In Case You Missed It – July 15, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Across the nation, conservative billionaires are funding a coordinated effort to dismantle public education to pay for private school vouchers that largely benefit wealthy families and enable corporations to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. In the last three years, an unprecedented number of states have expanded their private school vouchers, many providing universal access to these policies for the first time. Under the false promise of “school choice”, Republican-led state legislatures are adopting or expanding K-12 private school vouchers that drain hundreds of millions of dollars from their state budgets and public education systems to fund unaccountable private schools. The cost of private schooling is increasing well beyond what lawmakers anticipated, further draining state resources needed to pay for public services like public schools." -- U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pension, Senator Bernie Sanders, Chairman

SENATE COMMITTEE TAKES ON VOUCHERS

Senator Sanders Releases Report Assailing Billionaire-Funded Voucher Movement

The Senate HELP Committee has released a report on vouchers.

From Diane Ravitch

Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.

The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—”ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers.”

Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, “AFC’s political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers,” the report adds.

The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education...

CHOOSING THE "RIGHT" TEN COMMANDMENTS

When Religion Becomes Farce

There's a reason not to mix church and state. Which version of the Ten Commandments should we use? Should we include Buddha's Eightfold Path? excerpts from the Rig Veda? or the Koran? We have a diverse population so we should stick to the First Amendment's prohibition against establishing a state-sponsored religion by favoring one religious tradition over others.

From Sheila Kennedy

Most of us have seen the news that Louisiana now requires posting the Ten Commandments in that state’s schoolrooms. What I hadn’t seen reported–until this fascinating article from Salon–is that the version to be posted comes not from the Bible, but from Hollywood. Rather than go to any of the biblical texts, Louisiana opted for Cecil B. DeMille’s, taking the version to be posted from “The Ten Commandments.”

Actually, that shouldn’t be a surprise–Christian nationalists aren’t known for consulting original texts. Or for honesty.

The article is lengthy–and fascinating. It quotes several biblical scholars who have read–and engaged with–the biblical versions...

DELETING CLIMATE CHANGE IN TEXTBOOKS

Florida: Textbook Authors Told to Delete References to Climate Change

"If we pretend it doesn't exist, maybe it will disappear..."

From Diane Ravitch

Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel reports that Florida’s Department of Education has warned textbook authors to delete references to climate change, although some apparently are getting through. This is especially egregious since Florida is one of the states most threatened by climate change.

She writes:

Textbook authors were told last month that some references to “climate change” must be removed from science books before they could be accepted for use in Florida’s public schools, according to two of those authors.

A high school biology book also had to add citations to back up statements that “human activity” caused climate change and cut a “political statement” urging governments to take action to stop climate change, said Ken Miller, the co-author of that textbook and a professor emeritus of biology at Brown University.

THE DANGER OF PROJECT 2025

Project 2025: Ending Public Education for Students with Disabilities

The Republican Party's Project 2025 has an entire section on education that includes the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, universal vouchers, and the elimination of teachers' unions. Media Matters has an excellent summary, here.

From Nancy Bailey's Education Website

Project 2025 wishes to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE). The USDOE should not be eliminated, but serve as a vital bridge, a unifying force, and a check on local and State education departments, ensuring the cohesive and well-rounded development of our public education system.

In recent years, the USDOE has failed, opening its doors to corporations wanting to end public education and funding elite-driven, unproven programs like Common Core State Standards. It hasn’t supported teachers, students, and parents like it should and has reduced student privacy protections.

However, the USDOE is still responsible for vital programs, like special education, ensuring students from infancy to age 21 have services, Title I programs, and more, to ensure that there are no barriers for children educated in America.

LOCAL NEWS

East Allen County Schools eyes new buildings, renovations in long-range vision

Changes for EACS...

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

East Allen County Schools unveiled Tuesday a $190 million plan to build two new schools and renovate others.

The proposed projects, which would affect property owners differently, are part of the district’s broader long-range plan, which addresses the years through 2032. Superintendent Marilyn Hissong spent about 50 minutes detailing the student-based safety and renewal initiative.

“(It) represents our collective commitment to the future of our students, our schools and, most importantly, our communities,” Hissong said during a public hearing before the school board’s regular meeting.

The overall plan calls for improvements in every attendance area – Harding, Heritage, Leo, New Haven and Woodlan – with construction of new schools beginning as early as next year.

New Southwest Allen County Schools leader ready to listen

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Kent DeKoninck’s experience mentoring school leaders in recent years sometimes reminded the longtime educator why he retired.

But those relationships also reminded the former Indiana Superintendent of the Year what he missed.

“Anytime I was involved with superintendents and/or principals and helping them through issues, it’s like, I miss this,” DeKoninck said. “I miss that piece of me that wants to help and wants to solve problems and wants to make situations better for kids and for staff and for parents.”

That niggling feeling shouldn’t be an issue anymore. DeKoninck began leading Southwest Allen County Schools last week following the June 30 retirement of Superintendent Park Ginder.

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – June 24, 2024

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

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

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

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

THIS WEEK IN ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION

Moms on a Mission

How the Right Exploits ‘Moms’ to Privatize Education

From The Progressive

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

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

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

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

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

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

Taxpayers funding private schools

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

From Mother Jones

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

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

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

It's not a choice

Stop Calling It School Choice

From Peter Greene at Curmudgucation

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

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

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

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

Crossing the line

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

From Diane Ravitch

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

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

LOCAL AND INDIANA NEWS

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

From WANE.com

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

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

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

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

SACS Board of Trustees officially approves district’s superintendent pick

From WANE.com

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

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

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

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

From Indiana Capital Chronicle

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

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

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

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

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In Case You Missed It – June 6, 2022

Here are links to articles from the last two 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 to be informed when our blog posts are published.

