My question is quick, just a quick one. Thank you Chair Lewis and thank you for leadership, grateful for your leadership and your insightful testimony. And great to see you Superintendent Kelly being here. I was educated in Revere middle school and high school so yes. My question is really with these challenging times with you know, challenging hiring staff, in each of your district, have you recaptured all the students? How they all return up to 2020, February 2020? Thank you.
ANDERSON - No. So we haven't and there's still a constant effort. And I think when we think about when we look at our enrollment trends, it is those early grades. So kindergarten first grade, second grade where some may have delayed the start in another year, they may have started a little bit sooner. But5606 so we, we didn't experience a huge5609 loss in New Bedford because we were able to do a lot of remote virtual hybrid right from the beginning because of some creative processes but we haven't completely recovered.
HOWARD - Sorry, Do you have a number of what is the percentage for each of your district?
ANDERSON - I look at some of the whole numbers. I'd say we're probably down not as a percentage, but about anywhere from 150 to 200 students total. I mean our5637 enrollment is close to 13,000. So it's not a huge number but when you think about dollars and cents and what we need, it's an impact.
KELLY - And Revere is significantly smaller than New Bedford is, we've actually had over 400 students increase. Our increase in enrollment is over 400 this5656 year alone um, but it's not the same students necessarily who left us. And so we're still digging into that data to try to understand where all of5664 those kids have gone um, and where they are now. So the numbers are coming back up to pre pandemic levels, but they are not necessarily the same kids.
PIWOWAR - Yeah. And I would just say I have a similar story to Dianne. We were up about 80 kids from last year, but again, it's not necessarily the same students. And I think that's one of the things we're still working through.
ANDERSON - And the, the other part of that, it depends where the students are going. So depending upon what other educational options they have within your town or city. So they're still going to school some within the city, but they've decided to leave the public school system for different reasons.5701
PEISCH - I'd just like a quick follow up on that and you don't have to answer it now, but maybe you could get it to us, which is, I'm interested in knowing how many students have been quote lost. There's declining enrollment because of declining population so that's affecting some districts. But the degree to, we heard a lot5725 during the course of the pandemic about students that were just sort of disappeared. And it would be helpful to know the degree to which those students have been identified and returned or the degree to which that remains an issue. Thank you for raising that issue. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
We're all set. All right, well, thank you very much. Again, very much appreciate your
uh,
thank you. Um, Next, we're hearing from two charter school leaders.
Excuse me and correct. Next we're hearing from glen culture uh, from the mass association of school committees who I understand is primarily going to submit testimony, but maybe has a few words to say.
GLENN KOOCHER - MASC - Thank you for this opportunity. I've provided you with a statement which we spent some time describing all of the questions you asked. I'm very happy to stand on that statement and5791 uh let you catch up one time. I just did want to say very, very briefly uh, none of us could have anticipated the four crises that arrived simultaneously. COVID, the disruption of public discourse, the threats to democracy that has had everyone upset, and inflation all of which have have not been mentioned earlier but are issues that affect us. And our school committees have been dealing with that as the place with the table. It hasn't been easy, but we're committed to diversity equity and inclusion and we're committed to uh, keeping the rights of free speech open at the local level. There is much more in the written statement and I know you need to catch up on time. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you very much glenn, I appreciate your calling attention to those other factors, which I think most of5846 us are unfortunately seeing playing out in one way or another in our, in our districts. Um, and we will not sure what the answer is, but we will try to address that as well.
KOOCHER - Just say, I don't envy everybody's position because as my daughter, the kindergarten teacher reminds me those in the know, don't really know too many variables. Too many unknowns and we're all struggling with this and hoping for collaboration in a civil manner. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
correct. Thank you very much, glenn. Um well now move on to the next group of school leaders the chart, excuse me? The special education uh group Joanne Haley, Sullivan from the massachusetts Organization of Education collaborative Elizabeth Becker, the executive director of the Mass Association of 7 66 approved private schools and carl against the executive director of the administrators of public education.
Joanne did you want to kick off? Thank you. But I think we decided Carla would go first if that's okay, That is fine. Go right ahead First. I want to thank the Superintendents group for their I think if you bring the microphone just a little bit closer so the livestream that better. Ok.
CARLA JENTS - ADMINISTRATORS OF SPECIAL EDUCATION - First I want to really thank the Superintendents Association for the comprehensive review that they have done around the data collection for5939 the whole school population. We're here today to talk a little bit about um the special Ed services across the continuum and we are here with our partners. Um we want to thank you Chairman Peisch and Lewis and members of the committee for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Carla Jentz. I'm the executive director of the Mass Administrators for Special Ed, also known as ASE. Excuse me. ASE is the lead nonprofit association in Massachusetts, advocating for special education administrators across the state to support the needs of students with disabilities in5974 the commonwealth. Our goal today, in partnership with MOEC and MAAPS is to inform you about the effects of the pandemic on our students and our staff.
With me today is Attorney Paige Tobin, Special Education Council to Massachusetts school5988 districts and consultant to ASE. my presentation on behalf of ASE is in three parts today. I thought it would be best to give you our recommendations at this hour, um, and then tell you a little bit about what supports those recommendations. So I'm going to talk a little bit about short term recommendations, long term recommendations, and the context for these recommendations. To support the increasing social and emotional behavioral health needs of students with disabilities and our school setting staff, our school staffing needs6020 we recommend and ask in the short term to reform Circuit Breaker with a change from a reimbursement model to a first payer model.
Pay for services as they incur and increase the funds for FY 24 without decreasing the overall funds to districts by way of a process similar to the best buddies allocation of the circuit breaker line item. Two reform the Massachusetts inter agency services, capacity for services to school age students to provide mental health services from DMH, to include a framework for costs and expenses between DCF and school districts when residential placement is needed for a student due to a non educational issue. An inter6062 agency reform that would have enforcement capability and oversight for the implementation of these needed services for Massachusetts students. Three, put a pause on legislating any new Massachusetts special education laws keep in concert with federal legislation and not to go beyond it especially in the short term.
Number four, provide additional and flexible funding for school districts to meet their unique6087 needs for services to students and staffing. In the long term, we ask number one, create a committee to look at ways Massachusetts can accelerate opportunities to recruit and retain special education staff, increasing the pipeline for qualified applicants, excuse me, across the domain of services providers. Number two create a committee to develop a framework for bold and robust community partnerships to6114 support students and families so that our students have community support along with school support. Number three, create a committee to address general education, supports for district level MTSS And RTI student intervention and prevention services and to examine what is needed to support and enforce these processes in our schools to address student needs to prevent the over identification of students with disabilities. And this format can include stakeholders like ASE and M.A.S.S.
Four, develop a comprehensive committee to review special education to include ASE, MOEC, MAAPS, M.A.S.S. and school business managers to assess the cost, the projections, and budget needs for a five year period or something similar.6163 The context for our recommendations are, while the following conditions were present prior to the pandemic, the pandemic and the shutdown of schools have heightened their urgency in four ways. The first example of the urgency is the staffing shortages for special education teachers, paraprofessionals, and related service providers. Staff relieving positions and those6186 that remain are asked to do more. Those that remain are beginning to experience and tell of being burned6191 out, including special education administrators. Many have left due to this burnout.
One district had a very, had very few applicants for a school psychologist position. They hired a person. The person did not show up, didn't even call to say they weren't coming to start the school. Despite district level advertising and outreach, the position remained unfilled for a year due to a lack of applicants. Another district has 11 paraprofessional6218 vacancies with limited hope to fill these positions currently. Our students will suffer. The second example of urgency is an increase in students social emotional and behavioral health needs, resulting in increased numbers of special education referrals and increased need for a range of services to meet student needs. One community had a 30% increase in referrals for special education over the past two years and a 12.5% in IEP eligibility. Another district had a 60% increase in student referrals and evaluations to special Ed.
Currently it is our understanding that 13% of Massachusetts, Kindergarten students are identified as having special education needs. With the new dyslexia law requirements we anticipate this rate to increase. The third example of urgency is funding. The federal IDE Law will be 50 years of age soon. It was never funded to full capacity and the needs of students with complex special education needs are increasing, necessitating more funding6283 for the Massachusetts circuit breaker count as well. The fourth example of our urgency is the increase in workload accountabilities for special education staff which impacts their instructional time with students. To illustrate, the new dyslexia law, the new discipline law these will all create new opportunities for assessing students. It will also create a new opportunity for time management issue in more schools.
More and more special education team meetings with families and advocates are taking longer and longer. Some meetings can take up to eight hours or in some cases longer. Responding to PRS complaints districts must do a thorough review and respond to DESE. As experienced by one school community it took two full days including producing 22 documents to support the district's compliance efforts and they were in compliance. Additional meetings with families to ensure compliance for compensatory services due to the pandemic schools shut down and fluctuations in remote learning services to students. Special education is already overburdened with enormous paperwork functions. In closing we cannot be emphatic enough about the toll the pandemic has taken on Massachusetts students and staff and families across the continuum of services programs at the LEA Collaborative and approved private special education schools.
We believe strongly that now is the time for a variety of measures as described to be implemented simultaneously if we are to succeed long term in our responsibilities and accountabilities in educating and serving students with disabilities across the continuum of these service models in Massachusetts. Before Proposition 2.5 Massachusetts was at a 14% rate and after it we went to 17% and now to the current 18.9%. The rate of students identified with special education needs has been trending up steadily increasing with the total number of Massachusetts students with disabilities at present at 174,505 students. The national averages about 14.5% but I know we don't6413 want to be with the national and we don't. Again, we reiterate school based and student needs have been compounded and exacerbated as a result of the extended pandemic.
Massachusetts takes pride in its capacity to identify and respond to the needs of special education students. Our students and their families count on school districts for their support and we are obligated to provide it. We want to continue this excellence. We know the issues are complex and not easily solved and we appreciate all the support that this committee and you Representative Peisch and Senator Lewis have given to us. You're so accessible to us and we can't thank you enough for all of that help and all of you here. Thank you. Thank you bravo to you. Um We respectfully urge your consideration to these recommendations. We're here today in partnership with MOEC and with MAAPS because they are our providers and we need to6469 strengthen the capacity at the district level at the collaborative level and at the MAAPS level. So thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you Carla. And if you wouldn't mind if you could send a copy of your testimony to6482 add additional information to send to. Yes that would that would be very helpful in terms of us knowing and remembering exactly will be submitting. Um I would also just like to ask um we're kind of behind schedule and we don't have the room all day. So to the extent that um what you're going to say has already been said, I'd ask that you just highlight things that have not been said in your testimony. Uh and if if you have many things that have not been said then then please say them. But but the repetition is something I think we could avoid. It would be helpful if we could avoid that. Thank you.
PAIGE TOBIN - ASE - Um Hello, good morning, my name is Paige Tobin and I'm an attorney who worked um with ASE consulting and public and private schools um as well as some collaboratives. I really will not repeat what Carla said but I did want to just really talk about the need for an inter agency relationships between DMH, DDS, DCF and school districts. Um I have seen over the past two years so many cases of students stuck in hospital settings. I had one student for over 100 days while the agencies were squabbling um and it really is just unacceptable. I've been doing this, I've been practicing for 30 years and doing this for many, many years and I've6571 been, you know, everyone has been talking about the need for for inter agency collaboration, but it really is so important now. Especially there are students who are hospitalized who cannot return home without the ability to get supports from DMH. And then if they're in the hospital, DMH services dropout and again, there's the squabbling. So we really given the lack of out of district seats and the increased need of students with social emotional disabilities that would be my big urge. And I also, school districts6606 have asked me to also let you know that the 14% increase in out of district tuition rates which is so needed to be able to serve students. So it's not as if districts don't recognize that need, but that will have a very, SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
so we've heard a lot about that and I think it will be dealt with in the budget. Thank you. Yes,
JOANNE SULLIVAN - MOEC - Good morning, I hope it's still mourning. Thank you, Chair Peisch and Chair Lewis for the opportunity. Um and members of the committee for your attention to um what I have to share today about the challenges that we're facing post pandemic. You've been again, you've been incredible partners during always to MOEC and then more specifically now through the pandemic and we truly appreciate that. For those who don't know me. I'm Joanne Haley, Sullivan executive director of MOEC and I represent the 24 public educational collaborative throughout Massachusetts. I'm pleased to join ASE and MAAPS to update you on the status of special education in Massachusetts post pandemic. And I'll be, I will be submitting detailed, much more detailed written testimony after this, but I do want to highlight some things for you.
For context, collaboratives are extensions of school districts and served over 35,000 students last year. We provided programs to approximately 5200 high needs students and over 4000 students received our services within their homes schools or their homes during that period of time. You heard from Carla and from the Superintendents that districts too are facing a crisis about the district challenge and collaboratives too are facing some of those. Increased referrals resulting in students being placed on wait lists, more intense student needs, staffing shortages, a lack of targeted COVID funding and growing alarm about the special education teacher pipeline you've been hearing about this morning,6718 but I do want to go into a little bit of detail.
But let me start with some good news, virtually all students that collaboratives serve are identified with high needs. They weren't able to be, um they weren't effectively most effectively served by remote instruction and so we brought them back to school as soon as it was safe and allowed. And so that was probably July of 2020. We had our students back with us face to face receiving instruction. And I will say that um overall we are finding that our students that we had with us before the pandemic6753 are continuing to progress as we would have expected post pandemic. So we're pleased with that and pleased to report that. I think it's an important piece of information. Um we were in that small minority that Secretary Peyser talked about this6766 morning. That small minority of programs that were able to come back to school and as a result they are6772 continuing to progress as I said.
However, newly referred students are a bigger concern. We worry about their well being, their mental health, and their social skills. The systems of care that that um Attorney Paige talked about the state agencies. I won't go into a lot of detail about that, but as a result, um that system is not supporting6794 our students in the way that we6796 would have expected in the past. And so it's resulting in increased numbers of students being referred to us and being referred at a much higher level of need than we've experienced in the past. So I did a survey we heard back from about 14 of the 246812 collaboratives. And out of those, approximately 1700 students pre pandemic, 1700 students in a typical pre pandemic year are referred to us. About 50% more students were referred to collaboratives in 2021, so 50% higher. In the first two months of this year we have already received 1100 referrals and we're consistently6836 receiving more every week. So the needs of students and the ability of our school districts to support those students in ways that they might have in the past is really through the roof.
But even more alarming, every collaborative is seeing that increasing numbers of those students are dis-regulated. We heard that word a lot this morning, they're dis-regulated and they're presenting with really disturbing aggressive behaviors and so we're very concerned about those students. And at the same time as everybody has talked about, we're having a staffing crisis. We have 74 openings in those 14 collaboratives. 74 openings for professional staff and 82 more are on emergency licenses. So we have a lot of young new people in the roles. And we have a critical shortage with 140 paraprofessional openings across those 14 um collaborative and we have no additional funding for recruitment and retention of staff, none. Um as a result, we can't Keep up with those needs in a timely way. 361 students across the Commonwealth have been declined for admission and put on waiting lists in those collaboratives. And we might assume the number would be over 500 if we had data from the 24 collaboratives.
To address this need we have two recommendations. Um The first is that we request your assistance for approval of House Bill 4350 which is the bill to support educational collaboratives. It has not come before your committee. This is a bill that has been before the state administration and and um the Committee on State Administration and it addresses one barrier to hiring individuals who work for member districts to allow us to provide services during non school time or summertime. Um We're not able to hire those staff if they work in our member districts at this time. And um we urgently need it now. At this time we have the support of DESE and of the Ethics Commission. We've seen it successfully reported out of the Committee on State Administration for two years in a row and it's now currently in the bills in third reading. So we respectfully request your help for the passage of that bill. We think it's an urgent matter and a way that we could address some of these critical needs.
Number two, we recommend establishing a commission to explore ways to expand the pipeline of special educators and address barriers to entry to the field. Collaboratives currently partner with state universities to offer educator licensure programs and we think we would be value assets if such a commission or committee was formed. Um and there's some promising practices around that but I'd be happy to discuss it another time. As you know, collaboratives don't typically request funds. We don't come to the Legislature for funds. But as with every every sector we're experiencing um rising costs post pandemic. We haven't been eligible for any of the Cares funding, the GEAR funding other state and federal funding for districts. Nor have we received funding provided to the private schools through MAAPS. Um7016 We have received ESSER funds for um $3.5 million is7022 what we've received and it was really reimbursement for expenses in that very first7026 year post pandemic.
We've gotten that $25 per student that was the coronavirus prevention fund and small amounts in FEMA and MEMA grants.7035 And while we acknowledge that districts and private schools needed the funding. We too need equitable funding and so we do request that you consider some funding to support the recruitment and retention staff and other needs that we have within our programs. The one thing I forgot to say because someone had asked earlier about HVAC needs. Um We do HVAC needs very significant ones. We are working with DESE. Hopefully7059 we're going to be able to identify some funds that will support some of those HVAC needs because obviously with serving medically fragile students we need to have adequate um HVAC. So um I do want to acknowledge that they're working with us on that.
