Originally published in The Intercept on January 26, 2021.
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PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN’S recent pick to chair the Federal Communications Commission, Jessica Rosenworcel, is welcome news to those who have been fighting to help students access the internet during the coronavirus pandemic. It was Rosenworcel herself, one of just two Democrats on the five-person commission, who years back coined the term “the homework gap,” referring to inequities faced by kids living in communities with poor internet infrastructure or in households that can’t afford internet service.

The homework gap, or so-called digital divide, has been one the most difficult challenges for children throughout the pandemic. The disparity took on new urgency when schools nationwide closed to prevent Covid-19 spread in the spring, and internet providers also struggled to handle the surge in home usage among their regular customers. Ten months into the pandemic, millions of students still lack reliable connectivity, and many of those children have no plans to return to in-person school for months.

One change Rosenworcel has been advocating throughout the pandemic could now be used to address inequities in digital learning: By using her new emergency powers, she could authorize existing federal funding streams to go toward buying hot spots and tech devices for students learning at home who currently lack them. Rosenworcel did not return a request for comment. An FCC spokesperson said, “We need to put classrooms and libraries across the country on course for digital age learning, and a big part of that will be building an E-Rate program that can more fully meet these needs.” The spokesperson also referred The Intercept to Rosenworcel’s remarks before Congress in September, where Rosenworcel emphasized the FCC’s ability to get started “immediately.”

Established in 1996, the federal Schools and Libraries Program, commonly known as E-Rate, provides up to $4.15 billion annually to help connect public schools to the internet. The program was modernized in 2014 under reforms spearheaded by the Democrat-appointed FCC Chair Tom Wheeler. The goal was to help more schools access high-speed fiber broadband, but the modernization effort was opposed by then-FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who argued that the reforms were fiscally irresponsible and did not do enough to control fraud and abuse.

On January 18, 2017 — two days before Wheeler stepped down as chair — the FCC published a report describing the early results of its E-Rate modernization efforts. Among other things, the agency found that between 2013 and 2016, the percentage of school districts meeting minimum federal connectivity targets rose from 30 to 77 percent, and the costs schools paid for bandwidth fell dramatically. “E-Rate’s new approach to Wi-Fi has had a rapid and widespread impact,” the report concluded. “Nearly 50,000 schools and libraries received Wi-Fi support in 2015, compared to zero in funding year 2013 and 2014.”

But on February 3, 2017, shortly after President Donald Trump appointed Pai to succeed Wheeler as FCC chair, the report detailing the successes of the E-Rate reforms was retracted. Pai issued an order stating that the report “will have no legal or other effect or meaning going forward.” While a copy can still be found on the agency’s website, an FCC spokesperson told Education Week at the time that it “does not reflect the official views of the agency.” Education and tech advocates were baffled by the move, particularly since it showed that the reforms were working.

Pai’s continued opposition to E-Rate modernization was instrumental in hampering students from accessing more reliable internet during the pandemic. One little-known restriction on the program states that E-Rate’s federal funding can only go toward financing internet in physical classrooms and school libraries, meaning that the billions of dollars could not help students access at-home broadband or even subsidize internet at public libraries.

SINCE THE START of the pandemic, Rosenworcel, education advocates, and Democrats in Congress have urged Pai to use his emergency powers to lift the E-Rate restriction for virtual learning. “We should let our school libraries loan out wireless hot spots using the funding in the E-Rate program,” Rosenworcel said in August. “That’s not a radical idea. We could do that with existing law today, and we can do it at national scale.”

In March, 18 Senate Democrats, led by Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, sent a letter to Pai urging him to take emergency action during the crisis. In August, 38 Senate Democrats sent a similar letter. While Pai has claimed that his hands are tied and lawmakers would have to amend the federal Communications Act, which created the FCC, the senators pointed out that past FCC chairs have used their powers to reinterpret the statute, including in 2011 when then-Chair Julius Genachowski authorized a pilot funding off-campus connectivity for mobile learning devices.

In September, Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser submitted an emergency waiver to the FCC requesting the ability to direct their E-Rate funds to students off public school campuses during the pandemic. Others have joined in support, including Karen Charles Peterson, Massachusetts’s commissioner of telecommunications and cable.

