In Case You Missed It – December 16, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Consider the first sentence of this San Diego Union-Tribune, typical of school reporting: Unified finds literacy gaps in kindergarten and middle school:

Many San Diego Unified kindergartners are already arriving at school behind grade level in reading, and reading scores take a hit when students reach middle school, district testing data show.

How can kindergartners be behind when they haven’t started formal schooling?" -- Nancy Bailey in How Assessment and Data are Used to Stigmatize Children as Failing

WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE TO TESTING

How Assessment and Data are Used to Stigmatize Children as Failing

We haven't escaped from the damage done by No Child Left Behind. We're still overusing and misusing tests.

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

School districts continue to purchase high-cost commercialized tests that depersonalize teaching, stigmatize children and schools as failing, and build public distrust.

Assessment should inform educators and parents about where children are academically and behaviorally, but it doesn’t appear to improve learning.

Current tests appear to primarily be used to collect data, invading a child’s and family’s privacy. Such tests often stigmatize children as failing, and there are so many tests.

Aren’t there less costly methods that help teachers and parents understand how a child is doing that don’t share a child’s personal information, tests that lift children instead of disparaging them?

THE COMING ANTI-PUBLIC EDUCATION STORM

How will the Trump administration's education policies impact public education?

Will Trump Really End The Department Of Education

The plans are to leave schools alone and to micromanage them at the same time.

From Peter Greene in Forbes

The list of goals may or may not be current, but it underlines a basic contradiction at the heart of Trump’s education plans. The various goals can be boiled down to two overall objectives:

1) To end all federal involvement and oversight of local schools

2) To exert tight federal control over local schools

Trump has promised that schools will not teach “political indoctrination,” that they will teach students to be “love their country,” that there will be school prayer, that students will “have access to” project-based learning, and that schools will expel students who harm teachers or other students. He has also proposed stripping money from colleges and universities that indoctrinate students and using the money to set up a free of charge “world class education” system.

Above all, he has promised that he “will be closing up” the Department of Education. Of course, he said that in 2016 with control of both houses of Congress and it did not happen.

What Should We Be Watching For if Linda McMahon Is Confirmed as Education Secretary?

Do Republicans care about public education?

From Jan Resseger

...We ought to consider the implications when “outsiders” are appointed to manage the federal department which administers the myriad federal programs that shape opportunities for vulnerable students in public schools across the 50 states. At the center of every town and suburb and urban neighborhood, public schools are among our society’s most central and important civic and social institutions. Developed over the past two centuries, public schools are universally available and accessible, and they are institutions which, by law, must serve each child’s academic needs and must protect all students’ rights. In public schools our children come together to think, learn, and listen respectfully to others in schools served by credentialed professionals.

Trump and McMahon’s America First Agenda

Click this link to contact your legislators.

From Network for Public Education Action

Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education, is the Board Chair of America First, which has an agenda for K-12 schools. It is filled with a subtle plan to defund public schools while exerting Soviet-style surveillance over what our teachers teach and students learn. Watch the video to learn more.

TEACHER SUES OVER LGBTQ+ BOOKS

Teacher Sues After Being Suspended for Having Books With LGBTQ+ Characters in Her Classroom

An Ohio teacher sues their school district.

From Religion Clause blog

A third-grade teacher in the southern Ohio village of New Richmond filed suit last week in an Ohio federal district court seeking damages for the 3-day suspension imposed on her for having four books in her classroom's book collection that have LGBTQ+ characters in them. The school claimed that the books violated the District's Policy 2240 on Controversial Issues in the Classroom.

GIFTS FOR TEACHER

Gifts of Christmas Past

"Teaching offers many very rewarding experiences, but it’s not and never has been about the great swag."

From Teacher in a Strange Land

In a holiday-themed archetype of legislative overreach, Alabama passed an ethics law back in 2011, forbidding K-12 school teachers from accepting expensive presents. Previous legislation set a $100 limit on individual gifts to public workers, but the 2011 law specified that gifts to teachers be limited to those of nominal value. The stated purpose: to reinforce ethical practices by state employees.

This was such a big deal that the AL Ethics Commission was receiving about 25 calls a day from parents who didn’t want to get their children’s teachers in trouble. The Ethics Commission released a detailed report, letting parents know that cookies, hand lotion and mugs are OK. What I found interesting was what was forbidden. Four examples: hams, turkeys, cash and “anything a teacher could re-sell.”

I was a classroom teacher for more than 30 years. I received hundreds of Christmas and end-of-year gifts over that time. And I never got a turkey or a ham. Maybe that’s an Alabama thing?

ALLEN COUNTY WELCOMES DOLLY PARTON'S IMAGINATION LIBRARY

ACPL launches Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library comes to Allen County.

From 21 Alive News

The Allen County Public Library has officially launched Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.

The program provides free, age-appropriate books to local children from birth to age five.

Officials from Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library of Indiana say Allen County experienced the second-highest registration numbers in the country in its first month of signing children up for the program.

Those interested in signing a child up for the program can do so here. It takes about eight to 12 weeks from enrollment for children to receive their first book, which they then receive monthly.