Um let's see the other issue. So we have increased referrals, lack of staffing, but even if we have the staffing our space and facilities are really at maximum um and we don't receive any um any funding, any public funding other than through our school districts to access facility funds. And so we don't have MSBA funds, we don't have charter school funds, we don't have the OSD reconstruction process um to address our facilities and we end up leasing private space and those rates as you can imagine have skyrocketed as well. So this was7113 a challenge before but with the increase of student needs we're limited to respond. And I think7117 that's what's most important we aren't able to continue to respond to our districts in the way that we would typically want to be able to do. And so with funding we could provide additional therapeutic spaces and provide for increased numbers.
So we request funds to allow for the expansion and enhancement of school facilities for collaboratives to meet the growing needs of students in the districts we serve. And again we recommend a commission to explore, be begun7141 to explore the health and sustainability of special Ed in Massachusetts um and uh fiscal and funding capacity needs and inter agency supports. So in conclusion, Massachusetts is at a critical juncture in meeting the needs of students with disabilities. We're proud of our strong tradition in leadership that we've provided and we hope to find ways to continue this in the years to come. We thank the chairs and the committee for listening to our concerns and we're happy to discuss any questions you may have. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you Elizabeth,
ELIZABETH BECKER - MAAPS - Thank you Chairwoman Peisch Chairman Lewis and members of the committee, I'm Elizabeth, Dello Russo Becker and I'm the executive director of MAAPS. MAAPS is 80 private providers that provide specialized schooling for the public district's school children. We represent about 7000 public school children and 2000 of which are residential special education, which I'll focus a little bit on because I want a second everything that my partners Carla and Joanne have said. They said it so well, I won't duplicate it. We have shared um issues as you see what we like to call the three legs of the special education school before you. And um7211 so I won't repeat, but I will focus a little bit on something that's different, which is the residential special education schools.
Um so I would say that it's important to note and I'm sure you do know this, but it's important to note that residential special education schools were the only schools in the commonwealth that were never shut. That was, they were not part of the governor's order that shut schools and so they remained open and operational the entire time. And I want to thank our staff at those7241 schools who did a tremendous job in a very difficult circumstance. Um, quarantining with COVID sick students in houses together. Um, really going above and beyond in a very challenging time period. And I want to thank you because, but for the work that you did and the funding you provided us for the recruitment and retention of staff, I don't think that that work could have gone on. And it was so critically important to the students that we serve who are the most fragile, the most complex of all special education students.7273 Um, so thank you for your work.
Just as Joanne and Carla expressed more students are coming into special education that includes out of district. The student complexity, the need level is rising. So we already have upward trends as Carla has talked about in some for example autism and now you layer on to an already complex student emotional dis-regulation. So now they're coming in with layers more and of course what that means is more services, right. And you need the people, the personnel, the trained personnel to do those services for these very complex students. And then you couple that with a labor shortage like you see in almost every industry, excuse me. Um, but in this industry it is unique. You know, there's no closing of the restaurant, school goes on, K through 12 goes on. And so we must find these people, we must find7329 the qualified staff to work with the students who are experiencing high need.
And I think it is worth mentioning that inflation is the highest since 1986. That impacts all of our providers, but it also impacts our lowest paid workers, right. So we're talking about the paraprofessionals, the 1 to 1 aides um inflation impacts lower paid workers more as you know. Um So I can speak briefly to each of those elements. Those are the really, I think the four major pillars. Um I do want to mention residential special education remains at very high wait lists very high wait lists and and7366 residential is for your really the most extreme need. So um that is concerning, we need to grow capacity in residential special education 24 hours a day, schooling care and it is a longer school year. These schools are open almost all year long. Um so that's a lot more staffing that's required. Um and so one school has over 100 students on a waitlist. They won't even7393 begin to admit students for six months.
We are prioritizing students who are boarding in hospitals. Um Those are students in very complex crises, I think that is the right approach. Um But we would love to get the number of students their boarding in hospitals down. That's about growing capacity and I should say not every student boarding in a hospital would come to a residential special Ed school but some would. Um So huge, huge problem on the residential wait list side, some day schools, some approved Day schools do have capacity. That's a good thing. Um and and I've talked already about the level of complexity. I want to give you a message of hope. So we know this is the worst labor shortage in at least an approved special education in 50 years. Um Lots of data that we'll submit in our written report about just how bad that labor crisis is and it's not sustainable.
Um but you all did something and it really, I really think it is important to note this. You provided workforce recruitment and retention funds. You saw a crisis at the7463 height of the pandemic, you saw what was happening at these schools, you invested funding only for recruitment and retention of those working with high needs complex special education students. And I want to give you some of the results of that funding because we're just beginning to see that. First of all, the funding that you provided in FY 22 99.66% was spent. You created that funding so that it was use it or lose it by7489 July 1st7491 um7491 and7491 like we said, it went to staffing right. Um and because of that funding within just three months of receiving that money we had grown our staffing by 2147502 additional staff. That was a great, that's a great stride in just three months.
Um retention remained in the 90th percentile. So we retained, I mean, I think when you have a crisis like this, the first thing you do is you shore up who you have. You have to keep them. Um and those were the people doing the overtime covering the empty shifts. That's the burnout. Um but we retained them and that's because we invested a large part of that funding you provided in raising salaries7531 and providing for those people7533 paying the overtime for the work they did. And then this is the best part in just three months of you providing us funding we grew our enrollment by 177 additional students net new. That's the right thing. So that's a solution that worked. We need to maintain the solution, of course, this solution goes away July 1st.
You've heard already about the Commonwealth's proposal in order to not fall off a fiscal and employment cliff. We fully support that. We must raise that tuition and we also fully support the commonwealth's assistance to school districts in funding funding that increase that the commonwealth has proposed. Um So again, I'm trying to be brief and there's much more in the written, but in conclusion I think we have a complex situation. We have high student needs, we have high demand, we have low staffing, and we have very complicated7591 economic times. So we need a long term solution a pipeline to be built. You've heard that from my peers. I think we also need to continue with the interventions that have shown that they work, which is invest in these people, invest in those doing the hard work. Very complicated children, lots of needs it's a hard job. I think we can acknowledge this is a hard job.
We're asking a lot of people so we need to invest in them. We've seen what that investment does. We need to continue those investments and grow them across the three stools you see before you. The three legs of the stool. And to support our districts. Um, these are expensive endeavors and to support our districts in providing this. You do a great thing every year with circuit Breaker. That is a tremendous gift that you give. It is local aid. Um, and we fully support uh continuing and growing your initiatives in circuit breaker.7645 There will be more in our written testimony but I hope I have given you a small glimpse of the challenges that approved special7652 education schools have faced and also the gratitude for the work that you have done to support. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Uh, thank you. Um, are there any questions for any members of the panel. Um, seeing none. I thank you very much for your testimony. I would encourage you all to submit your testimony to the committee and we will distribute it to the members.
PEISCH - And I would particularly like Joanne when you were referencing some facilities needs my understanding had been that at least, and this is probably dated that many of the collaboratives programs7685 are housed within districts and therefore the districts um who are eligible for MSBA if7692 there are issues relative to that, I don't want to get into it now. Um I would like to hear about the committee would like to7698 hear about it. So thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Thank you. And I will now7702 turn it over to Senator Lewis to introduce our next panel.
Hey,
the next we're gonna hear from several charter school leaders believe Shirley Britos Britos, the executive director of the Benjamin Banneker Charter School and I apologize if I didn't pronounce your name correctly and Nicky Barnes, Executive director from kipp massachusetts. Um the floor is yours, please go ahead and welcome
at that time of year. I need glasses now.
SHERLEY BRETOUS - BANNEKER - So good afternoon, Co-chair Peisch, Co-chair Lewis and members of the Joint for, good afternoon Co-chair Peisch co-chair Lewis and members of the Joint Committee on Education for the commonwealth. It's an honor to be here before you today. My name is Sherley Bretous and I'm the executive director of the Benjamin Banneker Charter Public School, which generally serves 350 students pre7768 K through grade six. We're currently in our 27th year of operation and have long been a high performing school where we consistently demonstrate that black and brown students from low income backgrounds can achieve at the highest levels. The pandemic had a tremendous academic and social emotional impact on students nationwide, particularly among vulnerable populations. For example, 97% of Banneker students identify as BIPOC over 80 identify as black, 72 come from low income homes.
7804 Banneker7804 students7804 and families are part of the community's most significantly impacted7807 by the pandemic and our students were not immune. However, our school's strategic, intentional and multifaceted approach minimized the pandemic's varied impacts and supported rapid growth. Let me be clear, Banneker's ultimate goal is to grow lifelong learners. We are deeply committed to creating an environment in which learning is fun and joyful. An environment in which children come to see themselves as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, artists and thinkers. They do what real writers do. They do what real scientists do. High achievement on the MCAS is not our ultimate goal but the outcomes of the test are one of the ways we hold ourselves accountable and assess our progress.
On the spring of 2022 MCAS, Banneker students performed among the best and state comparable with some of the wealthiest communities in the commonwealth. In mathematics students demonstrated tremendous growth, increasing 31% points over 2021 scores and exceeding 2019 pre pandemic performance. In ELA students showed substantial achievement despite the prevalent declines in reading and writing scores statewide in the early grades. In fact, Banneker students are achieving at rates twice the statewide average for all students and three times the statewide average for black students. Our community's success is built on relationships. I'll repeat that our community's success is built on relationships. We strive to ensure that every Banneker student feels known and seen. That every student can name at least one person outside their classroom teacher, whom they trust deeply. Without these foundations of the strong relationship, nothing else is possible.
Our parents know we're invested in their children. So when mothers and fathers walk through our school buildings, they see welcoming faces who look like them. Not just in the cafeteria but7929 in the classrooms and among the school's small leadership team. These close relationships rooted in a shared commitment to educating children to achieve excellence has allowed our school to close the achievement gap and to perform at levels of excellence that too many silently believe are unattainable for children of color. As the doors closed in March 2020, we knew we had to find ways to keep our connections open. As the fear grew we knew we had to make sure that our students could interact daily with their teachers and peers to stabilize their lives.7962 We knew that as our teachers struggled to care for their own families, we had to find ways to make sure that the bonds of our community were stronger than ever before.
Finally, we knew that if we kept focused on our mission to serve our students, we would thrive. For Banneker like everyone else. March 2020 was a surprise. However, because we had technology infrastructure, teacher support, systems, student relationships and familial trust7989 we quickly mobilized these resources to provide our students with a high quality academic experience even during these unprecedented interruptions to their learning. As a 1 to 1 school, we could reallocate resources so that every student could access a device, the Internet, and the Google platform. We adjusted the curriculum to focus on essential skills for success in the next grade. Finally, we addressed the students' social emotional needs8015 by ensuring they had regular non academic specials like Art PE and Music weekly. Banneker students had virtual read aloud assemblies and field trips.
Additionally, providing teachers with the supports they needed enabled them to provide the support the students need. We're constantly focused on our teachers professional development to ensure that they have the skills and resources to reach each and every one of the diverse8039 learners in their classrooms. Banneker's professional development occurs in multiple8043 forms. We have schoolwide professional development where our teachers study specific element for three years. Additionally, all teachers receive coaching from instructional experts. We have mathematics, science and literacy coaches on staff full time. They are our in the moment problem solvers. Every classroom Banneker has two teachers a lead teacher and an associate teacher who are in the classroom full8066 time.
Associate teachers are provided with deep support to grow into lead teachers. They participate in the same professional development as a lead teacher and benefit from intensive coaching and mentoring from their lead partner teacher. This creates a sustainable model for our staff who approach instruction as a true team effort. In addition, our development program for aspiring teachers helps us to find diverse8089 candidates to groom and train them over time, ensuring we have a pipeline of talent available who already know the school, the community, the mission, and the dedication required to succeed at the Banneker. When you invest in teachers needs to create an environment where they want to stay. At Banneker, we experience minimal teacher turnover and that even remained true during the pandemic when across the nation, teachers were leaving the profession in droves.
There is no question we have seen the profound impact of the pandemic on our children academically emotionally socially and even physically with our youngest children struggling more than ever with simple tasks like putting their coats on and running on the playground. But what we know is that deep relationships, high quality instruction, and a commitment to supporting one another will enable us to ensure that every child achieves excellence. Right now, we're focused on rebuilding resilience. We have to rebuild attention span and social engagement norms and skills. As we continue this work we're incrementally increasing the expectations in the classroom while ensuring our children are engaged and finding the joy in learning. As an educator and school leader this was the most challenging time of my career and I speak of it today as if it's passed like some New England storm in February. It hasn't.
The disruption and the trauma from this period will be with us, with students, educators and society at large for years to come. What we ask from you and our leaders across the state is simple. First and foremost, we ask our leaders to lead and not just manage.8186 We ask you to lead with conviction, lead with the belief in our students, our families, and our teachers. And8194 most8194 importantly lead with the belief that a high quality education is a civil right that every student in the commonwealth deserves. As schools seek to rebuild, we need clear communication and consistent transparency from the Department of Education, lawmakers and other decision makers. Money is not the only answer to address8215 the academic impact of the pandemic. We welcome the annual MCAS as a critical indicator of our progress and a metric that allows us to gauge whether our students will be prepared to face the rigors of higher education.
Mutual trust and respect are critical. Legislative leaders must recognize that we are professionals in our classrooms and that educators with lived multicultural experiences have much to offer in discussing what works best for students of color. Too often we are talked to or reviewed by those who do not fully understand the culture of our communities or how to create the cultural achievements while also bringing enough joy to create lifelong learners. Listening to the needs of those of us on the ground, being responsive to us in an intentional way truly makes the world of difference which is why I'm so grateful that you have created this opportunity for me to share the Banneker experience with you today. Thank you.
RHONDA BARNES - KIPP MASSACHUSETTS - Good afternoon. My name is Rhonda Nikki Barnes and I am the proud executive director of KIPP Massachusetts. KIPP Massachusetts is a public charter school focused on creating joyful, academically rigorous experiences for children. We serve 2200 children across to Charters, including 600 students, about 600 in Boston in grades K through eight And about 1600 students in Lynn in grades K through 12. I am also proud to share that this is my 31st year as an educator and I still love what I am8308 doing even after leading schools through a worldwide pandemic. In fact, I've drawn incredible hope and inspiration from my community. I've learned valuable lessons about how to strengthen our work and service to children and families. And it's my honor to share8325 some of those learnings with you today in hopes that8328 we can help strengthen the ways in which we support continued recovery across the commonwealth.
First, I'd like to share what we experienced and8337 learned about the critical role of deep engagement with children's first teachers, their families. Throughout the pandemic families and schools8346 oftentimes found themselves at odds with one another about8349 masks. about returning to in person learning and more. At KIPP Mass we actually leveraged conflict and created ways to come together around important decisions that we call that co authorship. It is our family engagement model that means we literally walk hand in hand sharing the power of key decisions that we make with our families. Along with engaging in productive conflict with families we provide a variety of ways for families to access power, to access me, and to access information in our schools. Doing this allows us to build relationships rooted in mutual trust.
As a result of this work at the end of last year, 87% of our families agreed that they have a voice in their child's education. As we look ahead I urge our state leadership to remember the deep importance of co authorship with families. When beginning to build policies and programs that impact children invite families to the table even as the idea is being created. Create spaces for families to share their experiences as that idea grows. Listen deeply and embrace difficult conversations and be prepared for that idea to change and ensure the families hear their own voices when the idea becomes a decision. Secondly, we have always known that both academic growth and social emotional wellbeing are critical for student success. Through the pandemic we learned just how interconnected these two are and how interconnected our supports must be in order to ensure students are able to thrive.
I believe8446 that academic excellence doesn't begin and end with academics. It actually begins with honoring children's humanity with the creation of safe affirming learning8457 environments. And that's why at KIPP we have placed a high priority on social emotional and mental health. One thing I need to clarify immediately, however, centering children's mental health is not about teachers becoming therapists. Throughout the pandemic we chose to grow our mental health team and today we have 17 mental health counselors across our two charters. These counselors develop our regular social emotional programming in addition to providing both rapid response and ongoing clinical support for any student who needs it. Our mental health counselors are not auxiliary support staff. They are members of our leadership teams and grade level teams. They are mission critical.
In addition, we have reimagined our instruction, integrating academic learning and social emotional learning in the classroom simultaneously through8511 play based learning in kindergarten through second grade and project based learning through third and 12th grade. Play based learning, research based practice it allows students to apply their learning in fun and meaningful ways whether they are practicing geometry by building 2D and 3D shapes from play dough and toothpicks. Using their reading and writing skills to create a menu for their pretend restaurant or becoming engineers by building the tallest block tower. While engaging in these various activities students are also learning and practicing social skills such as decision making, managing disagreements and communicating a vision to peers things that are a must have8552 for my role.
Middle and high school students practice similar skills through project based learning, which utilizes student led projects8559 to learn core content, not as an add on at the end of the unit, but as the primary method of learning. With high school seniors across the country admitting they've lost engagement in school, a staggering 77% to be exact, project based learning is an approach that allows us to support reengagement8577 of students through the learning process. We believe centering our students' humanity has created an environment in which students feel seen, loved and valued an environment in which they can and want to learn. As a result, I'm proud to say 93% of our students across Boston and Lynn returned to our classrooms this year and we have maintained strong enrollment and we continue to have a healthy waiting list.