Kamala Harris was one of the Democratic senators to sign the letters sent to Pai urging the FCC to lift its restriction, and both Harris, now vice president, and Biden have emphasized the importance of addressing the digital divide during the pandemic and after it ends. Miguel Cardona, Connecticut’s education commissioner and Biden’s nominee for federal secretary of education, prioritized delivering tech devices to all students during the pandemic, and in December, Connecticut’s Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont announced that they were the first state in the nation to succeed in delivering internet and devices to every student in need.

Late last year, it looked like $3 billion in emergency funding for E-Rate was going to be included in Congress’s relief bill, but it was stripped out at the last minute.

“The FCC always had the power to utilize the E-Rate program to connect students at home for distance learning during the coronavirus pandemic, yet former Chairman Pai and the Trump administration just refused to act,” Markey said in a statement to The Intercept. “So I’m delighted that, under new leadership, the FCC is now poised to begin providing connectivity and devices to students in need.”

Sabia Prescott, an education policy analyst at New America, a think tank, told The Intercept that lifting the FCC E-Rate restriction, even at this point in the pandemic, would be an important step to getting internet to more students quickly — and it has no downside.

“The restriction has to do with where the Wi-Fi and tech devices can go, so right now schools that qualify for E-Rate can purchase Wi-Fi at discounted rates for their campus, and that’s why a lot of students have been sitting outside school buildings or in parking lots to gain access,” she said. “But with the restriction, schools can’t lend out devices or Wi-Fi hot spots that they’ve purchased or lend them to public libraries.”

Doug Levin, the national director for K12 Security Information Exchange, a nonprofit focused on protecting schools from cybersecurity threats, told The Intercept he’s pessimistic that lifting the restriction would help students much this spring, in part due to the failure of the federal government to provide earlier leadership and guidance on addressing remote learning needs.

To act now, Levin said, the FCC would realistically need to waive bureaucratic requirements like granting school districts waivers to spend E-Rate funds outside of a designated “funding window” and waive competitive bidding requirements, which “runs the political risk of future charges of waste, fraud, and abuse” by critics.

Still, Levin notes that even a more limited impact during the spring could help provide a “proof of concept” for a permanent expansion of E-Rate to fund off-campus broadband. “That is, the need to address the homework gap during remote learning can serve as the impetus for enacting Rosenworcel’s longer-term policy agenda,” he said.

Markey, who was one of the original authors of the 1996 E-Rate legislation, also has hopes that the program will be expanded. “Make no mistake,” Markey said, “this is just a first step, and Congress must still pass my legislation to provide billions more in E-Rate dollars to ensure all students can continue their education during this crisis.”

Originally published in Insider on January 17, 2021.
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At the Dupont Circle farmers market on Sunday, Abbye Prelip, who traveled to Washington DC to sell vegetables, said she was keeping an eye out for “any crazies.” But apart from the enormous security presence in downtown, and some delays caused by road closures, the day had been uneventful, even busy.  

“We’ve come to the conclusion that, when there’s civil unrest, people like to come and support small business, which is really cool,” Prelip said. Shenandoah Seasonal, her business, is an organic farm about an hour-and-a-half away in Virginia. 

Washington DC was on high alert Sunday as anxious residents readied themselves for the unknown. With the city still reeling from the insurrection at the U.S Capitol, the FBI warned that violent protesters could take to the streets just days before President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, and thousands of National Guard troops packed downtown. 

Sunday, Jan. 17 has been marked as a day for right-wing extremists to protest President Donald Trump’s defeat since at least late November. There were calls on Parler, a social media platform used by right-wing groups that has since been shut down, for a so-called “Million Militia March” on Sunday, and the New York Times reported the extremist Boogaloo movement was also planning rallies for the 17th. Appearing on Meet the Press on Sunday morning, the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, said she was concerned about attacks in residential neighborhoods, where there is less of a formal security presence. The mayor recently requested that businesses hang signs that stress weapons, “including concealed firearms” are not welcome on the premises.

But with the recent crackdown on right-wing organizing by tech companies like Facebook and Twitter, and the booting by Apple, Google and Amazon of the social networking app Parler, the warnings so far appeared to be mostly false alarms. By mid-afternoon, there was an eerie calm in the city of some 700,000 residents. The Washington Post reported that two people had been arrested, a woman for impersonating a police officer and a 22-year-old Virginia man who was reportedly carrying a Glock 22 firearm and ammunition. 

