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 – October 14, 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

"...Ninety-eight percent of Indiana’s voucher schools are faith-based, with restrictive admissions policies that prove “school choice” is, in practice, the “school’s choice.”

Last year, 36% of new state tax funding for K-12 education flowed to voucher schools educating about 7% of Indiana students. Public schools, including charter schools, educated 93% of students but received only 64% of the new funding, according to legislative budget estimates at the time." -- by Karen Francisco in the Colorado Sun

PRIVATE SCHOOLS' CHOICE

Colorado families already enjoy school choice. Amendment 80 would open door to school vouchers.

Private schools choose their students.

From Retired FW Journal Gazette Editorial Page Editor, Karen Francisco, in the Colorado Sun.

In Indiana, I watched a fledgling school choice movement grow from a handful of public charter schools to a voucher entitlement program expected to cost state taxpayers $600 million this year.

The money diverted from public schools is not going to students who live in poverty. An investigation by the University of Notre Dame’s Gallivan Program for Journalism, Ethics and Democracy found the average Indiana voucher recipient is a white female who has never attended public school and comes from a family earning more than $99,000 a year. A family of four earning as much as $220,000 a year now qualifies for vouchers, in a state where the median household income is a paltry $66,800.

None of this comes as a surprise. Indiana’s near-universal voucher program was always the end game for former governors Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, the legislature’s Republican super-majority and a nationwide network of wealthy donors that included Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s former secretary of education.

Emails obtained by The Associated Press under open records law revealed private meetings involving politicians and some of Indiana’s wealthiest powerbrokers — strategy sessions held over cocktails at high-end restaurants to plot out the voucher bill’s passage. A black-tie event at an Indianapolis hotel celebrated the misnamed “Indiana Choice Scholarship Program” — not a scholarship, but a handout to families already sending their children to private and parochial schools.

2024 ELECTION AND EDUCATION

Read the following articles for information about the Harris/Walz and Trump/Vance federal education plans.

Only a Harris-Walz Administration Would Protect Equity and Inclusion in the Public Schools

From Jan Resseger

In 1899, on the first page of The School and Society, John Dewey defined educational equity as essential for the public schools : “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put through the agency of the school at the disposal of is future members. All its better thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the new possibilities thus opened to its future self. Here individualism and socialism are at one. Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.”

Certainly, John Dewey didn’t fully anticipate the ugly conversation we are having today—where an attack on Dewey’s principle of equity and on public schooling itself has been mounted by well funded billionaires in philanthropies like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, well supplied with ideology and policy developed by the Heritage Foundation and other so-called think tanks, and spouted by billionaire-funded proxies like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education. The ethos underneath the wave of school vouchers passed by far-right state legislators as well as the specific educational policies promoted in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 includes individualistic consumerism and white ethno-nationalism. There is a lot of money being invested today to help us all forget about Dewey’s vision.

One of the most troubling aspects of today’s far right attack on public schooling is that it appears to be a another in a long a series of political reactions against the principle of equity in our public schools. Since the Civil War, according to constitutional scholar Derek Black in his powerful book, Schoolhouse Burning, our society has struggled to realize our long declared principle that all children, no matter their race, gender, or immigrant status have an equal right to education. Black writes that after the Civil War in order to join the union, states were required to guarantee in their state constitutions that no child would be denied the opportunity for education...”

If Trump wins, count on continued culture wars, school vouchers, and a fixation on ending the federal Department of Education

From The Hechinger Report, by Josh Cowen

...With the former president and his allies still denying that he lost the 2020 election, with Trump and his running mate embracing unfounded stories about Haitian immigrants eating household pets and with Trump’s obsession with the size of his cheering crowds, any analytical projection about his future agenda is all but impossible. With such an absence of facts or evidence-based policy designs, we must turn to past actions, current rhetoric and the priorities of Trump’s political alliances for a hint of what could come.

On that basis, we could expect more debates about bathrooms and women’s sports, more inexplicable musings about whether slavery had benefits for enslaved Americans, more spending of scarce resources to put Bibles in public schools and more singling out of kids because of their immigration status.

