Congressman Davis feels strongly that education is key to a responsible, healthy, and vibrant citizenry.  As captured by the Scottish politician Henry Peter Brougham, Congressman Davis agrees that, "Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave."  Given this perspective, he works to advance education for all students from birth through higher education.

 

Early Childhood  Education

 

Congressman Davis feels strongly that we must support children early in life to give them the foundation they need to grow into productive, healthy, and responsible citizens.  To this end, he actively advocates for legislation to strengthen parent-child relationships and early childhood education for children from low-income families.

 
 

O      Home Visitation Programs.  The new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act law included $1.5 billion for voluntary, evidenced-based, early childhood home visitation programs.  For five years, Congressman Davis worked bipartisanly and bicamerally to establish these evidenced-based prevention grants to prepare our youngest citizens for success in school and life.  The funding provides a critical opportunity for federal, state, and local communities to improve the health and well-being of children and families.  Quality, early childhood home visitation is a proven and cost-efficient method to improve school readiness, well-being, and health for children and families.  To be eligible for funding, States must take multiple steps to demonstrate that they have a quality plan in place that will be closely evaluated to ensure success, including: develop a coordinated system of home visiting and early childhood services; use quality, evidenced-based programs; and measure improvements in child and family well-being (e.g., reductions in injuries, neglect, family economic self sufficiency).  Indeed, the new home visitation program is unique among federal programs in its emphasis on research to guide and evaluate its effectiveness.  Given that Illinois is a national leader in providing and evaluating effective home visiting, these funds should help hundreds of children and families in Chicago and Illinois.

O      Head Start.  Congressman Davis successfully advocated for many improvements to Head Start during the recent reauthorization of this pivotal program that prepares low-income children for school, including:  maintaining the role of equal responsibility for parents in governing Head Start; ensuring that low-income families in high-cost-of-living areas such as Chicago do not lose access to this critical child development program; creating a program to recruit minority male teachers; increasing the emphasis on children's social-emotional well-being and mental health; incorporating the best practices from the field of home visitation into the Early Head Start program; and recognizing the expanding role of kinship caregivers in children's lives.  In Committee, the Congressman also secured language opening professional development funds for online masters program, such as offered by the Erikson Institute in Chicago. However, this provision was not retained in conference.

O      Preschool Expulsion.  Congressman Davis has a long-standing commitment to ensuring that students receive fair, appropriate discipline in school settings.  Research shows that disparities exist in elementary and secondary education with regard to discipline of students by race/ethnicity.  Research further indicates that this pattern of differential discipline treatment by race and ethnicity extends to prekindergarten.  The Yale University Child Study Center conducted a study of almost 4,000 prekindergarten classrooms representing all 52 of the national state-funded prekindergarten systems.  The research found that African-American students attending state prekindergarten programs were approximately twice as likely to be expelled as preschoolers of European descent.  Further, boys were over 4½ times more likely to be expelled than girls.  Boys from racial or ethnic minority groups were even greater compared to girls, indicating that being a minority boy is associated with tremendously higher likelihood of expulsion. Given that high-quality preschool programs improve school readiness and reduce racial/ethnic disparities in school readiness, preschool serves as a critical tool in reducing the racial/ethnic disparities in achievement in K-12 education.  In his role as co-chair of the CBC Community Reinvestment Task Force, Congressman Davis has worked with CBC Education Leaders to lead efforts to address this disparity.  An early step was to recommend that the Department of Education include variables to monitor the number of preschool children subjected to discipline methods within the Civil Rights Data Collection.  Understanding whether and where excessive expulsion occurs is a critical first step to intervening quickly to reduce disparate discipline treatment.   Congressman Davis will actively work in the next year to improve federal and state monitoring of disparities in discipline of preschoolers to encourage local education agencies to address this problem sooner rather than later.  Delaying examination of disparities in this area could contribute to and potentially worsen unequal educational opportunities. 

Elementary and Secondary Education

 

Congressman Davis believes that K-12 education needs strengthening in order for our citizens to enjoy economic well-being and for our nation to compete in the global marketplace.  He is adamant that our education system should provide quality programming for all students regardless of gender, race/ethnicity, age, disability, or income.  In addition to improving all levels of education, he feels strongly that we must target special attention to helping students whom the systems have not educated well.  Further, he works hard to reduce the disparities that exist in education based on race, income, and ability.