It was less than two weeks after President Donald Trump rallied his supporters to “Stop the Steal” and a mob stormed the Capitol building, overwhelming police and ransacking congressional offices. Federal prosecutors now say they have “strong evidence” the rioters intended to capture and assassinate members of Congress, and  in the days since local residents have witnessed a dramatic ramp-up in policing and security, including new fencing, barriers, and closures of subways, bike-shares, streetcars, stores, and restaurants. 

For now, people are continuing to make essential trips, like scheduling their vaccine appointments and stocking up on groceries. Few if any political protesters were seen around the city.

Back at the farmer’s market, Amanda Humphrey, working a stand for the D.C-based Little Wild Things farm, which sells microgreens, said their sales were actually up on a per-hour basis from the week before. “We thought that maybe it would be dead but traffic is pretty consistent and honestly I don’t notice a real difference,” she said.

Emily Zaas, co-owner of Black Rock Orchard, a family farm in Lineboro, Maryland, said she had been doing good business. Zaas recalled almost two decades ago when there were sniper attacks in the D.C region that killed ten people and critically wounded three more. “We were afraid then that people wouldn’t come out, that there’d be no business, but the markets were so busy that weekend,” she said. 

Maybe people were looking for “a reprieve,” she said. “It’s peaceful here.”

Even local composters didn’t pass up their opportunity to drop off food scraps, taking advantage of a weekly city-wide program that launched in 2017. At the Dupont market, volunteers confirmed their compost collection was not lower than a typical Sunday. “People have a habit, and we’re going to make it easy for them to keep that going,” said Read Scott Martin, a volunteer. “This is really a city that comes together when we’ve got pressure.”

Gannon Pitre, manning the Sexy Vegie stand at the Dupont Farmers Market, which sells plant-based vegan and vegetarian food, noted one of his colleagues from Maryland decided to stay home this week. And JC Clark, owner of Capitol Kettle Corn, a local popcorn vendor, said he got a call on Saturday asking if he wanted to launch a pop-up on Sunday, meaning there were some vacancies. Clark felt comfortable saying yes, noting his normal popcorn deliveries were more challenging with all the road closures across the city.

“Yesterday I had 38 popcorn deliveries and I finished only about 20 of them,” he said. “Getting around in a car was so hard.”

Originally published in The American Prospect on January 4, 2021.
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Miguel Cardona, a former teacher, school administrator, and currently Connecticut’s education commissioner, was recently nominated to lead the federal Education Department. Cardona’s selection reflects a shift from those who spearheaded education policy under Joe Biden’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.

As president, Obama aligned himself with the pro–charter school PAC Democrats for Education Reform, which, as co-founder Whitney Tilson put it, was founded “to break the teacher unions’ stranglehold over the Democratic Party.” Obama tapped DFER’s top choice for education secretary—Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan—and for the next seven years Duncan pushed controversial reform policies, including charter school expansion, weakening teacher tenure, and tying teacher salaries to student test scores. Unions despised Duncan, and Obama, who largely left the dirty work to his appointee, made clear he approved of the job Duncan was doing. “Arne has done more to bring our educational system—sometimes kicking and screaming—into the 21st century than anybody else,” Obama said in 2015.

While Biden didn’t go so far as picking former National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen García to lead the Education Department, the choice of Cardona has nonetheless been a relief to union advocates, who knew education reformers were lobbying behind the scenes for other candidates. It’s another example of how Democratic leaders have drifted away from the Obama-era agenda and more toward a platform focused on traditional public schools and their schoolteachers.

During his confirmation hearing for education commissioner, Cardona made clear that under his leadership, Connecticut would be focusing its energy on “neighborhood schools” rather than charters. He’s also echoed some of Biden’s criticisms of evaluating teachers by standardized test scores. “Not reducing a teacher to a test score and bringing the voices of teachers and leaders into the process of professional learning. Those are the two things I really felt like I had to champion,” Cardona told CT Mirror in 2019.

As an assistant superintendent for Meriden Public Schools—located about 20 miles south of Hartford—Cardona was intimately involved in one of the nation’s most successful so-called labor-management partnerships in public education. Cardona helped lead reforms to boost student achievement in collaboration with the Meriden Federation of Teachers, at a time when educators nationally were being framed as the barrier to such efforts.

