In Case You Missed It – October 10, 2022

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 to be informed when our blog posts are published.

THIS WEEK

Indiana names the Teacher of the Year and we feature posts discussing the failure and danger of standardized testing.

INDIANA TEACHER OF THE YEAR

Bluffton teacher named Indiana’s Teacher of the Year

Tara Cocanower, a Bluffton High School history teacher has been named Indiana Teacher of the Year for 2023.

From WANE dot com

The Indiana Department of Education announced the honor on Wednesday.

“For many educators, becoming a teacher is a calling to serve others and make a positive impact on the world, one student at a time, and Mrs. Tara Cocanower is the embodiment of someone who was truly meant to be a teacher,” said Dr. Katie Jenner, Indiana Secretary of Education. “When you see the way she connects with her students, it is clear to those around her that in addition to maximizing student learning, she is positively impacting lives and preparing her students to do the same. By believing in her students and being a trusted mentor, she is empowering the next generation of leaders and, as she calls them, world changers.”

STILL CRAZY -- OVER TESTING -- AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

The United States has weaponized standardized tests for decades. We have overused and misused them to punish students for being poor, to punish teachers for working with hard to teach students, and to separate the haves from the have-nots.

Privatizers have used tests to claim that public schools are failing, when the failure is our society's inability to conquer racism and poverty.

Bloggers Nancy Bailey and Steven Singer wrote about standardized tests on their respective blogs this week, and our readers were interested.

Dear Dr. Cardona: Punitive Student Assessment is Meant to Privatize Public Schools!

Nancy Bailey's open letter to the U.S. Secretary of Education...

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

High-stakes standardized tests have been punitive for years casting teachers as failing, closing public schools, opening charters, and pushing vouchers.

Tests, done right, can be a professional tool for teachers to understand students better. But corporate reformers stole that process years ago to make teachers look bad to close schools.

High-stakes standardized tests have unrealistically raised expectations even for the youngest learners. See Is Kindergarten the New First Grade? Children bear the pressure of high-stakes standardized testing, which can last a lifetime.

Public schools have been scrutinized, while charters and private schools are given free rein. See The New York Times’s recent report, In Hasidic Enclaves, Failing Private Schools Flush With Public Money, where gender-segregated schools funded with $1 billion from the government agreed to subject students to standardized tests, with dismal results.

And if test results were to ensure [public] schools would receive the resources they need, why are teachers resorting to charity, begging for materials, and using Donors Choose?

When Good Students Get Bad Standardized Test Scores

Gadfly on the Wall blogger Steven Singer posted twice about standardized tests. Why on Earth are we still using these ineffective and damaging so-called assessments?

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Ameer is a good student.

He takes notes in class, does all his homework and participates in discussions.

He writes insightful essays and demonstrates a mastery of spelling and grammar.

He reads aloud with fluency and inflection. He asks deep questions about the literature and aces nearly all of his classroom reading comprehension tests.

However, when it is standardized test time, things are very different.

He still arrives early, takes his time with the questions and reviews his work when he’s done – but the results are not the same.

His grades are A’s. His test scores are Below Basic.

How is that?

How can a student demonstrate mastery of a subject in class but fail to do the same on a standardized test?

And which assessment should I, his teacher, take seriously?

After all, they can’t BOTH be correct.

The Racist Origins of Standardized Testing Still Matter

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Would you walk across a bridge that was designed to break?

Of course you wouldn’t.

But what if someone told you the bridge had been fixed?

Would you trust it – especially if people were still falling off of it all the time?

That’s the situation we’re in with standardized testing.

The tests were explicitly created more than a century ago to fail minorities and the poor.

And today, after countless revisions and new editions, they still do exactly the same thing.

Yet we’re exhorted to keep using them.

^†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 26, 2021

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 new Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column to be informed when our blog posts are published.