Many Republican proposals have been well-covered, starting with Project 2025 — the policy agenda assembled by the conservative Heritage Foundation for a new Trump term. Although Trump denies that controversial document speaks for his candidacy, more than 140 former members of the first Trump team had a hand in its crafting.

The key education points in the platform Trump does claim as his own — the so-called Agenda47 and the GOP party platform — strike the same notes of emphasis as those in Project 2025. Indeed, the one-page education “chapter” in the 16-page party platform is all but a summary of its much larger Project 2025 counterpart.

Trump Describes His Plans for Education

From Diane Ravitch

When Donald Trump appeared recently in Milwaukee, he described his plan for the future of the Department of Education. It’s not quite the same as the scenario in Project 2025, which envisions the total elimination of the U.S. Department of Education. Trump imagines it as a “department” with only two employees: A Cabinet Secretary and a secretary.

The severely shrunken Department would focus solely on the three Rs and would somehow mysteriously have the power and personnel to prevent public schools across the nation from teaching anything connected to “woke.” That is, anything related to race, gender, or social justice. How this fictional Department would impose bans on curriculum when federal law prohibits any federal interference in curriculum is not explained. Actually, it’s nonsense.

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling writes in The New Republic about Trump’s vision for the federal role in education.

^†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 8, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"The assault on public education has displayed the fundamental disconnect between the civic purposes of education and citizens who see education as just another private, consumer good–skills to be acquired (by those who can afford it) in order to enhance the ability of one’s children to succeed in the marketplace." -- Sheila Kennedy in The MAGA Vendetta Against Arts And Education.

PROJECT 2025

The MAGA Vendetta Against Arts And Education

Former Republican Sheila Kennedy writes about politics in Indiana. In this article, she explains an imminent threat to public education.

From Sheila Kennedy

I forget who first popularized the phrase “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” but if Trump should win in November, Project 2025 has outlined policies that would dramatically escalate the attack on public education.

Here are some of the elements of what I can only describe as an assault on steroids:

• Title I, the $18 billion federal fund that supports low-income students, would disappear in a decade.
• Federal special education funds would flow to school districts as block grants with no strings attached, or even to savings accounts for parents to use on private school or other education expenses.
• The U.S. Department of Education would be eliminated.
• The federal government’s ability to enforce civil rights laws in schools would be scaled back.

The proposals are contained in a comprehensive policy agenda that’s part of a Heritage Foundation-led initiative called Project 2025: Presidential Transition Project, which includes nearly 900 pages of detailed plans for virtually every corner of the federal government and a database of potential staffers for a conservative administration. It will also feature a playbook for the first 180 days of a new term.

Project 2025 was devised by several former Trump administration officials and allies, working with dozens of aligned advocacy organizations (misnamed “think tanks.”) including Moms for Liberty. You will recall that Moms for Liberty is the organization that fought school boards over COVID-19 safety protocols, advocates for censorship of books in school libraries, and endorses far-right school board candidates.

THE EDUCATION WARS

The Education Wars Provides A Guide For Supporters Of Public Education

The podcasters at Have You Heard provide a playbook to defend public education.

"If we are to preserve our schools, it must be clear that public education is for all of us. We must win the peace.

"If we fail at that, we will lose our schools. And if we lose them, they won’t come back."

From Peter Greene at Forbes

In their 2020 book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire sounded the alarm:

The threat to public education...is grave. A radical vision for unmaking the very idea of public schools has moved from the realm of ideological pipe dream to legitimate policy.

In their new book The Education Wars (out this week), Schneider and Berkshire update us on how that radical vision, now fueled by the culture wars, is faring.

The culture wars—roaring debates over what schools are for, what they should teach, who should decide— are not new. But the writers note that “this time it’s different.” This time, the questions under debate include the question of whether public schools should exist at all.

CHOICE

Debunking the School Choice Movement’s Top Evangelist

Corey DeAngelis is on a mission to demonize public schools—and promote voucher programs that benefit his wealthy backers.