There is no cost to families.

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – November 18, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

IMPORTANT CALENDAR NOTE: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is taking a vacation. We will return on December 9, 2024. In the meantime, follow us on Facebook, Threads (@NEIFPE), and Bluesky (@neifpe.bsky.social).

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Most Americans want better public schools not a scattered approach of schools for the wealthy and schools for the poor, or to have their children facing computers all day. Let’s honor our students by providing them free quality democratic public schools that reject no one.

This needs to be a promise to our youngest children, that public schools will continue to be supported by Americans to work collectively with everyone." -- Nancy Bailey in Will the Future Include Free Democratic Public Schools and Teachers?

PRESERVE PUBLIC EDUCATION

Will the Future Include Free Democratic Public Schools and Teachers?

At the end of this post there's a link to a page on the Network for Public Education's website. What can you do to help preserve public education?

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

...according to the 2022 Kappan Gallup Poll, despite all the supposed anger surrounding COVID-19 and school closings, controversial books, CRT, gender identities, etc., Americans like their local public schools!

According to the results:

Americans’ ratings of their community’s public schools reached a new high dating back 48 years in this year’s PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools,

Polls have shown this for years. Parents might believe other public schools aren’t good, due to what they hear, but they’re satisfied with their child’s local public school!

This is good news; it hardly seems like the end of public education or that Americans want school choice! Many Republican and Democratic parents share the hope of creating quality public schools for America!

But all is not well. The Poll also indicates that the public recognizes difficulties facing teachers.

. . .fewer than ever expressed interest in having their child work as a public school teacher.

This is serious since teachers are the backbone of a school...

WHAT DO WE DO IN AMERICA?

How Do German Schools Teach Their Political History?

The German's learned that history is important. They aren't restricting what their schools teach about their role in World War II, in fact, they require that student learn and understand what happened.

From Nancy Flanagan in Teacher in a Strange Land blog

I asked, as a teacher, what German schoolchildren were taught about Germany’s role in World War II. It was part of their national curriculum, he told us. They began with equity and community in early childhood, accepting differences and playing together. When students were 12, they read Anne Frank. Media literacy and logic and an intense focus on preparation for good, attainable, satisfying jobs were part of the program, in addition to history, economics and the predictable disciplines. We do not avoid our history, he said.

So what do you do in America, he asked?

Here's what some states are doing in America...

Department of Education reports near double increase in library book removals

From Florida Phoenix

During the 2023-2024 school year, Florida schools removed nearly twice as many books than the year before following challenges from parents and community members.

Schools removed 732 titles during the 2023-2024 school year, on top of 386 removed the year before.

Twenty-three districts contributed to the list, with Clay, Indian River, and Volusia counties making up significant portions.

The removals stem from state laws requiring school boards to adopt protocols for screening books deemed to be pornographic or contain sexual content.

Florida book removals have been the subject of lawsuits claiming censorship and limiting freedom of expression.

NEW RESEARCH, SAME AS THE OLD RESEARCH

Socioeconomic status explains most of the racial and ethnic achievement gaps in elementary school

We've known for years that poverty is the largest factor that explains America's achievement gaps. This report on recent research comes to the same conclusion and adds some important factors.

From Eric Hengyu Hu and Paul L. Morgan in The Conversation

For decades, white students have performed significantly better than Black and Hispanic students on tests of academic achievement. Explanations for these achievement gaps include poverty and systems that result in discrimination. Others cite struggles to learn English. And some folks believe that some groups simply don’t value education.

Our new report shows that gaps in achievement between white, Black and Hispanic students in elementary school are primarily explained by differences in family socioeconomic status. That is, kindergartners from families with similar economic resources and educational backgrounds – among other factors – later displayed similar levels of achievement. This was true regardless of their race or ethnicity.

POST-ELECTION COMMENTARY

The new Trump administration has some plans for public education in the United States.

Despite Positive Election Results for Public Education in Some States, Trump’s Federal Education Agenda Remains Scary

From Jan Resseger

At the federal level, however, based on President-Elect Donald Trump’s comments during the recent campaign, the planks in this year’s Republican Platform, and the educational goals outlined in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has been presented as a blueprint for the incoming president’s reform of federal education policy, many seasoned education reporters are worried not only about a possible drop in the federal investment in U.S. public schools, but also about reduced protection of students’ civil rights, and about the disruption in schools and communities if Trump pursues his promised massive deportation of immigrants.

Project 2025 proposes block granting Title I dollars to states (without targeting the funds to schools serving impoverished students) and eventually phasing out the program, block granting IDEA dollars to states without required protection of services for disabled students, and eliminating Head Start for impoverished preschoolers. Just before the election, Education Week‘s Alyson Klein reviewed these proposals in the context of the record of the first Trump administration’s diminished support for public schooling: “Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, consolidated offices within the Education Department. And under Trump, staffing levels shrank significantly in the office of elementary and secondary education…. The office lost nearly 14 percent of its staff between the end of the Obama administration and the midpoint of the Trump administration at the start of 2019… In every budget request, Trump proposed deep cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s bottom line, only to see them rejected by Congress.”

