In Case You Missed It – December 23, 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

"It is well known that a school district’s aggregate standardized test scores correlate more closely with the economic level of the district’s population than with the quality of the schools’ programming and teachers. What Senator Brenner, whose district includes the wealthy, exurban Olentangy public schools, never acknowledges is that his new bill is an attack on school districts serving concentrations of poor children. And while Senator Brenner specializes in devising punitive systems for low scoring schools and school districts, Ohio’s legislature, in which Brenner chairs the Senate Education Committee, has not yet fully phased in and funded the Fair School Funding Plan, which is designed to provide equity and to invest in school districts serving children in poverty. Ohio’s legislature also recently established a universal voucher program currently diverting a billion dollars a year from the state budget to private schools." -- Jan Resseger in Ohio State Senator Pushes New Version of Punitive Plan to Restructure or Take Over Low-Scoring Schools

OHIO STATE SENATOR PUSHES TEST-AND-PUNISH

Ohio State Senator Pushes New Version of Punitive Plan to Restructure or Take Over Low-Scoring Schools

We know that punishing teachers, schools and/or students for scoring low on standardized tests does nothing to improve learning, yet this Ohio legislator is willing to try it again. The fact that it will hurt the most vulnerable of the state's students doesn't seem to bother him.

From Jan Resseger

Andy Brenner, the Chair of the Ohio Senate Education Committee, is once again pushing the Ohio Legislature to pass an old fashioned, test-and-punish school accountability bill, Senate Bill 295, in this last week of the legislature’s lame-duck session without sufficient public accountability or hearings. The bill would significantly restructure or close the schools in some of Ohio’s poorest communities. A hearing on the bill is scheduled for this afternoon.

Brenner, “an entrepreneur in the real estate and mortgage fields,” who earned a Masters of Arts in Teaching from Liberty University Online, is known for the now disproven theory that if teachers work harder and smarter, they can immediately ensure their students score higher on standardized tests. His new bill is modeled after No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which promised to make every American child proficient by 2014. Of course, we now know that NCLB’s threatening educators and school districts with scary sanctions failed to produce uniformly proficient students despite all the threats to close or charterize so-called “failing” schools, or fire and replace all the staff.

MORE LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE

Federal Anti-Commie Education Bill

Peter Greene is one of public education's most important voices. His work appears on his blog (see link below), in Forbes, on Substack, and elsewhere.

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

It could be worse. It's not a mandate to use Prager U materials, after all. And to be clear, I'm not personally a big fan of communism, though in my reading of history, nations that "turn communist" usually keep being awful in ways that they were awful before anyone pretended to be a communist.

In fact, now that I think of it, some study of what creeping totalitarianism wouldn't hurt Americans (in or out of high school) right about now.

But teachers recognize this same old dodge. "We want students to know and agree with This Particular Thing," say some bunch of leaders somewhere. "How can we do that? I know! We'll get teachers to teach it to them. Because there's lots of room in the day to slip in one more slab of curricular materials. Also, students always believe what teachers say. Also, legislating curriculum always works out well."

Congress may very well pass this. Teachers will either ignore it or not as they are so inclined, and politicians will be proud of themselves for battling the scourge of communism and for once against standing up for only the correct sort of indoctrination in our schools.

NO TEACHERS NEED APPLY

New Arizona charter school will use AI in place of human teachers

This is computer-led instruction. There will be human adults present...as baby-sitters.

From KJZZ Phoenix

At least one Arizona school will be handing off teaching duties to artificial intelligence in 2025.

The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools’ approved an application for an AI-based virtual academy on Monday.

Unbound Academy, which also operates in Texas and Florida under the name Alpha Schools, claims that kids can learn twice as much using a two-hour learning plan that gets customized by an AI program instead of a traditional human teacher in front of a classroom.

STUDENT LOANS

Biden Announces $4.28 Billion in Student Loan Forgiveness

Help for those with student loan debt.

From Diane Ravitch

The U.S. Department of Education released a statement:

The Biden-Harris Administration announced today the approval of $4.28 billion in additional student loan relief for 54,900 borrowers across the country who work in public service. This relief—which is the result of significant fixes that the Administration has made to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program—brings the total loan forgiveness by the Administration to approximately $180 billion for nearly five million Americans, including $78 billion for 1,062,870 borrowers through PSLF.

PAYING FOR EDUCATION IN INDIANA

Public schools remain on hook for book, curricula fees

Indiana struggles to pay for the constitutionally mandated promise of a free public education system.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Indiana Constitution of 1851 says the General Assembly will provide a system of schools “wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all.” During the 2023 legislative session, state lawmakers delivered on that 172-year-old promise.

Legislators dedicated $160 million in the state budget to eliminate textbook and curricula fees, starting this academic year, but Hoosier schools still must pay for those materials. Last month, Indiana’s largest teachers’ union called for a more than $500 million increase to basic tuition support for public schools in the 2025 fiscal year.

