After Title 42, Turkey Elections, Pandemic Learning Loss

seeking it here.

How are these changes being understood at the southern border?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing his toughest presidential challenge

yet.

He's been consolidating power for 20 years, but can he keep his seat when many Turks can't

afford food and are angry over the handling of earthquakes that leveled Turkish cities?

learning loss during the pandemic.

We've got all the news you need to start your day.

Along with the COVID-19 public health emergency, the pandemic border policy known as Title

42 ended last night.

The Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced new limits for asylum seekers

now that Title 42 is gone.

Immigrant advocates quickly sued to block the requirements, saying they violate U.S.

immigration law.

He joins us now from El Paso, Texas.

Joel, let's start with the lawsuit.

Who filed and what does it say?

Just as Title 42 officially expired last night, the ACLU and other immigrant advocacy groups

filed to reopen an existing case before a judge in California.

They're challenging a new Biden administration rule that makes it much harder for migrants

if they cross the border illegally after passing through Mexico or another country without

seeking protection there first.

Advocates say this is nearly identical to previous attempts to restrict access to asylum

during the Trump administration that were blocked in court and that it's legal to seek

asylum in the U.S. no matter how you arrived in the country.

some exemptions and because it's paired with new legal pathways as well.

And I would expect the administration to defend this rule vigorously in court because it is

a key component of how they plan to manage the border going forward.

So speaking of the border, you're there at the very moment that Title 42 expired.

What did you see?

front of a gate in the border wall, trying to turn themselves into the border patrol.

There were similar scenes in Arizona.

In South Texas, migrants waded through the river to try to reach U.S. soil.

There was no sudden rush on the border at the moment that Title 42 lifted like some

had been anticipating.

However, we know that there are still tens of thousands of migrants who are in northern

Mexico hoping for a chance to seek asylum.

And we really don't know what they're going to do next.

they do seem very aware that Title 42 is over.

We talked to a young woman named Alejandra Gonzalez, who fled from Venezuela with her

husband and her stepson.

They tried to turn themselves into the border patrol in El Paso before Title 42 ended.

She says they waited for days in the sun outside of the wall on U.S. soil, but never got a

chance to turn themselves in.

Now they are back in Juarez, sleeping in a tent on the street, and they're afraid to

try crossing again.

Because if we turned ourselves in, we might be deported, she says, or detained and jailed.

And I feel a lot of doubt and fear.

And I think that's where a lot of migrants are today.

They're confused and they are fearful about what comes next.

Joel, what can you tell us about that?

from custody without a court date.

Normally, immigration authorities do give migrants a date to appear in immigration court

before releasing them.

But the Biden administration has sometimes released migrants under what's known as parole,

with instructions to check in later with immigration authorities.

And they do this in order to alleviate overcrowding in border patrol facilities.

And immigration authorities have been preparing to do that again, if necessary.

But a judge in Florida issued a temporary restraining order, putting that idea on hold

for at least two weeks.

Joel, thanks.

election that will determine who will lead a major U.S. strategic security partner in

NATO.

He's led the country for two decades, often butting heads with Turkey's partners in NATO.

And he's been amassing power over his country's courts and media, sometimes jailing dissenters.

But he faces a tough challenge from an opposition leader presenting himself as a low-key, moderate

alternative to Erdogan's fiery populism.

Peter, how are people feeling about the two main candidates?

Voters have been hearing all along that this race is too close to call.

There's no way to be absolutely sure of that because Turkish polls are not especially reliable.

But there's no question that the main challenger, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is presenting Erdogan

with perhaps his toughest re-election bid yet.

Now yesterday, one of the other candidates announced he was dropping out.

It's too late to remove his name from the ballot.

Some are wondering if that means his supporters could switch their votes to Kılıçdaroğlu.

So that's another thing to watch for on Sunday.

How did he end up in such a close race?

He was first elected in 2002 to be prime minister after an earthquake killed some 17,000 people

and crushed the economy.

