In Case You Missed It – December 23, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

OHIO STATE SENATOR PUSHES TEST-AND-PUNISH

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

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

From Jan Resseger

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

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

MORE LEGISLATIVE INTERFERENCE

Federal Anti-Commie Education Bill

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

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

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

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

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

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

NO TEACHERS NEED APPLY

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

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

From KJZZ Phoenix

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

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

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

STUDENT LOANS

Biden Announces $4.28 Billion in Student Loan Forgiveness

Help for those with student loan debt.

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

PAYING FOR EDUCATION IN INDIANA

Public schools remain on hook for book, curricula fees

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

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

CREEPING CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

The Religious Right Is Plotting How To Get Christianity Into Schools

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

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

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

From Nathalie Baptiste in Huffpost

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

GET A SECOND OPINION

Trump Questions Need for School Vaccines

Experts, not politicians, should determine medical policy.

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – December 9, 2024

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

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

POLITICS

Heather Cox Richardson: Eliminating the Department of Education?

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

From Diane Ravitch

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

What Trump 2.0 Could Mean for Public Education

From the Texas Observer

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

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

From Jan Resseger

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

Public Education: The Bully and the Dream

From Teacher in a Strange Land

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

INDIANA NEWS

Braun education panel lacks educators

From School Matters

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

It includes no teachers.

Indiana charter group to push for property tax revenue sharing

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

OHIO NEWS

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

From Jan Resseger

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

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

From Ohio Capital Journal

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

POST SECONDARY EDUCATION

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

From Diane Ravitch

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

LET TEACHERS TEACH

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

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – July 29, 2024

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

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


QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

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

FOR THE PUBLIC GOOD

Project 2025, Public Education And The Public Good

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

From Sheila Kennedy

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

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

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

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

DEFEAT VOUCHERS

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

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

INVEST IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Ohio Charter Schools Still Struggle

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

From Stephen Dyer at 10th Period Substack

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

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

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

Need proof?

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

INDIANA GRADUATION

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

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

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

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

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

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

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

LOCAL NEWS

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

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

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

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

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

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

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

JOIN US

An Evening with Jennifer McCormick

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

Click HERE to register for the September 25th event:








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

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

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In Case You Missed It – December 5, 2022

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 to be informed when our blog posts are published.

THIS WEEK

This week we start with politics.

Since public education is paid for with tax money, it has frequently been used as a political football by politicians. This has become even more pronounced since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Our political discussions today range from bashing teachers' unions to the conspiracy theories promoted by right-wing pressure groups.

Other topics covered in today's posts are testing and vouchers.

POLITICS

Teacher: Why I Quit

After Teaching For 11 Years, I Quit My Job. Here's Why Your Child's Teacher Might Be Next.

There's a teacher shortage in the U.S.

Peter Greene describes it as "a slow-motion walkout, an open-ended strike that's hard to see because teachers are walking off the job one at a time." The pressures of teaching coupled with the last few years dealing with COVID, followed by the political backlash against masking, the conspiracies of "grooming," CRT, book banning, and the like, have created a perfect storm. Would you continue to work in an industry in which politicians, the media, and even your patrons bullied you, called you names, and threatened you?

Not to mention the almost daily incidents of school violence...and the lack of political will to control firearms in our society.

From Huffpost

...there is currently a full-blown cultural war against teachers (and counselors and school board members). It’s not a coincidence that the anti-teacher narrative has grown in tandem with the push for “universal school choice.” The corporate education reform movement is far from organic. The people pulling the strings (and providing the dark money) have a very specific ulterior motive: to discredit the public school system so they can completely privatize education. Ironically, their “indoctrination” accusations and efforts to restrict educators’ professional autonomy are actually in service of their own goals to censor what students learn and gradually eliminate the separation of church and state. If you think I’m exaggerating, read this.

This movement is not democratic. Proponents want to consolidate power over the education system among an even smaller group of decision-makers with different priorities from most Americans. Currently, decisions about how to operate schools are made by school boards composed of district residents — usually elected by other district residents — who, at least in theory, have students’ and communities’ best interests at heart. But when public institutions become vehicles for profit and political influence, shareholders do not historically prioritize the common good.

Thank You, Teachers

Dan Rather: Thank You, Teachers

We'll try to ease the pain of the above post with Dan Rather's thank you to teachers for their work.

From Diane Ravitch

“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called ‘truth.’”

