In Case You Missed It – November 18, 2024

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

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

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

PRESERVE PUBLIC EDUCATION

Will the Future Include Free Democratic Public Schools and Teachers?

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

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

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

According to the results:

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

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

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

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

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

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

WHAT DO WE DO IN AMERICA?

How Do German Schools Teach Their Political History?

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

From Nancy Flanagan in Teacher in a Strange Land blog

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

So what do you do in America, he asked?

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

Department of Education reports near double increase in library book removals

From Florida Phoenix

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

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

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

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

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

NEW RESEARCH, SAME AS THE OLD RESEARCH

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

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

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

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

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

POST-ELECTION COMMENTARY

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

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

From Jan Resseger

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

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

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

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

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

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

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

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

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

Protect Public Education: Here is What You Can Do

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

From the Network for Public Education Action

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

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

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – July 31, 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

"The people of America deprive us of every privilege—they turn round and taunt us with our inferiority!—they stand upon our necks, they impudently taunt us, and ask the question, why we don’t stand up erect? they tie our feet, and ask us why we don’t run? that is the position of America in the present time, the laws forbid education, the mother must not teach her child the letters of the Lord’s prayer; and then while this unfortunate state of things exist they turn round and ask, why we are not moral and intelligent; and tell us, because we are not, that they have the right to enslave [us]." -- Frederick Douglass

FLORIDA: WHERE HISTORY GOES TO DIE

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis claimed that he "wasn't involved" in writing the state's 2023 Social Studies standards, but he defended them nonetheless. In response, former U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of Texas tweeted that slavery "wasn't a jobs program that taught beneficial skills."

Florida Attempting to Revive the “Happy Slave” Myth as Real History

Beneficial skills don't matter when you don't "own your own body."

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Frederick Douglass was widely considered the most photographed American in the 19th century, though he never smiled in a single portrait.

He stares out of the frame with a look of quiet dignity, but never joviality or contentment.

The reason for this is simple – he didn’t want to perpetuate the myth of the “Happy Slave.”

Douglass was born into bondage until he fled to the North at age 20. He was considered a fugitive for nine more years until 1845 when English friends raised $711.66 to buy his freedom. He was already a famous orator, author and abolitionist.

But he knew the power of a picture and how a still image of him grinning ear-to-ear might be used by slaveholders to indicate that people of color enjoyed their own servitude.

Now 158 years after the Civil War, the Florida Department of Education is trying to perpetuate that same myth with its new guidelines for Black history curriculum in public schools.

Among other things, the guidelines suggest that American slavery was not all bad because enslaved people developed skills that “could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Letters from an American: July 22, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson analyzes the new Florida Social Studies standards.

From Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson

The Florida Board of Education approved new state social studies standards on Wednesday, including standards for African American history, civics and government, American history, and economics. Critics immediately called out the middle school instruction in African American history that includes “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” (p. 6). They noted that describing enslavement as offering personal benefits to enslaved people is outrageous.

But that specific piece of instruction in the 216-page document is only a part of a much larger political project.

Taken as a whole, the Florida social studies curriculum describes a world in which the white male Founders of the United States embraced ideals of liberty and equality—ideals it falsely attributes primarily to Christianity rather than the Enlightenment—and indicates the country’s leaders never faltered from those ideals. Students will, the guidelines say, learn “how the principles contained in foundational documents contributed to the expansion of civil rights and liberties over time” (p. 148) and “analyze how liberty and economic freedom generate broad-based opportunity and prosperity in the United States” (p. 154).

TIME TO END TESTING

Bob Shepherd: Past Time to End Our Obsession with Standardized Testing

The entire post is below...

From Bob Shepherd, quoted by Diane Ravitch

"I have come to believe that there is one way and one way only that we will eliminate the federal testing mandate, which has had such blood-sucking costs over the years, direct costs and opportunity costs in loss learning, and which has brought about a dramatic devolution in our curricula and pedagogy.

"The tests will remain in place until the national teachers’ unions take up the cause of ending them, until they call a national strike to do that. This would take real guts, real leadership. But until the teachers’ unions do that, until they institute a national action to end the testing, they are COMPLICIT IN CHILD ABUSE. I mean that. It’s not hyperbole. The testing is child abuse. It robs kids of large percentages of the time that they could be spending learning. And it robs them of coherent curricula and pedagogy. Instead, they get random exercises on random “skills” from the puerile Gates/Coleman “standards” bullet list and its progeny around the country.

"ENOUGH. It’s been an utter failure. It’s been devastating. Time to end it."

NACS BOARD FEARS CONTENT OF LIBRARY CONFERENCE

Northwest Allen County Schools board pauses vote on library conference attendance request

The last sentence in the quote below says it all. School Board members are afraid of what a keynote speaker might say. As they see it, it's their job as "thought police" to protect staff members from wrong thinking which they might bring back to students. The professionalism of the employee doesn't matter.

We agree that there are professional conferences that the School Board might question paying for. Still, with the recent history of this board, and the current "culture war" atmosphere in Indiana and around the nation, there's reason to believe that the refusal to pay for this conference might be based on political rather than educational reasons.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Northwest Allen County Schools board wants more information about a November library conference before voting on an employee’s request to attend.