As we move ahead it's important that our state leaders understand the intertwined nature of academic growth and social emotional growth. In order to support our students we must understand their strengths in both realms and address opportunities for growth in both realms in an interconnected way. I applaud the state's leadership in recently implementing universal early literacy assessments. I similarly urge our leaders to consider the implementation of a universal mental health screening that would provide us the data needed to enable us8634 to better allocate funding, training and programmatic solutions to support continued growth of the whole child. And finally through the pandemic, we saw more than ever before that we cannot care for children without caring for their teachers.
Today we are seeing more teachers than ever before, advocate for work life balance for their mental health and for additional support. At KIPP Mass we have instituted things like flexible paid time off, very well managed, on site childcare for staff members, children it's full targeted growth opportunities for emerging leaders and optional 1 to 18671 staff mentoring as well as affinity spaces that are not associated with evaluation. We are doing this to ensure our staff are supported both personally and professionally and because we listened to them. Thanks to these efforts, 84% of our staff returned this year and I intend to improve that number next. Looking ahead, we need to acknowledge that the teaching profession is changing and needs changing.
As we consider building programs and funding to support a8701 stronger Education workforce I invite you to consider investing time in facilitated8706 dialogue with teachers. We can read statements, we can speak at hearings, and we can8712 certainly vote. But teachers want and need to be heard and to have their experiences over the last, over the last few years acknowledged by our leaders and their ideas about the future of their profession considered. They will be the ones who can help us reimagine the future of teaching. It will take us years to not get back to pre pandemic levels of achievement because that would mean we've learned nothing from this experience and I submit that we have. It will take us years to come together to reimagine how we choose to tell a true story, a whole story, a multidimensional story8749 of growth and achievement. and I am full of hope that we can and yes, it will require hard work, but if we co author with our families, if we center our students humanity and if we care for and listen to our teachers, we will not only heal Massachusetts will thrive. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you very much for your powerful testimony today. Any questions Yes, McGonagle and
REP MCGONAGLE - Congratulations on all your academic achievements, extremely difficult times, and I'm just curious Sherley if you could tell me what is the average population of the students in your classrooms?
BRETOUS - The number of students?
MCGONAGLE - Yeah.
BRETOUS - 25.
MCGONAGLE - Thank you.
PEISCH - I was interested in your talking about how you're having co teachers in every classroom so that actually reduces the the ratio substantially. Um, and you are funded through the per pupil funding mechanism that the state provides?
BRETOUS - Yes.
PEISCH - Um, and what is your average, I'm not quite sure that this is the right question, but what's the range of salaries of your teachers?
BRETOUS - So I just want to clarify, we don't have two co teachers, we have a classroom teacher and an associate teacher. And an associate teacher is someone who's usually fresh from university, has very little experience and um, but has a8854 bachelor's typically. And their starting range is about $32,000 and are classroom teacher's starting range is about 45. So we do pay significantly less than Boston and Cambridge. And just for fun facts we're a longer school day and8869 a longer school year and my teachers average about 15 years. And I've been at the Banneker for 27 years. Yes,8876 I know. I cannot look like I've been at the Banneker8880 for, but you know what I'm saying.
So yes, the teachers have typically been there for about 15 years, so we've been together for a long time. And um, I do think that professional development plays a significant role with retention for us. Our families stay for a long time with us. So we keep the same kids from K through six. We know the siblings, we know the whole thing. I do think that the level of support our community, I know schools, safe family, but at Banneker we are truly a family. And I invite any of you to come. You don't even need to tell me to show up and because we don't put on a show, we are who we are and it's a wonderful place to go. And if I could give anybody a gift it would be to love where you work, I really do. And so I think that that plays and I really work hard that my team and the people I work and serve love where they work. And I think that plays a significant role.
PEISCH - And I have a similar question for the KIPP Schools. What are the, you mentioned a very high retention rate and I have spoken to you in the past actually about your success in diversifying the teacher population and maintaining that. What are the, the same question about salaries?
BARNES - The starting salary for a teacher at KIPP is $55,000 a year. Um with the Student Opportunity Act, I said we're going to pay teachers more. So we did increase teacher's salary. The average teacher's salary increased over the last year about 14%. Um we actually chose to shrink our day because we got that feedback from teachers, from families, and we also decided to um better use our time more efficiently. I'll also name those 67% of our teachers are BIPOC black indigenous people of color. 87% of our leaders8990 are black indigenous people of color. I retain 100% of my principals, 100% of my leadership team. I think what you're hearing from us is we are a mission driven organizations and we tell people we're like mission driven. So this is like really deep, hard work and we tell them that upfront. Um, but we do need all of the supports9013 to keep people and because our folks still need the support around mental health, so we just find a way to be really, really creative, yeah.
thank SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well,
VARGAS - I just want to say thank you for the presentation of the, your statement. Um, if you could elaborate a little bit on the mental health piece. I know you mentioned about the screening. Could you elaborate a little9045 bit on that? And I just want to say thank you, you both did a great job. Thank9048 you.
BARNES - Thank you. Yes, there is a large body of scientific knowledge around the mental health critical guideposts along the way that students should be able to develop. Think about it when you have a small child, you know, two years old is not when they're going to be able to sell suits so we know that. Right now as um public schools, we use that body of knowledge when a child is not not demonstrating those uh milestones and it's called, we assess a child, we assess that they have a mental health disability and we create an individualized education plan that lays along the way these are the mental health skills we want them to develop. I propose that we don't use it as a deficit9097 model since we have an entire body of knowledge about what a kindergartner should be able to do in terms of choosing self soothing.
We actually assess that upfront so we can determine what their strengths are and we can know who's coming into kindergarten, uh displaying um signs of distress, displaying signs of um maybe they are depressed. Or who's coming into kindergarten and we have an assessment where we have a child and we notice, wow, you can self soothe you can choose, you can name where you don't know something and you can ask for help. We've been able to do that through play based learning because our teachers give them a task. And one of the first things they do for example is they have to choose which center they're going to. And we literally say, okay, there are four people at that center. You're the fifth how do you deal with that? Brush it off. We teach them, brush it off, okay, choose a different choice. In that context you're teaching a child to self soothe, you're teaching a child to make decisions and9163 then they go to that same center and maybe they are learning to write their letters and the teacher is observing that so that they can see them write their letters and assess that we can also see them doing it on the carpet or at the table. So what I propose is9178 that we assess students, we do universal assessment of students the minute they walk into the door so we know what we're dealing with in an asset based SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
way.
Thank you.
Same to9194 you, thanksgiving. Um Next we will be hearing from a panel of another panel of teachers. Um Beth Cantos from president of the A. F. T. In massachusetts max page, president of the M. T. A. In massachusetts and eric Bird, Vice president of the boston Teachers Union.
Good morning. Really nice to see you all in. It certainly is. Thank you.
Thanks. I did email. Um Yes
and I know for the benefit of the committee members um eric Bergh is here as the president of the B. T. U. Was unavailable today but we, we thank you for coming in her place. Great, nice to see you.
BETH KONTOS - AFT - So um I'm Beth Kontos I'm president of the American Federation of Teachers from Massachusetts. We have about 24,000 members. I am a social studies teacher from Salem High School on leave while I serve as president. And um I really do appreciate you inviting us here. I think this is very important and it's been great to hear everybody's testimony. So um the pandemic we know huge impact on our students as well as our educators. Um you've heard a lot of testimony today. I've already gone through and crossed out all kinds of things because Ditto. Ditto. Ditto, They've said it and we agree. Um I do want to say that I don't like the term learning loss. I think our students have learned so many things during the pandemic, and so much of it has been about compassion and learning to work with each other in a totally different way and different9303 skills.
And many of them, as we know, have experienced so much trauma because of, even myself, while my family is healthy for two years I worried that they weren't healthy and I have an elderly mother and, you know, all the precautions you take. And our kids carried that burden with them as well as our educators. So it's not learning loss, but it is a different kind of learning and something9328 that isn't measurable in our usual way, right? Um, So that brings me to the second point that MCAS is9338 one9338 data point and certainly cannot measure all the intricacies of a personality of our child, right. So going beyond academics, um, it is indeed the case that the pandemic has been very harmful on emotional health of our students, the social emotional development, um and the readiness to learn, right.
So all of this took a huge toll on our students, but especially the ones who had the greatest needs children who need special education supports, children who may live in poverty, um children who have um unstable home environments and it was difficult to9383 be in the home all the time. So, um the net effect of the pandemic is that many of our students are now attending school without that foundation that they would have come with before. So um it's also, as I said, it's happened, it's the same with the adults that are in the building. But together the students and the educators are experiencing that long term ventilation problems. We've had sick buildings forever, we still have them. Um we are working on that and the money that has come from ESSER Funds to help us with our ventilation needs is being put to good use, but we're far from done with that.
Um we still have experience of safety issues in our schools, school violence, we're seeing it erupt. Um we use the term dis-regulation quite often um and I think it does describe what many of our children are feeling and experiencing. Um there is reform fatigue with a change in curriculum or initiatives happening quite often. That has been going on um and honestly we're spending a lot of money on that and time uh the adult time and it's frustrating to both adults and children. You know, we often lack basic supplies and materials and that again, is not fair to the educator or the student um and relatively low pay in a runaway inflation time. However, I'm very optimistic because we were invited to be here today and I know you're listening and you and your staff will look at our testimony very carefully.
Um and I guess part of this is resources really do matter when we're educating our students. Um the more districts, um the districts that have more resources can recover from all kinds of things more quickly. A district that has a few children that need intensive care of any kind are easier to help than the opposite district that everybody has many needs and only a few kids don't. We see that. Um Resources do matter in those cases because class size is important and we need to minimize that. We need to have a ready staff of well trained paraprofessionals. We need to support them if they do want to become educators. Um and a long term mentoring um for our educators, I know when9544 I became a teacher, I was paired up with a teacher who, I'll always remember Bob Bua if he's watching. Um and he became a long term friend and mentor. And um we we were paid a stipend to participate even though mentoring was required. But it made it much more meaningful um that our time was valued and we9567 need to make sure that we have that going on and it lasted for more than a year and I think that's truly important.
And many of our buildings in Massachusetts that were built around the Civil War, okay, the Civil War and I've seen on the cornerstone the date. So I know they're in Boston and I know they're in Lynn and I know there in many other areas. So what we need to ask you to help us do um is stay the course on the Student Opportunity Act. That was an amazing, I'll tell you when the Student Opportunity Act passed I said to myself, we're all set, we're done nothing can get in our way now except the pandemic. And it did get in our way. Um but we want to um encourage our districts to use their ESSER funds properly. Um you can use it as a stopgap until the full SOA kicks in um because the investment now will pay off later for our kids. And we ask you to supplement not supplant with our Student Opportunity Act going forward9638 when we start to have our funds from the fair share amendment.
So, um there are many priorities we have but some ideas. pre-K in our public schools to help all students come in with unequal foundation, full, kindergarten where it doesn't exist um Before and after school programs. This will also help with our educator needs because way too many of our educators cannot pay $20,000 a year or $25,000 a year for childcare. Um We need to think of ways to be creative so that our educators can be in our classrooms. Um and I know Salem I think of Salem High School very much we have a daycare in the high school. So talk about convenient to bring your child to that. And they paid for it but we need to do this in a way that um we help our people come to work and safely be in work all the time. Um certainly investments in public higher education so that um we're not carrying that debt burden.
And loan forgiveness. I just saw that the governor is going to do a big loan forgiveness for people in healthcare. Great but they also qualify for public service Loan forgiveness like educators do but we have to wait a real you know at least 10 years for that. Um But that might slow down somebody entering. Uh We do need a master's degree, Rep Vargas mentioned that. I like that we have to have a master's degree. Perhaps we don't need it in a shorter period of time as9735 is required. Perhaps we can help with tuition funding to help people get that. Um I know in Salem and I'll mention Salem a lot because we worked real hard to get these benefits into our collective bargaining agreement. We have money in our agreement to help people get their master's degree. Not all districts do that. Um That's really important.
Um So educational policies I would love you to help us get teachers, paraprofessionals on the DESE Board. Right now they are prohibited by law. That is something as lawmakers we can ask you to help us make that change. I would like to see the voice of the people in the classrooms be at that table. Um Let's see. Um We need supports rather than punishment, putting a school district in receivership without all the supports that we need to improve are 11 years wasted. We need to think about an end to receivership and um doing that quickly. I think9802 we're going to see some great gains in our districts where our SOA is high and we're able to attract and maintain educators that we need in those classrooms. And then all the other supports we heard many times mentioned today the social emotional needs we need counsellors. We need of all kind and we need lots of them. We need to be able to take a break outs for our kids so that they have some small group work or um small group conversations with counselors. Um There's a lot we can do.
Um I think alternatives to um MTEL. I'm not big on tests and MTEL is9841 one of the tests I really don't put much value on. Um I'd like to figure out how to streamline the licensure system. I'd like a really good para to teacher or even pull it back a student to para to teacher pipeline where we are encouraging our own students to come back to the district they graduated from. Again in Salem we're giving people a bump in their pay if they graduated from Salem High School. Um we're giving them a bump in their pay if they're bilingual. Um, so it is a way to attract our own and I'll give wonderful credit to Representative Tucker and also our future Representative Manny Cruz to help because he's on the school committee and worked with the Teachers Union to do this. And it really, we're seeing a change in who's coming to be our teacher uh, in our teachers in Salem. So, um, I'm going to give you something left to say. I know, I'm sorry, but um, you know, I just want to emphasize the respect for education as a profession. We need to figure9916 out how to pull that back, right and not vilify people who are dedicating their lives to this job. And I have to say that we need to be respectful of all of your jobs. Public service in general I think9929 it's super important. And having a government that works is what we really need. So I appreciate your time. Thank you and I will pass it on to you Max.
MAX PAGE - MTA - Thanks Beth. And good afternoon everyone, my name is Max Page I'm the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which represents 115,000 educators in public schools across the state and our public higher education institutions.9955 I just also want to note, I'm joined by my vice president, Deb McCarthy over there with great teacher from Hull. Um, so first I want to start with, I'm really proud to be her two weeks after we won an incredible victory on Question One. Um Without the people here, the unions here and the members9973 of these unions, we would not have one what no one else has been able to do 107 years, which is bringing a measure of tax fairness into our tax system, generate up to two billion or more dollars every year dedicated to public education pre K through higher Ed and roads, bridges and transportation.
And I want to say the third thing that that accomplished and I actually think this may be the most important thing over the long term, over the generations that we have9999 this in our constitution, hopefully many10001 100 years and beyond which is that10004 it allows us to broaden our political imaginations of what's possible in the state. It allows us to broaden what10009 we think we can do in our public schools and colleges. That's one of the lasting goals of10014 having Question One. And we stuck with this for many, many years. We10017 thank the Legislature for10018 having brought it forward, voted on it four times and brought10021 it the ballot. And10022 we're10022 so proud that10023 our members took their hard earned dollars. We in10026 MTA invested more in this than we have ever invested both in money10029 in our time of our staff and10031 our members because we know it's so10033 foundational to10034 have10034 a fair tax system10035 and the funds10036 to do what we want. So I just wanted to lay that out.
And it's also the culmination of a whole series of efforts that we've been involved10044 with, including fighting for a $15 minimum wage paid family medical leave, sick leave. Anti poverty measures are Ed reform measures.10053 Okay. We know that a core part of10057 whether a student is able to go to school, succeed has10060 to do with all the pressures outside poverty, violence, everything else. And so when we have thought as a union where most10068 of our members make over $15, although we'll get to that10071 some members do not make10072 much more over there. It's because we know our families will benefit from10076 that. So those were efforts that were designed to, that10080 we saw as improved as seeking greater education justice, even as we also saw10085 that link to racial and economic justice.
And also this Question One victory is, or the bookend um, or the third part of having stopped the privatization through the landslide victory over charter schools in 2016 and then with your help, the passage of the Student Opportunity Act unanimously in10105 2019. And now we have, we know we can guarantee the10108 Student10109 Opportunity Act funding and more. So that's the great10112 news. I will divert for a moment to the kind of the10115 difficulties of the past10116 years. These are10117 some10117 of the most difficult years for all of us and educators and10120 students have suffered enormously and continue10122 to suffer the lasting effects of that. And we've heard a lot so I won't10126 go to go into detail10127 about the social, emotional behavioral, the mental health issues. These are profound and they don't10132 go away that easily. Um and so I just really want10135 to underscore that even though I'll speak only briefly about it.
But I want to10139 focus on the educator stress and burnout and the loss of educators is real. Um10144 the shortage is real. You know, I've been listening to Secretary Peyser and Commissioner Riley who I don't always agree with and saying like yes,10151 we agree. And then we10152 hear from the superintendents of10153 the school committees. This is a10154 huge issue of10155 the educator shortage. Um, I just looked up on, you know, school spring and there's 4300 teacher vacancies, 3400 special education teacher vacancies 2200 para vacancies right now right now on the, on the10169 web site. So this is a huge crisis that we have to address. So just to return10174 to the good news10175 or that my optimism, which10177 is um, and10178 but my caution, which is that we10180 would make a mistake if we10182 see this as something about10183 fixing a10184 short term problem quick recovery. When I hear the phrases like high dosage tutoring uh there's a notion of like a short term illness10192 let's get back to normal everything's10193 fine acceleration back10195 to where we were.