I believe every word of it. These aren’t empty sentiments. They come from my lived history. A while back here on Steady, I shared my own experiences as a student of public schools, including an emotional return to my elementary school in Houston.

For all the challenges our schools face, right now millions of children are learning about the world and themselves thanks to dedicated teachers. Teachers are going the extra mile, reaching out to kids in need, tweaking lesson plans to include new insights, passing their own inspirations to the young people before them.

The work is not easy — far from it. And it can be an incredible grind, especially when it seems that society doesn’t value it or is even outright hostile to teachers. With this as a backdrop, it is understandable that many are choosing to leave the profession. This is not a reflection on them, but rather on the nation that is allowing it to happen.

Moms for Liberty? Moms Against Public Education!

Mercedes Schneider on “Moms for Liberty” Takeover of Local School Board: Let the Litigation Begin!

The radical right wing in the United States understands that "all politics is local." Aside from anti-public education legislation from state legislatures, a place to begin their effort to destroy public education is the local school board. Supporters of public education must organize to defeat them at the polls.

From Diane Ravitch

Mercedes Schneider describes the arbitrary and capricious actions of the Berkeley School Board in South Carolina. “Moms for Liberty” won control of the board in the recent election. At its first meeting, it fired the superintendent and the board’s attorney and immediately replaced them.

I posted a report previously about this extremist takeover, written by Paul Bowers, a journalist in South Carolina who attended the tumultuous meeting.

She points out that the superintendent had been rated “proficient” unanimously by the previous board only a month earlier.

Politicians Jockeying for Position

Pompeo: Randi Weingarten Is “the Most Dangerous Person in the World”

Mike Pompeo is testing the waters for a presidential run in 2024 by bashing teachers' unions. He claims that the most dangerous person in the world is a teachers union president.

From Diane Ravitch

Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just proved that he is the stupidest person in the world. He said in an interview that Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, is “the most dangerous person in the world.”

More dangerous than the President of China, Xi Jinping, who is threatening the survival of Taiwan and re-imposing a repressive regime across China.

More dangerous than President Kim, the dictator of North Korea, who is threatening South Korea and the rest of the world, with his intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons.

More dangerous than Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who is trying to destroy the people of Ukraine by destroying their access to heat, light, and water as winter begins,in addition to raining deadly missiles on them.

No, Pompeo says, Randi is “the most dangerous person in the world.”

Why? Because she leads a teachers’ unions, and unions are evil.

Florida: School Boards Endorsed by DeSantis Begin Firing Superintendents

Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis has been working overtime to damage his state's public schools.

From Diane Ravitch

Have you ever heard of a state governor endorsing candidates in local school board elections?

At the last election, DeSantis endorsed 73 local school board candidates who share his hard-right views. More than half won. Most of the same candidates were endorsed by the fringe group “Moms for Liberty.” Where the DeSantis candidates won a majority, they wasted no time in firing the superintendent. Teachers in DeSantis-led counties must be very careful in teaching about race, racism, gender, American history or anything likely to offend the ideologues who control the board.

Politico reported on the swift actions taken by DeSantis-endorsed school boards:

Florida: Why Does Governor DeSantis Appoint Local School Board Members?

From Diane Ravitch

In one county, his appointees fired the district superintendent and school board attorney at their first public meeting.

Just days ago, he appointed a campaign donor to the Miami-Dade school board.

TESTING

LOL, We Already Knew It

Grumpy old teacher explains that we already knew that state testing was a waste of time and money.

From Grumpy Old Teacher

...the teacher was told that the state did not report data (test results) by benchmark and the district did not allow teachers to review questions with students and analyze why students chose wrong answers; therefore, a third test was needed so teachers could look at the questions, go over them with students, and look at what wrong answer was most often chosen and why it was wrong.

Reread that paragraph carefully. Ha, ha, ha, did a district employee just admit what we always knew?! That state and district tests have little value for the classroom teacher. Their tests tell us nothing except that our schools no longer focus on what students need. It’s about the data. Students are nothing more than dogs running around a track for the bettors and the house who sets the odds so that it always wins.

VOUCHERS

School Vouchers Don’t Increase Academics; They Increase Bigotry

Vouchers don't work...other than to divert public tax dollars from public schools to private and religious schools.

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Let’s be honest.

At best, school vouchers are a failed education policy experiment.

At worst, they’re an attempt to normalize bigotry.

