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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. This week, we saw the White House proposed
the third massive spending plan of the Biden administration. The
latest plan is called the American Families Plan and it
will cost one point eight trillion dollars. The plan will
expand access to education with free universal preschool and two
years of tuition free community college, among other initiatives. This
(00:50):
would all be paid for by raising taxes on investors
and wealthy Americans and more enforcement from the I R S.
For more on what's in this plan, will speak to
Jeff Stein, white House economics reporter at the Washington Post.
This is the third policy you know, major economic proposal
from the White House, and spy and took office. The
first at one point nine trillion dollar economic relief package
was passed in March, and since then the White House
(01:12):
hasn't veiled two separate but related efforts that they say
collectively add up to his Build Back Better agenda. Those
four trillion dollars stretched over two plans, the first of
which is centered on infrastructure, manufacturing, and jobs, and the second,
release yesterday or I guess rather today, is centered on
in childcare, education, paid family and medical leave, and other
(01:33):
programs that the White House says are more directly geared
towards improving the economic fortunes and middle class families. The
distinction between the two plans kind of blurs a little bit.
It's a little unclear how they'll pass or if they'll pass,
but those are the two main buckets were looking at. Yeah,
that's the big thing. You know, we already are seeing
a little bit of opposition or pushback from Republicans on this,
and they're they're huge spending bills and now they you know,
(01:56):
they don't really want to go that way. But this
has kind of been so far the tactic from the administration.
I'm gonna put out a plan that has everything as
possible that we can possibly try to get and then
we'll work it back and everything. My understanding is that
they might not be able to really get to this
plan for some months though, to be able to start
hashing it out. It's definitely one of those things where
(02:17):
everyone in Washington is asking everyone else what they think
will happen with these two plans. And I think the
answer is that really nobody, including the White House, including Pelosi,
including Schumer's, and not a question that there's noble answer to. Unfortunately,
there's a ton of stuff in both of these plans
that a lot of people have been clamoring for that
really have widespread consensus, at least on the Democratic side,
(02:38):
and then pull it quite well, provisions such as you know,
as I mentioned, paid family and medical leave. America is
one of the countries in the world with the highest
levels of child poverty. In the White House temporarily approved
an expansion of the child talk credit in March. That's
gonna expire, um and so child poverty would spike if
that's not extended. So there are all these things that
(02:59):
a lot of people, um, you know, these among the
Democrats are very automate needs need to get done. But
the sequencing and the timing is really unclear, especially because
the tax provisions both in the Manufacturing Plan and in
this Family's plan are very contentious. The taxes on the
Manufacturing Plan would be primarily centered on corporations and businesses.
The taxes in the Family's plan are centered on investors
(03:22):
and rich Americans. But really those are both very controversial.
It's very easy to spend relatives, you know, taking money
away from some constituency, especially one um as influential as
rich people when it comes to Congress. Let's talk a
little bit about some of the details of the plan.
I mentioned education is a huge part of that. They
want to do a free pre K for ages three
(03:42):
and four. They also want to give people two years
free of community college. So right now the nation's guarantee
of a free education is that thirteen years. They want
to bump that up to seventeen years of free education.
How how how is that going to work? Another good
question that unfortunately I don't know how supera answers to.
The White House identifies certain levels of funding that they
(04:03):
want to include to achieve those goals. I think it's
about two hundred fifty billion or so for universal pre
K for all three and four year olds in the country,
and about a hundred hundred fifty billion over ten years
for free community college two years of pre community college.
But the mechanisms for that are very unclear, and it
actually became apparent in the release of the plan last
night to reporters and then to the public this morning
(04:25):
that they're really counting on a lot of state aid
and state money being used to reach that goal. So
the White House is saying that the money that they're
providing amount to that goal. But we've already seen these
kinds of approaches from Democrats not really work out in
the past. You may recall, some listeners may recall that
under Obama, there was a lot of hope that the
Medicaid expansions that they approved as part of the Affordable
(04:47):
Care Act would induce states to um, you know, expand
Medicaid and cover the poorest people um in those states
with health insurance, but that the states would kick in
some amount. That can happen, and a lot of people,
a lot of poor people in states controlled by Republicans
never saw that expansion, and so there's a lot of
concerning among some of the advocates to these policies that
(05:08):
while the White Houses trumpeting these measures as fulfilling these
probably health social goals, that they're not actually willing to do.
