April 26, 2021 • 20 mins
This week President Biden will reach his first 100 days in office and polls show that generally, the public approves of the job he is doing so far. 53% approve of his overall performance with the highest marks coming for his handling of the pandemic and the lowest marks for what is happening at the southern border. More people also approve of the administration’s priorities such as Biden’s infrastructure plan. Ginger Gibson, deputy Washington digital editor at NBC News, joins us for this and a preview of Biden’s first address to a joint session of Congress.
Next, after a rollercoaster year of remote learning and school closures due to the pandemic, many parents may be feeling powerless as they face the possibility of their children being held back. This particular situation deals with third graders across the country who are not reading at the appropriate grade level. 18 states have laws on the books where students must be held back if they don’t meet the requirements and many students have fallen behind. In Tennessee, some estimates say that nearly 66% of third graders don’t meet English language standards. Carly Sitrin, education reporter at Politico, joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, April. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles and
this is the daily Dive. This week, President Biden will
reach his first one days in office, and polls show
that generally the public approves of the job he is doing.
So far approve of his overall performance, with the highest
(00:23):
marks coming for his handling of the pandemic and the
lowest marks for what is happening at the southern border.
More people also approve of the administration's priorities, such as
Biden's infrastructure plan. Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at
NBC News, joins us for this in a preview of
Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress next
(00:44):
After a roller coaster year of remote learning and school
closures due to the pandemic, many parents may be feeling
powerless as they faced the possibility of their children being
held back. This particular situation deals with third graders across
the country who are not reading at the appropriate grade levels.
Eighteen states have laws on the books where students must
be held back if they don't meet the requirements, and
(01:05):
many students have fallen behind. In Tennessee. Some estimates say
that nearly sixty of third graders don't meet English language standards.
Carly Citron, education reporter at Politico, joins us for more.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. I'm proud
(01:25):
of the American people, the volunteers who showed up two
staff vaccination sites in their neighborhoods, drove senior citizens who
get their shots. FEMA, the military, the National Guards, state
and local health departments and providers running sites safely. And
officially joining us now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital
(01:47):
editor at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks
for having me. We got an important milestone. I guess
you can call it this coming week, President Biden's one
d days in office. You know, it's largely one of
these big symbolic things, but everybody makes a big deal
out of it. We got some poll numbers from NBC,
We had some Washington Post poll numbers as well, But
(02:09):
generally the public at large approves approve of the job
that President Biden is doing right now so far. So
it's an important marker for the hundred days. So Ginger,
tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing overall,
the majority of Americans still approve of the job that
President Biden is doing. We saw him hit what you said,
(02:30):
sort of the low fifties in terms of approval ratings,
very high approval among Democrats, pretty good approval still among
independence and then terrible approval among Republicans, which really speaks
to the continued division in our nation. We could sort
of measure him up. He is not as high as
the President Obama was at his one daymark, where he
(02:52):
was in the sixties, but he's much higher than President
Trump was, who was in the forties at his hundred
day mark. Yeah, let me fill in those numbers really quick.
So overall adult say they approve Democrats of independence, and
then nine percent of Republicans. So that's where he said
he was not doing very well there. His highest scores
came when it comes to the pandemic approved, and the
(03:15):
lowest scores come when it comes to border security and immigration.
We know we've been seeing a problem there, that's right.
I mean, I think we're seeing that number. I think
it was six on coronavirus nationally. I mean, that's a
pretty good approval number. That's an indication, especially when we
couple that with the overall approval number. Right, So people
who don't think he's doing a good job overall, but
(03:37):
do think he's doing a good job handling the pandemic.
You have to sort of really like the job someone
is doing to say they're not doing a good job
on overall but are on a certain topic. So generally speaking,
we think the public things he's handling the pandemic pretty well,
that he's delivering on what he said he was going
to do to try to abate the pandemic, to get
vaccines out, to get people to wear masks, and so
(03:57):
that's a really positive sign for him. And then a
border continues to be a real problem, and I think
that this is the type of issue where we knew
that there's a partisan division, and then I'll have his
own party a lot of concern that he's not doing
enough quickly enough to sort of reverse some of the
Trump policies and to fix the problem that he inherited there.