From Peter Greene at The Progressive

Corey DeAngelis is an influential, if not the most influential, voice in the rightwing campaign to demonize public schools and privatize public education. The guy’s résumé hits all the bases in the libertarian gameplan. After earning a doctorate at the University of Arkansas’s education reform program (funded by the pro-school choice Walton family), DeAngelis helped found the Education Freedom Institute, became a senior fellow at the Reason Foundation, worked as an adjunct scholar at the CATO Institute, took up an appointment as a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and was hired on as a senior fellow at Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children.

He still holds all of those jobs, but his more common title is “school choice evangelist.” As the recent school voucher wave has surged in state after state, DeAngelis has been there to spread the word. While on tour in support of his new book, he distills the current pro-voucher argument.

In a recent talk at the Heritage Foundation, DeAngelis touched on most of the main arguments for vouchers (many of them false) and revealed a few truths about the pro-voucher strategy.

1. The Evil Unions and COVID...

LOCAL NEWS

Imagine if every child has a library of their own

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library is a free children's book gifting program that she started in 1995. The program began by offering every child in Sevier County, Tennessee, the area where Dolly was born and raised, a free age-appropriate book each month in the mail until the age of five, regardless of family income. In 2000, the Imagination Library became so popular that Dolly announced that she wanted to make the program available to any community that would partner with her and support it locally. The program has expanded and is currently located in 1,800 local communities in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

Now, the Imagination Library is coming to Fort Wayne.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is a pathway to bridging the reading gap between low-income families and their wealthier counterparts. But most of all, the library is fun for children and families.

Inspired by Parton’s favorite children’s book, “The Little Engine That Could,” Allen County Public Library staff has launched a spirited $100,000 fundraising campaign with the Allen County Public Library Foundation to bring Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library to local children. The program gives children one free book each month from birth to age 5.

The enthusiasm is palpable, with nearly 900 Allen County families eager to enroll their children — a testament to the community’s belief in the power of early literacy.

**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 – June 24, 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

"...we already have school choice and always have. We have a requirement in most states that each child must get some sort of education, but how the child gets that education is a parent's choice. Public, private, parochial, religious, home-- you can choose the school you want. But that's not what modern choicers mean by school choice.

Instead, they use the term "school choice" as a blanket term to cover a whole bunch of ideas that are not actually school choice.

Instead, "school choice" refers to a constellation of policies aimed at directing taxpayer dollars into the pockets of private operators." -- Peter Greene at Curmudgucation in Stop Calling It School Choice

THIS WEEK IN ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

Moms on a Mission

How the Right Exploits ‘Moms’ to Privatize Education

From The Progressive

Moms are allegedly at the center of a rightwing campaign attacking public schools and advocating for school vouchers. The latest entry in the “moms space” is called Moms on a Mission, which the organization’s website reveals is an offshoot of the Betsy DeVos-controlled American Federation for Children (AFC).

Moms on a Mission joins the better-known Moms for Liberty (M4L), which the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as an extremist group. Yet while M4L and similar groups have tried to depict themselves as a grassroots movement, Moms on a Mission doesn’t hide the fact it is a masquerade for billionaire privatization schemes and Republican politics.

Betsy DeVos has long been affiliated with rightwing Christian campaigns to decimate public schools and redirect funds to voucher programs, charter schools, or religious schools. She was former President Donald Trump’s Secretary of Education, but at M4L’s 2022 national summit, she called for the abolition of that very department.

The debut of Moms on a Mission was announced in an email from AFC’s National Director of Communications Strategy, Elizabeth BeShears. BeShears previously worked at Americans for Prosperity, Charles Koch’s dark money nonprofit. Koch and DeVos are political allies on education.

In 2018, Koch announced a move into K-12 politics, with a billionaire compatriot describing it as the “lowest hanging fruit.” Nicole Neily, another Koch operative, runs M4L’s close ally Parents Defending Education, which supports book bans and opposes the factual teaching of racism and school policies to ensure all students feel welcome.

DeVos’s influence entirely depends on her wealth...

Taxpayers funding private schools

Christian Nationalists Are Opening Private Schools. Taxpayers Are Funding Them.

