Boris Johnson makes U-turn on free school meals after Rashford campaign

Boris Johnson has been forced into a U-turn over providing food vouchers for some of England’s poorest families after a campaign launched by the footballer Marcus Rashford threatened to engulf his government in another crisis.

In an embarrassing about-face, the prime minister said that on Tuesday he had called the England and Manchester United striker to explain the reversal, and made the remarkable claim that he had only become aware of Rashford’s interest in the issue earlier in the day.

Yet 24 hours before, No 10 had rejected the footballer’s plea for it to keep paying for the £15-a-week vouchers over the summer, and ministers had been sent out to defend the government’s position. But with Conservative MPs threatening to rebel against the government, Downing Street retreated and announced a new £120m “covid summer food fund” for 1.3 million pupils in England.

Appearing at the coronavirus daily briefing on Tuesday, Johnson said he had called Rashford, 22, to congratulate him on his campaign. “I thank him for what he’s done,” he said.

Rashford, who has written about the food poverty he experienced as a child, said of the reversal on Twitter.: “I don’t even know what to say. Just look at what we can do when we come together, THIS is England in 2020.”

The policy change was announced just hours before the government was expected to argue against feeding hungry children during the summer at an opposition day debate.

Until then, Downing Street had argued it would not award free school meal vouchers in England outside term time.

Asked if Rashford’s pleas had helped to change Johnson’s mind, his spokesman said: “The prime minister welcomes Marcus Rashford’s contribution to the debate around poverty, and respects the fact that he has been using his profile as a sportsman to highlight important issues.”

He said families entitled to free school meals would receive a one-off voucher at the end of the school term, worth £15 a week for the six-week school break, which they could spend in supermarkets.

Scotland and Wales would also continue with the voucher programme, while Northern Ireland’s first minister, Arlene Foster, said she would be proposing that the scheme be extended over the summer “if the necessary finances can be secured”.

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, who wrote to the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, last week about the need for a change in policy, thanked the footballer.

“Today’s announcement will help many families, but there will still be 4 million children living in poverty, a number that could increase following the covid crisis.”

Johnson faced pressure from senior Conservative backbenchers including the former minister George Freeman and the chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon. One senior party source said that more than 30 backbench MPs had told whips they were considering voting against the government.

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Is the University of California Committing Suicide? Equity vs. Excellence

What is the best public university in America? According to US News, it is not even close. In its latest rankings of national universities, six of the 50 best schools were campuses of the University of California (UC)—as many as for all other public American universities combined. Forbes ranks UC at Berkeley the 13th best school in America, tied with Ivy League heavy hitter Columbia, and above such prestigious private schools as the University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Johns Hopkins.

While undoubtedly some of UC’s prestige comes from its extraordinary research prowess, much of it emanates from the fact the school has implicitly said “we admit only the best, the brightest, and the hardest working of our state’s population.” In 1960, California, heavily influenced by UC President Clark Kerr, developed a Master Plan ordaining the very best students (generally the top one-eighth of their high school graduating class) would be admitted to UC, while good but less superior students (in the top one-third of high school graduates) would go to the California State University system; less capable students would go to community colleges with a possibility of transferring to the better universities upon demonstrating superior performance.

Over time, applications to UC soared. While there was some increase in capacity (the newest UC campus was created in 2005 at Merced), demand exceeded supply, and, like every other prestigious school, UC put increasing emphasis on SAT or ACT test results of students in determining admission. Even the least selective UC school, Merced, turns down well over one-fourth of those applying (UCLA, by contrast, rejects about five of every six applicants).

While some studies show high school performance is the best single predictor of college success, generally they also say that SAT/ACT scores are an important secondary predictor. Indeed, an admissions task force of faculty from all UC schools in January went farther, concluding, “At UC, test scores are currently better predictors of first year GPA (grades) than high school grade point average....” However, the faculty task force recommendation to keep testing was ignored. A school relying exclusively on high school grades might select the best students 60% of the time, but combining grades with test results would improve the accuracy of their selection dramatically, perhaps to 90%. Very few students drop out of highly selective schools using SAT-type testing, because the grade/testing combination usually finds the best and brightest successful students.

Ignoring the faculty, the UC Board of Regents unanimously decreed the phasing out of the use of the SAT and ACT tests over several years, under heavy pressure from various organizations. A 31-group coalition said “Eliminating the SAT and ACT will support talented Latinx, black, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander (AANAPI) and other historically underrepresented students.... Black, Latnix, Native American, and subgroups of Asians students are too often denied access....”