LEARNING LOSS vs COVID TRAUMA

The coronavirus pandemmic has had an impact on school children...academically, socially, and emotionally. Do we need to spend millions of dollars nation-wide for testing? Proponents of testing say that we need to know where the students are academically and provide remediation and academic support. But do tests actually tell us where students are academically or do they simply provide information on socio-economic levels?

Testing has always had limited value. Not everything that we value in education can be tested. Perhaps we should take this opportunity to help students heal from the trauma of COVID-19 before we subject them to tests that will just confirm that wealthy students get higher test scores than students who live in poverty.

Why learning isn’t the most important thing kids lost during the pandemic

From the Answer Sheet

Whatever we do when we return will be historic by definition. If all we come up with is passing out diagnostic tests to quantify learning loss and then track kids into groups for remediation, it will be a terrible failure of imagination.

“You know what’s going to happen to the kids who couldn’t get online last year because they had to support their families or because they were homeless when the sorting happens, right?” asks Berger. “They’re going to be sorted in a way that will only exacerbate the equity issues.”

Trailing down the backside of a steep mountain at long last, and picking up speed as we head into a promising new year, we seem to have our eyes fixed on the wrong problem entirely...

Outrage Continues as Standardized Testing Moves Forward in this COVID-19 School Year

From Jan Resseger

Standardized testing—required this school year by Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s U.S. Department of Education despite the disruption of COVID-19—is now happening in many public schools across the United States. But even as the tests are being administered, the anger and protests against this expensive, time consuming, and, many believe, harmful routine are not abating.

Last week, the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss reported: “The Biden administration is facing growing backlash from state education chiefs, Republican senators, teachers unions and others who say that its insistence that schools give standardized tests to students this year is unfair, and that it is being inconsistent in how it awards testing flexibility to states. Michigan State Superintendent Michael Rice has slammed the U.S. Education Department for its ‘indefensible’ logic in rejecting the state’s request for a testing waiver while granting one to the Washington, D.C., school system—the only waiver that has been given. Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen, whose state was also denied a waiver, said testing this year ‘isn’t going to show any data that is going to be meaningful for learning moving forward… The controversy represents the newest chapter in a long-running national debate about the value of high-stakes standardized tests. Since 2002, the federal government has mandated schools give most students ELA and math standardized tests every year for the purposes of holding schools accountable for student progress. The scores are also used to rank schools, evaluate teachers, make grade promotion decisions and other purposes.”

TESTS IN FWCS

FWCS adjusts schedules for tests

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Fort Wayne Community Schools needs middle school students to ditch their routines this week.

Students attending on a blended schedule will learn virtually Monday through Friday, and the remote students will attend in person.

The swap is because of ILEARN.

Students in grades three through eight are required to take the state's standardized test in person.

QUESTIONING MASK MANDATES IN NACS AND EACS

Two local school boards have had to deal with parents arguing against the Governor's mask mandate for K-12 schools.

NACS panel: Masks safe for kids

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Dr. Matthew Sutter, the Allen County health commissioner, said schools are an ideal place to spread COVID-19, which makes adherence to mitigation strategies incredibly important.

“Masks are inexpensive, they're generally well tolerated, and it's worked,” Sutter said...

Board members, particularly President Kent Somers and Steve Bartkus, pressed panelists about potential negative effects – both mentally and physically – of forcing students to wear masks for hours a day.

Evidence does not show masks cause mental health declines, panelists said.

Rather, they said, students are affected by being taken away from their social circles, such as sports and school. Parents' anxieties and home situations are other contributing factors, they said.

“I think we might be a little cavalier in thinking masks are safe,” Somers said, questioning whether there are health trade-offs to wearing masks. “Isn't there some real risks to the kids?”

No, panelists said. Masks can be safely worn.

Mask debate ignites EACS school board meeting as many voiced concerns

From WANE.com

To masks or not to masks? That was the debate at the East Allen County School Board meeting Tuesday night where teachers, parents, students and school administrators voiced their concerns over whether or not to let student unmask while at school.