Closing the U.S. Department of Education: A LOSS for Children with Disabilities

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Donald Trump just proclaimed the Project 2025 agenda in 10 points about education. As expected, this includes dismantling the U.S. Department of Education (DOE), responsible for many federal laws protecting students.

This post will focus on the loss of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA.

Many believe that states and local school districts can assimilate the laws or another department can take them over after a DOE closure, but this is a gamble. Transferring this legal responsibility to states or a department concentrating on other issues could mean the end of hard-fought, long-time laws that have benefited students.

To tamper with IDEA, a law that involved so much positive and critical change in the lives of students with disabilities, although imperfect, but a law just the same, would be terrible for the lives of these children and their families.

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Protect Public Education: Here is What You Can Do

Click the link to see what you can do. What will you do?

From the Network for Public Education Action

NPE Needs Volunteers to Join the Fight for Public Schools and America’s Children.

From a mandate for prayer in public schools, threats to fire teachers and principals, and an embrace of vouchers, Donald Trump has revealed his 10-point plan of hostility toward public schools on X.

Our tiny staff and Board cannot wage this fight alone. We need your help. Since the election, friends of public schools have emailed the Network for Public Education asking what they can do.

If you would like to volunteer to help stop the destruction of public schools and protect America’s children and teachers, please go here and let us know. You will find a menu of ways to help. Present and future generations of children depend on us. This is our moment to stand up and fight for democratically governed schools that welcome ALL children.

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – November 11, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"...the main tactic of privatizers remains getting friendly legislators to ignore the voting public and just go ahead and create voucher programs. Just look at Texas, where the now years-long fight by Governor Greg Abbott to get vouchers in the state has not hinged on changing the public’s mind or arguing the merits of vouchers, but on using a mountain of money to tilt elections so that he can get enough voucher-friendly legislators in place to give him vouchers." -- Peter Greene in NPE blog post, Even in a Red Wave, Voters Reject School Vouchers

VOTERS REJECT VOUCHERS

Even in a Red Wave, Voters Reject School Vouchers

When vouchers are put to the vote, Americans reject them. This year's election was no different. Voters rejected vouchers in three states.

From Peter Greene in the NPE Blog

...Colorado tried to amend the state constitution to put in place a right to school choice. The amendment was spectacularly awful, creating the potential for endless lawsuits and unmanageable demands by parents. Even the Christian Home Educators recognized that it was a spectacularly bad idea.

...In Kentucky, choice fans were miffed that the state supreme court could actually read and understand the plain language of their constitution, which says

No sum shall be raised or collected for education other than in common schools until the question of taxation is submitted to the legal voters, and the majority of the votes cast at said election shall be in favor of such taxation

So the court rejected various attempts to use public tax dollars for private school vouchers, and voucherphiles decided they’s just have to get the constitution rewritten.

Kentucky went 65% – 34% for Trump, and swept all sorts of MAGA officials back into office. Pretty much those exact numbers went the other way for the amendment, sending it down in flames.

Nebraska had perhaps the longest row to hoe, as the legislature passed a voucher law in 2023. Voters successfully petitioned to put a repeal of that law on the ballot, so the legislators repealed and replaced it themselves in an attempt to do an end run around voters. So a second petition was circulated, and repeal of the new law was placed on the ballot.

That repeal passed, and Nebraska’s voucher law is now toast.

ASSAULT ON EDUCATIONAL SPEECH

The Right’s ‘All-Out Assault on Educational Speech’ Continues Unabated

Book banning and curriculum restrictions have spread to post secondary education.

From The Progressive

A recently released report from PEN America, titled America’s Censored Classrooms 2024, tells a grim story about the right’s ongoing legislative attacks on inclusive public education.

According to the 102-year-old group, the steep rise in the number of book bans during the 2023-2024 academic year—more than 10,000 at last count—and educational gag orders to limit what topics K-12 teachers can teach and what books they can use has now spread to public colleges and universities. In the higher education sector, gag orders intersect with other worrying trends—including the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and constraints on college curricula and shared faculty governance—leading to what PEN calls “an all-out assault on educational speech.”

Jeremy C. Young, director of PEN’s Freedom to Learn program, tells The Progressive that six rightwing think tanks—The Claremont Institute, The Ethics and Public Policy Center, The Goldwater Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Manhattan Institute, and the National Association of Scholars—are largely responsible for the expansion of book bans and gag orders from K-12 to colleges and universities.

INDIANA HOUSE SEAT STAYS WITH PRIVATIZER

GOP spends big to keep rural legislative seat

[Editor's note: Republican incumbent Dave Hall has retained his seat in Indiana’s 62nd House District with 51.1% of the votes, a difference of about 800 votes.]

From School Matters

This year, Democrat Thomas Horrocks is challenging Hall. Horrocks is a church pastor and an Indiana National Guard chaplain. He has raised money and campaigned energetically, including with TV ads. On his campaign website, he lists supporting public education as one of his priorities. “This means universal pre-k, keeping public dollars in public schools, and paying teachers what they’re worth,” he says.