The board tabled Terri Uchtman’s professional development proposal in a 3-1 vote Monday. Members said they wanted more information about the activities planned for the Indiana Library Federation’s annual conference in Indianapolis.

The agenda posted online includes information about some speakers and indicates details about the 12 breakout sessions will be available soon.

“We don’t even know what the content is going to be,” member Darren Vogt said. “For me to approve something where I don’t know what the content is, I’m going to vote no.”

...This isn’t the first time a professional development request has divided the board. A split vote in January 2022 denied staff from attending a conference about students’ emotional well-being. Members feared what a keynote speaker might say, particularly about critical race theory.

FWCS BOARD OKs $10 MILLION IN IMPROVEMENTS

Fort Wayne Community Schools board OKs financing for $10 million in improvements

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Fort Wayne Community Schools’ plan to finance about $10 million in safety and accessibility improvements with general obligation bonds got the board’s final blessing Monday.

The elected leaders also agreed to hire two businesses to provide services for the accessibility projects, which will affect 11 buildings.

The pre-construction services contract with FCI Construction totals $28,125. The design services agreement with Martin Riley Architects and Engineers is estimated at $449,400.

The work will be funded with general obligation bonds – a common tool districts use to pay for projects outside the operations fund.

The accessibility upgrades have an overall construction budget of $6 million. They will affect Young Early Childhood Center; Adams, Harrison Hill, St. Joseph Central and Weisser Park Elementary Schools; Jefferson, Kekionga, Lane, Northwood and Portage Middle Schools; and the Center for Academic Success at Nebraska.

**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 on Mondays except after holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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In Case You Missed It – March 13, 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 to be informed when our blog posts are published.

THIS WEEK

State legislatures around the nation are working hard to defund and damage public education through book banning, charters, and vouchers.

LEGISLATURES TAKE AIM AT PUBLIC EDUCATION

Targeting teachers, school libraries exercise in legislative overreach

This op-ed penned by Michael Shaffer ought to anger you. Legislatures around the country, including the Indiana General Assembly, are jumping on the book-banning bandwagon in support of a minority of loud extremists who use threats, intimidation, and fear to force schools to bend to their will.

Not content with diverting billions of tax dollars to fund private and religious schools, the mob of book banners and their cronies in Republican-gerrymandered state legislatures want to limit the rights of (what is likely) the majority of parents who want their children to have access to accurate accounts of history and literature reflective of reality.

What constitutes "inappropriate?" The book banners want to decide for you.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

...SB 12 (authored by Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, to protect the “little tykes” and passed by the brain trust in the Senate) states, any teacher or school librarian who willingly subjects students – who include significantly more than “little tykes” – to material harmful to minors can be found guilty of a Level 6 felony and subject to 2 1/2 years in prison.

We would all agree with this, wouldn’t we? After all, who would want anything to happen to our school-age children that is harmful to them?

But wait, there’s more. It starts with a very carefully chosen word that has my blood boiling.

“Inappropriate.” Any parent or guardian can file a complaint against any book that a school has in its library or teacher has in their book collection that is inappropriate. Let that sink in.

Inappropriate? Not pornographic?

Just to be clear, we are not talking about taking Playboy or Hustler magazine off the shelves of your local high school library periodical sections. The bill specifically uses the word “inappropriate” and applies to any public school K-12 classroom or library in Indiana.

I am not in favor of putting pornographic materials in the hands of kids. But that is not what this bill is talking about.

This bill comes straight from the hands of Purple for Parents and Moms for Liberty (a branch of the American Legislative Exchange Council), which have self-appointed their organizations as the guardians of purity and appropriateness for our children, all the while spewing hate speech and falsities as quickly as they can hurl invectives in their auctioneer-paced rampages.

It is only fair to point out that SB 12 only applies to traditional public schools and charter schools; voucher schools are not affected at all.

Apparently, the only Indiana teachers and librarians completely safe from felony prosecution are those who teach in voucher schools, as long as they practice the right religion...

Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: Whose Black History Will Be Taught?

The "war of northern aggression." That's what they called the Civil War.

Pretending that the Civil War and the Reconstruction amendments solved the problem of racism in the United States and neglecting to teach our children about our true history is educational malpractice.

From Diane Ravitch

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. reviews the long debate about how to teach Black history in an article in the New York Times. The debate began as rationales by sympathizers of the Confederacy, who changed the Civil War into “The War Between the States.” In a visit to Charleston, South Carolina, not long ago, I heard the war described in a historic home as “The War of Northern Aggression.”

Dr. Gates writes:

Lurking behind the concerns of Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, over the content of a proposed high school course in African American studies, is a long and complex series of debates about the role of slavery and race in American classrooms.

Miami Herald: “Parental Rights” Is the Battle Cry of Extremists

Which parents get to choose the books to deny to everyone? Do the extremists speak for all parents? Not likely.