At times tensions were high and after more than an hour of discussion, the rooms were still spilt.

Due to COVID-19 restrictions there were only so many seats available in the board room. This meant parents, students and other member of the public who wished to speak were asked to wait in the lobby and in other locations of the administration building.

Some parents say that the school should allow students to choose whether or not to wear a mask. They say they are not against teachers or the school system but they are worried about their student’s mental health.

However, one teacher who spoke asked the board to keep the masks as a safety precaution until the end of the school year. To that some of the parents boo-ed him.

EACS USES FEDERAL DOLLARS FOR STIPENDS

EACS doesn't wait on stipends

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The East Allen County Schools board Tuesday didn't want to wait two weeks to endorse Superintendent Marilyn Hissong's request to spend federal coronavirus relief dollars on $500 and $1,000 stipends for employees.

“OK, let's just do this tonight,” board President Todd Buckmaster said when board members embraced Gayle Etzler's suggestion to act immediately on what was presented as a discussion-only item.

Collectively, employees will get about $1,193,500, with individual awards based on part-time and full-time status. Those employed May 14 are eligible.

“We wanted to do this for our staff,” Hissong said. “It took everyone to make this happen this year.”

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has changed its online access and is now behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both, are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/

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In Case You Missed It – April 19, 2021

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 *new* Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column to be informed when our blog posts are published.

TO OUR READERS

If you follow this blog by email...

If you signed up to receive notices of new blog posts using the old Follow Us By Email box in the right-hand column of the blog, you will stop receiving those notices soon. Click the link above to learn how to follow NEIFPE's blog posts.

INDIANA: MARCHING TOWARDS PRIVATIZATION

The Indiana General Assembly under the Republican supermajority continues its inexorable move towards the total privatization of public education.

Indiana poised to open school vouchers to families earning over $100,000

From Chalkbeat*

Nearly half of all Indiana families already meet the income criteria to be eligible for the program. Both the House and Senate budget proposals would open voucher access even further, in some cases to families earning over $100,000 per year for a family of four.

The plans would also eliminate partial vouchers, granting even middle-income families full scholarships — which average more than $5,800 per student.

For Republican politicians, who dominate state government in Indiana, the all-but-certain expansion represents a big win in advancing their free-market vision, where parents choose what is best for their child. At the same time, the legislature plans to broaden school choice, by creating education savings accounts that would provide stipends to pay for schooling and therapies for children with special needs.

A decade after Indiana created vouchers, the program served nearly 37,000 students at a price tag of close to $173 million last year. Enrollment plateaued in recent years, and widening eligibility for vouchers could spur a surge in participation.

Public funding for private education remains deeply polarizing. While Indiana’s voucher program initially targeted students from low-income families, the Republican expansion plans would offer generous aid to middle-income families. That amounts to a subsidy for affluent families, including some who likely would have enrolled their children in private schools without aid.

Senate approves 2-year budget

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The most strident speech against the budget came from longtime Republican Evansville Sen. Vaneta Becker. She called out the lack of effort on increasing teacher pay and the growing cost of K-12 school choice programs.

Becker said the state is losing teachers right and left because salaries are lagging the nation but, "I know most people in here don't care about that."

She also noted that an expansion of the state voucher program now makes a family of four making up to 95,000 a year eligible for a state-paid private school education. She compared that to the income limits on other state assistance programs, including 56,000 for a pregnant woman in a family of four.

"Ninety-five thousand dollars is nowhere near low-income," Becker said.

The voucher program started as a small 15 million investment and now has spent more than 1 billion over a decade, she said.

SOME NACS PARENTS DOUBT THE SCIENCE

"The good thing about science is that it's true whether you believe it or not." -- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Mask discussion goes on at NACS

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

One parent supporting mask choice said he wants NACS to have a plan. He described mask-wearing at school as an experiment, and claimed masks don't protect anybody, despite health officials saying otherwise.

