In Case You Missed It – September 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

"...the teacher pay penalty is one more symptom of two issues that are fundamental to so many of our education debates-- the desire to avoid paying one cent more than we absolutely have to for public school funding, and the desire not to pay taxes to educate Those Peoples' Children. Both of those desires are getting full expression in the privatization movement." -- Peter Greene in Does Teacher Pay Matter?

TEACHER PAY

Does Teacher Pay Matter?

It does. But teacher pay alone is not enough.

From Curmudgucation

...the teacher pay penalty-- the gap between teacher pay and pay for similarly-educated professionals-- has been growing over the last three decades to reach an all-time high. The gappage appears to have accelerated in the mid-90s.

Some, like the folks at Reason magazine...argue that it's not so bad because blah blah blah shuffling numbers around. But considering averages and other benefits does not improve the picture.

Fernandez also notes the other perennial argument against paying teachers well-- teachers don't care about money and they aren't motivated by it and boy do my old fart hackles raise at every similar argument posted by someone who also posts that damned stupid "Teachers do it for the outcome, not the income" meme.

Teaching is not supposed to be some act of self-sacrifice, immolating yourself so that you can illuminate the lives of students. For one thing, it's not sustainable. It's not even functional, because (as they don't tell you in teacher school), you can give every last atom of yourself and it won't be enough. You will burn out early, and--bitterest of ironies--you won't even be very good at it, because what can a person who has no life of their own teach students about life?

Don't get me wrong-- teaching is absolutely a noble and supremely worthwhile profession of service. But that doesn't mean teachers shouldn't be paid well.

DON'T ELIMINATE THE USDOE

Eliminating the Education Dept. Would Destroy Public Schools

Carol Corbett Burris is the Executive Director of the Network for Public Education.

From Carol Burris in The Daily Courier (Connellsville, PA)

Since President Jimmy Carter created the modern Department of Education in 1979, the department has faced continuous calls for its abolition. This threat has persisted through Republican administrations, from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.

Never following through on their campaign promises to abolish it, some presidents have often used the department to push agendas hostile to public schools. Reagan’s department brought exaggerated claims of doom and gloom in A Nation at Risk, denigrating our public schools with a still-existing narrative. And Trump’s secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, did little to hide her disdain for public schools, calling for abolishing the department she ran.

However, no matter how often presidents promise to ax it, ending the department would require an act of Congress. While there is little reason to believe that Congress would agree, given the volatility of government, one can never be sure. At the least, the promise to abolish the department is a rallying cry and a dominant feature of the right-wing agenda to end what it calls “government schools.”

That right-wing agenda, reflected in Project 2025 and to a more limited extent in the Republican platform, is to eliminate democratically governed public schools. It emanates from the vision of Milton Friedman, who believed that public school systems should be replaced by a patchwork of private, home school, religious and semi-public schools like charter schools. Parents would receive funds in a “savings account” to shop among them. Proposers of this voucher-like funding scheme know that public school systems could not survive without reliable systemic funding streams. The remnant of public schools would serve the children no private or charter school wants.

PRIVATIZATION

Why have vouchers "failed to improve test scores or educational outcomes?" Because the most pressing problem in the United States when it comes to education is child poverty.

“…we are likely to find that the problems of housing and education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished.” – Martin Luther King Jr., The Southern Christian Leadership Conference Presidential Address, 8/16/1967

Public School Successes

From Sheila Kennedy

...Some twenty or so years ago, privatization enthusiasts had a standard answer for every perceived government malfunction: let the private sector do it! This approach had multiple, significant drawbacks, and as those drawbacks became too obvious and costly to ignore, the early enthusiasm faded–except in education, where the “market can solve all problems” ideologues were joined by rightwing activists pursuing a vendetta against teachers’ unions, and by religious folks who chafed at separation of church and state and wanted a First Amendment “work-around.”

“How do you improve the performance of the nation’s public schools?” was–and remains– a fair question. Urban school districts, in particular, face multiple challenges, and when the question of how to meet those challenges became an everyday topic following publication of A Nation at Risk, political figures offered two wildly competing suggestions: “the market can solve everything” ideologues insisted that competition from private schools would incentivize public school improvement; supporters of public education lobbied for additional resources, to be deployed in line with reforms suggested by new academic research.

As we know, vouchers won the political debate. It was a disarmingly simple fix, championed by people who not-so-coincidentally stood to gain from it. Unfortunately, however, despite the promises, vouchers have failed to improve test scores or educational outcomes...

