{"id":71825,"date":"2025-04-07T13:54:22","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T20:54:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=71825"},"modified":"2025-04-07T13:54:22","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T20:54:22","slug":"with-u-s-students-struggling-educators-rethink-the-school-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=71825","title":{"rendered":"With U.S. Students Struggling, Educators Rethink the School Day"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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With chronic absenteeism and low performance among students nationwide, a growing number of educators are reshaping the school day \u2014 and what it means to be a successful graduate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Courtesy of Canva.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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A growing number of educators are reshaping the school day \u2014 and what it means to be a successful graduate.<\/p>\n

In the face of chronic absenteeism and low performance among students nationwide, these initiatives include a restructuring of yearly credit hours, or Carnegie units \u2014 developed by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1906 \u2014 to include career goal-based learning, work experience internships and early college classes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the positive things that came out of the pandemic is that everybody wanted to get back to school \u2026 then we saw chronic absenteeism rates reach record levels,\u201d said Louis Freedberg, former editor of EdSource and current executive producer of\u00a0<\/a>education reform podcast\u00a0Sparking Equity<\/a>, at a Friday, April 4 American Community Media briefing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis reinforced that our current learning opportunities are not sufficient for young people to get up every morning and want to go to school,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

In the 2021-22 school year,\u00a029.7%<\/a>\u00a0of U.S. students \u2014 nearly 14.7 million \u2014 were chronically absent, compared with 16% in 2019, before the pandemic; in 2022-2023, 27.9% were chronically absent.<\/p>\n

The 2024\u00a0National Assessment of Educational Progress<\/a>, known as the \u201cnation\u2019s report card\u201d, also saw that for the first time, a third of eighth grade students scored below \u201cbasic\u201d in reading levels, being 5 points lower on average compared to 2019; math scores were 8 points lower compared to 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeeping kids engaged in school presents a crisis for all forms of education,\u201d said Freedberg. \u201cThe notion that we should shoehorn learning into these six-hour daily bites doesn\u2019t work for all kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany other skills may be more important for how students succeed in the workplace and in life after they graduate, like critical thinking, being able to work collaboratively or independently, being able to stick with a task,\u201d he continued, adding that many states are now \u201cfiguring out how to measure these durable skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, the same Carnegie Foundation that had developed credit hours nearly 120 years ago is now working with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to create pilot projects testing students\u2019 skills.<\/p>\n

Last October, for instance, North Carolina was awarded nearly $4 million from the U.S. Department of Education to pilot a\u00a0Skills for the Future<\/a>\u00a0assessment project.<\/p>\n

North Carolina, alongside at least 16 other states, are also outlining these skill goals in \u201cgraduate portraits<\/a>\u201d that are influencing education policies across the country\u2019s school districts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that\u2019s definitely picking up steam across the country,\u201d said Freedberg: \u201cWhat do we want our graduates to leave school with? Not just whether you got A\u2019s or B\u2019s, but broader descriptions of a variety of skills\u201d including networking abilities, communication, cultural competence, civic engagement and conflict navigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen modern public schools were started, Carnegie developed credit units to fuel the workforce. But in order for people to be really good workers, they need to be well-rounded,\u201d said Shalonda Gregory, principal of Metwest High in Oakland, California \u2014 a non-traditional school which has implemented this skills-based models through\u00a0Big Picture Learning<\/a>\u00a0(BPL).<\/p>\n

BPL, a network of over 140 schools nationwide and over 100 more worldwide, encourages students to learn skills for the careers they want through field internships and mentorships up to two days a week \u2014 Tuesdays and Thursdays at Metwest \u2014 alongside core curriculum classes the rest of the school week.<\/p>\n

Every student entering ninth grade at Metwest creates an Individual Learning Plan with actionable goals not only for \u201ccareers or education beyond high school, but also for who the person is that you want to be, how you want to show up in this world,\u201d Gregory explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a student is really interested in wanting to become an architect, even in<\/p>\n

standard classes like English, math and science, for instance, we try to find ways to engage them by connecting the content to that interest \u2026 while also helping them find internships with architect firms,\u201d she continued, \u201cso they\u2019re not just graduating with their diploma but career-ready life skills, and some of our students have graduated with their associate\u2019s degree as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

One current graduating senior, Johnny, \u201cis really passionate about skateboarding. He\u2019s been interning at a skateboard shop, and in prior years, at auto shops, doing collision repairs and regular fixes,\u201d Gregory explained. \u201cBecause of those opportunities he\u2019s going to work at the skateboard shop in May, and work on cars as a side hustle to fuel his future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Metwest is only 23 years old, its work-based educational approach \u2014 also known as Linked Learning \u2014 have already spurred similar initiatives across the Oakland Unified School District, including internship programs, pre-college support and a year-long graduate\u00a0capstone<\/a>\u00a0program.<\/p>\n

\u201cHigh school is not the end game,\u201d said Anne Stanton, president of the\u00a0Linked Learning Alliance<\/a>\u00a0(LLA). \u201cIn the very recent past, we had a very bifurcated \u201950s model where students were sorted into vocational or college tracks \u2026 but young people at this period in their lives, as their brains are continuing to develop, can contribute in so many ways, and in our country, we think a lot less of what a 16-year-old can do than we should.\u201d<\/p>\n

In California alone, the San Francisco-based LLA is implementing work-based learning initiatives in 80 school districts and 250 schools serving 330,000 youth statewide thanks to $500 million that the state legislature invested in\u00a0Golden State Pathways<\/a>, a college and career readiness program.<\/p>\n

Across its total 977 school districts, California has approximately 5,496,271 students.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d like to get 600,000 young people in California having these experiences,\u201d said Stanton. \u201cBut for young people to apply their academic learning in the real world requires a deeper engagement in that social contract by the employers providing these opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEven school district superintendents often turn over every two years,\u201d she continued. \u201cIt\u2019s about who owns this vision of engaging youth. If it\u2019s owned by students, families, communities, employers, you can\u2019t break it down, no matter who the leadership is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core of our work to support young people in the real world requires that it\u2019s never just one teacher or one part of their lives doing it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BySelen Ozturk Apr 7, 2025 With...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-opinion","category-u-s-a"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71826,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71825\/revisions\/71826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}