From Mother Jones

...In addition to its thrumming weekly worship sessions and its blockbuster events, the church has another project: Dream City Christian Academy. The K-12 private school, which serves nearly 800 students, is part of Turning Point USA’s Turning Point Academy program, a network of 41 schools that describes itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God and preserve the founding principles of the United States through influencing and inspiring the formation of the next generation.” Dream City Christian Academy promises to “Protect our campus from the infiltration of unethical agendas by rejecting all ‘woke’ and untruthful ideologies being pushed on students.”

This politically charged approach to education likely isn’t for everyone—and because it’s a private school, it doesn’t have to be. Except for one thing: Dream City Christian Academy is one of a growing number of religious schools that are supported by public funds.

In 2022, Arizona became the first state in which all students are allowed to use state vouchers to cover a portion of tuition at any private school, secular or religious. Through Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, each participating family receives about 90 percent of the money the state would have spent on the child’s public school education—around $7,000 per student per year—for private school tuition. For the 2024-2025 school year, the Dream City Christian Academy annual tuition ranges from $10,450 in elementary school to $13,999 in high school—so families of the school’s nearly 800 students can use state funds to pay for between half and two-thirds of their tuition bill. Dream City Christian Academy received almost $1 million in tuition voucher money last year, the Arizona Republic recently reported.

It's not a choice

Stop Calling It School Choice

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

When framing a debate, it helps to pick just the right names. Just ask the folks who decided to call their respective sides "pro-life" and "pro-choice."

One of earliest victories for education privatizers was to coin the name "school choice." I don't know if somebody cleverly designed and tested it, or they just sort of stumbled over it, but it's a handy piece of coinage.

The Google Ngram for American English shows barely in use up through the mid-1980s, when it suddenly rocketed up the charts (aka immediately after the release of A Nation at Risk, A Nation at Risk, the Reagan era hit job on public education). That peak comes at 2001, then a steady drop since that year.

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of those instances are actually a misuse of the term. Because the privatization and reformster movements have got us using "school choice" to mean what it does not mean.

Crossing the line

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

From Diane Ravitch

Louisiana became the first state to enact a law requiring that the “Ten Commandments” be displayed in every public school classroom. Others have proposed such laws, but they didn’t pass. Governor Jeff Landry, who is Catholic, signed the law in a Catholic school, which is somewhat strange since the law applies only to public schools.

The New York Times reports that the bill is part of a larger agenda to turn the U.S. into an explicitly Christian nation. Despite the fact that the Founders wrote extensively against religion controlling the state and said in the Constitution that there could be no religious test for office-holders, the religious right continues to shove their religion—and only their religion—on everyone else

LOCAL AND INDIANA NEWS

NACS proposes 9th elementary school, natatorium, and more in 10-year plan

From WANE.com

On Thursday, Northwest Allen County Schools (NACS) met to discuss their strategic ten-year plan.

The NACS Senior Leadership Team presented the plan to the NACS Board of School Trustees, highlighting various projects to address the district’s growing population.

A new elementary school was suggested during the meeting. This would be the ninth elementary school in NACS.

“Right now, we’re at 86.1% capacity at all of our elementary schools,” NACS Superintendent Wayne Barker said. “The optimum operating capacity we’ve been told for a long time by demographers and those that work in schools is you really only want to be around 85% capacity. Because once that happens the demands on people and challenges for student learning become much more complicated.”

SACS Board of Trustees officially approves district’s superintendent pick

From WANE.com

Southwest Allen County Schools (SACS) will officially have its new superintendent at the helm starting July 1.

The SACS Board of Trustees unanimously approved Kent DeKoninck as SACS’ new superintendent during the district’s school board meeting Tuesday evening.

Tuesday night, WANE 15 spoke with DeKoninck after the meeting, about how he is committed to the district and the district’s needs...

Democrat Jennifer McCormick taps former Indiana Rep. Terry Goodin for lieutenant governor

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

...“I’ve traveled to many parts of the state in the last two years, and I was troubled by what I saw. In county after county, small towns and small cities seem to be going out of business,” Goodin said. “Unfortunately, the current leadership in our state seems to be okay with this as they have implemented no real policies that will rebuild our small communities, our rural communities … We can do better than that in Indiana, folks.”

He said change starts with education reforms, creating more union jobs and ensuring Hoosiers get “equal pay for equal work.”