 
 

O      Elementary and Secondary Education Act:  As Congress has worked to improve the central legislation governing K-12 education, Congressman Davis has advanced multiple priorities, including:  reporting of student data by gender and race/ethnicity; providing educational protections to foster children; maintaining the ban on segregation of students under McKinney-Vento; promoting the equitable distribution of qualified teachers; creating innovative programs designed to improve education - such as site-based management and teacher residency programs that are successful in Chicago; promoting professional development in classroom management to address the over-referral of minority boys for discipline; developing an appropriate measure of the achievement gap; promoting textbook equity by having local districts report how current their instructional materials are; including the HOUSSE program that provides special education teachers an alternative way of gaining certification other than having a degree in each subject taught; and advocating for various provisions related to mental health.  In his role as co-chair of the CBC Community Reinvestment Task Force, Congressman Davis has worked with CBC Education Leaders and education stakeholders to discuss ways to improve federal funding for high schools and to improve graduation rates, especially via the School Improvement Grants, as well as how to strengthen Title I funding.  He consistently advocates that teacher evaluation efforts must engage teachers as a fundamental partner in setting up effective professional development and evaluation programs.

O      Disaggregation of Data by Race and Gender.  Congressman Davis believes that policymakers cannot adequately craft appropriate interventions to ensure success for all without understanding the success of various groups of students.  One area in which he has led reform is in ensuring that educational data examines the intersection of gender with race/ethnicity, which current data systems often ignore.  Attention to student progress by both race and gender is critical to understanding the success of students.  For example, in 2006, an examination of public graduation rates in Illinois by race/ethnicity showed a rate of 49% for African American students.  Breaking out the data by gender revealed a sizeable discrepancy between men and women - African-American men graduated at a rate of 42% compared to African-American women with a rate of 55%.  The data in Chicago were more stark.  African-American and Latino men had graduation rates of 30.8% and 39.6%, respectively, whereas their female counterparts enjoyed rates of 49% and 53.7%, respectively.   Examining student progress by both race and gender together will provide a more detailed understanding of the key elements of student success (e.g., achievement, drop out, graduation rates, and other indices required by states and districts) so that educators and lawmakers can develop interventions tailored to the students most in need.

O      Educational Equity.  In his role as co-chair of the CBC Community Reinvestment Task Force, Congressman Davis has worked with CBC Education Leaders to ensure that education legislation passed by Congress includes critical adequacy and equity provisions related to protecting low income and minority students.  The Elementary and Secondary Education Act made clear that States should address inequities in the distribution of highly qualified teachers between high- and low-poverty schools and as well as ensure that low-income and minority children are not taught by inexperienced, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers at higher rates than other children.  Unfortunately, a decade after this requirement became law, students in high-poverty schools are still disproportionately taught by out-of-field and rookie teachers.  For example, a recent report found that out-of-field teachers are almost twice as likely to teach core academic classes in high-poverty high schools than in low-poverty schools.  Similarly, educators with neither a math major nor certification in the subject teach about one out of every four middle and high school mathematics courses in high-poverty schools.  Given that these disparities put low-income students at a tremendous disadvantage, the Congressman has worked actively to require states to address existing inequities in the distribution of inexperience, unqualified, or out-of-field teachers consistent with existing law - whether through use of emergency education dollars or through regulatory changes or data collections by the Department of Education.  Further, given that the economic recession has caused public education systems to dramatically reduce funding, Congressman Davis and his CBC colleagues have led efforts to ensuring that federal emergency education dollars are not supplanted for non-education purposes and that low-income and high-minority schools do not bear the brunt of any teacher layoffs.

O      Graduation Rates.  Congressman Davis believes that the dropout rate has reached epic proportions in our nation and especially in minority communities.  Nearly one-third of all high school students do not to graduate every year, costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars in lost revenue.  Approximately 2,000 "dropout factories" across the country produce more than 50 percent of the nation's dropouts, with poor and minority children disproportionately attending these institutions.   Graduation rates for African American, Hispanic, and Native American students are significantly lower than those of their white peers.  For example, only 48% of African American males and 58% of Latino males graduate from high school.  The social, economic and human costs of high drop out rates pose a growing threat to the nation's economic stability and global competitiveness.  For these reasons, Congressman Davis works to advance improvements in high school graduation.  In collaboration with multiple Congressional leaders, Congressman Davis developed legislation to address the high school dropout crisis.  The Graduation for All Act would help end this crisis by providing eligible school districts with competitive grants to help turn around their lowest-performing high schools, often deemed "dropout factories," as well as struggling, feeder middle schools.  Districts receiving grants would be required to implement data systems to help better detect early warning signs of dropout behavior, (such as frequent absences or failing a course), use appropriate interventions targeted to student needs and monitor the impact of interventions so that they can be refined as necessary. Research shows identifying and addressing these patterns early on can help keep at-risk students in school. 

