| | | | |  | | By Jessica Calefati | With help from Bianca Quilantan and Michael Stratford HARD WORK LIES AHEAD: The Biden administration focused relentlessly in the first half of the academic year on reopening schools shuttered because of the Covid-19 pandemic. But Education Secretary Miguel Cardona acknowledged in a speech last week that this achievement alone is insufficient for students to thrive. The nation must also nurture students' mental health, he stressed. — Cardona called on schools to use federal pandemic relief funds to hire more counselors and social workers and embed them in their day-to-day operations alongside teachers. "Every child must have access to a mental health professional, whether through their school or through a community-based partnership," he said. — And he's not the only one sounding the alarm. In December, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory to call attention to a "youth mental health crisis," and two months before that, three children's medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, declared a national state of emergency in children's mental health. — School leaders on the front lines of the crisis told your host they're taking it upon themselves to bring in mental health specialists and plan to prioritize children's emotional health, not just academics, in the months ahead. IT'S MONDAY, JAN. 31. WELCOME TO MORNING EDUCATION. I'm interested in documents and data that illuminate problems in our schools you feel aren't getting enough attention. Have something I should see? You can reach me at jcalefati@politico.com. You can also contact my colleagues: Lauraine Genota ( lgenota@politico.com), Juan Perez Jr. ( jperez@politico.com), Bianca Quilantan ( bquilantan@politico.com) and Michael Stratford ( mstratford@politico.com). And don't forget to follow us on Twitter: @Morning_Edu and @POLITICOPro.
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| | | HOW DID WE GET HERE?: The deterioration of youth wellbeing started in the earliest days of the pandemic and hasn't abated since. — A new analysis of research across nearly a dozen countries including the U.S. found widespread anxiety and depression among children and teens at the start of the public health crisis. The study authors pinned the symptoms on school closures and found they were exacerbated by more screen time and less physical activity. Another paper focused on New York City youth found visits to emergency rooms for suicidal ideation, suicide attempts or self-harm in the spring of 2020 were twice as high as the previous year. — Conversely, requests to investigate child abuse allegations have plummeted, researchers noted, likely because teachers spent so much less time with students and had fewer chances to notice the signs of physical violence. — A group of doctors who treat young people at Children's National Hospital here in Washington say they have observed not just mental health challenges, but also unhealthy weight gain, food insecurity, immunization delay and soaring rates of new-onset type 2 diabetes. "These immediate, visible consequences of school closures are harbingers of long-term outcomes, including decreased life expectancy for U.S. school children," the doctors wrote in a recent editorial for the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.
| | | SCHOOL LEADERS WEIGH IN: Principals and superintendents your host spoke with said they understood the gravity of the challenges ahead. One had already done as Cardona suggested and used federal pandemic relief aid to expand students' access to counselors. Shelby High School Principal John Gies arranged for staff from an Ohio mental health clinic to see his students during school hours. And he's glad he did. — "The anxiety levels we're seeing are through the roof," said Gies, whose rural district is situated halfway between Cleveland and Columbus. "Disagreements among friends used to be minor, now they cause fights. An inappropriate comment used to be ignored or talked through, and now something like that can cause a kid to snap." — Aaron Eyler, a New Jersey high school principal, lamented the disintegration of students' "frustration threshold" since the start of the pandemic. Coping strategies have long been modeled in the physical classroom but can't be taught as easily over Zoom, said Eyler, who also serves on the board of the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors' Association. — In Mike Simeck's affluent district on the North Shore of Chicago, students who had never before been on administrators' radar are acting out. The superintendent's take away: students' mental health must be addressed before schools can make progress catching up on all the learning students lost over the last two years. "What the pandemic has finally done is made clear that social and emotional wellbeing is the building block of everything else."
