Student Involvement in Community Activities Related to Educational Programs

The development of the object of study of citizenship education material is not fixed in classrooms carried out in formal schools, but can also be carried out in community activities known as socio-cultural citizenship. This is the purpose of this study by describing the application of civic education in the social sphere, namely the involvement of students from various universities who are members of the Atap Senja Community School. The method used is a case study on student involvement in community activities related to educational programs carried out in the community. The results of this study indicate that the concept of civic civic education can be carried out by involving community civic education that develops in the community, namely the Atap Senja Community School in Yogyakarta. This community consists of students from various universities in Yogyakarta. Activities carried out by providing learning assistance and attention to the development of morality for children who do not receive formal education at school. Funding for activities carried out by this community comes from membership fees or what has been called volunteers. The activities carried out by this community are proof of the participation of young citizens in changing the educational conditions of school dropouts, with various kinds of financial limitations. This can be interpreted as a form of civic engagement with the state, because indirectly these community activities will also affect and improve the conditions of education in Indonesia.

“The Basic Minimal Skills”

This chapter looks at the impact of segregated housing and schools on the performance of Black children on tests of academic skills, finding them lagging far behind White children. It shows that majority-Black school districts receive significantly less funding for education than majority-White districts. It then discusses in detail the 1973 Supreme Court case of San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, brought by Demetrio Rodriguez and other Hispanic parents of children in the Edgewood district of San Antonio, Texas, whose schools received less funding than majority-White districts because of state laws that based school funding largely on property taxes. Statistics showed that poor and largely Hispanic and Black districts with low property values could not match the funding of affluent White districts. The Supreme Court ruled 5–4 against this challenge, with Justice Lewis Powell writing for the majority in stating that Texas (and other states) need provide minority students only with “the basic minimal skills” to participate in civic affairs, with a passionate dissent by Justice Thurgood Marshall. The chapter then returns to Detroit, where Black students came in last in the nation in test scores; more than two-thirds could not even grasp fundamental skills in reading and arithmetic. This barrier to advanced education and good jobs stems from the systemic racism that places Black children far behind Whites in school readiness, raising the question: How can Blacks catch up with Whites when they start so far behind?

How to Reform Without Reforming: School District Racial Composition and Pennsylvania’s “Fair” Funding Formula

In the United States, researchers have documented persistent racial disparities in school funding for decades. Drawing on evidence from a recent policy change in Pennsylvania, this article contributes to research on the role of state governments in limiting or expanding racial disparities in K-12 education funding by examining differences in the racial composition of school districts positively and negatively impacted by a technical provision lawmakers inserted into a newly created formula for distributing state equalization aid. We find that negatively-impacted districts enroll a substantially higher number of Black and Latinx students, receive less state aid, have lower levels of state and local funding, and have lower spending levels than positively-impacted districts with otherwise similar financial needs. These findings suggest how state lawmakers can exacerbate racial inequities when pursuing reforms ostensibly focused on equity, and these results have implications for both policymakers and educational leaders focused on racial justice.

Quantifying the Supply Response of Private Schools to Public Policies

School policies that cause a large demand shift between public and private schooling may cause some private schools to enter or exit the market. We study how the policy effects differ under a fixed versus changing market structure in the context of a public school funding reform in New York City. We find evidence of a reduction in private schools in response to the reform. Using a model of demand for and supply of private schooling, we estimate that 20 percent of the reform’s effect on school enrollments came from increased private school exit and reduced private school entry. (JEL H75, I21, I22, I28)

The Judicialization of American Education

Judicialization is the term most commonly used to describe the supervening authority of the courts in virtually every sphere of public life in liberal democratic states. In the United States, where judicialization is most advanced, political and administrative decisions by agencies and officials at every level of government are subject to constitutional scrutiny, and thus to the oversight and substituted decision-making authority of unelected members of the federal judiciary. The judicialization of American education is associated with the judicial review of administrative decisions by public school officials in lawsuits filed in the federal courts by or on behalf of students alleging due process and other Constitutional rights violations. So defined, the judicialization of American education has been facilitated by a number of legal and social developments in the Civil Rights Era, including the ascription of limited Constitutional rights to minors in public schools, the expansion of government agency liability, and the ensuing proliferation of lawsuits under Section 1983. Judicialization has been criticized for subjecting routine administrative decisions to complex and costly procedural regimentation, for distorting social relations by subjecting them to legal oversight, and for flooding the courts with frivolous lawsuits. The causes and outcomes of the judicialization of American education present a complex and mixed picture, however. The U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity’s Legal Services Program has played a central role in judicialization by providing legal resources to confront racial injustice in the punishment of students and in school funding.

Learning loss due to school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic

Suspension of face-to-face instruction in schools during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to concerns about consequences for students’ learning. So far, data to study this question have been limited. Here we evaluate the effect of school closures on primary school performance using exceptionally rich data from The Netherlands (n ≈ 350,000). We use the fact that national examinations took place before and after lockdown and compare progress during this period to the same period in the 3 previous years. The Netherlands underwent only a relatively short lockdown (8 wk) and features an equitable system of school funding and the world’s highest rate of broadband access. Still, our results reveal a learning loss of about 3 percentile points or 0.08 standard deviations. The effect is equivalent to one-fifth of a school year, the same period that schools remained closed. Losses are up to 60% larger among students from less-educated homes, confirming worries about the uneven toll of the pandemic on children and families. Investigating mechanisms, we find that most of the effect reflects the cumulative impact of knowledge learned rather than transitory influences on the day of testing. Results remain robust when balancing on the estimated propensity of treatment and using maximum-entropy weights or with fixed-effects specifications that compare students within the same school and family. The findings imply that students made little or no progress while learning from home and suggest losses even larger in countries with weaker infrastructure or longer school closures.

Do Teacher Assistants Improve Student Outcomes? Evidence From School Funding Cutbacks in North Carolina

This article examines the influence of teacher assistants and other personnel on outcomes for elementary school students during a period of recession-induced cutbacks in teacher assistants. Using panel data from North Carolina, we exploit the state’s unique system of financing its local public schools to identify the causal effects of teacher assistants, controlling for other staff, on measures of student achievement. We find consistent evidence of positive effects of teacher assistants, an understudied staffing category, on student performance in reading and math. We also find larger positive effects of teacher assistants on achievement outcomes for students of color and students in high-poverty schools than for White students and students in more affluent schools. We conclude that teacher assistants are a cost-effective means of raising student achievement, especially in reading.