I want us to use the moment to think10198 about the transformations that we need for public education, pre10202 K through higher Ed. Let's think about having a professional nurse and librarian in every school. We've lost more librarians percentage wise10210 than any, all but10212 one other state in10213 the nation. How could that10214 be in Massachusetts? We should10216 have counselors and good ratios of counselors in every school. We should have green and10221 healthy schools. With10222 the10222 Student10223 Opportunity Act you took a big step forward in that, but10225 you10225 know, we have hundreds of critical school building10228 issues in the commonwealth. We need living wages for all10233 educators. You heard10234 that now from everyone who has spoken before. Our ESPs, our paraprofessionals, how can it be that we are not making even a living wage10241 when you hear story after story how10243 they provide the10244 most and some of the most10245 important and most most personal and necessary support and education to our neediest kids? So that has got to be got to be10255 fixed or10256 else we will, our schools will10258 continue to suffer.
We've heard a lot about that we need to10261 diversify our educational workforce. The gulf between the teaching workforce, still largely wide and the10267 and the students who are growing BIPOC number of students10270 is huge. And Piesch you have spoken about how is it that after all these years10274 we've been talking about it for so long and10276 we have not made measurable advances on that? Part of the answer is as you've heard today about transforming the MTEL. We thought we had a10283 good step forward last year and somehow it didn't happen. Um, on changing the MTEL to make it possible that there were pipelines for educators to go up and to become classroom teachers. Fundamentally, we also10295 need high10296 quality debt free public10298 higher education. This is an education10300 committee issue. I know there's a high Ed committee.10302 I'll be talking to them10303 as well, but to10304 have our schools are public schools. K 12 pre K10307 12 schools succeed you need to have access.
And you get10311 diversity because Students of color come into10315 those schools and take on higher10317 debt, they take on more and they come out with higher debt. And10322 so why would they10323 go into a profession that we know has 20% low10326 pay penalty. Same education,10328 you can get10329 20% more, doing a whole bunch of other10331 jobs. Why would you do that? How could10333 you do that for the financial,10335 you know, security of your family. So debt free public10339 higher education is10340 very important. I will invite you to a December 1st10342 hearing, I mean event10344 were happening having10345 here in the State house, you all get notice about that where10348 we'll10348 talk10348 about some of our higher Ed priorities. Finally the MCAS. You heard it from a number of people here. It is time long past time that we get rid of this high stakes testing regime that we10359 have.
There are10360 now years and10361 years of examples of studies the10363 MCIEA, the work of our member10365 Jack Schneider at10366 UMass Lowell to suggest alternative ways, more authentic ways educator and community driven ways of assessing a school based on what we all want from our public schools. If10378 you ask a parent what they want from their public schools, there's10381 a whole list of things they want that their10383 student to come out with. And then there's the MCAS10386 which measures some narrow narrow10389 portion of that and yet it has become10391 the be all end all.10393 And I'm afraid that we10394 cannot rely upon this board of education to actually transform that. There are still too far10400 more admired in some 1990s10402 attitude about what high stakes, what's testing is for.
Diagnostic testing we do all the time it's important but the high10410 stakes nature that leads to receiverships, that leads to10413 punishment of school districts that narrows the10415 curriculum is long past due. Not to mention the days10419 and days and days10420 taken away from real instruction and learning to focus on test prep10424 and test taking.10425 So I'm going to urge10426 that this is the session that we finally transform that. And I will note, I think some of my colleagues from Harvard are here and not my colleagues, but Harvard colleagues10434 are here10435 when we find ourselves in more closer10438 alignment with what's coming out of the Harvard grad school of education on MCAS, then you know, the thinking has changed. In other words, there's also a10446 recognition at that font of Ed reform10448 that you10449 know what the MCAS'10450 time has come and gone and we need10452 something very, very different.10453 So these10454 are some of the ideas but all I mainly want to10457 ask and I think that Beth10458 was echoing this and I believe Eric is going to escalate as10460 well, let's10461 use10461 the moment for transformative,10462 positive change. And I want to say that we set the table by providing, I know funding isn't everything, but we set the10470 table by providing something that is lasting now, hopefully for generations for you to draw on and to invest in our10476 public schools and colleges. Thank you.10478
ERIC BERG - BTU - Thanks Max, thank you Beth.10485 Um Good afternoon, my name is Eric Berg, I'm the vice president of the Boston Teachers Union and before I10490 came into this role five years ago I taught 1st and 2nd grade for 25 years. I'm also the dad of two young10496 adults who attended and graduated from the Boston Public Schools. So thank you Rep10500 Peisch,10500 Senator10500 Lewis and committee10501 for this opportunity. We're in our fourth10504 academic year now10505 affected by the pandemic10506 and while10507 the challenges that have emerged from the large amounts of time lost in the classroom are monumental, many of the issues we're facing are not new.10514 Having talked with many educators this10517 school year, the10518 main challenges are staffing shortages,10520 emotional10521 dis-regulation of students, and increased demands on educators' time and expertise. And as Max and Beth both pointed out, I think the presentations you heard from the superintendents, from the school committee, from the special10534 education people from10535 the charter school folks really echo a lot of10537 that.10537 So I will try not to go into too much10539 repetitive detail.
Um, but I'd like to frame the solutions to these challenges in terms of two things, time and space. And10548 we10548 need to think about time in our schools and I don't necessarily mean just more of it, but rather reexamining how it is used. We've all10556 experienced trying to rush through a project in a hectic, stressful way under pressure and whether it's painting your porch10562 or making dinner10563 or writing legislation the results of that10566 rush are usually worse than the outcome if we had taken our time. And the same10570 is true in our schools. The social emotional needs of our students have10574 changed drastically since the pandemic.10576 Each student had a10578 different10578 experience during this time. Some lost family10581 members, some experienced illness themselves, all of them lost10585 time in the classroom with their peers. There is no doubt10588 that our students have suffered and need to recover and learn.
10592 But10592 we10592 need to remember that what10593 they need in order to learn, what they10595 were not able to learn10596 is varied.10597 One thing they need10599 is time, time to go deep rather10601 than wide, to be more concerned about learning to read, write and think than to pass the10607 latest high stakes test. Our teachers need more time to plan, to ensure that every minute they spend10614 with their students is as effective as10616 it can be. We10618 should think about opportunities to take things off students and teachers plates rather than adding more to teachers and students10624 plates and our teaching and learning10626 will be more effective in the long run. Now let's talk about10630 space and our kids desperately need updated facilities. I had the opportunity to walk through our newest school building in Boston the other day Boston10639 Arts Academy which opened in September and it's absolutely beautiful. It's astonishing. I'm so happy10644 and proud that those10645 600 students get a chance to to learn there.
It's one of only nine new schools in the city of Boston built10652 in the last 40 years10653 and that's out of 120 buildings. So if10656 we keep going at10657 that rate, we will have a replacement.10658 We will replace our stock in 530 years, seriously. I asked the principal and10666 the teacher who were showing me through the school how10668 the social turbulence they experienced last10670 year was going this10671 year and they had some real problems, violence bullying, general dis-regulation that made10677 it really difficult for students to learn. And they both agreed as they showed10681 me the spacious new suite dedicated to counselling and10684 wellness, that the new building10685 itself had contributed greatly to a much more successful year. Students and staff had space10691 to breathe.
They could see a counselor in a well appointed rooms with windows rather than a repurposed closet. They could walk10699 down a wide hallways between classes rather than a claustrophobic and narrow corridor. They could have lunch in a spacious and well lit cafeteria10708 and all these things actually changed their learning10710 experience. It helped them, it helped the staff, it helped the kids. So one thing that our schools need is space, space to learn in flexible and differentiated ways. Space for counselors, special education teachers,10723 tutors to work individually or in small groups with10726 students or for students to work in groups themselves. And COVID highlighted some of our facilities' issues, but the10733 problems that come with10734 dilapidated facilities long precede the pandemic.
So a real focus on new and renovated buildings, housing, community schools with10742 wrap around services for students and families10744 is10745 essential. And now as an aside, before10748 I move to the final question,10749 um I just want to suggest here that when this committee holds hearings next you reserve a panel for students voices. They are the ones who are most affected by our policies and they have a lot to say. So, staffing issues are10762 probably the most critical10763 issue facing our10764 schools in this moment. You've10765 heard it from everyone and10766 I don't10767 want to skip over it because when you talk to people,10769 that's what it is. Because it exacerbates everything else that's going on.10773 So the preexisting issues10775 of inadequate staffing and being asked10777 to do more with less are now exacerbated by these shortages. And educators are walking10782 out the door daily in Boston10784 and I think around the state defeated by the impossibility of the task and10790 that makes it harder for those who remain.
Educators, including paraprofessionals, Special education10795 teachers are10796 pulled to cover, which means kids aren't getting needed10798 services. Teachers have been asked to reinvent their work with limited training and support multiple times over the past three years10805 and they've done so in a context where they10808 have often felt demeaned for just wanting reasonable conditions in which to teach and learn. To feel so10814 devalued and unsupported in10816 a context where the10817 work is increasingly difficult is a recipe10819 for burnout and for leaving the profession. Because there's been no easing of conditions, people are exhausted and demoralized and10827 haven't been able to recover. The fundamental conditions of the work10831 need to change if we're going to address turnover and the10834 difficulty10834 in hiring new folks.
Once again, we have10837 to take things off people's plates instead of adding more10840 and a few specific solutions10842 come to mind. First, relieve teachers of non teaching burdens and10848 stop adding new initiatives year after year. Let our educators10852 do what they do best. Uh I also want to10858 just10858 mention, I think we need10860 to reform the, both10862 Beth and Max10863 have mentioned it, the10864 receivership law which has proven nothing but failure over the last10868 10 years and adds additional stress and pressure to our teachers. Second, teachers, paraprofessionals and10876 other support staff deserve10877 pay far above10878 what they're currently receiving.10879 We can't pretend that pay10881 alone will solve the issue because it won't,10883 but it will help especially in this era of high inflation and especially for paraprofessionals and support staff.
Number three, ensure that we have solid10892 community based10893 pipelines such as teacher residency programs or, which is a program to move parents into paraprofessional10899 roles that we have in Boston. To10903 move10903 community members into educator roles. This will provide10906 them with, and then the second thing is to provide them with10909 dedicated supports in their 1st and 2nd years. This will10912 also help bring more teachers or educators of color in our schools, which as10916 we know, is desperately needed and an important way of helping our students be successful.10921 So the good news is as you know, I10926 think you all know and has been mentioned multiple times we have a tremendous opportunity before us. We10933 have10933 a funding mechanism to provide more of10936 what our schools need through the Student Opportunity Act10938 and the revenue earned through Question One. Let's take10941 advantage of this moment in time to provide our students and our10944 schools with the supports they so desperately need and so deeply deserve.10948 And thanks again for this opportunity. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you. Are10952 there any questions um for any members of the panel? So I don't see any from any other members of the committee.
10960 PEISCH10960 -10960 I10960 just10960 have one and I don't know whether you wish to address this or not, but all of the issues that you10967 are raising, these10968 are many of them10969 as you've indicated predate the pandemic. Um and I share your10975 view Beth10976 that learning loss is really not quite the right term. But10980 regardless10980 of what we10981 call it, there's no question that our students, and we've heard10986 earlier from um others about particularly the very young 1st and 2nd graders and then the high school kids what the opportunity that they10996 lost given the pandemic has been,11001 has uh can11004 have enormous negative consequences. Um a number of um programs have been um, and I think we have an obligation to address that in the short term. I think we're talking about short term and long term. And I certainly don't think that we can, you11022 know that there's any, you know, magic bullet quick fix, you know. But to the extent that this is an issue that we must address,11032 I wonder what your thoughts11034 are on specific programs that you may be aware of their successful or have shown some success in the schools that you are familiar with.
KONTOS - And I will pass it to you Max. But um I think and I,11051 and11051 let's say the program11052 doesn't have a name, but I'm thinking we did a survey when11055 we were first invited to this and we surveyed11057 our members and um we asked for input. Um What we see11063 where we are seeing some success is when we can have small breakouts with adults and a few children at a time to11074 have some really deep conversations. Um also children know when we care about them and it takes time to demonstrate that we care about them. And11086 finding11086 them the resources they need not even educationally, but11090 making sure that there's food pantry access and clothing access as we approach11095 the cold weather. Um it just, you need enough staff and enough staff that's there long enough to know every child's name and11106 know what the11107 background of11108 their families' needs are. Um I agree11111 it's not a quick fix it's an investment. And um there are many11116 students that have11117 missed out on things like proms and you know during the11120 pandemic and we can't make that up.11123 Although I know that some families have tried to do some, some11127 parties after the fact um you know, when it was safe to11131 do so. Um11134 Students11134 missed11134 out a lot on their connections to their coaches and people that they couldn't see11140 um regularly. And I'm not sure how we recover from that11147 other than making sure that our students11150 have the opportunity going forward to have sports and to have11156 after school11157 or before school engagement um to make up for11162 some of that. I don't know Max11163 you want to add anything?
PAGE - Just very briefly. Um11166 so there were lots of losses11168 during the pandemic and11170 whether I agree that11172 phrase is problematic, but no doubt11174 there was academic loss, there was social loss, there was all kinds of losses. We totally agree with that. And the notion of these of more11182 tutoring resources and acceleration academies that's not a bad idea, but I think what we're saying is that there needs to be permanent investment, they can't be one off, like we'll quickly do that and give a quick shot and we'll be all done.11194 So the permanent investments in these kinds of, all that we've been talking about is crucial. But Eric has talked about time11200 releasing from the things that don't matter as much for students learning and allowing11204 educators to11205 focus on what does, which we know what does, that seems important.
And then just one specific thing, I mean we've, there was a11212 lot of focus on summer school, I think11214 during the pandemic, getting,11215 getting kids back on track. I mean may I dream like every single child in Massachusetts gets access to whatever high11223 quality summer camp program, not summer school but11226 just11226 a great summer camp that everyone gets to go to. That11229 would be great. Not just the middle class and wealthy kids, what a great investment that would be. And it would be great11234 investment in their lives in general,11236 but it would also help them continue to learn over the summer and prepare and set them up for a11242 greater learning in the fall.
KONTOS - That just brings me11244 to something that I didn't11245 mention and I really wanted to about our buildings. Um it is incredibly hot in our11252 buildings. I11253 taught11253 on the third floor um for many years in the summer for some reason that's11258 where summer school was And um it looked like11265 I just came out11266 of the shower. I was11267 so hot because the air conditioning didn't work reliably or we didn't have it11272 in that part of the building.11273 um We need to be thinking about11276 our buildings and um we need11279 air conditioning and heat everywhere that functions. And I don't want to make our climate system more11288 taxed, we need solar panels on our roof, we need to be insulating our buildings better, and having better windows. These are some of11296 the long term infrastructure11297 changes that we need because11299 our schools could11300 be a refuge to our communities in the summer.
Like we had our Heat dome at over 100° for many, many days. A lot of our students don't have air conditioning at home, so they don't have the relief. It also means they don't sleep well11316 at night and elderly people don't either. So if we had a, if we really invested well into our public schools11323 and then made11324 them a community space where people could come in for11327 relief, um, and have recreation and have11332 vocational classes11333 that are recreational um, you know, even for adults, we could really see some payback to our communities um, and some respite from extreme weather without making it worse by running our air conditioning. Because if we have11349 solar panels, it's a11350 little11350 better. Do you have anything to add?
BERG - Just one brief thing. I11354 think when I think of11355 our schools that have11356 done the best academically and I do think that the social loss,11360 particularly for11361 our youngest kids and11362 our adolescents and I actually don't want11364 to discount the influence of social media and the time that our adolescents and even younger11371 kids spent on nothing but technology for11376 hours and hours is deleterious and affects learning.11379 But the schools that have really11381 been successful have11382 often been those that were able to build really great11385 relationships with families in the school. And11388 we11388 added in the Boston Public Schools family liaisons in each school and I do think that has helped. And those schools that have done the best thus far and I11395 think11395 also the jury is still11396 out are the ones11397 who have leveraged strong relationships11398 with families. Thank you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
thank you very much and um, thank you11404 for your time and thank11405 you for all of the11406 work that your members have put in over the past 2.5. I mean they have tough jobs to begin with, but the past few years have certainly11415 the teachers11416 in the classroom I11417 think11417 have really, um, you11419 know, done tremendous jobs and really deserve a lot of credit and appreciation for that for that effort. So, um, with that we thank you and we will now move on to,
sorry, I thought you were, you were all done.
LEWIS - I just let me first echo what Representative Peisch11442 just11442 said, just how deeply grateful we are to11444 you all of11445 your members for11446 what you do every day and especially of course through the pandemic and we all feel that way. Um, a few times you rightly mentioned the importance of having healthy green modern facilities. Um, you mentioned the11460 new school in Boston and the impact11462 that's having. Um, I think you all know I've been saying for quite some time that you know, the state school building program is really not keeping up with the need. And that gulf11473 has just grown over the last year or two particularly with the cost escalation we've seen in the construction industry and that this11480 is increasingly becoming11481 a major equity issue.
