The people of Utah are correct to be concerned about how far the state’s K-12 students fell behind during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data is in, and students are playing catch up. It will take a mindful and concerted effort to restore our state’s educational product. This is an undertaking worthy of a state that values the education of its children — a constituency that one could also refer to as our future workforce, entrepreneurs, leaders, civil servants and faith leaders. But clawing our way back to the pre-Covid baseline isn’t enough. We can and must do better.
It was noted several weeks ago at a forum sponsored by The Salt Lake Tribune and the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute that Utah’s public education system was, indeed, struggling before the COVID crisis hit.
In the words of 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year John Arthur, “We shipwrecked in 2020, but it was already a leaky boat.”
Early American education policy worked, in part, to keep children out of the workforce. Today, schools prioritize educating our youth so that our graduates can excel in a range of competitive economic environments. To ensure this, a superior public education product is a tremendous asset.
Utah can do more to ensure that our state’s children have access to one of the best public school systems in the nation.
But, support for public education among our political class has always been wanting, and stunts such as the newest means of funneling public money to private and religious schools and homeschooling further undermine the chances for a full restoration of educational opportunity for the majority of students.
The $8,000-per-student “Utah Fits All Scholarship,” rushed through the opening days of the 2023 Legislature to the tune of $42 million, would more properly be called a voucher plan of the kind soundly rejected at the polls in 2007. The awards are too small to help all but higher-income families afford private school tuition, provide no guarantee of a real education and will be of little use to households in rural areas, where private education is not to be found.
Removing $8,000 per student (in the form of vouchers) from the school system seems pernicious. The Legislature acted in such haste to ram this initiative through, that there are no guarantees in place to ensure students who leave the public schools are getting the well-rounded education they deserve. There is no follow up and no accountability. This is profoundly troubling.
Yes, some would like to opt out of public school, but should they be permitted to take much-needed tax dollars out of the school system the majority of families depend on in the process? Would such an approach ever fly in other silos? Some of us may feel the need to go beyond the protection offered by local police forces by installing alarm systems or hiring private security services. That’s fine, but should taxpayer money pay for that? And what would happen to the police force if such a tack were taken? It would collapse.
If a drive to recover from the impact of the pandemic and the resulting school closings and varied attempts at online learning motivate state and local leaders to bolster the support — financial, political and social — of our public schools, that would be a good start.
But if we just get back to where we were before and call it good, we will not be doing our children, and future generations of Utahns, any favors.
The damage done to learning by the pandemic was sort of like the iceberg that struck the Titanic. Without it, many people might never have known or cared that the luxury liner had far too few lifeboats or that it was held together by cut-rate rivets. With it, it should be clear that Utah schools need a much better plan.
Arthur noted that “learning loss” — the backsliding that happened as children were out of school altogether or struggling with online learning — is not limited to odd circumstances such as global pandemics. It happens every summer, as students forget what they learned during the last term and lose skills through lack of practice — it’s called the summer slide.
Test scores and other research show — as they have always shown — that higher-income students do better on this metric, pandemic or no pandemic, than those from lower-income families.
It damages all of society to expect those children and their families to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and catch up with the rich kids. The gap must be made up, in large part, by the schools and the wider society providing the back-up that many families just cannot offer.
To really do their jobs properly, teachers need support. Not just pay — though that helps — but professionals and paraprofessionals such as teachers’ aides, psychologists, counselors, social workers, nurses, lunchroom and bus monitors. Technology matters, as well.
Such a diversification of labor is needed so that teachers do not have to be all things to all people, so much so that actually teaching multiplication tables and the parts of speech gets pushed further and further down the list.
It is wholly disingenuous for Utah’s political leaders to say that we don’t have the money to do all, or at least most, of what needs to be done. Legislative leaders basically admit that they have more money for education than they are willing to spend on it every time they move to undermine the state’s constitutional mandate to devote income tax revenue to education. Sadly, the Legislature has addressed the leaky boat of the Utah schools, not by working to keep the ship afloat, but by helping some families buy their own lifeboats and escape, to the detriment of those left behind.
Utah schools are worth investing in and fighting for. Our children and state are counting on this. If done properly, our schools can emerge from the pandemic stronger than they ever were. But, to achieve this, we need our political class to summon the vision, the courage and the will to fund the best public education product we can muster.