From Diane Ravitch

Their narrative goes that to be “pro-parent” you must not want your children exposed to topics like “critical race theory,” or you only support a whitewashed version of this country’s history of racism. Being pro-kid means you don’t want them to learn that there are men who date men, women who date women and people who don’t identify with the gender assigned to them at birth. It means you want school libraries sanitized from content that might offend your sensibilities.

It means that there’s one way to look at America and education and anyone with a different opinion be damned, called names like leftist, communist, anti-American.

It’s as if only groups like Moms for Liberty represent what parents want. The group seems more preoccupied with banning books than concerned that too many kids in our schools cannot read at grade level. The leader of its Miami chapter once called the protests after the death of George Floyd at the hands of police “race wars” and repeated QAnon conspiracy theories on Instagram, Politico reported.

To be a parent, under this definition, means to be a conservative in the most extreme sense of the word...

The Rev. Dr. Robin Meyers on Oklahoma’s State Superintendent: “I Alone Will Indoctrinate Your Children”

"Beware the zealot who is going to save you from something that may or may not exist and intends to burn down your house to do it."

From Diane Ravitch

Dr. Meyers writes:

Oklahoma’s new state schools superintendent is about to take a desperate situation and make it awful.

His plans for stamping out “wokeness,” critical race theory, and boys using the girl’s bathrooms sounds nothing like a plan to advance education, and more like a platform to become Ron DeSantis Jr. The irony of this culture war approach to education is transparently hypocritical. Walters claims to be all “for academics and against indoctrination,” while making it clear that he alone will decide who gets hired, who gets raises and what gets taught in our schools. That is the very definition of indoctrination.

Beware the zealot who is going to save you from something that may or may not exist and intends to burn down your house to do it. Beware the fearmonger who incites the masses to muzzle free and open discourse about dangerous ideas so that he can make duplicate zealots for even worse ideas. Beware the evangelist who rails against other people’s sins while lining his pocket from two jobs at taxpayers’ expense while vowing to cut wasteful government spending. Ryan Walters makes more than the governor.

FUNDING VOUCHERS, NOT TEXTBOOKS

Indiana House budget covers textbook fees at schools' expense

For years, parents of Indiana public school teachers have had to pay for their textbooks despite the Indiana Constitutional guarantee of "a general and uniform system of Common Schools, wherein tuition shall be without charge, and equally open to all."

The Indiana General Assembly now wants to put the burden of textbook fees on the local school systems, while increasing state money for private and religious schools.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The House plan enables lawmakers to claim a win for parents no longer facing textbook fees while touting increases in school funding. But a disproportionate part of the new money goes to expanding the voucher school program.

The Senate could provide true relief for the students attending public schools in our state by using some of the money carved out to grow the voucher system to cover the tab for books and other needed curriculum materials. The money is there. It’s just a question of priorities.

CHARTERS DRAIN REAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Charter schools win in proposed Indiana budget amid public advocacy campaign

As expected from the anti-public schools Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly, "[p]roperty tax losses could be in the cards for some traditional public schools"

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

Charter schools in Indiana could see big gains under the current draft of the next two-year state budget. But the deal could cause long-term losses for traditional public schools, some of which stand to lose millions of dollars needed for teacher raises and other non-classroom expenses.

A new funding stream carved into the House Republican budget would mandate the amount of funds every public school district and charter school receives for operations, which are collected through local property taxes.

Charter schools would still be unable to tap into local tax revenues, but instead would get $1,400 per student from state funds in 2024, and $1,500 in 2025, according to the draft budget. A current state grant offers charter schools $1,250 per student each school year...

...That would mean cuts to local operations funds at some schools — especially in districts with a large tax base such as Indianapolis. It’s still not clear how exactly individual school districts could be impacted, however. A fiscal impact statement says schools statewide could lose $87 million in 2025 and $177 million in 2026.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [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 – November 21, 2022

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

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

The next In Case You Missed It will post on December 5.

THIS WEEK

This week's post has important, analytical information about the NAEP test scores, including a reminder that "proficient" does NOT equal grade level.

We also have reports on the school board elections in Indiana, the governor of Virginia's plan to whitewash history, and educational harassment at a charter chain. Jan Resseger answers all of those with a call for public education advocates to fight back.

Fort Wayne Community Schools sets a test score goal and some ideas for bringing success to public school systems.

DO STUDENTS NEED TO "CATCH UP?"

Worried About Helping Students “Catch Up”? Here’s How To Do It.

The NAEP, like most other standardized tests, is being misused and incorrectly interpreted. The public needs to be constantly reminded that "proficient" does not equal "grade level." Read Peter Greene's analysis.

From Peter Greene in Forbes

You've been seeing plenty of headlines about the dismal scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores.

Despite the panic, the NAEP results have provided no clear answers about any of the things people want answers about. As we saw with the "little" NAEP results, there's no clear connection between school closings and dropped scores— staying open when other schools were closed did not produce any clear advantages. And in fact some score declines mirrored other pre-pandemic declines.

Add this on top of the usual caveats about the test. NAEP’s “proficient” is set considerably higher than grade level, as noted on the NAEP site. (This is a lesson that has to be relearned as often as NAEP scores are released.) Students who don’t achieve “proficient” are not “below grade level.” And when interpreting scores, NAEP is extraordinarily clear that folks should not try to suggest a causal relationship between scores and anything else. There are too many factors in play to point to any single factor as a clear cause.

