Dr. Samantha Viano
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drsamviano.bsky.social
Dr. Samantha Viano
@drsamviano.bsky.social
340 followers 340 following 130 posts
Associate Professor of Education Leadership & Policy | School safety and security | Online learning | High school leadership | School improvement

https://www.samanthaviano.com/
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drsamviano.bsky.social
Public schools have not recovered from COVID-19, we can see it in the scores, hear it from teachers and school leaders. Throwing schools into chaos is the last thing they need, and there is nothing but chaos in dismantling the Department of Ed. This is an attack on educators & children

#EDMatters
How Dismantling the Department Hurts Students, Teachers, and Communities 7.4 million students with disabilities, served by Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), money that goes straight to states and schools to help kids with disabilities learn, like early intervention services. 26 million students from low-income backgrounds in urban, rural and suburban communities rely on federal Title I funding to improve achievement. 6 states where more than 20% of the education budget comes from the federal government: Alaska, Montana, South Dakota, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky. 9.8 million students in rural schools depend on federal support to bridge funding gaps iin communities with more limited local tax bases. 6.6 million Pell Grant recipients rely on federal student aid to attend college.
March 20, 2025 at 9:15 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
Last month, a reporter asked me for an example of ridiculous claims by a school security company, I responded that Evolv claims to have “500+ firearms detected daily." Reality Check: maybe 2,000 schools ever detect a firearm every school *year*
Marketing infographic reading: Building Safe Experiences for Millions Every Day 500+ Firearms Detected Daily 1000+ School Buildings Using Evolv ~700K Students & Visitors Screened Daily Up to 1000 Screened in 15 Minutes for a Dual-Lane System
November 27, 2024 at 6:55 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
The MLK Library in DC has an amazing slide, one story tall, made of wood, beautiful. The kids love getting books and expend tons of energy running up a flight of stairs and sliding down over and over and over
A slide made of wood, stretching between two levels of a building. The slide is next to a staircase to get to the top of the slide
November 27, 2024 at 6:33 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
We propose policy ignores structural inequality in ways that incentivize school leaders to push students through high school graduation without investing in these students in ways that would build college & career readiness

8/N
Based on the critical structural capital framing ideas, we conceptualize these policies as allowing schools (delivery systems) to avoid accountability sanctions by increasing graduation rates but to do so while perpetuating long-standing disparities in outcomes that were not part of the accountability system (college and career readiness/traditional and non-traditional capital accumulation). Our CDA of federal and NC policy indicated that policy communicated to schools that graduation rates, particularly for minoritized students, were their problem to solve, prioritizing graduation over any other metric.
November 26, 2024 at 8:59 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
Getting back to where this started, we then show that, adjusting for covariates and school-cohort fixed effects, Black students who fail courses have similar probability of graduating high school as White students who never fail courses

7/N
Black students who did or did not fail a course are consistently more likely to graduate high school than White students with the same course failure history.
November 26, 2024 at 8:59 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
We then transitioned into the quant findings that Black students are more likely to fail courses than White students, even when controlling for all of the things that should affect failure rates like test scores, attendance, behavior as well as school-cohort fixed effects

6/N
Figure showing the difference in probability of failing a course for Black students compared to White students. Black students are always more likely to fail courses, even when controlling for covariates like test scores and attendance as well as school-cohort fixed effects.
November 26, 2024 at 8:59 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
We analyzed federal accountability and state policy related to high school graduation, finding policy alluded to college & career readiness superficially, assumed that accountability would lead to access to capital, and portrayed schools as the "bad" actors in high school graduation

5/N
Theme Theme Description 1) College & Career Readiness Allusions What it means to "graduate from high school", what we associate with a high school diploma, how high school graduation is conflated with college & career readiness. 2) Accountability Increases Access to Capital Accountability for higher graduation rates will provide access to (privileged forms of) capital". Accountability will force schools to improve, and, if they do not, they will be given "resources" (but does not specify how resources should be used). 3) Federal Accountability as Incentivized Oversight Federal oversight provides access to various “resources” and “measures” to get schools back on track for positive performance, particularly for "disaggregated subgroups. 4) Schools as Problems Schools are "bad" they need to be forced to improve. They need oversight to do so. 5) Capital Distribution and Development is a Function of the Delivery System The delivery system (schools) operates as a gatekeeper or empowerment agent in the acknowledgment and/or privileging of capital (that students possess). 6) Capital is Fluid and Access Should Match the Context Capital is contextual and when the only focus is on traditional forms of capital, we ignore how non-traditional forms manifest. 7) Capital is Present in All All students possess ample capital to succeed despite the privileging of dominant forms of capital.
November 26, 2024 at 8:59 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
I tried to publish this finding, but others had a similar reaction, this finding could not stand on its own without context for the system that created these outcomes