"This isn't based on science," the parent said, demanding local data. "It's an overreaction."

Dr. Matthew Sutter, Allen County health commissioner, reiterated in emailed statements to The Journal Gazette last week that precautionary measures : including mask-wearing, social distancing, frequent hand-washing and avoiding large crowds : slow the spread of COVID-19.

NACS Superintendent Chris Himsel two weeks ago credited mask-wearing and other mitigation strategies for having fewer than 10 district cases linked to in-school transmission despite having more than 400 student and employee infections.

Those supporting the mask mandate included a teacher with a high-risk pregnancy. She said dropping the requirement would jeopardize her and her child's health.

A pediatrician stressed COVID-19 hasn't disappeared, and its effects on children can be serious, including heart failure.

Outside school called riskier for kids than class

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Dr. Matthew Sutter, the county health commissioner, reiterated in emailed statements last week that precautionary measures – including mask-wearing, social distancing, frequent handwashing and avoiding large crowds – slow the spread of COVID-19.

“If people choose to let their guard down, we could still see ongoing transmission of this deadly virus,” Sutter said. “And while children are not likely to die from COVID-19, we know they can spread it – particularly in their household, which may include individuals who are more at-risk for hospitalization and death.”

NACS Superintendent Chris Himsel credited mask-wearing and other mitigation strategies for having fewer than 10 district cases linked to in-school transmission despite having more than 400 student and employee infections.

child PNG Designed By 588ku from Pngtree.com

TESTING OR NO TESTING? US EDUCATION DEPARTMENT SAYS "YES"

Every teacher in the county will tell you that students who have had a chaotic school year -- sometimes hybrid, sometimes in class, sometimes at home -- will not score well on standardized tests given this year.

Every teacher in the country knows that the students who need the most help -- those who have special learning needs and those in poverty -- will not score well on standardized tests given this year.

The commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics has agreed to cancel the NAEP tests -- the Nation's Report Card -- for this year because of the pandemic. The commissioner, James Woodworth, said,

“[Due to the pandemic,] The change in operations and lack of access to students to be assessed means that NAEP will not be able to produce estimates of what students know and can do that would be comparable to either past or future national or state estimates.”

Do we really need state testing to tell us what we already know?

Cardona’s Flexibility on Standardized Testing Creates Confusion and Rancor

From Jan Resseger

After a chaotic schoolyear including remote learning and sometimes complicated hybrid schedules of in-person and remote learning, students are returning to full-time school to face the annual standardized tests. These are the tests that Congress requires under the Every Student Succeeds Act, the tests first required by No Child Left Behind (NCLB). They are the foundation of a two-decade-old scheme to hold schools accountable. Betsy DeVos cancelled required standardized testing last spring after schools shut down as the pandemic struck the Unites States.

The U.S. Department of Education announced in late February, before Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was even confirmed, that it is requiring standardized testing this spring. There is a whole lot of confusion between the federal government and the states right now because the federal guidance about testing this year features “flexibility.”

Here is some of the letter, dated February 22, 2021, from acting assistant secretary of education, Ian Rosenblum, a letter which informed states they must test students this year...

Why Standardized Tests Won’t Measure What Students Learned During The Pandemic

From Peter Greene in Forbes

Some supporters of testing have leaned hard on marketing that emphasizes the dreaded Learning Loss, with every ed tech company on the block promising a solution. But while some test advocacy seems to be the result of disaster capitalism in search of an opportunity, many folks supporting the administration are doing so out of deep concern for educational equity in this country, while others believe that schools can only find their way back from the pandemic with hard data.

The argument in favor of collecting data is a compelling one. It is completely understandable that education leaders and policymakers and even editorial kibbitzers would like to have a clear, data-rich description of where students across the country are right now. There’s just one problem.

They can’t have it.