Using taxpayer money to send your child to a private or parochial school has got nothing to do with getting a quality education.

If we look at the facts, using a school voucher to go from a public school to a private one actually hurts kids academically.

Large-scale independent studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show that students who used vouchers were as negatively impacted as if they had experienced a natural disaster. Their standardized test scores went down as much or more than students during the Covid-19 pandemic or Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

This should come as no surprise. When we give children school vouchers, we’re removing their support systems already in place.

They lose the friends, teachers, and communities where they grew up. It’s like yanking a sapling from out of the ground and transplanting it to another climate with another type of soil which may not be suited to it at all.

Vouchers have nothing to do with helping kids escape struggling public schools.

VOUCHERS: OHIO

Even with a Gerrymandered, Voucher-Supporting Legislature, Ohio Advocates Will Keep on Pushing for a Strong System of Public Education

Ohio finds itself where Indiana has been for more than a decade -- in the grip of an anti-public education supermajority in the state legislature.

From Jan Resseger

After the November election, we woke up in Ohio to a troubling political reality. We have only one remaining Democratic official elected statewide—U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, who now begins the final two years of a six year term. Our state is highly gerrymandered, and all the people elected to run our state government, from Governor Mike DeWine on down, are Republicans—most of them increasingly conservative. Republicans now hold a 26-7 supermajority in the Ohio Senate and a 68-31 supermajority in the Ohio House of Representatives.

Although the term-limited, outgoing House Speaker, Bob Cupp lowered himself by joining Senate President Matt Huffman to create illegal (and implemented nonetheless) gerrymandered legislative and Congressional districts for the November, 2022 election, Cupp’s biography summarizes a complex and nuanced political career: “Speaker Bob Cupp is serving his fourth term in the Ohio House of Representatives. He has served as an elected official in all three branches of government and at both the local and state levels: as an Allen County commissioner, a four-term state senator, a court-of-appeals judge, and a justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio.” Extremely knowledgeable about public school finance, Cupp led a several-years-long commission to design a new Fair School Funding Plan and sponsored the legislation as part of the FY22-23 state budget.

Here, however, is the Columbus Dispatch‘s Anna Staver describing Cupp’s replacement, Derek Merrin, who was just elected by his peers to become House Speaker in January: “A 36-year-old realtor and real estate investor who launched his political career before he could legally drink is about to become one of the most powerful lawmakers in Ohio… Merrin told reporters… that he plans to push a ‘bold conservative agenda’ in the next General Assembly… Merrin helped shepherd the 2019 ‘heartbeat bill’ through the House Health Committee where he served as chairman… When the next two-year legislative session gets underway, the leaders of both the Ohio House and Senate will be strong supporters of expanding school choice. Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, is known around the statehouse as the school voucher guy, and Merrin co-sponsored ‘the backpack bill.’ That’s a plan by House Republicans to make every K-12 student in Ohio eligible for a tuition voucher for private school. ‘Speaker-elect Merrin has been a strong supporter of funding students, not systems,’ Center for Christian Virtue President Aaron Baer said. Baer worked closely with lawmakers on House Bill 290, (the Backpack Bill) which was introduced more than a year ago.”

Senate President Matt Huffman has been shamelessly willing to brag about the power his gerrymandered, Republican supermajority grants him. Last spring, he told reporter Anna Staver: “We can kind of do what we want.”

^†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 24, 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

A judge in Mississippi understands that public funds shouldn't be spent on private, religious schools.

Memphis, Tennessee school board rejects two new charters.

Jan Resseger (as promoted by Diane Ravitch) argues against third-grade retention laws.

And a middle school teacher wonders why we don't care enough about children to protect them from gun violence.

UNLIKE INDIANA, MISSISSIPPI JUDGE RULES AGAINST VOUCHERS

Mississippi: Judge Rules Against Using Public Funds for Private Schools

A decade ago, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that state tax money, in the form of vouchers, can be spent at religious institutions despite Article I, Section 4, and Section 6, of the Indiana Constitution...

Section 4. No preference shall be given, by law, to any creed, religious society, or mode of worship; and no person shall be compelled to attend, erect, or support, any place of worship, or to maintain any ministry, against his consent.

Section 6: No money shall be drawn from the treasury, for the benefit of any religious or theological institution.

The money used for school vouchers in Indiana belongs to the public schools and is diverted to mostly Christian, religious schools. Apparently, even Mississippi knows better.