It appears to me that those calling for change, including thenUC Regents, believe there should be racially/ethnically-determined admissions quotas, independent of the ability of students to excel academically. More bluntly, too many Asian-Americans are currently being admitted, and too few blacks and those of Hispanic heritage. To the anti-testers, perceived equity concerns should trump traditional efforts to get the best and brightest students academically.

I think this is an exceedingly dangerous and slippery slope to negotiate, and UC is going further than other prominent schools. It values racial/ethnic concerns over academic ones and makes a mockery out of faculty control over academic standards. As to equity: is turning down an Asian-American immigrant with a high SAT score ranking 5th out of a class of 250 in order to accommodate, say, a lower-scoring native-born African-American student ranked 30th in her class of 250 at a much lower quality high school “equitable?”

Aside from the anti-academic excellence, anti-faculty, and racist aspect of the decision: it is another attempt to get around Proposition 209, approved by the California voters, making it unconstitutional to discriminate for or against persons based on racial or gender characteristics. While promoting economic and social mobility for lower income persons is a venerated American value, doing so in this fashion appears morally suspect and justifiably may hurt the reputation of the University of California.

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Is a Law School Meltdown Coming?

Watching TV ads for plaintiff trial lawyers wanting to cash in on other people’s misery doesn’t exactly endear me to the legal profession, but it does increase my already serious infatuation for The Bard himself, William Shakespeare, who once said (Henry VII, Part 2) “let’s kill all the lawyers.” That said, we are a nation ruled by law, and a massive breakdown of that bedrock principle, threatened in recent days, scares most Americans. We need lawyers, and lots of them, to enforce the rules and laws that allow for a prosperous, orderly society.

Enter Covid-19 and the possibility that law schools will forgo in-class legal education this fall. Already Harvard Law has said its fall courses are going to be taught remotely. How does this impact law students facing tuition and other fees often in the $50,000 range or even more? The apparent answer, based on a survey of 1,651 law students: “considerably.”

Asked if they would “reconsider continuing your legal education” in an era of social distancing and remote learning, more than 30% of students answered yes, and nearly 40% more said, “no, but I may take a hiatus until things return to normal.” More than 20% said they are reconsidering their career path. Some 87% said they thought their education would be overpriced if they had to continue it remotely. And most were concerned about rules in nearly all states restricting the ability of lawyers educated online to take the bar exam. The American Bar Association, which is the cartel that largely controls entry into the legal profession, seemingly hates online learning. Additionally, a large majority of current students found their own vocationally important summer internships interrupted.

Most damning, some 56% of those polled said their education last semester was “less effective” because of remote learning, while only 37% said there was “no change” going from in-person to remote learning. Most students feel they lose something in not facing in person the intense intellectual interchange between students and professors that characterizes legal education, and helps prepare students for something most other college graduates do NOT face (but perhaps should): a very high stakes examination that literally will determine whether they can practice the trade in which they were trained.

Mehran Ebadolahi is a UCLA/Harvard Law graduate who runs TestMax, a company that helps prepare students for the LSAT, bar examination, and some other key tests. Most relevant, he is responsible for the survey results reported above. While the TestMax database may not be a perfectly random sample of law school participants, it is pretty large. Mehran, whom I interviewed, is the personification of the American Dream. Born in Iran with one Jewish and one Muslim parent, he moved to the U.S. at the age of one, graduated with high grades from UCLA, did poorly (a 148 score) on the LSAT, but persevered until he got a 174 on that test and into Harvard. He has challenged the old, paper and pencil, in-person test preparation model, TestMax growing substantially with the passage of time. My hunch is his survey respondents probably fairly closely match that of law students generally.

I suspect most law schools are going to realize the implications of this survey and push hard to reopen next fall, particularly as mounting evidence exists that younger people seem to be far less likely to be lethally impacted by the novel coronavirus than older adults. The health arguments against live instruction may be seriously overstated. Law schools have enormous fixed costs and are mostly exceedingly tuition-dependent. Even with risks, the live show must go on for most of them or, in a few cases, they literally may die.

A comment from a friend and former student who is entering law school this fall, however, provides a small element of optimism: “I am actually salivating at the prospect that 30% of my peers would consider a career change… When I go to sell my labor on the job market after I finish school, fewer other prospects would play into my favor.” Maybe others will think the same thing, so actual enrollment declines come fall will actually be less than currently anticipated. As with the rest of higher education, this fall is critical.

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