On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Daniel Buck, Fordham’s editorial and policy associate, joins Mike and David to discuss the behavioral chaos in American schools post-pandemic. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber discusses a new study finding that pandemic-era declines in public school enrollment are likely to persist.
Recommended content:
“The school discipline disaster” —Daniel Buck
“‘There were fists everywhere.’ Violence against teachers is on the rise.” —Wall Street Journal
Andrew Backer-Hicks et al., “The stickiness of pandemic-driven disenrollment from public schools,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (August 2023).
Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our podcast? Send them to Daniel Buck at dbuck@fordhaminstitute.org.
This transcript was created using AI software.
Michael Petrilli (00:01):
Welcome to the Education Gadfly Show. I'm your host, Mike Petrilli of the Thomas b Fordham Institute. Today Daniel Buck, a policy and editorial associate at the Fordham Institute joins us to discuss the behavioral chaos in American schools. Then on the research minute, Amber discusses a new study that finds pandemic era public school enrollment declines, look likely to persist all that on the Education Gadfly show.
David Griffith (00:32):
Yes. Who among us has not gazed at the Capitol building and been inspired by what transpires inside it? <Laugh>, what
Michael Petrilli (00:38):
Hello. This is your host, Mike Petrilli of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute here at the Education Gadfly Show, and online at fordhaminstitute.org. And now please welcome back our special guest for this week, Daniel Buck. Dan, welcome back to the show.
Daniel Buck (00:55):
Hey, Mike, thanks for having me back on.
Michael Petrilli (00:56):
You know, Dan is now a policy and editorial associate here at the Thomas b Fordham Institute. Dan, we are so excited you've moved from fellow to staffer and it's been great having you here. I think it's been, what, a couple of weeks at this point?
Daniel Buck (01:10):
End of August, we'll make it two months. Just got to meet everybody in the office last week. Flew into the DC area for the first time. So I've never seen Lincoln Memorial or any of those things, and I got to go around and see 'em all while I was in, in town.
David Griffith (01:23):
Whoa, whoa, I didn't realize that.
Michael Petrilli (01:25):
Isn't that cool? Isn't that cool? And look, listen to me, boy, time flies when we're having fun. I can't believe it's already been a couple months. Well, it's great to have you here. Dan also joining us as always, you just heard his voice. David Griffith.
David Griffith (01:36):
Hey, Mike. Always a pleasure. I I have seen the Lincoln at Memorial many times at this point. I have to say, I got a little buzzed the first time I walked by it, but if you actually live here, it's amazing. You can walk right past the White House and not necessarily notice. But anyway, it's really exciting for Dan.
Michael Petrilli (01:52):
Don't get jaded. David, come on.
David Griffith (01:54):
I'm not jaded, Mike. I'm just, I'm normal. I'm, I'm, you know, I, I'm, I'm jog and I, you know, I'm tired and you know, it just so happens to be a Capitol building.
Michael Petrilli (02:03):
Well, we are here to do the podcast thing with Dan. Dan, you know, before coming on staff at Fordham was a teacher. Yes. I feel a little guilty about bringing Dan out of the classroom, but we're gonna talk about his experience, particularly with school discipline. Let's do that on ed reform update. Okay, Dan, well, you've got a great piece in National Review right now about school discipline and the fact that it seems to be going over a cliff. Let's start by some of your personal experiences. You recounted what it was like in your school, which let's be clear, was a private Christian school. So this is, this is not bashing the traditional public schools here. This is a private Christian school. What did you experience?
Daniel Buck (02:50):
Yeah, this is a private Christian school that modeled itself on the no excuse charter schools. And in the years prior to me working there had kind of dismantled a lot of their behavior structures. And what was, once one of the premier urban schools in my city was utter pandemonium. My classroom was more orderly than the average classroom in that building. According to my administration, they called it a Dr. Jekyll and Hide affair, where kids would go elsewhere and would act a fool and then come to my classroom and sit and work and get something done. But I mean, the kinds of things I saw a student ran into my room and started insulting another student's, one of my own students, deceased fathers. And I had to hold her back from committing assaults. The hallway smelled like marijuana, I broke up fights. There was constant, you know, kids running down the hallway, cussing, play, fighting, not going to class. Attendance policies were kind of a joke. Class would start and then for the next 10 minutes, kids would continue to trickle in. And there was no real start to the day. And as you would expect, it made teaching and learning very difficult.