THIS WEEK

The same people who don't trust teachers to choose appropriate books for their students are now calling for teachers to be armed in the classroom. Both issues are reflected in today's selections.

We also include three posts by a favorite blogger of NEIFPE readers, Peter Greene.

MATH TEXT IN NACS

Disputed math text approved

NACS Board approves a controversial math textbook.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

A high school math textbook that elected officials shelved two weeks ago will indeed be taught in Northwest Allen County Schools classrooms in the fall.

The 4-0 board decision Monday followed more than 30 minutes of public comment from 15 speakers, including several who urged board members to trust the district's education professionals and approve the seventh edition of "Precalculus" by Robert F. Blitzer.

Kent Somers, board vice president, abstained.

CHARTERS - THE DAMAGE DONE

Charter schools and ‘educational blackmail’

There is yet to be a proven benefit to students that justifies opening charter schools that drain public dollars from public education.

From School Matters

The paper identifies three types of harm that can be caused by the growth of charter schools:

• Increased stress on financially troubled school districts.
• Predatory real estate deals that divert resources to for-profit businesses.
• Loss of rights for students who enroll in charter schools.

When students leave district schools for charter schools, state operating funds typically follow, sometimes leaving the districts strapped. Over time, districts can cut costs by reducing staff and closing schools. But Green and Connery say districts often have fixed costs – for example, pensions, retiree health care and debt – that can’t be easily reduced when they lose students.

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD -- STILL RELEVANT?

‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is Still Relevant Because it Forces Us to Confront Ourselves

Steven Singer, a middle school teacher in Pennsylvania, discusses teaching To Kill a Mockingbird in 2022.

From Gadfly on the Wall Blog

Parris is peering into a crumpled paperback with a huge smile on his face.

“Mr. Singer, I love this book…” he says.

He stops, pauses and adds, “I hate what’s happening, but I love the book.”

In my middle school classroom, that’s a pretty routine reaction to Harper Lee’s classic, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

My 8th grade students approach the climax and resolution with equal parts dread and delight.

But it doesn’t always start that way.

No book I teach has gone through a greater change in cultural opinion than “Mockingbird.”

It used to be considered a bastion of anti-racism. Now some folks actually consider it to be racist.

THE BENEFIT OF SMALL CLASS SIZE IS NO MYSTERY

The (Not A) Mystery Of Class Size

How much more could your child's teacher provide to her class if the number of students was cut by ¹/₃? How would things change if she had 18 first graders in her class instead of nearly 30? or 20 freshman math students instead of 35?

We all know that a smaller class size means, at the very least, more time for teachers to spend with each student, but we don't want to pay for it. We're content to let the super-rich have small class sizes in their exclusive private schools, but for those "other students" in public schools? Forget it.

From Curmudgucation

The most fundamental issue of education in this country, the issue that underlies virtually all other issues, is that we want to have it and we want it to be good, but we do not want to pay for it. We want a Lexus, but we want it at Yugo prices (and we're pretty sure that Those People could just make do with a bicycle).

No issue captures this better than the issue of class size.

There is plenty of research to underscore the benefits of smaller class sizes, but seriously-- who needs it? It's bad form to pretend that anecdotal evidence is not true data, except in this case we're talking about anecdotes from several million teaching professionals, several million children, and several million parents.

THE POWER WORSHIPPERS

The Power Worshippers and Education

The so-called "conservative" attack on public education is more than just politics as usual.

From Curmudgucation

There is much to recognize [in Katherine Stewart's book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, which was published in 2019]. Betsy DeVos. Hillsdale College. The Council for National Policy, the shadowy group with a master plan for education and a truly scary membership list. If you've had the nagging sense that the religious right's attack on public education is part of something bigger, that's here. And if you have the nagging feeling that much of it doesn't make sense, Stewart will show you the angle from which it makes perfect sense.

This book is not going to make you feel better about any of it, which is probably the best reason to read it. Highly recommended.

ARMING TEACHERS BECAUSE MORE GUNS ARE THE GOAL

Three Reasons Arming Teachers Is A Bad Idea

Should teachers be armed?

From Peter Greene in Forbes

Securing the firearm.

Where and how would a teacher keep the gun secured? How do we make sure that the gun can’t possibly fall into younger hands? That includes, especially, the hands of students who are deliberately trying to commandeer the gun. We have had a non-zero number of instances where students have been caught planning a school attack. It’s chilling to consider what could have or would have happened in cases where, in the planning stage, the shooter thought, “I don’t have to figure out how to get a gun into the school—there are plenty already there.”

...The chaos of a classroom.

Like virtually every teacher in the US, I often played a game of hypotheticals. What if a shooter entered my building right now? What if one entered my room? What if I had a gun in my room?

...the chances were poor that I would get a chance to use my gun safely. In most scenarios, I would have to shoot at the gunman with students either between us or behind him. If he’s armed with an AR-15 style weapon and I have a handgun, my chances to reposition myself will be slim.

I would never have been able to live with making one of my own students collateral damage.

**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/ [NOTE: NEIFPE has no financial ties to the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette]

^†Note: NEIFPE's In Case You Missed It is posted every week except holiday weekends or as otherwise noted.

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