ELECTION 2022 - ANTI-CRT CANDIDATES

‘Anti-CRT’ candidates underperform

Sadly, Indiana's school board elections have become political.

From School Matters

Indiana, unlike most of the country, did experience a partisan red wave on Nov. 8. Republicans won every statewide race, easily. They won seven of nine congressional districts and came close to winning an eighth. They held their supermajorities in the state House and Senate. If there’s a state where anti-CRT rhetoric should have swept ideologues onto school boards, Indiana is it.

But there’s not much evidence that happened. Surveys show that most Americans, regardless of politics, have a positive view of their local public schools. Farfetched claims that schools are indoctrinating students with a “woke” agenda may play well on right-wing media, but most Hoosiers know better.

WHITEWASHING HISTORY

Virginia: Governor Youngkin Directs Whitewashing of History Standards

Virginia Governor Youngkin wants to remove non-white history from the state's history curriculum.

From Diane Ravitch

Educators, parents, and civil rights groups in Virginia are outraged because Governor Glen Youngkin has directed the rewriting of the state’s history standards. The Youngkin standards eliminate anything that extremists and rightwingers find objectionable. The Youngkin team initially deleted all mention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from the elementary curriculum. Presumably any discussion of Dr. King’s life and legacy might be interpreted as “critical race theory” by the Governor’s allies.

At the same time, Youngkin’s cultural warriors expanded coverage of Ancient Greece and Rome, expecting children in the early elementary years to learn about major figures in those civilizations for whom they have no context or understanding.

In the rewrite of the standards by the Youngkin team,, a startling amount of material about African Americans was deleted. The curriculum and standards were literally whitewashed.

And as you will notice, the Youngkin draft refers to Native Americans and indigenous peoples as “the first immigrants.” What?

PUBLIC ED ADVOCATES MUST FIGHT BACK

The Multi-Layered Attack on Public Schooling and Why We are Obligated to Fight Back

We can't sit back and let the anti-public education forces destroy our public schools. We have to fight back.

From Jan Resseger

...This background from experts prepares us to recognize today that Moms for Liberty and similar groups disturbing local school boards with racist and homophobic attacks are part of a conscious strategy of funders like the Heritage Foundation and the Goldwater and Manhattan Institutes to grow school privatization and undermine public support for our society’s largest and most universal civic institution. In my state, Ohio, House Bill 290, the universal, Education Savings Account school voucher bill, which will be hashed out this month in a lame-duck session of our gerrymandered, supermajority Republican state legislature, is intimately connected with the mass of culture war bills that have been introduced in the same legislature—bills that would ban books and ban any discussion that touches on race, gender, and sexuality. The culture war bills are there to make us define some of our children as “other” or deviant, to generate fear and unease, and to destroy commitment to a public system of education that has been made more inclusive over the decades in accordance with its declared mission of serving each and every child.

Whose responsibility is it to push back against today’s attack on public education? In his 2021, book, The Privatization of Everything, Donald Cohen assigns the obligation for protecting a democracy to its citizens: “In a democratic society, public goods…. should be defined by the public and its values. Just because some people can be excluded from having a public good does not mean we should allow that to happen. In fact, after we the people define something as a public good, we must use our democratic power to make certain that exclusions do not happen… no winners or losers—when it comes to education (or clean water, or a fair trial, or a vaccine), even if it’s possible to do so. We decide there are things we should do together. We give special treatment to these goods because we realize that they benefit everyone in the course of benefiting each one—and conversely, that excluding some hurts us all. That starts with asserting public control over our fundamental public goods… What’s important is that public goods exist only insofar as we, the voters and the people, create them. That’s how democracy should and often does work. But it really works only if we can hold on to an idea of the common good. Is it good for individuals and the whole?” (The Privatization of Everything, pp. 6-8)

EDUCATIONAL HARASSMENT AT SUCCESS ACADEMY

Success Academy Parents Speak Out. Part 2 “I was told my seventh-grade daughter had to repeat entire grade because she failed one course by one point”

From Gary Rubinstein's Blog

Success Academy is known for its high 3-8 standardized test scores and its extreme rigidity. In a way, the rigidity is part of what causes them to have such high test scores. They demand compliance from their students and from the families of those students. When a student or the family of a student is not conforming to the expectations of the school, that student or family are going to be harassed, humiliated, and punished until they either fall into line or ‘voluntarily’ transfer to another school.

The heartbreaking saga of a girl I will call ‘Carla’ began pleasantly enough eight years ago when she was accepted into Success Academy Springfield Gardens as a kindergartener. From kindergarten through fourth grade, she thrived at the school. Her fourth grade report card grades were mostly the highest or second highest category, except for writing where she was struggling.

In fifth grade, she started having problems academically, though not catastrophically, and then as we all know, the pandemic hit and schools in New York went remote for the next year and a half. For the end part of fifth grade and all of sixth grade, Carla struggled to learn remotely. She had various connection issues and would wait in zoom waiting rooms endlessly. She was really traumatized by the pandemic year and was eager to return to in person classes for her seventh grade year.

