In Case You Missed It – April 22, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Does 3.0 represent a serious shift for the organization? Not really. The fundamental message of M4L has always been the same-- public schools are scary and terrible and good God-fearing people should either take them over or abandon them. Parental rights (but not student rights)! As Chris Rufo, hot young culture panic agitator, told a Hillsdale College audience, 'To get universal school choice, you really need to operate from a place of universal school distrust.'" -- From Peter Greene in Moms For Liberty 3.0

MOMS FOR LIBERTY VERSION 3

Moms For Liberty 3.0

Moms for Liberty - yet another group of right-wing warriors who hate public education.

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

First, there was Moms For Liberty Beta, called the Florida Coalition of School Board Members. Then came the actual Moms For Liberty launch, a group of ladies who were upset about masking and school building closures. That gave way pretty quickly to M4L 2.0, the group that was all about banning naughty books and clamping down on LGBTA ideology (whatever that is).

M4L 2.0 cruised along pretty well for a while. But as more people came to understand what they were up to, their thin skins, their desire to tell other moms what children should be allowed to read. their intolerance-- well, opposition started to swell. And their last election round wasn't very impressive (we'll never know exactly how unimpressive because, perhaps already sensing that their brand was tarnished, they backed away from endorsing so many candidates). And their beloved Ron DeSantis had to slink home in humiliation and defeat. And they went on 60 Minutes and couldn't really explain the terrible alleged indoctrination they were crusading against.

Make way for version 3.0.

CHARTER AUTHORIZER SHOPPING

Charter school goes shopping

Steve Hinnefeld at School Matters writes about what happens when failing charter schools go shopping for an authorizer after being dropped by a previous authorizer...or two.

From School Matters

Trine University came to the rescue eight years ago when Thea Bowman Leadership Academy was in danger of losing its charter and being shut down.

Now Trine has revoked the Gary, Indiana, school’s charter, citing academic and governance issues. But another private institution, Calumet College of St. Joseph, has stepped up.

“It’s funny how things have come full circle,” said Lindsay Omlor, executive director of Education One, Trine’s charter-school-authorizing office.

Today’s topic is authorizer shopping, what happens when charter schools jump from one authorizer to another to stay open or find a better deal. Thea Bowman looks to be taking the practice to a new level. It now has its third authorizer in less than a decade.

CASHING IN ON THE SCIENCE OF READING LAWS

Jobs’ Reading Scam

Retired teacher and blogger Tom Ultican, writes that the science behind “the Science of Reading” movement is not very scientific. Publishers and vendors are preparing to cash in on legislative mandates that force reading teachers to use only one method to teach reading despite the lack of evidence for its efficacy. Ultican zeroes in on the role of billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs as one of the key players in promoting SofR.

From Tultican

Laurene Powell Jobs controls Amplify, a kids-at-screens education enterprise. In 2011, she became one of the wealthiest women in the world when her husband, Steve, died. This former Silicon Valley housewife displays the arrogance of wealth, infecting all billionaires. She is now a “philanthropist”, in pursuit of both her concerns and biases. Her care for the environment and climate change are admirable but her anti-public school thinking is a threat to America. Her company, Amplify, sells the antithesis of good education.

I am on Amplify’s mailing list. April third’s new message said,

“What if I told you there’s a way for 95% of your students to read at or near grade level? Maybe you’ve heard the term Science of Reading before, and have wondered what it is and why it matters.”

Spokesperson, Susan Lambert, goes on to disingenuously explain how the Science of Reading (SoR) “refers to the abundance of research illustrating the best way students learn to read.”

This whopper is followed by a bigger one, stating:

“A shift to a Science of Reading-based curriculum can help give every teacher and student what they need and guarantee literacy success in your school. Tennessee school districts did just that and they are seeing an abundant amount of success from their efforts.”

A shift to SoR-based curriculum is as likely to cause harm as it is to bring literacy success. This was just a used-car salesman style claim. On the other hand, the “abundance of success” in Tennessee is an unadulterated lie. National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tracks testing over time and is respected for education testing integrity. Tennessee’s NAEP data shows no success “from their efforts.” Their reading scores since 2013 have been down, not a lot but do not demonstrate an “abundance of success”.