The fight over vouchers is an existential battle for America’s public schools

From Linda Blackford in The Charlotte Observer

Advocates of “school choice,” or using public funds to pay for private school, often call it the civil rights issue of our time.

That’s a special kind of gaslighting, not only because numerous studies have shown how little academic progress students make with school vouchers, but also because the school choice movement was actually born out of the horror that parents and politicians had toward the 1954 Brown v. Board decision that would end legal segregation in schools.

That resistance was bolstered by Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s book “The Role of Government in Education,” which objected to any government oversight of any kind, and first suggested some kind of tax code changes to subsidize private education.

“It was this idea — what became school vouchers — that allowed segregationists to frame a racist response to the Court’s desegregation orders as an issue of markets and what we would call today parental choice,” writes Josh Cowen in his timely new book, “The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers.”

The book is a fascinating history of how the school choice movement began in segregation, then caught steam as a way to help poor and minority students in failing systems.

WHAT DO PARENTS KNOW?

What Do Parents Know About Public Education?

The most important facet of education is the relationship between the student and the teacher. The second most important is the relationship between the teacher and the student's parents/guardians. Communication is important.

From Nancy Flanagan in Teacher in a Strange Land

Kappan recently took a look at American adults’ knowledge of public schools:

Our findings shed light on a key question: What do adults know about U.S. education? Specifically, what do they know about what is taught, who makes decisions, the role of parents, and the belief systems driving education policy? Our results have important implications for how we might support children and improve the education system.

No kidding, Sherlock.

The survey results would come as no surprise to veteran public school educators: Half of adults don’t know what is/is not taught in their local school. Most are unsure about who’s making curricular decisions. Most are unclear on the impact of privatization on their public schools. Some of the surveyed issues (Critical Race Theory and learning loss) revealed a complete lack of understanding.

Least surprising finding: Adults’ perceptions of what’s happening in public schools mainly come from their own personal experiences (and this includes people with no K-12 children in the home). The percentage of people who read books or articles, watch cable news or videos, or listen to podcasts about education is small. People who get their education news from newspapers? Fifteen percent. Second highest source of ed news? Social media.

That’s a lot of guesswork, memes and faulty memories.

FORT WAYNE AND INDIANA

The challenge of chronic absenteeism

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Indiana’s battle against chronic absenteeism mirrors a broader national trend that has proven difficult to reverse in the post-pandemic era. Chronic absenteeism is the rate of students absent from school for any reason for at least 10% of the school year.

While the Indiana Department of Education noted earlier this month that the state made progress last school year, with the absenteeism rate falling to 17.8%, the improvement still leaves more than 1 in 6 students habitually missing school.

Allen County’s chronic absentee rates are mixed. Southwest Allen County Schools, for example, posted an impressive absenteeism rate of less than 1%, the lowest the district has seen in more than a decade. By contrast, Fort Wayne Community Schools and East Allen County Schools struggled with rates higher than 20%. However, FWCS did see modest improvement.

Core change: With deadline looming, state must move rapidly on new diploma requirements

By Indiana State Representatives Phil GiaQuinta and Kyle Miller in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Indiana is in the middle of redesigning its high school diploma requirements. Given the importance of getting this right, the Indiana State Board of Education and Department of Education are required to engage in a public comment period to hear from Hoosiers about their feedback on the proposal.

When the first draft came out earlier this year, there was widespread outcry from parents, educators and our state universities about how the proposal focused too much on nebulous work-based learning and external internship requirements and would not adequately prepare students to meet admissions requirements to Purdue, Indiana University and other in-state institutions.

Thankfully, the department of education and board of education heard our concerns, and the second draft, which has been unveiled but not yet fleshed out in the form of a draft agency “rule,” is a marked improvement. However, we believe it can improve more.

That’s why we hosted a town hall on the redesign this week and invited local education leaders to join us to discuss the plan’s promises, pitfalls and remaining questions.

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 – October 23, 2023

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"It seemed like good news for charter schools when a study released this summer declared that they get better student outcomes than do traditional public schools — at least from 2015 to 2019, the years for which researchers said they crunched the numbers. The Wall Street Journal editorial board hailed the results as showing “huge learning gains over union schools” (with “union schools” used as a pejorative reference to public schools in traditional school districts). Education Week’s headline declared: “Charter Schools Now Outperform Traditional Public Schools, Sweeping Study Finds.”