Michael Petrilli (04:05):
Again, it's interesting that this is in a private school. So you say a, a sort of a no excuses private school a few years ago. And then I assume that, you know, when there was this big push for discipline reform in public schools, charter schools at your private school also got on board. Was it in part because of concerns about unfair, what was considered unfair discipline to racial minorities, to African American kids in particular? Was that that was some of the motivation. People felt like, well, we shouldn't be we're we're suspending or expelling too many black students.
Daniel Buck (04:36):
I think that's exactly, it's in another piece for national affairs. I track it. It's kind of the, the educational analog to, you know, to fund or abolish the police movements. And a lot of the no excuse charter schools in New York, such as Uncommon or Kipp, got rid of a lot of their no excuse standards, their exacting behavioral expectations, because it was promoting, you know, submissiveness on the part of students, or it was propping up a unfair, unrealistic meritocracy. That's not real. And a lot of these schools succumbed to public pressure. And then the other schools like mine around the country that kind of followed their lead did just that and got rid of uniform expectations. So my school used to have, you know, ties and suit jackets, and then that kind of turned to just sweaters and khakis and whatever shoes they wanted. Silence in the hallways was no longer an expectations. All of these kinds of basic rules and expectations for order were no more.
Michael Petrilli (05:42):
Yeah. And you know, we, we hear these stories and you report on it in your piece about now, you know, discipline just being out of control. Of course, you also say that, you know, could have been the pandemic had a big impact. Kids were outta school for a long time and they just, you know, got outta practice of doing school and being able to behave probably on screens way too much, maybe not sleeping enough. I mean, all the, the broader issues that we have going on. And yet my sense is that a lot of educators are really feeling like it's gone too far, and that there is starting to be a backlash to some of these reforms. We did see, for example, the Biden administration came out with a dear colleague letter that was much anticipated. Many of us were worried they were gonna go back to an Obama era policy from 2014 where they would explicitly say from the Office for Civil Rights, you know, we're gonna be watching if you have discipline if your discipline rates are different by race we're gonna assume that you're violating civil rights.
(06:41):
And in fact, they, instead, it was a very mild letter where they just encouraged school districts to kind of look at their own data and also expressed a lot of empathy with educators about how hard some of these issues are today and student mental health, et cetera. So, you know, maybe a little bit of a backing away. And so I, I guess long way of saying, do you have any sense that in your school or some of these charter schools, you think about, they're rethinking and they're saying, okay, maybe we, we went too far. That we let the pendulum swing too far in the direction of letting anything go.
Daniel Buck (07:12):
There is some pushback that I'm starting to see. A few teachers unions have threatened to go on strike over issues like this. I think it was in Akron, Ohio, where the administration wanted to change the definition of assault from contact to injury. So it didn't qualify as an assault unless somebody was injured. If a student hit another student that didn't count as long as it didn't break a bone or something like that. And the union was threatened to go on strike for it. And I'm pretty sure the language was maintained in kind of the, the stricter framing. And then just this morning I was reading about a few districts in Florida that were running audits on their, you know, schools and systems and found some concerning things where there just, there weren't really behavior codes anymore, or there, there wasn't a person whose responsibility at the district was to manage these kinds of things. And I'm in con I'm in conversation with the think tank in Wisconsin that are sending out sample models of what school board policy should look like for schools that are trying to clamp down and get this school chaos under control.
Michael Petrilli (08:29):
And look, you know, the answer is not, as you say, necessarily to go back to some of these old policies either, right? I mean, it was never seemed like a great idea to just suspend kids for a week and have them sit at home all by themself or, you know, out on the streets. And yet, I don't know, David, I mean, this is something we talked about a long time, right? We're just not sure what to do with kids who are chronically misbehaving so that their peers can learn. Like, what, what do you do with those kids if you don't just put 'em out?