So this is also a story of an academic meet cute! Nakia and I were both attending various AERA Div A/L early career sessions...

3/N
A chart showing the predicted probability of graduating for students who failed courses, comparing whether the student retook courses face-to-face (F2F) or through online credit recovery (CR). Students in CR consistently have higher probability of graduating high school within 4 years. Also, Black students, regardless of whether they are in F2F or CR, have higher probabilities of graduating compared to White and Hispanic students.
November 26, 2024 at 8:59 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
This project has a long origin story with many twists and turns, and it started with a footnote in my dissertation. Tl,dr: Black students who fail courses in North Carolina were more likely to graduate high school than White students who fail courses. I thought about this FOR YEARS

2/N
Footnote on p. 74 reading, " The odds ratios on the variables indicating whether a student is black or Hispanic are both significant and indicate that being black or Hispanic is associated with higher odds of graduating from high school and lower odds of dropping out of high school. While this result is unusual given the literature on the chronic under-attainment of students of color, within the sample of students who fail courses, the data indicate that these students have higher graduation rates and lower dropout rates. Descriptively, the graduation rate for white students who fail courses is 63 percent, while 65 percent of Hispanic students and 67 percent of black students who failed classes graduate from high school. For dropping out, 32 percent of white students who fail classes drop out, while 24 percent of black students and 26 percent of Hispanic students who fail classes drop out."
November 26, 2024 at 8:59 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
Literally the second I posted this, I got a ClassDojo notification. They're also creepy af
Class dojo notification
November 18, 2024 at 7:13 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
This is a Title I school with free breakfast, lunch, and after care. It's predatory to ask caregivers with very limited resources to literally pay to better communicate with teachers

3/N
An offer to upgrade to the plus version of ClassDojo in order to access chat features including whether the message is urgent and the read status
November 18, 2024 at 7:09 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
Many of my kids' teachers rely on ClassDojo for messaging and behavior management. Don't love it, but that's what they choose to do. The apps are constantly making a hard sell, promising that you will be a better parent if you pay for the plus version

2/N
Two hidden features in ClassDojo that parents have to pay to have access to, including points by day and top skills
November 18, 2024 at 7:09 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
There is A LOT of things to stress about in this world, but I need to talk about ClassDojo upselling