I did want to just zero in11485 while we have you here Eric because I've long wondered why the city of Boston hasn't done more because of all the districts11494 arguably Boston has more resources, um, hasn't done more11498 to invest in school facilities. You know, Boston is able to partner11502 with the MSBA of course as well. And I understand Mayor Wu has made this a priority and there is certainly,11507 you know, a plan11508 for much greater progress,11509 but why11510 is11511 it that only nine school,11512 You know, in the11513 last, what did you say, 1011514 years11515 um, you know? And it is very disheartening um, you know,11518 when we, um, when11519 I visited various Boston schools just to see the state of disrepair. And I know that's not the only place, but11525 you know,11526 it is disheartening to see11527 that.
BERG - Yeah. To be honest, I wondered the same question myself and I don't have an11533 answer. I will say we're moving forward rather11535 than looking back. Mayor Wu um, and our current superintendent and our previous superintendent, um, also Mayor Walsh did invest11543 significant amounts in our schools and we're starting to, we have built11546 three new schools in the11547 last four years so that's, you know, we're getting11550 there. Um, and as11552 you said, Mayor Wu has made11553 a significant new investment. Um, we also recently did get a timeline for yet another new, significant remodel of a school, the Irving School we have two under construction11562 now, so I11563 do11563 think we're well on the way.11564
Um We also have recently come to11567 know about the Inflation Reduction11570 Act11570 has11570 an incredible as I understand it,11572 a tax credit for states, local education agencies to um if they're doing some uh some ventilation work, particularly energy efficiency, green ventilation11584 work, they can get up to11586 60% of that funding in the form of11590 a tax credit to the contractors as I understand it. I know the AFT has really done a lot of work on that. We've connected the city of Boston construction folks to that, so, but other districts should be aware of11600 that because that is federal money that is out there and available11602 for this. Um And I'm happy to follow up,
LEWIS - Yes, it would be great to follow up11607 on that. I'd like to make sure we yeah,
KONTOS - And if we could get some help from11614 the Legislature to help especially our smaller districts that might not11619 have someone that is assigned primarily to grant11623 writing and things11624 like that um11625 to access the funds that are going11628 to be available after11629 January. Um Additionally, the MSBA that's the building fund, right? Um It's one cent of the sales11638 tax goes to that. I'm11640 wondering whether or11641 not one cent isn't enough um with the amount of11645 aged buildings that we have11647 and that perhaps we can look at something in the11650 new year um to change that regulation.
PAGE - One more thing and I forgot to say at the beginning is I11656 teach11656 architecture at UMass Amherst and my colleagues have been focused on on this issue a lot. Obviously more money is needed. As11663 I said, the Student Opportunity Act you've added significantly more and11666 the long long list is still there, so that would11669 be one important11670 thing. But I think we've11671 spoken um Senator Lewis also about the rules have to change the rules. The formula that MSBA uses, I live out in11680 Amherst Holyoke voted down11682 one of the poorest communities in the state, reasonably11684 could argue the voters voted down an increase to their taxes which they shouldn't have had to pay. In other words,11691 the formula did not11692 allow for enough payment subsidy11694 from MSBA for those11696 two middle schools and11697 that's just wrong. How could that happen? And that means we need to kind of unlock I think some of the some of the decisions that get made there so that we can both provide greater subsidies for these communities but11708 also really emphasize11709 the11710 climate change, the climate11711 mitigation elements. Our public schools and public college building should be the11716 absolute models of what a11718 green building should11719 be. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
All right, thank you again, thank you11722 very11722 much and happy thanksgiving11723 all right. Moving on.11725 Our final panel11726 today, um we will hear from and we're very fortunate to be11731 joined by um paul revel the Harvard Graduate School of11735 Education.11735 Um I appreciate paul coming back. Always good to see you11739 uh thomas11740 Kane also from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Great to see you11744 Professor Kane um and then we have chad d'Entremont and Alexis Lee11749 in chad is the executive director and Alexis is11752 the Director of policy from the rainy11754 center of education. Thank you for being here. And finally11758 Karen pauly miles for the presidency of Education resource strategies. So I don't know11764 if11764 anybody everybody can11765 sit at the table at one time, but we'll hear11767 from you each in turn11768 and um whose kicking it off is that you, Professor Rebel?
Okay, please please go ahead. Okay,
PAUL REVILLE - HGSE - Madam Chair, Mr. Chairman uh it's an honor and pleasure to be back with you again. Um and members of the11789 committee, thank you11790 for giving the opportunity to talk today. Ordinarily I11793 don't11793 like to read testimony11794 but I have so many things to say that I didn't trust myself to say them ad11798 hoc in11799 the limits of time that are presented. So I'm going to read quickly11802 to you, a statement that's being11804 distributed to11805 you. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Could I interrupt for a moment. We we11808 have a fairly, our committee is relatively new and I am not sure that everyone in the committee is familiar with who you are.11816 So if you11817 could just give a little before you launch into your statement if you could11820 just give a little background on your experience with education in massachusetts. Okay, thank you.
REVILLE - I'm ancient. I go way11829 back to the early11831 days of Education Reform. I co founded with Jack Rennie11834 the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, which wrote the report Every Child a Winner, which served11839 as a foundation for this committee and the House and the Senate and the Governor to develop the Education11845 Reform Act of11846 199311846 in which11847 we were intimately involved in getting it through. I served11850 on the Board of Education for five years, appointed by Governor Weld. At that time, I chaired the Commission on Time and Learning11858 in Massachusetts. When I left the11860 board, I11861 chaired the Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission for a number of years. I founded the Rennie Center on11868 Education Research and Policy about what you're going to hear from chad d'Entremont11872 coming up shortly.
Um I went to teach at Harvard. I've been teaching at Harvard11877 for 25 years now, off and11879 on with time off for government service.11881 In 2006, I became involved with then candidate Governor Deval Patrick, and11887 we worked on his transition committee on a new governance structure. I became the chairman of the Massachusetts State Board of Education which it was called at11898 that time and then went on to be the Secretary of11901 Education after that. I served in that capacity for roughly five years as secretary. I had a hand in writing11910 with members of11911 this committee, the Achievement Gap Act of11913 2010 and the race to11915 the top proposal to11916 the11916 federal government. I returned to Harvard11918 in 2013 and established the education redesign laboratory, which is11924 some of the things that I'll be11926 talking about today are part of our work. And so you hear more about that later.
Okay, thank you for that introduction. I'm late or the last11936 in a long line of11937 expert testimony you've heard today on combating11939 learning loss in Massachusetts schools. You've already11942 reviewed the alarming numbers, considered the causes, contemplated the wide variance and experience that our children11947 have had over the11948 last11948 couple of years, with some enjoying every possible support and opportunity and others struggling11953 with basic survival11954 matters ranging from health and housing to hunger, to say nothing of internet11958 connections, tech11959 tools, and various learning opportunities.11961 You know11963 that achievement and opportunity11964 gaps are11965 not new to Massachusetts from before the pandemic11968 to the present time. We have some11970 of the widest gaps in11971 the nation between our various11972 subgroups notwithstanding our high average performance.
So learning deficits are11977 not a new problem in Massachusetts, but11979 this moment fortunately has given us11982 a new opportunity due to increased urgency11985 and visibility coupled with unprecedented financial resources11988 to do something significant,11990 perhaps11991 even transformational to address our state's persistent11994 inequity in educational opportunities and outcomes. Let's hope we can seize this moment and12000 policy makers like12001 yourselves can lead us into a12003 new12003 era of educational justice. So let's stipulate that the gaps are large12008 and unacceptable. Let's agree that something needs to be done and done12011 soon. What are some promising strategies,12013 interventions and opportunities for short term gains and long term12017 transformation of12018 an education system that is failing far too many students?
Time does not12023 permit me to explore any of these approaches in depth12026 but let me mention a few by briefly describing some areas of challenge and opportunity that I believe12031 we should all be exploring. I'd be12033 happy to follow up with12034 deeper discussion online. So here are a list of half a dozen or so12038 challenges and opportunities. First of all, rebuilding relationships and connectivity. For students, the COVID years were alienating and for some traumatizing.12047 For most the painful interruptions of schooling12049 fractured students' relationships with one another, with faculty,12053 and with the very process of learning and going to school. Before jumping into the technical solutions and12059 strategies for remediating learning loss, educators must focus on restoring these relationships and reconnecting12065 students to school and learning12067 to reconnecting ties and re-inspiring students to learn.
Long before the pandemic our secondary schools were structured to batch process and mass produced education. With 50 minute periods, guidance counselors having12081 loads of 400 students, and teachers seeing more than12084 100 students each12085 week school structure totally discouraged the12088 formation12088 of meaningful motivating relationships, especially12091 between adults12092 and young people. Yet relationships should be at12095 the very heart of the learning process. Even12097 so, we12098 actually have a system that allows for many12100 students to go through middle and high school anonymously.12102 That's12103 a disgrace and one which12105 with a little thought and12106 design work can be remediated.12107 We need to rebuild secondary education to nurture essential relationships.
Personalization, this brings me12115 to my second challenge. Every child12117 deserves to be seen,12118 heard, understood and responded to. This is what parents and students12123 want and what teachers love to do. However, our one size fits12128 all factory model of education ignores individuals. A redesigned system which aims to personalize education would have12135 at its core the design principle meet children where they are and give them what they need12140 to succeed. Every child should have their own personalized success plan and a navigator a caring adult should be assigned for a period of several years to each child and their family as an advocate mentor and12152 guide to fulfilling the success plan.12154 The school system in Nashville Tennessee now has 80,000 students with a success12159 plan and 6000 teachers staff12161 and other adults serving as navigators.
This can be done12165 and the resources from12166 federal aid and12167 other sources are here to do it. And my12170 success planning recommendation12171 is12172 only one strategy for personalizing others include advisory groups, meaningful student counselor ratios, peer counselling, expanded extracurriculars, and the use of various technology platforms to customize services, supports and opportunities12186 for students. Our12188 particular12188 school systems12189 must be, our school systems must be more nimble and adaptable to meet children's particular individual needs. There is no such thing as average, just as medicine customizes to meet the needs of individuals12202 rather than giving each patient the12205 same treatment so education must12207 customize to meet the particular needs, academic, social and physical of each learner.
Children's cabinets. Children spend only 20% of their waking hours in schools between Kindergarten12219 and high school graduation.12220 80%12221 of12222 their waking hours are spent outside of school. This simple fact has profound implications. As we saw in the pandemic, the factors shaping children's lives outside of school poverty or affluence for example, had12235 everything to do with how much they learned.12237 These factors intensified during the COVID years but social determinants12241 like inequality have always been present in US education and have yielded results such as12247 an embarrassing iron12248 law correlation between socioeconomic status at birth and educational achievement and attainment. That's not12255 what America is supposed to be about. That's12257 not what Horace Mann12258 had in mind when he established modern12260 public education here in Massachusetts.
12263 By12263 now we should all see that educators cannot be successful unless others in our community said about mitigating those factors in children's living12271 circumstances that get in12273 the12273 way of them coming to12274 school12274 and being12275 ready to learn if they12276 get there.12277 We need a new social compact and12279 mechanisms like children's cabinets which12281 summon community leaders, grassroots and grass tops to make12285 common cause in addressing12286 the impediments that undermine student learning. Impediments like food and housing insecurity,12291 inadequate physical and12293 mental health supports, threats to safety,12295 lack of internet12296 connectivity, and inadequate access to enrichment opportunities outside of school. Local collaborative action bodies12303 like children's cabinets are increasingly12305 popular around12306 the country and12307 doing impressive work12308 in their communities to construct holistic cradle to career pipelines composed of quality education surrounded by robust support and opportunities.
All of our education12319 reform has12320 proved one thing for certain, schools while necessary are clearly insufficient to doing the job12327 of equity in our commonwealth. Schools are on12330 average two week in intervention to overcome significant disadvantage. If12335 schools are to be successful12336 if school reform school optimization is to work, then the whole community must come together to pitch12342 in to holistically develop each community's most precious resource their children. Public policy should incentivize12350 and support the building of collaborative action Children's cabinets in communities throughout the commonwealth. Next, redesigning the school day after school and summer. We are locked in a legacy system12362 of time utilization and education,12364 a system that derives from the needs of a society12367 from more than12368 a century ago.
12370 Our12370 approach to education time is totally out of12373 sync with modern society and more importantly, not providing what children need. For example, in school we give all students the12380 same12380 quantity of instruction even though obviously some need12383 more time to catch up from learning loss, to learn English,12386 or to overcome12387 other forms of inequity disadvantage or disability. During out of school time,12392 which consumes 80% of students12394 waking hours some children have a bulging menu of enrichment opportunities, while others12399 have very slim pickings for after school or summer enrichments. We cannot and should not accept this reality12405 as fixed. It's grossly inequitable. We know from abundant evidence that enrichments matter to students' learning12412 yet we continue12413 to treat access to out of school learning as an incidental, an accident of birth.
Some kids get it. Some12419 don't. If we're committed to equity in education, which12422 we claim to be in this situation must be rectified. Both12426 in12426 school and out12427 we must differentiate between students and their needs. One size doesn't fit all. Adults will need to be more flexible in meeting children where they are and providing for their needs. Again, resources12439 are available, models of practice abound, and state policy can incentivize innovative practices and12445 new ways of leveling12446 this very uneven12447 playing field. Family engagement. We hear so12451 much rhetoric about family engagement, but12453 we see so little authentic12454 action. We don't incentivize schools to collaborate12457 with parents, don't reward them for doing so, or hold them accountable for failing to connect with families. We12463 don't allow the time12464 and training necessary to do family engagement12466 well. Quite simply family engaging isn't12469 now, nor has it ever been a priority.12471
Many school systems worked hard during the12474 pandemic to reach out12475 and connect with parents because children were getting lost. This good work12479 needs to continue and be supported. Parents need to12482 be met where they are12483 and welcomed into the educational process as genuine partners. This is not difficult12488 work but it12489 takes time and support. Done12492 properly,12492 family12492 engagement,12492 accelerate student learning while alleviating the burden on teachers by incorporating parents as partners. Again, research and best practices point the way to needed improvements in this area. Secondary school redesign. Not only to, secondary schools need to be12509 redesigned to nurture key relationships as I have already described, but we need to rethink and redesign curricula to engage and motivate12516 students. Boredom is pervasive12518 in our middle and high schools.
Many students are12521 leaving school woefully unprepared for the rigors of12524 college and employment. Students need12526 opportunities for deeper12527 learning, applied learning, problem12529 solving on12530 issues and challenges that are meaningful in their environments. Students need to be inspired and given the hope that a meaningful future12537 is possible and attainable for them. Our job as educators is to connect them12542 to that bright future. Many promising12544 practices exist for rethinking what and how we educate in our secondary schools. Most prominent12550 among these are12551 career pathways and12552 early college programs. I know you've12554 heard much and12555 supported these initiatives12556 but they need12557 to be expanded. Instead of wasting more time arguing ad nauseam about12561 issues like12562 testing and charter schools we should concentrate on doing what we12566 know works to prepare each and12568 every student to12569 be college and12570 career ready.
Well that's my short list12573 and I know it poses a tall order. In conclusion, I'll12576 only say that it would be12577 a grave mistake to view. COVID learning loss is simply an immediate technical12581 problem that can12582 be eradicated with a clever intervention. The pandemic stress tested our education12587 system in unprecedented12588 ways and in so doing,12590 highlighted and exacerbated12591 our longstanding12592 systemic12593 weaknesses. In this moment, we have a golden opportunity to remedy some of those weaknesses through transformative system changes.12602 I urge you to take advantage of this promising moment, take advantage of a window that is open for change. Think big12609 thank you very much. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
12612 Thank12612 you very much.
12621 And12621 yes, I think so. Professor Tomkins. Thanks12624
welcome.
THOMAS KANE - HGSE - So thank you Chair Peisch and Chair Lewis for hearing from12638 me today. My name is Tom Kane I'm faculty12641 director of the Center for Education Policy Research12644 at Harvard.12645 Um We work with school districts12648 in Massachusetts and the state12650 education agency12651 as well as school districts around the country, helping them use12655 their data to try to answer policy questions. And my challenge this afternoon is to try to describe the magnitude of the achievement losses and provide some12670 sense of the scale12671 of effort that is going to be required to help students catch up. Everybody knows student achievement has declined, but I don't think that there is a broad appreciation for the scale of effort that's going to be required to help students catch12687 up. And I think research potentially shed12690 some light on each of these.
So if12693 you look in that, I provided a handout and there are some slides. Um, so I'm not sure. How do I click this. Okay, great. We click12703 forward. Um, hang on. There we go. So just to start, I12711 just wanted to highlight just the magnitude of the declines in Massachusetts' students performance on the NAEP in the last six years or12722 so. So everybody12723 is aware, I think of the most recent declines, but it's important to recognize that there12729 were declines that started12730 before that. So for instance, in12733 8th grade math, there's been a 17 point decline since, since the12738 peak um, from 301 to 284 in 4 grade math, there's been an 1112744 point decline. In eighth grade reading there's been a 10 point decline12749 in um, fourth grade reading there's been an 11 point decline. Now to give you some context for those declines, The typical gain from12761 one grade12762 to another is about 10.4 points in math and about 11 points in reading.