David Griffith (08:58):
Yeah. I'm struck by the continued absence of I'll say call 'em alternative consequences. In our public discourse. We've been culminating against suspensions. There has been a backlash, I would argue from conservatives saying essentially, consequences are important. And it seems like every, both sides to me are missing the point, which is we need consequences other than suspensions, right? Suspensions are not, it's not a synonym for consequences. It's just this insane sort of, I I really, I really find myself deeply annoyed by almost all sides of the debate. I mean, I think it's crazy. Nobody basically who has had a child in my experience, thinks that you can get away with no consequences, right? Or, or views, you know, punishment as sort of inherently dehumanizing, right? Like that's, I I punish my kids all the time, right? And I love 'em to death. It's part of teaching them to act appropriately and, and, and setting boundaries.
(09:55):
But having said that, I don't, you know, I don't push them outta the house and tell 'em to walk around DC for a week, right? That's, that's not, you know, that's not good parenting, obviously. And it's, it's, it's pretty unsatisfactory, right? And it just, it frustrates me that there doesn't seem to be more discussion of, you know, where this should go. I get it. I have zero desire to defend the notion that we should equalize suspension rates across races. It's not, it's not realistic in the short term. I have zero desire to defend the notion that we should implement restorative justice or, or P B I S as sort of these standalone measures instead of suspensions right. In, you know, at some massive scale. I, I don't think that's realistic. I don't think it's gonna work out well in practice, but I, I don't know, like, why can't we have a little bit more money or funding or sorry, those are the same thing, but why can't we have put a little more effort into alternatives, right? Like, whatever happened to detention. I mean, it's like, it's in the movies, it's always detention, but I haven't heard the word detention in like a decade. And I, my my guess is it's 'cause it's a huge pain in the butt, right? Like, who actually wants to stay after school for an hour and a half and hang out with, with the knuckleheads that you didn't want in your classroom in the first place? Nobody wants to do that. But it
Michael Petrilli (11:10):
Might be better. But you're right, you should not, instead of less school, we need to make them do more school.
David Griffith (11:14):
Well, I mean, yeah, right? Isn't that sort of intuitive, right? Like, I, I mean, I think Dan makes a good point. You know, in, in, in, in the column, right? Where he says basically, you know sending 'em to the, to the lounge with a bag of chips sort of incentivizes misbehavior, right? Okay, so let's actually disincentivize it. Like let's say you can't leave school until 5:00 PM and you say, and you clean the, you, you clean the cafeteria or whatever, right? I mean, there has to be, it just, there's a level of common sense that's associated with this. And I, my guess is that it's, it's hard to execute in practice, but we should at least be talking about it. Well,
Michael Petrilli (11:48):
And, and look, when some people have talked about it, there's been an uproar. I mean, there's an article recently that upset that some districts are saying, okay, we're gonna take kids who misbehave and have in-school suspensions and they can tune into their classes remotely from down the hall. Now you know, I'm sure the details matter there, but that doesn't sound unreasonable. They're in school, they're safe, they're kind of being able to learn. Maybe, maybe it's the best case scenario. Oh no, this is terrible. You're, you know, it's, and, and maybe illegal according to some people that that you're going that way. Huge uproar in, in Houston right now, at least according to the New York Times that they might turn some libraries into some discipline centers. And people are very upset about that. I, I mean, again, it's like a lack of seriousness. I mean, we need, we need to have, be honest that there's no great option. So what is the least worst option?
David Griffith (12:39):
Yes, there's a utopianism that runs through this that doesn't survive contact with reality. And that's why it, you know, there's inevitably pushback when, whenever we try ask teachers in schools to do the impossible. And I don't know how to get past this sort of utopianism. It's, it's kinda like saying every kid, every kid's gonna read on grade level, right? We're gonna, we're gonna end suspensions. We're gonna, you know, we're gonna keep every kid in class. We're not gonna keep every kid in class. So can we have real conversation about it? Please?