That’s 7.98% more compared to what schools are expected to receive. Under current law, K-12 public schools are projected to see average student funding increases of 1.7% in the 2025-26 school year.

CREEPING CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

The Religious Right Is Plotting How To Get Christianity Into Schools

Not all our students are Christians. Not all our Christian students are Evangelical Christians. Not all parents of our Evangelical Christian students want public school teachers teaching religion.

Both parts of the First Amendment are important -- the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

From Nathalie Baptiste in Huffpost

From displaying the Ten Commandments to demanding that teachers use the Bible in their classrooms, conservatives seem determined to blur the lines between church and state by infusing Christianity into public schools. And with Donald Trump headed back to the White House and a conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court, reshaping the country’s education system is looking increasingly feasible.

GET A SECOND OPINION

Trump Questions Need for School Vaccines

Experts, not politicians, should determine medical policy.

From Diane Ravitch

We know that Trump chose RFK Jr. to run the federal public health system as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. we know that Kennedy opposes vaccines. He has said that he would not ban vaccines outright but suggested that he might leave the decision about vaxxing to parents. We also know that senior Republican Mitch McConnell had polio as a child and does not like the idea of making the polio vaccine a matter of personal choice.

But we didn’t know much about what Trump believes or wants when it comes to vaccines.

Politico reports that he wants to keep vaccines, at least for adults. But he is doubtful about vaccine mandates for attending school. Public schools in every state require students to be vaccinated. If these mandates are reversed, we can expect to see a spread of the highly infectious diseases that were nearly eradicated.

Your child or grandchild might get measles or mumps or rubella or tetanus. These are deadly diseases.

**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 – December 9, 2024

Here are links to articles from the last three weeks^† 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.

There are quite a few articles in this issue...presented to you with a minimum of quoting and no comments.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"...I want us to move beyond the last two decades of teach-to-the-test, which almost all of my students saw as a sign of disrespect, treating them like a test score. We all need to participate in cross-generational conversations on how we can do both – defeat the attempts by Ryan Walters to impose rightwing ideologies on our students, and build on their strengths and moral compass in order to prepare our kids for the 21stcentury." -- John Thompson in Will We Ever Get Free of NCLB’s Mandates and Let Teachers Teach?

POLITICS

Heather Cox Richardson: Eliminating the Department of Education?

From Diane Ravitch

Trump has promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. He needs Congressional approval to do it.

Tell Your Senators to Vote "No" for Linda McMahon for Secretary of Education

From Diane Ravitch

The Network for Public Education Action strongly opposes the nomination of Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education. Ms. McMahon is unqualified and inexperienced in school governance. She has demonstrated little interest in children or schools outside of a short, politically appointed stint on the Connecticut Board of Education.

What Trump 2.0 Could Mean for Public Education

From the Texas Observer

Houston native and education expert Diane Ravitch urges a fight for "the future of Texas, and for the future of the children" under Trump's proposed reforms.

Trump’s Threatened Immigration Deportations Would Traumatize Students and Disrupt Public Schools

From Jan Resseger

...Chalkbeat‘s Kalyn Belsha explores some recent history to remind readers about what happens when massive raids disrupt public schools and terrify children and adolescents: “When immigration agents raided chicken processing plants in central Mississippi in 2019, they arrested nearly 700 undocumented workers—many of them parents of children enrolled in local schools. Teens got frantic texts to leave class and find their younger siblings. Unfamiliar faces whose names weren’t on the pick-up list showed up to take children home. School staff scrambled to make sure no child went home to an empty house, while the owner of a local gym threw together a temporary shelter for kids with nowhere else to go. In the Scott County School District, a quarter of the district’s Latino students, around 150 children, were absent from school the next day. When dozens of kids continued to miss school, staff packed onto school buses and went door to door with food, trying to reassure families that it was safe for their children to return. Academics were on hold for weeks, said Tony McGee, the district’s superintendent at the time. “We went into kind of a Mom and Dad mode and just cared for kids,” McGee said. While some children bounced back quickly, others were shaken for months. “You could tell there was still some worry on kids’ hearts.”

Public Education: The Bully and the Dream

From Teacher in a Strange Land

...If all we’re doing right now (guiltily raising hand) is re-posting that video clip of Linda McMahon getting body-slammed, we’re not helping preserve, let alone improve, public education. When our focus is on fighting bad policy, especially policy that hasn’t yet been enacted, we need to have better ideas—dreams, if you will—about what public education should look like in our back pocket.

INDIANA NEWS

Braun education panel lacks educators

From School Matters

Something is missing from the education transition council that Indiana Gov.-elect Mike Braun appointed recently. Several things, actually.

It includes no teachers.

Indiana charter group to push for property tax revenue sharing

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

A recently formed group representing Indiana’s growing public charter school sector says it’ll push lawmakers to make traditional public schools share local property tax revenue.