EXHAUSTED SUPERHEROES

Too Much For Mere Mortals

Former classroom teacher Peter Greene knows that teachers are overworked. There are not enough hours in the day for them to meet all their obligations. What to do?

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

Being overworked is part of the gig, and some of us wear our ability to manage that workload as a badge of honor, like folks who are proud of surviving an initiation hazing and insist that the new recruits should suck it up and run the same gauntlet. On reflection, I must admit this may not be entirely healthy, especially considering the number of young teachers who blame themselves because they can't simply gut their way past having overloaded circuits.

There's also resistance because the "let's give teachers a break" argument is used by 1) vendors with "teacher-assisting" junk to sell and 2) folks who want to deprofessionalize teaching. That second group likes the notion of "teacher-proof" programs, curriculum in a box that can be delivered by any dope ("any dope" constitutes a large and therefor inexpensive labor pool).

We could lighten the teacher load, the argument goes, by reducing their agency and autonomy. Not in those exact words, of course. That would make it obvious why that approach isn't popular.

INDIANA TESTING: NEW ILEARN FORMAT

New ILEARN format will allow for more personalized learning for students

From The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

An estimated 1,200 Hoosier schools including those in the Fort Wayne Community and East Allen County districts will pilot a new ILEARN assessment format next school year. This adds three preparatory tests to be administered prior to the typical end-of-year exam.

Summative assessments are intended to collect data on student performance, pinpoint problem areas and spur improved educational programs. But Indiana’s low proficiency rates on standardized tests have been used by proponents of the state’s school voucher system to claim public schools are failing Hoosiers.

The new setup, which will be adopted statewide for the 2025-26 school year, moves away from that played-out game. Instead, the preparation tests are diagnostic, helping teachers and parents learn where students between grades 3 and 8 are performing academically throughout the year and could better prepare them for the spring summative exam.

Approved by the State Board of Education last summer, the three preparatory tests will contain 20 to 25 questions focusing on four to six state education standards and a shortened summative exam in the spring. The new ILEARN setup will help educators implement remediation and intervention, such as additional tutoring for students who require it, ahead of the end-of-year exam, said Education Secretary Katie Jenner.

**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 10, 2023

Here are links to the last two 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 best choice is your local public school. It welcomes everyone. It unifies community. It is the glue of democracy." -- Diane Ravitch

July 1 was Diane Ravitch's 85th birthday.

THE SUPREME COURT -- AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

U.S. Supreme Court Bans Affirmative Action in College Admissions. Will It Matter?

From Diane Ravitch

In a decision handed down today, the United States Supreme Court banned the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. The six conservative justices voted for the decision, the three moderate-liberal justices voted against it.

The media coverage stresses the likelihood that entrants to elite universities will become more Asian and more white, because of reliance on standardized tests, where those two groups typically have higher scores.

But we do not yet know how much it matters to eliminate official policies of affirmative action.

THE SUPREME COURT -- CHARTER SCHOOLS

Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Whether Charter Schools Are Public or Private

From Diane Ravitch

Matt Barnum, writing in Chalkbeat, reports that the U.S. Supreme Court declined today to rule on whether charter schools are public or private.

The case at hand was a charter school in North Carolina that required girls to wear certain types of clothing. If the school were deemed “public,” its rule would be considered discriminatory. If it were deemed “private,” the school could write its own rules about student dress.

So the question remains open, and the Court of Appeals ruling that the school could not discriminate remains in place.

THE ANTI-PUBLIC SCHOOL RIGHT WING

Politico: Republicans Flock to “Moms for Liberty” Event

From Diane Ravitch

Politico reported on the rising significance of “Moms for Liberty” among leading Republicans. “Moms” are known for their advocacy of censorship, book banning, and hatred for public schools.

BATTLE OF THE MOMS — Moms for Liberty is having a busy month...

