Failure Rates Among Students Fuel Calls for Face to Face Teaching
Most schools hoped this fall would see students make up academic ground lost last spring when the pandemic hit. Instead, districts are looking for ways to reverse plummeting grades and attendance among students learning at home.
Alarming failure rates among Texas students fuel
calls to get them back into classrooms
By Aliyya Swaby - October 23, 2020
As fall progresses, Texas public school superintendents are realizing that virtual instruction simply is not working for thousands of students across the state.
Report cards from the first weeks of the school year show more students than last year failing at least one class. Students are turning in assignments late, if at all; skipping days to weeks of virtual school; and falling behind on reading, educators and parents report. Many parents say they’re exhausted from playing the role of at-home teacher, and some students without support at home are struggling to keep track of their daily workload with limited outside help.
The problems are concentrated among students trying to learn from home, more than 3 million of the state’s 5.5 million public school students, according to administrators’ accounts. The trends are adding urgency to calls for getting more students back into classrooms as quickly as possible.
By now, many school districts hoped their students would be making up academic ground lost last spring, when the pandemic caused them to shut down classrooms. Texas is mandating that districts get back to normal this fall and prepare students for upcoming state standardized tests. Schools dialed up the intensity of their classes — and then an alarming number of students began failing.
As the first grading period came to a close, some administrators began temporarily backpedaling from their initial insistence on academic rigor. They gave teachers the message: Do what you can to make sure kids pass.
Judson Independent School District, in San Antonio, added a note to its grading handbook allowing principals to “grant any exceptions” and “extend grace” to students, letting them make up late work or drop assignments. “We understand that connectivity issues, lack of devices, technological issues with the Student Portal, Canvas, and electronic books may impede a student from submitting their assignments in a timely manner,” the handbook now reads.
Cathryn Mitchell, principal of Austin ISD’s Gorzycki Middle School, sent an email in early October, obtained by The Texas Tribune, alerting all staff to a “campus-wide dilemma.” Almost 25% of students were failing at least one class, including 200 failing more than one subject. She attributed the failures to steep technology learning curves, lack of access to devices and Wi-Fi, shifting reopening guidelines and anxiety over the health risks of on-campus learning.
The email implored teachers to exhaust “all measures to assist the student before failing them,” including working with them one on one, emailing or calling parents, and setting up Zoom parent conferences. For teachers unable to do everything to help a failing student before the grading deadline, Mitchell wrote, “we would ask that you gift the student with a 70.” Texas’ “no pass, no play” rule prohibits students pulling less than a 70 in one or more classes in a marking period from playing sports or participating in extracurricular activities for three weeks.
“We know that some students are taking advantage of the situation or have procrastinated to get themselves into this position. There is no question about that,” Mitchell wrote. “But we also know that we have asked a great deal of them these first five weeks. ...This will not be the norm every six-weeks."
Austin ISD officials told the Tribune that school leaders are “committed to high standards of academic rigor” and working to “better serve” students with low averages or incomplete grades based on their individual needs. They did not respond to questions about whether Mitchell’s approach was supported by the district or whether 25% is an average failure number across the district this marking period. According to KVUE-TV, about 11,700 Austin ISD students are failing at least one class this year, a 70% increase from last year.
As the extent of students’ struggles become clear, parents and superintendents are increasingly determined to get students back to school, the pendulum of their worries swinging away from health risks and toward the risks of students not learning at all. “Districts are starting to feel some real internal pressure as educators,” said Joy Baskin, legal services director at the Texas Association of School Boards. “If they feel that there’s enough momentum around getting everyone back, I think that’s their preference.”
State data on COVID-19 in schools is limited and full of gaps, but it points toward low student infection rates, encouraging some experts. Experts say layering policies such as sanitization, social distancing and masks is needed to reduce the risk of transmission. Despite outcries from some teachers and parents, dozens of school districts have nixed their virtual learning options altogether and brought nearly all students back to classrooms.
According to the San Antonio Express-News, at least one of those districts is attempting to require all remote learners with failing grades to return in person — violating recently updated state guidance. “Discontinuing remote instruction in a way that only targets struggling students is not permitted,” the updated guidance reads.
Texas school districts don’t have much time to get students back on track. This academic year, the Texas Education Agency will resume strict sanctions on schools and districts with consistently low student standardized test scores after pausing those penalties last spring. And there are dollars at stake, with state funding tied to student attendance. Districts have reported losing track of thousands of students, including some of their most vulnerable, who haven’t logged into virtual classes or responded to phone calls and door knocks. According to state leaders, schools that are open for in-person instruction have seen higher levels of enrollment than those with only virtual education.