Indiana Charter Innovation Center President and CEO Scott Bess said his group’s request starts with the core principle underlying Indiana’s approach to funding education: money follows the student.

OHIO NEWS

Ohio’s Legislators Focus on Culture Wars & Private School Vouchers. In Next Session, Will Legislators Fully Fund Public Schools?

From Jan Resseger

As the 135th Ohio General Assembly winds down its lame-duck session at the end of 2024, there is not a lot off cheerful and exciting news for the state’s public schools.

Ohio lawmakers move to override local control and mandate mix of religion with public school time

From Ohio Capital Journal

Funny how Republicans running red states have done a 180 on indoctrination of students in public schools — as long as it’s Bible-based indoctrination. Ohio appears on the verge of following Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and others in turning public schools into officially sanctioned Sunday schools with religious messages and mandates. The intensifying GOP push to incorporate more religion in public education is clearly an effort to indoctrinate students with preeminently Christian beliefs.

POST SECONDARY EDUCATION

Hechinger Report: Rural Students Lose Options, as Universities Cut Majors

From Diane Ravitch

A team of reporters at The Hechinger Report describe the damages of budget cuts at rural universities. The universities respond to declining enrollments and declining revenues by eliminating majors; students who want those majors are left in the lurch. Chemistry, science, math, foreign languages, philosophy, physics—Almost everything is on the chopping block somewhere.

LET TEACHERS TEACH

John Thompson: Will We Ever Get Free of NCLB’s Mandates and Let Teachers Teach?

From Diane Ravitch

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, wonders if the days of authentic teaching and learning will ever return. After a quarter-century of NCLB mandates, are there still teachers who remember what it was like in the pre-NCLB days. John does.

**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 – October 28, 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

"Indiana Republicans have expanded school choice so aggressively since 2011 that you’d think there would be almost nothing left to do. We know there will be a push to make the voucher program “universal,” extending public funding for private school tuition to the wealthiest 3% of Hoosier families – a top priority for GOP gubernatorial candidate Mike Braun. But legislators may have other tricks up their sleeves. The 2025 legislative session stars in January, so we’ll find out soon." -- Steve Hinnefeld in School Matters blog, ‘School choice’ backers bankroll Indiana GOP

WHO PAID FOR INDIANA'S REPUBLICAN SUPERMAJORITY?

‘School choice’ backers bankroll Indiana GOP

The "Hoosiers" behind school "choice" funding are not all from Indiana.

From School Matters

Why is “expanding school choice” always at the top of Indiana Republican’s policy agenda even though few Hoosiers are clamoring for it? The old saying holds true: Follow the money.

Hoosiers for Quality Education, which advocates for private school vouchers and charter schools, is one of the top contributors to Republican legislative candidates’ campaigns. It gave GOP candidates and committees nearly $250,000 in the past six months.

The group gave $150,000 to the House Republican Campaign Committee, far more than any other PAC. (Indiana Realtors were in second with $40,000). It also gave generously, as much as $10,000, to individual candidates.

While the group calls itself “Hoosiers,” nearly all its money comes from out of state. This year, it got $375,000 from Walmart heir Jim Walton of Bentonville, Arkansas. In the past five years, Jim Walton and his sister, Alice Walton, have given the group over $1.2 million.

Hoosiers for Quality Education, the political arm of a nonprofit called the Institute for Quality Education, gave far more to Republican legislative candidates than groups that are often thought of as GOP cash cows, like the Indiana Chamber of Commerce, the Insurance PAC and the Builders’ Association. Only the Realtors gave significantly more, and some of its contributions went to Democrats.

And it’s not the only group that’s pushing school choice at the Statehouse. Hoosiers for Great Public Schools, organized by former Democratic Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson, spent $151,000, nearly all of it in contributions. Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, has bankrolled the group with $1.2 million since 2020.

Hoosiers for Quality Education and Hoosiers for Great Public Schools donate exclusively to Republican candidates...

EDUCATION TOPICS - PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Support public education in this year's election.

Children and the Presidency: X-Rated or Fine for Prime Time?

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

As the election approaches, the stakes of how and what children learn, what they see and hear from both Presidential candidates, couldn’t be more different and critical for the future of America’s children. Breaking it down for kids, one candidate is X-rated, and the other is fine for prime time!

For years, former President Trump’s behavior has created problems in how parents and teachers teach children good behavior and respect for one another. His vulgar ramblings often have nothing to do with policy.

The other candidate, VP Kamala Harris, reaches out to voters even if one has some policy differences and speaks respectfully. The TV can be left on when children are in the room. She appears to genuinely care about people.

There have been concerns about how Trump’s behavior affects America’s children and schools.

Anti-Public Schools

Trump said he’d defund public schools, democratic schools owned by Americans, if school officials don’t do as he says. How must this sound to a child who likes attending their public school?

His claims are often outlandish. He has accused teachers of doing sex change operations!

Has Donald Trump ever visited any public schools?