(04:18):
And just a quick drawback to the coronavirus numbers in
these polls that we were saying, the bad news that
we saw there is that nearly one in five Americans
are resistant or hesitant about getting the vaccine. Still, so
that's the trouble spot that the Biden administration needs to overcome.
You know, we want to keep get everybody vaccinated, get
to hurt immunity, get this behind us, the pandemic behind us.
(04:39):
So that's really a tough spot right there when it
comes to the president's agenda. At least generally, people saw
the COVID relief bill favorably, and the infrastructure plan that
Biden is pushing right now, they generally see that favorably,
I think, say they support it. That's right. You know,
the American public often has said they like big spending,
(05:01):
they like spending proposals, they like things that build roads
and bridges, they like the government programs that government funding.
It's a little trickier when you start matching that up
with do you want to pay more in taxes or
do you think businesses should pay more in taxes to
fund that? But generally speaking, you're right, people want to
see things get done, and I think that that's going
to really drive Biden's next hundred days is can he
(05:24):
get Congress to sort of push through a proposal that
authorizes a lot of spending on those infrastructure and other
sort of jobs and healthcare related programs that they really
want to see get more funding. And how does how
do Republicans fair throughout all of this? They've they've kind
of always had going back through the campaign, everything troubled
time pinning Biden down. You know, they'd call him a socialist,
(05:46):
you know, they'd call him other things, and the message
is always kind of muddied. I think the only thing
that really stuck is that he's old. But but you know,
so so a lot of times, you know, they're they're
on their own things right now. They're passing bills related
to voting access, they're focused on cancel culture, fighting with
corporate America for staying out of politics, generally not necessarily
(06:07):
attacking President Biden himself so much. Great piece from Mike
colleague Allen Smith this weekend, looking at how sort of
Republicans are fighting everyone but Biden at this point, including
themselves and Trump and corporate America and voting in the
States and everything but Biden. And that's because you're right,
they've really struggled to find the narrative that sticks to him.
(06:27):
And you look at them what they said, you your reference.
We often heard Trump talking about how old Biden was well,
if Trump had predictions had come true, Biden would not
be president anymore. That's clearly not the case. Um. You know,
we talked about how he was going to be secretly
taken over by socialists. That hasn't happened. So they're still
struggling to find an argument that they can make stick
(06:48):
and that works sort of in their reality of where
we are, which is that Biden is still president. He
still seems pretty healthy, uh, and he hasn't embraced sort
of the most liberal left wing of his party in
terms of enacting policy. And then you know, coming up
this week to mark those one hundred days of President
Biden's administration, he's going to issue a speech to Joint
(07:10):
Session of Congress. So that's gonna be happening on Wednesday.
It's gonna have a historic that drop. We're gonna have
Nancy Pelosi there and Kamala Harris standing right behind him.
It's right, the first time we'll ever have two women
seated behind the president when he gives an address to
a joint Session of Congress. Although it's not gonna look
like the previous joint Sessions of Congress State of the
Union addresses that were all used to. There won't be
(07:32):
people packed the rafters of the House Chamber. They're limiting
capacity to about two hundred people. They've divided it among
the parties instead of you know, eight of the nine
Supreme Court justices, we're only going to have one person
from the Court. We don't expect anyone in the cabinet
maybe one, So not all of the crowds and the
pomp and circumstance that we're used to these types of addresses.
(07:55):
Gender Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, Thank
you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
This is such a really impactful and really heavy, difficult decision,
and it's not one that should be taken lightly, and
(08:17):
it's not one that should be speaking just looking at
a couple of studies and saying, oh, this is going
to have negative impacts on my kids. Forget it. We
are against joining us. Now is Carly Citron, education reporter
at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Carly, Thanks so much
for having me. One of the most interesting things to
me that has developed over the course of the pandemic
(08:38):
is what has happened with our education system, with our students,
with our teachers. We know, it's been the big disruptor
of our lives the past couple of years now, and
the education system took a huge hit. We heard all
the stories, the roller coaster ride of remote learning, in
person learning, back and forth, back and forth, and then
obviously the anxiousness that teachers and its students have as
(09:00):
well for contracting COVID nineteen. But one of the interesting
things that you wrote about here is about students possibly
being held back after this year of remote learning. And
we've seen a lot of people say that a lot
of our students are behind so far. You know, it
just was just so difficult to really keep that learning
curve up. And there's a number of states, I think
(09:22):
it's eighteen states that have laws on the books that
and this is the key to third grade, which is
also an interesting thing that if they don't pass certain
requirements and reading that they could be held back. So
this is a thing that a lot of families are
going to be looking forward to this next year happening.