San Antonio’s Northside ISD has not changed its expectations for virtual students, despite seeing higher failure rates, said Superintendent Brian Woods. Since many students learning from home are low income, Black and Hispanic, lowering academic standards for those students could end up deepening existing inequities, he said.
Instead, the district has put together a call team to reach out to low-performing virtual learners and urge them to come back to campus. Just under 45% of students are learning from classrooms in the second grading period, up from less than 25% earlier in the fall, when the district slowly phased students in. “We’re not going to fix it by only taking the good grades or dropping half the grades,” Woods said. “We’ve got to dig in and look more at the root cause. We know what it is: There’s kids who need to be in the building, period.”
In Brazosport ISD, where 78% of students are learning in classrooms, a quarter of virtual learners are failing two or more classes, compared with 8% of at-school students. The district is “not dropping our expectations for at-home students,” said Superintendent Danny Massey. But with coronavirus cases dropping in Brazoria County and district officials being transparent about COVID-19 cases on campuses, more parents are gradually choosing to send their students back. Some Austin ISD parents are considering sending their children back later this fall, once the district returns to in-person instruction that more closely resembles a regular classroom. When the district reopened, it had students sitting in classrooms but learning virtually. The state halted that approach. Rosemary Wynn, an Austin ISD parent, thinks her eighth and ninth grade sons may get more out of learning in person once it includes more face-to-face instruction.
She and her husband had a stern talk with their O. Henry Middle School eighth grader earlier this fall after realizing he had not opened about 100 emails from his teachers, except one from his football coach. He was previously a straight-A student, but at one point his grade in one class had fallen to 29, she said. “Children don’t know how to read email. That is not part of their repertoire,” she said, with exasperation. “I haven’t had a single teacher reach out to say, ‘your kids’ grades this, your kids’ grades that.’ I think the whole way this is set up is a recipe for disaster.”
Kelly Sanders and her son Bizuayehu Crouther, a 14-year-old at Austin High School in Austin ISD, regularly debate whether he should return later this fall. Bizuayehu has dyslexia and dysgraphia, which impacts his ability to write clearly by hand, and he’s found virtual learning much easier. “I do not want to go back,” he said.
Sanders is concerned that the second grading period will be even more academically rigorous and that her son will not be able to keep up virtually. “I’m happy that [he is] making really good grades right now, but I’m concerned that it still isn’t as rigorous as the classes would be if it were in person. If at some point he has to take a standardized test on the material, I don’t know what that looks like,” she said.
But for other parents, the decision is easy. Single parent Renee Schalk chose to keep her 17-year-old son and 2-year-old triplets home from Georgetown schools and doesn’t regret it. “My children are children of color,” said Schalk, who is Black. “I don’t want them subjected to COVID-19. … We’re not doing enough in this state, we’re not doing anything in this country to make it safe.”
Angelina Allegrini, a 14-year-old ninth grader in San Antonio’s North East ISD, said her grades suffered in the beginning of the year as she got accustomed to the variety of programs teachers used for online learning and the exhaustion of staring at a screen for three to four hours a day. After a few weeks, and a little leniency from teachers, she pulled them back up.
But the social, extroverted teenager still felt she was missing something. “I wanted to try to get to know people in my class. I saw some of them on the screen, but that’s not the same,” she said.
On Monday, after several weeks of learning from home, Angelina walked into her high school for the first time this year. Her mother, Cherise Rohr Allegrini, a prominent epidemiologist in San Antonio, said she was “not thrilled” about her daughter’s decision but predicted it wouldn’t last long, with a surge in COVID-19 cases likely on the horizon. “I think they’re probably going to change and close schools in a couple of weeks or so,” she said. “We’re going to start seeing outbreaks on campuses.”
Wi-Fi Buses
As more students return to school in person, some school districts are having to trim back programs that deployed buses as hot spots in neighborhoods for students with little or no internet access.
Wi-Fi buses were a quick solution for student internet access, but as schools reopen they need their buses back
"Wi-Fi buses were a quick solution for student internet access, but as schools reopen they need their buses back" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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The sight became familiar across Texas after the coronavirus pandemic abruptly closed schools last spring — empty school buses rigged with Wi-Fi routers sat in parking lots and neighborhoods, allowing students to tap into free internet to do their schoolwork.
But with more students returning to in-person classes, some school districts now need to get those buses back on the road while still figuring out how to provide internet access to families needing it.
The Austin Independent School District has been deploying 261 Wi-Fi-equipped buses across 40 neighborhoods with little or no home internet access, said Eduardo Villa, a district spokesperson. Drivers not needed to haul loads of students to school and away sports events stationed their buses as internet access points on weekdays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m, said Kris Hafezizadeh, the district’s executive director of transportation.