How extremists ‘won by losing’

From School Matters

The John Birch Society was “the original Moms for Liberty,” as the headline on a recent episode of “Have You Heard” podcast puts it. Like the contemporary extremist group, it specialized in far-right rhetoric, conspiracy theories and bullying tactics. It appealed to a small but passionate group of true believers.

But there’s one big difference. The Birch Society, in its heyday of the late 1950s and ‘60s, was almost universally considered a fringe group. The news media marginalized it. Popular entertainers mocked it. Republicans, even many conservative Republicans, kept their distance.

Today, by contrast, Republican officeholders and candidates trip over themselves to appeal to Moms for Liberty and similar groups, like Indiana-based Purple for Parents. Indiana legislators fell in line with their agenda of attacking so-called critical race theory, diversity education, and LGBTQ+ youth. Lawmakers banned state funding for Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute based on disproven right-wing claims.

INDIANA -- NEW LAWS

Indiana: More Laws to Stifle Freedom of Thought and Democracy

From Diane Ravitch

These are some of the new Indiana laws that will take effect on Saturday. [Indiana is run by the GOP and they have NO respect for public schools or teachers.] Gary is a poverty area and they cannot vote for their school board members. 87% of Hoosier children attend public schools and they are continuously underfunded.

Book bans — Every public school board and charter school governing body is required to establish a procedure for the parent of any student, or any person residing in the school district, to request the removal of library materials deemed “obscene” or “harmful to minors.” School districts must also post a list of the complete holdings of its school libraries on each school’s website and provide a printed copy of the library catalogue to any individual upon request. (HEA 1447)

Charter schools...

Gary schools...

INDIANA -- EDUCATION DASHBOARD

New Indiana education dashboard data sheds light on student performance, teacher retention

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

An updated education data dashboard released this month by the Fairbanks Foundation shows declining teacher retention across Indiana, as well as increases to student suspensions and expulsions, among other trends. For the first time, the Community Data Snapshot additionally displays academic outcomes and workforce readiness information for Marion County on a school-by-school basis. Users can then sort that data by race, ethnicity and family economic status and other characteristics. The updated dashboard allows users to explore data by school corporation and compare metrics across school types, including by each district, public charter, Innovation Network, and private school — a feature not available through other online dashboards.

THE READING WARS

Rcharvet: How I Taught My Students to Love Reading

From Diane Ravitch

Rcharvet, a retired teacher and regular commenter here, explains how the pedagogy of the Common Core taught his students to dislike reading. They were supposed to read excerpts of books, not a complete book. They were expected to analyze the meaning of words and sentences instead of following the narrative of the story. Mr. Charvet became a subversive. He explains here.

...When I taught reading, I would read out loud so kids would HEAR the characters voices (yes I did the voices as well). For struggling readers they typically move through a sentence like they are walking on glass. But, we worked together.

One book that we started was “The Pig Man.” It started out slow (geez I was slow) but started liking the book to the point kids were saying, “Can we read The Pig Man and find out what happened?” They felt the words. They connected to the characters. We could ask questions like, “If you were Tommy what would you do in this case? What should the Pig Man do about the broken statue?” Then because I was making a connection to the book and trying to follow the curriculum I was deemed “moving too slow” and the department head said, “Just collect all the books and move on.”

What did I know?

Tom Ultican: “The Right to Read” is Horse Manure

Ultican shows the graphs of NAEP scores over the past thirty years: reading scores have been unchanged for 30 years. The rhetoric about “the crisis in reading” is a hoax.

From Diane Ravitch

In this illuminating post, Ultican analyzes a documentary called “The Right to Read,” which he compares to the propaganda film “Waiting for Superman.” Behind the film, he writes, is the whole apparatus of the corporate reform movement, armed with derogatory claims about public schools and a simplistic cure for literacy.

He begins:

The new 80-minute video “The Right to Read”was created in the spirit of “Waiting for Superman.” It uses false data interpretations to make phony claims about a non-existent reading crisis. Oakland’s NAACP 2nd Vice President Kareem Weaver narrates the film. Weaver is a full throated advocate for the Science of Reading (SoR) and has many connections with oligarch financed education agendas...

