House Education Committee Chairman to Big City School Districts: Don’t Mess This Up – By Lauren Camera (US News) / Mar 22 2021
The chairman of the House Education Committee told big-city school districts that they better use the coming windfall in relief funds in a way that leaves no doubt the funding drove improvements.
REP. BOBBY SCOTT TOLD the leaders of the country’s big city school districts Monday that they’re set to receive a windfall of federal relief to help reopen schools for in-person learning. But they better use it in a way, he warned, that leaves no doubt that the funding drove improvements.
“You have a lot of work to do,” Scott, Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, told the Council of the Great City Schools during its annual legislative conference. “The biggest school districts are the ones with the most challenges.”
“The achievement gap got worse, and in some areas it may have gotten a lot worse,” he continued. “So we need to acknowledge that and find out how bad it got and then show that the money we provided and focused according to the Title I formula made a difference.”
Despite the fact that the country’s public school system is tiptoeing back to life, urban school districts account for the majority of the holdouts to providing in-person instruction – and for good reason as they’ve faced significantly more challenging circumstances to reopening. The Council of the Great City Schools represents 76 of the country’s largest urban public school systems, 42 of which currently offer some types of in-person learning.