1/N
Screenshot of the class dojo app selling the premium version with options of an annual subscription for $5.84 a month for one year or a monthly subscription of $9.99
November 18, 2024 at 7:09 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
Post a picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline
Venice at night with a full moon, canal, and boats
November 17, 2024 at 7:50 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
We found differences in class membership by methodological paradigm, with qualitative articles being more likely to be Extensive and quantitative more likely to be Narrow
5/N
Bar chart shows the predicted probability of class membership across the six classes separately for qualitative research, quantitative research, and mixed methods research. We might also hypothesize quantitative research would be less likely to use racial terminology or to do so narrowly based on critiques of this paradigm (Gillborn et al., 2018). We confirm that qualitative articles have lower probability of being in the Absent (.26) and Widening (.02) classes than quantitative articles (.38 and .10, respectively). Qualitative articles have higher probability of being in the Extensive class at .27 compared to .09 for quantitative articles. However, qualitative and mixed methods articles have higher probability of being in the Sporadic class (.24 for both) than quantitative articles (.10).
February 19, 2024 at 10:43 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
We also found changes over time in probability of class assignment. The probability of being assigned to the Absent class decreased over time while the probability of being assigned Extensive increased.
4/N
The line chart shows the predicted probabilities of class membership for all six classes by year (2009-2019). As we might expect due to increasing awareness among researchers of racial inequality in education, articles have lower probability of being in the Absent class over time and higher odds of being in Narrow, Widening, and Extensive classes.
February 19, 2024 at 10:43 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
The LCA picked up on sig diff in racial terminology by class. This chart compares the means for the Narrow v Extensive classes. Their use of “White” “Caucasian” and “Black” is similar, Extensive articles were more likely to include terms like “Pacific Islander” “Multiracial”
3/N
Line graph comparing marginal predicted probability of the use of each racial term between the Narrow and Extensive classes. The lines show that Narrow and Extensive articles have similar probabilities of using White (close to 1.0), Caucasian (close to 0.0), and Black (close to 1.0). However, Extensive articles have higher probability of using other terms including African American, Asian, Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native American, American Indian, Latino, Gender-engaged language for Hispanic, Multiracial, Underrepresented minority, Of color, and Minority (exception is Hispanic which is more widely used in Narrow articles).
February 19, 2024 at 10:42 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
We use latent class analysis, identifying 6 classes of racial terminology. Range:
36% of articles did not use racial terminology (absent class) ➡️
12% of articles used extensive terminology, multiple terms for racial categories, wide-range of racial categories (extensive)
2/N
Bar graph showing the following percentages: Absent=36% Sporadic=13% Narrow=25% Widening=8% Traditional=7% Extensive=12%
February 19, 2024 at 10:41 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
🚨 Out now in Ed Researcher @aeraedresearch.bsky.social a new study with @bakerdphd.bsky.social Karly Ford&Marc Johnston-Guerrero 🚨
We coded a census of original research from AERA journals (2009-19) to surface hidden patterns in authors use racial terminology
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/...
1/N
Educational research commonly uses racial terminology but with little understanding of racial classification patterns across the field. In this study, we surface the use of racial terminology using a census of original research published in American Educational Research Association journals between 2009 and 2019. We do so as an ethical quantification exercise, seeking to further social justice goals by encouraging scholarship on racial terminology in educational research. Using latent class analysis, we identify six classes of research ranging from about a third of articles that use almost no racial terminology to an eighth of articles that use terminology extensively. More recently published articles are more likely to be part of classes with extensive or narrow racial terminology usage and less likely to be in classes that are absent racial terminology. Qualitative research is more likely to use extensive racial terminology, and quantitative research is more likely to be absent of or
February 19, 2024 at 10:41 PM
drsamviano.bsky.social
Heading to Atlanta for APPAM? I have two ed policy sessions that I am pumped for!

Test-Based Accountability - Thursday, 1:45-3:15, Courtland (LL3) with @joshbleiberg.bsky.social @psaenz.bsky.social

Learning or Lockdown? - Saturday, 3:30-5, Baker (LL3) with @lucy-sorensen.bsky.social
On the Margin: Who Receives a Juvenile Referral in School and What Effect Does It Have? Andrea Headley, Georgetown University, Lucy Sorensen, University at Albany, State University of New York and Stephen Holt, University at Albany The Consequences of Sibling Criminal Justice Contact for Parental Involvement in Schooling Garrett Baker, Duke University The School-As-Prison Pipeline: A Typology of Carceral Practices in Schools Nalette Brodnax, Georgetown University The Prison Industrial Complex Goes to School: School Security Measures and Teacher, Principal, and School-Level Outcomes Samantha Viano1, Benjamin W. Fisher2, John H. Boman, IV3, Thomas J. Mowen3, Alex O. Widdowson4, Aishia A. Brown4 and Kristina N. LaVenia3, (1)George Mason University, (2)University of Wisconsin-Madison, (3)Bowling Green State University, (4)University of Louisville Balancing Federalism: School Accountability from NCLB to Essa Eric Hanushek1, Patricia Saenz-Armstrong2 and Alejandra Salazar1, (1)Stanford University, (2)NCTQ Designing School Accountability Systems in a Pandemic: Lessons from the NCLB Waivers Joshua Bleiberg, University of Pittsburgh Has High School Achievement Really Been Falling? the Role of Rising High School Graduation Rates and Compositional Effects in the NAEP Douglas Harris1, C. Kirabo Jackson2 and Marco Pariguana1, (1)Tulane University, (2)Northwestern University The Impact of Reducing High School Graduation Requirements on State Graduation Rates Samantha Viano, George Mason University
November 8, 2023 at 5:25 PM