...One of the first media interviews about “The Right to Read” appeared on KTVX channel 4 in Salt Lake City. Ben Heuston from the Waterford Institute answered questions about the new film and the supposed “reading crisis” in American public schools. Heuston who has a PhD in psychology from Brigham Young University claimed that two-thirds of primary grade students in America read below grade level. That is a lie. He is conflating proficiency in reading on the National Assessment of Education Performance (NAEP) with grade level and should know better.

MICHIGAN SUPPORTS PUBLIC EDUCATION

Michigan Passes Historic Increases for Education

From Diane Ravitch

It’s amazing to see what a state education budget can look like when you have pro-education legislators in charge–and teachers chairing the House and Senate Education Committees and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on PreK-12.

The budget includes:

•universal school meals

•foundation allowance increase of 5% — the largest in state history

•fully funded special education programs

•expanded Pre-K programs

•student teacher stipends for K-12

...Budgets are about more than dollars—they are moral documents; and in Michigan we are showing that we value our children, our families, and our future...

NAEP TESTING

John Thompson: The Misinterpretation of NAEP Data

From Diane Ravitch

John Thompson writes here about the negative consequences of shallow reporting on NAEP data. Reporters are sensitive to whether scores are up or down, but tend to ignore contextual factors that may play a role in student performance.

He writes:

Despite the problems with education metrics, the decline in the nation’s 2022 math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test is worrisome – if we look at the big picture.

As Diane Ravitch explained, the decline in scores during the pandemic was a “duh” moment. Rather than publishing panicky headlines, these predictable drops in scores should be seen in the broader context of the decade of declines which followed the implementation of rushed and simplistic corporate school reforms. And, as we should have done previously, we must acknowledge what reformers should have previously understood – meaningful increases in learning require inter-connected, holistic team efforts, as opposed to metric-driven instructional shortcuts.

^†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 – November 7, 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

TUESDAY IS ELECTION DAY. BE SURE YOU CAST YOUR VOTE FOR CANDIDATES WHO SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION.

Charters and NAEP scores are in the news this week. Plus NACS is growing and needs to plan for the future.

CHARTER "VULTURE" IS "CIRCLING" IPS SCHOOL

Indianapolis charter school announces intent to acquire IPS school building if it closes

The image of this charter school as a “vulture circling” comes to mind. Don’t forget that it’s our legislators who are turning our public schools into “roadkill.” Time to vote for people who respect our public schools that serve all students without discriminating.

The charter school is in the same neighborhood as the public school. Were there enough students for another school in that neighborhood? What kept the public school from improving its program? Could it have been a lack of funding caused by a drain on public funds by charters and vouchers?

From Chalkbeat*

A charter school within Indianapolis Public Schools borders is hoping to acquire Paul Miller Elementary School 114 if the school board approves its closure next month.

Victory College Prep, a K-12 school just half a mile from School 114, hopes to use the property to accommodate its growing enrollment.

“The Paul Miller property is just two city blocks from the VCP campus — and annually, in recent years, we’ve welcomed a growing number of Paul Miller transfer students into our VCP classrooms,” Ryan Gall, the school’s executive director, told the board on Thursday.

The district’s Rebuilding Stronger plan — an attempt to address declining enrollment amid charter school growth — would leave multiple school buildings open for charter schools to potentially occupy. Victory College Prep is the first to publicly announce its intentions to acquire such a building.

State law allows charter schools to lease or acquire empty school buildings for $1.

PUBLIC FUNDS, AND PUBLIC OVERSIGHT, FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Preston Green: Charter Schools Must Be Regulated

Charter schools use public funds. They should have public oversight.

From Diane Ravitch

Preston Green, Ed.D, is the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the University of Connecticut. He delivered these remarks as part of the Graduate Schools of Education’s annual Barbara L. Jackson, Ed.D., lecture. Green is a specialist on the subject of education and the law. He warned that charter schools without sufficient oversight may actually threaten students’ civil rights. For the protection of students, charter schools must be regulated by government.

DON'T STRESS ABOUT NAEP SCORES

Jan Resseger: Don’t Get Stressed About the NAEP Scores

Diane Ravitch asks some good questions about our obsession with testing. Why should we expect this year's fourth graders to do better than last year's fourth graders? Do we have realistic expectations? Click to read the article.