“This race we’re getting ready to undertake is between those who have a vision for a great future for our state, or those who simply want to be stuck in the past,” he said.

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

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In Case You Missed It – January 15, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

BANNING BOOKS IN AMERICA

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

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

(Emphasis in original)

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

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

THIRD GRADE RETENTION

GOP lawmakers look to cut exemptions to grade retentions

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

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

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

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

LIES, LIES, AND MORE LIES

Arthur Camins: The Lies That Protect the 1%

(Emphasis in original)

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

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

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

PUBLIC EDUCATION SALARY INCREASES

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

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – September 25, 2023

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

"...these problems of American education have their start in the tracking of America’s children — but not necessarily by their schools! Our children are tracked into different neighborhoods on the basis of their family’s income, ethnicity, and race. This is where our school problems begin. We seem blind to the fact that housing policies that promote that kind of segregation are educational policies, as well." -- David Berliner in Education professor: My students asked who I would vote for. Here’s what I told them.

SCHOOL PROBLEMS HAVE ROOTS IN POVERTY

Congress Canceled 2021 Child Tax Credit Reforms, Pushed 5.1 Million Children Back into Poverty

In his 2009 research report, Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success, David Berliner outlined poverty-based factors that contributed to school difficulties. In the 2018 article quoted above, he repeats the call for true educational reform by attacking the real culprit in school problems – Poverty.

From Jan Resseger

Very few people are talking about an alarming piece of news from last week: Child poverty in America has more than doubled since 2021. On September 12, the story was in the papers and on PBS and cable news, but after that, it pretty much fell out of our collective consciousness. This news should trouble us all from an educational point of view—on top of what it says about the misery, hunger, and isolation of millions of children and their families.

David Berliner is an expert, a Regents’ professor emeritus and former dean of the College of Education at Arizona State University and the former president of the American Educational Research Association. Berliner is blunt in his analysis of how poverty affects children’s learning at school: “(T)he big problems of American education are not in America’s schools. So, reforming the schools, as Jean Anyon once said, is like trying to clean the air on one side of a screen door. It cannot be done! It’s neither this nation’s teachers nor its curriculum that impede the achievement of our children. The roots of America’s educational problems are in the numbers of Americans who live in poverty. America’s educational problems are predominantly in the numbers of kids and their families who are homeless; whose families have no access to Medicaid or other medical services. These are often families to whom low-birth-weight babies are frequently born, leading to many more children needing special education.

...Our educational problems have their roots in families where food insecurity or hunger is a regular occurrence, or where those with increased lead levels in their bloodstream get no treatments before arriving at a school’s doorsteps. Our problems also stem from the harsh incarceration laws that break up families instead of counseling them and trying to keep them together. And our problems relate to harsh immigration policies that keep millions of families frightened to seek out better lives for themselves and their children… Although demographics may not be destiny for an individual, it is the best predictor of a school’s outcomes—independent of that school’s teachers, administrators and curriculum.”

DFER—BIPARTISAN ATTACK ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

Democrats for Education Reform are just another group of millionaires and billionaires who have worked to privatize public education.

Politico Advises Democrats to Act Like GOP on School Choice

From Diane Ravitch

Why in the world should Democrats support schools that are free to discriminate, free to hire uncertified and unqualified staff, managed by for-profit entities, and are not as successful as public schools?

That is bad political advice, which you got by interviewing people whose organizations advocate for charter schools (DFER and the so-called “National Parents Union”). The only pro-public school voices in your article were Randi Weingarten and Miguel Cardona, a union leader and the Secretary of Education.

Why didn’t you interview parents engaged in the fight to keep public education public? They are in every state, fighting billionaire-funded organizations like DFER and Moms for Liberty.

Time for Reformster Benefit Poker Again

From Curmudgucation

Want to sponsor a table with ten seats plus a special guest? A Straight Flush Table costs only $100,000. For $50K you can host a Full House Table, and $30K gets you a regular table of ten. If you just want to grab a single seat for yourself, that's a mere $3K. Just want to skip the poker and have some dinner and cocktails while playing some casino games? That's a mere $250. Sadly, I will be busy that day and unable to attend...