"But the study, it turned out, doesn’t show that at all. The headlines were wrong. For one thing, a close look at the results revealed only tiny improvements in charter schools. That, plus concerns critics have raised about the validity of the methodology and definitions used in the study, render moot the claims of besting traditional public schools." -- The Answer Sheet blogger, Valerie Strauss in Why what looked like good news for charter schools actually wasn’t

CHARTERS, VOUCHERS, AND PRIVATIZATION

Valerie Strauss: The Latest “Good News” about Charter Schools is a Hoax

From Diane Ravitch

Education Week’s headline declared: “Charter Schools Now Outperform Traditional Public Schools, Sweeping Study Finds.”

But the study, it turned out, doesn’t show that at all. The headlines were wrong. For one thing, a close look at the results revealed only tiny improvements in charter schools. That, plus concerns critics have raised about the validity of the methodology and definitions used in the study, render moot the claims of besting traditional public schools.

The “not what they seem” theme of the study results reflect the uncertain position in which charter schools find themselves these days. The vanguard of the “school choice” movement when the first charter opened in 1992 in Minneapolis, these schools have been eclipsed in the national debate about “school choice” by programs that use public money for private and religious schools, including vouchers, tax credit programs and education savings accounts.

Texas: State Commissioner Cracked Down on Houston While Ignoring Low-Performing Charter Schools

From Diane Ravitch

Since taking office more than seven years ago, Morath has repeatedly given charters permission to expand, allowing them to serve thousands more students, even when they haven’t met academic performance requirements. On at least 17 occasions, Morath has waived expansion requirements for charter networks that had too many failing campuses to qualify, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of state records. The state’s top education official also has approved five other waivers in cases where the charter had a combination of failing schools and campuses that were not rated because they either only served high-risk populations or had students too young to be tested.

Oklahoma: Founders of Epic Charter Schools Charged with More Crimes

From Diane Ravitch

Founders of Epic Charter Schools are facing new charges of money laundering and presenting false claims to the state, bringing the total number of charges to 15.

Epic co-founders David Chaney and Ben Harris and Chief Financial Officer Josh Brock, were arrested and charged with a list of felonies in June 2022. Charges included racketeering, embezzlement of state funds, and obtaining money by false pretense.

The amount of diverted money so far totals $30 million. Republicans complain about public schools, but no district superintendent or principal has ever been accused of massive crimes like those of EPIC. Let it be noted that virtual charter schools have been the source of the biggest financial crimes.

National Education Policy Center: What Does Research Say About Vouchers?

From Diane Ravitch

The National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado invited scholar Chris Lubienski of Indiana University to review a recent publication of EdChoice (the new name of the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation), which summarizes what voucher advocates believe about the efficacy of vouchers. The publication is titled “The 123s of School Choice: What the Research Says About Private School Choice Programs, 2023 Edition.”

Not surprisingly, EdChoice concludes that vouchers are effective. Lubienski, however, is critical of the studies they include and those they exclude. In short, EdChoice engages in cherry-picking to bolster its cause.

STUDENTS STEP IN WHERE ADULTS HAVE FAILED THEM

Band Director Quits and Other Evidence of Pandemic Aftermath

From Teacher in a Strange Land

Perhaps you’re thinking that the national shortage of teachers is limited to certain sub-specialties, or geographic regions, that no responsible school leader would leave a group of six-year-olds to “teach themselves.” If so, you ought to take a look at the percentages of students, especially in charter schools, with unqualified substitutes. There are uncertified subs everywhere, in all subjects, k-12, and unfilled jobs in prestigious private and suburban schools, two months after the start of the school year.

The loyal-to-band kids in West Virginia do not surprise me. Band students, in my thoroughly biased opinion, are THE BEST, and these kids appear to be like band kids everywhere—self-starters, and leaders. Good kids. There are, of course, good kids in all grades and disciplines, in every school, those who can be trusted to carry on when the chips are down.

But here’s the thing that doesn’t get mentioned in this feel-good story: the band kids in WV learned how to do the things they have done—writing rules, running rehearsals, playing tunes—from a teacher. By all indications, a pretty good teacher, someone who instilled a spirit of cooperation that led students to try to balance out the band sound by switching instruments.

FORT WAYNE LOCAL NEWS

Northwest Allen County Schools reveals details of proposed teachers' contract

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Northwest Allen County Schools teachers could see their salaries increase up to 9.5% under a tentative collective bargaining agreement set for ratification this month, Superintendent Wayne Barker said Wednesday.

He shared highlights of the proposed 2023-24 contract during a special public meeting that last about 10 minutes at Carroll High School.

