BRIDGING A DIGITAL DIVIDE THAT LEAVES SCHOOLCHILDREN BEHIND
McALLEN, Tex. — At 7 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, Isabella and Tony Ruiz were standing in their usual homework spot, on a crumbling sidewalk across the street from the elementary school nearest to their home.“I got it. I’m going to download,” Isabella said to her brother Tony as they connected to the school’s wireless hot spot and watched her teacher’s math guide slowly appear on the cracked screen of the family smartphone.Isabella, 11, and Tony, 12, were outside the school because they have no Internet service at home — and connectivity is getting harder. With their mother, Maria, out of work for months and money coming only from their father, Isaias, who washes dishes, the family had cut back on almost everything, including their cellphone data plan.So every weeknight, the siblings stood outside the low-slung school, sometimes for hours, to complete homework for the sixth grade.“There’s just no funds left,” Maria Ruiz said later outside the family’s white clapboard rental home. “It worries me because it will become more important to have Internet when they have to do more homework.”With many educators pushing for students to use resources on the Internet with class work, the federal government is now grappling with a stark disparity in access to technology, between students who have high-speed Internet at home and an estimated five million families who are without it and who are struggling to keep up.The challenge is felt across the nation. Some students in Coachella, Calif., and Huntsville, Ala., depend on school buses that have free Wi-Fi to complete their homework.
HOW TO HELP MORE COLLEGE STUDENTS GRADUATE
Despite the rising cost of education, a college degree is one of the best investments that a young person can make. In 2015, median earnings among workers aged 22 to 27 with a bachelor’s degree were $43,000, compared with $25,000 for those with just a high school diploma. Over a lifetime, a person with a bachelor’s degree typically earns $800,000 more than someone who has completed only high school, even after netting out tuition costs.The financial prospects for college dropouts are poor, for two reasons. First, dropouts earn little more than people with no college education. Second, many dropouts have taken on student loans, and with their low wages, they have difficulty paying off even small balances. Dropouts account for much of the increase in financial distress among student borrowers since the Great Recession.The dropout problem is particularly acute for students whose parents did not attend college. First-generation students beat enormous odds by even enrolling in a four-year degree program. Yet 30 percent of first-generation freshmen drop out of school within three years. That is three times the dropout rate of students whose parents graduated from college.A new “On-track Pell bonus” will increase the grants of low-income students who enroll in 15 credits a semester. The bonus is intended to signal that 15 credits is the right level of course work if students want to graduate on time.Helping students to enter college isn’t enough. For higher education to fulfill its promise as an engine of economic mobility, we need to get students across the finish line to graduation.
NEW CHICAGO SCHOOL BUDGET RELIES ON STATE PENSION
The upcoming budget for the Chicago Public Schools will rely on $500 million in yet-to-be-enacted pension savings by Illinois, school officials said. The third-largest U.S. public school system is projecting a $1.1 billion deficit in its fiscal 2016 budget, largely because of an approximately $675 million pension payment. If the $500 million in pension relief does not materialize, officials said, the school district would turn to “unsustainable borrowing and additional cuts” to balance the budget nearly halfway through the fiscal year. “THE FACT IS MUCH OF THE PAIN IN THIS YEAR’S BUDGET IS DUE TO A BROKEN PENSION SYSTEM THAT FORCES CPS TO CHOOSE BETWEEN MAKING PENSION PAYMENTS AND INVESTING IN OUR CLASSROOMS,” INTERIM CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER JESSE RUIZ TOLD REPORTERS. A complete fiscal 2016 budget, which will include a $61 million property tax increase and must be in place by the end of August, will be released later this summer. The school system tapped borrowed money to make a $634 million, state-mandated fiscal 2015 payment to the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund by a June 30 deadline. It also announced $200 million in spending cuts last month that include the elimination of 1,400 jobs. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who controls the district, called on the state legislature to either create a uniform pension system for all Illinois teachers or pay a bigger chunk of the city’s teacher pensions. The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund said it received just $62.1 million in fiscal 2015 state appropriations, compared with $3.5 billion for the statewide Teachers Retirement System. District officials said the upcoming budget would incorporate a $106 million cut in state funding. Still, per-pupil funding will remain at current amounts of $4,390 to $5,444, depending on the grade level.