Kamala Harris Is the Right Choice. She Would Be an Education President

From Jan Resseger

Trump’s Election Would Endanger the Public Schools

First Focus on Children’s education policy director, Lily Klam defines core principles that have long been understood as the foundation of the institution of public schooling: “The purpose of public education has always been to give the nation’s children the knowledge, skills, tools, and development they need to thrive as individuals and as citizens of our democracy.” Klam describes the federal government’s role: providing “strong federal oversight of education to ensure that all children—including those from low-income families, those with disabilities, those experiencing homelessness, English language learners, and other underserved student groups—have the same access to the resources they need to thrive, regardless of their family status, the state in which they live, or other disparities. In addition to serving the needs of students across diverse parts of the country, our federal education infrastructure also houses the Office for Civil Rights, making it the nexus of student protection.”

Trump has already declared his support for several of the dangerous policies described in Project 2025, a proposal developed by the Heritage Foundation and many former Trump administration officials. If Trump is elected and follows through on his education promises, Klam fears the implications: “One of the (Project 2025) agenda’s most alarming proposals advocates for giving all parents ‘the option to direct his or her child’s share of education funding through an education savings account (ESA)’… (T)axpayer dollars will be used to subsidize the private, oftentimes religious, education of wealthy students, at the expense of the nearly 90% of U.S. students who attend public schools. It’s hard to overstate the destruction that this plan would inflict on the U.S. public education system. Directing each child’s education funding share to an ESA would rob public schools across the country of the funding they need to operate and would force tens of thousands of them to shut down or drastically reduce education services to children. This scenario has already played out in many states that have enacted school voucher and privatization schemes. Executed at the national level, these schemes would radically exacerbate existing inequities, cause extreme teacher shortages and layoffs, and create huge disparities in access to a quality education… The largest federal education (funding) streams, including Title I and IDEA, were created to ensure greater equity for students with disabilities and students in low-income families. The Project 2025 agenda is designed to do the exact opposite: Use government funds to create more inequity in education, especially for the most underserved students.”

STATE POLICIES MATTER

Policies Matter

Down ballot races matter, too. State and local elected officials have an impact on education.

From Sheila Kennedy

[An] article...from the American Prospect—focuses on educational vouchers, a policy choice I frequently discuss. The article warns that Red state expansion of universal school vouchers is likely to have profound impact on the lives of young people.

As states race to pay for families to send their kids to private schools, blowing up state budgets in the process, the schools attended by the vast majority of kids will be left with far fewer resources, blunting their prospects. By design, funds are being shifted away from students in poor and rural areas and into the pockets of affluent parents, entrenching inequality in the process.

Among the other detriments of these programs is an almost-total lack of oversight. In Arizona, for example, parents are allowed to direct education funds, not just to the school of their choice, but to anything they might call “education.”

ANOTHER CHARTER CLOSES ABRUPTLY

D.C.: Celebrated Charter School Closes Its Doors Abruptly

Choose public schools for stability.

From Diane Ravitch

A charter school in D.C. that opened in 2003 and had a reputation built on its services to students with disabilities suddenly closed, with minimal notice to students, teachers, and parents.

Its finances had been shaky for a long time, and its enrollment had declined. Yet no one anticipated its sudden closure.

As it happens, the Network for Public Education reported only days ago on the frequency of charter school closures. Its report is called Doomed to Fail. It’s sad but true that charter schools have an unusually high record of transience. Parents can’t be sure that the charter school they chose will keep its doors open for more than a year, or three, or five.

^†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.

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 – August 19, 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

"In 1990, state lawmakers created the country’s first “voucher” program in Milwaukee, providing public funding for students to attend private schools. Soon after, Minnesota lawmakers were the first to write legislation for charter schools, allowing teacher-led nonprofits to operate schools. Wisconsin was one of the first states to follow in 1993, but without the requirement that teachers lead them.

Thirty years later, the forum noted there is 'little evidence … that the average Milwaukee child receives a higher quality education today.'" -- Rory Linnane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quoted in Diane Ravitch's blog, Milwaukee: Three Decades of Charters and Vouchers Produced No Gains for Kids

NO IMPROVEMENT THROUGH VOUCHERS

Milwaukee: Three Decades of Charters and Vouchers Produced No Gains for Kids

It's all about the money. It was never about student achievement.

From Diane Ravitch

A major, nonpartisan review of Milwaukee schools over the past three decades produced a dismal result: No improvement.

Backed by millions from the rightwing Bradley Foundation, voucher advocates promised that competition would produce gains for all sectors. It didn’t.

Milwaukee has a significant number of charter schools and voucher schools. About 55% of all students are enrolled in traditional public schools. The public schools enroll a disproportionate share of students with disabilities.

Rory Linnane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported...

GUIDE TO PROJECT 2025

Check Out New, Short, Informative Guide to Project 2025’s Education Policies

Project 2025 will disable the American government and do permanent damage to public education.