Hall, a farmer and the owner of a crop insurance business, seems to be a congenial and civic-minded person who takes being a legislator seriously. Unlike his fellow Jackson County Republican, Rep. Jim Lucas of Seymour, he doesn’t gratuitously threaten people or pick fights over guns and culture-war issues. His campaign website doesn’t mention education. A cute TV ad says he’ll protect public schools like his daughter’s, but he voted for the 2023 budget bill that expanded vouchers.

If Hall wins, he will owe his seat not only to the voters but to the organizations that paid for his campaign: the House Republican Campaign Committee and its deep-pocketed donors, including groups that promote vouchers and charter schools. Hall has raised over $600,000 this year, and more than half came from the HRCC.

When the time comes for tough votes on expanding “school choice,” a perennial priority for Republican leaders and their pals, you can bet he’ll be reminded of that.

LOCAL NEWS

Good news on teacher salaries -- sort of

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

An Indiana state government report on teacher salaries reveals an average pay exceeding $60,000, which might seem promising at first glance. However, this number conceals troubling realities: Our educators earn well less than the median salary for degreed workers and are paid less than their neighbors and nationally.

Released on Nov. 1, the 2023-24 Teacher Compensation Report by the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board provides a critical reference point for understanding current teacher pay. The average annual teacher salary has increased significantly, from $51,500 in 2019-20 to more than $60,000. But this figure represents a state average, masking substantial pay variability across districts, with many educators earning well less than this benchmark.

Adding to these concerns, a recent report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, published this past August, highlights a longstanding decline in interest in teaching. The share of bachelor’s and master’s graduates has sharply declined since the 1970s, when a quarter of college graduates earned education degrees.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – September 30, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"When lawmakers consider expanding or creating private school voucher programs, their projections often dramatically underestimate the actual costs. They sell a false promise that vouchers will save money, do not budget adequate funds, and then wind up with million dollar shortfalls, necessitating cuts from public education and even tax increases… First, it costs less than the average expenditure to educate some students...The students who are most expensive to educate...tend to remain in public schools, because they cannot find a private voucher school willing to accept them. Yet, because of the voucher program, the state now pays tuition for private school students who never attended public schools...This all adds up to more, not less spending." -- from the National Coalition for Public Education, quoted in Voucher Programs Prove Again and Again What We Already Know


THE COST OF VOUCHERS

Voucher Programs Prove Again and Again What We Already Know

Voucher costs in Indiana...two-thirds of which go to students who never attended public schools and who can afford the cost of a private education...are approaching half a billion dollars a year. That money goes to mostly religious schools even though the Indiana Constitution states (in Article 1, Section 6) that...

"No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution."

Note also that the state allows voucher accepting schools to reject students on the basis of "religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or academic ability."

From Jan Resseger

As we all know, state legislators across the country originally justified passing small, experimental voucher programs as a way to help poor kids escape from their so-called “failing” public schools. A year ago, at the end of The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, an authoritative collection of essays by experts on school vouchers, here is what the editors conclude instead:

“As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… ”

In states like Ohio, where the legislature made vouchers universal by raising the income eligibility level to 450 percent of the federal family poverty level (with partial vouchers for even wealthier families), the state simply started paying the private school tuition bills that families had been undertaking for generations. In other states like Arizona, the state has been awarding Education Savings Account vouchers for the private educational expenses of children who are not enrolled in public schools, whether to pay for private school tuition vouchers or homeschooling costs...Here is the primary fiscal problem of all these programs, according to Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University: “It’s not that there is a mass exodus from public to private schools… (W)hat these states are doing is obligating themselves to expenditures that were previously borne by the private sector.”

Indiana is a classic example of a state that has made its old fashioned private school tuition voucher program universally available. This week for Chalkbeat Indiana, Aleksandra Appleton and Mia Hollie report: “Voucher use has soared in Indiana since lawmakers made nearly every student in the state eligible, with more than 90% of students at more than half of all participating schools using a voucher during the 2023-24 school year…. That was true in just 11% of private schools before lawmakers made the Indiana Choice Scholarship available to nearly every student in Indiana by relaxing income eligibility and removing other requirements to participate…. Since lawmakers approved the expansion last year, the number of schools where 100% of students receive a voucher rose from just one in 2022-23 to 28 in 2023-24. Last year, in 178 of the 349 private schools that accept vouchers, more than 90% of students enrolled use a voucher to pay for tuition.” The program cost the state of Indiana $439 million for the 2023-24 school year.

Peter Greene: Why Sex Scandals Matter

From Diane Ravitch

...How could someone who had inveighed against “the woke agenda” and urged the adoption of vouchers to escape that agenda have done what the rumors said? I didn’t think I would touch it with a ten-foot pole. I don’t care what others do in their private lives. I believe in Tim Walz’s credo: “Mind your own damn business.” But I was troubled by the hypocrisy.

Corey worked for Betsy DeVos and was her leading salesman for vouchers. DeVos and her family are rabidly anti-LGBT. For years, they have funded anti-LGBT organizations like the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Alliance Defending Freedom. Yet the rumor was that Corey had performed in gay porn, and there were many videos online to prove it.