From Diane Ravitch

Here is good news. The politicians in Mississippi tried to divert public funds to benefit private schools. This is taking from the poor and middle-class to benefit the children of the affluent. The judge said no. In most red states, state judges have repeatedly ruled that state constitutions are invalid when it comes to funding private and religious schools. All state constitutions require that public funds are for public schools. Mississippi is lucky to have a judge who ruled that the state constitution means what it says.

CHARTER SCHOOL SETBACK IN MEMPHIS

Tennessee: State Charter Commission Rejects Two Charter Schools in Memphis

Charters lose this round in Tennessee.

From Diane Ravitch

The executive director of the Tennessee Public Charter School Commission has recommended against approving two proposed charter schools in Memphis, siding with a school board that found the charter applications failed to meet state standards.

Tess Stovall’s recommendations uphold the Memphis-Shelby County School board’s unanimous decision in April and again in July to reject the applications for the proposed Binghampton Community School and Tennessee Volunteer Military Academy. Leaders of both schools had appealed the decisions to the state.

END MANDATORY THIRD GRADE RETENTION

Jan Resseger: Why Ohio Must End the Failed Policy of 3rd Grade Retention

Third grade retention policy, which is also part of Indiana's education environment, should be ended. Diane Ravitch reports on why retaining students in third grade is a bad idea.

From Diane Ravitch

Jeb Bush and his ExcelInEd Foundation have been dogged promoters of the Third Grade Guarantee, but last May, the Columbus Dispatch’s Anna Staver traced Ohio’s enthusiasm for the Third Grade Guarantee to the Annie E. Casey Foundation: “In 2010, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released a bombshell special report called ‘Early Warning! Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters.’ Students, it said, who don’t catch up by fourth grade are significantly more likely to stay behind, drop out and find themselves tangled in the criminal justice system. ‘The bottom line is that if we don’t get dramatically more children on track as proficient readers, the United States will lose a growing and essential proportion of its human capital to poverty… And the price will be paid not only by the individual children and families but by the entire country.’”

But it turns out that promoters of the Third-Grade Guarantee ignored other research showing that when students are held back—in any grade—they are more likely later to drop out of school before they graduate from high school. In 2004, writing for the Civil Rights Project, Lisa Abrams and Walt Haney reported: “Half a decade of research indicates that retaining or holding back students in grade bears little to no academic benefit and contributes to future academic failure by significantly increasing the likelihood that retained students will drop out of high school.” (Gary Orfield, ed., Dropouts in America, pp. 181-182)

DO WE CARE ABOUT KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE?

Will We Even Try to Keep Students and Teachers Safe from Gun Violence? Or Just Keep Preparing for the Worst?

Right-wing politicians get all bent out of shape by the "damage" done to America's school children who were forced to wear masks in order to keep them, their peers, their families, and school staff safe during the coronavirus pandemic, don't seem to care enough to do much about the "pandemic" of school shootings.

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

“Teachers, we are operating on a lockdown. Please keep your doors locked until we tell you it has been lifted.”

Before me a sea of wide eyes and scared faces.

I slowly walked toward the door continuing the lesson I had been giving before the announcement. The door was already shut and secured but I nonchalantly turned the extra deadbolt.

“Click!” it sounded like a gunshot across the suddenly silent room.

I continued talking while making my way back to the blackboard pretending that nothing out of the ordinary was happening.

That’s just life in the classroom these days.

According to Education Week, there have been 38 school shootings in the US this year resulting in injuries or deaths. That’s up from 34 last year and the highest it’s been since the media source began tracking such things in 2018.

During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there were only 10 such shootings in 2020, and 24 each in 2019 and 2018.

That comes to a total of 130 school shootings in the last five years.

“Mr. Singer, can I go to the bathroom?” DeVon asked.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We’re still under lockdown. I’ll write you a pass as soon as it’s lifted.”

It seems like nowhere is safe.

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

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In Case You Missed It – August 29, 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. NOTE: Due to the Labor Day weekend, the next posting of In Case You Missed It will be on September 12, 2022.

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

The so-called education "reform" movement has damaged the teaching profession. "School choice" in Ohio is wasting education dollars. FWCS offers vaccines for students. A failed charter school in Indianapolis is still draining the system of funds. And finally, a report from the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

"REFORMERS" HAVE DAMAGED TEACHING PROFESSION

New PDK Poll: Esteem of Public Schools Rises But Most Parents Don’t Want Their Children to Become Teachers

The latest PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools shows once again that public school parents are happy with their local schools. Unfortunately, they also recognize the difficulties that teachers face from so-called "reform" efforts.