FWCS SETS TEST SCORE GOAL

FWCS sets reading goal of 95% passing by 2027

It's too bad that FWCS needs to focus on test scores. The pandemic caused emotional trauma, aside from academic losses. Focusing on the test scores alone, and of third graders, in particular, might cause some to ignore the real needs of children. Luckily, we know that most teachers rarely ignore the needs of children to focus entirely on test scores, but children's needs, rather than test scores, should be the system-wide focus.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The Fort Wayne Community Schools board formalized its expectations Monday about students' reading skills, matching a statewide goal of reaching a 95% passing rate on a key exam by 2027.

Board member Steve Corona, who presented the resolution, hopes FWCS' resolution encourages other boards and districts to do the same.

"We as a state have to get serious about this," Corona said after the meeting.

FWCS and other districts saw their scores plummet on the Indiana Reading Evaluation and Determination assessment, or IREAD-3, when testing resumed in 2021 after disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The exam measures third grade literacy proficiency.

SOME GOOD NEWS SCHOOL SYSTEMS

Disrupting disruption: How 3 school districts improved with steady work

From the Answer Sheet

Public schools are frequently in the news these days, and seldom is the news good. The spotlight is on ideological donnybrooks over how race and gender-related topics are discussed in classrooms; the growing demand that parents, not teachers, decide what their children should be taught; assaults on the system by opportunistic politicians; and the learning loss blame game, with schools faulted for keeping schools closed during the pandemic. Some state lawmakers have proposed junking the common school and replacing it with a market-based regime.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be this way.

In “Disrupting Disruption,” my co-authors and I shine a light on three racially and ethnically diverse school systems: Roanoke, nestled in Virginia’s Shenandoah mountains; Union, Okla., Tulsa’s neighbor; and Union City, N.J., across the Hudson River from Manhattan. Their students don’t resemble those in highflying places like Wilmette, Ill., or Lexington, Mass., predominantly White and well-off, with their off-the-charts test scores and graduation rates, and they do not appear on any list of the nation’s highest-performing districts. But they look like much of America, where White students don’t constitute a majority, and many come from low-income families.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [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 17, 2022

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

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

THIS WEEK

Steven Singer refutes Republican nightmares about public schools, North Carolina wants to used test scores to grade teachers, teaching the controversy of the holocaust, and new plans for NACS.

REPUBLICAN NIGHTMARES

Top Five Republican Nightmare Fantasies About Public Schools

Do public schools teach children to be gay? Steven Singer refutes Republican nightmare fantasies about public schools.

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Republicans are fighting against a version of public education that does not exist.

Critical race theory, pornographic school books, and other bogeymen haunt their platforms without any evidence that this stuff is a reality.

Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for Governor of Pennsylvania, actually promises to ban pole dancing in public schools.

Pole dancing!

“On day one, the sexualization of our kids, pole dancing, and all this other crap that’s going on will be forbidden in our schools,” he says.

Mr. Mastriano, I hate to tell you this, but the only school in the commonwealth where there was anything like what you describe was one of those charter schools you love so much. The Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School in Philadelphia used to run an illegal nightclub in the cafeteria after dark.

But at authentic public schools with things like regulations and school boards – no. That just doesn’t happen here.

Maybe if your plan to waste taxpayer dollars on universal school vouchers goes through you’ll get your wish.

But reality has never stopped the state Senator from complaining about a list of fictional public education woes.

CONTINUED PRIVATIZATION IN NORTH CAROLINA

North Carolina: A Teacher Explains Why the State is Pushing a Disastrous Plan

Here is another response to North Carolina's new education plan that continues to move public education in the state from a highly acclaimed system a decade ago to privatization. The plan calls for paying teacher for test scores, which hasn't worked and ends up driving teachers out of education...causing a teacher shortage.

...which is likely one of the goals of the privatizers. Peter Greene explains more about the plan in his Forbes column -- Who Is Behind North Carolina’s Plan To Upend Teacher Pay.

From Diane Ravitch

A few days ago, I posted a column by Peter Greene about a dreadful plan in North Carolina to align teacher pay and evaluation with test scores, an approach that has always failed and that always demoralizes teachers.

Peter was relying on the thorough research of Justin Parmenter, a North Carolina teacher who is a National Board Certified Teacher.

Another North Carolina teacher wrote the following comment...

TEACHING CONTROVERSIES

Teachers: Would Your District or State Allow You to Teach Ken Burns’ Series on the Holocaust?

New state laws about teaching "controversies" might get in the way of teaching history.

John Thompson's comments can be found here, John Thompson: Will Oklahoma Schools Dare to Show Ken Burns’ Series on the U.S. and the Holocaust?

From Diane Ravitch

I recently posted a commentary by John Thompson, a retired teacher in Oklahoma who speculated about whether the state would permit high school teachers to teach Ken Burns’ series on the U.S. and the Holocaust. Oklahoma has a law—HB 1775–which might intimidate teachers.