Yong Zhao and William McDiarmid: Time to Rethink Standardized Testing

From Diane Ravitch

COVID-19 has disrupted schooling in its traditional sense. It has also disrupted other school related activities such as state standardized testing. As schools return to “normal” thanks to vaccination, many states are already pushing to resume standardized testing as part of the “normal” operations of formal education and to assess the so-called “learning loss” (Zhao, 2021). Resuming standardized testing is perhaps one of the worst things that can happen to children, especially after more than a year of social isolation and unprecedented disruption.

REFORM

John Thompson: How Corporate Reform Devastated My School

From Diane Ravitch

In 2006, our John Marshall High School was enduring the worst of the five months-long, extreme meltdowns I witnessed in 18 years with the Oklahoma City Public Schools. Many days, I’d see the anarchy and the blood-splattered halls, and ask if I was dreaming. One thing that kept me sane was the discovery of education blogs, above all Deborah Meier’s and Diane Ravitch’s conversations in Bridging Differences. In a prescient example of the wisdom which grew out of their “animated conversation,” they agreed:

That a central, abiding function of public education is to educate the citizens who will preserve the essential balances of power that democracy requires, as well as to support a sufficient level of social and economic equality, without which democracy cannot long be sustained. We agreed that the ends of education–its purposes, and the trade-offs that real life requires–must be openly debated and continuously re-examined.

*Note: Financial sponsors of Chalkbeat include pro-privatization foundations and individuals such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, EdChoice, Gates Family Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, and others.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has changed its online access and is now behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both, are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/

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In Case You Missed It – February 8, 2021

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 to be informed when our blog posts are published.

INDIANA REPUBLICANS WANT TO EXPAND VOUCHERS

HB 1005 -- an expansion of vouchers that will take even more money from public schools and launder it through parents to unaccountable private schools that can (and do) discriminate -- has passed out of the House Education Committee and is now scheduled to be heard by the Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, February 9.

Meanwhile, Fort Wayne Community Schools, made up of real public schools, has to work around cuts in complexity funding (which is based on students and families in each district receiving welfare or food stamps or caring for foster children).

Three articles about HB 1005 on our Facebook page received a lot of attention last week.

Indiana voucher supporters, opponents spar at Statehouse

From Chalkbeat*

A set of Statehouse proposals that would vastly expand public funding for private school education in Indiana inspired a marathon of impassioned testimony Wednesday, from both supporters and opponents of the controversial bills.

The legislature is considering opening the state’s existing private school voucher program to thousands of families who currently make too much money to qualify and increasing the stipends for middle-class students. The proposals would also create education savings accounts, which would give stipends to parents of children with special needs for their schooling.

The House Education Committee made several changes to the bill in bid to bring down the price tag to about $34 million in the first year, from the initial projection of over $100 million. A House Republican priority, the bill was approved by a vote of 8-4, and it will head to the Ways and Means Committee next.

The next two articles about HB 1005 were posted before the House Education Committee approved the legislation.

Betsy DeVos is gone — but ‘DeVosism’ sure isn’t. Look at what Florida, New Hampshire and other states are doing.

Indiana is only one of several states where privatization is occurring. There is a blitz of privatization articles now pending in Republican controlled state legislatures.

From the Answer Sheet

Indiana

House Bill 1005 would greatly expand the state’s voucher program by allowing families with incomes up to $145,000 a year to participate. That amount is near twice the median income of families in the state and provides taxpayer assistance to families who can already comfortably afford to send their child to a private school. According to an estimate from the Legislative Services Agency, it could increase the number of students receiving state stipends by about 40 percent in 2021-22.

Some 12,000 students already attending such schools would be eligible for state funding — costing taxpayers $100 million in the first year alone. In addition, the bill would add a new “Education Savings Accounts,” which would be made available to parents with students with special needs.

FWCS leader: Call your legislator: Tells parents bill to grow school choice detrimental

House Bill 1005 would expand Indiana's school choice program and create a more generous education savings account system. It has an estimated cost of $202 million over the next two years alone.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

House Bill 1005 would expand Indiana's school choice program and create a more generous education savings account system. It has an estimated cost of $202 million over the next two years alone.