From Diane Ravitch

The latest Phi Delta Kappa poll about education was released, and it shows the damage that so-called reformers have done to the teaching profession...

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

Results of the 54th annual PDK Poll tell a tale of conflicted views of public schools — local ratings are at nearly a five-decade high and a majority have trust and confidence in teachers, yet there’s wide recognition that the challenges they face make their jobs broadly undesirable.

A teacher shortage, or not?

Fewer young people than ever are going into education, and many who do end up avoiding the classroom due to the "teacher pay penalty."

From Live Long and Prosper

...there is a significant gap between the salaries of teachers and the salaries of other professionals with similar education. This gap, which is continuing to grow, is referred to as the teacher pay penalty and it, too, has been around for quite a while.

Does the pay penalty exist because teaching is traditionally "women's work" and women in the US still, after all these years, make 72 cents for every dollar that men make? Absolutely.

Does the pay penalty continue to grow because Republican legislators in state houses in Indiana and around the county are transferring funding for public education to private and charter schools? Absolutely.

Does the pay penalty continue to grow because those same legislators hate teachers unions and are doing their best to "bust" the unions? Absolutely

The teacher pay penalty has hit a new high

OHIO IS LOSING MONEY ON "CHOICE"

Stephen Dyer: School Choice Costs Ohio More Than Public Schools, with Worse Results

Ohio's "choice" programs for education is costing the state valuable education dollars.

From Diane Ravitch

Stephen Dyer, a former state legislator in Ohio, keeps track of school choice in his state, which has been a costly disaster for students and taxpayers.

He writes in this post that charters and vouchers are actually more expensive than public schools.

I’ve helped document for years how Ohio’s charter schools and voucher program doesn’t lead to better educational outcomes, while it harms the educational opportunities for the 90% of Ohio students who are educated in local public school districts and leads to greater racial segregation.

However, the pro-privatization folks seemed to always have this in their quiver: At least charters and vouchers are cheaper for Ohio’ taxpayers.

Here’s how the Fordham Institute put it:

Even after a massive overhaul of the school funding system, Ohio charter schools are still shortchanged, receiving about 75 cents on the dollar compared to their traditional public school counterparts.

So I decided to check out their claim. And it appears that the state’s charter and voucher programs cost about 5-10% more than it would to just have all those students return to their resident public school district.…

VACCINES FOR FWCS STUDENTS

FWCS provides vaccines to students

FWCS offers vaccines for students who need them.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Northwood Middle School families had a choice this year as they toured the registration tables set up in the gym. Between booths for schedule change requests and athletics, they could make sure their children got the required vaccinations for school.

"We have grabbed so many people that it's unbelievable," longtime school nurse Marilyn Mueller said of the pop-up clinic offered in partnership with the nonprofit agency Super Shot.

Fort Wayne Community Schools families who missed vaccination opportunities at registration don't need to look outside the district to cross those requirements off their to-do lists. The nearly 30,000-student school system is in its fourth year of offering an on-site immunization clinic at the downtown Wendy Y. Robinson Family and Community Engagement Center. Appointments are available year-round on weekdays during school hours except on major holidays. Any FWCS student can be helped, regardless of insurance status.

CHARTER SCHOOL FAILS, GETS NEW LIFE AS AN INDEPENDENT CHARTER

After troubles in IPS, Ignite charter school rebrands

A failing charter school changes its name and continues to drain education dollars from local schools in Indianapolis.

From Chalkbeat- Indiana*

Single-digit proficiency rates. Plummeting attendance. A work environment described in a former employee’s lawsuit as “one big mess.”

Ignite Achievement Academy came to and left Indianapolis Public Schools within just four years under challenging circumstances. Some low test scores from Elder Diggs School 42 — the traditional school Ignite took over — dropped even lower on Ignite’s watch, while attendance fell below the district average and staff retention rates became the worst in the district.

These falling scores and other poor metrics led Ignite to become just the second charter school to not have its partnership renewed with the district’s innovation network.

Yet despite the school’s challenges, the mayor’s Office of Education and Innovation (or OEI) – the school’s authorizer – has allowed the school to continue operating as an independent charter school under a new name.