One of the alleged virtues of vouchers was that they enable students to escape pedophile teachers and to attend schools that ban LGBT students. I couldn’t make sense of these two lives.

Peter Greene wrote about Corey’s apparent double life.

NEWS FROM THE NETWORK FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION (NPE)

Network for Public Education launches the National Center for Charter School Accountability

The National Center for Charter School Accountability provides research and recommendations on increasing transparency and accountability for charter schools.

From The Network for Public Education and Diane Ravitch

Having spent years covering charter scandals and seeking accountability for charters, the Network for Public Education realized that it could not compete with the high-powered corporate public relations firms representing the charter school industry. So, we decided, the only way to get accountability is to do it ourselves.

So NPE established the National Center on Charter School Accountability, which will produce reviews of charter school performance.

Network for Public Education 2025 National Conference

From The Network for Public Education

Registration is now open for NPE/NPE Action’s 2025 national conference, Public Schools: Where All Students Are Welcome. We can’t wait to see you in Columbus, Ohio, on April 5-6!

Stay tuned for more info about keynote speakers and session topics.

BANNED BOOKS WEEK

Banned books week is over...but book banning continues.

It's Banned Books Week

NOTE: A Facebook account is required to access this article.

From Michael B. Shaffer on Facebook

So here we are in the third day of Banned Books Week 2024, and I want to give a huge shout-out to all of the great teachers in Indiana who have resisted the mandate to clear their shelves of books that one person might find objectionable, in favor of keeping the books that speak to the hearts of kids. What those who want to restrict access to the kinds of books students want, do not realize is that if we are serious about literacy, we must have the books that mean something, books that students want to read, books that students will read!

When we ban books, or sit still while it happens, we are not only giving up a precious freedom, we are also depriving our students the ability to do what my friend Alan Boyko, the retired President of Scholastic Book Fairs, used to say that students need the ability to "find themselves in a book, and then lose themselves in that book."

Banned Books Week

From American Library Association

In a time of deep political divides, library staff across the country are facing an overwhelming number of book ban attempts. In 2023 alone, the American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 1,247 efforts to censor books and other resources in libraries—an increase of 65% from the year before. In total, 4,240 unique book titles were targeted, many of them representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC voices and experiences.

As we gear up for Banned Books Week 2024 (September 22-28), with the theme "Freed Between the Lines," we’re reminded how much is at stake. The freedom to explore new ideas and different perspectives is under threat, and book bans don’t just restrict access to stories—they undermine our rights. Now is the time to come together, celebrate the right to read, and find freedom in the pages of a book. Let’s be "Freed Between the Lines."

LOCAL NEWS

Wells County school district scores Red Wagon status

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Bluffton-Harrison Metropolitan School District has once again earned Red Wagon Corporation status for its fundraising efforts for Riley Hospital for Children, a news release said.

Districts receive this designation when their fundraising equals $1 per student per building in an academic year, the release said. State enrollment data shows Bluffton-Harrison had about 1,800 students last year – the year its recognition honors.

The Wells County school system has contributed more than $300,000 to the Indianapolis-based children’s hospital since 1993, the release said. It indicated each school annually hosts special events – including dress-up days, boat races and an auction – to support the cause.

Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – July 1, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Imagine there is no public schooling and a candidate in 2024 runs on a great new idea: “Let’s provide universal free K-12 for all students and tax ourselves to pay for it!” What was established 150 years ago would seem outrageous today, especially in an environment strongly influenced by wealthy donors who want to do away with public programs. We take for granted the fact that in all of our communities, we have tuition-free schools that welcome all of our children—it’s a natural feature of the landscape. The system isn’t perfect and often disappoints us. But we need to remember that the core features of this system—that it is publicly governed, taxpayer-supported, open access, and used to advance the common good—are actually pretty remarkable. Moreover, our public education system has made our country far more equal than it was in the past. If we dismantle public education, it would be difficult if not impossible to bring it back." -- from NEA Today, What do Book Bans and Vouchers Have in Common?

THE WAR AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS

What do Book Bans and Vouchers Have in Common?

A new book from the Have You Heard podcasters...coming on July 2.

From NEA Today

In their latest book The Education Wars, journalist Jennifer Berkshire and education scholar Jack Schneider explain the sudden obsession with race and gender in schools and the ascendancy of book bans. It offers analysis of school vouchers and the impact they’ll have on school finances and explores the movement for “parents’ rights,” explaining the rights that students and taxpayers also have.

NEA Today spoke to Berkshire and Schneider about the new book and some of the alarming findings. We also asked about the path forward...

...Can a family with an LGBTQ+ student attend private school with a voucher? What about students with disabilities?...

JB and JS: LGBTQ+ students would be embraced by a Quaker school, but those are a small percentage of the faith-based schools that dominate the private sector. Most LGBTQ+ students would face resistance at a religious private school or, worse, intolerance and exclusion. So vouchers may offer options, but they don’t protect students’ rights. They can deny admission and equal treatment based on their “religious freedom.”