THE PROBLEMS WITH EDUCATION SAVINGS ACCOUNTS

Six Big Problems With Education Savings Accounts

In this post, Peter Greene writes about the problems with Education Savings Accounts which are included in Indiana's HB 1005. Among the problems he sees are the fact that parents can choose multiple unaccountable and unqualified vendors. There's also the problem of choice. Private schools -- or in this case, educational vendors -- can choose which students to accept and which to deny. Education Savings Accounts are just another step in the move from education as a common good to education as a commodity.

From Peter Greene at Forbes

No Oversight or Accountability

Most ESA programs have little or no accountability in place to determine just how the money is being spent. In Arizona, an audit found that parents had spent $700K of ESA money on beauty supplies and clothing. In Florida, where voucher-receiving schools openly discriminate against LGBTQ students, a new bill proposes that audits be performed only every three years. Kentucky’s new ESA bill proposes audits after the state has found evidence of mis-use of funds, which seems like a rather late shutting of the barn doors. And the bill that the Iowa senate just fast-tracked in order to establish ESAs includes no call for any audits or oversight at all. (That may be in part why the Iowa Satanic Temple has announced their intention to establish the Iowa Satanic School.)

PRIVATIZATION MEANS LESS PUBLIC OVERSIGHT

John Thompson: Oklahoma’s Disastrous Efforts to Privatize Everything

Shouldn't taxpayers have a say in how public dollars are spent? With vouchers and ESAs, there is no public oversight of public tax dollars.

From Diane Ravitch

Speaking of school privatization, this week the Epic Charter Schools board “accepted the resignation of 11-year member Mike Cantrell.” This occurred as the State Department of Education continued efforts to “recoup” $11.2 million of inappropriately spent state money. Cantrell still claims, “They don’t have a right to look at a private company’s records.” He calls the auditing process a “sham,” and speculated that maybe the auditor should be impeached.

NEW ED SECRETARY, MIGUEL CARDONA

Two articles about nominee for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona

Carol Burris: Cardona Is a Public School Guy

From Diane Ravitch

“Most parents want to send their children to their neighborhood school. It is important to support all schools, including the neighborhood schools that are usually the first choice for families in that community.”

That statement gives me hope. Cardona did not fall into the trap of using the term “traditional public schools,” a term coined by the charter community.

“Traditional public schools” is and was always meant to be a disparaging term. Cardona’s innovative elementary school was not “traditional.” The high school I led that had an enriched, challenging curriculum for all where support and racial integration of classrooms and activities were the highest priority was not “traditional.”

Cardona deliberately chose the term–“neighborhood” to describe public schools. Unlike his predecessors he did not use “traditional” to distinguish them from charters. And he stated that they are, as our friends at Journey for Justice remind us, “usually the first choice for families in that community.”

Cardona: Testing is important, but ‘I don’t think we need to be bringing students in just to test them’

Will Indiana follow federal advice about testing?

From Chalkbeat*

Miguel Cardona sent mixed messages Wednesday morning on how he would approach federally required standardized testing this year, in the likely event that he is confirmed as education secretary.

“If the conditions under COVID-19 prevent a student from being in school in person, I don’t think we need to be bringing students in just to test them,” Cardona said in response to a question from Sen. Richard Burr during his confirmation hearing. But he suggested he still believes testing could be useful this year.

“If we don’t assess where our students are and their level of performance, it’s going to be difficult for us to provide targeted support and resource allocation in the manner that can best support the closing of the gaps that have been exacerbated due to this pandemic,” he said.

Burr followed up by asking whether states should be able to make their own decisions.

Cardona responded: “I feel that states should not only have an opportunity to weigh in on how they plan on implementing it and what’s best for their students, but also the accountability measures and whether or not those assessments should really be tied into any accountability measures.”