ICPE'S ANNUAL MEETING

ICPE’s All-Member Meeting: They’re Coming for Your School District

From the Indiana Coalition for Public Education*

Our Board member and former Indiana State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Jennifer McCormick and our lobbyist, Mr. Joel Hand, started us off with a review of what happened the last legislative session–and what to expect in the next.

Remember that it will be a budget session and we need to be prepared to fight for full and adequate funding for our kids in public schools!

• We can expect to see the Public-schools-must-share-referendum- dollars-with-charter-schools bill back.
• We expect to see more push for book banning and control over what teachers do in the classroom next time.
• Also, we have deep concerns that they will expand “education savings accounts” very broadly and create a universal voucher program like Arizona recently did.
• The concern for continued dilution of teacher licensing and certifications is another expectation for the next session.

*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 – July 26, 2021

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

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

CHARTERS

Charter schools haven't provided the innovations promised. When charters were new they were going to be the labratories for discovering new ways to teach. Charters were going to fill in the gaps that public schools missed. After more than two decades, however, the charter school experiemnt has provided no new innovations and no increased performance when compared to public schools (and neither have private schools collecting state funds through vouchers).

Charters have provided hundreds of scandals and millions of lost tax dollars that should have gone to real public schools.

Read below how charter operators are whining about minimal regulations to help stop the flood of embezzlement, cheating, and the theft of America's tax dollars.

In addition, there's more evidence that charters choose their students, increase segregation, and don't perform better than public schools.

House Democrats Want to Bar Federal Funding of For-Profit Charter Schools, and Charter Lobby Goes Wild

From Diane Ravitch

The federal government has handed out billions of dollars to start new charter schools. The federal Charter Schools Program program started small, in 1994, with less than $10 million. At that time, based on hope, not evidence, charter schools, it was believed, would be more innovative, more accountable, and better than district public schools. Twenty-six years later, we know more, and we know that many charters fail, few are accountable, and precious little innovation has come from them. But the funding for the program has grown and grown. The federal government is now the biggest funder of new charters. Under Betsy DeVos, most of the annual appropriation of $440 million was doled out to charter chains, like KIPP and IDEA, not to teacher-led schools or mom-and-pop schools.

In 2019, the Network for Public Education issued reports based on federal data, showing that one of every three federally-funded charters closed soon after opening or never opened at all. (See here and here.) NPE also issued a report recently about the for-profit management companies that enrich themselves and their shareholders with public money intended for instruction.

Chris Lubienski: The Deceptive Language of School Choice

From Diane Ravitch

Chris Lubienski is a professor of education policy at Indiana University. He wrote recently with Amanda Potterton and Joe Malin about the deceptive rhetoric of school choice rhetoric. Thirty years ago, the school choice movement boasted that charters and vouchers would “save poor children from failing public schools.” They claimed that private schools outperform public schools. Now we know that school choice does not produce academic improvement for students; that many pick their students and discriminate against the children they don’t want. “Success” for school choice means expansion of charters and vouchers, not better education for students.

Last week, Forbes magazine published an article on how “School Choice Keeps Winning.” Interestingly, “winning” isn’t defined as helping kids learn. Indeed, the article avoids that issue because evidence indicates that school choice is actually failing on that front. Instead, Forbes uses the term to celebrate the expansion of choice programs in many GOP-led states.

TESTING

Economists Worry Covid-19 May End Standardized Testing Altogether

Could the silver lining of the COVID-19 cloud be that we finally end the misuse and overuse of standardized testing?

From Gadfly on the Wall

The sky is falling for standardized test enthusiasts.

Economists Paul Bruno and Dan Goldhaber published a paper this month worrying that the Coronavirus pandemic may increase pressure to end high stakes testing once and for all.

The paper is called “Reflections on What Pandemic-Related State Test Waiver Requests Suggest About the Priorities for the Use of Tests.” It was written for The National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) – a Walton funded, pro standardized testing policy concern.

It’s easy to see why Bruno (who also taught middle school) and Goldhaber (who did not) are distressed.

Last school year President Joe Biden forced districts nationwide to give standardized assessments despite the raging Covid-19 pandemic.

DECADES OF HOSTILITY TO PUBLIC SCHOOLS

White Evangelicals Want to Destroy the Public Schools

In 1979, Jerry Falwell (Sr.) said,

I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!

His philosophical and religious descendants are still trying to damage public education.