Austin's schools reopened for in-person classes Monday. While bus drivers will still have Wi-Fi duty, the hours will be squeezed between morning and afternoon routes — roughly 4-hour shifts in the middle of the school day.
Families relying on the buses for internet will now have to request free hotspot devices from the district, which has about 8,000 of them left to give out, Villa said.
Wi-Fi bus programs were an affordable, quick-turn solution to long-standing problems getting students in rural and underserved neighborhoods access to the internet.
Students learned which spots in their homes were within Wi-Fi reach. Parents called bus drivers and asked them to please move the bus a few feet closer, or shift a bit to the left so their child’s’ school-provided laptop could catch the signal. Some parents packed sandwich lunches and spent hours in the car with their kids parked next to what was a hulking yellow internet router.
But it was meant to be temporary, internet access experts said.
“I look at it as very much exactly like a band-aid type of solution. You stop the initial bleeding until you can figure out what the long term plan is,” said Brian Shih, principal network consultant at the EducationSuperHighway, an organization focused on bringing internet access to public school classrooms.
Southside ISD, in the more sparsely populated southern reaches of San Antonio, initially reopened its schools at one-quarter capacity. For now, the district can still spare buses and staff for the Wi-Fi program, but that won’t be the case soon, said Jesse Berlanga, the district’s transportation director.
Of the district's 41 buses, 15 have been serving as hot spots. As schools allow more students to return to class in person, the district will have to cut hours and may cut the program to the five most popular bus hotspots, Berlanga said.
At its peak, the program served about 180 households a day, but the number hovered in the 70s over the last week, he said.
Students in households with limited or nonexistent internet access were among the first group, along with students with disabilities and English language learners, given the option to return to schools in person.
The district ordered mobile hot spots for households that chose to stick with online learning, but 130 internet-less households are still on the waiting list for a device. For now, the district will hand-deliver printed learning packets to students’ homes.
But even with the mobile hot spots in hand, some students will be left out. The hot spots work well in urban and suburban districts with plenty of cellphone towers. But they’re virtually useless in rural areas with no towers to capture a signal.
“I think that's probably the most important thing to understand, especially with school connectivity, is that every community is going to be different and require different solutions,” said Jennifer Harris, state program director for Connected Nation Texas.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/10/08/schools-internet-buses/.
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Texas is Revising its Sex Education Standards
The State Board of Education is taking up the first revision of sex ed curriculum in more than 20 years. LGBTQ students say they're being excluded again.
Texas is revising its sex education standards, but they'll likely remain silent on LGBTQ issues
"Texas is revising its sex education standards, but they'll likely remain silent on LGBTQ issues" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
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By the age of 16, Atticus Sandlin has become a sex education expert.
As a student at Hebron High School in Lewisville Independent School District, in the suburbs of Dallas, he built what he calls a "sex ed mini career," educating himself through internet research, conferences and advocacy groups — then turning around and educating his peers.
Last school year, he says, students would find him in the halls to ask questions like, "What is a hymen?" or "Does this count as sex?" He handed out condoms, pamphlets and dental dams to anyone who asked, and highlighted the importance of respecting other people's boundaries. He even taught sexual education classes specifically for LGBTQ students through Youth First, a program in North Texas for queer teens.
Texas does not require public schools to teach LGBTQ issues in sex education, an omission that frustrates Sandlin, who is bisexual and a transgender boy. "There are some queer people who don't do their own research, and they don't get information from school or any resources," said Sandlin, now a high school junior at public iSchool Virtual Academy of Texas. "It's important that they get that information even when they don't have access to it or it's not safe for them to get access anywhere else."
This week, the Texas State Board of Education, which determines what millions of public school students learn, is expected to approve new standards outlining how schools should teach health and sexual education — the first revisions to that statewide policy since 1997. At an initial public hearing this June, many students, teachers and advocates asked the board to require that students learn about sexual orientation and gender identity, especially since LGBTQ students are more likely to be discriminated against and bullied.
One study conducted by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law estimates that as many as 158,500 LGBT youth live in Texas, about 2% of the state's youth population.
But the final proposal, set for debate and a preliminary vote this week with final approval expected in November, still excludes any direct mention of LGBTQ issues.
Over the last several years, Texas Republican leaders have targeted LGBTQ rights and protections. In 2017, they unsuccessfully pushed a policy preventing transgender people from using public bathrooms that match their gender identity, and last year they encouraged an investigation into whether a mother supporting her child's gender transition was committing "child abuse."
At its June hearing on the new policy, the 15-member elected education board — 10 Republicans and 5 Democrats — split down partisan lines, with Democrats pushing for explicit inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity and Republicans largely opposed.