From Diane Ravitch

Since the two sets of NAEP scores were released recently, commentators have gone into a panic about “learning loss” and used the declines to promote their favorite reform: more of this, less of that. DeSantis even released a press release claiming falsely that Florida’s formula of ignoring the pandemic was just right (California stuck with the CDC guidelines and did at least as well, maybe better, than Florida, but Gavin Newsom did not issue a press release).

Jan Resseger has words of perspective that I sum up as: why are we surprised that learning was disrupted by the pandemic?

My question, having served on the NAEP board for seven years, is why the media and the reform crowd thinks that NAEP scores should go up every year? Why should fourth and eighth graders this year know more than fourth and eighth graders two years ago or four years ago? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that students of the same age and grade are likely to have the same scores? Yet if they do, the media sends out loud lamentations that scores are “flat.” Oh, woe! Surely we want to see a rise in the scores of the lowest scoring students, and a narrowing of gaps, but the media assumes that everyone must increase their scores or the education system is failing. This is nuts...

NACS FOCUS SHOULD BE ON MIDDLE SCHOOLS

Northwest Allen County Schools told to prioritize middle schools with enrollment forecast

NACS is growing.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

With Northwest Allen County Schools’ enrollment forecasted to increase by more than 800 students in the next decade, a demographer recommends the middle and high schools get top priority...

McKibben’s forecast shows NACS will have 8,996 students in the 2032-33 academic year. That’s 859 more students than it has now, he said, and most of that forecasted growth will happen in the next five years...

McKibben said a few primary factors are driving growth in NACS: the sustained rate of new home construction and the relatively high number of elderly housing units turning over coupled with a steady rate of young families moving into the district.

Future NACS boards must address the middle schools. The two buildings are full now, he said, and enrollment for grades six, seven and eight is forecasted to climb to nearly 2,200 students, from about 1,950.

*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 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 31, 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

BE SURE TO VOTE. VOTE EARLY. VOTE FOR CANDIDATES WHO SUPPORT PUBLIC EDUCATION. VOTE!

This week we cover the latest NAEP scores and the pandemic's impact on student achievement. We also look at the teacher exodus, charter schools, and a particular student mural in Michigan that has parents losing their minds.

THE NATION'S REPORT CARD -- PANIC!

New NAEP scores have been released and, as expected, the pandemic had an impact on the results. Before you read the three articles below, it might help to take a refresher course on what the levels Basic, Proficient, and Advanced actually mean. Tom Loveless wrote an article back in 2016 that's still one of the best explanations of why low Proficiency on the NAEP should not cause widespread panic.

The NAEP proficiency myth

NAEP does not report the percentage of students performing at grade level. NAEP reports the percentage of students reaching a “proficient” level of performance. Here’s the problem. That’s not grade level.

In this post, I hope to convince readers of two things:

1. Proficient on NAEP does not mean grade level performance. It’s significantly above that.
2. Using NAEP’s proficient level as a basis for education policy is a bad idea.

Proficient on NAEP is not grade level. It's "significantly above that." NAEP agrees [emphasis added]...

NAEP achievement levels are performance standards that describe what students should know and be able to do...Students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level on NAEP assessments demonstrate solid academic performance and competency over challenging subject matter. It should be noted that the NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments).

It's true that students scored lower this year than in past years, but when you read in Chalkbeat, below, that only a third of fourth graders scored at or above the Proficient achievement level in reading, that does not mean that two-thirds of Indiana's fourth-graders are reading below grade level.

Can we do better? We hope so, but we don't need to panic.

NAEP Scores Confirm that COVID Disrupted Schooling; They Do Not Reflect a Downward Trajectory in School Achievement

Jan Resseger suggests that the test scores are a benchmark of where we were during the pandemic.

From Jan Resseger

There is no cause for panic. Schooling was utterly disrupted for the nation’s children and adolescents, just as all of our lives were interrupted in so many immeasurable ways. During COVID, while some of us have experienced the catastrophic death of loved ones, all of us have experienced less definable losses—things we cannot name.