Students with disabilities will face similar obstacles. We recently did a podcast on threats to special education in a voucher system. A mother of a student with disabilities from Tennessee read 20 different rejection letters she got from 20 different schools. In a privatized system, a school can say “no, we don’t have the facilities or the personnel to accommodate your child.” And there will be no incentive to do so. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which turns 50 next year, would not apply as it does in our public school system. Again, vouchers provide some options, but no rights, which leaves a large population with no options.

READING WARS

The Comprehension Problem with New Reading Programs: Ignoring the Books Children LIKE to Read!

The Science of Reading leaves out one essential aspect...the joy of reading.

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

I’m not a gambler, but if I were, I’d bet that a lot of parents whose elementary school-age children are getting explicit phonics instruction, memorizing rules, and who can define words like diphthong and schwa will be disappointed when their children get to high school and couldn’t care less about reading.

New reading programs promising the Science of Reading don’t cover what children need to become good readers. What’s missing are reading comprehension and the incentive to read because it’s fun and interesting.

When critics of public schools and teachers debate how to teach reading comprehension today, they chatter about knowledge building (of course, previous knowledge is important) and raise questions like, should you teach a child about the main idea? (of course, you should), as if teachers haven’t taught children to read (and write) in the past.

The difference is that, today, they often ignore the main star: books children like to read.

VIRTUAL CHARTER REPORT

New Indiana virtual charter school report shows $60M in funding for 2022-23

The annual report also gives other data on class sizes and teacher-student ratios across the state’s seven virtual charters.

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle

More than $60 million in state tuition funding went to Indiana’s virtual schools during the 2022-23 academic year, according to a new report.

In all, those dollars covered roughly 8,500 students — a majority of those attending a handful of virtual charter schools operating in the state.

Each year, virtual charter schools are required by law to submit data to the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) with the number of student-teacher meetings conducted in-person or via video conference, classroom size, the ratio of teachers per class, as well as state funding totals.

The newest numbers were submitted to the Indiana State Budget Committee last week.

POLITICS AND EDUCATION

New Hampshire: Why the GOP Is Determined to Destroy Public Schools

This is an important article for everyone to read, no matter where you live. It explains succinctly the true goals of the privatization movement.

From Diane Ravitch

A responsible citizen is an informed citizen, and that appears to be the problem today. Too many people interested in power instead of governing don’t want a truly informed public. Instead, they want enough of the public spoon fed “alternative facts,” conspiracy theories, and outright lies to ensure they retain power although they have views that are both harmful to the majority of citizens and allow the tyranny of the minority to overturn the will of the majority.

At the heart of the minority’s transformation plan is the destruction of the public school system.

Indiana’s attempt to take shortcuts on education is costing us.

It’s time for the State to stop trying to privatize schools and start investing in our public school system.

From Masson's Blog: A Citizen's Guide to Indiana

Ball State economist, Michael Hicks, has a column about Democratic run areas of the country getting richer while Republican run areas are getting poorer. He notes that the U.S. is seeing its best economic performance in the last half century but the benefits are not being distributed uniformly. He doesn’t lay the blame on one party or another because some of the underlying reasons were a long time in the making. But he does underscore the significance of educational attainment in the dynamic.

It is difficult to lay the blame for worsening economic conditions at the feet of one party or the other. For the past 50 years, there was considerable overlap in state policies, so conservative Democratic states behaved a lot like more progressive Republican states in tax, education and economic development policy.

...The 15 states that have seen the biggest relative drop in educational attainment are all solidly Republican states—and poor. Indiana ranks 10th on this list...

LOCAL NEWS

FWCS board unanimously approves $55M loan for Snider stadium

From WANE.com

At Monday’s meeting, the Fort Wayne Community Schools Board welcomed a new member and approved financing of the upcoming Snider football stadium.

The FWCS Board unanimously approved the financing of the new Snider Stadium alongside other improvements in the district. The cost will come as a loan of $55,650,000 from general obligation bonds and building corporation property tax first mortgage bonds.

FWCS Board President Maria Norman assures that the project will not raise property taxes.

Snider’s new 4,000-seat stadium will utilize a large portion of the loan. The remaining money will be used to update athletic equipment, scoreboards, and other FWCS facilities such as restrooms and offices.

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – April 29, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The number of individual books banned by schools is soaring to a record level, according to a new PEN America report Banned in the USA: Narrating the Crisis. The report documents over 4,000 instances of book banning during the first half of the current school year – more than in the entire previous 2022-2023 school year.

"The report, which examines book bans from July to December 2023, details book bans in 52 public school districts across 23 states. Bans took place in both red and blue districts." -- from Pen America in New Report Finds Unprecedented Surge in School Books Bans

UNTRADITIONAL EDUCATION

The Return of the Tradteacher

Should we support untraditional teaching, curriculum, and school organization models?

From Teacher in a Strange Land

Been reading about the tradwife lately? Although explicit definitions vary, the general gist is returning to a post-war conception of a stay-at-home wife, most likely with children (or planning for children), in relationships where men make all the family decisions, and control the finances. Reinforcing patriarchal norms and glorifying the satisfying and ‘natural’ role of housewife.