The book was its spending to achieve them. You know,
it's already getting kind of panned on both sides, really
on the Democratic side on some areas for not going
too far obviously on the Republican side for raising taxes
too much, and and the increase in the role that
(05:29):
government would play in American society. One of those things
that I guess being criticized for maybe not going too far,
those child text credits that were kind of implemented so far.
I think they want to try to extend it to
with this new plan, but you know, they're trying to
keep the cost down of the overall bill, so they said,
let's keep not extended indefinitely, you know. So there's like
(05:51):
a lot of wiggle room and jockeying with all of this.
It's such a strange dynamic you put your finger on,
because while as you correctly say, the White House plan
only extends the tax credit through the White House and
Biden themselves keep saying that they want to make it permanent,
and it's basically an admission that they're trying to play
(06:12):
games with a number that they envisioned this policy being
permanently enacted, but they do not want to be tied
to the implication that because this program will be expensive
in the back half of the decade, it gets actually
much more expensive to extend after because that is the
year at which the Republican increase in the child tax
(06:33):
credit from twenty seven team from the seventeen tax law
that will end. So to extend it beyond would require
them not only to pay for the extension from the
stimulus plan passed in March, but also the expansion from
the seventeen Republican tax ps some jobs back. So they're
trying to avoid being saddled with the sticker shock, but
at the same time acknowledging that their intention is to
(06:55):
spend the same amount of money is. It's an awkward
dance they're trying to pull off. So we have the
Infrastructure Plan, we have the American Families Plan. Now they're
both going to be really tough to get through. What
would do a win look like for the Biden administration
with these two bills, because as I mentioned, you know,
they put a lot in it They know they're gonna
have to negotiate a lot of things and they won't
be the same at the end, But what would a
(07:17):
win look like for them? From the people I talked
to in the White House, there's some debate about whether
they're acting on this appropriately, but I think there's a
broad recognition that under the Obama years, Democrats didn't really
do enough to prove to everyday Americans that the federal
government was capable of delivering concrete, material benefits that would
improve their economic well being and standing. And I think,
(07:40):
you know, there's a lot of different provisions, but the
White House is hoping that these two packages combined, that
enough of them gets through that the economy is changed.
I know it sounds maybe amorphous, but it's changed in
a way that that people noticed in their daily lives.
They have these plans to you know, build electric vehicle
charging stations throughout the country, to weather rize millions and
(08:02):
millions of homes, to traumatically reduce the amount of families
facing their childcare bills, um what they pay to have
their parents and grandparents watched through the elder care system
that's so broken in this country, And I don't know
what the precise metrics for success for them looks like.
But I think they're really aiming to have an impact
(08:23):
so that people really notice sort of the economy get
better and not you know, they're they're they're very careful
about this and sort of understated. But the way they
frame it is build back better. That's been by and slogan,
and it's it's a call to say, you know, let's
not just go back to where we were before. COVID
makes sort of these structural adjustments to the American economy
that go beyond you know, immediate emergency release. Jeff Stein,
(08:48):
white House economics reporter at the Washington Post, thank you
very much for joining us. Thanks for having it. After
a roller closure 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 grades across the country
(09:10):
who are not reading at the appropriate grade level. Eighteen
states have laws in the books where students must be
held back if they don't meet the requirements, and many
students have fallen behind. In Tennessee alone. Some estimate that
nearly sixty six percent of third graders don't meet English
language standards. For more on how the pandemic continues to
impact education, will speak to Carli Citron, education reporter at Politico.
(09:34):
These third grade reading laws were kind of a sad
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
(09:55):
a part of all of their studies, moving forward, thinking
word problems in asked, 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
(10:18):
can make sure that you have what you need to
move forward and end 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, that's on
test scores and boost states rankings that they could access
indtional federal funding and all sorts of other stuff. But
(10:38):
it was also as kind of a way to hold
schools accountable to pay attention to literacy and the importance
that 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
(11:01):
a lot of teacher or parent involvement, driven kind of
at the lawmaker governmental policy level, not so much with
with teachers and educators. But now what 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 laws or
unfinished learning situations. This year, these policies could kick in
(11:24):
and really target an outsize number of kids that was
kind of unthinkable many years ago. So that's what folks
are a little afraid 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
(11:46):
say that nearly sixty six percent of third graders are
not meeting English 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 pro grams pre pandemic, there was about five
thousand third graders they said could be identified for retention.