I think this year’s NAEP scores—considerably lower than pre-pandemic scores—should be understood as a marker that helps us define the magnitude of the disruption for our children during this time of COVID. The losses are academic, emotional, and social, and they all make learning harder.

Schools shut down and began remote instruction in the spring of 2020, and many stayed online through the first half of last school year. While most public schools were up and running by last spring, there have been a lot of problems—with more absences, fighting and disruption, and overwhelming stress for educators. It is clear from the disparities in the scores released last week among high and low achievers that the disruption meant very different things to different children. It is also evident that the pandemic was a jolting shock to our society’s largest civic institution. It should be no surprise, then, that the attempt to get school back on track was so rocky all through last spring…

While the NAEP is traditionally used to gauge the trajectory of overall educational achievement over time, and while the trajectory has been moderately positive over the decades, the results released last week cannot by any means be interpreted to mean a change of the overall direction of educational achievement.

Indiana’s NAEP scores show biggest decline in math as leaders weigh COVID’s fallout

To their credit, Chalkbeat does mention somewhere buried in the article, that "the bar for achieving proficiency on NAEP tests is generally higher than it is for state exams." Perhaps we would have been better served by Chalkbeat if they had given us data on the percentage of students who scored Basic or above.

From Chalkbeat*

Indiana students’ math and reading scores on “the nation’s report card” declined from pre-pandemic results, with the state’s average math scores declining the most.

Scores released Monday from the most recent National Assessment Educational Progress — or NAEP — showed that 33% of fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders were proficient or better in reading, while 40% of fourth graders and 30% of eighth graders were proficient or better in math.

Those proficiency rates were lower than in 2019 except in fourth grade reading, where the rates are statistically about the same as in 2019.

Indiana’s average reading scores were around the national average this year, and math scores were higher than the national average scores.

Your All-Purpose NAEP News Release

From Curmudgucation

As always, the main lesson of NAEP is that contrary to the expectations of so many policy wonks, cold hard data does not actually solve a thing.

The NAEP remains a data-rich Rorschach test that tells us far more about the people interpreting the data than it does about the people from whom the data was collected. Button up your overcoat, prepare for greater-than-usual pearl-clutching and solution-pitching from all the folks who still think the pandemic shutdown is a great opportunity to do [whatever it is they have already been trying to do].

KEEP EXPERIENCED TEACHERS IN THE CLASSROOM

The Teacher Exodus Continues Whether You Care or Not

Reformers are working hard to privatize all education. One of their goals is to remove those pesky professionals (who actually know something about teaching, learning, and child development) from the schools.

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Remember when federal, state and local governments actually seemed poised to do something about the great teacher exodus plaguing our schools?

With an influx of money earmarked to help schools recover from the pandemic, many expected pay raises and bonuses to keep experienced teachers in the classroom.

Ha! That didn’t happen!

Not in most places.

In fact, the very idea seems ludicrous now – and this was being discussed like it was a foregone conclusion just a few months ago at the beginning of the summer.

So what happened?

We found a cheaper way.

Just cut requirements to become a teacher.

Get more college students to enter the field even if they’re bound to run away screaming after a few years in.

It doesn’t matter – as long as we can keep them coming.

The young and dumb.

Or the old and out of options.

Entice retired teachers to come back and sub. Remove hurdles for anyone from a non-teaching field to step in and become a teacher – even military veterans because there’s so much overlap between battlefield experience and second grade reading.

And in the meantime, more and more classroom teachers with decades of experience under their belts are throwing up their hands and leaving.

Stop and think for a moment.

This is fundamentally absurd.

END SUPPORT FOR CHARTER SCHOOLS

Arthur Camins: Democrats, It’s Time to Give Up on Charter Schools

"Are you listening, Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey, Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and other charter allies?"