So Carl tell us a little bit more about this.
These third grade reading laws were kind of a sad
(09:46):
policy a couple of years ago, starting in like the
early two thousands, with Jeb Bush down in Florida, who's
then governor. And the idea is that at in the
third grade, kids are no longer kind of learning to read,
but they're reading to learn, which means reading then becomes
a part of all of their studies, moving forward, thinking
(10:07):
word problems in maths, all sorts of reading scientific papers,
science class and things like that, and so all these
kind of states more so, you know, over the last
couple of years started enacting these policies that say, look,
if you can't read at a third grade level in
third grade, we're going to hold you back until you
can make sure that you have what you need to
(10:30):
move forward and be successful. And the reasons a lot
of these policies were passed we're kind of twofold. One
it was to help improve national scores, mass on test scores,
and boost state ron things that they could access in
federal funding, and all sorts of other stuff. But it
was also as kind of a way to hold schools
accountable to pay attention to literacy and the importance that
(10:53):
it plays in students lives. And so the folks who
passed these bills, we're kind of trying to say, like
we really need to focus on this really crucial part
in kids lives. And so over the years, these policies
have been enacted and pushed through in some cases without
a lot of teacher or parent involvement driven kind of
at the lawmaker governmental policy level, not so much with
(11:16):
with teachers and educators. But now we're seeing is you know,
it was fine to have all these laws in place
and policies in place before, but now that kids have,
you know, run into these learning loss or unfinished learning situations.
This year, these policies could kick in and really target
an outside number of kids that was kind of unthinkable
(11:37):
many years ago. So that's what folks are a little
fraid of this year. Yeah, as you mentioned your article,
the a lot of these decisions aren't made by parents
and teachers or their children, but by state officials because
these laws have been passed. So let's get into some
of the bad news though, as you you're you're alluding
to right now. So in Tennessee they say that nearly
sixty six percent of third graders are not meeting English
(11:58):
language standards, so they could be flagged for this type
of retention under these new laws. In Michigan, one of
the eighteen states, who also has a decline in literacy programs.
Pre pandemic, there was about five thousand third graders they
said could be identified for retention. They said because of
the pandemic, that number could have quadruple. So it is
(12:19):
a serious concern for a lot of parents and students.
What's also really complicated, and we're seeing kind of in
a national level of these patchwork of policies, so so
different states address it differently. In Michigan, there is funding
and money for literacy coaches and for grade monitoring and
to take efforts to help the kids, so that yeah,
you may be flagged for attention, but you know they're
(12:41):
good cause exemptions. There are things you can do to
get up to speed. In other states there isn't even
a mandatory notification to parents, or in some states the
schools don't even have to tell parents if their kid
has been targeted for retention. It's such a varied picture
across the country, and you know, in some places there's
funday for wraparound services and for all sorts of other
(13:02):
things and summer school programs, and in other states the
money just isn't there, and there's a real fear that
you could be in one of the states where you
might not even know that this policy was passed. In Tennessee,
it went through in a rushed session and in three
days without even a chance for teachers or parents to
kind of testify on the bill to lawmakers. So from
(13:23):
what the one Democratic House member told me, it was like,
you know, by the time she could reach out and
get in touch with teachers and parents and tell them
this policy is being considered, it was already done. So
how is this going to play out? Because a lot
of this is tied to standardized testing. So in general
and just my experience right going to school, you know,
if the kid is failing his subjects and his classes,
(13:45):
pretty likely you're gonna have to be held back or
try to make up some of those things. But this
is tied to standardized testing, so they have to wait
till the next school year and take those tests, and
then they'll decide if they have to go back. And
then do parents have any recourse? I noticed in your
article they can quest good cause exemptions possibly to keep
moving their their students forward, But you know, is that
(14:05):
the only mechanism they have for remedying this. So the
Biden administration this year has been really kind of flexible
with these waivers. Some states have received standardized testing waivers
that say you don't have to test this year. Others
have not received the waivers or their waivers have been
rejected in part, which means some states are moving ahead
with their tests. So it really all depends on what
(14:27):
the federal government has said to each state's education department
and whether or not these tests will be taken. But
a lot of states are moving forward with standardized testing
this year, and if so, then third graders are going
to be subject to the tests. And if their governments
have not made a decision or if their education departments
have not made a decision about the retention portion, then
it's going to go forward as planned. And that could
(14:49):
mean that, you know, a year without preparation for standardized tests.
