Good morning,
Below you’ll find three new pieces from the Student Dispatch. First up, MADDIE AITKEN profiles the work of state senator Jason Lewis on early childhood education. Then, AMELIA MILLER tells the story of Breakthrough Greater Boston, a non-profit that helps students get on a path to college. Finally, in this week’s installment of The Seminar Room, ALEX SHARP and CLAIRE BRENNAN share insights from a conversation with Danna Mauch, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Mental Health.
Happy reading!
Eitan Hersh
Can Massachusetts Revolutionize Early Childhood Education?
Senator Jason Lewis is throwing his weight behind the Common Start legislation in the hopes of getting families the childcare and education their young kids need.
Madeleine Aitken
Lewis on a visit to a Malden child care center in 2018. Courtesy Thomas Dalton, communications director for the Office of Senator Jason Lewis
Jason Lewis knows exactly what it feels like to be a parent in an education system that’s failing your children. When his daughter was in kindergarten, Massachusetts cut school funding, forcing his daughter’s school to lay off all of the librarians. The school then asked parents to volunteer in the library; if parents didn’t step up, it would be forced to close.
“That was a real awakening for me, in terms of how public schools are funded,” Lewis says. Hoping to fight for changes in the education system so that other parents wouldn’t ever be in his position, he decided to run for office.
Now a state senator, Lewis represents the Fifth Middlesex District, including Malden, Melrose and Stoneham, and has concentrated his seven years in office on education policy. In 2019, Lewis led the effort to pass the Student Opportunity Act, the first major infusion of new funding to Massachusetts public schools since 1993. That funding helped address achievement gaps among low-income students, students of color and English learners.
Recently, this focus has narrowed to early education and childcare. In recognition of his commitment to educational issues, Senate President Karen Spilka appointed Lewis chair of the Education Committee at the State House. She also appointed him co-chair of the Special Commission on Early Education and Care Economic Review, which is charged with finding solutions for the challenges in early education. That commission will issue a report and subsequent recommendations by the end of the year, with Lewis leading the charge.
“This is an important milestone for putting forward a blueprint for the kinds of reforms that we need to make in Massachusetts for early education,” Lewis says.
As chair, Lewis encouraged the committee to also address the needs of families with young kids. One major area of concern is that early education and childcare are too expensive for most families to the point where early education facilities struggle from a business standpoint. “We have many childcare providers, whether they’re small or large, non-profit or for-profit that are finding it very difficult to stay open,” Lewis says.
The Common Start bill, new legislation backed by Lewis, emerged as a solution to these issues. The bill is named for the Common Start Coalition, a group of organizations, providers, parents, early educators and advocates from across Massachusetts working toward making accessible, affordable, high-quality early education available to all families.
The Common Start bill is particularly unusual because it includes direct-to-provider funding to offset providers’ operating costs, as well as a subsidy so that families that make below 50-percent of the state’s median income can access early childcare and education for free. In other words, the bill would benefit not only the families seeking childcare and education, but also the businesses providing those services.
Amy O’Leary, the Executive Director of Strategies for Children, an advocacy group that is also part of the Common Start Coalition, got to know Lewis through his work on the Education Committee and commends his versatility. “One of the things I’ve been most impressed with as [Lewis] came to work on that Committee is that he was so knowledgeable about the K - 12 system,” O’Leary says. “He really wanted to learn more and better understand the early education and care system. It’s been inspiring to see him learn, and to realize how seriously he takes his work as a legislator and how seriously he takes the issues.”
The Common Start legislation would help streamline early childhood care and education into a universally understandable system. It would also propel all Massachusetts children forward. Early childhood education leads to reductions in special education placement and increases in high school graduation rates. Lewis’s mission is to make sure all Massachusetts children get these benefits, whether or not their families can afford the high prices for high quality early childhood education.
“I’ve been aware for a long time how broken our early education and childcare system is,” Lewis says soberly, “but in this role I’ve become even more focused on what the challenges are and what the solutions are for really supporting our early education and childcare.”
Lewis is also aware of the price tag: an estimated $600 million over five years. But he believes it’s money well spent. “We have to be able to put more funding into early education and that is going to take significant new dollars,” Lewis says.
He’s bullish that the Common Start bill will pass because he believes that the pandemic helped more people in the state recognize the importance of quality early education and care for working families. “That growing awareness and understanding on the part of the public, the business community and legislators [of] just how important high-quality, affordable early education is makes me hopeful that we are going to increasingly have the momentum we need to make the necessary reforms,” Lewis says.
Lewis has high hopes for what the passage of the Common Start bill could mean for Massachusetts and for the nation, referencing Massachusetts’ status as a pioneer of the concept that education could and should be a public good. “Back in the 1800s...that was a revolutionary idea,” Lewis says. “I think there’s a real opportunity now for Massachusetts to be a pioneer again, to take accessible and affordable early education and childcare — what is now a ‘revolutionary idea’ — and turn it into a public good like we turned K - 12 public education into a public good.”
Serving Students Against the Odds
How one organization is changing lives and advancing education equity
Amelia Miller
The sun shines bright over the field as the students watch their teachers with amusement. Suddenly, the air is filled with laughter as the first teacher takes a pie to the face, laughing at her own predicament. It’s Field Day at Breakthrough Greater Boston— connections are being made, and fun is being had.