“We’ve made a significant, positive step in the right direction for what we want to do for our teaching staff,” Barker said afterward, noting NACS has about 520 teachers. “We want them to know they’re valued. We want them to know they’re appreciated.”

The superintendent cited the district’s increasing enrollment as the reason why the contract applies for one year and not two – the duration of the previous agreement. It’s to the teachers’ benefit, he said. Schools receive state funding per pupil.

**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 24, 2023

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, and they have been doing so for a while. Short-sighted leaders are attempting to put a Band-Aid on an open wound that has been festering for more than two decades, with quick fixes such as sign-on bonuses and reductions in licensure requirements." -- University of Indianapolis Professor of Secondary Education Sarah M. Denney in IndyStar 

PRIVATIZATION

Who Will Teach Indiana's Children?

Who will teach Indiana's children? Hard to attract, retain teachers in current climate

The Republican supermajority in the Indiana General Assembly has been doing its best to kill public education in the state for over a decade. Is it any wonder that qualified teachers are leaving the profession and classroom positions are left unfilled?

From IndyStar

According to a Chalkbeat study analyzing teacher turnover data from eight states, the teacher shortage remains, and it is getting worse. Rising teacher turnover rates and growing shortages put the quality of our children’s education at risk.

The teaching profession is bleeding qualified teachers, and our children are suffering. If we want to save the teaching profession, and by extension, our children’s education, we need to reduce the bureaucratic workload on teachers, set aside damaging political battles and require all educators to come to the classroom with appropriate training and certification.

The profession is being systematically dismantled by adding layers upon layers of bureaucratic red tape, with workload and working conditions being a major factor in teacher attrition. The Indiana Department of Education reported 1,675 open teaching positions in mid-August, when many school sessions had already begun.

North Carolina Follows Indiana's Lead

North Carolina: Vouchers Fund Schools That Discriminate Based on Religion, Disability, LGBT Status

Just like Indiana...

• Divert money from public schools to private schools -- check!
• Subsidize the private school education of wealthy students -- check!

Apparently, North Carolina has learned how to damage public schools by watching Indiana.

From Diane Ravitch

Justin Parmenter, a National Board Certified Teacher in North Carolina, is concerned that vouchers in his state will go to private and religious schools that discriminate when they choose their students. Republicans in the Legislature have a super-majority since a teacher elected as a Democrat—Tricia Cotham—betrayed her voters and flipped parties. Republicans can pass whatever they want without fear of a veto. Would you want your tax money to fund a school that would not accept your own child or one where teachers speak in tongues?

He wrote recently:

As this year’s legislative session hits the homestretch, public education advocates are waiting to see whether proposed changes to North Carolina’s school voucher system become law.

On the House side, brand new Republican Rep. Tricia Cotham sponsored House Bill 823, a bill which would expand funding for vouchers by hundreds of millions of dollars a year until the annual amount going to school vouchers eclipses $500 million in school year 2032-33 and every year thereafter.

In addition to massively increasing funding for vouchers, the proposed legislation eliminates income eligibility requirements so that any student in the state–regardless of financial need–may use public money to attend private schools. That means North Carolina taxpayers will be subsidizing the tuition of wealthy families whose students already attend private schools.

Idaho Joins the "Destroy Public School" Club

Idaho: How to Destroy Public Schools and Grab the Money: Connect the Dots

...and Idaho follows suit as well.

From Diane Ravitch

Idaho will spend $2.3 billion on K-12 public education in 2024. There are powerful out-of-state forces who want to get their hands on that money. Some are driven by profit, others by political ideology, religious beliefs, or a combination of interests. They all share one common goal: shift your public schools dollars to the private sector. Here are some of the dots to connect in the “privatizing public education” playbook:

1. Make public schools look worse than other school choices. The legislature does this by continually underfunding public education. Schools can’t meet parental expectations, accommodate growth, or hire/retain experienced teachers when salaries are not competitive and buildings are falling apart. Idaho has a backlog of over $1 billion in K-12 school building maintenance and we’re still at or near the bottom in per-student investment, even after having a $2.1 billion surplus and a recent budget increase. This makes other school choices look more attractive by comparison.
2. Undermine confidence in public schools...
3. Hide the facts...
4. Legislative intimidation. New laws are making classrooms a hostile workplace...
5. Promote “school choice” and “education freedom.” ...
6. Kill public education with vouchers (deceptively called Education Savings Accounts, or ESAs)....