Michael Petrilli (13:05):
So, Dan, we've been monopolizing the conversation. <Laugh>, you tell us you know, your school is a private school. I guess you could just, they could just expel kids. That's an option. That's not an option as much for public schools, charter schools. What, what would you do? I mean, what, what would make it better do you think? I don't
Daniel Buck (13:22):
Have as much of an aversion to exclusion of some kind as David does. What is the quintessential punishment for children? It's a timeout. It is removing them from the play. It is sending them to their room during dinnertime. You were excluding them kind of from the community for a time. That's a huge punishment. It's biblical. If we wanna go there, kick people out of the church. I don't remember which letter of Paul that is, but it's one of 'em. So I don't hate the idea of suspensions, like you said, I think a lot of schools rely on suspensions because they're easier. Somebody has to watch them if they have an afterschool suspension. Somebody has to be in the detention room and just kicking 'em out of school for the day is easy. That doesn't mean that's necessarily what we need to do though. And I think a little creativity on what our consequences are would help us a lot. Take 'em outta gym. Take 'em outta recess. What are the other things we can do short of expelling them for the minor infractions, especially, and I think we all, well, not everyone agrees, that's why I had to write this gosh darn piece. We need consequences of some kind. And I was in my video cheering mic along. As he said, sometimes we have to go with the least bad option.
David Griffith (14:33):
I just wanna clarify, I I'm actually okay with exclusion too. I, I, I think the critique, the valid version of the, this critique has always been specifically about Outof school suspensions. And I have some sympathy for that position.
Michael Petrilli (14:46):
Alright, we will have to leave it there. Thank you so much, Daniel Buck, Dan Buck for coming on the show. We'll have to have you back sometime soon. Now it's time for everyone's favorite Amber's research minute. Amber, welcome back to the show.
Amber Northern (15:06):
Thanks, Mike.
Michael Petrilli (15:08):
So we learned earlier that David, you know, has been in DC so long. He's, he's not even blown away anymore by the sights and sounds of dc. You know, he just walks by the, the Lincoln Memorial without thinking twice. You know, he is not impressed by the White House, you know, is do you have this experience too now, Amber?
Amber Northern (15:25):
No, I do not. I still, even when I was coming in more often than we were, I still would gawk, you know, at the White House and the Capitol. I don't know. I just, I think that they continue to, you know, inspire all, and I don't know, just inspiration. I don't know. Maybe I'm just a geek that way.
David Griffith (15:42):
Yes. Who among us has not GAed at the Capitol building and been inspired by what transpires inside it, right? <Laugh>.
Michael Petrilli (15:50):
See, this is the problem, David. Maybe Amber and I can remember a time when things weren't quite so dysfunctional. Yeah, I
David Griffith (15:57):
Really can't, I gotta be honest. <Laugh>
Michael Petrilli (16:01):
Sad, sad, sad. Alright, Amber, hey what you got for us this week on the research front
Amber Northern (16:06):
We have a new report from N B E R and Mathematica. We're gonna be diving into patterns and pandemic driven dis-enrollment from public schools and whether it's bounce back or not. And I have a just two or three, just little mini quiz questions embedded in here. 'cause It is interesting if you ask me. It's a descriptive report. Starts off by providing national estimates, specifically that in the first year of covid, 1.5 million K 12 kids left the public system for alternatives like homeschooling and private schools. Recent national studies also suggest that public enrollment did not recover in 21, 22, remained about 3% below pre pandemic enrollment levels. So now we have a state level study in Michigan. It's gonna dive into how these enrollment patterns changed in this one state between one and two years into the pandemic. How these exit rates compared to pre covid exit rates, and whether kids who exited during the pandemic re-enrolled after two years. We've got Michigan students K through 12 from fall 2017 to fall 2021.
Michael Petrilli (17:13):
Oh, but, but this is important. So, so let's just be clear. It ends at fall 2021,
Amber Northern (17:17):
Fall 2021,
Michael Petrilli (17:19):
All. So we definitely, you know, don't, this doesn't even last school year. So we gotta be careful about any conclusions we make, right? Because that was still not the end of the pandemic. Okay?
Amber Northern (17:29):
It, it still, it still is not right, but you, yes. All right. Total enrollment had been declining by a thousand students per grade annually before Covid totaling more than 10,000 students per year in fall 2020, total enrollment dropped by 3.2%, which was four times the historic trend, and represents a single year decline of more than 40,000 students. The fall 2020 enrollment drop was largest in the kindergarten grade. Declined by how much you think it declined in kindergarten and fall 2020. My first little question.