From Jan Resseger's Blog

Here is a guide to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposals for education policy—a short primer reflecting what you might learn in American Government 101. Rachel Perera, Jon Valant, and Katharine Meyer, all of the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, explain plainly not only the dangerous education policies proposed, but also the ones likely not to be enacted—or even possible to enact—in a future Trump administration. The report is short, basic and crystal clear:

“Project 2025 outlines a radical policy agenda that would dramatically reshape the federal government. The report was spearheaded by the right-wing Heritage Foundation and represents the policy aims of a large coalition of conservative activists. While former President Trump has attempted to distance himself from Project 2025, many of the report’s authors worked in the previous Trump administration and could return for a second round… Project 2025 warrants a close look, even if the Trump campaign would like Americans to avert their gaze.”

Perera, Valant and Meyer start out with the to-do list Project 2025 prescribes for early childhood, K-12, and higher education:

• “Dismantle the U.S. Department of Education;
• “Eliminate the Head Start program for young children in poverty;
• “Discontinue the Title I program that provides federal funding to schools serving low-income children;
• “Rescind federal civil rights protections for LGBTQ+ students;
• “Undercut federal capacity to enforce civil rights law;
• “Reduce federal funding for students with disabilities and remove guardrails designed to ensure these children are adequately served by schools;
• “Promote universal private school choice; (and)
• “Privatize the federal student loan portfolio.”

INDIANA AND LOCAL NEWS

Indiana Department of Education reports increase in proficiency in 2023-24 IREAD results

Indiana, like the rest of the nation, is still overly fixated on test scores.

From WANE.com

With its 2024 IREAD 3 results, the Indiana Department of Education saw the largest single-year increase in proficiency since the assessment began in 2013.

According to officials with the department, more than 67,000 third-grade students, or 82.5%, demonstrated proficient reading skills in the 2023-24 assessment. This was an improvement of 0.6% percentage points from the 2022-23 IREAD results.

“Ensuring Hoosier students are able to read is key to not only the future of Indiana, but to the individual success of every child,” Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb said in a news release from the Indiana Department of Education. “The historic literacy investments we have made over the past several years are beginning to show return on investment, which is a testament to the hard work of teachers, families and students in every corner of our state. Let’s keep this positive momentum going.”

This continues the increased proficiency trend of results coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the proficiency percentages increasing year after year since the 2020-21 school year

Indiana officials make major updates to new high school diploma plan — earning higher ed support

The graduation requirement overhaul — still to be approved by the State Board of Education — would create a single baseline diploma and optional add-on “seals.”

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle

The Indiana Department of Education made significant changes to a proposed high school diploma overhaul on Wednesday, including offering just one baseline diploma for all graduates.

...Under the updated draft, students can earn “readiness seals” for enrollment, employment or enlistment that correspond with their future path of continued higher education, workforce or military service.

Each readiness category has two possible seals — honors and honors plus.

Fort Wayne Community Schools eyes expansion at Electric Works

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Fort Wayne Community Schools – which just began its third year of programming at Electric Works – is preparing for a potential expansion on the former General Electric campus south of downtown.

The board is expected this month to consider leasing Building 25, a structure at Broadway and Swinney Avenue that would house second-year Amp Lab students, district officials said Monday.

“We’re really just exploring how do we continue to evolve and potentially grow our presence on that campus,” said Riley Johnson, director of Amp Lab at Electric Works. “We’re just really excited to be at this point.”

Open to high school juniors and seniors, Amp Lab is a half-day program that launched in the 2022-23 academic year with four educational studios – a science research and development lab with a greenhouse; a content creators lab; a maker space and fabrication lab; and a venture and strategy lab.

JOIN US

An Evening with Jennifer McCormick

NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Jennifer McCormick, candidate for Governor of Indiana. We hope you can attend.

Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:






**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 – August 12, 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

"Education is a human right, and public schools, open to all, are the guardians of this right. What privatizers call choice does not really exist." -- From the Hechinger Report, They call it ‘school choice,’ but you may not end up with much of a choice at all

PRIVATIZATION

Vouchers

Time to Rein in Vouchers

Money for private schools is drained from public education.

From School Finance 101

...It would certainly be foolish to spend additional taxpayer dollars on programs that exacerbate inequality and lead to lower outcomes, especially where more efficient and more equitable alternatives exist. For example, Rauscher and Shen (2022) found that investing new school spending in higher poverty public school settings has substantially greater effect than investing the same dollar in lower poverty settings. Jackson and Mackevicius (2023) found the same across several studies. But, more recently adopted and expanded voucher programs, drive public expenditures to higher income families whose children already attend private schools, and on average, lead to lower (and less equitable) outcomes:

• Not only are most participants in these programs already enrolled in private school but they tend to be from the highest income brackets. That is, the universal vouchers are exacerbating inequity rather than improve equity.
• Further, subsidies are often going to schools that engage in discriminatory admissions of students, creating inequality of access.
• To the extent that researchers have studied and measured the academic outcomes of these programs, they have been dismal, yielding more damage to student outcomes in reading and math than major national disasters or the recent global pandemic.