Even a test that some advocates say doesn't even properly
measure reading attainment could be used as the basis for
a lot of these retention decisions. In terms of yeah,
these good cause exemptions, I do want to be clear
that in most states there is a way, so it's
(15:10):
not automatic, you know, case close you're held back like
there are in many states ways to either boost grades,
attend summer school, show you're making some kind of effort
to achieve, and work with districts and school leaders to
kind of say, hey, I don't want this. I want
to fight for my kid to move forward, This isn't
(15:30):
the best thing for them, and kind of fight your
way out or or chase down these good cause exemptions.
But in many cases these take a lot of time
and effort and showing up to meetings after meetings, and
for a lot of working parents, it's not necessarily part
of the plan. Proponents of these retention policies they say
it's not about holding kids back, it's about improving literacy.
(15:52):
But on the flip side of that, when kids do
get held back, there's a lot of self esteem issues
that go along with it. Their stigma attached to it,
you know, or the kids being labeled dumb or slow
or think, you know, whatever the case may be. There's
a lot that's attached to it by being held back,
and you know, that could affect them in many ways
down the line as well. I think in speaking with
(16:14):
the parents, even the parents who made the decision to
hold their kids back, what they really wanted to emphasize
with me is that this should be a family decision,
and this should be a parental decision made in concert
with school leaders and teachers and the students, you know,
him or herself for themselves to kind of have the
data and the research at hand and to say, we
(16:36):
know what could happen, but we are making this decision
because it is what's right for us at this time.
You know, it could be because of mental health issues
this year, or even in some cases I've heard families
saying my child rissed out on the year of sports
that could have been really important for gaining scholarships or
or gaining sports opportunities and college in the future. And
(16:57):
so what folks have told me is this shouldn't be
a governmental decision. It shouldn't be a decision made at
the top level because a governor a lawmaker wants to
improve scores. This should be a decision based on the
individual students because they're the ones that have to go
through this and to front the stigma and some of
the negatives consequences attached. You know, as I mentioned the beginning,
(17:20):
I've just been very interested in how all this has
played out. I I saw it firsthand with my sister
and dealing with her three kids, all three of them
had to do the remote learning, and I was just
checking up on her constantly, how are you guys doing,
how are the kids doing? Just to see what their
progress was. And luckily they were okay. I mean, they
were doing fine. I'm sure there is some deficit that
they missed from being in person, being taught in person,
(17:43):
but luckily they would do their lessons and all that.
But still I feel like they were missing a lot
of stuff. And you know, so I talked to my
sister about that. I was just very interested in that.
And one of the parents you profiled in your article,
Sonya Thomas, you know, she turned some of her experience
into action with this. She went through this emotional, complex
kind of decision to hold her son back, but she
(18:04):
made it in concert with him too. He also agreed
that they had to do it. But so she started
an organization that would help other parents to deal with
this type of thing as well. Parents should at least
have all the information and data and policy in front
of them so that they can help make these decisions
right like this is such a really impactful and really heavy,
(18:27):
difficult decision, and it's not one that should be taken lightly,
and it's or not whether it should be taken just
looking at a couple of studies and saying, oh, this
is gonna have negative impacts on my kids. Forget it,
we are against it, and that you know, you really
have to talk to your kid and taken their interests
into account. And she said, in her case, his son
was like, I don't feel ready. I don't feel that
(18:49):
I'm reading on the same level as my peers. I'm
not ready to go into a high school or new
high school during a pandemic with new virtual learning and
what I'm not going to know anyone. And so they
made the decision to keep him back, and she said
it's a decision she does not regret by any means,
but you know that being said, she said she respects
everyone's ability to make the decision that's right for them,
(19:11):
and that it shouldn't be up to the state to
dictate whether or not a child needs to be held back,
and that it should be something that's coming from the
ground up. Carl Citron, education reporter at Politico, Thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much for
having me as a pleasure. Thank you. That's it for today.