Michael Petrilli (18:05):
Tough one. 15%,
Amber Northern (18:08):
David,
David Griffith (18:08):
I'm gonna go for 20%.
Amber Northern (18:10):
All right, 11.3. So still high in contrast, enrollment in high schools remain roughly in line with pre covid enrollment trends, even after, in adjusting for pre covid enrollment trends, data followed the same pattern, I'll, I'll be at these numbers were reduced somewhat. Then we move to the second year, fall 2021. Enrollment continues to decline. In fall 2021, it was about 4% below 3.6 below the pre pandemic levels in fall 2019, which corresponds to an additional loss of 0.4 percentage points from that 3.2% decline I just told you about in fall 2020 kindergarten enrollment partially recovered in 2020 in fall, but still remained substantially below the fall 2019 enrollment. Other grades continued to decline modestly except for middle school, which saw enrollment drop by an additional 3% in the fall of 2021. Now we move, move to exit rates. Again, small fraction of Michigan kids enroll in the public school system prior to kindergarten. So the declines in kindergarten enrollment primarily reflect, reflect those changes in initial enrollment, those kids just not being enrolled at, at the front end. And other grades, however, declines were largely driven by these increased exit rates among students who were previously enrolled. But then they ask, okay, what portion of those kids sub subsequently re-enrolled? All right, overall, of those who exited before fall 2020, how many do you think re-enrolled in the public school system by fall? 2021.
Michael Petrilli (19:45):
75%.
David Griffith (19:46):
I'm gonna go with 60.
Amber Northern (19:48):
Ah, 55. Yes.
Michael Petrilli (19:50):
David wins that one.
Amber Northern (19:52):
<Laugh>. this re-enrollment rate is highest among kindergartners. 62% of those youngins left the public school system did not enroll. I mean, they did enroll in first grade, but they had re-enrolled by fall 2021. Return rates for elementary and middle grades were slightly lower at 56% lowest were high school kids with only 40% returning. In contrast, re-enrollment rates in private in, in years prior to the pandemic were 24% lower on average. All right, next, and this is our last big bucket here. They find variation in re-enrollment by sector. So you have higher return rates among those who left for homeschooling compared to those who left for private schools. So approximately what percentage of students who exited for homeschooling by fall 2020 had returned to the public schools by fall 2020?
David Griffith (20:47):
Amber, this is like asking me how much I can bench on Mars. I, I don't know. <Laugh>
Amber Northern (20:53):
It's a guessing game.
David Griffith (20:55):
I'm gonna say 75% for this one. All right.
Michael Petrilli (20:58):
Yeah. I was gonna go for 80, 80%.
Amber Northern (21:00):
Oh wow. 50% left for homeschooling had returned. All right. Another guess, how about, I mean, obviously it's lower for private schools. How many of those kids you think might have returned
Michael Petrilli (21:11):
20, 25%? I don't know.
Amber Northern (21:13):
David,
David Griffith (21:14):
What'd you go? I'll go with 30, 20,
Amber Northern (21:15):
20%. Those kids who went to private schools returned both of 'em had the same pattern by grade levels. High returns among the kindergarten kids, low returns among the high school kids. And in terms of student characteristics compared to white students, black students were more likely to return. Asian students were less likely to return low income and special ed students more likely to return e l l students. Less likely the likelihood of returning decreased by grade level compared to kindergartners who exited in fall 2020. Students in grades one through five were of 1.4 percentage points less likely to return. Middle school students, four percentage points less likely to return high school students, 19 percentage points less likely to return. All of that is consistent with fixed effects models. So this is really not about the school environment. And then they close with, okay, if this, if this pattern sticks around relative to your point Mike, we, we really don't know yet. Schools and districts are gonna need to deal with budget restrictions, which we've been hearing a lot about. That's it.