| | | EXCLUSIVE POLL ON COVID AND SCHOOLS: Asked how their communities should respond to a surge in coronavirus infections, more than 40 percent of likely voters said they want schools to take steps to limit the spread of disease — even if those measures inferefere with students' learning, according to a survey conducted by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy in partnership with APM Research Lab and obtained exclusively by POLITICO. — Among those who said in-person instruction should be prioritized, the poll found respondents were evenly split on whether schools should require children to wear masks or not. The survey was fielded Nov. 30 to Dec. 7, just as the Omicron variant was taking hold in the U.S. — The poll also found that a larger share of voters want parents of school children to influence school health policy than the share who want to see state public health agencies or teachers making those decisions. Fewer than 1 in 4 respondents said they wanted governors or state legislators calling the shots, even though local lawmakers are often the ones setting policy. — "These findings should be a wakeup call for public officials," said Craig Helmstetter, managing partner of APM Research Lab. "They need to do a better job communicating with the public about their roles and responsibilities. — Black respondents were the most likely to say state public health agencies should heavily influence decisions that impact schools. — Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, a public health advocacy group , took note of the more than 53 percent of independent voters who said parents should heavily influence their school's response to a coronavirus outbreak. It was that same parents-first mentality that helped sweep Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin into office and will likely influence the upcoming midterm elections. — "If large numbers of independents buy into the parental choice arguments being made by Republicans, they could sway future elections ," Castrucci said. "I'm a parent. I know my kid. But personally, I don't think that qualifies me to make educational decisions that impact everyone's kids."
| | | | STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING: What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president's ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | | EXCLUSIVE: REDEFINING RURAL HIGHER ED: The Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges today unveiled a report that outlines a first-of-its-kind metric to determine rurality beyond a college's location. The research and advocacy group is challenging Capitol Hill leaders to rethink how they evaluate and fund rural and regional colleges. — AARC identified 1,087 rural-serving institutions, often called RSIs, in a tool that uses a new metric to define the institutions. The report, first given to POLITICO, shows the intersectionality of RSIs: One-third of historically Black colleges and universities, 18 percent of high Hispanic-enrolling institutions, 93 percent of Tribal colleges and universities, and 94 percent of high native-enrolling institutions are rural-serving. — Other key findings: 83 percent of postsecondary institutions located in low employment counties are RSIs. More than two-thirds of the institutions located in persistent poverty counties are also RSIs. The institutions have smaller average enrollments compared to non-rural-serving colleges, but they also enroll a large share of Pell Grant-eligible students and a higher percentage of Native American/Alaska Native students. — ARRC Policy Director Vanessa Sansone said a better definition for RSIs could help spur policy advocacy similar to what's happened for HSIs, tribal colleges and universities, or historically Black Colleges and Universities, which have federal designations. "Similar to those particular institutional designations and classifications, we think there's an opportunity to have that conversation," she said, adding that it could highlight the funding needs for "institutions who are truly serving these rural areas." NEW APPROACH TO OVERSIGHT FOR COLLEGES THAT ENROLL VETERANS: The American Legion and EducationCounsel, an education consulting firm, today are rolling out a new risk-based model for how state regulators should oversee colleges that enroll GI Bill recipients. — Key context: Starting in October, all state approving agencies — the state regulators that decide which colleges are eligible to accept GI Bill funding — will be required to review colleges using a risk-based approach as part of a bipartisan law Congress passed in 2020. — EducationCounsel, along with the National Association of State Approving Agencies, jointly developed the model and tested it in six states over the past two years. They say their approach, backed by the American Legion, is now ready for primetime across the country. — The model uses several factors to assess a college's risk to veterans and taxpayers , such as graduation rate, loan default rates, post-graduate earnings and the percent of revenue that a college spends on instruction. The goal is for regulators to shift their limited resources toward more aggressively reviewing the riskiest institutions. — The American Legion and EducationCounsel are also calling on other state and federal regulators of colleges, such as accreditors and the Education Department, to embrace a similar approach to oversight. ( Read their policy recommendations here. ) "This pilot has demonstrated that risk-based, outcomes-focused reviews are feasible, effective for regulators and students, and can be realistically implemented, right now," Nathan Arnold, senior advisor at EducationCounsel, said in a statement.
| | | — Florida International University has promoted two administrators into senior leadership roles. Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs Elizabeth Béjar will serve as interim provost, executive vice president, and chief operating officer effective March 1. She will be the first Hispanic and first alumna to serve as provost. Associate Vice President for Business and Finance Aime Martinez will become interim chief financial officer and vice president for finance and administration.
| | | 'So broken down': Teachers, students and families caught in the middle of Youngkin's mask order. The Washington Post Over 1,000 Wichita school workers out because of COVID-19. Associated Press University mistakenly tells 5,500 students they won huge scholarships. The New York Times Michigan districts are running out of snow days. What happens now? Chalkbeat | | | | Follow us on Twitter | | | | Follow us | | | | |
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