OKLAHOMA: MORE MONEY FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Oklahoma: $39 Million in Federal Pandemic Funds Tilted Towards Private Schools, Not the Neediest

Oklahoma funnels much-needed school aid to private schools rather than where it's needed.

From Diane Ravitch

Two nonprofit news organizations in Oklahoma—The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch—teamed up to discover a misuse of federal funding by special interest groups. One such group was Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children. The state received $39 million to aid students during the pandemic.

Millions in federal relief money meant to help Oklahoma students during the pandemic was misspent at the hand of special interest groups who gave preferential treatment to private schoolers while hundreds of needy children missed out on financial aid, a state audit has found.

The Stay in School program provided tuition assistance of up to $6,500 for private school students whose families were financially affected by the pandemic.

An audit released Tuesday also confirmed flaws in how the state handled the Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet pandemic relief program. A joint investigation by The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch last year revealed how families spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bridge the Gap money on video game consoles, Christmas trees and grills.

CHARTER SCHOOLS: PUBLIC OR PRIVATE?

North Carolina: Legislators Want to Declare That Charters Are Private Schools

These Charter schools want it both ways. They want public funding, and they want to be able to set their own rules without public oversight.

From Diane Ravitch

A North Carolina charter school has a rule requiring girls to wear skirts, as they did in the good old days. The courts said that if they are a public school, they can’t impose such a discriminatory rule. The school insisted it was “not a state actor” and not public. As matters stand, the school can’t force girls to wear skirts.

This is a dilemma. The national charter lobby has made a point of claiming that charters are public schools and are entitled to full public funding. They call themselves “public charter schools” to make the point. I have maintained for years that charter schools are not public schools because they don’t have an elected board, they are not accountable to anyone, they make up their own rules about admissions and discipline, etc.

But North Carolina legislators want to pass a law saying that charter schools are not public schools because the owner of the charter in question is a member of the rightwing elite. If he wants girls to wear skirts, they should wear skirts.

FWCS WELCOMES TEACHERS

Fort Wayne Community Schools gives new teachers 'red-carpet moment' as orientation begins

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

The strip of red carpet Fort Wayne Community Schools unfurled for its new teachers didn’t go unnoticed Monday when the educators arrived for the first day of a two-week orientation.

As the new employees left the Parkview Mirro Center for lunch, administrator Ramona Coleman recalled the gasps she heard as staff and school board members welcomed the educators with hugs, high-fives, handshakes and fist bumps – whichever they preferred.

By adorning the entrance with a red carpet – something often used by Hollywood – the district wanted the teachers to recognize the value they are bringing to FWCS, Coleman said.

“Just like the movie stars have their Oscar moments, well, this was our red-carpet moment for our teachers,” said Coleman, assistant superintendent of human capital management. “I shared with them this morning that they could have chosen any other district. However, they chose us, and we’re very grateful that they made that choice.”

**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 – April 17, 2023

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

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

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"...Over the same time period as this stunning increase in voucher spending, Indiana decreased its per-pupil funding for public education by 1.5 percent...

"...Indiana retreated significantly in its commitment to public education at the same time it substantially increased its funding of private schooling..." -- PFPS Report: The Fiscal Consequences of Private School Vouchers

HOOSIER REPUBLICANS TAKE AIM AT LIBRARIANS AND LIBRARIES

Hoosier librarians step up

Indiana Republican legislative supermajority opened a new front in its apparent constant war against public education. This year they followed the lead of other Republican-led states and included censorship in their agenda. Fortunately, Indiana's librarians spoke up.

From School Matters

Hat’s off to Indiana’s librarians. They turned out in force last week when legislators considered making it easier to ban books and prosecute people who provide material that’s “harmful to minors.” And they pushed back when lawmakers suggested they didn’t know what they were saying.

But it may not matter. The legislation is on the agenda again today for a meeting of the House Education Committee, and Republicans on the panel seem determined to pass it into law.

...The amendment would require school libraries to compile lists of all their books and materials, post them online, and print them out for parents or others who request hard copies. They would also have to create and publicize a procedure for members of the public to seek to remove books from libraries. That seems heavy-handed and unnecessary, but school libraries can probably manage it. Most have computerized inventories that could be used to satisfy the law.

...But Cash’s amendment would remove the educational purpose defense. And it would eliminate the “scope of employment” defense for school and public libraries and their employees. It would retain the scope of employment defense for university, college and museum libraries.

In other words, it would make it easier for a politically ambitious prosecutor to convict a school or public librarian on a felony charge. No wonder librarians are alarmed.