Labor-management partnerships are collaborations between executives and their unions that extend beyond traditional collective bargaining over wages and benefits. The partnerships have existed in the private sector for decades, with firms recognizing that expanding labor’s role in decision-making can lead to improvements in productivity, quality, and overall competitiveness. Some well-known labor-management partnerships include UAW’s collaboration with General Motors in the 1970s, and health care unions like SEIU working with hospital systems to drive improvements in patient care.

In public education, these types of partnerships have been more rare. But interest in the model started picking up about a decade ago, partially in response to attacks on teachers unions, and also as a way for reformers to push their preferred policies through new vehicles.

In 2010, with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Rutgers labor scholar Saul Rubinstein and his student John McCarthy started researching labor-management partnerships in education. One school district stood out in particular, the ABC Unified School District in Cerritos, California, which put a labor-management partnership in place in 1999. That collaboration helped drive student gains in the district, and also helped ABC Unified weather the 2008 recession with no layoffs, loss of employee health benefits, or increase in class size. This surprising success led to a 2014 paper where the Rutgers academics found “strong evidence” that such partnerships can help boost school quality and student achievement.

In 2007, Meriden’s then–teachers union president, Erin Benham, shared an article with school superintendent Mary Cortright about what was happening in Cerritos. Cortright and Benham met to discuss the piece, and afterward more regularly, in part due to the growing recession. Cortright’s successor, Mark Benigni, was eager to expand the conversations, and starting in 2010, union and district leadership began scheduling regular meetings on the first Monday of every month to discuss whatever was on their minds. Cardona would sit in on the meetings, too.

“We’d just sit there and bring up issues and use the time to hash things out,” says Benham, who retired as president in 2019 and now serves on the state education board. “We’d come up with a plan, and that just became a way of life.”

One of the biggest innovations that came from Meriden’s labor-management partnership was a push to expand the school day at three elementary schools. Research has shown that more instructional time is one of the most effective ways to boost student learning, and union and district leadership wanted to figure out how to deliver that opportunity to more students. The union applied for a $150,000 American Federation of Teachers grant in 2012, and by leveraging volunteers and community organizations, and giving annual stipends of $7,500 to staff, the district managed to offer 40 additional days of instructional time. While funding dried up after about five years, Meriden Federation of Teachers president Lauren Mancini-Averitt says they plan to bring at least one extended-learning school back after the pandemic.

A spokesperson for AFT says there are about 50 labor-management partnerships in various stages of depth and development today, but that “Meriden’s is among the most fully developed.”

Shaun Richman, a labor expert at SUNY Empire State College, says one drawback of labor-management partnerships is that union reps can end up having to do more work with management in improving the company’s product than in organizing members. Benham and Mancini-Averitt agreed the partnership was time-consuming, but defended the commitment, saying it’s proven to be the best way to actually solve problems, which is what their members want.

Richman says these partnerships sometimes draw criticism from more radical workers, who would rather spend their time fighting with management. But he said the partnerships generally tend to be quite popular, as most union members don’t want to be fighting. “For most unions, it’s this cycle where you have two years of fighting and six years of peace,” he said. “I’m a real boss hater and it’s something I struggle with, that most workers would prefer not to be fighting.”

One major initiative Cardona led as part of the labor-management partnership involved developing Meriden’s new teacher evaluation system. Unlike the dominant education reform model sweeping the nation at the time, Benham says their team wasn’t looking at teacher evaluations as a punitive tool to weed out low-performers, and instead believed evaluations should be constructive tools to help all educators improve. “We were very intentional about keeping those things separate,” says Benham. “Evaluations were about being a helping tool, not a gotcha.”

While Connecticut had some requirements to use student test scores in teacher evaluations, Meriden, under Cardona’s leadership, pushed to make those measures weigh less than they were being counted in neighboring districts. In Meriden, relevant department chairs also provided feedback for teachers, rather than just leaving evaluations to administrators less familiar with the assessed subject areas.

Cardona “was assistant superintendent for four years, and if there was any personnel issue, any really sensitive issue, he is who we would meet with,” says Benham. She praised his openness and said together they worked on areas ranging from restorative practices and professional development to improving school climate.

“He was a good partner to us, very personable, and the fact is he’s a parent,” adds Mancini-Averitt, noting Cardona has two of his own children in Meriden Public Schools. AFT president Randi Weingarten shared the enthusiasm. “There is great potential for a renaissance in public education after years and years of the school wars,” she said in a statement, adding that Cardona’s “deep respect for educators and their unions will travel with him to Washington.”