Why is this all occurring unchecked? Precisely because it is unchecked...

They call it ‘school choice,’ but you may not end up with much of a choice at all

Indiana’s voucher program began in 2011 and has expanded since then…it’s not just Arizona…

From the Hechinger Report

Private schools have the power to choose, not parents...

Over the years, the state incrementally made more students eligible, until full expansion was finally achieved in 2022. For some students, the amount of voucher money they qualify for is only a few thousand dollars, nowhere near enough to cover tuition at a private school. Often, their parents can’t afford to supplement the balance. However, my son, who is autistic, qualified for enough to cover full tuition...

Once a private school admits your child, they can rescind admission without cause. Private schools are at leisure to act as virtual dictatorships, and special-ed schools in particular are notorious for keeping parents at a distance...

As ESAs and private schools siphon off money and public schools start closing down, parents will be horrified to discover that nothing can defeat the closely held advantages of a private system designed to keep them out, and no amount of vouchers will make a difference.

When all the public schools are closed, and you can’t get a private school to accept your child, what will you do?

Charters

Case for Indianapolis charter schools relies on cherry-picked data

The lure of money is diverting tax dollars from public education to private pockets.

From Letters to the Editor in the Indy Star

In his column, Mind Trust CEO Brandon Brown asks why some Hoosiers are skeptical of charter schools. He follows this up with the type of selectively cherry-picked data that gives informed citizens pause.

Brown claims charters “have revolutionized public education within Indianapolis’ old city limits.” By some measures, yes. By others, no. For example, while ILEARN is problematic as a measure of students’ abilities, Indianapolis Public Schools tends to outperform the vast majority of charters within its district on that test.

Brown makes claims about the funding and performance gaps between charters and public schools. Yet, it appears that the studies he references consider innovation schools to be public schools when it comes to funding, but charter schools when it comes to test results. This leads to obviously skewed results.

He references Stanford University’s 2022 study on Indianapolis schools. That study claimed that, compared to their public school counterparts, students attending charters in Indianapolis receive the equivalent of approximately 64 more days of learning in reading and 118 more days in math. In 2023, the same research body at Stanford University published a study showing that, statewide, Hoosier charter students receive the equivalent of 26.6 fewer days of learning in reading and 2.9 more days in math.

RELIGION IN SCHOOL

Oklahoma: Tips on Teaching the Bible in Your Public School Classroom

Whose translation of the Bible should Oklahoma public schools teach from? Which books should be included? Should other holy books be included? Should non-Christian students be allowed to opt out of Bible instruction?

There's a reason the Establishment Clause was included in the First Amendment.

From Diane Ravitch

State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters is eager to inject religion into the public schools. He has mandated the introduction of the Bible into every classroom. Some teachers in Oklahoma have begun assembling a collection of helpful lessons. Of course, as they show, you can integrate local places into your lessons. If you have some ideas, please pass them along.

For you teachers in Oklahoma, beginning this fall: This was posted on Facebook. Walters has become the butt of jokes nationwide.

Hallelujah! Thank you to my creative friends for all these great Biblical math problems. They’ll really help the Oklahoma school superintendent’s goal of inserting biblical content into math and science! I’ve collected a multitude of the problems into one post for ease of reading:

1) Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). If he lay with one wife or concubine every night at the Mayo Hotel or The Skirvin but took off one day per week for rest, how many days would it take him to lay with all of his wives and concubines?

LOCAL NEWS

School building upgrades part of plan as EACS begins budget talks

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

East Allen County Schools’ proposed $4.1 million capital projects plan for the upcoming budget cycle generated no questions from the board during a preliminary review Tuesday.

Community members curious about the district’s proposed 2025 spending plan can learn more Sept. 3. That’s when Chief Financial Officer Pat McCann is expected to review the entire budget, including the operations and education funds.

Public hearings on the overall budget, capital projects plan and bus replacement plan are planned for Sept. 17 with board approval expected Oct. 15. Meetings typically begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Administration Building, 1240 Indiana 930 E., New Haven.

Capital projects are supported by the operations fund, which pays for most of the district’s noninstructional expenses and generates revenue through property and other taxes.

JOIN US

An Evening with Jennifer McCormick

NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Jennifer McCormick, candidate for Governor of Indiana. We hope you can attend.

Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:





**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 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

"In Indiana, voucher program costs have ballooned to $439 million, some 40 percent higher than in 2022–2023.

Despite the enormous costs -– vouchers haven’t improved educational outcomes." -- Sheila Kennedy in Project 2025, Public Education And The Public Good

FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD

Project 2025, Public Education And The Public Good

Sheila Kennedy makes clear that the purpose of Project 2025 is the destruction of public education.