12771 So12771 these losses that we've seen are the equivalent to about a grade levels worth of growth or more in the case of eighth grade12783 math, just over the last five or six years. Now, to get12788 a sense you can even just do the calculation yourself12791 to get a sense of what a grade level is.12793 You know12794 fourth grade to eighth grade it's it's intended to be a vertical scale. There's about a 4212800 point difference between fourth grade and eighth grade and just do the math and it's12806 around 10 points per year. So what we've lost should be understood in that in that context. Now everybody may hear about the12820 state changes but may have a hard time thinking about what are the consequences12824 for my kids in our schools. And so we worked with um at research center at Stanford to take these12835 National Assessment12836 of Educational Progress scores by state and take each state's um achievement scores on12843 the state assessments, use them to put12846 them on the same scale, and then report out the losses12850 district by district, district12852 by subgroup around the country.
So so far we've done 29 states plus DC and12859 one12859 of those states is12860 is Massachusetts. And so on the next um slide uh12868 we12868 um12868 we just report district by district around Massachusetts what was the magnitude of the decline?12874 And we put those in terms of grade12877 level units. So um let's12880 forward again to the next one there we12883 go. So um here you can see that there are a number of12888 districts that saw a12890 decline more like a third or a quarter of a grade12895 level. So for instance, Andover, Arlington, Natick, Newton, Lexington Needham. They saw declines12903 too, but their declines were more like a third12906 of a grade level in math over this time period during the12910 pandemic. Um,12911 but there are other12913 districts in the state that saw much larger losses. So12917 for instance, Lynn experienced more than a year's worth of achievement12923 loss. Uh, Fall River,12930 Revere, Chicopee, Haverhill, Malden, um, even Boston saw large declines.
So the important thing to, so to remember here is these are not describing test score levels. These are describing test score changes.12942 And so what that's saying, what what this12945 is saying is yes, achievement may have12947 been unequal in 2019, but12951 it became much more,12952 much more12953 unequal over the pandemic. The12956 losses were significantly larger12958 for the higher poverty districts around the state. The first slide was math, the12966 next12966 slide is reading. The declines were smaller in reading,12970 although there was the same pattern that, that higher poverty districts saw larger losses. Now, it should be clear from12982 these that, um, especially12985 in12986 districts that lost a whole grade level's equivalent worth of12990 learning that we're not going to make up for that With12993 just a few extra days of instruction or providing tutors to13001 five or 10% of students. It13004 should13004 be clear, but I'm going to, I'll do some of the calculations13007 to13008 make that even13009 more clear.
So if we go to13011 the next slide, so uh one more.13015 There we go. So,13020 in this example I just take two examples of interventions that many districts around the country and here in Massachusetts are trying. And I just say, okay, what13031 does the research say about the impacts of these? And then I add up, okay, what's the13036 likely effect in13038 terms of grade equivalents13039 for13040 the interventions that many of these districts13043 are trying? So here13045 I say, okay, suppose13046 and by13048 the way, this would be a fairly13050 aggressive plan from the13052 plans that I've seen. Um so tutors, suppose this district provided tutors to 10%13064 of students and13067 suppose they were13068 doing a high dosage tutoring program.13070 Many districts are struggling to provide13072 high dosage, but suppose this one13074 succeeded where high dosage is three times a week,13078 groups of three or fewer students for the whole13081 year.
The pre pandemic research suggested you get about a year's worth of additional gain from providing that level of intervention. So13092 say we provided an extra year to 10% of13097 students, we add that13098 up we get 0.1 year boost in in mean13101 student achievement. Now, suppose I increase summer school. In the typical district in the US about 6% of students13110 attend summer school say we13112 tripled that um got13114 to 18% of students attending13116 summer school. The summer school13118 research suggests if you do five weeks, um13121 five hours a day, including13123 some reading and math you get about a quarter of a year's worth of growth. If I13128 multiply that 18% by 0.25, I end up with .045 and if I add the two,13134 I get about .14513138 years worth of growth.13143 That's13143 1/7, that's 1/7 the size of the losses in many of the higher poverty districts around Massachusetts.
Now let's go through like what might a right size plan look like.13155 Well, so say if13157 we did 10% tutors of students receive high dosage tutors, that's13162 a challenge. Many13163 districts are having13164 trouble finding enough tutors13166 and scheduling enough hours but suppose they13169 succeeded and did13170 that. And then double dose13172 math, say that13173 was provided an extra13174 period of math instruction. That's 30% times about a half a year. Summer school, suppose dramatically scaled up summer13183 school. So not 8%, not13185 18%, not 30% like Boston had last summer, but suppose they hit 70% of kids attending summer school. And then on top of that, suppose they added 2.5 weeks to the school year. That13201 would13201 be the scale of13202 intervention that if you13203 added it up would get13204 you about half a year's13205 worth of growth. And if you did that two13208 years in a row you might get13210 get a year. So this should13213 give you just an example of the magnitude of effort that will be required to13219 help students catch up from these losses.
Now so, what are13225 three13225 things that13226 the state could be doing? Number one, um, required districts to set aside funds for13232 expanding instructional13233 time unless and until subgroups return13237 to 2019 levels.13239 As you13240 know, there's a lot13241 of federal money that districts still have13244 and it's important that now that we know13247 the magnitude of13248 the losses, we didn't know this until recently, but now that we know the magnitude of the13253 losses districts should be revisiting their plans and scale in prioritizing13258 increases in instructional time. A second thing the state could be doing13264 is funding13265 and evaluating pilots to provide additional evidence on effective13270 interventions. One13272 of the problems right now is that um,13276 if you ask district folks like what13279 could we be doing?13280 The common answers are things like tutoring. Well tutoring is tough increasing summer school that that's also tough, but worth doing.
We need some additional models and so that the13293 state has funded things like acceleration academies during the summer13297 acceleration academies13298 using school vacation week. We13300 need to be evaluating those and providing data back to other districts around the state saying13307 what the impacts of those were so that we could potentially get a lot more people13312 replicating those. And a third thing the13316 state could be doing is13318 uh, funding regional intermediaries to13324 dramatically expand summer learning activities starting13327 this coming summer. And the reason why I mention that is it's not just educators who13334 are um who are stressed out. Many district13338 leaders sort of13340 lack the bandwidth to be in addition to trying to run13344 a successful school year this year, trying to also be planning major efforts for this summer.
It's just like it's not just dollars, its bandwidth for planning those. And these regional intermediary intermediaries like Boston and beyond um could13363 provide that help by coordinating with lots of other summer learning providers to work with students and let the schools provide the academic content but let some of these other organizations provide13379 the enrichment activities13380 that will draw13381 students and make students want13383 to attend summer school, make summer school fun. And I13388 think13388 we have an opportunity over the next couple of years that completely reinvent summer. So, these losses in scores um aren't just declines in test scores.
We've looked at what happened in states like Massachusetts and m Florida and Texas that saw large increases in NAEP during the 90s and the 2000s. And we13417 saw what happened to the incomes for the birth13420 cohorts that benefited13421 from those increases.13422 We saw increases in earnings, we saw increases13425 in educational attainment. We saw declines in teen motherhood, we saw declines in incarceration and arrest rates so that this is not just a matter of of um counting13439 points on a test. These13441 tests are13444 leading indicators leading social indicators of what the careers for13450 our students will13451 be. And unless we reverse these trends we'll see unfortunately big declines in achievement especially, big declines13461 in long term outcomes,13462 especially in13464 the higher poverty districts around the state.13466
LEWIS - Thank you very13469 much. Um, actually, just13471 before we go on while we13472 have the slide, sorry, can13473 we keep the slides up13474 just back to the first one13476 for a minute. I just wanted13477 to just clarify, I13479 may the slide that showed the Massachusetts NAEP scores declining. Um Two questions just to the first is um, do you know whether this trend of declining NAEP scores which you know, obviously13493 predates the13494 pandemic um, in math and reading is this true nationally or would Massachusetts stand out as a state that's seeing a decline.
KANE - There was a smaller13505 decline nationally but I think the declines in Massachusetts since the peak have been larger than13514 the national declines in this period.
LEWIS - So there's something about13517 Massachusetts where we've seen, You know, we obviously saw significant increases for a couple of decades, but, but we have seen a disproportionate decline.
KANE - Right. I think I was startled just because I13530 don't think it's been part of the national discussion13532 or the statewide discussion13534 at the magnitude of13536 the losses in eighth grade math. 1713538 points is quite a large decline.13541
LEWIS - So my follow on is13543 the rest of your presentation understandably focused on the impact of the pandemic, right? You looked at, and13548 again dishearteningly how the loss is greater in the13552 high poverty districts and you've got some great suggestions for us on what to do13556 about it. Um But when13559 you look at these declines, obviously they predate the pandemic right? In almost all cases,13564 so,
KANE - They started decline,
13565 LEWIS13565 -13565 They13565 started13565 so that it would suggest that there was, there are deeper issues that and again, it's not just as a result of the pandemic right? There was something going13572 on well before you just want to comment on thoughts13575 around that.
KANE - So um uh I have not studied13582 that so I um I hesitate to speculate. But honestly I wonder13590 if part of it13591 may be due to um our sort of um taking our eye off13596 the ball a little bit13597 and not focusing it as much on the13600 importance of the MCAS results. Um and you know that it,13605 the MCAS was a big part of that upward improvement. And while13611 um while I realized that13614 there are limits to test13615 based accountability and actually you can13617 see it in this graph13618 that you know,13620 we sort of plateaued13621 before we started declining. Um but I think it would be a mistake to think,13628 oh we13629 can ignore uh13631 student achievement uh and without seeing13636 um further13637 declines. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Yes. Unfortunately I broke that while the slides were up. So um, do you want to sit on the side? It is, it is, thank you. It's very obvious this is socioeconomic driven13656 this data here.
KANE - So the declines are13660 so like, so that's what I was13662 trying to emphasize. There were already differences13664 and the declines were larger and higher poverty district.
BELSITO - And I, and I appreciate that my two things, Do you feel that this13675 is outside of the state, okay. Do you feel that that the federal13678 continual federal defunding13680 of education has impacted this? And then the other part too13684 and I'd be curious if the chairs would have their own thoughts do you believe the Student Opportunity Act will impact positively these disparities here in this?
KANE - So I hope so. Um it'll depend on how the, how the dollars are used, but I hope so. And I think they13704 could make a difference.
13706 BELSITO13706 -13706 How13706 about the federal pass?
KANE - So I'm not sure what you mean by the federal,
13713 BELSITO - Just the money that, you know,13715 the state can only do so much, there's only so much the towns can13718 do with property taxes.13719 If the Fed doesn't give us a substantial amount13722 of money to help13723 correct the focus on education, does that, has that disrupted this over over several decades? Or do you have more data outside of this13733 particular timeframe?
KANE - So that graph is covering the 2019 to 2022 year period. And I think over that period there was quite a substantial increase in Title One funding in the federal funding.
BELSITO - I'd be curious if you13749 had additional data from previous years on this and I13753 thank13753 you for putting13754 this in a graph form. Thank you very much.13756 And thank you chair. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Oh jeez sorry sorry
VARGAS - Thank you Mr. Chairman and thank you for the presentation and for providing us with some clear direction on what are some things that could work. I'm curious with this slide the an example13773 of a right sized plan. Um To what extent13776 should sort of social and emotional readiness also be in13781 sort of this chart here to make sure that students are even ready to accept13784 the tutoring to you13786 know, be ready for summer school etcetera? Um And does13789 that impact sort of the effect size?13792 If you do sort13794 of the social emotional stuff have you seen that that affects the13797 effect size?
KANE - So of course I, you know. Um so I have a13803 1613803 year old son13804 and and13805 I saw the impact of13807 the pandemic13809 on on13810 him uh emotionally and fortunately I think13816 he's back13817 but it's only because of a lot13820 of efforts at his school13821 and from his parents. So I do think that the social13826 emotional impacts are real, they're important. I13830 don't mean to say that, um but I don't think it's either or, both. Honestly though, I don't13841 think we have a ton of13842 evidence, although13843 I it sounds entirely plausible to13846 me that there are complementarities between the two that kids are going to benefit more from tutoring, you know, double dose math, you know, summer school, if their relationships at schools have13863 been repaired and are, they're happy to be at school. So I13871 think it's, so13873 in framing this, I was just13875 trying to frame this wasn't13877 a complete list of of the things13879 schools need to be doing. I was just trying13882 to say, okay13883 if we were to do these things and this would be optimistic hoping for these effect sizes, given that any time districts are doing something for the first time, they are not going to be doing it as well as the research based um, estimates were. Even doing that and we added them up it would still only add up to about a half a half a year. So, um, but I didn't mean for13915 this to be like the complete package.
VARGAS - I didn't take it has like the comprehensive, you know, this is what we need to do to solve everything. But I think it would be an interesting research question around, you know, were the impacts greater in districts that did these things and ahead of it, you know, took care of the social emotional piece um and compared to those that13933 maybe didn't have as much of an investment on that end as well. But thank you very much for the presentation. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
So unfortunately are starting to press up against them. So let's let's keep going and then we at the end hopefully question, Okay,13945 and I apologize, it was my fault intervening there. Okay. Next, we're gonna hear from chad and Alexis from the rainy center. All right, well, we'll keep the train shutting down the track here.
CHAD D'ENTREMONT - RENNIE CENTER - Um Good afternoon, thank you. Chair Peisch Chair Lewis, members of the Joint Committee on Education. It's a privilege to be here. You all should have received blue folder. You'll find in that our testimony on your left side on the right side, a brief summary of our findings of the Impact Research Consortium I will talk about that in a moment, as well as slides13980 that describe the work of the consortium. You'll also on the first page of the slide, see a web link. And if you click on that when you're in front of a computer, you'll be able to dig into the data dashboard we'll describe and go deeper on some of the data we're going to share. Consistent with Paul's comments I'm going to read as I believe Alexis will as well so we can efficiently hit a lot of information down on the work we've been doing.
I should introduce myself. Hello, I am Dr. Chad d'Entremont, executive director of14006 the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy. The Rennie Center's mission is to ensure education decision making is based on deep knowledge and evidence of effective policy making and practice. I'm joined today by the Rennie Center's director of policy Alexis Lian. Alexis has played a lead role in the work of the EdImpact Research Consortium, a partnership of the Rennie Center, Education Resource strategies. You'll hear from Karen in just a moment. The Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and the Series Institute at Wheelock College Boston University. As you well know, Massachusetts received roughly $2.9 billion in federal funding through the elementary and secondary schools Emergency Relief Fund to assist students and schools and recovering from the effects of the COVID pandemic.
90% of these funds will be provided directly to districts determine how they are spent before September 30th 2024. Launched in 2021, the aim of the EdImpact Research Consortium is to work with state and local leaders to ensure spending decisions are aligned with effective and equitable practices that will lead to long term sustainable improvements in student learning and wellbeing. For more than a year, we have worked closely with districts to inform and analyze their spending decisions, assess their alignment with key evidence based practices that are likely to produce14084 learning gains, and better understand how districts and schools are navigating current challenges while planning for the future. For the next few minutes, Alexis and I hope to share with you our learnings and offer some thoughts on actions the state might take in response. I'll now turn it14100 over to Alexis to discuss current patterns in national state and local spending of ESSER dollars.
ALEXIS LIAN - RENNIE CENTER - Thank you Chad. Good afternoon Chair Lewis, Chair Peisch, and members of the joint committee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify today. I'll take a moment to discuss a few national ESSER trends and how they aligned with those that we found here in Massachusetts. First, looking nationally ESSER funds constitute the largest single federal investment ever in K-12 education at $190 billion and provide approximately double what schools received under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. District, school and classroom leaders across the country are being expected to balance the urgent day to day student needs within school buildings each day as they're doing right now, as we testify while simultaneously managing the long term strategic investment decisions that require significant time and attention.
In a national study released recently by McKinsey of more than 260 districts, 90% of district decision makers cited challenges deploying stimulus funding including administrative hurdles14166 such as navigating, ESSER compliance and finalizing procurement, limited internal planning capacity and talent and vendor shortages. The study demonstrates that national spending trends14177 are shifting over the course of ESSER one, two and three. Not surprisingly, in the first three years of14183 the pandemic district leaders prioritized pandemic related safety concerns and14188 support for vulnerable students. For example HVAC systems, remote learning and technology costs, and increased compensation for substitute teachers. Looking ahead to the next three school years districts are expected to shift ESSER funds towards addressing unfinished learning and persistent staffing challenges.
Top projected spending categories include substitute teacher compensation, tutoring programs, teacher training and professional development, compensation for special education teachers, and credit recovery. Now turning to Massachusetts. While we have our own set of unique circumstances across the Commonwealth, the challenges and spending trends that we have seen through our work in EdImpact align very closely to these national trends. In Massachusetts EdImpact has reviewed 24 district spending plans, including the 12 largest districts across the state. We've also done a deep dive into six districts as we've helped collaborate on strategic decisions that the districts are making with these ESSER funds. While we need to continue to do additional research, it has provided a strong foundation of data to build upon. As of October 2022, 99% of ESSER one dollars here in Massachusetts have been claimed those that were due this past September. 59% of ESSER two are due next September in 2023 and 17% of ESSER three funds due in September of 2024.