(19:37):
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Ramirez and this is your Daily Dive. Then back
It's Monday, April. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles and
this is the daily Dive. This week, President Biden will
reach his first one days in office, and polls show
that generally the public approves of the job he is doing.
So far approve of his overall performance, with the highest
(00:23):
marks coming for his handling of the pandemic and the
lowest marks for what is happening at the southern border.
More people also approve of the administration's priorities, such as
Biden's infrastructure plan. Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at
NBC News, joins us for this in a preview of
Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress next
(00:44):
After a roller coaster year of remote learning and school
closures due to the pandemic, many parents may be feeling
powerless as they faced the possibility of their children being
held back. This particular situation deals with third graders across
the country who are not reading at the appropriate grade levels.
Eighteen states have laws on the books where students must
be held back if they don't meet the requirements, and
(01:05):
many students have fallen behind. In Tennessee. Some estimates say
that nearly sixty of third graders don't meet English language standards.
Carly Citron, education reporter at Politico, joins us for more.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. I'm proud
(01:25):
of the American people, the volunteers who showed up two
staff vaccination sites in their neighborhoods, drove senior citizens who
get their shots. FEMA, the military, the National Guards, state
and local health departments and providers running sites safely. And
officially joining us now is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital
(01:47):
editor at NBC News. Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks
for having me. We got an important milestone. I guess
you can call it this coming week, President Biden's one
d days in office. You know, it's largely one of
these big symbolic things, but everybody makes a big deal
out of it. We got some poll numbers from NBC,
We had some Washington Post poll numbers as well, But
(02:09):
generally the public at large approves approve of the job
that President Biden is doing right now so far. So
it's an important marker for the hundred days. So Ginger,
tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing overall,
the majority of Americans still approve of the job that
President Biden is doing. We saw him hit what you said,
(02:30):
sort of the low fifties in terms of approval ratings,
very high approval among Democrats, pretty good approval still among
independence and then terrible approval among Republicans, which really speaks
to the continued division in our nation. We could sort
of measure him up. He is not as high as
the President Obama was at his one daymark, where he
(02:52):
was in the sixties, but he's much higher than President
Trump was, who was in the forties at his hundred
day mark. Yeah, let me fill in those numbers really quick.
So overall adult say they approve Democrats of independence, and
then nine percent of Republicans. So that's where he said
he was not doing very well there. His highest scores
came when it comes to the pandemic approved, and the
(03:15):
lowest scores come when it comes to border security and immigration.
We know we've been seeing a problem there, that's right.
I mean, I think we're seeing that number. I think
it was six on coronavirus nationally. I mean, that's a
pretty good approval number. That's an indication, especially when we
couple that with the overall approval number. Right, So people
who don't think he's doing a good job overall, but
(03:37):
do think he's doing a good job handling the pandemic.
You have to sort of really like the job someone
is doing to say they're not doing a good job
on overall but are on a certain topic. So generally speaking,
we think the public things he's handling the pandemic pretty well,
that he's delivering on what he said he was going
to do to try to abate the pandemic, to get
vaccines out, to get people to wear masks, and so
(03:57):
that's a really positive sign for him. And then a
border continues to be a real problem, and I think
that this is the type of issue where we knew
that there's a partisan division, and then I'll have his
own party a lot of concern that he's not doing
enough quickly enough to sort of reverse some of the
Trump policies and to fix the problem that he inherited there.
(04:18):
And just a quick drawback to the coronavirus numbers in
these polls that we were saying, the bad news that
we saw there is that nearly one in five Americans
are resistant or hesitant about getting the vaccine. Still, so
that's the trouble spot that the Biden administration needs to overcome.
You know, we want to keep get everybody vaccinated, get
to hurt immunity, get this behind us, the pandemic behind us.
