California hosts a historic summit + Chronic absenteeism hurts school performance
Good morning and welcome to the A.M. Alert!
SPEAKER MCCARTHY MEETS WITH TAIWAN’S PRESIDENT AT REAGAN LIBRARY
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley played host to a meeting Wednesday that is likely to produce political shockwaves.
U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, and a bipartisan contingent of lawmakers — including Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Fontana, the third-ranking Democrat in the House — met with the president of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, despite concerns that such a meeting could provoke China.
It is the first known meeting on U.S. soil between a House Speaker, second in line for the presidency, and the president of Taiwan since the U.S. formally broke ties with Taiwan in 1979, according to the AP.
In a press conference with Tsai on Wednesday, McCarthy called Taiwan “a successful democracy, thriving economy, and global leader in heallth and science.”
“The friendship between the people of Taiwan and America is a matter of profound importance to the free world, and it is critical to maintain economic freedom, peace and regional stability,” McCarthy said.
Taiwan, formally called the Republic of China, has been separate from China, formally the People’s Republic of China, for nearly three-quarters of a century.
Though the United States has maintained close ties with Taiwan it walks a very fine line in doing so without angering China. The two countries do not have formal diplomatic relations. For example, President Tsai’s visit to California isn’t being referred to as a state visit, but rather as “a transit” en route to Central America, according to the Associated Press.
While the meeting didn’t generate wall-to-wall media coverage in America — being somewhat overshadowed by Tuesday’s criminal arraignment of former President Donald Trump — but as Politico columnist Jonathan Martin noted on Twitter, it is likely to be a huge deal in Beijing.
“It will get a fraction of US media attention as Trump but this image is gonna detonate in China,” Martin wrote.
CHRONIC ABSENTEEISM LED TO DECREASED SCHOOL PERFORMANCE, PPIC REVEALS
California students are still reeling from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw a spike in chronic absenteeism, according to a recent blog post from the Public Policy Institute of California.
In 2021-22, 30% of public school students missed at least 10% of the school year (18 days or more), according to the PPIC. This led to poorer performance on the Smarter Balanced English and math tests, especially math.
“For example, schools that experienced an increase in absenteeism of about 18 percentage points (the median increase across schools) saw roughly a 2.5 percentage point decline in English proficiency and a 4.2 percentage point decline in math proficiency,” according to the PPIC.
However, the PPIC points out that correlation doesn’t necessarily mean causation.
“It could be that the same factors are responsible for both changes,” according to the post, which listed possible factors as pandemic deaths or illnesses in the community.
“However, even if the relationship between chronic absenteeism and proficiency is not causal, it may have profound implications for learning recovery,” the PPIC post read.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Any doubt in your mind, given his Twitter feed for last 6 months, his jargon, PAC creation, & trip to Rep strongholds that @GavinNewsom is infinitely more focused on anything other than California? Wouldn’t it be nice if he hunkered down to focus on issues here- like housing $?”
- Assemblyman Joe Patterson, R-Rocklin, via Twitter.
Best of The Bee:
The Biden administration gave California more than $391 million to improve its drinking water infrastructure this year, the United States Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday, via Gillian Brassil.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, finishing his first trip Wednesday under the banner of a national campaign to speak out against red state policies, met with students of New College of Florida, the small liberal arts school that has become a culture war flashpoint under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, via Maggie Angst.
In 30 days, it will be illegal to use a loud speaker in front of Planned Parenthood clinics in the city of Sacramento, via Theresa Clift.
The head of California’s adult parole division is leaving to oversee Los Angeles’s long-troubled juvenile halls and manage the nation’s largest juvenile justice system, via Maggie Angst.
After months of protesting the takeover of their school by conservative trustees appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, students and faculty at New College of Florida found an empathetic ear from an unlikely source: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, via Divya Kumar.