They say because of the pandemic, that number could have quadruple.
(12:10):
So it is 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 as 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
(12:32):
know they're 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. In some states,
the schools don't even have to tell parents if their
kid has been targeted for attention. It's such a varied
picture across the country, and you know, in some places
there's funding for wraparound services and for all sorts of
(12:54):
other things and summer school programs, and in other states
the money just isn't there, and there's a real speed
or 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.
(13:14):
So from 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 in
(13:35):
his classes, 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 request good cause exemptions possibly to
keep moving their their students forward, But you know, is
(13:56):
that 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
(14:19):
what 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
(14:41):
could mean that, you know, a year without preparation for
sandardized 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 these good cause exemptions, I do want to be
clear that in most states there is a way, so
(15:01):
it's 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
(15:22):
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.
(15:44):
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
(16:05):
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 are herself for themselves to kind of have the
data and the research at hand and to say, we
(16:27):
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 family
saying my child missed 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
(16:48):
so what folks have told me is this shouldn't be
a governmental decision. This shouldn't be a decision made at
the top level because a governor or 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 consequencely attached. You know, as I mentioned
(17:11):
the beginning, 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
(17:31):
that they missed from being in person, being taught in person,
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. It 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
(17:53):
kind of decision to hold her son back, but she
made it in concert with him too. He also agreed
that they had to do a but so she started
an organization that would help other parents to deal with
this type of thing as well. It's such a thought
and such a tricky, complex and emotional issue, and it's
so individual that what many times this point was to
(18:15):
was that 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, 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
(18:38):
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 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
(19:00):
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, 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.
(19:23):
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 don't forget to join us
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and
Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment, give
us a rating, and tell us the stories that you're
(19:43):
interested in. Follow us and I heard radio or subscribe
wherever you get your podcast him Oscar Rameras and this
is the Daily Dive weekend edition.
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:27):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. This week, we saw the White House proposed
the third massive spending plan of the Biden administration. The
latest plan is called the American Families Plan and it
will cost one point eight trillion dollars. The plan will
expand access to education with free universal preschool and two
years of tuition free community college, among other initiatives. This
(00:50):
would all be paid for by raising taxes on investors
and wealthy Americans and more enforcement from the I R S.
For more on what's in this plan, will speak to
Jeff Stein, white House economics reporter at the Washington Post.
This is the third policy you know, major economic proposal
from the White House, and spy and took office. The
first at one point nine trillion dollar economic relief package
was passed in March, and since then the White House
(01:12):
hasn't veiled two separate but related efforts that they say
collectively add up to his Build Back Better agenda. Those
four trillion dollars stretched over two plans, the first of
which is centered on infrastructure, manufacturing, and jobs, and the second,
release yesterday or I guess rather today, is centered on
in childcare, education, paid family and medical leave, and other
(01:33):
programs that the White House says are more directly geared
towards improving the economic fortunes and middle class families. The
distinction between the two plans kind of blurs a little bit.
It's a little unclear how they'll pass or if they'll pass,
but those are the two main buckets were looking at. Yeah,
that's the big thing. You know, we already are seeing
a little bit of opposition or pushback from Republicans on this,
and they're they're huge spending bills and now they you know,
(01:56):
they don't really want to go that way. But this
has kind of been so far the tactic from the administration.
I'm gonna put out a plan that has everything as
possible that we can possibly try to get and then
we'll work it back and everything. My understanding is that
they might not be able to really get to this
plan for some months though, to be able to start
hashing it out. It's definitely one of those things where
(02:17):
everyone in Washington is asking everyone else what they think
will happen with these two plans. And I think the
answer is that really nobody, including the White House, including Pelosi,
including Schumer's, and not a question that there's noble answer to. Unfortunately,
there's a ton of stuff in both of these plans
that a lot of people have been clamoring for that
really have widespread consensus, at least on the Democratic side,
(02:38):
and then pull it quite well, provisions such as you know,
as I mentioned, paid family and medical leave. America is
one of the countries in the world with the highest
levels of child poverty. In the White House temporarily approved
an expansion of the child talk credit in March. That's
gonna expire, um and so child poverty would spike if
that's not extended. So there are all these things that
(02:59):
a lot of people, um, you know, these among the
Democrats are very automate needs need to get done. But
the sequencing and the timing is really unclear, especially because
the tax provisions both in the Manufacturing Plan and in
this Family's plan are very contentious. The taxes on the
Manufacturing Plan would be primarily centered on corporations and businesses.