*Note: Financial sponsors of Chalkbeat include pro-privatization foundations and individuals such as Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, EdChoice, Gates Family Foundation, The Walton Family Foundation, and others.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has changed its online access and is now behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both, are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/

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In Case You Missed It – January 11, 2021

Here are links to last week's articles receiving the most attention in NEIFPE's social media. 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 to be informed when our blog posts are published.

BYE, BYE BETSY

Betsy DeVos Bails Out

The President's behavior was finally too much for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (former Ed Secretary by the time you read this).

From Curmudgucation

Well, she finally had enough.

DeVos blamed Trumpian rhetoric for the riots, called it an "inflection point" for her, and became one more GOP Trump-fluffer to suddenly discover her shock and outrage for exactly the same kind of shit that he's been doing for four years. I mean, there's something deeply disingenuous about watching someone throw gasoline and matches around for four years and only getting all pearl clutchy and knicker twisty when the completely predictable fire actually starts.

She also said "Impressionable children are watching all of this, and they are learning from us. I believe we each have a moral obligation to exercise good judgement and model the behavior we hope they would emulate." Which is as true today as it was when President Pussy-grabber talked about shithole countries and very fine people on both sides. It's an odd time to suddenly grow scruples. But at this point, I guess the wounded lame duck can't really do anything for her. The full letter can be read here. It actually starts with another rehearsal of her "accomplishments" as ed secretary.

NO TAX BREAKS FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS

Jake Jacobs: End the Tax Breaks for Charter Schools and the Uber-Rich

Will the Biden administration continue the Democratic/Republican quest for school privatization, or will we finally see a change? Spoiler: Don't hold your breath.

From Diane Ravitch

Joe Biden’s recent nomination of Miguel Cardona as a relatively lesser-known, less controversial selection for Secretary of Education was telling. It shows the incoming administration’s reticence to take a side in the ongoing battle over school choice and standardized testing, just like most members of Congress and the major U.S. media.

On the campaign trail, Biden drew cheers from teachers for his promise to end standardized testing, but he noticeably never added any such policy to his website. As was well known by teachers in those audiences, federally mandated tests provide no educational benefit but are the fuel in the engine driving charter school expansion.

IT'S THE TEACHERS" FAULT -- AGAIN

MO: GOP Rep Tells Teachers To Take A Hike

Is it any wonder why there is a shortage of teachers? One wonders where the anger directed at, and fear of, professional educators comes from.

From Curmudgucation

So here's a jolly exchange from Twitter on Saturday.

Get a different job. No one owes you anything.

— Justin Hill (@HillForMissouri) January 3, 2021

That's Justin Hill, a Missouri GOP rep from the 108th district, showing his love and support for teachers in his state. He was a cop before running for office, so you'd think he'd know something about public service, but maybe not so much.

END STANDARDIZED TESTING

The New York Times Should Add a Former Teacher to Its Editorial Board

Standardized testing this year will measure the difference between the "haves" and the "have-nots." We don't need to spend millions of dollars for that information.

From Diane Ravitch

The New York Times published an editorial correctly blasting Betsy DeVos as the worst Secretary of Education in the 40-year history of the Department of Education. Unfortunately, the balance of the editorial was a plea to administer tests to find out how far the nation’s children had fallen behind because of the pandemic.

This is a misguided proposal, as I have explained many times on this blog.

DO SOME RESEARCH

A Warning: Who Is Paying for Your State’s Civics Courses?

From Diane Ravitch

If you have a few minutes to do some research, you might wonder about the connections among these three links:

First is from the extreme rightwing group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), funded by DeVos, Charles Koch, and major corporations. ALEC has 2,000 members who are state legislators. They get a free trip every year to a posh resort, where ALEC gives them model legislation to introduce in their state to promote the libertarian, anti-regulation, anti-government agenda.

Second is an article in the conservative journal Education Next...

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