Our Shrinking Public-School System

Plus: the hidden photos of the massacre in Haditha; “election interference” everywhere; and Sabrina Carpenter’s new album. View in browser | Update your preferences Tuesday, August 27, 2024 In today’s newsletter, Alec McGillis on his latest reporting about the crisis facing public schools in America, and then: • The claims and counterclaims of “election interference” • What does it really mean to learn? • Sabrina Carpenter’s wry petulance Alec MacGillis New Yorker contributor The building that housed Rochester’s now shuttered School 10. Such closures “rend the community,” a professor of education said. Photograph by Joshua Rashaad McFadden for The New Yorker Four years ago, as the school year started with remote learning in many districts around the country, particularly in Democratic-leaning cities, I reported a piece for ProPublica and this magazine looking at what Zoom school was really like for disadvantaged students. The piece focussed on Shemar, a seventh grader in Baltimore who had grown deeply isolated since schools had closed the previous March, and who only occasionally logged on to his online classes. “That homeschooling is not going to get it,” his grandmother said. Shemar would not return to in-person schooling until the following year, the end of an almost-eighteen-month hiatus. His struggles to engage since then have been unsurprising, and have been shared by countless other students. I have written several more pieces for The New Yorker and ProPublica on the lingering consequences of the closures, including learning loss and chronic absenteeism. Earlier this year, I decided to report on another aftershock: declining enrollment that is forcing districts to close underpopulated schools on an unprecedented scale. Nationwide, public-school rolls have diminished by more than a million students, as many families have opted to leave for private schools or homeschooling. The declines are particularly stark in places where schools stayed closed the longest during the pandemic. I focussed my reporting on one such city: Rochester, New York, where the district just decided to close eleven of its forty-five schools, a wrenching process that has caused disarray for families and left many neighborhoods without the hubs that sustained them for generations. “It’s like you’re watching institutions decline in real time,” one county legislator told me. “Anchors of the community are disappearing.” The piece raises the crucial question: Can American public education survive its downsizing intact, or is there a tipping point beyond which the system starts to unravel? Read “The Death of School 10” Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » From the News Desk The Lede The Election-Interference Merry-Go-Round Claims and counterclaims of “election interference” are ubiquitous these days. What does the term actually mean? By Jon Allsop If you know someone who would enjoy this newsletter, please share it. Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up. Podcasts The Hidden Photos of the Haditha Massacre When U.S. Marines killed twenty-four people in an Iraqi town, they also recorded the aftermath of their actions. For nearly twenty years, the military tried to keep these photos from the public. They provide critical evidence for the In the Dark podcast’s investigation of what happened in Haditha and why no one was punished. Madeleine Baran reports » In the Dark: In the sixth episode of Season 3 of the podcast, startling new information emerges from deep within the investigation files. Then the reporting team gets a big break. Listen now » Joshua Rothman What Does It Really Mean to Learn? Illustration by Josie Norton The computer scientist Leslie Valiant tries not to use the word “intelligent” when describing a person, and he is sometimes taken aback when others use it. A better measure for our capacity to learn, he argues, is “educability.” As Joshua Rothman explains it, “We need to build capacious and flexible theories about the world—theories that will serve us in new, unanticipated, and strange circumstances—and we do that by gathering diverse kinds of knowledge, often in a slow, additive, serendipitous way, and knitting them together.” Read more » Open Questions publishes every Tuesday. Culture Dept. Listening Booth Sabrina Carpenter’s Funny, Feisty “Short n’ Sweet” The artist sings with wry, petulant specificity, whether she’s addressing a boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend, or that ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. By Carrie Battan Late-Summer Sale in The New Yorker Store! Through Labor Day, enjoy 20% off most items. Browse the store » Fifty Days of Flash Fiction Flash Fiction “Skylight” Above the hall in that house with a skylight was another mysterious home, and through the glass you could see a family of feet, surrounded by haloes, like saints. By Silvina Ocampo Fun & Games Dept. Crossword A Moderately Challenging Puzzle Parent language of Icelandic: eight letters. By Wyna Liu Daily Cartoon Tuesday, August 27th By Liza Donnelly P.S. To make sense of the ideological flexibility, let’s say, of Donald Trump’s newest political bedfellows, read in-depth reporting by Kelefa Sanneh, on Tulsi Gabbard, and by Clare Malone, on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Let us know. If you like the daily newsletter, browse more New Yorker newsletters. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the daily newsletter from The New Yorker. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2024. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.