From Diane Ravitch

It is time for Democrats–voters and the politicians who represent them–to abandon charter schools as a strategy for education improvement or to advance equity. Charter schools, whether for- or non-profit, drain funds from public schools that serve all students, increase segregation, and by design only serve the few. Continuation of tax generated funds for charter schools, all of which are privately governed, support the current broader assault on democracy. That should not be the way forward for democracy loving Democrats. In addition, public support for private alternatives to public education suborns the lie that government cannot be the agency for solving problems.

The United States is tilting sharply toward, if not rushing headlong into, a less equitable, less democratic, more authoritarian, more racially divided, and meaner way of governing and living together. Out-for-youselfism is alarmingly rampant. Sadly, continued bipartisan state and federal support for charter schools that pit parents against one another for limited student slots reflects those tendencies.

CULTURE WARS

Michigan: Parents Go Bonkers Over Mural in School

The education right wing can't seem to tolerate tolerance.

From Diane Ravitch

Thanks to Christine Langhoff for sharing this horrifying video.

It shows parents at Grant Middle School in Grant, Michigan, demanding the removal of a mural painted by a high school student. The mural was meant to make all students feel welcome.

But parents saw frightening symbols in it, such as a T-shirt that was a trans symbol, another that was a gay symbol, others graphics that were allegedly demonic or Satanic.

A high school student's mural angers parents over what they say are hidden messages

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

^†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 12, 2022

Here are links to articles from the last two weeks^† that received 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 ISSUE OF ICYMI

"The Nation's Report Card" supports the need for teachers in the classroom. Charters continue to spread in Indianapolis and more Indiana high school students can earn college credits.

We start with two articles about the importance of public education...

DO WE NEED PUBLIC EDUCATION?

Are Schools A Waste Of Time And Money? Only If You Have A Time Machine.

From Peter Greene in Forbes

As part of a New York Times series of essays headed “What is school for,” economist Dr. Bryan Caplan suggested that “school is for wasting time and money,” a case that he has made before in a 2019 book entitled The Case Against Education.

His main argument in the NYT essay boils down to, “people don’t remember most of the academic material they learned in school.” There are three problems with his argument— problems that are shared by some other critics of schooling.

First, the argument that adults don’t remember much of what they learned in school (a version of the student complaint “When will we ever use this stuff”) is that it requires the use of a time machine to buttress a kind of retroactive utility.

In Game 6 of the 2021 World series, the Atlanta Braves won 7-0 over the Houston Astros. Those runs were scored in the 3rd, 5th and 7th innings. So, clearly, the time spent letting the Astros bat was wasted, nor was there any need to play any of the other innings in which nobody scored. It was, an economist might argue, a waste of time and money to play all those parts of the game that did not obviously affect the final outcome.

The problem, of course, is that we only know which parts of the game affect the outcome when the game has been played. It’s easy to say of students “that only a tiny fraction of what they learn durably stays in their heads.” Even if that is true (and I have some questions about how well we can measure what “durably stays”), it is impossible to know what that tiny fraction will include before the fact.

Anya Kamenetz: The Attack on Horace Mann’s Historic Vision of Public Schooling

NPR education reporter, Anya Kamenetz, wrote this for the New York Times. She explains why our democracy needs public schools.

From Diane Ravitch

For the majority of human history, most people didn’t go to school. Formal education was a privilege for the Alexander the Greats of the world, who could hire Aristotles as private tutors.

Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States began to establish truly universal, compulsory education. It was a social compact: The state provides public schools that are free and open to all. And children, for most of their childhood, are required to receive an education. Today, nine out of 10 do so in public schools.

To an astonishing degree, one person, Horace Mann, the nation’s first state secretary of education, forged this reciprocal commitment. The Constitution doesn’t mention education. In Southern colonies, rich white children had tutors or were sent overseas to learn. Teaching enslaved people to read was outlawed. Those who learned did so by luck, in defiance or in secret.

YOUR RELIGIOUS BELIEFS SHOULD NOT AFFECT MY CHILD’S EDUCATION

Mom in Texas Shuts Down Extremists and Joins the Honor Roll

A mom in Texas stands up to those who are bringing the culture wars to school board meetings.