Michael Petrilli (22:21):
Yeah. So, right. This story is still being told. I mean, I do feel like, I mean, this, this school year that is just starting now, I, I feel like we should, you know, if, if there's gonna be a return to normal, it should happen by now. The official pandemic emergency is over, and we'll see how this sorts out. I mean, all these parents that, that reported homeschooling their kids, I was always skeptical of that. You know, I always thought that was just a reporting thing. Like you're, are you homeschooling your kid or is your kid just at home right now? Two very different things, right? At least for us once. And that a lot of those kids would go end up going back. And it looks like they, that is to some degree happening, but not everybody. I mean, there are, you know, this was a long enough experience way too long for many kids that it, it makes sense that some new patterns happen, you know, and, and that parents that found a private school for their kid so they could go back to school in the fall of 2020, that a lot of 'em are sticking with that.
(23:15):
I think that's I think that's interesting.
David Griffith (23:17):
Yeah. I mean, I'm just struck again though, how the modal parent's experience though has not been to, to exit the system, right? Your average parent never left the system in the first place. Right? So, I don't know. I feel like this in many ways in's a bigger event in terms of how it affected the way parents think about school. Right? And I, I feel like the implications for, for like chronic absenteeism, right? And how parents relate to teachers, to me that I think that's almost a bigger story than people exiting the system, right? Or am I misunderstanding the numbers?
Michael Petrilli (23:52):
Well, look, it's still, it, it doesn't take a ton of kids to leave the system for, that's still to have a big impact on budget and policy, right? And the experience that kids are having. I mean, you know, and, and let's keep in mind I if they got into this amber, but this is on top of the ongoing demographic trend that was already underway, which was the baby bust, right? And so, you know I know because Nico, my 15 year old, born in 2007, you know, more babies born in 2007 than any other year in American history. And so he's going into a sophomore year of high school. It's, so right now it's the sophomores and juniors that is the, the high point of student enrollment. And everybody younger than them, the enrollment's declining and it's been declining more or less year over year.
(24:36):
So it's just is the case that there's fewer kids in kindergarten right now than there are in high school. And as, as this works it way through the system. So that's happening too. And I just wonder like how do you control for that? I mean, it still has the same impact on districts, which is that many of them, if not most, are going to shrink. And there's no sign of uptick on the baby boom or bust. Immigration might have some, you know, maybe that comes back more than it did during the pandemic, but still, I mean, the trends are down and, and school districts are gonna have to close schools. There's no way around it.
Amber Northern (25:09):
Right? Well, and also the disproportionate return rates among subgroups of kids. So you've got less Asian students coming back, you've got more black students coming back. You've got low income students and special ed students more likely to come back, but not the e l kids. I mean, you know, you've got all these different sort of, you know, patterns in terms of the demographics. So I mean, that's changing too, which makes it, you know, makes a difference in how we study, you know, trends across time and, and that sort of thing.
Michael Petrilli (25:37):
Yep. And, and the high school students, I always wonder, what does it mean to not come back? Does that mean that we had a bunch of kids drop out and I haven't yet seen, you know, really hard numbers to say what, you know, how many of these kids we just lost and, and they're just lost. They're, they're in the labor market and they're disconnected.
David Griffith (25:54):
Mike, I, I don't think we're ever gonna know at this point. I mean, honestly, yeah, I've been looking, I mean, I, I've had the same experience you have. I keep waiting for someone to nail it down and I've seen Chris, you know, some reasonable estimates, but I, I don't think anyone knows.
Michael Petrilli (26:07):
And, and it makes me wonder like really like the e l l data were interesting and it made me wonder, oh, is, was that in the high school level, a lot of maybe Latino immigrant kids that that left and, and started working and that's, that's it.
David Griffith (26:20):
Yeah. That made me wonder about identification rates too. But I agree. That one's strange. Other than that though, right? I mean it was basically intuitive, right? Like the kids with the few adoptions were forced to come back,
Michael Petrilli (26:33):
Right? Alright, Amber good stuff. Maybe we'll come back in a year and, and see
Amber Northern (26:38):
Have another year of data,
Michael Petrilli (26:40):
Another year of data. There we go. Very exciting for us. Alright, thank you guys. That is all the time we've got for this week. And so until next week, I'm David Griffith. And I'm Mike Petrilli of the Thomas b Fordham Institute signing on
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