(04:39):
So that's really a tough spot right there when it
comes to the president's agenda. At least generally, people saw
the COVID relief bill favorably, and the infrastructure plan that
Biden is pushing right now, they generally see that favorably,
I think, say they support it. That's right. You know,
the American public often has said they like big spending,
(05:01):
they like spending proposals, they like things that build roads
and bridges, they like the government programs that government funding.
It's a little trickier when you start matching that up
with do you want to pay more in taxes or
do you think businesses should pay more in taxes to
fund that? But generally speaking, you're right, people want to
see things get done, and I think that that's going
to really drive Biden's next hundred days is can he
(05:24):
get Congress to sort of push through a proposal that
authorizes a lot of spending on those infrastructure and other
sort of jobs and healthcare related programs that they really
want to see get more funding. And how does how
do Republicans fair throughout all of this? They've they've kind
of always had going back through the campaign, everything troubled
time pinning Biden down. You know, they'd call him a socialist,
(05:46):
you know, they'd call him other things, and the message
is always kind of muddied. I think the only thing
that really stuck is that he's old. But but you know,
so so a lot of times, you know, they're they're
on their own things right now. They're passing bills related
to voting access, they're focused on cancel culture, fighting with
corporate America for staying out of politics, generally not necessarily
(06:07):
attacking President Biden himself so much. Great piece from Mike
colleague Allen Smith this weekend, looking at how sort of
Republicans are fighting everyone but Biden at this point, including
themselves and Trump and corporate America and voting in the
States and everything but Biden. And that's because you're right,
they've really struggled to find the narrative that sticks to him.
(06:27):
And you look at them what they said, you your reference.
We often heard Trump talking about how old Biden was well,
if Trump had predictions had come true, Biden would not
be president anymore. That's clearly not the case. Um. You know,
we talked about how he was going to be secretly
taken over by socialists. That hasn't happened. So they're still
struggling to find an argument that they can make stick
(06:48):
and that works sort of in their reality of where
we are, which is that Biden is still president. He
still seems pretty healthy, uh, and he hasn't embraced sort
of the most liberal left wing of his party in
terms of enacting policy. And then you know, coming up
this week to mark those one hundred days of President
Biden's administration, he's going to issue a speech to Joint
(07:10):
Session of Congress. So that's gonna be happening on Wednesday.
It's gonna have a historic that drop. We're gonna have
Nancy Pelosi there and Kamala Harris standing right behind him.
It's right, the first time we'll ever have two women
seated behind the president when he gives an address to
a joint Session of Congress. Although it's not gonna look
like the previous joint Sessions of Congress State of the
Union addresses that were all used to. There won't be
(07:32):
people packed the rafters of the House Chamber. They're limiting
capacity to about two hundred people. They've divided it among
the parties instead of you know, eight of the nine
Supreme Court justices, we're only going to have one person
from the Court. We don't expect anyone in the cabinet
maybe one, So not all of the crowds and the
pomp and circumstance that we're used to these types of addresses.
(07:55):
Gender Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital editor at NBC News, Thank
you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
This is such a really impactful and really heavy, difficult decision,
and it's not one that should be taken lightly, and
(08:17):
it's not one that should be speaking just looking at
a couple of studies and saying, oh, this is going
to have negative impacts on my kids. Forget it. We
are against joining us. Now is Carly Citron, education reporter
at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Carly, Thanks so much
for having me. One of the most interesting things to
me that has developed over the course of the pandemic
(08:38):
is what has happened with our education system, with our students,
with our teachers. We know, it's been the big disruptor
of our lives the past couple of years now, and
the education system took a huge hit. We heard all
the stories, the roller coaster ride of remote learning, in
person learning, back and forth, back and forth, and then
obviously the anxiousness that teachers and its students have as
(09:00):
well for contracting COVID nineteen. But one of the interesting
things that you wrote about here is about students possibly
being held back after this year of remote learning. And
we've seen a lot of people say that a lot
of our students are behind so far. You know, it
just was just so difficult to really keep that learning
curve up. And there's a number of states, I think
(09:22):
it's eighteen states that have laws on the books that
and this is the key to third grade, which is
also an interesting thing that if they don't pass certain
requirements and reading that they could be held back. So
this is a thing that a lot of families are
going to be looking forward to this next year happening.