While there is still an enormous amount of money left to allocate, districts are working incredibly hard to make strategic financial decisions as wisely, efficiently and urgently as possible. EdImpact has analyzed submitted spending plans for districts receiving the highest allocations of federal funds. And we provide data dashboards of these 24 districts across the state describing how districts plan to use their funds to address student need and drive long term school improvement. In our work analyzing and working with these districts across the commonwealth14295 at both the aggregate and district level, we've seen investments mainly targeted toward academic recovery. So high dosage tutoring, as we've heard about previously, acceleration academies or high quality curricular materials and social emotional and mental health needs. So14310 things like implementing multi tiered systems of support or MTSS, focusing on Tier one interventions such as universal screening, SEL curriculum and mental health literacy for students and staff followed then by investments in family and community partnerships, staff supports, facilities, tech health and safety benefits and other admin costs.
So for a more local context. For example, Salem as one of the collaborating districts in our EdImpact work has focused on accelerating academic learning through high dosage tutoring, and the district has also focused on advancing social emotional learning and aligning their SEL work to the district's anti racism priorities. In New Bedford as shown in their district spending plan, the bulk of funding has been allocated to facilities and is aimed at strategic initiatives like supporting new practices through the construction of a school based health center for students partnering with the Greater New Bedford Health Centre. In Methuen also demonstrated through their district spending plan the district is allocating significant funds to accelerating instruction, particularly in core literacy instruction, school based mental health services, and investing in new facilities including 11.5 million to purchase a new building. I'll turn it over to Chad now for discussion on recommendations.
D'ENTREMONT - Thank you Alexis. I have to admit, I'm very curious to follow up with Tom and talk a little bit more about the district impacts. You know, I noted that Methuen14391 and Salem weren't on the graph and as very well managed, thoughtful districts in their planning I'm curious to see where they would fall. I also know that New Bedford didn't seem to experience the same level of decline some of the other districts, which is worth noting. Overall our analysis of district investments of ESSER funds makes clear that educators are working hard as first responders. Aiding students and families in navigating daily crises while simultaneously mapping out a path to recovery. It's also revealed that they are overwhelmed. While schools have reopened the trauma of the last few years is ever present in classrooms and communities. School leaders and staff continue to face daily crises as a result of staffing shortages, lost learning time and growing mental health needs.
Many potential14435 solutions require hiring new staff and as we've heard throughout today, there just aren't enough people to hire. A more coordinated and comprehensive response to COVID recovery is needed and it is here that the state has a powerful role to play. I would respectfully offer three recommendations. First, districts need more time. The pandemic has lasted years and even the most straightforward solutions are difficult to pursue right away. For example, one effective action districts can take with both near and long term benefits is to purchase and implement high quality curriculum.14469 Research has shown that high quality curriculum has a bigger impact on student achievement than the difference between a first year teacher and a veteran educator. Well, a 2017 study by Rand found that only 20% of teachers curated assignments are on grade level with 96% of teachers using Google to find lessons and materials. But supporting staff and properly implementing a new curriculum can take a year of planning and preparation.
To give districts the time they need the federal government should extend the current deadline for spending ESSER funds past September 30th 2024. Now, I do understand that this is a decision that is outside the control of this committee, but state leaders have a powerful bully pulpit and the ability to advocate on behalf of local leaders to ensure COVID recovery plans are the product of well informed decisions and well planned actions. Second, to develop effective COVID response plans districts need strong state guidance and a clear set of recommendations on what to do. To be frank you could slide right in here most of what Professor Kane just said about responding to the COVID crisis. As Alexis shared our own experiences working with districts point to a few essential strategies.
A laser like focus on improving academic instruction through actions such as implementing high quality curriculum and providing ongoing instructional coaching. Aligning strong instructional practice with just in time14554 interventions like high dosage tutoring and summer acceleration academies14558 to ensure all students are accessing rigorous grade level content and linking academic learning to comprehensive supports that address students, social and emotional wellbeing and mental health. Giving districts choice in14572 how to spend COVID relief funds is important to ensuring that communities are able to build on their strengths and address students unique needs. But right now, most districts are working alone to figure out how to spend funds, duplicating the efforts of many other communities.
I appreciated earlier today, Commissioner Riley's description of the actions the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is taking to address students' unfinished learning and health and wellbeing. The department's actions are14601 supported by our own research findings and it should be commended for its leadership during this time. However, continuing to push for a more coordinated effort between state and local leaders is necessary to enable districts to learn from one another and allow the commonwealth to move forward some key priorities for improving education. Pushing aggressively means actively sharing successful recovery strategies, such as the examples provided for14626 Salem New Bedford and Methuen. And targeting technical assistance to ensure recommended strategies are implemented in ways that align with best practice.
Let's talk about tutoring for a sec. Tutoring is one of the most common uses of ESSER funds. As Tom alluded to, to match the effectiveness however, highlighted in the research literature, high dosage tutoring needs to be time intensive, meaning provided a minimum of three times a week, administered in small group settings of no more than three or four students, and closely aligned with grade level classroom content. The tutoring we've observed is often being provided in large settings14665 to all students without targeting specific learning needs. And although it is well intentioned, it is unlikely to have a substantial impact. The state can help districts figure out how to, the state can also, excuse me, help districts figure out how to sustain improvement efforts. While some districts are engaged in long term recovery strategies, many are focused on one time expenditures and remain weary of an impending funding cliff. At least their perception of one.
This is one of the reasons we believe why so much funding has been focused on facilities. However, the continued increases in state education funding through the Student14700 Opportunity Act provides districts the ability to discover ways to continue to support new investments past ESSER deadlines. Regardless, a thorough analysis of how ESSER funding aligns with growing state investments would greatly help local decision making. And third, the state can take a lead role in planning for what's next. Here I just want to endorse an echo the comments14724 that were made by Secretary Reville. You've heard about how federal resources, combined with increased state education funding provide an unprecedented opportunity for Massachusetts to not only recover from the pain of the last few years, but to rethink an antiquated and historically inequitable education system so that it prepares all students for the possibilities and growing demands of a rapidly changing world.
At the Rennie Center we wholeheartedly agree with this position. The need to act is urgent, but acting with urgency doesn't mean spending14756 money quickly. It means mobilizing at all levels to spend money smartly. Pressuring schools to throw money at innovations will not lead to the kind of substantive changes our students need. Schools are stretched impossibly thin right now and state leaders can play a powerful role in moving conversations from education recovery to reinvention. The state can help incentivize communities to come together14782 and work collaboratively across sectors and interests to provide schools with additional capacity, space and expertise to look beyond urgent short term challenges and craft a vision for the14794 future. Thank you for your time and Alexis and I are happy to answer any questions. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you very much. Let's allow Karen to give her testimony and then we'll open it up for questions for for everyone.
KAREN MILES - ERS - Hello, I get to go last this long testimony. I'm Karen Hawley Miles. I run a non profit organization called Education Resource Strategies and we work with districts all over the country that serve high concentrations of students living in poverty, mostly large districts, but increasingly smaller districts in some of the states. And we're the resource people as our name suggests. We're the ones that take all this and figure out how you can, how to spend the money in ways that align with these strategies and um in a way that works over the long haul. So, over this pandemic period of time, we've been running Um six different national networks of superintendents14858 and chief financial officers and chief strategy officers to sort of engage in this crisis along the way. Meeting14867 with14867 them every month and thinking about the strategies for adjusting to the pandemic. And then we work deeply with a small number of districts around the country to help figure out how to pull all this together and do that.
So, um, you know, I'm taking notes on these comments because these are the folks that are influencing the whole nation in terms of thinking about this. So just to be able to sit here and listen from that. And so the things that we'll talk about here, um, you know that they have shared are exactly the sorts of things that we're working on. What I would add to, you know, I came here with three messages. One is to echo everybody this is an unprecedented moment of disruption and magnitude of spend especially in the state of Massachusetts. So you have in Massachusetts the first or second depending on the year that you look highest spending level in the nation across states. So you are spending a lot on education14923 and you get high outcomes relative to other states. Um Dr. Kane talked about the decline in uh, scores but didn't show also the relative high scores that we have um in Massachusetts as compared to the other.
So yes, declining but also a history of incredible excellence and high levels of spending. Plus the numbers that um, that the Rennie Center shared with you um, talk about, so the highest poverty districts got about 30%14955 more of their operating budget, um, you know of a one year operating budget, 30%, like there's no business in the world that could possibly expand by 30%. Now, if they spread that evenly over each year, that would be about 10% then on top of that they have the Student Opportunity Act so for the highest, which is also spread14978 based on, on poverty and student need. So for some districts they're getting, you know, they haven't spent all their money now,14986 they've got this window which needs to be expanded extended for sure of opportunity to spend somewhere probably take the ESSER funds somewhere, maybe 20% of a year's operating budget. Plus some of these districts have up to 20% increase in their operating budget from the Student Opportunity Impact. So they have a huge infusion of resources.
So just to put that in perspective. Um, yeah, so that's just a lot added onto it. And the way that districts work, how decisions are made in districts about spending, there isn't a person in a district that is making, that is consistently linking strategy to spend. These dollars go into chief financial officers and they have, you know, they are trying to figure out what what to do with it. Superintendents often are not um, don't come to those roles, knowing about strategy, resource use and organization. And the different departments in those organizations Chief academic officers and so on they're great at figuring out what curriculum to use. But how to spend and organize against that is not something that folks who are in those leadership roles are ready to do. So, big moment, a huge opportunity to rethink what we're doing as everyone said.
I mean we heard that from the teachers saying this is a moment for transformation, but we also heard a lot of solutions that are right inside our current box. We heard solutions about, you know, we need, we need lower class sizes, we need higher pay, we need, you know, extended days. What I would, what I would posit is we need to move to many of the things that um uh that um Paul Reville shared in the beginning about busting open the system, busting15095 open the boxes that we're in in terms of working on this because otherwise, you know, we're having this increase in in dollars and you asked someone asked about, you know, what's the link between increase in spending in student performance and the answer was of course it depends on how you use the money, right? Of15113 course it depends on what you do and we15115 don't have folks in these roles who necessarily know what to do.
Park in the state role. And I'm seeing some states take a role and saying here are the big areas and we've outlined a few of them among us that need dollars to be spent and we need to figure out new ways to do that. So I've got a couple of charts here, but I actually think maybe asking more questions. But I'm going to go through a couple of them and then ask you to skip a few. This chart on power strategies it's another way of summarizing the list that we have shared with you that is about like, what do we know from research? We're not starting from scratch. What do we know from research about what works here? Um and we've talked about, you know, uh Chad talked about powerful instruction and curriculum materials. We've talked a lot about increasing time and attention. One thing we haven't talked a lot about actually in the way I'm15166 going to is improving the teaching job.
So I do want to focus just a little bit on that, but if we go to the next um, chart. Um uh and and15175 and the reason I have this chart15176 in here, this is actually from the Rennie Center data dashboard and it's showing what I15181 want to highlight is so 65% of funds have been spent on these power strategies that were in the chart before. 1% has been spent on investing in teachers. Um, apart from investing in a little bit of professional development, which would be in that purple box, empowering adaptable instructions. So, you know, we heard a lot about helping teachers learn how to adjust instruction to respond to student needs and stuff. This is not a big piece of what has been spent so far. Um, so if you go to the next slide, we have this amazing moment. Not only do we have huge needs, but we have a change in mindset about what's possible in K-12 education, how we might organize really differently.
You know, overnight we closed schools and we figured out a way to deliver instruction technology. We're in districts across the country that now have 1 to 1 technology, the kids are takng, and they figured out how to sustain that over the year. Families can and must be deeply involved and they know a lot more about what was happening in school than they did and just go down the list. Teacher roles can be differentiated. We don't have to have every teacher doing the same thing. In fact, we can have some part time teachers, in fact, we can have some teachers that might even work remotely all the time after hours to support homework. We have community partners playing much15257 bigger role and we have this really growing awareness about the huge disparities that are associated with race and socio economic status. So if we go to the next slide. Um, if we can skip that about like we can't be so worried about the immediate moment because we need to redesign.
And so this is just, you know, I think the teachers who spoke suggested that this is a challenge. They're exhausted and I can't overestimate that enough. They're exhausted and their leaders are exhausted. I'm running these networks and we almost have to have a psychologist along with us at the networks. We now do yoga, we do breathing exercises as part of our network work because it is so overwhelming. Um, and so we need to think about how we're going to restructure the job to do all these things that we're talking about and in terms of15307 that. Um, And so if you go to the next slide, um, but the job as it is as uh, as um Paul Reville talked about, especially at the secondary school level is not structured in a way that's going to work. So adding more teachers, you know, adding more tutoring doesn't change the fact that schedules now don't make time for teacher reflection or even taking a break.
Teachers still work alone. Um, They don't work in teams. They don't share their work. They don't typically collaborate about what each student needs. They don't have time to look at what each student knows and what their progress is, let alone connect with their families or even meet with their students about what they're doing. Um, and of course they're burnt out. So if you go to the next slide, um, we need an approach that busts it up. That changes up what the teaching job looks like. So right now we can be investing those dollars that we have. You know, it's a do now build toward. We can't change it all at once, but we can15367 do things with a vision in mind of what we're moving towards is actually radically different than the one teacher per classroom, than every teacher has the same job over their entire career. Than um, teachers work all by themselves, than school happens only between eight and three. Well actually in Massachusetts, eight and two, uh, in the, in the, in the day and it only happens for 180 days or 20% of the student's life. And no learning counts unless15396 it's for towards credits, unless it's happening in the school delivered by a teacher.
That's the model we need to break out of so we can do some things due now revise the master schedules and calendars to get more time and these things. Um, uh, but we can't do it as an add on band aid kind of thing. It needs to be about, let's redo these schedules so teachers are teaching. In Maryland they passed a law that in seven years, teachers are15423 only to teach about 60%, be in classrooms, about 60% of the day which is, is more than many international places. But I'm here to tell you, you can't get there. Um, you can't afford those sorts of strategies without rethinking the entire model. And so that is, and so if you move to the do not the build toward, which is that I think the next slide will animate yes, the15450 next. If you put in the build toward piece, what are we really working toward? We're working toward really different visions of what the teaching job actually looks like every day for teachers and all of that.
And so, and you can see that incoming teach would be working as in the Banneker School as teaching associates paired with a teacher who's been there for a long time. And at Banneker school, let me tell you, they don't hire all those associate teachers as full time teachers later. It's a wonderful way to figure out who really wants to be in teaching, who really wants to work with students, who really has the potential to become a great teacher. And so you can see they're differentiating those roles, they are actually using their dollars in really different ways, and15493 they are able to provide students with a lot more time and attention because there's two adults in there who are working to love them. So there are ways to get this done. There are ways to pay many teachers so much more, but we have to rethink the overall model in doing that.
Especially in Massachusetts, we have the dollars15511 to infuse into doing pilots and things like that. Um, So I think I know everybody is ready to go. So I won't share more examples. So if you skip, I'll just summarize with my, oh, I do want to say this. So right now, only 1% of the dollars are being spent. As I had said that the districts and spending dollars to increase the teacher pipeline and support and retention and they're spending, I mean 1% not much, they're spending some money on stipended teachers for playing leadership roles. This is a problem in Massachusetts when you look at, and in most of these places. When you look at how teachers earn extra money, it's through stipends that are not part of a comprehensive career path and compensation system where teachers can plan out of and say, you know, I'm going to earn $125,000 like they do in Washington DC because I'm going to take on these different roles and all.
Or I want to work, I want to only work 60% of the time and not over the summer. And this is the kind of job I want to have and I'm going to earn $60,000. Um, adding on stipends gets you additional work for a period of time. But it doesn't change the nature of the teaching job over time. So that's my do, that's the difference between a do now, that's15590 a band aid pop a stipend on for a teacher that's doing extra planning and a do now that's actually building toward a really different sort of structure for teacher compensation where teachers can earn significantly more for playing very different roles in schools. So I really, this is a place where the state role is huge because for districts to break out of the models and modes there15613 in that govern the way spending happens every year every day, every, all the planning, it does take outside support and pressure, especially with all the small districts that you have.
It's not like there are district teams they're sitting around figuring out how do I combine these different sources and what's the optimal way of spending the dollars. Frankly, there talk about a teaching shortage. At the district level we're having massive departure because they all have to go into work every day. And so there's huge, huge folks leaving district department. So if you go to the next slide, which I think is no skip that and the next one. Those are my examples, but we have tons that we could share more with you and you go to the next one. Um, so what can state leaders do? There are policy barriers in the way, and the commissioner and his team have, have worked to remove many of those and to clarify things to create flexibility. But there are rules around time. There are rules around those kinds of things that are embedded in state legislatures that makes some of this innovation difficult.
But this group talked more about the pilots, we can be doing sponsoring pilots and really doing that and creating technical assistance for sharing as the Rennie Center talked about. Um, And elevating. There are places that are doing some amazing things in Massachusetts. You have a history of innovation and supporting them, but actually not much sharing about what's happening15695 or celebrating the bright spots that are happening. Um, districts will need help doing this, support providers and like some of the states are really investing in an infrastructure15706 of technical support providers to help districts and schools figure this out. And then the last thing I would say is helping districts develop processes for monitoring progress and continuously improving.