From Diane Ravitch

Katherine Stewart’s new book The Power Worshippers describes the hostility of evangelical Christians to public schools. I reviewed her book along with two others in the New York Review of Books. One of the most interesting insights in her book is that white evangelicals at first tried to mobilize public opinion to protect the tax-exempt status of segregated private schools and universities. When that didn’t work, they found another issue that did: abortion.

But they have never given up on their goal of public funding for religious schools that were free to discriminate and the elimination of public schools.

SELF-SERVE EDUCATION PLANS

Education and the Self-Service Thunderdome

Curmudgucation blogger Peter Greene comments about the increase in self-service stores...specifically at Walmart...and how privatizers (including the Walton family) are working hard to make America's education system "self-serve."

From Curmudgucation

I'm not opposed to self-service on principle. I do not, for instance, miss gas station attendants at all (you youngsters can go ask your parents or grandparents what they were). Rather than explain to someone what I want and then wait for them to do it, it's far simpler to just get out of the car and do it myself. But what value is added by having me do my own swiping across a bar code reader?

In fact, as we're having the chance to view across many businesses these days, "self-service" is a pretty euphemism for "reduced service."

It's the dawn of retail thunderdome, in which the retailer provides customers with virtually no service at all except for a building, a marketplace in which to hunt, as best your able, for what you are able to find. Need help? Holler fruitlessly at the surveillance cameras. Can't find what you want? Not their problem--you're welcome to choose from whatever they decide to put on the shelves. Customer, you are on your own.

If this model seems vaguely familiar, that's because it's the same model at the heart of modern school choice. It is self-service education, an "ecosystem" in which customers are on their own, without aid or assistance or even anyone to make sure that the available options are safe. Nobody around to watch out for their interests but themselves. Caveat your own emptor, buddy. Here's a tiny voucher to help you feel as if the community hasn't abandoned you entirely, but once we hand you that voucher, we wash our hands of you.

IGNORING HISTORY, IGNORING SCIENCE

The Venn diagram of those who are against teaching evolution, those who are against teaching facts about the racial history of the United States, those shouting the loudest against the "tyranny" of having students wear masks during a pandemic, and those refusing to get vaccinated, is nearly a perfect circle.

America - Exceptionalism or Ignorance?

From Live Long and Prosper

Many of the same science-denying activists and legislators who are trying their best to "protect" American school children from climate change, public health efforts, and evolution, are now trying to "protect" students from actual history which doesn't always present the "American Experience" in a good light.

Instead of teaching children that the freedoms so eloquently described in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution should be taken as goals, not reality...that such freedoms were not available to women, native people, and hundreds of thousands of Africans and their descendants enslaved throughout the entire country, they want us to focus on "American Exceptionalism" -- that the USA is somehow God-ordained to lead the world morally as well as militarily. Somehow, if we hide the ugly side of our history it will be ignored and forgotten.

...There is a concerted effort on behalf of many Americans to hide the truth from our children...the truth about science, and the truth about our history. How "exceptional" can America be when we're sending our children to school and encouraging them to remain ignorant?

Ohio Governor Signs Bill To Ban Schools and Universities from Requiring COVID Vaccinations

From Diane Ravitch

America, we have a problem. The COVID is spreading, largely through a highly contagious variant called Delta, but only 48.3% of the population is vaccinated. More than 600,000 Americans have died. In five states—Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Wyoming, and Louisisna—less than 36% are vaccinated.

Despite the resurgence of this deadly disease, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed legislation barring schools and universities from excluding unvaccinated students. The results are predictable: more hospitalizations, more deaths.

GOP legislators say they prefer to wait until the vaccines have received full approval from the Centers for Disease Control. The three in wide use-Moderna, Pzifer, and J&J-were approved on an emergency basis by the CDC and have been highly effective.

SUMMER HELP FROM FWCS

FWCS partnerships help students

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Placing FWCS teachers at various community sites – the Euell A. Wilson Center, Parks and Recreation centers, YMCA locations and other Boys and Girls Clubs facilities – for two four-week sessions is a first for the 30,000-student district, said Matt Schiebel, a secondary education director.

The effort helps broaden FWCS' summer reach to children not participating in Jump Start, the district's academically focused K-8 summer program at Blackhawk and Memorial Park middle schools, Schiebel said.

The school district's renewed focus on summer learning followed a nontraditional school year marked with remote learning, quarantines and other challenges presented by the coronavirus pandemic.

**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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