In response, a teacher in Utah said that he or she felt sure that the Burns’ series would not be allowed because it’s controversial.

NACS PLAN FOR SHAPING THE FUTURE

Creating a 'North Star' among goals for Northwest Allen County Schools superintendent

The new superintendent of Northwest Allen County Schools announces his plan to collect input from district stakeholders.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Superintendent Wayne Barker plans to give Northwest Allen County Schools stakeholders an opportunity to shape the district’s future.

Leading the 8,000-student district through a strategic planning process is among four goals Barker and the school board set for his superintendency. That’s the best way to collect input the public is eager to share, Barker said Monday.

“It’s letting the community, first of all, say, ‘Here’s what we want from Northwest Allen County Schools,’” Barker said. “‘These are the things that are important to us. These are the things that maybe we do well now. Here are things that we should be focused on in the future.’”

Although Barker has spearheaded strategic plans in other districts, he said the district will likely hire someone to do that work, and not just because of the district’s size.

“We need to make sure it, quite honestly, looks neutral, that we totally solicit the public’s input on that in a neutral way,” Barker said, acknowledging the tensions and division NACS has experienced in recent years.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [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 26, 2022

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

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

THIS WEEK

Diane Ravitch shares a blog post written by Oklahoma educator John Thompson about Ken Burns' new PBS documentary, The U.S. and the Holocaust.

We share two articles about the failure of charter schools.

And we close with an exciting new project in FWCS.

"YOU HAVE A CHOICE TO MAKE FOR THE FUTURE"

John Thompson on Ken Burns’ Powerful “The U.S. and the Holocaust”

Ken Burns's new documentary on PBS, The U.S., and the Holocaust, gives teachers an opportunity to explore pre-World War II America. We have to teach students actual American history, the bad with the good. That's how we ensure that the bad doesn't happen again. [Note: link available to Indiana state standards]

"...would legislators who voted for censorship of school curriculums want to admit out loud that they want Anne Frank’s story banned? And would even the most extreme legislators follow through with mass firings at a time of teacher shortages?"

A must-read...

From John Thompson on Diane Ravitch's Blog

...The U.S. and the Holocaust also raises questions such as “what are the responsibilities of our leaders to shape public opinion rather than follow it?” and “what does this history tell us about the role of individuals to act when governments fail to intervene?” It also raises tough questions about the role of the media in spreading hate, as well as constructive information.

The film’s website also links to Oklahoma’s and other states’ Academic Standards. They call for high school students to “examine the causes, series of events and effects of the Holocaust through eyewitnesses such as inmates, survivors, liberators, and perpetrators,” and examine the “rise of totalitarian regimes in the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, and Japan.” Such Standards also call for an examination of “how the media we consume shapes our beliefs, opinions, and actions both historically and in modern contexts in this media.”

These Standards are very consistent with the concepts that Burns explored. If I were still teaching high school, I’d be carefully building a unit that follows the Standards and instructional techniques that were carefully prepared by state and national experts. For instance, I would begin with the recommended, first question, “Why do you think many people did not question or push back against the harmful ideas presented by people who believed in eugenics?”

As also recommended, as students watched video clips, and read and analyzed the primary source materials in The U.S. and the Holocaust website, I’d ask them to share their “feelings or thoughts after each clip as some of the content covered is very heavy and may be emotional for students.” Students would take notes and engage in classroom discussions. I’d end with the recommended question, “Although the images and videos shown in the last clip are very challenging to watch, why do you think U.S. Army leaders said they needed to be shown to people in the United States and across the world?”

CHARTERS DRAIN MONEY FROM REAL PUBLIC SCHOOLS

There's no doubt about it; Charters drain money from real public schools. We must continue to fight the privatization of public education in Indiana and the U.S.

Stephen Dyer: The Abject Failure of Charter Schools in Ohio

From Diane Ravitch

Stephen Dyer, a former state legislator in Ohio, writes a blog that tracks funding and privatization in Ohio. It’s called “10th Period.” He relies on state data to tell the truth about the failure of charters and vouchers. Here is the latest data on charter schools.

Dyer’s summary:

98 Percent of Ohio Charter School Graduates are Less Prepared for Post-Graduate World Than Students in Youngstown City Schools

Dayton is the lowest performing major urban district. Yet 2 out of 3 Ohio charter schools are less prepared than Dayton students Ohio’s new report card has revealed something extremely troubling about Ohio’s Charter Schools. On a new measure called “Students in the 4-year Graduation Cohort who Completed a Pathway and are Prepared for College or Career Success”, only 9 percent of Ohio’s potential Charter School graduates met those qualifications. More than 36 percent of Ohio’s public school district students met those qualifications.

Of the 43 Ohio Charter Schools with enough students to count in this College and Career Readiness measure, 18 schools had zero — that’s right, not a single student —who qualified as college or career ready. That means that 3 out of every 25 Ohio charter school graduates attended a school where not a single potential graduate was considered college or career ready.

But it gets worse.

