When Schools Remain Prison Pipelines
And EdTech funding is about a third of where it was pre-COVID at this time of year
What’s Happening in the Market
Rethink Education invested an undisclosed amount in Aanaab, a Saudi-based teacher-training platform focused on the Middle East and North Africa. They provide teachers with licensing, certifications, courses, PD, and partner with about 250 schools. This is a great investment for a few reasons–both the demographic trends and needs of schools, but also because Saudi Arabia has struggled somewhat to attract its much-desired influx of expats because of a lack of schools.
Source: Wikipedia
PE and VC funding continues to decline, hitting its lowest deal count since 2019, according to a report released a few days ago by S&P Global. In 2019, there were 336 deals at an aggregate funding amount of $4.27B. The number of deals peaked in 2021, at 475 (with an aggregate funding of $7.7B) while funding peaked in 2020, at $10.2B across 345 deals. 2024 is on track to be far more pessimistic: We are at 38 deals YTD at $260M in funding. If you’re a startup, buckle down and focus on unit economics…or just slap AI as something you do! Q1 2024 funding for AI-related startups hit $12.2B across more than 1,000 deals, according to Crunchbase.
What We’re Talking About
The Texas Educational Agency (TEA) released thousands of pages for public review and feedback last week. The next step is approval by the State Board of Education in November. Schools can then purchase approved materials by accessing additional funding as an incentive. The list has been a contentious one, drawing criticism for inserting biblical references into the lesson plans. This comes days after the state Republican party passed a platform requiring the TEA to include instruction on the Bible.
Ed Secretary Miguel Cardona has vowed to overhaul the Federal Student Aid office after an absolutely abysmal rollout of the reformed FAFSA, which saw rolling delays. They are “reorganizing” leadership and pulling IT consultants in. FAFSA applications are down nearly 16% YoY (still better than the 40% decline back in March, but awful nonetheless).
One Big Idea
8 female high school students were recently arrested in Novato California for assaulting a classmate. The footage is bad, but the knee-jerk response that will follow will be worse: Calls for further policing in our schools, which is a mistake.
In 2022, 90% of students arrested across NYC’s public schools were Hispanic or Black. Black students are 3x more likely to be arrested than a white student: Compare this to the national incarceration rate, which is about 5x more likely for Black Americans than white. Students with disabilities make up 11% of California’s student body but over a quarter of arrests.
If you ever want a more visible, tangible school-to-prison pipeline, look no further. Florida spends about $400M alone on school resource officers (according to the Intercultural Development Research Agency). This is as school districts across Florida face funding and enrollment shortfalls. Hardee County faces a $2.7M shortfall and is laying off teachers. Duval County, which has seen enrollment increases, has to lay off 11% of district and 6% of school positions due to budget constraints.
This represents the sort of short-term thinking that the US really excels at. Schools are forced to make tough financial decisions, so they cut teachers, nurses, counselors, and the arts. Which, in the long term, obviously impacts the quality of educational environment we’re able to create for students; the outlets they can access, the mental health resources at their fingertips. And then we make the short-term decision when we see instances like Novato to increase the presence of police officers in schools.
Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and other organizations have studied the effects of police in schools and found “no evidence that the presence of police officers in schools reduced crime or promoted safety (Source: Forbes).” They did find that the presence of officers led to higher rates of criminalization; as we’ve written about in the past, officers often respond to issues that could be handled by teachers through escalation and arrest.
Source: The ACLU calculated the opportunity-cost for hiring SROs
In 1975, 1% of public schools had school resource officers (school police offers). Today, 48% do. More schools have SROs than have nurses (Source: ACLU). We have decided to funnel billions of dollars to police officers in schools rather than the actual schools, turning many public schools into microcosms of the environment outside, when they should be safe havens.
Our worry is that we will continue perpetuating the school-to-prison pipeline by putting officers in schools, instead of investing in evidence-based practices.