O      Accelerated Programs for Struggling Students.  In addition to improving every school, Congressman Davis believes that we must intensively target middle and high school students who are struggling.  Chicago and our nation cannot afford to let these students drop out.  Rather than holding back our struggling students, we should re-double our efforts to help these students excel.  Advancing the students without doing anything is not an option; we must recognize they are struggling and intervene effectively so that these students can succeed.   The educational experts at Johns Hopkins have shown how critical Early Warning Data Systems are for identifying and intervening quickly when students first start to struggle with attendance, behavior or curriculum.  CPS has developed strong data systems for improving the school safety.  This base combined with the federal dollars to improve individual, longitudinal data systems to measure student growth are key to helping students early, not late.  Further, Congressman Davis believes that CPS needs to strengthen and expand the programs that accelerate learning, such as acceleration academies, dual-enrollment, and work programs.

O      School Safety.  Congressman Davis recognizes the need for increased federal, state, and local efforts to improve the safety of our schools.  The discussion of safety is intricately linked to school success, school climate, and drop out prevention.  His legislation to improve graduation rates would provide a critical funding opportunity for Chicago's safety programs, given that the Chicago program uses individual data to identify and intervene quickly to help students at risk for dropping out and violence.  In addition, Congressman Davis introduced legislation to amend the Safe and Drug-free Schools and Communities Act to include bullying and harassment prevention programs.  Curbing bullying and harassment an integral part of the mission of the Safe and Drug Free Schools program. To reflect the evolving nature of threats to school safety, this bill would provide explicit definitions of prohibited bullying and harassment activities. It would also clearly outline a set of characteristics of a relatively new form of bullying that has been garnering considerable attention lately-cyberbullying and sexting.  Under this legislation states would be required to submit data on the incidence and prevalence of reported incidents of bullying and harassment and on the perception of students regarding their school environment and school responsiveness to incidents of bullying and harassment. States would also need to provide an assurance that they would provide assistance to districts and schools in their efforts to prevent and respond to incidents of bullying and harassment.  School districts would be required to indicate the performance indicators that they would use for bullying and harassment prevention programs and activities; they also would need to agree to provide annual notice to parents and students regarding the full range of bullying and harassment activities that would be prohibited.  This legislation would promote teaching students about the consequences of bullying and harassment as well as training for teachers, administrators, and counselors on strategies to prevent bullying and harassment and to intervene effectively when such activities occur.  Congressman Davis also strongly supports more comprehensive efforts to improve school climate and behavior, such as through the Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports and the Social and Emotional Learning Program.

O      Teacher Development.  Consistent with the resolution approved by the American Federation of Teachers during 2010, the Congressman strongly supports developing the profession of teaching so that teachers receive the supports and career ladder opportunities that they have repeatedly requested.  Installing critical support systems and opportunities for professional learning are very much needed - such as job-embedded professional development, mentoring, and induction programs.  Congressman Davis agrees with the part of the resolution that indicated, "You can neither fire nor hire your way to better schools."  Teachers are a fundamental partner in education reform, but educational reform must involve more comprehensive ideas than firing teachers.

O      Civil Rights Data Collection.  In his role as co-chair of the CBC Community Reinvestment Task Force, Congressman Davis worked with CBC Education Leaders to send a letter to the Secretary of Education supporting expansion of the Civil Rights Data Collection, which was established to promote equal educational opportunities for all students.  The letter indicated strong support the data enhancements related to discipline, including the addition of new variables, the refinement of existing variables to better capture students' experiences of a range of discipline tactics, and consideration of discipline experiences among all students and students with disabilities.  Given that minority students, and minority boys especially, are disproportionately referred to special education and subjected to discipline procedures, the Congressman felt strongly that expanding the data collection to better understand the nature of the discipline used and for which students is a critical piece of the Civil Rights Data Collection.   Further, the Congressman and his CBC colleagues note the need that the data collection allow researchers to examine the variables of interest based on the interaction of race/ethnicity with gender as well as out-of-field teaching.