Um, because we're not going to get this right the first time around and we can't get into the15724 situation which happens so often in education, which is, we try a thing that seems like it's going to work, but it doesn't work the way we thought. But that doesn't mean it wasn't partly a good idea. It probably means we need to work on how we're implementing it. And so having systems to monitor progress and continuously improve is again, something districts don't necessarily have capacity to do. And states can put dollars in legislation that beef that up and provide resources in order to support that. So I'll stop there. And um, and you can all answer questions.
LEWIS - Thank you so much. Thank you. You've all given us tremendous food for thought. Um, I want to read a question that Senator Jehlen submitted she's participating remotely. She said thanks to15769 Professor Reville for pointing out that schools aren't, are not a big enough intervention. And thank you to Professor Kane for acknowledging that schools in high poverty districts have experienced greater score declines. The interventions that he, I assume Mr. Kane recommends are very expensive as you noted. So Senator Jehlen's question is, are the best investments in more instruction or maybe in things like preventing homelessness? And I assume the sort of behind this question is, you know, we do live in a world of constrained resources notwithstanding, you know that we have federal money and the Student Opportunity Act. Um, so I don't know Professor Reville if you want to go first or if anyone else wants to comment on that.
REVILLE - I'll defer to some of my colleagues in the particulars. But I just think in general, you know, we have this tendency to think that there is a shortcut that we can do one or the other that this is an either or proposition and it's it's got to be a both and proposition. I mean if kids can't come to school because they're hungry, or fearful or you know their lives are totally traumatized by a whole variety of factors, then if we don't work15839 on mitigating those, you know, if we don't, I mean look at the districts where we have high turn. Look at Holyoke, there has been a sort of state of quasi receivership of the commonwealth for decades and it's a district with the highest turn rate, because of housing insecurity and housing changes in the housing market in Holyoke, because the migrant community there that have, you know, created problems for the schools.
So the schools can't do their work unless kids come to school and unless they come to school ready to learn. So, you know, it's a task for Solomon to sort out exactly what the proportion is. We don't, as a society, I think we're unfairly expecting schools to remedy all of it. On this 20% intervention, schools are supposed to be15887 our vehicle for creating equity in society. When those of us who have privilege, know that what it takes is really holistic 24/7 365 days a year from prenatal all the way until they're in their 30s to give them what they need, wrap around services and supports and high quality education. And there really isn't a shortcut to doing that. So, we've got to do the best we can to develop a public default system to give as much of that as we possibly we can to young people, which means, you know, this kind of cradle to career pipeline where you have a pipeline of high quality, universally accessible school services, pre K, K-12 and higher education wrapped around with the kinds of opportunities and supports that, those of us who have privilege take for granted. That's what it's going to take overall. And15934 we've got to build public policy that says it's more than just schools to get the job of equity done.
KANE - So, um, so I was just doing some calculations, uh, back, just this, just to maintain the stereotype I guess. So. Um, so as I mentioned, we had looked back at state by15969 state, looking at the states that had big increases in eighth grade NAEP score. So exactly the same scores I was describing using here. Looking at the increases in the state scores and then what happened to, we use the census to say, okay, what what state were people born in and then we looked at their income and educational attainment and other outcomes. And given the relationships we saw like that the states that saw big runups in eighth grade in math scores had big improvements in income and educational attainment and so forth. So I was doing some calculation to say, okay, what would a 17 point decline based on our prior research, what would a 17 point decline mean for people's income later?
And um, the answer is it would be about a 3.8% decline in income over the rest of your career, which may not, certainly 3.8% may not sound, you know, gigantic. Um, but actually if in present value over the course of your career for the average Massachusetts resident that would represent about $49,000. So yes, these interventions are expensive. But just in terms of if we can somehow, you16062 know, reverse these losses, it would be, it would be well worth, you know, the money that that gets spent over the next few years to help students catch up. Just again, we've got to recognize that these aren't just test score declines. I know people have ambivalent, you know, relationships with test scores. Test scores are used for all sorts of, you know, um, negative purposes. What I'm trying to say here is, yeah, but this is not a statement about16099 that. This is a statement about test scores as a indicator for folks' longer term outcomes. And uh, and a 17 point decline is a substantial decline that will have substantial consequences for students in Massachusetts if we don't reverse it. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
reach.
D'ENTREMONT - Um, so I just want to circle back to Senator Jehlen's comment and raise two things. One is, at the very beginning of the pandemic there16136 were16136 remarkable examples of communities coming together stepping forward and making the system work at a time of intense need. At the Rennie Center we documented work that was done in Somerville and how they built up family engagement liaisons and went out into the community to figure out what families needed. That model was led by Mary Skipper who is now the new Superintendent of Boston Public Schools. And as we quote unquote return to normal there's a push where schools are starting to work again in isolation and we can't lose that spirit of community commitment to the education or schooling of all our kids.
You know, Paul mentioned how16172 much of a development and learning of a child happens outside the schoolhouse doors. That means community partners have to be very centered in this conversation. In Boston regarding homelessness there's an organization Higher Ground that works with networks of schools to connect students and families who are homeless to necessary social services because that's something that schools by themselves really struggle to do. So situating our notion of education in the community is really important. Having said that, and there's two things to hold in our understanding that can both be possible. Every single school, Chair Peisch knows this is16204 a hobbyhorse of mine should have a multi tiered system of support. It's a framework, it's established on the Department of Elementary and Secondary, excuse me, Elementary and Secondary Education's website.
There's a whole evidence based strategy for rolling it out, where in a school every single student across all domains get screened, we understand what their needs are, and then we allocate appropriate services at tiers, Tier one, tier two, tier three. Tier one large group, Tier two smaller group, tier three individualized attention. And while a school16238 might not be able to solve homelessness for a particular student and family, what they can do is make sure that interventions are put in place to recognize some of the challenges that student might face while they're in school. It's malpractice that every school does not have an MTSS right now.
MILES - Can I just say one thing about that? Yes, yes, yes. And we're working in districts right now, where it used to be 20% of students were, uh, needed, only 20% of students needed tier two and tier three. Now, we're in districts where 80% of students need tier two and Tier three support. And so this is where the redesign comes in the old ways of like, okay, I'm picking one student out and making sure they have extra support right now. Um, it's not that way in some of our school districts. And so really thinking about what, how this could look and then also investing in the research about what does this cost? Because right now, you know, I'm putting these numbers16301 out and saying, oh, 30% more as a whole lot. There's an argument that we need to be spending four times as much.
You know um, um, Title One only gives, um, About 12% more to high poverty students. And so it's,16315 it's not much, then you're adding a little more. And you know, we're not talking about, we're talking about an increase, but we don't know what it, what it might take to do this. And so there's a real opportunity to learn from this moment um by learning16328 from others about how they're investing in what turns out to be successful. And that's that can be a state role. Your small districts can't do that and even your most sophisticated R&D Department in Boston can't do that work by themselves. There needs to be a unification and a research around that comes out of universities and all sorts of places.
LEWIS - Thank you all. Um and just had one follow up question um and then I'll open it up if anyone else does and then we'll wrap and wrap things up. Um She texted, she says uh appreciates um Professor Reville's ideas for transforming schools and thinking particularly about our personalization strategies. Um we count on test scores to decide what interventions students need and to judge school quality. Would a broader range of measures encourage focus on, for example, student's social skills or schools engagement of families? So obviously she's getting at something, we talked about different times today, the right kind of metrics If you will.
REVILLE - I'll try to be brief. I talked about student success plans and in the districts that are doing that work. For example, I mentioned city of Nashville where we have 80,000 kids on plans. That data is being aggregated up to the district level. So each plan, if it points to housing, if it points to mental health, if it points to after school, you know, access to after school enrichment opportunities, they then take each plan at the school level, aggregate it up to the school level and see generally what the needs are and then at the district level. And then what we recommend is you then have a children's cabinet, which they don't actually in Nashville, but they do in other places that takes that data and that is basically, that's the data that they need to build that cradle to career pipeline.
It tells you where the gaps are in the pipeline that we have this extraordinary mental health need right now. So if you had a children's cabinet that would become a priority for summoning the rest of the community to focus deeply on that particular piece of work. So, yes, I think Senator Jehlen, the answer to the question is that there are there are more diagnostics that we could gather and we do that through the process of personalizing and asking each child and their families what it is they need and trying to meet those needs as a community in a new kind of social compact.
KANE - So I just wanted to add one thing that I just wanted to call out, that is something that I think all five of us have mentioned in different ways, but um,16488 but I think is a really important point. Um, and that is that schools are not going to solve this on on their own. And that, you know, I think there's a role for other organizations outside of schools to play a role even in the short term this summer, um, uh, where if, there are lots of organizations around16516 the state, as I'm sure you all know that provides summer enrichment opportunities for students. If we could uh starting this summer bring them together and have them provide enrichment activities supplemented with instructional periods during the day, that would help. And I think maybe we could continue that even beyond the next couple of summers and into the school year. Other resources around these communities around schools, given that schools are heavily impacted right now, that can help with the catch up.
REVILLE - That's actually the job of the children's cabinet in the community is to bring together. In Boston After School Beyond is like a collaborative action that focuses exclusively on out of school time and summertime. But a broader kind of cabinet brings together the community says, okay, what are the resources we have? What are the needs that kids are expressing? Schools can't do it by themselves. So, we're the rest of the equation in getting the child development, in getting to education with a capital E, not just schools, in getting kids ready to be successful. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Very good. Thank you. Anybody else.
BELSITO - I just, I do want to say thank you and I appreciate there is so much about working in silos and and perhaps as an opportunity not to do it. And this information has me feeling motivated so thank you for this. And anything, any, I'm failing at your name, my dear friend who went last, she said she went last, but I was captivated, what Karen, Karen, if you can, I don't know if we have her slides, but I would love16623 to see.
MILES - Yes, we will, we will distribute the slides.
BELSITO - Thank you so very much.
PEISCH - I had a couple of questions you might have just answered one of them, but you mentioned at the end, were you finished? I'm sorry. Um, you mentioned at the end of your testimony that there were some examples of where these kinds of things are being done. I think we would be very interested in learning about those, you know, where are they, are they particularly if they're local, that would be helpful. Uh, and then the other question is much broader. Um, Change is not easy and you're talking about massive change. And um, I think just of, you know, the, um, the, I think we have something like 400 separate districts when you talk about, you know, regional districts and, and so on not just every, not just one for every single city and town. And trying to um, get everyone to essentially give up a certain amount of control here in this decision making process, I think is what is being suggested. Maybe it's not, maybe you're talking about, um, just using the bully pulpit to try to convince all of the various school committees to move in this16714 direction. But I wondered if any of you have given any thought to how one actually makes changes of this order of magnitude.
KANE - So I'll start. I think if there were these, um, if there were regional intermediaries helping with planning for the summer, they could work across multiple districts in a region. And actually, I don't think we should try to extend this program across every16748 district in in Massachusetts. As we saw, the losses are very unequal like the losses are particularly large in the gateway districts and gateway cities. And so, and in fact, it could backfire if every district in the commonwealth were trying to scale up this summer. My guess is the Newtons, the Arlingtons and the Needhams and Lexingtons might get more than their fair share of the high quality tutors. Um, if we were to do that, try to do this expansion. So at least in the short term, I would be trying to prioritize the highest need areas of this, of the state and and provide regional intermediaries that might be able to support more than one district at a time.
MILES - I would add to that. Um, so we've thought a lot about this pressure urgency causes change. So we got that check urgency. Openness to help, um, check. This is a new world here now where people are, you know, district leaders and school leaders are actually saying, I need some help figuring this out. So check openness to that. Um, you know, uh dollars to do this, check. Um, it's, really the bright spots of like how do we, since we don't, we can't say go to this school and see this redone teaching job. We can't say16840 go to, we can't say go to some of these cities and see the um, you know, the collaboration across cities. But we need to create more of these bright spots and do the cohort learning. Do the sharing across the learning in places where we see things spread what we have is folks that are doing great work that can serve as exemplars um, and we have the ability to share it.
And the other thing we have is often from a state or this happened during race to the top real clarity about three to five priorities for investment where the state is providing encouragement and to some degree cover to do things in new ways. So, you know where you're, and that that happened here when you, when you extended the school day. You know, people were arguing against it, but you're saying, are you, are you, we really not do this if you're getting 30% more, you know, and that that's what is happening in Texas all over the place. Really, we're going to turn down all this money to do this and the same thing is happening around college and um dual enrollment credits and things like that as you're seeing. You have the money there to do it. If you don't do it, you're turning away a real opportunity. So I think um targeted incentives for piloting new ways of doing things and then really showcasing it.
D'ENTREMONT - Yeah, I mean I rephrase a little bit because I think we all agree to change for change sake isn't the goal, right? So what are the outcomes that we're trying to achieve in our education system? And I do think educators recognize and want to also push for the type of change that not only benefits their students, but really makes their jobs more livable. So there's an opportunity there. I think I don't want to be16945 to Pollyannaish, but some of this does come down to approach in messaging and one is back to that message of time. I16951 wholeheartedly in fact, we're sort of working collaborative as organizations, agree with Karen's vision for where teaching needs to go. If you're going to build a new pipeline, it has to be a profession that is attractive to young people that's more flexible, more dynamic, right?
But you know, right now, I was in a district the other day that just informed me that they had a record number of 504s filed for students. That's accommodations for students who are dealing with mental health challenges and other issues like anxiety, right? And the schools do their budgeting16978 in January February and March, right? So to say to them, hey, completely change your staffing plan in the next six weeks to rethink the teaching profession. There is unable, it's impossible,16990 right? But to say what would be a three or five year plan for thinking about stronger professional supports and scheduling and staffing as a new vision for how educators can work in a redesign high school. I think there17005 is some appetite for it, particularly in some really dynamic leaders in places like Salem like Revere that we've worked with.
The other thing I do want to say is, I think there's levels here, right. Some of this stuff is actually really pretty straightforward and isn't perhaps the most exciting or radical stuff, but should be done right. Really working with districts to make sure that they all have a high quality curriculum that is being used. I find firstly shocking that 20% of teachers when studied are providing materials that are not at grade level for the students and what they should be learning. Second are things that are big shifts, but schools really need help with. So mental health supports. There's a consortium right now, the mental health, I'm going to get, but the school based mental health consortium led by John Crocker in Methuen. I'll follow up with the committee to get the right title. But it has 171 districts that have voluntarily signed on to be part of this consortium to share resources on how to support students' mental health.
Because most districts and schools say we weren't trained and prepared to do this. We don't know what to do. We want really strong guidance that we can follow. And then the final thing is, okay, what would actually mean to reinvent what schooling looks like? And that I think is hard to do all at once. But I totally refined that if we were to create some space, what education lacks is research and development. Where again, leading educators could actually step into that space and say, you know, we want to be the ones to try this out and test it and see if it works. And then it's my experience school leaders and educators are most influenced by their peers. And if they see it happening in other districts, they'll start adopting it.
REVILLE - Sorry, I spent17111 most of my career trying to answer the question how to bring about change here. And and so it's a really tall order. But I think I think urgency and clarity on what the problem is. And I think that's why we have an opportunity. There's a window of opportunity here, both in a political sense and in17127 a cultural sense in terms of the way we do things. And I think what we'll get through that window in this moment are changes that are being proposed to an exhausted field. We've all acknowledged that but that speak to immediate problems like the mental health crisis. That's why we like the success planning because it's a needle that pulls a very long thread. The other things that I would say at second Tom's notion that we17150 have to differentiate, we have to go where need is greatest.
So setting priorities in doing that is critically important. As others have said, incentivizing whether it's adding your own dollars to the dollars that are spent from the federal government or17168 the local commitments to doing things that you think are good ideas. For example, we did in race to the top. We created an opportunity for a handful of districts to develop basically children's cabinets that I've been talking about and they would get money if they did it. And I think we could, we could, we could do that. And then finally, lastly, it's just broadening the concept of if we want to achieve equity and we know schools are a central part of that, but it's going to take this much broader community wide effort to do for all children what all children need in order to be successful. And that's going to take calling everybody to the table and we're going to, we're going to support the building of mechanisms and help nurture and make that happen rather than just be all about schooling. And that goes to the, you know, the public's general conception, which is from another era of17221 what schooling ought to do and helping to change that in the way that you talk about it and act on it I think is important.
MCGONAGLE - First I want to thank our two chairs for putting, um, you experts in front of us, um, to talk about solutions to our educational issues. Um, To you, Karen, how do I go back to my school superintendent tomorrow and say I was at an incredible hearing today, I met with some of the most brilliant minds on education, how do we get you to come to our district especially to show us where we're17268 spending our money if we're spending it the right way? We are a gateway city. We get an infusion of money from the SOA. Um, I would love to know that we are doing everything the right way.
MILES - And also, you know, the state can be being ways for17298 folks to go through that process. We've done this in the states and my learning from it is that there's some, some work you can do, webinars, but a lot of the times, you do the webinar and then you got to go deeper in that place. But, but still, I do think we've got a lot of tools and supports and questions to be asking. SHOW NON-ESSENTIAL DIALOGUE
Thank you all for being here. Well, I think we've gone later than we ask you to stay. So we very much appreciate the time that you've given us, um, this afternoon and all of the important information. And thank you to the committee members who stuck with us all all day. And we look forward to continuing the conversation. So thank thank you all very much and we'll be in touch happy thanksgiving.
Yes. The hearing is now closed.
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