From Diane Ravitch

“We know that books are continuing to be purged. We know student library aides have been banned. We know that a group of non-parents have pushed for these removals and continue to do so,” she began. “So, being a taxpayer does not grant special privileges over students, staff, and parents. I do not want random people with no education background or experience determining what books my child can read, what curriculum they learn, and what clubs they can join.”

“Just because you can get up at every meeting and rant and rave does not give you authority over my child’s education.”

“Your personal religious beliefs, people in this room and on this board, should not have an effect on my child’s education either. Our school are not to be used for personal political agendas and our children are here for education, not religious indoctrination,” she told the room as she looked various board members and attendees directly in the eye.

TEST SCORES AND THE PANDEMIC

Why NAEP Scores Plummeted During Pandemic

For a while during the pandemic, teachers were heroes. They adapted to online teaching. They worked hard to learn new techniques and to try to meet the needs of their students while avoiding illness. Now, when the already misused standardized tests show that students didn't learn as well virtually, teachers are being blamed. There doesn't seem to be any acceptance that teachers weren't to blame for the pandemic, or for the state-wide responses and requirements. Why can't teachers work miracles?

From Diane Ravitch

...students need to have human contact with a teacher and classmates to learn best. Virtual learning is a fourth-rate substitute for a real teacher and interaction with peers.

Tech companies have told us for years that we should reinvent education by replacing teachers with computers. We now know: Virtual learning is a disaster.

The crisis we should worry about most is the loss of experienced teachers, who quit because of poor working conditions, low pay, and attacks by “reformers” who blame teachers at every opportunity.

CHARTERS SPREAD IN INDY

Two charter schools seek to enter Pike Township, which has no charters

Whenever charter schools startup it's always good to ask several questions.

• Does the location need more schools?
• Are there enough students to support another school?
• Are the public schools fully funded?
• Does the local school board have any control over the new schools?

Indianapolis is falling into the charter school trap which has failed miserably elsewhere.

Privatization continues...

From Chalkbeat-Indiana*

Two charter high schools within Indianapolis Public Schools boundaries are hoping to expand to Pike Township, an area that currently has no charter schools.

Purdue Polytechnic High School, the growing charter school that opened its second Indianapolis campus inside Broad Ripple High school this year, hopes to open a third Indianapolis high school in August 2023, according to a letter of intent submitted to the mayor’s Office of Education Innovation (OEI). The office authorizes charter schools in Indianapolis that are approved by the Indianapolis Charter School Board.

Believe Schools, which operates Believe Circle City High School in the Crown Hill neighborhood, also hopes to open Believe: Pike Academy in August 2024.

Both schools hope their expansion into Pike Township will help serve students of color. They would become the only physical charter schools in Pike Township if approved by the Indianapolis Charter School Board. The Indiana Charter School Authority and OEI, which oversee nearly all of the charter schools in Marion County, have not previously authorized charters in Pike.

COLLEGE CORE EXPANDS

College Core expands to 141 schools

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Access to a program that lets students earn up to a year of college credits while in high school has expanded by 57 schools, including five in northeast Indiana, state education officials said Wednesday.

This brings the total number of schools offering the Indiana College Core to 141, a 68% increase, according to a news release from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education and the Indiana Department of Education.

"As we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the core, high schools and higher education providers have now come together like never before to expand access to this incredible opportunity for our students," said Katie Jenner, Indiana secretary of education.

*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 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 – April 19, 2021

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

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

TO OUR READERS

If you follow this blog by email...

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

INDIANA: MARCHING TOWARDS PRIVATIZATION

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

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

From Chalkbeat*

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

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

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

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

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

Senate approves 2-year budget

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

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

SOME NACS PARENTS DOUBT THE SCIENCE

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

Mask discussion goes on at NACS

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outside school called riskier for kids than class

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

child PNG Designed By 588ku from Pngtree.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cardona’s Flexibility on Standardized Testing Creates Confusion and Rancor

From Jan Resseger

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

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

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

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

From Peter Greene in Forbes

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

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

They can’t have it.

Yong Zhao and William McDiarmid: Time to Rethink Standardized Testing

From Diane Ravitch

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

REFORM

John Thompson: How Corporate Reform Devastated My School

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

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

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

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