Erdogan came in as a reformer.

He championed poor and working-class Turkish people.

And they loved him.

A devout Muslim leader who cared about their needs.

But later, Turkey's strong economy that he had been riding began to slump, and soaring

inflation left families really struggling.

And that continues.

Some economists say this was Erdogan's own fault.

He's always championed lowering interest rates to spur growth, no matter what.

He defied the conventional economic wisdom that you need to raise interest rates to fight

inflation.

On other issues, Erdogan grew more authoritarian after a failed coup in 2016.

He jailed tens of thousands of people, sometimes on very scant evidence.

That killed more than 50,000, left millions homeless.

Erdogan has admitted the government's response was slow and inadequate.

Now, for his part, Kılıçdaroğlu's promising to tackle inflation, improve Turkey's relations

with the West.

Whether that means he might give up this Russian missile system that Washington has been demanding

he do remains to be seen.

a loss?

His supporters expect him to accept the results, but others are more worried.

Would he call on his supporters to take to the streets and protest if he loses, for example?

Now, in the past, Erdogan has nullified local elections when his candidates lost.

When voters in largely Kurdish areas elected Kurdish leaders, Erdogan sacked them by decree

and installed ruling party officials instead.

Critics have said Erdogan tends to follow democratic norms when it suits him.

Sunday night.

That's Turkish time, if past elections are any guide.

And of course, under Turkish election law, if nobody gets more than 50 percent of the

vote, that's 50 percent plus at least one vote, there has to be a runoff of just the

top two candidates.

And that would be something that would be likely to happen on May 28th.

NPR's Peter Kenyon.

Peter, thanks.

That's how new research describes just how much learning students missed during the pandemic.

the clearest picture yet of which students were hit hardest and why.

Corey, how much learning do researchers think students have missed out on?

And in reading, they missed a quarter of a year.

And that's according to researchers at Harvard's Center for Education Policy Research and Stanford's

Educational Opportunity Project.

Now, not surprisingly, wealth and poverty played a big role here.

By last year, a student in the poorest 10 percent of districts had missed twice as much

math learning as her peers in the richest districts.

Researchers say students of color were also more likely to be hit hard.

And obviously, these differences come on top of already large opportunity gaps between

our most and our least privileged students.

What about schools being remote for long periods of time?

I mean, what effect did that have?

I put that question to Tom Kane.

He's one of the researchers and a professor at Harvard.

their way around.

And that was particularly true in high poverty districts.

school year, students missed nearly twice as much math as districts that had stayed

largely in person.

But this is key here.

School closures were only part of the story.

The researchers found other community level factors beyond school that also affected how

much kids did or didn't learn.

Well, so students missed more learning in places with higher COVID death rates and where

adults were more likely to say they were feeling depressed or anxious about the pandemic.

On the other hand, students missed less learning in places where people were more likely to

vote or respond to the U.S. Census.

In their brief, the researchers explain that one by saying, living in a community where

more people trust the government appears to have been an asset to children during the

pandemic.

They found that social activities, like going out to dinner or meeting a friend in public,

were intertwined with kids' learning.

Tom Kane told me, basically, the places where life was more disrupted saw bigger losses.

And finally, A, they looked at earlier test score drops before the pandemic.

You know, when a single district may have been hit by a local flu outbreak or maybe

too many snow days, they wanted to see if kids naturally made up that ground over time.

Here's Sean Reardon.

He's another one of the researchers on the project and a professor of education and sociology

at Stanford.

decline in one year, those cohorts don't seem to catch up for those three or four years

that we can follow them into the future.

up for all that lost ground, because history shows in those test scores, without a concerted

effort, much of it will just stay lost.

To NPR's Corey Turner.

Corey, thanks.

I'm A. Martinez.

Up First is produced by Ziad Butch and Shelby Hawkins.

Our editors are Mohamed El-Bardisi and Ali Schweitzer.

Our technical director is Josephine Neonay and our executive producer is Erica Aguilar.

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