Category: Government Actions

GAO Report Looked at Effectiveness of ESSER (October 28, 2024)

According to a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released October, 23, 2024, school districts prioritized spending of COVID-19 emergency (ESSER) funds based on community input, financial need, state policies and other influences. It also found that the effectiveness of the ESSER money for COVID-19 recovery efforts is difficult to determine because school districts were involved in many activities during the pandemic. Additionally, long-term improvements are unknown because not enough time has passed since initial positive effects were noted.

Republican members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee had asked GAO to examine school district ESSER spending. Some conservative lawmakers at the federal level have questioned the proper use of the money. A statement posted on the Senate HELP Committee GOP page on X said that the report “found it difficult to determine what uses were effective. More research is needed from the field.”

In addition, AASA, The School Superintendents Association released a September report on spending practices from ESSER’s allocations from the American Rescue Plan and found most districts directed money toward expanded learning time, including summer programming and after-school activities. But because districts had various fiscal priorities and approaches for investing the money in different phases, it was difficult to generalize the best practice approaches for the emergency funds.

GAO’s report said education officials from varying states sometimes differed on what they considered was an allowable expense for district-level use of federal COVID-19 emergency funds for schools. Directives from state legislatures also influenced spending practices. Pennsylvania officials told GAO researchers that proposals to renovate or upgrade athletic fields, stadiums or tracks were denied because school districts could not justify that those improvements were necessary to respond to the pandemic.

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USDE Releases AI toolkit for K-12 Schools (October 28, 2024)

On October 24, 2024, prompted by a Biden administration October 2023 executive order and as a result of U.S. Department of Education (USDE) public listening sessions held with 90 educators as well as 12 roundtable discussions with education leaders between December 2023 and March 2024, USDE’s Office of Educational Technology released a highly anticipated guidance to help K-12 leaders integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their school districts. The 74-page toolkit includes strategies for mitigating risks and developing AI use policies and comes as more K-12 school districts look to use the technology in their classrooms or for business operations.

Titled Empowering Education Leaders: A Toolkit for Safe, Ethical, and Equitable AI Integration, the toolkit contains three sections. They are:
–Mitigating risks while safeguarding students’ privacy, security and civil rights.
–Building a strategy for integrating the use of AI tools that best fits students’ needs.
–Guiding the effective use of AI to boost teaching and learning.

Click here to access the toolkit.

Source K-12 Dive

Ed. Sec. Mumin Records Audiobook at the Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians (October 13, 2024)

On October 11, 2024, PA Secretary of Education Dr. Khalid N. Mumin visited the Library of Accessible Media for Pennsylvanians (LAMP) to tour the library and record a narration of It Fell From the Sky by The Fan Brothers. Secretary Mumin’s recording will be entered into the Library of Congress’ National Library Service Catalog.

LAMP is funded through the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office of Commonwealth Libraries and administered throughout the state of Pennsylvania by Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Free Library of Philadelphia.

The library provides people with disabilities access to free materials shipped to them in accessible formats like braille, audio, described movies, and large print, as well as digital access to downloadable audio or braille to hundreds of thousands of titles. The library also hosts a state-of-the-art recording studio that has added more than 700 audio books to the National Library Service Catalog. Since the early 1970’s, the library’s three accessible sound booths and full digital array of equipment and support systems offer a unique and accessible service that adds locally themed books to the collection.

LAMP’s services are available to eligible Pennsylvania residents who have difficulty using standard print materials because of a visual, physical, or reading disability. To access services, users must submit an application form certified by a health professional or public or welfare agency authority (e.g., social worker, counselor, rehabilitation teacher, certified reading specialist, or superintendent). Professional librarians or anyone approved by the Library of Congress may also certify eligibility for patrons.

In addition, Governor Josh Shapiro’s 2024-25 budget secured more than $2.5 million in funding for LAMP, $3 million for Library Access, $70 million for the Public Library Subsidy, and more than $2.6 million for the Office of Commonwealth Libraries.

For more information on the Pennsylvania Department of Education, please visit the website.

One-third of Teenager Students Report Experiencing Racism in School (October 13, 2024)

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) results of a 2023 nationwide Youth Risk Behavior Survey released on October 8, 2024, Asian, multiracial, and Black students were the most likely to report having ever experienced racism in school. In fact,more than half of Asian students (57%) and nearly half of multiracial (49%) and Black (46%) students reported experiencing racism sometimes in their schooling. Non-White students reported experiencing racism in school at a rate two to three times higher than the 17% reported by White students.

In addition, poor mental health, suicide risk and substance use consistently ranked higher among students who reported ever experiencing racism in school when compared to students who said they had never faced a racist environment.

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CDC Study Focuses on Transgender High School Students and Those Questioning Gender Identity (October 12, 2024)

On October 8, 2024, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of its first nationally representative survey data on transgender students, which showed that transgender students also had higher rates of bullying and poor mental health. In fact, CDC found that approximately 3% of the nation’s high school students are transgender, and another 2.2% say they are questioning their gender. In addition, slightly over a quarter of transgender students and the same portion of questioning students skipped school in 2023 because they felt unsafe, compared to just 8.5% of cisgender male students. About the same level also said they attempted suicide within the last year, as opposed to 5% of their cisgender male peers. Transgender and questioning students also had higher rates of bullying and poor mental health and the lowest rates of school connectedness when compared to their cisgender male and female peers.

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