If you’re hearing a touch of cynicism there, well—I lived through a time when the tradwife, even if she was working, could not get a credit card or substantial business loan. While I certainly defend any woman’s right to stay home and support her children and spouse in places other than an outside workplace, the whole “tradwife” schtick (especially combined with the rollback of Roe) makes me itchy.

It also strikes me that tradwives are just another glitzy, social media-driven facet of a larger wave of backlash against a whole lot of un-trad trends in American society: Full-blown reproductive freedom. The continued shrinkage of mainline religions. Honoring personal sex/gender choices. Women running for office and corner offices–and winning. And so on.

I also see lots of pushback against untraditional teaching, curriculum and school organization models. The whole “Science of Reading” battle rings very familiar to those of us who started teaching in the 1970s, when teachers were pushing back against the “Why Johnny Can’t Read” –because teachers theoretically weren’t teaching phonics–crusade in the late 50s.

SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION

Defend the People’s Schools

Tom Ultican offers a source for those who support public education.

From Tultican

I am sure you’ll be shocked to your core but there are some really bad people out there trying to end publicly-financed free education.

Since the beginning to the 21st millennium, misguided wealthy people have been attacking public education. The reasons range from religion to hubris. Betsy DeVos thinks secular education is an insult to her Christian God. Bill Gates believes he knows more than anyone else and Charles Koch is opposed to all government-sponsored social action. That would all be fine if they were not billionaires, using immense wealth to impose their way.

Truth-in-Funding (TiF) offers tools for opposing their propaganda with a webpage providing links to 25 organizations, working to protect public schools. Organizations such as National Education Policy Center, Network for Public Education and Education Law Center share links to their research along with toolkits for delivering the message.

TiF’s homepage states:

“School voucher programs use public funds to pay for private education costs. These programs are spreading despite overwhelming evidence that they are harmful public policy.”

And their about page says:

“This website offers a wide range of tools from groups that oppose vouchers and other efforts to divert public funding in education. We work to protect the vital institution of public education and ensure all students have access to welcoming, well-resourced public schools.”

GOOD TEACHERS

David Berliner: The U.S. Has Many Wonderful Teachers, and Few Who Are “Bad” Teachers

Good teachers are out there.

From Diane Ravitch
[quote edited for typos]

A refereed journal article by colleagues reported on a survey of adults, asking for their beliefs about “good teachers.” The respondents defined good teachers as those who “knew me, cared about me, and wanted me to do well; created interesting activities for us to do; praised me and other students for good grades and improvements; gave extra help or a challenge to students who needed or wanted it; covered a lot of material that was useful; and made learning relevant to me and my life.”

These respondents had little trouble recalling such teachers. Good teachers demonstrated caring and support, along with strong subject matter knowledge. They also estimated that more than two-thirds of their teachers were good or very good teachers, and they believed that only 12% of their teachers were bad or very bad.

With a different set of colleagues, I studied what students said about their “bad teachers”. In that study we had access to 4.8 million ratings of teachers! Using a 100-point scale, 55% of our respondents gave a maximum rating of 100 (the best score), 75% gave a rating of 80 or more, and 89% gave a rating greater than 50 points. These data are compatible with other studies suggesting that America’s students are exposed to high percentages of “good” teachers, and a low percentage of “bad” teachers.

LOCAL NEWS

FWCS board approves new math curriculum adoption

Students in Fort Wayne will learn math with new curriculum materials.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board on Monday approved a new math curriculum for elementary and middle school students.

The board approved buying both i-Ready from Curriculum Associates of North Billerica, Mass., and Indiana Reveal from McGraw Hill of Columbus. The district will spend more than $3.5 million total on the curriculum.

i-Ready will be used for elementary students, and Indiana Reveal will be used at the middle school level. Both resources are Indiana standard-aligned and can be used in core, small group and individualized instruction.

Courtney Lumbley, FWCS director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, said the district started the pilot process in fall 2022. She said 19 elementary and five middle schools have used the material. The pilot involved about 1,500 elementary and about 1,200 middle school students.

“We found so much value in the two-year process for teachers to really understand in depth what those publishers have to offer,” Lumbley said.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – January 15, 2024

Here are links to last week's^† articles receiving the most attention on NEIFPE's social media accounts. Keep up with what's going on, what's being discussed, and what's happening with public education.

Be sure to enter your email address in the Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of our blog page to be informed when our blog posts are published.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"PEN America reported that more than 1,600 books have been removed from circulation until they have received approval from school officials. The big joke in Escambia County [FL] is that a dictionary is in the Escambia list of books that possibly violate the law. Actually, five dictionaries!" -- From Diane Ravitch in PEN America: Escambia County, Florida, Banned More than 1,600 Books, Including 5 Dictionaries!

BANNING BOOKS IN AMERICA

PEN America: Escambia County, Florida, Banned More than 1,600 Books, Including 5 Dictionaries!

Republicans want to be the ones to decide what K-12 students can read.