From Sheila Kennedy

As we’ve learned more about the various elements of “Plan 2025,” it looks increasingly like an all-out attack on the America most of us believe in. There’s the assault on women (the effort to take us back to what those nice White “Christian” men consider our proper role as breeders and housemaids); the fight to remove any and all elements of a social safety net (who needs health insurance or Social Security?); the multiple provisions favoring the wealthy over the middle-class; and a full-scale attack on public education.

Time Magazine, among others, has reported on the education portion of the White Nationalists’ plan.

Project 2025, the policy agenda for Former President Trump’s potential first year back in the White House published by the far right conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, has been making waves recently. Some of the many destructive proposals within the agenda include the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education—along with federal education funding and any civil rights protections—and the diversion of public money to private school voucher programs instead.

Make no mistake: The goal is to end public education.

DEFEAT VOUCHERS

Anti-Voucher Victories in 2024: A Conversation with Education Advocates from MS, NJ, ID, TX and TN

Public Funds for Public Schools - Education advocates from MS, NJ, ID, TX, and TN – states that successfully defeated private school voucher proposals in 2024 – share insight, strategies, and tips during PFPS’s latest webinar.

INVEST IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Ohio Charter Schools Still Struggle

Can states afford to fund more than one type of school system? Indiana's constitution, for example, mandates a system of public schools...not charters or private schools.

From Stephen Dyer at 10th Period Substack

Here’s what I wrote in 2015 about Ohio’s historic House Bill 2, which was supposed to start improving our historically ridiculed charter school sector,

“And while we should all celebrate its passage and acknowledge the enormous strides the bill represents for additional accountability and transparency of Ohio’s charter schools, we must now keep a careful eye on what happens next.”

Since I wrote that piece, Ohio has spent nearly $9 billion on charter schools. And what has resulted? The same sad performance Ohio’s charter schools have given us for the last 25 years.

Need proof?

Let’s look at the list of “high performing” charter schools the state put out this year. First thing first: There are 23 schools on the list. Out of 269 non-dropout recovery charter schools. That’s 8.5% — about the same as it’s always been.

INDIANA GRADUATION

Feedback on Indiana’s diploma overhaul plan continues to pour in as state officials deliberate

Though members of the State Board of Education are trying to slow down the process, they only have until December to finalize new graduation options.

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

As state education officials pump the brakes on a plan to overhaul Indiana’s high school diplomas, concerns from Hoosier teachers, students and families are mounting over the proposed graduation requirements.

With the deadline fast approaching for the State Board of Education (SBOE) to finalize the changes, state leaders are asking for more statewide feedback — including what’s expected to be a lengthy public forum scheduled for next week.

Although the original plan was for the state board to vote on the new diplomas in September, Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said at a board meeting last week that — in response to feedback received already — the process is slowing down, at least somewhat.

Jenner said the board will hear a revised draft proposal at the August meeting, followed by a second round of feedback, including a public hearing, before the board releases a final proposal.

LOCAL NEWS

Fort Wayne Community Schools board votes to expand student cellphone pouch program

The FWCS Board has decided to lock up student phones during the school day. What do you think?

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board decided in a split vote Monday to spend about $300,000 on equipment that will keep more students from using their phones during class.

The purchase of Yondr products – including 12,000 magnetic lock-and-release student phone pouches – follows a spring pilot program that saw participating schools’ GPAs increase and discipline violations decrease at greater rates compared with districtwide rates.

Board member Steve Corona acknowledged some students and parents were unhappy when the cellphone pouches were introduced at Jefferson and Shawnee middle schools and at North Side and Wayne high schools in March. However, Corona added, the district’s focus must be on improving the academic environment.

“Phones disrupt and distract,” Corona said. “We need to improve the classroom performance and the behavior of our students, and silencing those phones, putting them in the Yondr pouches, is the solution.”

JOIN US

An Evening with Jennifer McCormick

NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Jennifer McCormick, candidate for Governor of Indiana. We hope you can attend.

Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:








**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 22, 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

"There are several major threads when it comes to K-12 education.

Vouchers, vouchers, vouchers. Eliminate the federal Department of Education, and turn the money for Title I and IDEA into block grants that states can use for anything education-adjacent (but Heritage is hoping it will be for vouchers), with Title I ending within a decade." -- Peter Greene in What Does Project 2025 Actually Plan For Education?

PROJECT 2025

Project 2025's education plan is a broad scheme for privatization.

What Does Project 2025 Actually Plan For Education?

From Peter Greene at Forbes

The education chapter was written by Lindsey Burke, chief of the Heritage Center’s Center for Education Policy. She’s also works at EdChoice, a school choice advocacy group formerly named after Milton Friedman, and she was part of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s transition team in 2021.

Burke leads off with some broad goals, including the elimination of the Department of Education and the goal that “families and students should be free to choose from a diverse set of school options and learning environments.” She salutes Friedman’s ideal, with education publicly funded but “education decisions are made by families.” She points to state leadership where the “future of education freedom and reform is bright and will shine brighter when regulations and red tape from Washington are eliminated.”