Past celebrities, they note, have included a bunch of big name poker players, sports guys, U.S. Congressman Hakeen Jeffries, Billy Crudup and Kevin Pollak.

Do people pay that kind of money, some of you may ask, correctly noting that the Straight Flush Table costs more than most teachers make in a year. Well, in 2022 there was one Straight Flush sponsor, three Full House sponsors, and twenty-five table hosts. All of them were either guys who got rich shuffling money or corporations in the capital biz. They raised over $2 million.

This is the kind of thing that reminds me of the considerable imbalance between reformsters and public school defenders. Many of us are out here doing what we can on a budget of $0.00, and these guys just get together to drop a couple mill playing games for "exotic trips." All things that folks actually working in education can totally relate to.

PRIVATIZERS CONTINUE TO ATTACK PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Insidious harvest': Students are the victims in relentless campaign to delegitimize public schools

Schools are underfunded and defunded, teachers are driven from the classroom, professional judgment is replaced by state-sponsored tests and punishment, books are banned, and threats are issued, and then public schools are blamed for "failure."

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

We hate being told, “I told you so” – but here it comes in response to the latest NWEA test score announcement that student achievement has not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels.

That’s almost like the weather forecaster who predicts with confidence, “There’s 100% chance of darkness tonight, with possible clearing in the morning.”

Proponents of choice and privatization in education (i.e., vouchers, charters, virtual schools, tax-credit scholarships) lament that “if only” their preferred “fixes” had been prioritized all along, U.S. education would have bounced back much more quickly.

People who support traditional public education know that these crocodile tears hide a celebration. It turns out that the foes of public education are like carnival barkers: They bluster, shout, entice and preach about the glories of partisan/privatized education despite extensive evidence that such an education does not result in better achievement when compared to public schools.

But still, the foes of public education celebrate any news that demonstrates the damage done to public education, public educators and public school students.

In their attempt to sow doubt, confusion and falsehoods, the foes of public education planted several different crops to ensure this insidious harvest...

SOME FOREIGN INFLUENCES ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS

Republicans Hold Congressional Hearings on Chinese Influence in American Schools

Turkey or China?

From Diane Ravitch

The Republican leadership of the House Education Committee held hearings on the threat posed by Communist China to American public and private schools. Read the summary and ask yourself the following questions: Would red states grant the Confucius Classrooms a charter to run their own schools? Would they let a school organized by the Confucius Classrooms accept voucher students? Are they equally concerned about the scores of Gulen schools that receive public funds and operate as charter schools? Gulen is a Turkish imam who lives in seclusion in Pennsylvania; the board of trustees of his schools are led by Turkish men; the Gulen schools have a large number of Turkish teachers on staff. When will the House Committee on Education investigate the Gulen schools?

FORT WAYNE LOCAL NEWS

Budget balanced: Trusted voice in Indiana school finances closes book on career

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Kathy Friend couldn’t let a question after her final Fort Wayne Community Schools budget presentation go unanswered, even though it was about a number two decades old.

She had the answer for board member Steve Corona the next day. Her first FWCS budget – for the year 2001 – totaled $215.7 million.

Friend will retire as the district’s chief financial officer on Oct. 31, about a week after the expected adoption of next year’s $365 million budget. By comparison, Fort Wayne Mayor Tom Henry’s city budget proposal for next year is $235 million.

Her nearly 24-year tenure at FWCS was about more than managing the district’s money, however. Considered an expert on Indiana’s education funding formula, Friend has mentored many school business officials and effectively lobbied about funding issues at the Statehouse, her colleagues said.

Southwest Allen County Schools projects tax rate will decrease in 2024

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Southwest Allen County Schools anticipates its tax rate will decrease by about 4 cents next year despite advertising a rate that reflects a nearly 9-cent increase.

Mark Snyder, the business director, told the school board Tuesday that the advertised rate – 89.76 cents per $100 in assessed value – is intentionally inflated to ensure SACS captures all available tax dollars. His projected rate is 76.87 cents.

“We advertise high to make sure we get all the revenue,” he said during his 2024 budget review.

**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 every Monday except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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