Breakthrough Greater Boston serves students who may not otherwise have the opportunity to graduate high school and continue on to college. The nonprofit hosts community-building events, and also provides workshops, tutoring, homework assistance, summer programming, and guidance for the college application process. Breakthrough starts working with students in seventh grade and continues with them into their sophomore year of college. The goal is not only to ensure that the students have the opportunity to enter high school and college, but that they build the skills and support needed to stay there.
Breakthrough partners with the Cambridge Public School District, TechBoston Academy, New Mission Collegiate Academy, Neighborhood House Charter School, Codman Academy, and Somerville Public Schools. They target students in these districts who may face higher levels of adversity— low-income students, students of color, first-generation students, immigrant students, and students from single-parent households — for enrollment into their cohorts. Often public and urban schools don’t have the resources necessary to guide individual students through the college application process or to provide sufficient academic support when needed. Breakthrough fills these critical gaps.
“Breakthrough is really an additional set of adults who know you, who love you, who care about you, who are working alongside your family to ensure that all that information, all of those resources that other students may have, are also available to you,” says Jennie Brown, managing director of major gifts at Breakthrough Greater Boston.
While this academic support is crucial for students who may otherwise struggle in school, what sets Breakthrough apart from other academic programs is that it also focuses on training future urban teachers. Through its Student Teaching Students model, the organization trains high school and college students to become educators, giving them hands-on experience. It also serves the larger goal of recruiting a more diverse and prepared educator workforce. Over 75% of Breakthrough teaching alumni go on to pursue careers in education.
Tufts junior Hannah Mascuch, an education major, decided to teach through the program last summer after hearing her peers speak highly of their own experiences volunteering with it. Her experience gives a glimpse into why Breakthrough is so successful in recruiting teachers, and retaining students. “With so many different perspectives and experiences [of the students], there was a really good learning opportunity for me throughout the whole class,” she said. “I don’t think I would have had that opportunity with a different kind of program.”
Because training teachers is a primary part of their model, Breakthrough can address the systemic issues that perpetuate educational inequity within the United States, especially within urban areas. They can train their teachers to be more culturally competent and understanding of the issues that minority students face, creating a workforce that is more effective at encouraging and retaining students. Over the past eight years, 97% of Breakthrough students have been admitted to college and 82% of Breakthrough alum have stayed in college.
“I really, really believe that when incredibly talented, well-trained, thoughtful, culturally competent teachers are in front of classrooms, that’s really one of the biggest levers to try to turn this mess around,” Brown said. “We also really feel like the person in front of the classroom needs to be more reflective of the kids who they’re there in front of.”
As Breakthrough continues to move forward in their work, teachers like Mascuch are excited by the idea of helping students who may otherwise be left behind. “I think the mission of Breakthrough is really important because I think a lot of times in schools students who are low-income or first gen can sort of slip through the cracks… I know by talking to a lot of directors of the program that a lot of the kids that they have in Breakthrough are the kind of students who they notice in their classes are really smart and have the potential to be great, but maybe are struggling with those social and emotional aspects of school and life. And I really feel that Breakthrough does a great job of making sure that those students are supported.”
With a strong program like Breakthrough’s, the educational workforce is improved, with teachers inspired and equipped to stop students from falling through the cracks. And so, the future of education equity looks a little brighter.
The Seminar Room
Mass. Association of Mental Health CEO Danna Mauch Talks Health Care “Power Games”
Alex Sharp and Claire Brennan
On September 30th Danna Mauch, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Association of Mental Health (MAMH), was in the midst of moving into a new home. The truck had taken all of her furniture so she sat in a chair in her pantry -- using wine boxes to prop up her laptop -- to Zoom with the Student Dispatch. “Anything to talk about advocacy,” she joked in a half serious sort of way.
Mauch outlined the advocacy strategies and policy goals for MAMH. MAMH is well known for conducting research and using the results to lobby health care power brokers. The organization is deeply committed to fact-based advocacy and evidently, so is its CEO. Rather than appeal to our pathos with personal mental health stories, Mauch sticks to the facts.
A couple of decades ago, mental health advocates were disorganized and undermined one another’s work. Constant squabbling among different interest groups prevented real gains at the state house. “Today there is a much more unified approach,” she said, crediting organizations like MAMH for working diligently with different advocate groups to unite around core values and agreements.
Mauch described getting things done in health care advocacy as a “marathon not a sprint” but noted that it’s important to act fast to take advantage of windows of opportunity. She cited the Covid-19 pandemic as providing MAMH an opportunity to quickly file and pass legislation requiring insurance companies to pay telehealth providers the same as in-person providers, an initiative MAMH had previously been slogging away at for two years.
In a field as complicated as American health care -- with many stakeholders pressing for change -- it can be difficult for policymakers and regular people to keep track of what’s going on. “It is a very complicated area and it’s just not realistic to expect that busy political actors can have a command of all the facts and details,” she said. Though complexity is necessary in legislative and committee hearings, Mauch said it is also the job of groups like hers to unify and simplify their message so folks outside the field, including lawmakers, can understand what’s at stake.
Throughout her conversation with the Student Dispatch, Mauch embraced a sort of salesperson role, attempting to persuade the group to take on her field of work. That’s why she took the time to talk to us from an empty home in the middle of moving. In a career that can be frustrating and arduous, Mauch clearly wants to find passionate people to work alongside her. Mauch’s enthusiasm shined through at the conclusion of the interview, when she excitedly said, “I hope you all become health care advocates. Go out there and play the power games.”
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