So Carl tell us a little bit more about this.
These third grade reading laws were kind of a sad
(09:46):
policy a couple of years ago, starting in like the
early two thousands, with Jeb Bush down in Florida, who's
then governor. And the idea is that at in the
third grade, kids are no longer kind of learning to read,
but they're reading to learn, which means reading then becomes
a part of all of their studies, moving forward, thinking
(10:07):
word problems in maths, all sorts of reading scientific papers,
science class and things like that, and so all these
kind of states more so, you know, over the last
couple of years started enacting these policies that say, look,
if you can't read at a third grade level in
third grade, we're going to hold you back until you
can make sure that you have what you need to
(10:30):
move forward and be successful. And the reasons a lot
of these policies were passed we're kind of twofold. One
it was to help improve national scores, mass on test scores,
and boost state ron things that they could access in
federal funding, and all sorts of other stuff. But it
was also as kind of a way to hold schools
accountable to pay attention to literacy and the importance that
(10:53):
it plays in students lives. And so the folks who
passed these bills, we're kind of trying to say, like
we really need to focus on this really crucial part
in kids lives. And so over the years, these policies
have been enacted and pushed through in some cases without
a lot of teacher or parent involvement driven kind of
at the lawmaker governmental policy level, not so much with
(11:16):
with teachers and educators. But now we're seeing is you know,
it was fine to have all these laws in place
and policies in place before, but now that kids have,
you know, run into these learning loss or unfinished learning situations.
This year, these policies could kick in and really target
an outside number of kids that was kind of unthinkable
(11:37):
many years ago. So that's what folks are a little
fraid of this year. Yeah, as you mentioned your article,
the a lot of these decisions aren't made by parents
and teachers or their children, but by state officials because
these laws have been passed. So let's get into some
of the bad news though, as you you're you're alluding
to right now. So in Tennessee they say that nearly
sixty six percent of third graders are not meeting English
(11:58):
language standards, so they could be flagged for this type
of retention under these new laws. In Michigan, one of
the eighteen states, who also has a decline in literacy programs.
Pre pandemic, there was about five thousand third graders they
said could be identified for retention. They said because of
the pandemic, that number could have quadruple. So it is
(12:19):
a serious concern for a lot of parents and students.
What's also really complicated, and we're seeing kind of in
a national level of these patchwork of policies, so so
different states address it differently. In Michigan, there is funding
and money for literacy coaches and for grade monitoring and
to take efforts to help the kids, so that yeah,
you may be flagged for attention, but you know they're
(12:41):
good cause exemptions. There are things you can do to
get up to speed. In other states there isn't even
a mandatory notification to parents, or in some states the
schools don't even have to tell parents if their kid
has been targeted for retention. It's such a varied picture
across the country, and you know, in some places there's
funday for wraparound services and for all sorts of other
(13:02):
things and summer school programs, and in other states the
money just isn't there, and there's a real fear that
you could be in one of the states where you
might not even know that this policy was passed. In Tennessee,
it went through in a rushed session and in three
days without even a chance for teachers or parents to
kind of testify on the bill to lawmakers. So from
(13:23):
what the one Democratic House member told me, it was like,
you know, by the time she could reach out and
get in touch with teachers and parents and tell them
this policy is being considered, it was already done. So
how is this going to play out? Because a lot
of this is tied to standardized testing. So in general
and just my experience right going to school, you know,
if the kid is failing his subjects and his classes,
(13:45):
pretty likely you're gonna have to be held back or
try to make up some of those things. But this
is tied to standardized testing, so they have to wait
till the next school year and take those tests, and
then they'll decide if they have to go back. And
then do parents have any recourse? I noticed in your
article they can quest good cause exemptions possibly to keep
moving their their students forward, But you know, is that
(14:05):
the only mechanism they have for remedying this. So the
Biden administration this year has been really kind of flexible
with these waivers. Some states have received standardized testing waivers
that say you don't have to test this year. Others
have not received the waivers or their waivers have been
rejected in part, which means some states are moving ahead
with their tests. So it really all depends on what
(14:27):
the federal government has said to each state's education department
and whether or not these tests will be taken. But
a lot of states are moving forward with standardized testing
this year, and if so, then third graders are going
to be subject to the tests. And if their governments
have not made a decision or if their education departments
have not made a decision about the retention portion, then
it's going to go forward as planned. And that could
(14:49):
mean that, you know, a year without preparation for standardized tests.