Federal money comes with federal rules and regulations attached. Burke proposes that federal dollars come to the states as block grants with no rules or regulations attached. She nods to the characterization of the department that runs through the whole document—a department born of a deal between Jimmy Carter and the National Education Association, attractive because it gave certain people a way to extend their influence via federal power and “continuously expand federal expenditures.” The federal education infrastructure has been “[b]olstered by an ever-growing cabal of special interests that thrive off federal largesse.”

Project 2025’s Plan for Public Education

From NPE Action

Project 2025 has an agenda for public schools: Destroy your neighborhood public schools and make parents shop for schooling using vouchers. Even as that is occurring, it would whittle away protections and support for LGBTQ students, disadvantaged students, and students with disabilities. Watch our explainer and find out how.

Project 2025: What Happens to K-12 in a New Trump Term?

From Diane Ravitch

Matthew Stone of Education Week described the plans for K-12 education in a second Trump term, as they appear in Project 2025, a document written by hundreds of former Trump officials. The 44-page education section emphasizes eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, distributing its functions to other agencies, converting categorical funds (like Title I for low-income children) into block grants, and rooting out “critical race theory” and any recognition of the existence of LGBT students. The document emphasizes the primacy of parental rights.

Trump has distanced himself from the document, because its recommendations are so radical, but it was prepared under the watchful eye of Kevin Roberts, president of the ultra-rightwing Heritage Foundation. Roberts is a close associate of Trump’s.

CHARTER SCHOOLS ARE WOKE

Wacky Heritage Foundation Report Warns that Charter Schools Are “Woke”

If being "woke" means being aware of what's going on in your community relating to race and injustice...being awakened to the needs of others...being informed, thoughtful, compassionate, humble, and kind...then count us in.

From Diane Ravitch

A recent Heritage report warns that parents can’t trust charter schools because so many of them are just as “woke” as public schools. Some are even more woke than public schools.

The report, written by Jay Greene, Ian Kingsbury, and Jason Bedrick, asserts that the major philanthropic foundations supporting charter schools—the Walton Family Foundation and the Gates Foundation—are also woke. This is where it gets crazy. Walton is woke? The anti-union, rightwing Waltons?

ILEARN

Indiana’s new ILEARN test scores show student progress remained stagnant in 2024

When reading this article, keep in mind that grades are a better measure of academic success than standardized tests.

Because...

...standardized tests have a major blind spot, the researchers asserted: The exams fail to capture the “soft skills” that reflect a student’s ability to develop good study habits, take academic risks, and persist through challenges, for example. High school grades, on the other hand, appear to do a better job mapping the area where resilience and knowledge meet. Arguably, that’s the place where potential is translated into real achievement.

"...cut-off scores are professional judgments that sit somewhere between objective and subjective, art and science, and reasoned and arbitrary."

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle

New state standardized test results show stagnant progress among Hoosier students in grades 3-8, signaling a continued struggle to reverse widespread learning loss following the COVID-19 pandemic.

New ILEARN scores show 41% of Indiana students who were tested earlier this spring were at or above proficiency standards in English and language arts (ELA), according to new data released Wednesday by the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE). That’s on par with the year prior, when 40.7% of students were proficient.

The percentage of students at or above proficiency standards in math, on the other hand, saw a slight decrease — from 40.9% in 2023 to 40.7% in the most recent school year.

Data released by IDOE reported 30.8% of Hoosier students passed both the math and English sections of ILEARN. That’s slightly up from last year’s spring test results, which showed that 30.6% earned dual passing scores.

SCIENCE OF READING

Science of Reading and the Emperor's New Clothes

Michael B. Shaffer is an associate clinical professor of educational leadership at Ball State University. He wrote this for a pro-public education Facebook group and gave us permission to repost it on the NEIFPE blog.

From Michael B. Shaffer on Facebook and in NEIFPE's Blog

I should clarify that I am not against ANYTHING that improves the practices of literacy instruction and helps students gain better reading skills. I am not against anything that supports teachers in gaining additional skills in literacy instruction. I dedicated most of my professional life as a principal to studying literacy, and providing professional development to the teachers in the schools where I was principal on the topic of literacy. I should say that I started my career as an elementary teacher.

The major argument I have against the current push for Science of Reading at this point is that it is the embodiment of the fable, The Emperor's New Clothes. We have been told that it is something shiny and new and that if we follow it, our students will suddenly start to read effectively where they could not prior to following the path established by SOR and as trained by the State of IN through Keys to Literacy, and includes (are you ready for this?) phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Hold on. Every responsible reading approach I have seen in the last twenty years has been built on these five pillars! Oh, yeah, that is what they call them. The Five Pillars of Reading Instruction. That is not new.

JOIN US

An Evening with Jennifer McCormick

NEIFPE is proud to co-sponsor this event featuring Indiana's next governor, Jennifer McCormick. Hope you can attend.

Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:

^†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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