Public School Closures in Oakland: Another Example of Failed School Reform and Charter School Expansion

From Jan Resseger

I am grateful that last Sunday the Washington Post’s Scott Wilson recounted the long, sad story of the school closings in California’s Oakland Unified School District. Oakland has universal school choice, and this fall, students in two of Oakland’s now shuttered public schools had to find new schools elsewhere in the school district—with five additional public schools to be closed at the end of the current school year. As Wilson explains: “The district has… been whiplashed over the years, by education trends and population changes, leaving many schools under annual threat of school closure.”

We have been watching this story develop for years. Wilson reports: “By 2003, with the district facing a roughly $35 million budget deficit, the state Department of Education took over the operation of Oakland’s public schools, laying off hundreds of teachers and eventually shuttering more than two dozen schools. The state’s day-to-day management ended six years later, but the education department still has what is effectively veto power over fiscal decisions. At the time of the takeover, the state extended the district a $100 million line of credit, which has yet to be paid off entirely. The district’s uncertain finances and poor performance also opened the door for experimentation from wealthy, mostly White philanthropists with no ties to Oakland. One initiative was the ‘small schools’ movement, financed in large part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The idea was to break up big campuses into more intimate places for learning. The money—about $25 million before it ran out—helped open about two dozen schools. But the state administrator at the time closed 14 others over several years.”

Wilson continues: “More lasting was the charter school movement. At the time, billionaires Mike Bloomberg and the late Eli Broad spent tens of millions of dollars promoting charter schools nationally, including large sums in Oakland… But in a state that funds districts by student, every pupil who enrolled in a charter school meant money lost to the broader public education system.”

AN OUTDOOR CLASSROOM IN FWCS

Fort Wayne principal envisions 'oasis' with outdoor classroom

Hands-on learning for students in Fort Wayne...

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

A Fort Wayne Community Schools principal can already envision what her students might experience in an outdoor classroom.

Apple trees could teach kindergartners about the life cycle of an apple, and water tables could offer lessons about erosion, said Mary Kinniry, Irwin Elementary School principal.

“What we’re most excited about is really just bringing learning to life,” Kinniry told the school board last week. “I really just hope to create an oasis within our urban district next to the school so the kids can be immersed in nature in a very unique way.”

Outdoor classroom learning equipment will be installed at Irwin and two other magnet schools next summer in conjunction with sitework needed to create the outdoor learning areas at each building. The board approved buying the equipment – including seating and shade structures – from Recreation inSites of Fishers on Sept. 12.

Officials said the $308,457 expense is supported by a grant.

**Note: The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette is behind a paywall. Digital access, home delivery, or both are available with a subscription. Staying informed is important, and one way to do that is to support your local newspaper. For subscription information, go to fortwayne.com/subscriptions/ [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 7, 2021

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

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

THIS WEEK

The fights about the pandemic and masks are still going on. Truthfully, it sounds suspiciously like the "Am not! Are too!" arguments on the third-grade playground.

Mask supporters say the science is in and it is clear that masks help to stop the spread of COVID-19. Those who deny the efficacy of masks do so because they don't believe the government or the science community. Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans support mask-wearing. Meanwhile, the anti-mask state of Texas leads the country in child COVID deaths with 59.

GETTING SCIENCE WRONG

Research Finds Masks Can Prevent COVID-19 Transmission in Schools

Here's the science. Believe it.

From Duke Today, a hub for news produced around Duke University

The widespread use of masks in schools can effectively prevent COVID-19 transmission and provide a safe learning environment, two Duke scholars said Wednesday.

Danny Benjamin, M.D., and Kanecia Zimmerman, M.D., were co-chairs of the Duke-led ABC Science Collaborative, which issued a new report Wednesday showing that North Carolina schools were highly successful in preventing the transmission of COVID-19 within school buildings.

The report found in part that masks effectively prevented COVID-19 transmission even without physical distancing in schools and on buses.

Benjamin and Zimmerman spoke to reporters Wednesday in a virtual media briefing. Watch the briefing on YouTube. Read a news story about the collaborative's findings on Duke Health's website.

Quarantine rules eased by governor

Governor Holcomb has provided an incentive to school boards to use mask mandates to keep schools open. That way, local school board members get the threats from crazy anti-maskers instead of the governor.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday loosened quarantine rules for symptom-free students, teachers and staff in close contact with a positive COVID-19 case – but only if schools mandate masks.

The new approach provides a key incentive to districts struggling with the mask question while also not being a mandate. Fort Wayne Community Schools and Northwest Allen County Schools have mask requirements while East Allen County Schools and Southwest Allen County Schools have mask-optional policies.

Holcomb issued a new executive order running through September, and the Indiana Department of Health also issued a COVID-19 control measure. It says schools and day cares with mask requirements “consistently followed throughout the day” do not have to quarantine students, teachers and staff who are close contacts and aren't showing COVID-19 symptoms.

NACS reinstates mask mandate

Northwest Allen County Schools fights back against the minority who want to threaten students (and their families) with COVID-19. It was ugly.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

An unruly audience on Monday criticized the three school board members who voted to reinstate Northwest Allen County Schools' mask mandate. The requirement takes effect Wednesday.

“Revote! Revote! Revote!” mask mandate opponents chanted after two hours of public comment.