Even a test that some advocates say doesn't even properly
measure reading attainment could be used as the basis for
a lot of these retention decisions. In terms of yeah,
these good cause exemptions, I do want to be clear
that in most states there is a way, so it's
(15:10):
not automatic, you know, case close you're held back like
there are in many states ways to either boost grades,
attend summer school, show you're making some kind of effort
to achieve, and work with districts and school leaders to
kind of say, hey, I don't want this. I want
to fight for my kid to move forward, This isn't
(15:30):
the best thing for them, and kind of fight your
way out or or chase down these good cause exemptions.
But in many cases these take a lot of time
and effort and showing up to meetings after meetings, and
for a lot of working parents, it's not necessarily part
of the plan. Proponents of these retention policies they say
it's not about holding kids back, it's about improving literacy.
(15:52):
But on the flip side of that, when kids do
get held back, there's a lot of self esteem issues
that go along with it. Their stigma attached to it,
you know, or the kids being labeled dumb or slow
or think, you know, whatever the case may be. There's
a lot that's attached to it by being held back,
and you know, that could affect them in many ways
down the line as well. I think in speaking with
(16:14):
the parents, even the parents who made the decision to
hold their kids back, what they really wanted to emphasize
with me is that this should be a family decision,
and this should be a parental decision made in concert
with school leaders and teachers and the students, you know,
him or herself for themselves to kind of have the
data and the research at hand and to say, we
(16:36):
know what could happen, but we are making this decision
because it is what's right for us at this time.
You know, it could be because of mental health issues
this year, or even in some cases I've heard families
saying my child rissed out on the year of sports
that could have been really important for gaining scholarships or
or gaining sports opportunities and college in the future. And
(16:57):
so what folks have told me is this shouldn't be
a governmental decision. It shouldn't be a decision made at
the top level because a governor a lawmaker wants to
improve scores. This should be a decision based on the
individual students because they're the ones that have to go
through this and to front the stigma and some of
the negatives consequences attached. You know, as I mentioned the beginning,
(17:20):
I've just been very interested in how all this has
played out. I I saw it firsthand with my sister
and dealing with her three kids, all three of them
had to do the remote learning, and I was just
checking up on her constantly, how are you guys doing,
how are the kids doing? Just to see what their
progress was. And luckily they were okay. I mean, they
were doing fine. I'm sure there is some deficit that
they missed from being in person, being taught in person,
(17:43):
but luckily they would do their lessons and all that.
But still I feel like they were missing a lot
of stuff. And you know, so I talked to my
sister about that. I was just very interested in that.
And one of the parents you profiled in your article,
Sonya Thomas, you know, she turned some of her experience
into action with this. She went through this emotional, complex
kind of decision to hold her son back, but she
(18:04):
made it in concert with him too. He also agreed
that they had to do it. But so she started
an organization that would help other parents to deal with
this type of thing as well. Parents should at least
have all the information and data and policy in front
of them so that they can help make these decisions
right like this is such a really impactful and really heavy,
(18:27):
difficult decision, and it's not one that should be taken lightly,
and it's or not whether it should be taken just
looking at a couple of studies and saying, oh, this
is gonna have negative impacts on my kids. Forget it,
we are against it, and that you know, you really
have to talk to your kid and taken their interests
into account. And she said, in her case, his son
was like, I don't feel ready. I don't feel that
(18:49):
I'm reading on the same level as my peers. I'm
not ready to go into a high school or new
high school during a pandemic with new virtual learning and
what I'm not going to know anyone. And so they
made the decision to keep him back, and she said
it's a decision she does not regret by any means,
but you know that being said, she said she respects
everyone's ability to make the decision that's right for them,
(19:11):
and that it shouldn't be up to the state to
dictate whether or not a child needs to be held back,
and that it should be something that's coming from the
ground up. Carl Citron, education reporter at Politico, Thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much for
having me as a pleasure. Thank you. That's it for today.
(19:37):
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Ramirez and this is your Daily Dive. Then back
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