The taxes in the Family's plan are centered on investors
(03:22):
and rich Americans. But really those are both very controversial.
It's very easy to spend relatives, you know, taking money
away from some constituency, especially one um as influential as
rich people when it comes to Congress. Let's talk a
little bit about some of the details of the plan.
I mentioned education is a huge part of that. They
want to do a free pre K for ages three
(03:42):
and four. They also want to give people two years
free of community college. So right now the nation's guarantee
of a free education is that thirteen years. They want
to bump that up to seventeen years of free education.
How how how is that going to work? Another good
question that unfortunately I don't know how supera answers to.
The White House identifies certain levels of funding that they
(04:03):
want to include to achieve those goals. I think it's
about two hundred fifty billion or so for universal pre
K for all three and four year olds in the country,
and about a hundred hundred fifty billion over ten years
for free community college two years of pre community college.
But the mechanisms for that are very unclear, and it
actually became apparent in the release of the plan last
night to reporters and then to the public this morning
(04:25):
that they're really counting on a lot of state aid
and state money being used to reach that goal. So
the White House is saying that the money that they're
providing amount to that goal. But we've already seen these
kinds of approaches from Democrats not really work out in
the past. You may recall, some listeners may recall that
under Obama, there was a lot of hope that the
Medicaid expansions that they approved as part of the Affordable
(04:47):
Care Act would induce states to um, you know, expand
Medicaid and cover the poorest people um in those states
with health insurance, but that the states would kick in
some amount. That can happen, and a lot of people,
a lot of poor people in states controlled by Republicans
never saw that expansion, and so there's a lot of
concerning among some of the advocates to these policies that
(05:08):
while the White Houses trumpeting these measures as fulfilling these
probably health social goals, that they're not actually willing to do.
The book was its spending to achieve them. You know,
it's already getting kind of panned on both sides, really
on the Democratic side on some areas for not going
too far obviously on the Republican side for raising taxes
too much, and and the increase in the role that
(05:29):
government would play in American society. One of those things
that I guess being criticized for maybe not going too far,
those child text credits that were kind of implemented so far.
I think they want to try to extend it to
with this new plan, but you know, they're trying to
keep the cost down of the overall bill, so they said,
let's keep not extended indefinitely, you know. So there's like
(05:51):
a lot of wiggle room and jockeying with all of this.
It's such a strange dynamic you put your finger on,
because while as you correctly say, the White House plan
only extends the tax credit through the White House and
Biden themselves keep saying that they want to make it permanent,
and it's basically an admission that they're trying to play
(06:12):
games with a number that they envisioned this policy being
permanently enacted, but they do not want to be tied
to the implication that because this program will be expensive
in the back half of the decade, it gets actually
much more expensive to extend after because that is the
year at which the Republican increase in the child tax
(06:33):
credit from twenty seven team from the seventeen tax law
that will end. So to extend it beyond would require
them not only to pay for the extension from the
stimulus plan passed in March, but also the expansion from
the seventeen Republican tax ps some jobs back. So they're
trying to avoid being saddled with the sticker shock, but
at the same time acknowledging that their intention is to
(06:55):
spend the same amount of money is. It's an awkward
dance they're trying to pull off. So we have the
Infrastructure Plan, we have the American Families Plan. Now they're
both going to be really tough to get through. What
would do a win look like for the Biden administration
with these two bills, because as I mentioned, you know,
they put a lot in it They know they're gonna
have to negotiate a lot of things and they won't
be the same at the end, But what would a
(07:17):
win look like for them? From the people I talked
to in the White House, there's some debate about whether
they're acting on this appropriately, but I think there's a
broad recognition that under the Obama years, Democrats didn't really
do enough to prove to everyday Americans that the federal
government was capable of delivering concrete, material benefits that would
improve their economic well being and standing. And I think,
(07:40):
you know, there's a lot of different provisions, but the
White House is hoping that these two packages combined, that
enough of them gets through that the economy is changed.