"There likely will not be consensus on this," said Keven Ellis, a Lufkin Republican, who chairs the board, at the June meeting. He told The Texas Tribune in an e-mail that he supported teaching about "different types of bullying, including bullying for sexual reasons."
All Texas public schools must offer health education for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, but health education is optional in high school. The board is considering requiring all seventh and eighth grade health teachers to include lessons about contraceptive methods for the first time, now only a requirement in high school health.
Schools are not required to teach sexual education, but those that do must stress abstinence as the preferred choice for unmarried young people and spend more time on it than any other sexual behavior. Parents can opt their children out of any lesson they want.
Dee Lepine, a 17-year-old senior at Timber Creek High School in Keller ISD, remembers eighth grade health teachers showing students pictures of people with sexually transmitted diseases and telling them not to have sex. That was the last health class Lepine, who is nonbinary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, took. There was no mention in the class of sexual orientation or gender identity.
"I think just knowing that having attractions when you're a teenager is normal and you shouldn't scare kids with scary images," Lepine said. "It's really important that they don't feel like, you know, a freak, because everyone deals with it."
Lepine remembers learning the details of sex education from the media and friends, who were similarly uneducated and confused.
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Sandlin can clearly remember one of the most uncomfortable assignments he received in a public school sexual education class. Each eighth grade student was given a cup with liquid and told to pour it back and forth among other students' cups.
"At the end of it, they put drops in all of our cups. If your cup turned purple, you had a [sexually transmitted infection]," said Sandlin. "I just remember it being awkward. I was like, are they really trying to get us to simulate sex?"
And most important, the educator at the front of the classroom didn't include very many lessons that would apply to LGBTQ teens. Sandlin sat in the class with a few friends taking notice of the gaps in the lessons, like the statement that all sex risks pregnancy, which is untrue for many queer people.
In high school, whenever Sandlin realized a class had a substitute teacher, he would run to the front of the room to explain his chosen name and pronouns, which differ from the name and gender he was given at birth. Some teachers made a point of ignoring his requests — an indication, he believes, that comprehensive health education classes would be just as useful for those outside of the queer community.
"Pretty much every queer person I know has experienced some level of bullying or just plain ignorance," he said. "One time, I had a teacher straight up say, 'I'm not going to call you that.'" As he's gotten more confident, Sandlin has reported such incidents to counselors, but said it's scary to go up against a teacher.
The State Board of Education debated the importance of adding gender identity and sexual orientation into the standards in June, and a few Republicans suggested strengthening the lessons around bullying, making it clear that students know that they should respect everyone. But they largely opposed making direct references to LGBTQ students.
"If we start delineating things, we need to go back and make sure we include everybody else," said Ken Mercer, a San Antonio Republican on the board.
"If we can save a life because we include this and we allow these students to find that there is no shame in their gender identity, isn't it worth it to you? It's worth it to me," said Ruben Cortez, a Brownsville Democrat on the board. "Hearing and knowing of teens that have [killed themselves] ... because of some of the things they deal with, if we in Texas have the opportunity to correct some of this and save one life, I think it's worth it."
Georgina Pérez, an El Paso Democrat on the board, said including LGBTQ students in the health standards would parallel work the board has already done creating standards for Mexican American and African American studies courses over the last couple of years. "LGBTQI is an identity, an identity that's not reflected in any of our curriculum," she said.
"Racism is a lot bigger problem than the sexual thing as far as people being picked on for different things," responded Pat Hardy, a Fort Worth Republican on the board.
The state sets minimum standards for what should be taught, but districts are allowed to include additional topics they feel would benefit their students. Some districts, including Austin ISD and Fort Worth ISD, have adjusted their own health and sex education policies to include lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation.
Conservative groups such as Texas Values have headed the fight against these policies, considering them pro-LGBT "indoctrination" and urging parents to opt their children out of sexuality courses. Left-leaning advocacy groups such as Texas Freedom Network, Planned Parenthood and the Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy have pushed in the other direction.
Sock Trimarco, who is "queer in most senses of the word" and uses gender-neutral pronouns, has taken sex ed workshops through Planned Parenthood after learning abstinence-only sex education in the online public school Texas Connections Academy.
The 17-year-old shies away from coming out as transgender and nonbinary in school or out in the world, worried about people "pushing back or being upset" or even resorting to violence. "I have to think in my head and say, 'Should I introduce myself as my deadname, or should I introduce myself as my name?'" Trimarco said, referring to their previous name.
Sex education that includes LGBTQ students benefits everyone, they said. "To teach people not only that it's OK to be you, but it's also OK for other people to be queer."
Disclosure: Texas Freedom Network and Planned Parenthood have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/08/texas-state-board-education-sex-ed/.
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