(Emphasis in original)

From Diane Ravitch

Five dictionaries are on the district’s list of more than 1,600 books banned pending investigation in December 2023, along with eight different encyclopedias, The Guinness Book of World Records, and Ripley’s Believe it or Not – all due to fears they violate the state’s new laws banning materials with “sexual conduct” from schools.

Biographies of Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Oprah Winfrey, Nicki Minaj, and Thurgood Marshall are on the list, alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Black Panther comics by Ta-Nehisi Coates. The Feminism Book was banned along with The Teen Vogue Handbook: An Insider’s Guide to Careers in Fashion.

The list obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project also includes Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, The Adventures and the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. The Princess Diaries and 14 other books by Meg Cabot have been taken from libraries, alongside books by David Baldacci, Lee Child, Michael Crichton, Carl Hiassen, Jonathan Franzen, John Green, John Grisham, Stephen King (23 of them), Dean Koontz, Cormac McCarthy, Celeste Ng, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult, and Nicholas Sparks. Conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly’s two books, Killing Jesus and Killing Reagan, were also banned pending investigation.

THIRD GRADE RETENTION

GOP lawmakers look to cut exemptions to grade retentions

Contrary to this editorial, retained students are at a higher risk of dropping out. At best, retention doesn't help.

The writers also cite a New York Times columnist's claim that "retention of third graders [was] 'perhaps the most important single element' of Mississippi’s apparent success" in the state's improved fourth-grade test scores. Could it be that the improved test scores were because low-achieving students were held back in third grade and were no longer included in the fourth-grade cohort?

Yet states continue to double down on third-grade retention. A student's future should not be determined by a test score.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Last school year, more than 65,000 Hoosier third graders – or 81.9% – demonstrated proficient reading skills on the state’s IREAD-3 reading test, according to the Indiana Department of Education.

In Allen County, 93.1% of third graders in Northwest Allen County Schools, 88.5% at Southwest Allen County Schools, 79.5% at East Allen County Schools and 70.9% at Fort Wayne Community Schools passed IREAD-3. Statewide, scores improved just 0.3%.

As reading scores have decreased, retention rates also have fallen, causing thousands of students to enter fourth grade unable to read at grade level. State education department data show more than 96% of students who did not pass IREAD-3 advanced to fourth grade.

Urgent improvement for all student populations will be essential to achieve Gov. Eric Holcomb’s worthy goal of 95% of all Indiana third graders passing IREAD-3 by 2027. He and Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston presented their legislative agendas Monday for the 2024 session. Improving elementary student literacy rates is among their top concerns.

LIES, LIES, AND MORE LIES

Arthur Camins: The Lies That Protect the 1%

(Emphasis in original)

From Diane Ravitch

Liar, Liar. Pants on Fire. The lies from the powerful, especially Republicans, have risen to stunningly Orwellian 2 + 2 = 5 levels. The lies that protect their wealth and power have been quite successful at gaining wide acceptance. They keep at it because they know most of us reject a grossly inequitable society in which only some people enjoy a stable secure life. Inevitably, the truth seeps through the cracks in their wall of deceptions. Most Americans want fairness and access to decisions that affect our lives. The purveyors of self-protecting fabrications are afraid of the truth. Increasingly, they resort to authoritarianism, outlawing truth-telling, spreading misinformation, and blocking democratic processes.

The well-trod lies are designed to sound like common sense but are demonstrably false. They include:

Providing parents with choices through school vouchers and charter schools improves achievement and equity.

No, they support the privileged, starve and undermine public education, and get the rest of us to fight amongst ourselves for scraps.

PUBLIC EDUCATION SALARY INCREASES

Indiana teacher salaries are on the rise — but averages still fall short of governor’s goal

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

New data shows Indiana’s teacher pay is ticking up — but still trails behind averages in neighboring states — as the debate over Hoosier educator salaries continues.

The average teacher salary in Indiana is $58,531 — up from about $57,000 the year prior — according to the 2022-23 state teacher compensation report by the Indiana Education Employment Relations Board (IEERB).

The lowest teacher salary reported was $38,000. The highest is about $108,000.

More than 31,000 full-time Hoosier teachers earn above the statewide average. Almost 32,000 educators still earn below that margin, per the report.

Currently, Indiana law requires a minimum salary of $40,000 for each full-time teacher. The Indiana State Teachers Association’s (ISTA) county-by-county map of average teacher salaries and starting salaries shows most, but not all, Hoosier districts have raised salary minimums during the previous and current school years.

But representatives from the state’s largest teacher union told the Indiana Capital Chronicle that the latest IEERB report shows “there is still work to be done in achieving the teacher salary goals set by the governor in 2020.”

New custodial, maintenance, transportation contracts OK'd at East Allen County Schools

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

East Allen County Schools’ custodial, maintenance and transportation staff will receive bigger paychecks this year, following a school board vote this week.

The elected leaders approved two-year agreements Tuesday with the EACS Custodian Association, the EACS Maintenance Association and the EACS Transportation Association. The contracts were ratified by each union in December.

Terms include raises comparable to other negotiated groups. Compensation for 2025 will be revisited during reopeners, said Pat McCann, chief financial officer.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is essential; one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted by the end of the day every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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