I know it sounds maybe amorphous, but it's changed in
a way that that people noticed in their daily lives.
They have these plans to you know, build electric vehicle
charging stations throughout the country, to weather rize millions and
(08:02):
millions of homes, to traumatically reduce the amount of families
facing their childcare bills, um what they pay to have
their parents and grandparents watched through the elder care system
that's so broken in this country, And I don't know
what the precise metrics for success for them looks like.
But I think they're really aiming to have an impact
(08:23):
so that people really notice sort of the economy get
better and not you know, they're they're they're very careful
about this and sort of understated. But the way they
frame it is build back better. That's been by and slogan,
and it's it's a call to say, you know, let's
not just go back to where we were before. COVID
makes sort of these structural adjustments to the American economy
that go beyond you know, immediate emergency release. Jeff Stein,
(08:48):
white House economics reporter at the Washington Post, thank you
very much for joining us. Thanks for having it. After
a roller closure 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 grades across the country
(09:10):
who are not reading at the appropriate grade level. Eighteen
states have laws in the books where students must be
held back if they don't meet the requirements, and many
students have fallen behind. In Tennessee alone. Some estimate that
nearly sixty six percent of third graders don't meet English
language standards. For more on how the pandemic continues to
impact education, will speak to Carli Citron, education reporter at Politico.
(09:34):
These third grade reading laws were kind of a sad
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
(09:55):
a part of all of their studies, moving forward, thinking
word problems in asked, 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
(10:18):
can make sure that you have what you need to
move forward and end 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, that's on
test scores and boost states rankings that they could access
indtional federal funding and all sorts of other stuff. But
(10:38):
it was also as kind of a way to hold
schools accountable to pay attention to literacy and the importance
that 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
(11:01):
a lot of teacher or parent involvement, driven kind of
at the lawmaker governmental policy level, not so much with
with teachers and educators. But now what 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 laws or
unfinished learning situations. This year, these policies could kick in
(11:24):
and really target an outsize number of kids that was
kind of unthinkable many years ago. So that's what folks
are a little afraid 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
(11:46):
say that nearly sixty six percent of third graders are
not meeting English 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 pro grams pre pandemic, there was about five
thousand third graders they said could be identified for retention.
They say because of the pandemic, that number could have quadruple.
(12:10):
So it is 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 as 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
(12:32):
know they're 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. In some states,
the schools don't even have to tell parents if their
kid has been targeted for attention. It's such a varied
picture across the country, and you know, in some places
there's funding for wraparound services and for all sorts of
(12:54):
other things and summer school programs, and in other states
the money just isn't there, and there's a real speed
or 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.
(13:14):
So from 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 in
(13:35):
his classes, 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 request good cause exemptions possibly to
keep moving their their students forward, But you know, is
(13:56):
that 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
(14:19):
what 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
(14:41):
could mean that, you know, a year without preparation for
sandardized 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 these good cause exemptions, I do want to be
clear that in most states there is a way, so
(15:01):
it's 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
(15:22):
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.
(15:44):
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
(16:05):
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 are herself for themselves to kind of have the
data and the research at hand and to say, we
(16:27):
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 family
saying my child missed 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
(16:48):
so what folks have told me is this shouldn't be
a governmental decision. This shouldn't be a decision made at
the top level because a governor or 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 consequencely attached. You know, as I mentioned
(17:11):
the beginning, 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
(17:31):
that they missed from being in person, being taught in person,
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. It 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
(17:53):
kind of decision to hold her son back, but she
made it in concert with him too. He also agreed
that they had to do a but so she started
an organization that would help other parents to deal with
this type of thing as well. It's such a thought
and such a tricky, complex and emotional issue, and it's
so individual that what many times this point was to
(18:15):
was that 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, 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
(18:38):
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 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
(19:00):
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, 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.
(19:23):
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 don't forget to join us
on social media at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and
Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment, give
us a rating, and tell us the stories that you're
(19:43):
interested in. Follow us and I heard radio or subscribe
wherever you get your podcast him Oscar Rameras and this
is the Daily Dive weekend edition.
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