Indiana House committee abandons contentious library materials amendment — for now

Rep. Bob Behning, former florist turned school choice entrepreneur, and no friend of public education made it clear that librarians and libraries are still not safe.

From the Indiana Capital Chronicle

A hotly-debated amendment that sought to ban materials deemed “harmful to minors” in school and public libraries stalled Monday, following hours of opposition testimony the week prior.

The House Education Committee did not vote on the amendment on Monday. Instead, lawmakers voted 12-0 to send the watered down bill, which deals with graduation rates, to the full House.

The amendment could still resurface on the House floor, however.

The proposal under consideration was similar to the controversial Senate Bill 12. But rather than hearing that measure, House lawmakers considered inserting similar provisions into Senate Bill 380.

Committee chairman Rep. Bob Behning, R-Indianapolis, did not comment directly when asked by the Indiana Capital Chronicle about the decision not to vote on the amendment, but he said such language will “likely” be up for debate again in the full chamber.

“The issue is not done yet,” he said.

THE TRUE COST OF VOUCHERS

The Fiscal Consequences of Private School Vouchers

This report focuses on the real impact that seven state voucher programs have on public education. The states highlighted are Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

From Public Funds Public Schools, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Education Law Center

Conclusion

The pattern of education spending in these seven voucher states is unmistakable. Private school voucher programs are initially proposed as limited in size and scope, then grow as existing programs are expanded, and/or additional voucher programs are established. This results in greater and greater amounts of public funding diverted to private educational institutions and private corporations. At the same time, as noted, funding for public schools in these states has largely decreased.

Although direct cause and effect is difficult to prove, the bottom line is clear: As states transfer millions of dollars to private hands, there are fewer available state resources for projects that serve the public good, from mass transit to public parks, libraries, and schools.

INDIANA'S REPUBLICAN-SPONSORED TEACHER SHORTAGE CONTINUES

Who will teach Indiana's children? Hard to attract, retain teachers in current climate

The shortsighted goal seems always to have been the destruction of public education and the teaching profession.

From the Indy Star

According to a Chalkbeat study analyzing teacher turnover data from eight states, the teacher shortage remains, and it is getting worse. Rising teacher turnover rates and growing shortages put the quality of our children’s education at risk.

The teaching profession is bleeding qualified teachers, and our children are suffering. If we want to save the teaching profession, and by extension, our children’s education, we need to reduce the bureaucratic workload on teachers, set aside damaging political battles and require all educators to come to the classroom with appropriate training and certification.

Legislators act to help schools find the right kinds of teachers, staff

We're glad that this Republican-sponsored bill makes sure that school children are safe from possibly dangerous adults, but taking credit for "broadening the pool of available teachers" after spending a decade trying to destroy the teaching profession strikes us as just a bit hypocritical.

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

State lawmakers have taken action on two education bills within the past week. One could broaden the pool of available teachers. The other is intended to restrict school districts from hiring instructors and other staff convicted of certain felonies.

House Bill 1528, authored by state Rep. Dave Heine, R-Fort Wayne, expands eligibility to the Next Generation Hoosier Educators Program to include those participating in transition-to-teaching programs and alternative teacher certification programs. It also moves the annual scholarship amount allowed to $10,000 per individual, with a maximum single- year state expenditure of $1 million.

Heine’s bill heads to Gov. Eric Holcomb’s desk after winning unanimous support from the full Senate on Tuesday.

Currently, high school and college students interested in a career in education may earn a renewable scholarship of up to $7,500 each academic year. In exchange, students agree to teach for five years at an eligible Indiana school or repay the scholarship.

In fiscal year 2022, there were around 650 scholarship recipients with a mean award of about $7,300 each, for a total annual expenditure of $4.8 million, according to the Legislative Services Agency.

Indiana State Teachers Association President Keith Gambill said the scholarship program is a justified measure for the legislature to pass to attract more people to the teaching profession.

NACS BUILDING PLANS

Architects shape Northwest Allen County Schools building plans with input, site visits

From the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette**

Site visits and stakeholder meetings are helping officials shape plans for Northwest Allen County Schools building projects proposed as solutions to overcrowding, an administrator told the district’s elected leaders Monday.

“I really believe we’ve got three great architect firms working for us right now,” said Brandon Bitting, assistant superintendent for operations and safety.

The 8,200-student district is preparing to build a new middle school and to renovate and expand the high school because a demographer told NACS last fall to expect enrollment to increase by more than 800 in the next decade.

**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 – 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 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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