Member Steve Bartkus, who opposed the mandate along with President Kent Somers, was game.

“Let's just revote then,” Bartkus said to cheers.

His attempts to rescind the measure supported by Vice President Liz Hathaway and members Kristi Schlatter and Ron Felger weren't successful.

...Dr. Matthew Sutter, the Allen County health commissioner, issued an advisory last week encouraging school boards to revise optional masking policies. He recommended universal masking in K-12 schools.

Some Indiana schools aren’t reporting COVID cases as pediatric hospitalizations spike

So if we don't report any COVID cases does that mean we don't have any?

From Chalkbeat*

More than 1,200 of Indiana’s nearly 2,200 schools are not reporting their COVID-19 cases to the state this school year, health officials said Friday, as positivity rates and hospitalizations for children rise across the state.

In a news conference, State Health Commissioner Kris Box emphasized that these schools are out of compliance with Indiana code, which requires institutions like schools to report cases of COVID-19 in group settings.

This helps the state determine the number of students who need to be quarantined in order to reduce transmission of the disease.

GETTING HISTORY WRONG

We know just enough history to get it wrong

Diane Ravitch reprised this post by Steve Hinnefeld. She commented, "Frankly, it’s astonishing to hear enemies of public health compare themselves to courageous fighters for justice and equality."

From School Matters

At a central Indiana school board meeting last week, an anti-mask parent said, “This is our Martin Luther King moment to say no,” a reporter tweeted. It wasn’t clear what he meant, but it seems unlikely King would have downplayed the seriousness of a virus that’s hit Black Americans especially hard.

At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King famously talked about his dream that someday his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Today, Republican legislators – in Texas and elsewhere – twist those words to try to prevent students from learning hard truths about America’s racial history, which they label “critical race theory.” They say that teaching about race is “divisive” and could make white children uncomfortable.

But Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t the person they make him out to have been. He engaged in repeated acts of nonviolent civil disobedience and was jailed 29 times. He spoke out against racism, poverty and violence. Three-fourths of the American public disapproved of him, especially after he brought his anti-racism campaign to the North and began speaking against the Vietnam War.

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

PA: The CRT Flap Continues To Metastasize

While the COVID-19 mask wars are going on, there's still the problem of the people who don't want to acknowledge the history of America. As Peter Greene shows in this Curmudgucation piece, school boards are hoping to soon be able to ban the teaching of anything they don't like.

From Curmudgucation

Clarion County, despite containing a state university, is a mighty conservative place. Back in March, the County Commissioners, for no particular reason, declared themselves a "Second Amendment County." Now, one of the county's school districts has let itself get played by the "critical race theory" flap.

Parents showed up to complain about the possibility of that race stuff sneaking into schools, supporting the board's newly-minted policy. The policy follows the usual template, borrowing language that is being used in these policies all across the country, such as

The teaching concepts which impute fault, blame, a tendency to oppress others, or the need to feel guilt or anguish for persons solely because of their skin color, race, sex, or religion are prohibited in the district as such concepts violate the principles of individual rights, equal opportunity, and individual merit underpinning our constitutional republic and therefore have no place in training for administrators, teachers, or other employees of the district

That same language was adopted by the Mars School District, located just a bit north of Pittsburgh (and in California, and Alabama, and so on...). While the basic policy seems to be getting copied and pasted all across the US, folks feel free to add some details as well. In Mars, there was an addition of patriotic patriotism ("We will teach our children to honor America..."

Because these policies also come with a built-in "This is totally not saying that teachers can't teach controversial stuff, but only, you know, factual stuff and only all sides presented," there's also a list of Stuff That Can't Be Taught.

Further, this policy shall ensure that Social Justice and unsubstantiated theories of any kind, including but not limited to Holocaust Denial Theory, 9/11 Theory, The 1610 Project, and Critical Race Theory, are not advocated or presented to students as part of any curriculum unless approved in advance by the board.

LEFTOVERS FROM LAST WEEK - GETTING TESTING WRONG

While colleges go test-optional, Indiana juniors prepare for a new SAT requirement

What constitutes a high enough score on the SAT for a student to graduate from high school? We don't know that information because passing scores -- cut scores which are arbitrary -- haven't been "determined" yet.

Tests do not represent what students have achieved in high school. Tests are a reflection of a student's family background more than their achievement. Colleges around the country are finally beginning to understand how tests are poor instruments in determining school success. Indiana should, too.

From Chalkbeat*

Under the new graduation framework, the state will meet its federal accountability requirements through the SAT, chosen for its utility to college-bound students, according to the architect of the changes, Rep. Bob Behning.

But students who don’t meet the still-undetermined benchmarks have other pathways to graduation, such as completing an approved apprenticeship or demonstrating proficiency on a military aptitude test.

The state Department of Education will determine passing score rates — or cut scores – next summer.

Preparations are already underway for students and teachers ahead of the March test date in schools and through a bootcamp run by Purdue University’s GEAR UP, a federally funded program designed to provide students a path to college.

The latter offered a bootcamp to about 500 Indiana teachers last month to train them to prepare students for the test.

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

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

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